Trivia / The Simpsons S8E14 "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show"

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!:
  • Poochie's dubbed-in line is "I have to go now. My planet needs me." Some sources misquote the first part of the line as "I must go" instead of "I have to go now". "My planet needs me" also often gets misquoted as "my people need me".
  • Parodies of Doug's comment of "Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder" often have the "I really hope" part misquoted as "I sure hope".
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Crosses with Two Voices, One Character. June Bellamy's natural speaking voice is provided by Tress MacNeille, but In-Universe, she plays Itchy and Scratchy, who are voiced by Dan Castellaneta and Harry Shearer, respectively.
• Development Gag:
  • Roy's name came from a scrapped scene in "Time and Punishment" from "Treehouse of Horror V", where Homer ends up in an alternate timeline where his son is an annoying teenager.
  • The code on Poochie's animation cell, "4F12", is also this episode's production code.
• First Appearance: The female executive, eventually becoming Lindsey Naegle aka the "New Job as the Plot Demands" lady.
• Milestone Celebration: With this episode, The Simpsons officially surpassed The Flintstones as the longest-running prime-time animated series. In celebration, the Couch Gag in the syndicated reruns (the original couch gag, as well as the version of the episode available on Disney+, was a repeat of the Sgt. Pepper album parody) has Fred and co. sitting on the couch when the family enters.^note It seems fairly likely that this change was actually made for the FOX repeat — some international copies also have the Flintstones couch gag, and they tend to be based on US network copies rather than anything that was done for syndication
• Reality Subtext:
  • Word of God says this episode, particularly the focus group scene, reflected the strains they felt balancing the expectations from both fans and the network, torn between being relatively realistic and being wackier.
  • Comic Book Guy's first utterance of "Worst episode EVER" was based on several Usenet fan reviews of earlier episodes that used that exact phrase (with the first use being traced back to the season four episode "Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie").
• What Could Have Been:
  • David X. Cohen's initial vision for Poochie was that he would be annoying to fans because he was wealthy, aloof and unlikeable. In the DVD Commentary, he read his script for the first cartoon featuring Itchy, Scratchy and Poochie:
    Itchy and Scratchy are laborers in Poochie's gold mine. Poochie sits on a velvet throne surrounded by bags of money. He drinks champagne as he whips Itchy and Scratchy and lectures them on the value of hard work in a capitalist society. Finally, Itchy and Scratchy get fed up and plan their revenge. They decide Scratchy will present a fake money bag to Poochie. Itchy will secretly be hiding in the bag. When Poochie raises the bag to inhale the sweet smell of money, Itchy will jab him in the nose with a syringe of poison. Itchy gets in the bag and Scratchy presents it to Poochie, but the plan backfires because Poochie is offended by how small the money bag is. To demonstrate how worthless it is to him, he sets it on fire and uses it to light his cigar. Itchy's flaming skeleton falls out of the burning bag, and the syringe lands on Scratchy's toe and kills him, too. Poochie says, "Oh, well, I can always use my millions of dollars to hire more workers. That's the power of money." The end.
  • The Terrible Interviewees Montage was longer, with auditions from Chief Wiggum (rejected because his voice was too cartoony), Grampa Simpson (rejected because he talked too slowly for a 30 second cartoon), Rainier Wolfcastle (rejected for demanding a salary of $1 million per episode), and Moe (who quit after seeing Poochie's self-shilling as "a crock of crap").
• Writer Revolt: Before the eighth season, Fox executives suggested adding a younger character to the show to keep it fresh and relevant. The writers were more amused than disgusted by the suggestion, knowing that such a move is often seen as admitting the show is entering its twilight years, and wrote the episode, in which not only is the titular character added to I&S, triggering a fan revolt, the Simpsons themselves are graced with the addition of "Roy" to the family. Pointedly, this episode was the one with which the show broke The Flintstones' record for most episodes of a primetime animated series. It was a huge hit and they never heard any suggestions from FOX about adding another character again.

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