An Oral History of ‘Not It,’ the Stephen King ‘Treehouse of Horror’ Parody That Required a Whole ‘Simpsons’ Episode to Tell

All October long, Cracked is catching up with some of the greatest writers in Simpsons history to discuss the most beloved segments from the “Treehouse of Horror” series. From the cursed monkey’s paw to Krusto the Clown, we’re digging into the making of some real fan-favorites.

In Springfield, Krusty the Clown has long been known as a cheap, desperate, steamed hams-slinging TV personality with innumerable vices and personality flaws. But despite the fact that he was framed for murder and a killer doll with his likeness once came to life, the kids of Springfield still love the cackling clown. In Kingfield, however, things are much, much different.

In the 2022 “Treehouse of Horror” special “Not It,” The Simpsons did something it had never done before: The show dedicated an entire episode to a single “Treehouse” parody, which took aim at Stephen King’s It. Of course, taking the place of the evil Pennywise had to be Krusty — or Kusto in this episode — who feasts on the flesh of Kingfield’s children.

The result was an instant Simpsons classic with fans offering up rave reviews, original fan art and Krusto tattoos in its honor. Which is why we gathered up the episode’s writer, director and a few others to tell us how they dared to tell the tale of the bloodthirsty Krusto the Clown. 

Cesar Mazariegos, writer of “Not It”: The idea for “Not It” came about during the summer when It Chapter Two was coming out. I was brand new at The Simpsons, and we were talking about Halloween stuff. I said, “Have we ever done an It parody?” With so many Halloween episodes and usually three stories per “Treehouse,” it was surprising that we hadn’t. But we put it in our back pocket and didn’t think about it again until two years later. We were working on another “Treehouse,” and (showrunner) Matt Selman said, “It parody! Whose idea was that?” I raised my hand, and he said, “You want to do that one?” 

The more we thought about it, though, it seemed too big. “Treehouse” stories are about seven minutes long, and they’re often joke-heavy and story-light. With It, it’s a thousand-page book. It was a two-night miniseries. It was two nearly three-hour movies. There was no way to do that in a trilogy of terror, so we said, “What if we do it as it’s own thing? We do our normal ‘Treehouse’ episode, but we have an extra, added bonus. People love those episodes anyway and so does Fox, so why not?”

Matt Selman, showrunner of The Simpsons: It, the book and the movies, have this two-act structure, and we thought it would lend itself to a full episode instead. Plus, now that we’re in Season 50,000 of this show, the idea of alternate futures where everyone ends up with someone else and different stuff happens is very tempting to us.

Mazariegos: By the time I started to write it, I’d read the book and seen the TV movie and both new movies. We wanted to be sure to include the most iconic moments. For example, I knew we needed that opening scene with the paper boat and It in the sewer because it’s so iconic, scary and moody. 

We didn’t want to get too in the weeds, though. The book especially has all this crazy stuff, like the one kid is afraid of giant birds. While it might have been fun to do that, how many people know that? Sure, a lot of people have read the book, but more people have probably seen the movies or the miniseries, so it made more sense to take from there.

There’s also some questionable material in the book, like that scene where all the kids have sex. I had a joke in the episode where Moe says, “What if we all have sex with each other?” and everyone is like, “Why would that help?!?!” But Matt Selman and Brian Kelley, who was co-running that episode, thought it was a little gross and that we didn’t need to remind people of it, especially if they don’t know about it in the first place.

Even with a whole episode though, it was still a challenge to figure out how to tell this story in 21 minutes, because there’s a lot to cram in there. We had to figure out which characters are right for it. Which parts of the story do we stick to? Which parts do we change? Which parts do we ignore? Each character had to have their own little nightmare and their own interaction with Krusto. There was how they got along. There was the love triangle. There was the history of Krusto. It was a lot to fit in, and there were a ton of jokes we had to cut just to fit in story stuff. 

Selman: We had a thing with a spooky gravedigger. We hoped Stephen King would do the voice of it, but he passed. It was just as well, because we didn’t have time for it.

Mazariegos: For the selection of characters we used, there was a lot of kicking around to see who fits in the mold. Obviously Homer. Obviously Marge. Moe is always fun because he can be anything you need him to be — a little dirtbag, a kid you feel sorry for, whatever. Carl because there’s the joke about the one Black kid in all of Maine. Then, the last part was whoever was going to be the other part of the love triangle. It could have been Moe, but it felt like Comic Book Guy had good energy as a guy who is always a little selfish and needy. We also thought he had to be the one to die of the group, so we thought it would work if he’s the one to take credit for the poem Homer wrote for Marge.

Selman: As much as there’s a lot of stuff about slaughter, murder and other craziness, we wanted to do what Stephen King does so well, which is to tell a sad human story at the center. The idea that young Comic Book Guy had a crush on Marge but she liked Homer more, that’s a real little-kid thing — it’s a realistic, emotional thing. You think a girl likes you, but then the girl likes someone else more, and it’s sad. 

Mazariegos: For the Pennywise part, maybe for a second we thought, “What if it was Sideshow Bob?” But really, this was always going to be a Krusty story. Then we had to figure out the backstory for Krusto, and the way we made it our Krusty was that he was so desperate for laughs that he keeps these ghost children forever to be his laugh track. That tracks with who he is as a character. Pennywise is some alien spider thing, but Krusto is just a hacky comedian who always wanted laughs but never got them, so this is how he gets them.

As for the design of Krusto, the It most recently in people’s minds is the movie version, so we leaned on that, but for legal reasons, we couldn’t make him look too much like Pennywise. 

Steven Dean Moore, director of “Not It”: A general guide for something like this is that you take the thing you’re making an homage to and you divide it by Springfield — I call it “Simpsonizing.” So you have this thing where it looks like it’s in our show, but it also looks like the reference material. 

Kevin Newman, designer of Krusto the Clown: The writer’s note I got for Krusto was to “Make a Krustified version of It.” I rewatched the movies, sitting on my couch with a pen and paper, and I just sketched page after page of character development. There were certain things I was trying to capture, like the evil eyes and the tilted-down head. From that, I had to take our Krusty the Clown and somehow bridge the gap so it reads as It. When we do these types of things, sometimes they want to keep it closer to our guy, and sometimes you’re pushing more toward the source material. You want the middle where you get the feel of both things.

In this case, my first pass looked a lot more like Krusty. He had Krusty’s body shape — rounder, chubbier, shorter. He still had the It hair and a slightly bigger forehead, but more Krusty proportions.

Then I did a second one where I unleashed myself with a crazy big forehead and made him taller. I took Krusty’s body shape, but I stretched it so the ball is small and the torso’s bigger. I presented those to the director, and he was like, “These are awesome.” He sent the second version over to the writers to see what feedback they had. They were very positive. They threw in a couple of details, but that version stuck. It was about 80 or 90 percent of the final design.

Mazariegos: Color-wise, we figured we’d go with green. That’s what Krusty’s hair looks like, so it made sense. 

Newman: Then the board artists started roughing out the angles and the scenes. Steve said they’d need him in the gutter with crazy rows of fangs, popping his face out. There’s a scene where he’s popping out of a television, and there’s a scene where he’s crawling on the ceiling.

Mazariegos: Where we could, we wanted to make things actually unsettling, like when Barney gets pulled into the sewer. It took a while to get the ending, where Kusto crumples in on himself, right. Even in the animatic stage it was still a little unclear, so I drew out this image of how exactly I wanted him to crumple in on himself for maximum body horror and pain. 

Newman: For the premiere party that year, they made a Krusty as It shirt for everyone, and they created these 12-inch standees on foamcore. I still have one of those sitting on my desk now. The public really responded to it too. I was at this Halloween event last year at Descanso Gardens in L.A. where they had a thousand carved pumpkins, and I saw a Krusty as It jack-o’-lantern. My son pointed it out saying, “Dad, it’s your design!” Everyone turned their heads. I felt like a rock star for a few minutes there.