Little Girl Lost (The Twilight Zone) - References in Other Media

References in Other Media

"Little Girl Lost" was parodied in Homer3, a segment of "Treehouse of Horror VI", an episode from the seventh season of The Simpsons. Instead of recovering Tina from the fourth dimension, the two-dimensionally-drawn characters attempt to retrieve Homer (and later, Bart) from the mysterious "third dimension". The episode ends with Homer destroying the 3D world and getting jettisoned into the real world, where he is initially frightened, but forgets his troubles when he finds an erotic cake store. The episode was famous at the time for mixing 3D computer animation and live-action with the show's two-dimensional cel animation. The Twilight Zone was even referenced in the episode when Homer describes the series as "that twilighty show about that zone."

An only slightly similar event occurs at the end of the first episode of the second season of Primeval: Stephen Hart tries to return to the present through an anomaly in time (from the Cretaceous, after returning two rogue raptor dinosaurs there) but is being pulled back by one of the raptors. The other characters manage to pull Stephen entirely through the anomaly and it closes on the attacking raptor's neck, decapitating it, similar to what Bill had warned would happen to Chris had the portal closed on him.

Many elements of this episode were later echoed in the Steven Spielberg-produced Poltergeist. Spielberg was keenly familiar with The Twilight Zone, having produced Twilight Zone: The Movie and also directed a segment. Spielberg's first film, Duel, was written by frequent Twilight Zone contributor Richard Matheson, who wrote this episode. The main elements of "Little Girl Lost" that were repeated in Poltergeist include a little girl falling into another dimension where she and her parents cannot see each other but can talk to and hear one another; the marking off of the dimension "hole"; the father going into the other dimension to rescue his daughter and then being pulled back out by people on the outside; and even the girl's voice coming through the television set.

In addition, an area of the queue for the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror theme park attractions in California and Paris uses subtle effects to simulate air currents coming out of a solid wall, as well as playing a subtle recording of the little girl's dialogue at intervals.