YMMV / The Simpsons S 7 E 2 Radioactive Man

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Did the director foolishly get Bart's hopes up, or was he so impressed by Bart's acting that he was willing to cast him only to immediately see that he's an inch too short and backtrack?
• Alternative Joke Interpretation: When Comic Book Guy and Otto are racing miniature electric vehicles, Otto exclaims "Alright!" when the bus hits the wall and explodes. Does this mean Otto the bus driver was ironically not controlling the bus, or does he just think it's cool to see his vehicle explode?
• And You Thought It Would Fail: When director Susie Dietter read through John Swartzwelder’s first script, she did not find it very funny because of all the visual gags. Once the animatic was finished, her opinion changed, and she thought to herself: "Hey, this is really funny!"
• Angst? What Angst?: After being turned down in the role of Fallout Boy in the movie three times, you'd expect Bart to be upset. Instead, he acts as if he's glad to be turned down from the role.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Moe killing Alfalfa (and Moe saying that Alfalfa was an orphan the studio had custody of) somehow manages to be both disturbing and hysterically funny.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The producers are clear that they want the Radioactive Man movie to "stay as far away from the campy '70s version as possible". This is a reference to how the 1966 Batman show was seen in the 1990s. In today's world, the 1960s series is much more fondly remembered (though film adaptations of Batman continue to get Darker and Edgier).
  • Bart's claim that real-world heroes are losers because the problems they try to fight haven't been solved, necessitating fictional heroes played by Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Van Damme. Given how their films have mutated into Franchise Zombie status over the years, they likely wouldn't meet Bart's criteria for heroism either.
  • At one point in the episode, an ancient-looking executive starts talking about bringing back "the original Radioactive Man", Dirk Richter (suggested to be a No Celebrities Were Harmed blend of Adam West and George Reeves), only to be denied by a producer pointing out that Dirk Richter is 73 years old and also dead. Years later, The Flash (2023) would feature not only a 71-year-old Michael Keaton playing Batman, but rather controversially, CGI-crafted cameos of Adam West and George Reeves (both of whom were dead at that time, the latter for over sixty years). It seems that executive finally got control.
  • Bart mentions a special edition of the Radioactive Man comic where both the hero and Fallout Boy die on every page. A 2020 issue of Batman: Black and White includes a choose-your-own-adventure story where every route leads to Batman's death unless you ignore every choice the comic/The Riddler gives you. Sometimes he dies several times on the same page!
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "MY EYES! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!" (often misquoted as "My eyes! The goggles, they do nothing!") It's said to be one of Matt Groening's all-time favorite quotes from the series.
  • "Thanks to modern editing techniques, we can use existing footage to complete the film without Milhouse" is frequently used to ridicule TV shows or movies that haphazardly try to work around an actor's absence, especially if they passed away. Dark Simpsons has their own subset of videos titled "Seamless Cut", which intentionally forgo trying to make the edited scenes fit together, named after that line, bookended by the scene of the editor, minus the words "without Milhouse".
• One-Scene Wonder: The Spirograph guy.
• Ugly Cute: Little Moe.

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