How The Simpsons’ Treehouse Of Horror XVII Team Creates The Scariest Homer Story Ever

Screen Rant's Halloween coverage has been focused on highlighting the best scares to hit the big and small screen alike in 2026, but we can't forget about the frightfully funny holiday traditions too. That includes The Simpsons' annual "Treehouse of Horror" specials, which this year open with a beautifully crafted stop-motion love letter to both Springfield and The Nightmare Before Christmas, courtesy of Robot Chicken production company Stoopid Buddy. During an interview with Screen Rant, The Simpsons writer Tim Long and Robot Chicken Executive ProducerJohn Harvatine sat down to discuss the origins of their latest "Treehouse of Horror" collaboration, recreating "This is Halloween" with the citizens of Springfield, and crafting the scariest Homer Simpson story ever. "This Felt Like A No-Brainer:" Why The Simpsons Recreated Nightmare Before Christmas The opening sequence to "Treehouse of Horror XXXVII" is a tribute to The Nightmare Before Christmas, recreating the "This is Halloween" song that opens the film. The short sequence has a lot of fun mashing up the characters, including Bart as Jack Skellington, Homer as the Mayor, and other citizens of Springfield as the various background ghouls. "It is adorable," Tim Long noted, revealing the concept had come from The Simpsons team. "We had been talking about it for a long time. What are the things we do with Halloween? What are the touchstones? Nightmare is such an institution now. Disney has based entire parts of their theme parks around it! We are always looking for mashups and new ways to represent the characters. This felt like a no-brainer." With the idea in mind, the only production company The Simpsons crew could think of was Stoopid Buddy Stoodios. The stop-motion company behind shows like Robot Chicken had previously collaborated with the long-running animated series on couch gags and even a prior "Treehouse of Horror" segment, making them ideal partners for the new short. "We knew Stoopid Buddy, the company that does this stuff, could handle this and would really enjoy doing it. We worked together with them. It was really fun trying to figure out which characters in Nightmare corresponded to our characters. I think they really knocked it out of the park." Stoopid Buddy loved the challenge of the short, even if it proved to be something of an unexpected challenge. John Harvatine recalled how at a meeting a few years ago, they had been talking with The Simpsons team and that they had been talking about doing a shout-out to The Nightmare Before Christmas. "I'm a big stop motion fan, a big Nightmare fan. So when I heard that, I was like, 'Okay, this sounds amazing.' With The Simpsons... all those amazing things they could be cooking up, it doesn't mean it's going to be happening anytime soon. We talked about it, and it sounded really exciting. "We kind of forgot about it. I really hadn't thought about it until about four months ago or so when they called up. 'Oh, you remember that Nightmare thing we're talking about? It's back, and it will be due in three months.' It was like, wait, what? Like, how's that possible? We heard about it, and then we did some work figuring out how we could actually do it with the time that we had. "That was our biggest challenge, figuring out how we could go from zero to finished in time. With Halloween, they don't move that date, unfortunately. So the hard part was really just figuring out how we could do this quickly and make it look really good. Being such a Nightmare fan, I don't want to do something and have it just not be amazing. That was the real challenge; we actually had to make this look good. That was the tricky part." The real challenge proved to be making sure the segment properly reflected The Nightmare Before Christmas​​​​​. Henry Selick's timeless holiday special has a purposefully stilted sense of movement that isn't necessarily the same style of stop-motion as a Robot Chicken. Replicating that feeling of the original film was crucial to the team, though. "We really studied Nightmare," Harvatine explained. "We really wanted to be true to Nightmare. That came down to when we made the sets, to the way we lit it. We didn't want to go too big and too crazy because when we look at Nightmare, the amazing thing is it's not super huge. The sets aren't really amazingly big. They're actually kind of conservative, especially compared to features these days. "We studied that. We studied lighting; we studied the animation and how they did things. They were really dynamic, and they had really expressive characters. It wasn't the smoothest, necessarily. I mean, they were really new with the frame referencing that they had back then, but they had really great acting. That was stuff that we looked at." According to Harvantine, the biggest difference between the segment and their usual approach comes down to energy. "When we do Robot Chicken, things can be a little poppier and a little more fun. We kind of like scaled that down a little bit and really tried to smooth things out, take our time with it and make it feel a little more the feature vibe than a typical TV show that we would do." Crafting A Treehouse Of Horror Is A Different Beast For The Simpsons Writing Room The "Treehouse of Horror" segments have been a staple of The Simpsons the second season of the show. Now, 38 seasons in, the series has expanded on the concept of horror parodies to make it a genuine tradition. It's also one that has expanded in recent years thanks to the "Treehouse of Horror Presents" episode-length extra specials. The pressure is on to deliver with every episode of the show, but Tim Long admitted the vibes are slightly different when working on "Treehouse of Horror" episodes. "We're trying to you're trying to serve several masters. You want segments that focus on different members of the family. [This year], we have one segment that's devoted to Marge, one segment that's very much about Bart, and then the other one that is more about the kids in their teenage years. We like to spread the wealth that way." "In terms of picking the subject matter, it's tricky. I'm always very jealous of the guys who came up with the first few Treehouse episodes because they would be like, 'Let's do King Kong and a vampire!' They had this whole world of horror and sci-fi, the genres were their oyster, but they've sort of picked those trees pretty bare, but that's okay. It just made us need to be a little more creative." That creative approach is evident in this special, which takes inspiration from newer novels like Holly Gramazio's The Husbands, classic horror stories like Stephen King's Pet Sematary, and the safe driving videos from driver's ed classes. "I'd always wanted to do an episode that was based on those videos," Long admitted with a laugh. "I felt like it was a funny idea to do a Halloween episode based on those incredibly grisly driver's ed videos because they're very scary, but I've never seen them treated in a kind of Halloween-style. It also occurred to me that we'd never use Patty and Selma as villains in a Treehouse segment, which seems like a no-brainer because we already know that they hate Homer." "The last couple of years, Matt Groening has said that he wanted to go back to "Treehouse" Segments that are genuinely scary. Horror movies these days are really scary. You have to keep pushing the envelope." One such example is the second segment of the latest "Treehouse of Horror," which introduces arguably the scariest version of Homer the show has ever played with. "The fact that he acts so badly and is so scary kind of justifies what happens to him at the end... We have sort of found that the line is as far as we want it to be. Obviously, there are some things they could never do, but we thought it was funny in the opening segment to have Lisa literally saying Halloween episodes are not canon. "That was sort of our tip of the hat to the idea that these characters are going to go way out there in this episode, and it's not going to have to return to the same starting point. We're not going to have to justify their behavior or redeem them, which is such a freeing thing as a writer. I think there's a silliness in this. I think the responsibility to the audience is different. "It's not that unusual when we're doing the show for somebody to make a joke and pitch a joke and for us to admit that's funny, but it's going to ruin the moment or make Homer unsympathetic. To have those guardrails thrown away is just fantastic. Over the course of the rest of the year, 90% of the pitches about Homer that get rejected are just because he's being too much of an asshole. We don't have to worry about that in this segment. It's very freeing." That commitment to excellence and lack of guardrails was clear even to an outside collaborator like Harvatine, who noted how different the production of a regular episode of The Simpsons is to "Treehouse of Horror." "The couch gigs are great because we get these ideas of what would be really fun to do in the Simpson world, and we pitch it, and they're very chill. They're like, 'You guys have fun, just make it look good, and hit the deadline.' There's a lot of freedom to that. But "Treehouse" is really important to them. "It's intimidating because it's a bigger deal. There are a lot more eyeballs on it. It's not as much of us just playing around and doing whatever we want; it's really listening and listening and listening, then it's more feedback back and forth with them. We don't get nervous or intimidated by it, but we definitely really pay attention to what we're doing. "We needed to make sure our communication is clear on how we're progressing because we really want it to be what they're excited about. We worked with David Silverman, who's the director of the episode, to go back and forth on how we're interpreting the overall vision with what we're doing in stop-motion." Dream Robot Chicken Specials And Teases For The Simpsons Season 38 While "Treehouse of Horror XXXVII" is a high benchmark for both The Simpsons and Stoopid Buddy, there's still plenty to look forward to from both. Robot Chicken has increasingly been shifting to longer specials, with their recent Adult Swim tribute poking fun at themselves just as much as everyone else. When asked which other properties might be due for a special, Harvatine noted that they hadn't thought about a Simpsons one -- but that it could be a great idea. "I actually haven't thought about a Simpsons one. That's really good. That's a really good idea. That would be a lot of fun. That universe is so huge, and there'd be so much you can do in there. That's a great idea. We've talked before about Disney, but Disney is so big that it's kind of overwhelming. We were really lucky to do DC and Star Wars. Those were really great franchises to work with. "Disney is a pretty intimidating one, and there's a lot of bosses up there, so that one feels a little scary. But I'll also say we've talked before about Nintendo; that would be a fun one to get in there. There's definitely some IP out there that would be fun to get our hands on and explore. But as you said, I think I need to text Selman again. I think a Simpsons special would be really good in stop-motion. As for The Simpsons, Long described the rest of the historic season 38 as a season that leans into "more craziness. We take a dip into sci-fi. We do a pretty big space epic coming up in November that we just watched a rough version of today; it's turned out really, really well. It's sort of inspired by Dune. There is lots of really crazy, fun stuff coming up. There's a lot of stuff that breaks the form. There is a very twisted parody of When Harry Met Sally with a guest voice from Meg Ryan, which is very exciting. I just think that is I'm really proud of this season because I feel like we hit a lot of different notes and a lot of different kinds of stories while maintaining the essence of what The Simpsons is. So I would definitely encourage you to stay tuned." Looking at the legacy of the show and the enduring popularity it enjoys, Long admitted that it means the world to the team to see The Simpsons still thriving. "We're in such a bubble here; we don't hear responses from the fans often. One of the rules that has really served us well is just trying to make each other laugh. "We don't really try to speculate too much about what people are going to think. If we think it's funny and it's a good story, we usually run with it. At the same time, it's really nice to see that, after all these years, people are still responding to the stories we're telling." That doesn't mean they're playing it safe, though. Noting that the show is increasingly approaching an unprecedented season 40, Long admitted that the team has "really taken it upon ourselves to tell stories in a crazier way, because why not? No show has ever gotten to season 40, so we might as well take advantage of people's familiarity with the show and our ability to fuck with the formula [Laughter]." The Simpsons Release Date December 17, 1989 Network FOX Cast Homer Simpson / Abe Simpson / Barney Gumble / Krusty (voice) Marge Simpson / Patty Bouvier / Selma Bouvier (voice)