Trivia / The Simpsons S2 E8 "Bart the Daredevil"

• Creator's Favorite Episode: This is Matt Groening's favorite episode. Co-writer Wallace Wolodarsky named it as his favorite episode among the episodes that he wrote, because it is "near and dear to [his] heart".
• Edited for Syndication:
  • The music video for "Do The Bartman" originally aired after the episode before the credits. This was taken out of most re-airings (note that the original airing was extensively edited to make time for the "Bartman" video, and later airings sans video restored the cut material). The first re-run of the episode on Fox also had to be cut for time, but in that case it was for Gulf War news coverage.
  • Homer falling down Springfield Gorge was butchered on Disney+ however, as of 2024, Disney Plus streams the ending untouched.
• First Appearance: Debut of Dr. Hibbert and Captain Lance Murdock.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In the original script, Hibbert was a woman named Julia Hibbert, who was named after Julia Sweeney (Hibbert was her last name, through marriage, at the time). When the Fox network moved The Simpsons to prime time on Thursdays to compete against NBC's The Cosby Show, the writing staff instead decided to make Hibbert a parody of Dr. Cliff Huxtable.
  • The episode was originally too short to air, so Al Jean and Mike Reiss wrote a filler piece which was a parody of cartoon shorts from the 1940s called "Nazis on Tap". In the short, amongst other things, Mr. Burns would be making planes for the war effort at his aircraft plant, Bart's spiky hair would be replaced by a pointy Jughead cap and Moe Szyslak would be a dog. Matt Groening thought the piece was too weird and nixed it, thinking it was too early in the series to present something so offbeat to the audience (other sources have said it was more of an inside joke that wasn't supposed to leave the studio, possibly stemming from a dare as to whether or not Hitler could be funny). Audio from the piece was released online by Simpsons storyboard artist John Mathot in 2006. Simpsons character designer Phil Ortiz adapted the short as a four-page comic book and handed out copies at Wizard World Philadelphia on June 2, 2016.

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