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TREEHOUSE OF HORROR VI
"Treehouse of Horror VI" is the sixth episode of The Simpsons' seventh season, as well as the sixth Halloween episode.
Opening Sequence
Krusty is the Headless Horseman from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, holding his laughing head, and hurling it at the camera, which makes "The Simpsons Halloween Special VI" appear on screen.
Synopsis
Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores
When Homer goes to Lard Lad Donuts to get a "Colossal Donut", he denounces their advertising when he realizes that the "colossal donuts" aren't very colossal. So, in revenge, he steals the Lard Lad's donut, and in the midst of a freak storm, Lard Lad, and other giant advertising statues come to life to terrorize Springfield. Homer eventually returns the donut, but Lard Lad and his friends simply keep right on destroying. Finally, Lisa goes to an ad agency, and an executive suggests not to look at the monsters. He tries to write a song, but suggests it would actually sound better coming out of Paul Anka, who performs a song with Lisa. The citizens of Springfield do not look at the monsters, who lose their powers and become lifeless.
In a comical twist of the typical scenario of a tempter portrayed as a "devil on your shoulder", the segment shows a devil's statue destroying the town, while being tempted by Bart on its shoulder.
Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace
Bart has a nightmare that Groundskeeper Willie is out to kill him. He is slashed with a rake, and the scratches are still on his body after he wakes up. Many other people at Springfield Elementary School also say they were terrorized by Willie in their nightmares, and what he did actually affected them. When the students take a test, Martin falls asleep and is killed by Willie. Martin dies in class, and Bart and Lisa tell Marge about the monster. She says that Willie was killed in a furnace explosion in the school's basement, and burned to death while the parents of the students looked on and did nothing, and that he told the parents he would get his revenge by killing the children in their dreams. Bart decides that he's going to go to sleep and dream of fighting Willie. Bart appears in his dream and he attempts to get Willie, who can also transform into other things. He turns into a bagpipe spider and gets Bart and Lisa, who enters his nightmare. But when there's a vent in the spider, Maggie uses her pacifier to seal the vent, causing Willie to explode, and Bart and Lisa hope they are free of Willie forever. (He does show up again, but just as a normal person with no dream-powers.)
Homer³
Possibly the most famous of the Halloween specials. When Homer desperately tries to avoid Patty and Selma during a visit, he hides behind a bookcase and stumbles upon a gateway to the third dimension. Homer explores the peculiar area while searching for a method to escape it. Marge calls around Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Professor Frink, Chief Wiggum and Dr. Hibbert to help Homer get out of the dimension. Thanks to an accident involving one of the many cones flying around, the third dimension starts to collapse into a black hole, taking Homer closer to it with increasing force, while Professor Frink outsides explains to the others that Homer was in the third dimension. Chief Wiggum, enraged, shoots the wall that Homer passed into when entering the 3-D universe, but the bullets create more mini-black holes. Bart goes into the dimension to save him, but Homer falls with the singularity and Bart ends up back in the house thanks to his safety rope. Homer finds himself in an even more terrifying place: The real world.
Trivia
- This contains the first live-action sequence in a Simpsons episode. The only other live-action sequences are
- The company that did the animation for "Homer³", Pacific Data Images, went on to make the animation for Antz, Madagascar and the Shrek movies years later. Also, this segment was in the IMAX 3D film Cyberworld.
- The live-action scenes were reportedly filmed on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, California.
- When Homer is discovering how "bulgy" he is, a teapot can be seen in the background. This is the Utah teapot, the first 3-dimensional object ever to be rendered on a computer using sculptured surfaces (rather than as a series of polygons).
- The term "bulgy" which Homer uses to describe the third dimension and the premise of a two-dimensional cartoon character getting inside a three-dimensional world has been reused in The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour, a crossover co-written by Butch Hartman (creator of The Fairly OddParents, which was part of the crossover), who is known to be a fan of the Simpsons.
- The equations, codes and easter eggs that appear in Homer³ are:
- P = NP; this is a reference to the famous P = NP problem, and similarly contradicts the general belief that in fact P ≠ NP.
- 46 72 69 6E 6B 20 72 75 6C 65 73 21; an ASCII-hexadecimal string that decodes as "
Frink rules!"
- eπ i = -1; Euler's identity where i is the imaginary unit.
- 1 + 1 = 2
- 734 are the numbers that correspond to the letters PDI (Pacific Data Images, the animation studio) on a phone keypad.
- ρmo > 3 H0² / 8 p G; appears shortly after the universe collapses. It defines the critical density of the universe above which the universe would collapse. It is part of Einstein's general theory of relativity. G is the universal gravitational constant, H0 is the Hubble constant.
- 178212 + 184112 = 192212.
- Although a false statement, it appears to be true when evaluated on a typical calculator with 10 digits of precision. If it were true, it would disprove Fermat's Last Theorem, which had just been proved when this show first aired. Cohen generated this "Fermat near-miss" with a computer program. [1]
- That the formula is false is apparent by inspection: the left side is the sum of odd and even numbers, which produces an odd result, but the right side is even.
- Using exact arithmetic, the left side equals 2,541,210,258,614,589,176,288,669,958,142,428,526,657 and the right side equals 2,541,210,259,314,801,410,819,278,649,643,651,567,616.
- This is the first Treehouse of Horror episode to feature a short opening sequence, omitting the cemetery motif and tombstones with humorous names seen in the earlier specials.
- This episode was The Simpsons' submission for the 1996 Emmy Awards. The show would eventually lose to Pinky and the Brain. The reason this episode was submitted was because of its 3D animation and the writers felt it would be a lock-in. In several DVD commentaries, the writers and producers talk about how they had many different emotionally driven episodes during the seventh season that probably would have "destroyed Pinky and the Brain" and won the Emmy, episodes such as Mother Simpson, Lisa the Vegetarian and Bart Sells His Soul.
Cultural References
- "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace" is a parody of A Nightmare on Elm Street.
- "Homer³" is inspired by the 1962 The Twilight Zone episode called "Little Girl Lost". Homer even explicitly mentions The Twilight Zone (see quote below.)
- The film Tron (the first major film to use computer animation) is also mentioned by Homer as a means of describing his surroundings, as it featured similarly-styled vector-like computer graphics. In what appears to be a sly allusion to the film's lack of success at the box-office, none of the other characters are familiar with the reference (see quote below).
- The writing of Homer³ is similar to that of Alien³, as well as the equation x³, which something two-dimentional becomes 3-D.
- The ornate building Homer encounters inside the third dimension (and is subsequently sucked into the black hole) is a recreation of the exterior of the library players encounter in the popular PC game Myst. The calm strings-based music throughout this segment similarly evokes the The Last Message (Imager Room Theme) from this game.
Quotes
Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores
- Chief Wiggum (after shooting a very tall man): See, they're not so tough.
Lou: Uh, Chief, that wasn't a monster. That was the captain of the high school basketball team.
Wiggum: Yes, well, uh, he was turning into a monster.
- (the Lard-Lad donuts mascot appears at the Simpsons' house)
Homer: Oh, uh, if you're looking for that giant donut of yours, um, I think Flanders has it. Just smash open his house.
(mascot then leaves; we hear loud crashing noise as he walks away)
Homer (unusually calm): He came to life. Good for him.
(we then hear very loud smashing, followed by huge footsteps. The doorbell rings and Homer answers)
Flanders (running in the background): Help me, Lord!
Homer (to mascot): I told you! Flanders has it...or Moe. Go kill Moe.
Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace
- Marge: (telling a flashback story) It all started on the thirteenth hour of the thirteenth day of the thirteenth month. We were all there to discuss the misprinted calendars the school had purchased.
Homer: (shivering) Ohhhh, lousy Smarch weather!
- Lisa: I don't know, Bart, something tells me Willie is still out there, and he'll come back and kill us! In ways we can't even imagine!
( Bus pulls up, Wille gets out )
Willie: Boo! Ha ha...ya ga yaaa! Here I...am...yaaaah!
( Bus drives off )
Willie: No wait!...I left my gun on the seat!
( to Bart, Lisa, and Maggie)
Willie: Wait here, please.
( Willie runs off after the bus, cursing, his shoe falls off )
- Martin: I am the wondrous wizard of Latin! I am a dervish of declension and a conjurer of conjugation, with a million hit points and maximum charisma.
( spots a blackboard with verbs written all over it )
Aha! "Morire": to die. "Morit": he, she, or it dies.
( Willy morphs out of the blackboard; Martin gasps )
Willy: "Moris":...you die.
Martin: Aarghh! ( runs off )
Willy: ( laughs ) You've mastered a dead tongue, but can you handle a live one?
( his tongue shoots out of his mouth, wraps around Martin, and squeezes him )
( in class, Martin twists and screams, then collapses on the floor )
- Lisa: Do you understand what this means, Bart? The next time we fall asleep, we could...die!
Grandpa: Eh! Welcome to my world! (falls asleep)
Homer³
- Homer (putting his arm through the portal): That's odd. It's like something out of that twilighty show about that zone.
- Homer's brain (as he enters the 3rd dimension): "Oh, glory of glories. Oh heavenly testament to the eternal majesty of God's creation."
Homer: "Holy macaroni!"
- Homer: It's a place I've never been before.
Selma Bouvier: The shower.
- Patty: It's like he disappeared into fat air.
- Homer: I'm so bulgy!
- Homer (Homer looks at fish in the water): Mmmmm.... unprocessed fishsticks.
- Homer: Man, this place looks expensive. I feel like I'm wasting a fortune just standing here. Better make the most of it. (He belches.)
- Dr. Hibbert: Homer, this is your physician, Dr. Julius Hibbert. Can you tell us what it's like in there?
Homer: Uh, it's like, uh... Did anybody see the movie Tron?
Dr. Hibbert: No.
Lisa: No.
Chief Wiggum: No.
Marge: No.
Bart: No.
Patty: No.
Chief Wiggum: No.
Ned Flanders: No.
Selma: No.
Professor Frink: No.
Reverend Lovejoy: No.
Chief Wiggum: Yes. I mean, uh, I mean, no.
- Frink: Here is an ordinary square.
Wiggum: Whoa, whoa, slow down, egghead!
Frink: But, suppose we extend the square beyond the two dimensions of our universe, along the hypothetical Z-axis there. (everyone gasps as he draws a cube) This forms a three-dimensional object known as a cube or a Frinkahedron, in honour of its discoverer.
- Chief Wiggum (shooting into the portal): Take that, ya lousy dimension!
- Homer: Oh, there's so much I don't know about astrophysics. I wish I'd read that book by that wheelchair guy.
- (after Bart was pulled from the 3rd dimension)
Marge: Bart, what happened?
Bart: Well, we hit a little snag when the universe sort of collapsed on itself. But Dad seemed cautiously optimistic.
Homer: (from other universe) Craaaaaaaaaaap!!
- Homer: (upon entering the new universe) Ooh, erotic cakes!
- Rev. Lovejoy: Do you see a light?
Homer (from other universe): Yes.
Rev. Lovejoy: Move toward the light.
Zapping sounds; Homer (from other universe, screaming): Ow!
External links
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