Difference between revisions of "The Sweetest Apu/References"

Latest revision as of 12:19, February 28, 2026

Cultural references[edit]

• The episode title is a pun on the 1985 song "The Sweetest Taboo" by the English band Sade.
• Apu mentions the Indian rope trick, a magic trick said to have been performed in and around India during the 19th century in which a rope rose by itself and a boy climbed it.
• Homer says to Lisa "Don't go Mary Todd on us", referring to Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln.
• At the American Civil War reenactment:
  • The battle flag of the Confederate States is seen.
  • Cletus plays the traditional southern song "Dixie" on a banjo.
  • The patriotic song "Battle Hymn of the Republic" is heard.
  • There is a confederate soldier who bears a striking similarity to Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
  • Barney plays the role of General Ulysses S. Grant. Homer tells Barney that if he were going to be General Grant, he "had to have a drink". This is a reference to Grant's struggle with alcohol at certain points in his life.
  • Abraham Lincoln starts the battle by shooting a gun at his head, referencing his assassination in 1865.
  • Disco Stu playing Confederate General Stonewall Jackson is roller-blading in the battlefield.
    • The disco song heard during this sequence is "A Fifth of Beethoven" by Walter Murphy.
• Homer refers to the punctured keg of beer as being "so cold...so cold." These are the words Snowden uses when hit and bleeding, in the 1961 satirical war novel Catch-22.
  • Milhouse also says these words in season seven episode "Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily" after Bart complains that nothing happened to Milhouse after playing with the monkey in the Pier One wicker basket.
• American author and journalist Tom Brokaw is giving a speech on the "Remembering WWII" act. The plane behind him is a Vought F4U Corsair.

Professor Frink drives a giant mechanical spider like the one from the 1999 American steampunk Western comedy film Wild Wild West.

• Professor Frink drives a giant mechanical spider like the one Dr. Loveless, portrayed by Will Smith, drives in the 1999 American steampunk Western comedy film Wild Wild West.
• When Marge is watching the video of Apu's wedding, Homer gets up with the band and tries to sing "C'è la luna mezzo mare", the song from the wedding scene in the 1972 film The Godfather.
• Homer uses a bottle of Mrs. Dash to recereate Apu's infidelity act with Annette.
• Moe poured "Windelle", a parody of the hard-surface cleaner Windex, into Marge's drink.
• When Manjula first kicks him out of the house, his children hiss at him. This is a reference to the hissing children in the David Cronenberg film The Brood.
• Springfield Bachelor Apartments have Murphy beds.
• In Homer's imagination, "You can run, but you can't glide" is a pun on "You can run, but you can't hide", a statement attributed to American boxer Joe Louis.
• Bart acts like Ganesha, the Indian god. He also imitates Dracula.
• Marge prepares Tandoori chicken, a dish of Indian origins, for the dinner with Apu and Manjula. Homer also ordered a "Fudge Mahal", a Taj Mahal made of fudge.
• On Apu's reincarnation poster, one of his past lives was "a clod" (Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman) and an assistant to Saturday Night Live executive Lorne Michaels. Lorne hired such Simpsons writers as George Meyer, John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti, Conan O'Brien, Ian Maxtone-Graham, and Joel H. Cohen as sketch writers in the mid-1980s into the 1990s, and hired voice actor Harry Shearer as a season five cast member in 1979.
• When Apu is about to commit suicide, Manjula calls him a "Brahma queen", a pun on Brahma, the Hindu god, and the term drama queen.
• Homer bought an edition of The New Yorker in which Apu's cartoon appears in. However, Homer says he purchased it only for the pictures of Lenny taken by American fashion and portrait photographer Richard Avedon.
• Apu and his octuplets reenact My Fair Lady as part of Manjula's list.
• There is a picture of the Taj Mahal in Apu and Manjula's bedroom.

Trivia[edit]

• Manjula is voiced by Tress MacNeille instead of Jan Hooks in this episode.

Goofs[edit]

• When Homer gets in bed after finding out Apu was having an affair with Annette, he is wearing his normal clothes, but after he wakes up after having a nightmare about Apu's affair, Homer is in his sleepwear.
• When the episode starts, the Kwik-E-Mart Sign has a green, blue, and white background instead of a green and white background.
• The tasks on Apu's list swap occasionally.