The Simpsons S5 E17 "Bart Gets an Elephant" / YMMV

Alternative Character Interpretation: Near the end of the episode, when Stampy continues to be disruptive and unhappy even in the animal sanctuary, there's a Nature Versus Nurture discussion that suggests some animals (and people) are just jerks. However, since Stampy was already treated poorly by both the Simpsons family and possibly by the radio station who took an elephant out of its natural habitat to begin with, his awful behavior could be a result of his existing trauma, not necessarily innate. Since the ending compares Stampy's rude behavior with that of Homer, it can also be interpreted that his bad behavior was enabled further by living with such bad role models.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- The setup for this episode is a situation where someone who qualifies for an unusual prize can either accept the prize, or take a cash payment in its place. The exact same thing happened twice in Real Life with two separate Simpsons-related contests (however, unlike Bart, the winners decided to take the money instead):
  - First, in regard to the official contest for "Who Shot Mr. Burns?", the top prize for who could guess the correct identity of the shooter was a framed illustration of the winner with the Simpsons family. However, when it came to picking a winner at random^note, the winner was someone who wasn't a fan of the show and accepted a cash prize instead.
  - The second instance was when a woman from Kentucky won a FOX contest where the grand prize was a replica of the Simpson house built in Nevada (right down to the furniture being the same as on the show and El Barto graffiti on the garage). The winner chose to go for the cash prize instead, after it was decided that physically moving the house to Kentucky wasn't feasible.
- Two years after the episode aired, Pepsi ran an ad campaign in which customers could redeem purchases of soda for points and use them to buy t-shirts, hats, and other such promotional items. The commercial featured a Harrier Jet, valued at seven million points (the plane has a price tag of $32 million). While intended as a joke prize, with a value that no ordinary customer could ever hope to achieve^note, one young man attempted to call Pepsi's bluff by exploiting a loophole in which 15 points and then money valued at 10 cents per point would cover the plane's value, backed by wealthy investors who provided $700,000. Fortunately, a court ruled in Pepsi's favor, and they later redid the ad by upping the value to 700 million points and adding a "just kidding" disclaimer.
- One joke in the episode involves the DJs at KBBL being replaced by a computer that produces such "topical" insights as "Looks like those clowns in Congress have done it again. What a bunch of clowns." Twenty-five years later, Sideshow Bob actor Kelsey Grammer would use that exact same phrase, "bunch of clowns", to mock both political parties, proving how timeless the DJ3000 actually was.
Memetic Mutation: The signs at the Democrat and Republican conventions ("WE HATE LIFE AND OURSELVES"/"WE CAN'T GOVERN" and "WE WANT WHAT'S WORST FOR EVERYONE"/"WE'RE JUST PLAIN EVIL", respectively) are a very popular pick for political discussions. Sometimes, the signs can represent the same party at the same time.
Woolseyism: In the Italian adaptation, Blackheart's line about being president of the Fox Network is bizarrely turned into being "an extra on The Pink Panther (1963)". Not only is there a reference to an animal (the other references about him being a whale hunter and seal clubber are left intact), but the Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking angle of the joke is kept.

YMMV / The Simpsons S5 E17 "Bart Gets an Elephant"

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