, who also
pitched the idea of having "scary names" in the opening credits. "Treehouse of Horror II", the second edition of the
Treehouse of Horror series of episodes, was written by
Al Jean,
Mike Reiss,
Jeff Martin,
George Meyer, Sam Simon and
John Swartzwelder.
Jim Reardon was the director. The episode is presented in a similar format to the
previous season's "
Treehouse of Horror" and contains several similarities to the previous episode, such as
Marge's opening warning, the tombstones in the opening credits and the appearance of the alien characters
Kang and Kodos. "Treehouse of Horror II" was the first episode that employed the "scary names" idea, in which many of the names in the opening and closing credits have unusual nicknames. The idea came from Al Jean, who was inspired by old issues of
EC Comics. Although the names quickly became more silly than scary, there has been a wide variety of special credits. For example, the director's name is given as Jim "Rondo" Reardon, a reference to his idol,
Rondo Hatton. The "scary names" became such a burden to write that they were cut for the
thirteenth season episode "
Treehouse of Horror XII" and the
fourteenth season episode "
Treehouse of Horror XIII", but after hearing complaints from the fans, Jean decided to bring them back. During the beginning of
Lisa's dream,
Hank Azaria faked some Arabic. Usually, the writers get inspiration for the Halloween specials from old horror stories, but recently, the writers tried to conceive of their own stories instead of creating more parodies. Also, when the Moroccan salesman tries to warn
Homer, saying "You'll be sorry", the animators forgot to move his lips. They realized their error only after the broadcast. While writing the segment, writer Sam Simon wanted the fingers to go down in such an order so they would eventually have the
middle finger sticking up. Once the animation would have been complete, however, they could not have gone through; Fox would have refused to air the episode. They had considered the alternative of deliberately blurring the middle finger themselves, but decided that Fox would have also refused. For this episode, there were a lot of loop lines; for instance, the ending to Lisa's dream was added to the last second. As a result of the loop, they still retained
Ned Flanders' old house next to his newly created castle. In order to make the episode fill the time needed, the animators often extended the laughing time for Kang and Kodos. The segment parodies the narration of
The Twilight Zone, and the producers were pleased with
Harry Shearer's portrayal of
Rod Serling (Shearer had previously impersonated Serling while he was a cast member on
Saturday Night Live). In addition, though it took a long time, the design of the monster version of
SnowballII by Dale Hendrickson was greatly enjoyed by the producers, who thought it looked "just hideous, just right". Bart's prank call to Moe was thought of by John Swartzwelder, one of the writers; however, Hank Azaria detested the line. According to George Meyer, the animation for when
Bart sits up screaming was extremely tough, especially to make the mouthlines natural. In the third segment,
Mr. Burns and
Waylon Smithers go down to the lab during Homer's nightmare. The animators decided to make the animation a bit more impressive, and decided to do the concave and convex images of Burns and Smithers. Even though it was tough and took up more time, the producers felt it was a necessary tour-de-force. Originally, Homer's robotic voice was done post-animation in order to avoid stress on the voice actor. Then-head writer
Jay Kogen, who created the
Davy Crockett joke, thought it was so funny he actually mimicked the actions of Mr. Burns putting on Homer's brain in the writing room; the producers thought it was hilarious, so they decided to add it into the episode. ==Cultural references==