It also features a Disney inspired couch gag animated by Disney animator Eric Goldberg.
Tropes
- Animation Bump: The couch gag begins in the normal Simpsons style, then quickly switches to a more fluid style. When Bart as the Sorcerer's Apprentice turns everyone back to normal, the others look disappointed. When they are back to normal, the animation is still noticeably more fluid than how the show's animation typically is (especially on Bart), due to Eric Goldberg animating the end of the couch gag as well.
- Art Shift: Within the Couch Gag, Maggie is drawn in the Inkblot Cartoon Style of the early 1930s, while Homer as Baloo is drawn with a sketchy line to emulate the Xerox cel look of Disney films from the 1960s. The backgrounds are also done in the style of the movies that each segment parodies.
- Bait-and-Switch: What seems to be a Travel Montage for Homer and Flanders turns out to be a trip to the postcard museum.
- Beary Funny: In Homer's segment of the couch gag, Homer is a bear resembling Baloo.
- Black Comedy: After Marge gets annoyed with Bart being a Bratty Half-Pint, their waitress says that her son acted similarly and he’s now on death row. The power then flickers, before she corrects herself to “WAS on death row”.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Homer holds up packaged action figures of "8-Year-Old Bart" and "6-Year-Old Lisa," one of which is labeled "AS SEEN IN THIS EPISODE."
- Brick Joke: Bart throws a book Lisa is reading over a guard rail, and we later see it lining a bird's nest.
- Disney Creatures of the Farce: In Marge's segment of the couch gag, Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II are washing the dishes.
- Disneyesque: The Couch Gag is fully animated with backgrounds matching the movies being referenced. The characters themselves, however, are still drawn in the Simpsons style.
- Driven to Suicide: One of the mules that flee in terror when Homer expresses the idea of riding one of them runs into a glue factory.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Homer reveals he has a hidden bottle of beer in Maggie's room, and brings it out to enable himself to continue his story.Homer: "A vacation with Flanders? That's like telling you a bedtime story with no beer!"
- Hilarious in Flashback: Six-year-old Lisa had a love of bacon to rival Homer's.
- Honorary Uncle: As Homer and Ned prepare to leave the group to search for supplies, Bart frustrates Homer by begging "Uncle Ned" to reassure him that he'll come back safe, completely neglecting his father.
- Ironic Echo: Maude tells Marge that she is "only going to say this once" about Marge being a little "checked out" but it echoes through the Grand Canyon.
- Living Weapon: In lieu of strangling Bart, Homer picks up a rattlesnake to use as a whip, to which Bart begins chucking scorpions at him to fend him off. They both end up getting such a kick out of this that they're downright disappointed when Marge makes them stop.
- Long-Runner Tech Marches On: The episode takes place only two years before the "continuous present" in which the series occurs, which means that we see Maude Flanders, who died in the year 2000, using a smartphone.
- Mooning: Bart moons Homer while hanging from the underside of a glass walkway above the Grand Canyon with help of suction cups. Homer angrily tries to moon Bart in response but is tasered by the security guards, much to Marge's embarrassment.
- Overly Long Gag: Homer peeing.
- Potty Dance: Homer finds a restroom near the Grand Canyon and hurries over to it. A bear then runs out of the woods, also waiting its turn. He returns to the woods when Homer takes too long to finish.
- Potty Emergency: “After 10 hours of driving, I saw the most wonderful sight”. Cut to the Grand Canyon… before zooming to the side to show Homer rushing to a toilet, while Lisa uses the female toilet next door and Bart runs off into the woods.
- Scenery Porn: One of the most beautiful looking episodes of The Simpsons, with various animated scenes of the Grand Canyon.
- Series Continuity Error: Two years before the events of the series, the three-eyed fish is already firmly established as an iconographic symbol of Springfield, which ignores the fact that Bart caught the first known three-eyed fish or "Blinky" in Season 2.
- Shout-Out: The Couch Gag parodies the following Disney films:
- Maggie appears as early '30s Mickey Mouse.
- Lisa is Cinderella.
- Marge is Snow White.
- Homer is Baloo.
- Bart is the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
- The Watson: Maggie, of all people, briefly acts as a non-verbal version by being about to protest the inclusion of Lisa eating bacon. Homer informs her that Lisa was not a vegetarian at this point.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: It took Homer "ten hours of driving" to get to the Grand Canyon.
- Whole Episode Flashback: Homer tells Maggie the story of the family's trip to the Grand Canyon before she was born. This also allows for Maude to return in an episode after being killed off in Season 11 and for Lisa to eat bacon after becoming a vegetarian.
- World-Weary Waitress: Marge thinks she's a bad mother because Bart doesn't thank the waitress for bringing him a sensible meal when Marge wouldn't let him buy what he actually wanted. The weary waitress chimes in.Bart: You want me to lie and say I'm thankful for chicken and veg when I wanted whiskey-battered bourbon bangers?
Marge: Just say thank you.
Waitress: My boy never said thank you. Now he's on death row.
(The lights flicker overhead)
Waitress: Was on death row.
