'Simpsons': 'Treehouse of Horror' Top 10!

Features the origin of Kang and Kodos and James Earl Jones as Serak the Preparer.
”That was the first Halloween show. The idea of it to parody EC Comics was really original and kind of shocking for a cartoon on network television. [Executive producer] Jim Brooks said, ‘We better have a disclaimer at the beginning of this Halloween show,’ so Marge came out and warned people that they were going to see something scary. And the funny thing is it’s now very tame by our Halloween standards and by network animation standards.”

Homer changes the future forever with a haywire toaster.
”’Time and Punishment’ is one of the fans’ favorites. It’s basically the butterfly effect, where if you cause a tiny change in the past it destroys the future, which I always think proves time travel to the past is impossible because things would be changing all the time and Hitler would be the president. I think it’s really funny that Flanders is a dictator.”

Homer enters the third dimension.
”That was our first foray into 3-D animation. Now, of course, with Pixar and everything, it may look a little primitive, but it was extremely technically proficient and beautiful for when it aired. I couldn’t believe you were seeing this crazy thing on a network-TV show. And it has the infamous Tron joke that nobody’s seen Tron. We were thinking of updating it to where nobody’s seen Tron: Legacy, either. We’ve only had two live-action things [on the show]. One was Katy Perry and one was Homer walking around Burbank. We still have the erotic-cakes sign in our rewrite room.”

Springfield’s giant logos come to life, and the town is saved by Paul Anka.
”Everybody loves the Paul Anka song, ‘Just Don’t Look’ at the end. I thought it was a great multiplication of the Ghostbusters Marshmallow Man idea: ‘What would happen if all of them came to life?’ ”

Kang and Kodos possess the bodies of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole — and no one notices.
”This might win the vote of the most popular ‘Treehouse’ segment ever. I love the line when somebody realizes that the people posing as Clinton and Dole are actually evil aliens and he says he’s going to vote for a third party, and they say, ‘Go ahead, waste your vote!’ By the way, it relied on knowing that Clinton and Dole were sure things to be the candidates months in advance. It was an accurate guess.”

The hair of a condemned man goes on a killing rampage through Springfield.
”The scene where the toupee is killed in a gunfight — I defy anybody to watch it and not laugh.”

Mad experiments horrifyingly combine Springfield favorites with animal bodies.
”It was an idea that the second you heard it, you just started laughing. And I’m really excited because it’s actually an action-figure set. We don’t pitch things with that in mind; they did it after the fact. The Island of Dr. Hibbert action-figure set is one of the few Simpsons things I’ve actually laid out money for. It’s right in my office. I like [the scene where] Homer was having sex with Marge; he knew she was a half-big cat half-person but he didn’t care.”

A horde of hungry, hungry Homers ravages Springfield.
”If one Homer is funny, then 1,000 Homers has to be really, really funny. It’s one of the classic segments. It features a little shot of the Family Guy in the clone, and there’s also just the fact that the Homers are incredibly stupid and die in record numbers. And in fact, the one that Marge ends up with at the end isn’t the original one but she doesn’t care.”

Milhouse’s beloved Grand Pumpkin comes to life and goes on a killing spree when he sees what Springfielders do to his fellow pumpkins.
”For years we had never been able to parody Charlie Brown’s Halloween special, which is one of the all-time top three animated shows ever. The Vince Guaraldi music is such a huge part of it, so we got to clear it. It was just a dream come true to satirize it. I thought it was a really funny idea that instead of not ever seeing the Grand Pumpkin, it comes to life, and he’s really horrified at the way humans cook pumpkins into pies, and eat pumpkin seeds, which are basically pumpkin fetuses…. Yeardley [Smith] did this amazing rant as Lisa yelling at Milhouse the way Sally yells at Linus, and unfortunately it was cut for time, but we’ll put that on the DVD.”

Homer confronts a sinister voting booth in the 2008 election.
”It was satirizing the possibly correct fear that voting is not all on the up-and-up in America. I love Homer saying, ‘This doesn’t happen in America! Maybe in Ohio, but not America!’ ”