The opening refrences the fact that due to the Fox network's coverage of the World Series (which one game usually falls on Sunday), the Simpsons halloween show is pushed to november.
Kang and Kodos wonder if speeding up time will allow the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series, a reference to the team's long-standing championship drought. In 2016, they won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. Coincidentally, this episode aired less than two weeks after the Chicago White Sox, the Cubs' crosstown rivals, ended their World Series title drought of 88 years.
The scene where Bart meets the group of robots in the woods is a spoof of the music video for the song, Rockit by Herbie Hancock. The walking pair of robot legs were featured in the video.
The segment concludes with a short parody of The Exorcist, featuring a possessed Homer, he just faked it so he won't have to go to work.
The Robo-Tots ad that features a dog pulling a boy's swimming trunks down is a parody of the Coppertone ads.
As Bart is telling Lisa that he is going to jump, Lisa is reading Master of the Senate, the third book in biographer Robert A. Caro's series The Years of Lyndon Johnson.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In the episode "Halloween," most of the residents of Sunnydale don cursed costumes that transform them into what they are dressed as.
The classic Twilight Zone: In the episode "The Masks," four greedy heirs are turned into monsters by the hideous masks each wears at their benefactor's behest.
After all of Springfield's citizens are turned into real-life versions of their costumes, Mayor Quimby as Mayor McCheese says, "I am not a happy meal right now" as dogs lick at him, a reference to McDonald'sHappy Meals.
At the end of the segment, Maggie the witch flies up to the moon, accompanied by the theme music of Bewitched, in a scene very similar to the TV series' title animation.
Tress MacNeille voices the witch in this segment, who also voiced the Wicked Witch of the West in the animated Wizard of Oz show from the 90s.
Trivia
The show Pomona on the opening sequence from FOX references the real life city of Pomona, California, which is located in Los Angeles County in the Pomona Valley with a population of 149,058 as of the 2010 United States census. "Pomona is hotter away from the beach" is said in the announcing of the new show at the game, because Pomona is thirty miles away from the nearest beach.
"I've Grown a Costume on Your Face" is similar to an issue of Simpsons Comics' Bartman, in which Itchy and Scratchy are brought to life through alien technology create a nuclear explosion which turns the Simpsons into costumed superheroes.
Kent Brockman: Flung from a tree, and was the last person to be shot out of the air.
Moe Szyslak: He was flung from the tree along with the others, but Burns missed him. After taunting Burns, he ironically lands on on a weather vane, impaling himself. He still survives, wins the lottery, and is about to leave to cash it in, but Chief Wiggum lands on him, crushing and finally killing him.
Clancy Wiggum: Falls on a weathervane and dies instantly, crushing Moe.
Professor Frink: Eaten by Homer, who passes up bananas, saying that they look green.
Sideshow Mel: Shot by Burns, using machine guns on a plane during a strafing run.
Yeardley Smith is credited as "The Lizard Queen" which is a reference to Lisa's drunken/drug-adled line from Selma's Choice.
Hank Azaria is credited as "No Seriously, The Republican Party", which is somewhat odd as his real name or a variant of it does not appear in the "name" at all.
Goofs
When Homer, Carl, and Lenny were in the first shot, the plaques that Mr. Burns would hang their heads on are missing but after Barney says "The most dangerous game, I wonder what it could be?" The plaques suddenly appear over Lenny and Carl.
