Treehouse of Horror XI

"Treehouse of Horror XI" is the first episode of The Simpsons' twelfth season and the 249th overall, and the eleventh Halloween episode. The episode features "G-G-Ghost D-D-Dad", "Scary Tales Can Come True" and "Night of the Dolphin" and was written by Rob LaZebnik (story by Mike Scully), John Frink and Don Payne and Carolyn Omine and directed by Matthew Nastuk.

This year's installment sees Homer as a wandering spirit who must do one good deed before going to Heaven ("G-G-Ghost D-D-Dad"), Bart and Lisa as genre-savvy peasant children who end up lost in a fairy tale forest in "Scary Tales Can Come True", and Springfield's population at war with sea mammals in "Night of the Dolphin".

The episode first aired on November 1, 2000, beginning a practice of the show's Halloween episodes debuting after the holiday itself due to Fox's late-October prime time schedule being pre-empted by the network's coverage of the World Series. (Through 2010, all subsequent Halloween episodes save for 2009's "Treehouse of Horror XX" premiered in November, although beginning with 2011's "Treehouse of Horror XXII" the network has resumed airing the episodes on or before Halloween.) This was also the first Simpsons episode to have mixed-case closed captioning. The episode received positive reviews from critics.

The opening sequence is done as a parody of The Munsters, with Homer as Herman Munster, Marge as Lily Munster, Lisa as Marilyn Munster with a book on copyright law, Bart as Eddie Munster, and Grampa as Grandpa Munster. Meanwhile, at the front of their mansion, an angry mob of townspeople attack the Munster Simpsons. They stab Marge and Grampa in the chest with stakes, set Homer on fire, and activate a bear trap on Bart's head, leaving Lisa unharmed; she then walks away from the scene while whistling, pretending as if she was never there with no connection of the monstrous family.