Treehouse of Horror XXI/References

General	References/Trivia	Gags	Appearances	Gallery	Quotes	Credits

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Treehouse of Horror XXI

Lisa Simpson, This Isn't Your Life ►

◄ Treehouse of Horror XX

Treehouse of Horror XXI

Treehouse of Horror XXII ►

Cultural References

Monster Office

Opening

• The creature inside Professor Frink when he goes past the X-ray resembles an Alien.
• Frink has made his own Frankenstein's monster.
• The monster refers to The Office, and the scene that immediately follows parodies the opening of the show.
• The first few frames of the opening credits are also done in the same style as The Office.

War and Pieces

• The title is an obvious reference to the novel War and Peace, though there is a Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon from 1964 that is titled "War and Pieces".
• The plot is a parody of Jumanji (kids playing with a board game that comes to life and the only way to stop it is to play the game to completion).
• The Board games that come to life include:
  • Taffy Land (Candy Land)
  • Kerplunk (various building games, though there exists an actual board game called Ker-Plunk, where players have to keep a pile of marbles from falling through straws as the straws are removed one by one)
  • Drops and Risers (Snakes and Ladders)
  • Consternation (Concentration)
  • Ravenous Ravenous Rhinos (Hungry Hungry Hippos)
  • Mouse Catch (Mouse Trap)
  • Battleboat (Battleship)
  • Funopoly (Monopoly and its many variations and editions)
  • Crate of Apes (Barrel of Monkeys)
  • Yahtzu (Yahtzee)
  • Tiddlywonks (Tiddlywinks)
  • Satan's Path (Jumanji)
  • Spinning tops
  • Connect Three (Connect Four)
  • Tumble
  • Ice Hockey Game
  • Dominoes
  • Blocko (Lego)
  • Chess
  • Mystery Dude (Mystery Date)
  • Operation
  • Scrabble
  • Clue
    • Colonel Ketchup (Colonel Mustard).
  • Jarts

Master and Cadaver

• The title is a homage to the book, Master and Commander.
• The plot parodies Dead Calm.
• At the end, Maggie imitates Alex from A Clockwork Orange.
• In the beginning scene, we see that Marge was about to be attacked by a shark, referencing the movie Jaws.

Tweenlight

• Twilight is punned in the title and parodied throughout the segment.
• Yogi Bear is seen with Ranger Smith's head.
• Big Bird from Sesame Street is bitten by Count von Count.
• Seen in Dracula-la Land:
  • Grandpa Munster
  • Blackula
  • Count Orlok
  • Booberella
  • Count von Count
  • Count Fudge-ula
  • Selene

Trivia

• If you look closely on the television that Professor Frink is fast-forwarding, you can see Glee flash by quickly.
• This is the first time the viewers were told not to watch ever since Treehouse of Horror V.
• This is the first time since Treehouse of Horror XVII that no one broke the fourth wall at the end to wish the viewers a Happy Halloween.
• This is the first Treehouse of Horror episode to air in the 2010s.
• Bart, Lisa, and Milhouse were the only ones understood not to be in one of the board games when they came to life, although there were some others that we saw (such as Rod, Todd, Chief Wiggum, Selma, Homer and Marge).
• This episode aired after the three week hiatus on FOX, thus making it the first time since 2008 that a Treehouse of Horror episode aired in November.
• The Wilhelm scream is heard at a couple of places in the episode:
  • During the "War and Pieces" segment, when Bart and Milhouse kill enemy characters in the video game they are playing.
  • After the closing credits, when the Gracie Films card appears.
• This is the second episode where Homer plays Drops and Rises. The first was Any Given Sundance.
• It actually was 187 seconds between the words "Joel Cohen Will Die In 187 Seconds" and "As Predicted, Joel Cohen Just Died" in the opening credits as Joel H. Cohen is both a Co-Executive Producer and a Writer in this episode.
• The answer to the puzzle on the Consternation box is "A Board Game Rip-Off."
• Bart and Lisa do not appear during Master and Cadaver segment.
• This is the second time Homer becomes a vampire. The first was in Treehouse of Horror IV.
• This is the second time Lisa escapes from becoming a vampire, because of Homer's "agreement" in being bitten instead of her. The first time was also in Treehouse of Horror IV, but because the episode ending started instants before Lisa was bitten.
• In Tweenlight, Bart claims that when he takes his shirt off, girls become smitten. He takes his shirt off and his belly sags, because is too fat and he walks away in shame.
• In the closing credits, this is the first actual Treehouse of Horror episode to have Nancy Cartwright's Halloween name as NecroNance.
• Marge's line "That's crazy talk, man!" was also used by Indian casino owner in "Bart to the Future".

Goofs

• Edmund was about to bite Lisa when they were on the window seal, but in the next scene they were standing up.
• In the opening when Homer and Bart are carving pumpkins, the door is closed. In the next shot, the door is opened and is facing the opposite side. In another shot, the door is facing the right way.
• When all of the evil board games are approaching Bart, he manages to run back to the mousetrap without having to swim over it again in a previous shot.
• Lisa was not playing Satan's Path with Milhouse and Bart, but unlike other Springfield residents, she was not put into any other board game.
• In the beginning of the second segment, right when the shark is about to spit out Homer, its eye is gone in one shot.