Sideshow Bob Roberts/References

==Cultural reference==
* Joe Quimby proposes a new expressway at the Springfield Retirement Castle. The seniors want to call it the Matlock expressway after the television series Matlock, a favorite show among senior citizens.
==Trivia==
*Ironically, this episode, which suggested some Republicans were capable of "rigging" elections, aired exactly one month before the historic 1994 Republican Revolution elections. Despite teasing Republicans, the episode also displayed criticism of Democrats. Another Simpsons episode which suggested these upcoming "Republican Revolution" victories, Bart Gets An Elephant, aired five months before "Sideshow Bob Roberts" aired as well.
*Smithers use of the words "choice of lifestyle" hints what was later revealed in the 2016 episode The Burns Cage, which is his homosexuality.
*This is the first and only Sideshow Bob episode that Chief Wiggum, Eddie, and Lou don't appear, to arrest him.
*Sideshow Bob was released by Democratic mayor Joe Quimby after pressure from Republican-inspired protests. In "Black Widower" he claimed he and his prison mates would be released on the streets once the Democrats were back in power.
**"Black Widower" also saw Bob mentioning being a lifelong conservative Republican, which would prove central to this story.
*Syndicated prints and FXX reruns of this episode, including the Complete Sixth Season DVD print, skips the whole intro, meaning that it goes from the "P" of the title screen to the "Created By/Developed By" TV credits. This same intro was used five seasons earlier on some prints of "Life on the Fast Lane", and returns in HD twenty seasons later in "The Musk Who Fell to Earth".
**In FXX airings, there is a slight cutoff when the "P" goes to the TV credits, as the TV moves up while the "P" moves, showing that FXX seems to paste the same TV credits onto intros.
*Fox Broadcasting Company said that the episode was running too long to have the couch gag. Along with "Bart the General", "Life on the Fast Lane", "The Great Simpsina", "The Ned-liest Catch", "The Food Wife", "The Book Job", "The Man in the Blue Flannel Pants", "Adventures in Baby-Getting", "The Day the Earth Stood Cool", "To Cur, with Love", "Steal This Episode", "The War of Art", "Brick Like Me", "Opposites A-Frack", "The Musk Who Fell to Earth", "Sky Police", "Cue Detective", "Halloween of Horror", "The Girl Code", "Much Apu About Something", "The Marge-ian Chronicles", "Simprovised", "The Town", "There Will Be Buds", and "The Great Phatsby", this counts as the third episode to not have a couch gag, chalkboard gag, and a billboard gag (for mid-Season 20-present episodes), although a couple of mid-Season 20-present episodes without the intro have a title screen gag.
*The Springfield Republican Party members are:
**The Rich Texan
**Dracula
**Birchibald T. Barlow
** Rainier Wolfcastle
** Blue-Haired Lawyer
** Julius Hibbert
*Sideshow Bob's middle name "Underdunk" is mentioned for the first time.
*Names, which are on the voter records, are:
**Edgar Neubauer
**Prudence Goodwyfe
**Buddy Holly
**Richie Valens
**The Big Bopper
*Animals, which "voted" for Bob, are:
**Mr. Bananas and Mrs. Bananas (apes)
**Humphrey Boa-Gart (a snake)
**Shnookums
**Snookums
**Snowball I (Lisa's first cat)
**Stormy
**Stampy (Bart's elephant) - a reference to the episode "Bart Gets an Elephant" (Ironically, the elephant has been the mascot of the Republican Party since the 1870s)https://new.caddogop.com/origin-of-the-republican-elephant/
* The end of the episode, where the prison rowing team is going to compete against Princeton alumni, is the first time Bob is disparaging towards the school (the second is when he refers to it as "clown college" in Brother from Another Series).
* The episode's German title is called "Tingeltangel-Bob". "Tingeltangel" is German for "ding-a-ling".
*In the Mythbusters "The Simpsons Special" episode, Adam and Jamie tested a myth about this episode: A person hanging onto a wrecking ball can protect a house from damage if the ball swings to pin him against the wall? In order to test this myth, they built a real life Homer Simpson with rubber and filled with water to match Homer's weight (239 pounds). in the final test, Homer was intact, and so is the house (even if it was damaged). The myth was classified as "Plausible".
* This is the first time in the series were the catchphrase "Meh" is used, with a librarian using it to answer Lisa's interjection about votes being secrets.
* Though never explicitly stated what his "choice of lifestyle" is, the reason Smithers helps the kids to take down Sideshow Bob in secret by giving them information is likely due to the fact that Bob is affiliated with the Republican Party, who have a long tradition of being opposed to gay marriage; something that would not sit well with the closeted Smithers.
** Despite this, however, Smithers was allied with Mr. Burns, and even admitted he was reluctant to go against Burns' back to hint at the fraud, implying that Smithers was a Log Cabin Republican, a faction of the party that was more tolerant of the homosexual agenda and included homosexuals.
* Hints of Smithers being a homosexual had existed since the ending of The Telltale Head. W. Mark Felt, who was confirmed to be Deep Throat 11 years after the episode aired, was a loyalist of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who has long been claimed by his enemies to have been a closet homosexual. Despite their prominence in the FBI, U.S. President Richard Nixon, who was President when Hoover died in May 1972, passed over Tolson and Felt to succeed Hoover as FBI Director and opted to promote then-Assistant Attorney General L. Patrick Gray, a former naval officer and lawyer who had no experience in law enforcement, to succeed Hoover. However, unlike Tolson, Felt was not put into retirement and served in Tolson's previous position as Deputy FBI Director, which put him in a position that made capable of providing the incriminating "Deep Throat" information.
*Although Sideshow Bob was established to have won the election by rigging it via deceased voters, the scenes of the people casting their votes showed Homer and Krusty (people who Bob antagonized before) voting for Bob, implying that Bob would have won the election regardless.
** Homer when deciding whether or not to vote for Bob says he doesn't approve of his Bart-killing policy, but does approve of his Selma-killing policy when deciding to do so, referring to the events of Cape Feare and Black Widower, respectively. Likewise, Krusty when reluctantly casting his vote for Bob stated the latter had earlier framed him for armed robbery, referring to the events of Krusty Gets Busted. He also cites as his main motivating factor for voting for Bob as him wanting a piece of the upper-class tax cut, referring to how Republicans tended to go for fiscally conservative policies as well as critics by more left-wing opponents of how said policies only serve the rich.
== Goofs==
*In the final scene where Bob is asked to join the prison rowing team, the boat is first seen in its correct orientation. However, when he jumps into the boat, the stroke seat has magically switched to rowing starboard. Typically, the seat closest to the coxswain in a eight person rowing shell rows port.
== Citations ==
*Much of the episode is based on the and borrows many elements from the film which focused on the investigation into the incident by and . These include the meeting with Smithers, whose secret informant role was modeled on that of secret Woodward and Bernstein source Deep Throat, and the overheard shot of Lisa in the library.
*Bob's aides are parodies of Richard Nixon's advisors during Watergate, and .
*The meeting with Smithers was based on the series of meetings that Woodward and Bernstein had with Mark Felt that took place at the bottom level of an underground carpark at Rosslyn, across the Key Street Bridge in Virginia during the Watergate Investigation in 1973. At the time of the Watergate Scandal and the investigation, Mark Felt (who was referred to by Woodward and Bernstein as Deep Throat) was the Deputy Director of the FBI who told Woodward and Bernstein about the Watergate Tapes and the sections of the tapes that were missing. However, despite occasional speculation which was made to the press in 1975 and 1992, Felt's role as Deep Throat-which was again speculated in 1999 and confirmed in 2005- was not publicly disclosed at the time the episode aired.
*Bob runs a campaign advertisement against Quimby which is largely based on George H.W. Bush's "Revolving Door Ad," an extremely important event in the 1988 US presidential campaign.
*Quimby's appearance at the debate impersonates Nixon's appearance at the 1960 Presidential debate after he had just recovered from a cold.
*Birch Barlow is a parody of conservative talk-show host , while his first name is a possible reference to the far-right John Birch Society.
*The title is a reference to the film Bob Roberts, a 1992 film following the eponymous politician, suggesting that success comes from shady deals, hypocrisy and deceit. Bob enters the meeting wrapped in an American flag, a reference to the film's poster.
*Archie, Jughead and Reggie from the Archie Comics throw Homer out of their car, while Moose says, "Duh, stay out of Riverdale!" It is not known how he met them or what he did to offend them (and presumably the community they lived in).
**Homer later refers to them again; he is seen reading an Archies comic and comments, "Riverdale punks, think they're too good for me!"
**This episode was later referenced in the new Bite Sized Archie Comics #39 - Wrong Turn, where Homer dropped Archie at Jughead's house and told Archie to come back to Springfield anytime. Jughead asked Archie where he has been, and Archie told him that he woke up at the wrong side of the multiverse.
*In court, Bob says, "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!" A reference to a line from the movie A Few Good Men starring Jack Nicholson.
*Birch Barlow mentions the cartoon spokesperson Joe Camel.
*Springwood Minimum Security Prison is a parody of Allenwood Minimum Security Prison.
*Sideshow Bob gives his acceptance speech (or, rather, laughs dementedly upon attempting to give it) underneath a giant poster with a picture of himself on it; this is a reference to the campaign speech scene in Citizen Kane.
**In Season 2, Mr. Burns did the same thing when running for Governor in Two Cars In Every Garage And Three Eyes On Every Fish.
** Bart reveals his other enemy to be Dr. Demento, a real-life radio host famous for his partnership with "Weird Al" Yankovic, a partnership that is the reason for Yankovic's fame.
Category:Trivia
Category:Goofs
Category:Cultural references
Category:Episode references