Trivia / The Simpsons S8 E10 "The Springfield Files"

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: The Waterworld arcade machine forcing a Game Over on Milhouse, making him deposit money to continue really did happen with arcade games at the time. Arcade games had operator settings that would render the game Unwinnable by Design without the player noticing; once the player got a Game Over, that sequence becomes winnable, upon which a still-later point in the game becomes unwinnable and the cycle starts anew. This is something arcade operators kept a secret as best they could, so it's unlikely the Simpsons writing team knew about it.
• Approval of God: Chris Carter thought it was an honor to be satirized by The Simpsons.
• Defictionalization: The Kevin Costner's Waterworld game is now available as a full game. You play as Milhouse playing the game and yes, you do have to put in $10 of quarters each time you die.
• Edited for Syndication: The scene at the beginning where Milhouse blows $10 worth of quarters on the Waterworld video game, only for it to read "GAME OVER" after the main character takes one step is cut on the free-TV syndicated version (but not the cable, streaming, or DVD versions).
• Role Reprise: Regarding the actors from The X-Files:
  • In the original English version, Gillian Anderson as Scully and David Duchovny as Mulder.
  • In the Japanese dub, Keiko Toda and Morio Kazama as the already mentioned characters.
  • In the French dub as well, Georges Caudron (not that one) and Caroline Beaune reprised their roles of Mulder and Scully.
  • Averted in the Latin American Spanish dub:: Scully is voiced by Patricia Hannidez and Mulder is voiced by Jose Maria Iglesias, rather than Gisela Casillas and Alfonso Obregón Inclán respectively, despite those voice actors having previously worked in The Simpsons before. Also, in an odd case, Leonard Nimoy is voiced by his voice actor from Star Trek: The Original Series, Carlos Petrel, who also voiced Grandpa Simpson, but just for a few lines at the beginning of the episode, while the rest of his lines are dubbed by Octavio Rojas instead.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The episode's original script never revealed the alien's true identity, implying what Homer encountered really was an alien.
  • When Homer tries to buy two more "Homer is a dope" t-shirts, the clerk was originally going to say, "I told you, we sold out".
  • Sanjay was going to appear, but his appearance was cut.

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