Recap / The Simpsons S 30 E 3 My Way Or The Highway To Heaven

The citizens of Springfield remember their divine encounters as God and St. Peter think about what would enable a soul to get into Heaven.

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Tropes Used in the episode:

• Activist-Fundamentalist Antics: A bunch of deceased Promise Keepers are still at it in Heaven.
  Promise Keeper: Have you accepted the Lord?
  Old Lady: I'm here, dimwit!
  God: Frankly, those guys weird me out.
• Already Met Everyone: According to this episode, Ned's first encounter with Homer (and Abe) Simpson occurred when Ned was a door-to-door salesman in his 20s who sold trampolines, not realizing that they were dangerously defective. Having sold a trampoline to the young Homer and his father, Ned had to race to save Homer's life upon finding out that he was attempting to set a jumping record that would have forced the trampoline over the limit and caused him to be electrocuted. This encounter turned Ned—formerly a directionless guy inclined to shady business practices—into Ned Flanders as we know him, as he took the electric shock that might have killed Homer and had a Near-Death Experience which made him religious from that point forward, besides emerging with a scar on his upper lip that caused him to grow a mustache.
• Appeal to Obscurity: When Marge's great-grandmother bitterly asks herself if there was a God then how could they allow World War II to happen. God says he's prevented a thousand wars that would have been worse, but people only ever talk about the ones that happened.
• Crossover: With Bob's Burgers in the Couch Gag.
• Continuity Nod: A subtle one—Ned in his story is shown to be an adult while Homer was still a kid, which is consistent with his reveal that he is sixty in the present day.
• Diving Save: How Ned rescued the young Homer from the trampoline.
• Easy Road to Hell: The episode revolves around St. Peter arguing that Heaven needs to expand its narrow admissions criteria. Inverted at the end, when God decides to just let everyone in...except Mr. Burns, unless it's as Smithers' plus one.
  St. Peter: It's easier to get into Upper West Side preschools. All we're getting up here are little old ladies and Promise Keepers.
• Future Loser: We see Gil in the past where he's confident and successful. However he admits to having clinical depression, and we all know where he ends up.
• High-Voltage Death: The trampolines Ned sold build up static electricity with every bounce due to their construction. This charge builds up immensely until discharging after five hundred bounces, shooting off a lightning bolt into the sky. Ned narrowly manages to save Homer from such a fate, and has a near death experience that leads him to being born again.
• Mistaken for Thief: Louise and Linda believe Homer to be a burglar upon finding him in their restaurant.
• My Little Panzer: Ned in his past job as a door to door trampoline salesman in the late 60's-early 70's, laments accidentally selling a death trap to families. His coworker says it's part of the job and if he wanted less child deaths he'd get out of the kid's toys business.
• One-Steve Limit: Discussed during the Bob's Burgers Couch Gag. Louise tries to name Homer "Bob" and renames Bob himself to "Bob Two"; much to Bob's dismay, all the Belchers start calling him "Bob Two" as well^note Amusingly enough, Bob is already technically "Bob Two" in his home show, because his father is also named Bob.
• Puff of Logic: Tracy Morgan appears As Himself in Heaven, to which God asks him "Tracy, what are you doing here? You're all better" (referring to his near-fatal car accident in 2014), causing him to vanish and leave only his halo rolling on the ground like a coin.
  Tracy Morgan: Nobody tells me these things!
• Scars Are Forever: According to Ned he grew his mustache to cover up a small scar, that he calls disfiguring, which he believes is a sign of God's mercy.
• Three Shorts: The Framing Device features both Springfield characters talking about their religious experiences and shows God and St. Peter debating on how many more faiths they should open up to heaven.
• Toilet Humor: During the Bob's Burgers Couch Gag, Tina theorizes that the confused Homer is searching for the bathroom. Gene then shouts at him to do it all over the restaurant and promises to clean it up, before backtracking a second later.
• Trapped in Another World: During the opening sequence, Homer gets warped to the Bob's Burgers world and is unable to get back to Springfield.
• Universal-Adaptor Cast: In depicting characters in Marge's French ancestral history most of the characters are played by different members of the cast, from Marge playing her great grandmother, Moe playing a Nazi collaborator and Wolfcastle playing a Nazi. They do a similar thing is depicting the origins of Buddhism.