Trivia / The Simpsons S2 E21 "Three Men and a Comic Book"

• Defictionalization: Otto's Bus Man comic was later made into a back-up story in Simpsons Comics.
  • Radioactive Man itself got a short run of comics, with the first issue closely (but not exactly) being adapted from what was seen in this episode.
• First Appearance: First episode featuring Comic Book Guy, Mrs. Glick, Radioactive Man, Fallout Boy, and Bartman.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The rerun of this episode on April 30, 1992 had an additional sequence following the end of the episode where Bart and Homer comment on The Cosby Show ending, itself a redubbed version of a clip from "Bart vs. Thanksgiving". This clip hasn't been officially released on home media.
• Real-Life Relative: Daniel Stern has a voice cameo in a parody of The Wonder Years. His brother, David M. Stern, was a writer for The Simpsons.
• Throw It In!: Nancy Cartwright had a cold on the day the final scene was recorded, which they went ahead with as Bart might well have gotten one from spending the night in the treehouse during a storm.
• What Could Have Been: According to DVD Commentary, the third act originally had Bart rally a union of kids who were sick of doing chores for minimum pay, but the writers thought this detracted from the original story and banged out a subtle The Treasure of the Sierra Madre parody.
• Write Who You Know: Mrs. Glick was based on an old lady co-writer Jeff Martin and his brother used to do chores for when they were kids. Martin said they got to "pull weeds until [their] hands would bleed", and yet they were only paid two quarters for several hours of work.
• On the flashback scene, Patty sings (rather badly, after moths of smoking) the chorus to Frankie Avalon 's 'Venus'.

---