Treehouse of Horror VI

"Treehouse of Horror VI"
The Simpsons episode
File:Kang Kodos Hitchhiking.jpg
Episode no.	Season 7
Directed by	Bob Anderson
Written by	John Swartzwelder Steve Tompkins David S. Cohen
Original air dates	October 29th, 1995
Episode features
Couch gag	The family are hanged on nooses, staring blankly. Despite being dead from asphyxiation, Maggie manages to suck on her pacifier.
Commentary	Matt Groening Bill Oakley Josh Weinstein David S. Cohen Bob Anderson David Silverman

"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. This makes "The Simpsons Halloween Special VI" appear on screen in blood. We hear Krusty do his trademark groan.

Plot

Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores

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The advertising icons destroying Springfield

When Homer goes to Lard Lad Donuts to get a "Colossal Donut", he denounces their advertising when he realizes that the "colossal donuts" are not very colossal. So, in an act of revenge, he steals the Lard Lad's giant donut from the statue displayed outside, 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 that does not stop Lard Lad and his friends from causing destruction. Finally, Lisa goes to an ad agency, and an executive suggests not to pay attention to the monsters, as they are advertising gimmicks, attention is what keeps them motivated. He tries to write a song, but suggests it would actually sound better coming from Paul Anka. Anka later performs a catchy song with Lisa. The citizens of Springfield stop looking at the monsters, who lose their powers and become lifeless.

Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace

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Maggie saving Bart and Lisa from Groundskeeper Willie

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 students 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 strangled by Willie in his dream. Martin dies in class, and Bart and Lisa tell Marge about the incident. Marge then asks what this has to do with Willie despite the fact Bart and Lisa did not mention him. She then tells the kids the truth: Willie was killed in a furnace explosion in the school's basement on the thirteenth hour of the thirteenth day of the thirteen month (that thirteenth month being "Smarch" due to misprinted calendars) and burned to death while the parents of the students (in a meeting Marge says was called to deal with the issue of the misprinted calendars) looked on and did nothing. He told the parents he would get his revenge by killing the children in their dreams. The parents ignored him, but he made good on his promise. Bart decides that he is going to go to sleep and dream of fighting Willie. Lisa is supposed to stay awake and wake him up if he seems to be in trouble. Bart appears in his dream and attempts to find Willie, who can also transform into other things. Willie turns into a bagpipe spider and is about to kill Bart, when Lisa enters, trying to wake him up. Bart realizes that since she is in the dream, that means she has also fallen asleep. They are about to lose the battle when Maggie appears and uses her pacifier to seal the vent on Willie's spider body, resulting in Willie's explosion. Now Bart and Lisa hope they are free of Willie forever, but they are wrong. He does show up again, but just as a normal person with no evil dream-powers, much to the children's relief.

This segment is a parody of Nightmare on Elm Street.

Homer³

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Homer entering the third dimension

Patty and Selma are about to visit the Simpson family for dinner. Homer panics and searches for somewhere to hide. He looks behind a bookcase (remarking "I never looked behind this whatchamacallit case before") where he discovers a gateway to an eerie third dimension.

The 3-D landscape looks like the grid pattern used in the early Atari video game Battlezone, and has some floating and bouncing objects, some mathematical equations like Fermat's last theorem, and hidden messages, such as an ASCII message written in numbers that translates into "Frink rules!". The pavilion and pond also seen are a reference to the library seen in the blockbuster 3-D game Myst, and has matching incidental music. There's another reference to Myst along the credits, where the Gracie Films logo plays music similar to the game, instead of regular scream of horror and organ minor chord.

Homer explores the peculiar area, being depicted as a 3-D computer-generated animation. He questions why he is "so bulgy", and remarks that "this place looks expensive... I feel like I'm wasting a fortune just standing here" (a reference to the high cost of computer-generated animation at the time the episode was created). Through the walls, he calls Marge for help.

Marge calls Ned Flanders (because he "has a ladder"), Reverend Lovejoy, Professor Frink, Chief Wiggum, and Dr. Hibbert to help Homer get out of the dimension, but they are of no help. "It's like he just disappeared into FAT air", remarks Selma.

When Homer accidentally pierces the fabric of the space-time continuum, the third dimension starts to collapse into a black hole, taking Homer and other objects closer to it with increasing force, while Frink outside explains to the others that Homer is in the "third dimension". An enraged Wiggum opens fire on the wall, but the bullets just get sucked into the black hole after narrowly missing Homer, making the force of the black hole stronger. Bart takes command and ties a safety rope around his waist, going into the third dimension to save him, despite Marge's objection. Bart yells at Homer that he has to jump to get hold of Bart, so that they can escape. Homer agrees and tries to, but falls short and into the hole, yelling "Craaaaap!", and Bart ends up back in the house thanks to his safety rope pulled by Wiggum, Ned, Lovejoy, Frink, Grampa, and Hibbert after the third dimension collapsed on itself. Bart tells the truth about what happened ("Well, we hit a little snag when the universe sorta collapsed in on itself"), much to Marge's dismay. Lovejoy assures her that Homer has gone to a better place. Homer finds himself in an even more terrifying world: the real world. Despite being utterly terrifed of the humans walking down the street and the sights all around him, Homer forgets his troubles by walking into a bakery specializing in erotic cakes.

Within this segment are many references to 3-D animation, such as the presence of the Utah teapot and Homer referring to the movie Tron (which many Simpsons characters admit to not seeing). This segment was provided by Pacific Data Images (now Dreamworks Animation SKG, creator of the Shrek movies) and was later converted into a 3-D IMAX short film as part of Cyberworld 3D. When shown as part of Cyberworld, the ending after the 3-D animation finishes is cut.

Awards

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 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".

Math equations

The 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!".
• e^{π i} = -1; Euler's identity where i is the imaginary unit.
• 1 + 1 = 2; This is perhaps one of the most basic and easiest mathematical equations one can understand. This fact can act as a building block to all the other mathematical concepts seen in the episode providing an interesting contrast.
• 734 are the numbers that correspond to the letters PDI (Pacific Data Images, the animation studio) on a phone keypad.
• ρ_mo > 3 H₀² / 8 p G; appears shortly before it falls into the black hole. 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. More specifically, any number ending with 2 carried to the 12th power will end in a 6, and any number ending with 1 carried to any power will end in a 1. So this equation would result in a sum that ended with 6 + 1 = 6, which is incorrect.
  • 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, a difference of 700,212,234,530,608,691,501,223,040,959.

Cultural references

• In 'Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores' the radio announcement "Astronomers from Tacoma to Vladivostok have just reported an ionic disturbance in the vicinity of the Van Allen Belt. Scientists are recommending that all necessary precautions be taken." is an homage to the "announcements" near the start of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre radio play The War of the Worlds broadcast on Halloween 1938. In that play, the music of "Ramon Raquello and his orchestra" is interrupted by radio reports of astronomers at Princeton observing disturbances on Mars prior to the Martian invasion.
• 'Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace' is a parody of A Nightmare on Elm Street. When Willie shows the shadow of his rake, it is a homage to Freddy Krueger's famous clawed glove. Willie is also dressed as Freddy would be, in a red and green striped sweater. The scene where Martin Prince dies while daydreaming in class is a spoof of a similar scene from the film A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. There is also a possible reference to Friday the 13th, as Groundskeeper Willie died on Friday the 13th. Finally, Groundskeeper Willie is killed by Homer, who accidentally sets fire to him. This is perhaps a reference to Krugers 'first death', where he was bombarded with molotov cocktails inside a boiler room.
• 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, except possibly Chief Wiggum (who denies it twice, then says yes, then no a third time), are familiar with the reference. Tron's distributor, Disney, would release the first completely CGI-animated film, Toy Story the following month.
• The ornate building Homer encounters inside the third dimension 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 'Last Message (Imager Room Theme)' from this game.
• The ad executive tells Lisa that advertisements go away once people stop paying attention to him, and Lisa mentions "Like that old woman who couldn't find the beef?" She is referring to Clara Peller, famous for her line "Where's the beef?" in commercials for Wendy's.

• The segment 'Homer³' is a parody of The Twilight Zone episode 'Little Girl Lost', in which a girl travels through a portal to the 4^th dimension. This is referenced when Homer remarks "It's like something out of that twilighty show about that zone." The design of the title 'Homer³' is a parody of the title design of the 1992 horror film Alien³.
• In 'Attack of the 50 Foot Eyesores', some of the mascots are parodies of known mascots. For example, Lard Lad is a parody of Big Boy, and the "Zip Boys" are a parody of the Pep Boys.
• Willie changing shapes while sinking in the sand box is similar to the T-1000's "death" in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

External links

• Pacific Data Images on Homer³
• "Treehouse of Horror VI episode capsule". The Simpsons Archive.