How I Wet Your Mother/References

General	References/Trivia	Gags	Appearances	Gallery	Quotes	Credits

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"How I Wet Your Mother"

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Cultural references

• The episode title is a reference to the sitcom How I Met Your Mother.
• The aspect of the Simpson family going into Homer's dreams, one at a time, is a parody of the Christopher Nolan film Inception. Further references to the film include:
  • A dream involving skiing on a snowy mountain.
  • Entering a dream within a dream to slow their descent.
  • Arriving at the deepest dream layer with high rise buildings next to a beach (depicted as discarded food, beer cans, and beer bottles in the episode), which begin to collapse.
  • Walking up a vertical road in a dream.
  • A spinning top that topples in real life but spins indefinitely in a dream.
• The closing credits feature audio of the song "Dream Operator" written by David Byrne with vocals from David Byrne and Glenn Close. The song originally comes from Talking Heads' penultimate album, True Stories.
• In a dream, The Simpsons appear in The Tracey Ullman Show shorts style where it references The Simpsons short Family Therapy.
• Grampa says his and Mona's tiffs is actually a television program, featuring Mitch Miller shouting at "one of his idiot singers." Miller produced for many singers, including Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin, and Johnny Mathis.

  

• While monitoring the Simpsons in the real world, Professor Frink reads Scientific Springfieldian, a reference to the magazine Scientific American.
• In the crowd of women supporting drunk driving in Homer's dream, one can see Maude Flanders.
• When Homer and Bart are fishing in Lake Springfield, if you look closely you can see Plopper's waste silo from The Simpsons Movie.
• In Homer's dreams, he has Jennifer Aniston's hair from Friends.
• In Homer's dreams, different actors appear as constructs of the movie trivia part of Homer's subconscious:
  • Robin Williams mentions Stanley Kubrick wanted him to star in The Shining.
  • Ronald Reagan mentions he was originally going to star in Casablanca.
  • John Travolta mentions there was a movie called Grease 2 and he was not in it.
• Mr. Simpson's Wild Ride is a parody of the Disneyland attraction Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

• 

  Smithers with the Portal Gun and the turrets.

  When Smithers goes into the supply closet, two 'turrets' from the hit game Portal come out to shoot him, Smithers quickly uses a Portal Gun (also from the game) and portals them away.
• The slow-motion fight between Clancy Wiggum and Professor Frink is a reference to The Matrix Revolutions where Neo punches Agent Smith in the face in slow-motion.

Trivia

• This episode marks the second appearance of B.F. Sherwood. B.F. Sherwood also has the longest gap between his first and second appearances of any other recurring character. His second appearance in "How I Wet Your Mother" was three shorts and 502 episodes after his first appearance in "Family Therapy."
• Barney didn't seem to realize he didn't work at the Power Plant, and he was heard in the bathroom there in "The Falcon and the D'ohman."
• This episode contradicts One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish, in which Homer stated that he and Grandpa had not gone fishing while Homer was a child.
• Homer also fails to go undercover into a shop in "Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson."
• On Mr. Simpson's Wild Ride, several past versions of Homer are seen, including:
  • Homer's muumuu outfit from "King-Size Homer".
  • Pie Man from "Simple Simpson".
  • King Homer from "Treehouse of Horror III".
  • Mr. Plow from the episode of the same name.
  • Angry Dad from "I Am Furious (Yellow)" and "Angry Dad: The Movie".
• Dan Castellaneta voices Robin Williams. This is the second time Castellaneta has imitated Williams's voice on the show, the first being Aladdin's Genie in "Mypods and Boomsticks". Coincidentally, Dan Castellaneta was hired to replace Robin Williams as the voice of Genie when Disney's Aladdin movie was turned into an animated series, as well as in the Kingdom Hearts game series.
• Professor Frink's line: "Frink out." was last used in "Treehouse of Horror XV".
• Zutroy, the illegal immigrant from "The Last Temptation of Homer" was seen at the beginning of the episode.
• This is the second episode where a Simpson dresses up as the Grim Reaper. The first was "Treehouse of Horror XIV".
• Homer mentions that his sheets would be as dry as the surface of Mars, except for the poles. Ironically, a few months after this episode was aired, the Mars Curiosity Hover found water streams and lakes on craters outside of Mars' poles.

Goofs

• The configuration of the Uralarm Whizz-No-More 9000 changes as Homer plugs the alarm mechanism into the main console.
• As Homer was thinking of Apu, a picture of a younger Mona featured her with white hair instead of auburn.