Treehouse of Horror Segments, Ranked

Thirty-some years of Halloween, and the good ones all aired before the internet.

Entries
10
Category
TV
Updated
  1. A glass petri dish of cola on a science-fair table, with a baby tooth inside and tiny glowing city lights rising from it.

    10. The Genesis Tub

    The Simpsons · 1996

    Lisa's tooth in a dish of cola, plus a jolt of static, grows a tiny civilization that worships her as God. Bart enters the whole universe in the science fair as his own and wins first prize. Theology and grade inflation, in seven minutes.

  2. A dusty alien cookbook on a gleaming spaceship dining table set with a giant fork and knife.

    09. Hungry Are the Damned

    The Simpsons · 1990

    The debut of Kang and Kodos, who have been required by law to appear every Halloween since. Lisa finds a book called How to Serve Man, blows dust off it, and the title keeps changing. The aliens were just being nice. Lisa ruined dinner for everyone.

  3. A school cafeteria steam tray with a ladle, a meat grinder on the counter and a bulletin board of detention slips.

    08. Nightmare Cafeteria

    The Simpsons · 1994

    Budget cuts and detention overcrowding lead Principal Skinner and the lunch ladies to the obvious solution, which is the students. Willie gets an axe in the back as a running gag. It ends with a fog turning the family inside out and a song-and-dance number to lighten the mood.

  4. A black raven perched on a marble bust above a creaking chamber door, candlelight and a stack of old books.

    07. The Raven

    The Simpsons · 1990

    Edgar Allan Poe, read nearly straight by James Earl Jones, with Homer as the narrator and Bart as the raven. Matt Groening worried it would be the most pretentious thing they'd made. Instead it taught a generation the poem, which is the most pretentious thing they made.

  5. A toy clown doll on a bathroom floor with a small switch in its back, a knife lying beside it.

    06. Clown Without Pity

    The Simpsons · 1992

    Homer buys Bart a cursed Krusty doll that keeps trying to kill him, and the fix turns out to be a switch on its back set to Evil. The repairman flips it to Good and the doll becomes Homer's servant. Customer service has never worked this well since.

  6. A cartoon living room bookcase pushed aside to reveal a glowing wireframe grid of floating cones, cubes and equations.

    05. Homer³

    The Simpsons · 1995

    Homer hides behind a bookcase and falls into the third dimension, rendered by Pacific Data Images in the show's first CGI. It ends in live action on Ventura Boulevard, outside an erotic cake shop. It won the Ottawa animation grand prize and lost the Emmy to Pinky and the Brain.

  7. A single pink frosted donut with sprinkles on a red velvet cushion, wreathed in smoke and flames.

    04. The Devil and Homer Simpson

    The Simpsons · 1993

    Homer sells his soul for a donut to a devil who turns out to be Ned Flanders. Marge wins the trial on a technicality: he'd already promised his soul to her on a wedding photo. Hell tries ironic punishment by donut and learns nothing. Conan O'Brien co-wrote this one.

  8. A chrome toaster sparking with blue lightning on a kitchen counter, a swatted prehistoric mosquito beside it and donuts falling outside the window.

    03. Time and Punishment

    The Simpsons · 1994

    Homer fixes a toaster, it becomes a time machine, and every swat of a prehistoric bug rewrites the present. One timeline has Flanders as lord of the world; one rains donuts. He settles for a family with forked tongues and calls it close enough. Same, Homer.

  9. Two red-white-and-blue campaign podiums on a rally stage, a flying saucer hovering above them and balloons drifting.

    02. Citizen Kang

    The Simpsons · 1996

    Kang and Kodos replace Clinton and Dole in 1996, Homer exposes them, and America votes for one anyway because of the two-party system. The closing line got a ska punk band named after it. IGN ranked the episode the best Treehouse ever. Politics has not recovered.

  10. A snowbound mountain lodge hallway with a typewriter, an axe leaning on a wall, and an empty beer can on the carpet.

    01. The Shinning

    The Simpsons · 1994

    Mr. Burns takes away the TV and the beer, and Homer writes his own review on every wall of the lodge. Willie has the shinning, and when Bart corrects him, he shushes him over lawsuits. It is a near shot-for-shot Kubrick parody that improves on the dialogue.

Honorable mentions

  • A yellow school bus in a rainstorm at night, one wheel's lug nuts loosened and a road flare burning on the shoulder.

    Terror at 5½ Feet

    The Simpsons · 1993

    A Twilight Zone parody in which Bart sees a gremlin loosening lug nuts on the school bus and nobody believes him. He tells Otto there's a gremlin on the side of the bus, and Otto runs Hans Moleman's AMC Gremlin off the road. Technically he listened.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A hospital bed with a stack of baby powder and a single black widow spider on the bedrail.

    The Diving Bell and the Butterball

    The Simpsons · 2011

    A spider bite paralyzes Homer, and the family learns he can communicate only through flatulence. A second spider makes him a mute Spider-Man. It parodies an Oscar-nominated French film about locked-in syndrome. Vulture ranked it the worst Treehouse segment ever made.

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