Woody Allen’s Scandals Forced ‘The Simpsons’ to Change a Joke at the Last Minute

The Simpsons hasn’t exactly shied away from including references to Woody Allen over the years, such as when Bart and Homer spotted him shooting a Japanese rice cracker commercial, or when he was seen hammering out Chinese fortune cookie messages, or the time he was absolutely torn apart by the comic stylings of McBain.

But while these jokes were obviously intended to demean the Oscar-winning filmmaker/accused sexual predator, the show once came very close to including an innocuous Allen reference at the worst possible time. 

The second segment in “Treehouse of Horror III” was the King Kong parody “King Homer,” which ends with an old-timey newspaper spinning into frame bearing the headline “WOMAN WEDS APE.” Just below it is the headline “DICK CAVETT BORN,” featuring an image of a fully adult Dick Cavett.

Which is a funny joke, but if you pause the scene right as the newspaper is spinning, it’s clear that the original gag involved Woody Allen being born, complete with an image of the bespectacled comedian. Which might be the scariest thing about this Halloween special. Also, the date on the paper is different: October 29, 1933. That was the same day that the show aired, plus the year that King Kong was first released. The finished version, on the other hand, depicts Cavett’s actual birthday: November 19, 1936.

Some fans have claimed that this wasn’t actually a mistake, but rather, an elaborate joke poking fun at Cavett’s penchant for constantly dropping Allen’s name. Which kind of seems like a stretch considering that such a joke would be virtually undetectable on broadcast television at the time.

Although, to be fair, The Simpsons later poked fun at this very personality quirk when Cavett guest-starred just a few years later:

It seems far more likely that the Simpsons crew changed the final headline, but didn’t bother to re-animate the spinning newspaper. 

The timing of this episode would certainly bear out that theory. “Treehouse of Horror III” came out in October 1992. In August 1992, Allen was accused of molesting his daughter Dylan (he was never arrested or prosecuted), and that news was quickly followed by a public announcement in which Allen admitted to a scandalous relationship with his partner’s daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, who was reportedly around 21 when they first got together. 

All of which undoubtedly would have made a random Simpsons reference to Allen seem far more loaded than it was perhaps intended when the episode was first written, thus necessitating a last-minute change.

While the “Woody Allen Born” headline was briefly visible, it was really only obvious to those Simpsons fans who painstakingly taped each episode and watched them frame-by-frame like cartoon Zapruder films. But now, thanks to streaming, it’s way easier to randomly pause popular TV shows to see if there are any hidden references to famous creeps.

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