The episode was written by
Tim Long, his second writing credit of the season after "
Elementary School Musical", and was directed by
Nancy Kruse, her first directing credit of the season, and her last of the series. This marks the second appearance of
Mike Scioscia on
The Simpsons. His first appearance on the show was in the
season 3 episode "
Homer at the Bat" in 1992, which is referenced in the episode. Baseball sabermetrician
Bill James also makes a guest appearance in a talking picture on a
wiki, being used as a reference when Professor Frink points out to Lisa that "baseball is a game played by the dextrous but only understood by the poindextrous."
Opening sequence Approximately the first half-minute of the opening sequence remains the same, with a few oddities: the word "Banksy" is sprayed onto a number of walls and other public spaces;
Krusty's billboard advertises that he now performs at
funerals (first seen on "
Take My Life, Please", but this had "Banksy" on it). The chalkboard gag ("I must not write all over the walls") is written all over the classroom walls, clock, door, and floor. A large group of tired and sickly artists draw animation
cels for
The Simpsons among piles of human bones and
toxic waste, and a female artist hands a barefoot
child employee an
animation cel, which he washes in a vat of
biohazardous fluid.
Executive producer Al Jean first took note of Banksy after seeing his 2010 film
Exit Through the Gift Shop. According to Jean, "The concept in my mind was, 'What if this graffiti artist came in and tagged our main titles?'"
Simpsons casting director Bonnie Pietila was able to contact the artist through the film's producers, and asked if he would be interested in writing a main title for the show. Jean said Banksy "sent back boards for pretty much what you saw." It appears that a poster of
Rupert Murdoch could be the 5% that was left out of the final cut.
The Simpsons is storyboarded at
Film Roman, a company based in California. The storyboards, voice tracks and coloring instructions are then sent to
AKOM, a company in
Seoul, South Korea. According to
Nelson Shin, the founder of AKOM, they received the storyboard for the sequence in August 2010. Believing the sequence to be "excessive and offending" he pushed for some of the darker jokes to be removed. He was successful, though "not nearly as much as he had pushed for." For example, in the storyboards, the workers were wearing
conical Asian hats, but these were removed. Banksy told
The Guardian that his opening sequence was influenced by
The Simpsons long-running use of animation studios in
Seoul,
South Korea. However, Al Jean disputed this, saying "[The animation department] didn't walk out. Obviously they didn't. We've depicted the conditions in a fanciful light before." Commenting on hiring Banksy to create the titles, Jean joked, "This is what you get when you
outsource." Although conceding to the fact that
The Simpsons is largely animated in South Korea, Jean went on to state that the scenes shown in titles are "very fanciful, far-fetched. None of the things he depicts are true. That statement should be self-evident, but I will emphatically state it." ==Cultural references==