At the beginning when Lisa is reading from her German verb wheel, she says "ich esse" (I eat), "er isst" (he eats), and "wir essen" (we eat) to which homer replies "When? When? Ich bin hungrig" (I am hungry).
In this episode Bart attempts to retrieve Santa's Little Helper who is used as a guide dog without being caught. The blackboard gag for "Whacking Day" implies that Bart was caught stealing a guide dog (or borrowed it and wasn't going to bring it back).
The song played at the party during the end credits of this episode is "Jamming" by Bob Marley with Chief Wiggum singing.
On French, Russia and Spanish prints of this episode, Chief Wiggum does not singing "Jamming" over the end credits.
An off-color gag occurred where it cut to a cruise ship and had them shoveling dogs (apparently including Santa's Little Helper) into a furnace for fuel. A similar gag would be used for the Hello Kitty Factory in "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo", albeit offscreen.
Cultural References[]
The episode's name is a play on the classic maritime novel and war film The Caine Mutiny.
The premise of a human character using the family pet's name to get a credit card was used on a season three episode of the FOX sitcom Married...with Children (with the only plot difference being that Al and Peg eventually did get caught for credit card fraud, but only had their stuff impounded and Al working in a hotel to pay off the room service charges after the bank discovered that they sent a credit card approval letter to Buck, the family dog).
According to the DVD commentary, the Repo Depot is loosely based on the building from the movie Repo Man.
Mr. Gasser By Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth
Homer receives a magazine in the mail, entitled Car Toons and featuring a cover illustration of a hot rod driven by a monster, in the style of Ed Roth.(Creator of 'Rat Fink' and 'Mr. Gasser')The picture on the cover is a slightly Simpsonized version of Mr Gasser.
Goofs[]
As Bart looks through the junk mail, his sleeve grows longer in the middle of the scene so that it goes beyond where his other arm overlaps.
In the same scene, the utensils on the table change dramatically between shots.
A Debt Collection Agency would never call in the middle of the night.
When Fat Tony, Legs and Louie dump a cadaver rolled up in a rug into a hole, and Legs says to Bart "We ain't see nothin' if you ain't see nothin'", he has Louie's voice.
A brown section of Kent Brockman's dog's fur briefly is colored white.
After Maggie has oatmeal dumped on her head and Homer puts her back in the high chair, the oatmeal is gone.
Chief Wiggum kicks down the blind man's door. But when the shot moves to outside the house as the other officers arrive the door is back in place, and merely opened.
At the heroic dog scene, Laddie is not wearing a collar, however when he receives the medal he is wearing it.
The fence at the blind man's house is gray in close-ups but black in other shots.
In the commentary, Josh Weinstein claims that Frank Welker did the [original] voice of Scooby Doo. Welker actually voiced Fred (in one of the rare times Frank Welker actually voiced a human being and not did vocal effects/walla for an animal), while Don Messick was the original voice of Scooby Doo.
Production Notes[]
The final draft for this episode was published on September 19, 1996.[1]
