When a lightning storm occurs, Bart ends up in another deep coma and ghosts appear before him. Lisa after being humiliated by Bart decides to make his coma-dream worse.
This Episode Contains Examples of:
- Accidental Murder: In his dream, Bart attempts to lay Maude's ghost to rest by luring Homer into an ally where the bullies attack him with t-shirt guns. His only intention is to give Homer a scare, but it winds up killing him.
- Actually Pretty Funny: After waking up from his coma, the first thing Bart does is ask Lisa if she was responsible for his nightmares. When Lisa responds in affirmative, he excitedly asks her to teach him how to do it.
- Adventures in Comaland: Bart dreams that ghosts appear before him, thanks to Lisa's intervention.
- Animation Bump: The scenes of Lisa getting tangled in underwear and Bart encountering Maude's ghost are both more fluidly animated than the rest of the episode.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
- Lisa breaks down sobbing on Bart's hospital bed and desperately begs him to come back, even telling him that she loves him as he seemingly flatlines.
- In his dream, Bart accidentally kills Homer, whose ghost is about to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. Bart begging Homer to stay with him (paralleled by Lisa pleading with the dying Bart to stay with her) contrasts his typical attitude toward the possibility of Homer dying an untimely death and shows how much it means to him to have his father in his life.
- Black Comedy Burst: The closing Death Montage.
- Call-Back: Maude Flanders' ghost asks Bart to avenge her, and we see a clip from "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily" (in the original frame ratio) of how she died.
- Cartwright Curse: Exaggerated and Played for Laughs in the final montage, where Ned seemingly outlives over 40 wives.
- Comically Missing the Point: Homer in Bart's dream several times:
- Upon being menaced in an ally by a t-shirt gun-wielding group in masks.Nelson: Maude Flanders says hello.Homer: (cheerful) Hello!
- As Homer's body is taken to the ambulance, Marge tearfully states that he was as good as dead as soon as they started putting cheese in pizza crust, asking "What's next?! Plugging Swiss cheese with cookie dough? Peanut butter and hot dogs?!" Homer's ghost asks Bart why no one's writing this down.
- Upon being menaced in an ally by a t-shirt gun-wielding group in masks.
- Continuity Cavalcade: Bart's dream features many characters who have died over the course of the show, from Bleeding Gums Murphy to Shary Bobbins to Rabbi Krustofsky to Dr. Marvin Monroe to Homer's Vegas wife to a whole succession of Snowballs.
- Continuity Nod:
- One of the old VHS tapes is labeled "Wedding/Alaska Video."
- Homer makes an offhand reference to Bart being on some kind of mood-stabilizing medication, evoking a gag in "Homerland."
- During the Distant Finale, Bart finished his life as Chief Justice of Supreme Court.
- Marge is seen married to Ned after Homer's death, recalling their attraction in episodes like "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife" and "The Devil Wears Nada."
- Convenient Coma: Bart has apparently been in and out of quite a few of these and Hibbert thinks his current one will be no different.
- Deadly Distant Finale: The closing montage showcases how most of the Simpsons cast passed away, several of them executed by other members of said cast.
- Dirty Old Man: Abe Simpson was looking at porn when the family lost Internet connection.
- Disproportionate Retribution: As revenge for a screamer prank he pulled on her, Lisa whispers into Bart's ear during his coma dream and helps turn it into a living nightmare... not that Bart minds that much.
- Wiggum using police brutality to kill Homer all for a sandwich. Which he then chokes on and dies not mere moments after.
- Distant Finale: The ending shows how all the Simpsons family passed away, including how Maggie never died after all. In her case, it is implied that she is immortal, but no longer human. Also Ned Flanders apparently never dies, though his scene involves outliving numerous wives and probably everyone else he cared for.
- Driven to Suicide: A broken heart causes Smithers to jump to his death into one of the cooling towers at the age of 50.
- Easily Forgiven: Bart is completely nonplussed about learning that Lisa helped inspire his hellish Nightmare Sequence, and is instead impressed, asking her "Can you teach me how to do that?"
- Evil Is Petty: The Deadly Distant Finale vision of Wiggum has him pull a faked accidental shooting of a man (Homer) and so has him deliberately executed by his men... because he wants Homer's sandwich.
- Ghostly Animals:
- Among the ghosts which visit Bart are those of the deceased family cats Snowball II, Snowball III, and Snowball IV/Coltrane.
- Also amongst the ghosts are a group of ants, whose Unfinished Business involves utilising a Solar-Powered Magnifying Glass on their former tormentor - Nelson.
- Go Out with a Smile: In the closing montage, Marge, dying peacefully of old age by Ned's side.
- Hilariously Abusive Childhood: According to Dr. Hibbert, "Bart's had more comas than he's had hot breakfasts."
- Hoist by His Own Petard: In the Death Montage, Bart dies seconds after Skinner when his prank causes Skinner to have a heart attack and his wheelchair runs Bart over.
- Holy Burns Evil: Subverted in Bart's dream. He fills his treehouse with crucifixes and other holy objects in an attempt to ward off a ghost, failing to consider that that ghost is Maude Flanders.Maude: Oh, this looks just like my first apartment with Ned. I'm never leaving!
- Ignored Epiphany: Lisa almost changes her mind about messing with Bart when she sees a sign reading DO NOT TORMENT COMA PATIENTS ("You know, that sign should be unnecessary") and decides to say something positive to cheer him up. Then she gets a notification alerting her to the continued uptick of views on his viral video.
- I See Dead People: In the coma dream, Bart gains the ability to see the spirits of the dead.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: After the version of Homer in Bart's coma dies and starts ascending into the light, Bart tells him that Marge will marry someone else. Homer casually responds with this trope.
- Klingon Promotion: Ralph ends up becoming a vicious king who rules over the land, but is poisoned by his own son at the age of 120, who immediately declares himself the new evil king.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- After an 80 year old Bart causes a wheelchair-bound Skinner to die of a heart attack, Bart himself is killed when the wheelchair runs him over.
- Chief Wiggum knowingly has Homer gunned down, so he can take his submarine sandwich. He promptly chokes to death on said sandwich.
- Long-Runner Tech Marches On: As young children in 2018, Bart and Lisa now have to have the concept of rewinding a VHS tape explained to them, notwithstanding the fact that they themselves watched videos in the 90s episodes.
- Meaningful Echo: Highlighting the Plot Parallel between the dream story and the "real" one, Bart uses the same words as he's pleading with Homer's ghost to stay with him that Lisa uses as she's begging him to wake up.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Lisa reacts this way when Dr. Hibbert tells her that filling Bart's head with nightmares while he's in a coma could give him permanent brain damage and actually kill him.
- Mythology Gag: When Marge goes over their old VHS tapes and finds one with The Tracey Ullman Show, Homer briefly lapses into his original voice (and original animation style) from the shorts.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Lisa's first attempt to evoke nightmares for the comatose Bart involves dragons and pools of blood. Bart smiles serenely in his sleep.Lisa: ...Oh, right. You like that.
- Noodle Incident:
- Bart's apparently inherited some of Homer's Made of Iron quality, as Dr. Hibbert notes that he's been briefly comatose many times before with no harm done (which gets more believable with the very next episode, Season 30 premiere "Bart's Not Dead," when it happens again). This justifies Lisa using the situation as an opportunity to mess with Bart, since he's recovered easily from this type of thing so many times that even Marge is fine with leaving him alone with Lisa for most of the time he's under.
- The ending montage has a number of them, including Ned becoming a widower many more times (with the widowed Marge among his eventual wives), Ralph somehow becoming the evil king of Earth, and Maggie attaining immortality.
- Patricide: In his dream, Bart accidentally kills Homer, whose ghost reassures him that "patricide is just a part of life," noting that death expanded his vocabulary.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: Bart to the dead Homer in his dream and, simultaneously, Lisa to the dying Bart in real life.
- Police Brutality: Homer dies when he is gunned down by police, who think that a long bag he is holding contains a gun. While this would otherwise be considered an accident, it is brutality because Wiggum admits that he knew it was a sandwich and didn't tell anyone before they killed Homer so he could steal it... then chokes to death on it.
- Real After All: Milhouse mentions the sweater Bart was wearing in his dream. Bart wonders how he knew about it.
- Screamer Prank: Features as Lisa's main motivation to get Bart into an even worse state.
- Second Love: The closing montage has Marge finding happiness with Ned after Homer's death.
- Shout-Out:
- The final scene of the episode is a nod to the final scene of Six Feet Under, in which the entire Simpsons family pass away in flashforwards, along with Sia's "Breathe Me" playing in the background.
- Ralph's death spoofs that of King Joffrey Baratheon's in Game of Thrones.
- Staggered Zoom: When Bart asks how Milhouse knew about the sweater in his dream.
- Stellification: The episode ends with the revelation of how some of the show's characters die. The last of these clips shows Maggie as a constellation and the reveal that she never died.
- Unbroken Vigil: In a dark twist on this trope, Homer and Marge are touched when Lisa tells them that she wants to stay by Bart's side all night, unaware that she's doing it so that she can torment him while he sleeps.
- The Un-Favorite: Bart, somewhat understandably, in his dream.Homer: I leave this world without a care, knowing I raised two great kids, plus the one who murdered me.
- Unwanted Rescue: Bart fires a t-shirt cannon at the hole in the sky through which Homer's ghost is about to ascend, causing the ghost to be knocked down and reinhabit Homer's body. The now-alive Homer is furious because he was finally about to know peace.
- Vengeful Ghost: Maude Flanders, as imagined by Bart. A number of the other ghosts who consult him are vengeful too, such as the ants fried by Nelson's magnifying glass.
- X-Ray Sparks: A clever variation. When Bart is struck by lighting, instead of his skeleton we see the animator's guidelines.
