Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?: Grampa has a heart attack (after complaining about the McBain movie he saw/fakes one as part of the scam he, Homer, and Bart are running).
Stark Raving Dad, Bart Sells His Soul, Treehouse of Horror III ("Dial Z for Zombie") and the music video for "Do The Bartman": Bart and Michael Jackson (Bart befriends the bald mental patient who thinks he's Michael Jackson/Bart tells Milhouse that the soul is something parents use as a way to scare their kids into behaving, like the boogeyman or Michael Jackson/Bart uses the Thriller record album cover as a hat while summoning zombies/the lyric, "If you do the Bart, you're bad like Michael Jackson"/Bart gets scared off by a man dressed as The Jackson Five).
Cultural references[]
The episode's title is a pun of The Great Muppet Caper, the second movie of The Muppets.
When Homer tries to sell a Bible to Ned Flanders, Flanders mentions the movie Paper Moon a black and white 1973 American motion picture comedy with the same plot-line as this episode.
Grandpa's line about being rich enough to get a "crazy stripper wife" is a reference to deceased Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, who started out as a stripper, had undiagnosed medical issues and a prescription pill addiction that made her "crazy" in the eyes of the public, and was accused of seducing J. Howard Marshall, an elderly billionaire who allegedly promised her all his money when he died and was taken to court over it by Marshall's surviving family members.
Shortly before bumping into a "blind" Bart, Kent Brockman ends a phone conversation with "Good Night and have a pleasant tomorrow", a signoff used by Chevy Chase (and later Tina Fey) at then end of the Saturday Night Live news segment Weekend Update.
Goofs[]
Lisa's neck drawn over her necklace
When the Simpsons are driving back home, Marge asks the kids to be quiet because of her hangover. She is not wearing any lipstick in this clip. The picture then pans out and Marge can be seen wearing lipstick once again without having time to reapply it.
Also while the family was driving home, Lisa's neck is incorrectly layered over her necklace for a few frames, making it appear that the top of her beads are missing.
Willie wouldn't be able to fire a gun, as "Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two)" revealed that he developed a crippling arthritis in his index fingers from space invaders (not the 1970s video game--actual space invaders).
Several scenes involving the Russian space station Mir were inaccurate: For one thing, the sturgeon that was implied to be their dinner would have burned in the atmosphere by the time it entered reentry, and even if some part of it managed to survive re-entry, the damage to the car would have been much more than just landing on the hood (it would have taken off the entire front of the car and possibly killed everyone in the car). Also, the cosmonauts had their helmets off when it was discovered that they accidentally left the hatch open, which would have actually resulted in their deaths from explosive decompression. Lastly, by the time this episode aired, Mir was not only already decommissioned for about four years, but was also deorbited and burned in the atmosphere a few months prior.
Willy wasn't informed about the whole prank on Bart and Homer so him shooting in court wasn't planned, making it odd that they took care of that part of the hoax.
