Recap / The Simpsons S 32 E 4 Treehouse Of Horror XXXI

Season 32 Episode 4

Original airdate: November 1, 2020

The annual terror themed trilogy, including a frightening look at the 2020 election, parodies of Pixar and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and a ninth birthday Lisa just can't get over.

Tropes

Opening sequence

• All Just a Dream: Homer heading to the voting polls. As it turns out, he slept the whole day away.
• Ambiguous Situation: In 2021, the country has become an apocalyptic dystopia terrorized by government robots, but we never find out who won the 2020 election that caused all this.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The Long List of Trump's misdeeds (in no particular order) range from legitimately terrible things like "Leaked classified information to Russian ambassador" and "Said Jewish people who vote Democrat are disloyal," to Poke the Poodle moments like "Describing Meryl Streep as overrated" and "Looks lousy in a tennis outfit".
• Artistic License – Politics: Lisa entering the voting booth that Homer is using to try and sway his vote in the Cold Open is actually a federal offense. Justified, since Homer is only dreaming about it.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The Long List of Trump's misdeeds that scrolls in front of Homer.
  • Kang and Kodos appear to be listed on the ballot, which doubles as a Call-Back to Treehouse of Horror VII's Citizen Kang.
• Horsemen of the Apocalypse: They're seen riding through the sky at the end of the opening, with Death carrying a flag that says "Treehouse of Horror XXXI" instead of his name.
• Noodle Incident: The list of Trump's misdeeds mentions many of the things that Trump did during his presidency - leaking information, misrepresenting the size of the turnout at his inauguration, calling racists 'fine people', et cetera - before finishing with the words, 'And we haven't even said the worst one'. What could Trump have done that inspired this one?
• Tempting Fate: Homer asks how bad things could get after Election Day, by January 20th, 2021, Springfield has become an apocalyptic dystopia terrorized by government robots.
• Too Dumb to Live: Since this clearly takes place in 2020, Homer is the ONLY one who doesn't wear a facemask when he goes to vote. Then again, it was All Just a Dream.

Toy Gory

• Advertised Extra: In the promotional material, Milhouse is shown trying to save Bart from the toys. In the episode itself, he only appears as a punchline and invalidates Bart's excuse for his actions. He even leaves without a word as his own toys start cutting into him.
• And I Must Scream: Implied. In the end, Bart is given "plastic surgery" by the toys he unwittingly abused, involving being hollowed out and having his vital organs replaced by toy mechanics. While it's hard to notice, Bart moves slightly to look at Marge in Hibbert's office when she asks the doctor how this happened. Bart's voicebox also triggers without his pullstring being activated in response to his parents begging for him to speak to them, and one picture during the ending song has Bart seemingly reacting in pain to the toy's antics. However, it's never confirmed that he's still alive, so he could just be dead.
• Art Shift: The segment is in CGI for the most part, much like the medium Pixar films are in. However, the movie airing on the TV is animated in the usual 2D. The epilogue is also done in the regular 2D style, albeit with still images rather than animation.
• Backing Away Slowly: Homer backs away when he sees Bart use a power sander on the heads of dolls.
• Bathos: Bart's death is played like this. There are serious elements such as how he's killed, the various blank stares Bart's corpse gives us, and an incolsolable Homer and Marge crying hysterically over Bart's death. However, Hibbert chuckles and makes a pun after giving the family a rundown on what happened, Homer eats Bart's substitute brain while crying upon finding out it's made of pop rocks and silly putty, and a lighthearted song with mismatched lyrics about what happened to Bart plays over the epilogue. Said epilogue also contains an Ass Shove joke.
• Bloodless Carnage: Despite Bart's toys extracting all his bones and organs and replacing them with things such as a tennis racket, a toy frog and a toy chest, their "work" comes out surprisingly clean. Bart's corpse appears almost completely intact, with no bloodstains and only a little stitching on his neck where his pullstring emerges from.
• Continuity Nod: One of Bart's homicidal toys is a Funzo.
• Cymbal-Banging Monkey: Radioactive Man's "widow" is one of these toys.
• Decoy Protagonist: At first it seems like Radioactive Man is gonna be the Buzz Lightyear to Krusty's Sheriff Woody, only to explode in the microwave not too long after.
• Dies Wide Open: When Bart's toys kill him and convert his body into a toy, his eyes are left open and permanently unfocused.
• The Dog Bites Back: The toys amputate Bart's insides and turn him into a mindless toy with a pull string that lets him talk.
• Downer Ending: Bart is murdered by his vengeful toys and left for his desolate family to weep over upon discovering him. It's also implied that they have a Mummies at the Dinner Table moment out of grief.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Doctor Malibu Stacy's surgery on Bart gets blocked with a "Nothing to see here" message on an Sketch n' Etch.
• He Who Fights Monsters: The montage at the end of the segment shows that the toys abusing the now-toyified Bart in ways similar to how he treated them, even though he's no longer a threat to them anymore.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: After the Radioactive Man action figure explodes in the microwave and splatters on her, Marge says "It's wine time" and drinks it straight from the bottle.
• Interspecies Romance: Downplayed with Radioactive Man being apparently married to the Cymbal-Banging Monkey. They're both a different species, but they're also both toys.
• Ironic Echo: The Radioactive Man action figure declares that he now has a "sweet and kind" boy of his own upon leaving his box for the first time, only for Krusty to explain just how wrong he is. After Bart is killed by the toys and fashioned into a pull-string toy that only allows him to say pre-recorded, kind lines, the song at the end reuses the quote in the context of Bart's corpse being manipulated to appear like a nice person, rather than Bart being so himself.
  He's sweet and kind, but he's got no mind...
• Kids Are Cruel: Bart's barbaric treatment of his toys. He says he wouldn't have done all those things if he knew they were alive until Milhouse shows up and points out Bart mistreats him all the time even though he has feelings. Milhouse also counts for this, as Bart never did anything as bad to Milhouse as he did to the toys. He also doesn't seem to care about the fact that Bart died from this encounter, nor does he even decide it's going to far and try to help.
• Mummies at the Dinner Table: Implied. After taking the lifeless Bart to Dr. Hibbert and being told of his fate, Bart's family apparently take his body home afterwards when the toys complete their revenge against him. In some of them, he is posed as if he is still alive and doing an everyday task, such as laying on his bed and sitting at the dinner table.
• Nothing Is Scarier: In-Universe. From Homer, Marge and Lisa's perspective, Bart randomly died and was left in the unexplainable situation of being hollowed out and filled with toys, with a voice box that allows him to spout canned lines. For all they know, Sideshow Bob could have finally succeeded on his lifelong goal.
• Not So Similar: Milhouse compares how Bart treats him to how he treats his toys, seemingly trying to justify their murderous revenge on him. However, this comparison doesn't exactly work since Bart's mistreatment of Milhouse was mostly pranks rather than elaborate destruction, so this doesn't invalidate Bart's statement that he wouldn't have killed his toys if he'd known they were alive. Not that this stops the toys from going through with it anyway.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Lisa immediately realizes something is terribly wrong with Bart when he suggests watching what she wants to watch, coupled with his unresponsiveness and the pullstring he now has in his back. Even after learning that his innards have been replaced by toy mechanics Homer and Marge desperately beg for him to speak to them until he says, "I love my mother and father," causing both of them to weep in despair.
• Out-of-Character Moment:
  • Alternate Continuity aside, Radioactive Man is Bart's hero, so it's odd seeing the boy nuking his action figure of him in the microwave for kicks.
  • While Bart often goes too far with his pranks against Milhouse, the latter probably wouldn't knowingly condemn him to being killed by mad toys (or justify it to them, for that matter), then not care about the aftermath at all.
• Please Wake Up: Upon learning from Dr. Hibbert that Bart's innards were all replaced with toys, Homer desperately begs for Bart to speak to him. Toy-Bart's canned response of how he loves his parents are what causes them to realize they lost him, and they proceed to mourn his loss.
• Shout-Out:
  • The light that shines on Bart in the treehouse comes from a living Luxo lamp, a clear nod to the titular character of Luxo Jr. and mascot of Pixar.
  • Bart's mutilation into a human toy is akin to Cleopatra's mutilation into a "human chicken" in Freaks.
• Spoof Aesop: At the very end, the show decides that the moral of the story is to never buy toys.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The song that closes out the sketch sounds like a jovial song that came straight out of Toy Story... Or, it would if its title wasn't "The End Of Bart". Or if it's lyrics weren't going into detail about the loss of a child's bones, organs and life. And for good measure, it's played over a montage of Bart's vengeful toys roughing his body up even further in the house of his grieving family.
• Take That!: Marge and Homer fall asleep watching a movie on TCM until it's interrupted by Ben Mankiewicz after a character calls the inhabitants of an Irish district "booze-brains", which is an obvious reference to classic films being axed entirely due to scenes that are now considered offensive.
• Tempting Fate: The Radioactive Man action figure is thrilled to have a loving child to play with him. Bart's Krusty doll warns him that it isn't Bart. Bart later puts Radioactive Man in the microwave.
• Turned Against Their Masters: Puppy Goo Goo runs away from Milhouse and joins Bart's toys. Milhouse is shown to get him back, much to his annoyance, at the very end of the segment.
• "The Villain Sucks" Song: The song that plays at the beginning describes Bart as a rotten kid that does all sorts of heinous things with his toys. There's also another one at the end, which sings about Bart's demise at the hands of the toys. Doubles as a parody of Toy Story's "You've Got a Friend in Me".
  You put a dent in me.
  You soaked my head in pee!
  Then you set my feet on fire!
  Then you threw me under your front tire!
  I'm basically an invalid! Boy, you're a rotten kid! I know everything you did! Yeah, you are a rotten kid!
  Scatting break
  You have no redeeming qualities.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: A variant. Lisa, Homer, and Marge are horrified by Toy-Bart's kind dialogue and mourn him. Justified as they were more likely traumatized and mourning over the fact that Bart died a sudden and brutal death rather than the fact that he's now saying nice things.
• Whole-Plot Reference: To Toy Story.
• Would Hurt a Child: The toys finally decide to fight back against Bart for abusing them and for killing their brethren. Bart is punished by being disemboweled, and having his insides replaced with various toys. A pullstring on his neck allows him to recite lines, all of which being monotonously delivered praises of his family (He's roughly now Kitten from Father Knows Best only Bart's not in Kitten's pretty dresses and it isn't The '50s). While Hibbert never pronounces Bart as dead and speaks as if he is alive, it's pretty clear that he's been dead for the remainder of the segment. They're also not above emotionally abusing Milhouse after they Blackmail him into taking part.

Into the Homer-verse

• Alliance of Alternates: All Homers team up to fight against the alternate Burns alliance.
• Alternate Self: Homer meets five versions of himself. Apparently so does Mr. Burns and Smithers.
• Animesque: Naturally, Anime Homer, with him speaking Japanese and making good use of Mundane Made Awesome.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The Burns' take out the Homers quite easily. Mr. Burns tasers Homer, Hunter Burns shoots Homer Barbera, Burns Koopa scorches 8-Bit Homer, Bald Burns stabs Homer Noir, Robo-Burns defeats Anime Homer with a headbutt, and Maleficent Burns gives Disney Princess Homer poisoned beer.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Homer Noir, befitting his hard-boiled detective persona.
• Evil Sorceress: Maleficent Burns.
• Gender Bender: Disney Princess Homer and Maleficent Burns are female versions of you-know-who.
• Iconic Item: All the alternate-universe Smithers wear a bowtie and round glasses.
• Informed Attribute: Homer Barbera describes himself as smarter than the average Homer, but we never see this in action.
• Involuntary Shapeshifting: Homer Barbera shifts between forms that resemble various Hanna-Barbera characters, like Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, and most prominently, Snagglepuss. This is never acknowledged by him or anybody else. Homer Prime himself starts to undergo this when the other Homers are starting to overstay their welcome.
• The Lad-ette: Disney Princess Homer is slender, beautiful (albeit with a feminine version of Homer's face) and dressed as a princess but still has an almost identical personality to 'our' Homer, refusing a poisoned apple being offered by Maleficent Burns only to happily accept a poisoned beer.
• The Multiverse: Since there are more than five alternate versions of Homer, it shows there are the same amount of universes as well.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Homer Barbera's first appearance mirrors his appearance as Yogi Bear in the episode "When You Dish Upon A Star".
  • The vomiting frog prince from "Treehouse of Horror XII" makes a brief appearance.
• Never Gets Fat: Disney Princess Homer retains her slim figure even though she eats and drinks like Main Homer.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Invoked when Homer meets Homer Barbera as Yogi Bear.
  Homer: Say, you sound just like an actor named Art Carney.
  Homer Barbera: (whispering) Don't tell his estate.
• Rule 63: Disney Princess Homer and Smithers, & Maleficent Burns.
• Running Gag: Homer Barbera "exiting stage left".
• Shout-Out:
  • Noir Burns looks similar to Roak Jr./The Yellow Bastard from Sin City.
  • Anime Homer resembles the fat version of Majin Buu, while Robo-Burns seems to be inspired by Dr. Wheelo.
• Skewed Priorities: Burns decides to send all the different universe Homers, Burns, and Smithers away because one of his counterparts is the sidekick to Smithers Noir.
• Whole-Plot Reference: To Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Be Nine, Rewind

• 6 Is 9: For her ninth birthday, Bart just gives Lisa the same card he gave her on her sixth birthday turned upside down.
• Close-Enough Timeline: After breaking the time loop, Lisa can finally celebrate her ninth birthday in peace and everything is back to normal—except Ralph's head, which is now on backwards.
• Death Montage: Lisa and Nelson's attempts to survive blowing out the candles involves them dying in various ways. Both of them burning to death because of the candles, getting stabbed in the head with a knife, and being crushed by a falling object.
• Died on Their Birthday: The segment spoofs Happy Death Day by having Lisa die in grisly ways over and over again on her ninth birthday.
• Disaster Dominoes: Inverted. Nelson and Lisa throw a cinder block at Gil to kill him so Lisa's first death doesn't occur and breaks the time loop.
• Driving Test Smashers: Gil accidentally crashing through the wall and killing Lisa is what sets the plot in motion.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Lisa and Nelson are stuck in a time loop on the day of Lisa's ninth birthday.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: For once, averted! Lisa finally turns 9 after 32 years of being 8 - but as the Halloween episodes are non-canon, it could mean she remains 8 in “reality”.
• Now You Tell Me: Lisa's reaction when Nelson tells her there's an alternative way to reset the time loop instead of jumping in the wood chipper after him and she complains about the fact he didn't say it before she jumped.
• Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: The title is a pun on Be Kind Rewind.
• Skewed Priorities: Patty lets Gil take the behind the wheel portion of his driving test before the written portion and tells him that since he killed a kid, he better do really well on the written test.
• Take That!: Comic Book Guy calls the time loop the most ambitious and the laziest of all Sci-Fi tropes.
  • He also notes how similar the story is to Tom Cruise and his film Edge of Tomorrow, then mocks it for bombing in theaters.
• The Unreveal: Nelson tells Lisa she didn't need to die to reset the time loop but the viewers never learn the other way she could've done it.
• Whole-Plot Reference: To Russian Doll. It's also reminiscent of Happy Death Day.
• Wood Chipper of Doom: In one timeline, Nelson dies by falling into a wood chipper outside Lisa's window. For the sake of resetting the time loop, she reluctantly jumps in after him.

End Credits

• Clip Show: All 90 Treehouse of Horror segments from the past 30 years are shown in reverse, from "When Hairy Met Slimy" to "Bad Dream House".