YMMV / The Simpsons S5 E10 "$pringfield"

• The Catchphrase Catches On: While in the US, the "Batman Smells" parody song has pretty much always been sung the way it was in this episode, in the UK, there are several regional variants, most of which use the lyric "Robin flew away"... until this episode, which singlehandedly shifted the cultural zeitgeist for a good 15 years, until the all-consuming influence of The Simpsons on pop culture ended and the regional variants reasserted themselves. Tom Scott explains.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Siegfried and Roy expies (Gunter and Erst) getting attacked by their white tiger, Anastasia, would become a reality when Roy Horn got attacked by his white tiger on October 3, 2003. In the writers' defense, they knew this would happen someday (whether they were joking or not is up for debate) and were not surprised when it did.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Bart starts his own casino, with blackjack, but (presumably) no hookers, before fellow Matt Groening creation Bender names the trope six years later.
  • This wouldn't be the only time Robert Goulet recorded a parody of "Jingle Bells".
• Memetic Mutation:
  • “Bart, I don’t want to alarm you, but there might be a boogeyman or boogeymen in the house!” followed by Bart's scream has been subject to all sorts of remixes on YouTube and Twitter.
  • Replacing various monsters with Lisa in her Florida costume.
• Nausea Fuel: The germs on Smithers' face and the prickly music accompanying it (though the germs saying, "Freemasons run the country" is kinda funny).
• Unintentional Period Piece: Quite a few things date the episode:
  • Special guest Robert Goulet died in 2007.
  • Sears (where Homer had previously been caught stealing watches from) has had its popularity and ad revenue plummet in The New '10s; as of December 2023, it's down to just 12 stores and is on the verge of vanishing completely.
  • Siegfried and Roy (the magician duo who inspired the Ernst and Gunther characters) retired their long-running show in 2003 after the latter's real-life tiger attack left him disabled (though the actual attack made the one in this episode relevant when it happened on October 3, 2003). And both men died with a year of one another; Roy Horn would die in 2020 due to complications from COVID-19 while Siegfried Fischbacher died of pancreatic cancer in early 2021.
  • Younger viewers may have to look up who Gerry Cooney is and why Otto punched him out.
  • Henry Kissinger appearing in this episode, considering that he died in 2023, at the age of 100.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Homer is made out to be a victim of the Gambling Ruins Lives trope because Marge is spending all of her time gambling at the casino, resulting in the house going to hell and Lisa's Epic Fail at the school state pageant, even bursting into the casino to call Marge out for not being there for the family. However, most of the problems in this episode aren't caused by Marge's addiction and the potential drain you think it'd place on the family's finances. Instead, they're caused by Homer being unable to act as a competent homemaker to save his life, with him even blaming Marge for "not being there to keep him from acting stupid" after a burglar scare that he caused. Even worse, when Marge realizes that she has an addiction and plans to get help for it, Homer A) acts as if this addiction is worse than anything he's ever done (despite that certainly not being the case), and B) he rejects the idea of Marge getting therapy because "it would be too expensive", which results in Marge's gambling addiction resurfacing in later episodes.
• Values Dissonance: Homer teaching Maggie to gamble may have been shocking to American audiences, but not so much to the British audience. British gambling laws allow minors to gamble, albeit on arcade games that dispense tokens and/or tickets to the winners, kind of like what America has with Chuck E. Cheese and Dave & Busters ^note For overseas readers, both Chuck E. Cheese and Dave & Busters are restaurants/arcade centers, the only difference being Chuck E. Cheese is intended for kids and Dave & Busters isn't. Unless it's by the seaside, in which case gambling with real money (albeit small stakes) is not only legal in the UK and parts of Europe but is a normal part of growing up, teaching kids the valuable lesson of "Don't bet what you can't afford to lose."
• Woolseyism: In the Czech dub, Homer's improvised breakfast contained dill dressing instead of Tom Collins mix.

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