Trivia / The Simpsons S7 E4 "Bart Sells His Soul"

• Colbert Bump: "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida" by Iron Butterfly gained a boost in popularity thanks to this episode, after Bart tricks the churchgoers into singing it under the name "In the Garden of Eden".
• Creator's Favorite Episode:
  • Matt Groening named this as one of his favourite episodes.
  • Nancy Cartwright named this as one her top three episodes, along with "Lisa's Substitute" and "Bart the Mother".
  • Yeardley Smith named this as one of her favourites, along with "Girly Edition".
• First Appearance: Of Sherri and Terri's mother.
• What Could Have Been: The song in church was supposed to be "Jesus He Knows Me" by Genesis (which, despite its title, is actually an attack on corrupt televangelism), but they couldn't get the rights; another version of the script that made it to table-read had it as "Stairway to Heaven" (with Homer starting to sing "Whole Lotta Love" after the rest of the church is exhausted), but this was, understandably, even more expensive. The final version arguably works better, since "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida" is an organ-and-vocal-heavy song more than twice as long as either.
• Write What You Know: The story was inspired by an incident during staff member Greg Daniels's youth. When he was harassed by a bully in boarding school, he offered him to sell his soul to him for a dollar. Over the course of a few weeks, Greg preyed on the guy psychologically, until said bully was apparently totally in panic over what he had done and he demanded his soul back. Greg sold it back to him for another dollar and was amused by the idea how financially profitable buying one's soul was. However, when he realized that the only other person who made money by doing this was The Devil, he got scared himself and quit the habit forever.

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