Bart Vs. Australia - Cultural References

Cultural References

The plot of the episode is based on the story of Michael Fay, an American teenager who was caned in Singapore in 1994 for vandalizing cars. This episode perpetuated a popular myth that the Coriolis effect affects the motion of drains in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. In reality, the Coriolis effect affects global weather patterns. The amount of water in a toilet or sink is much too small to be affected by it.

When Bart is talking to the boy's father on the phone he says "I think I hear a dingo eating your baby", referencing the case of Azaria Chamberlain, a ten-week-old baby who was killed by dingoes. The bullfrogs taking over Australia and destroying all the crops is a reference to the cane toad, originally introduced to Australia in order to protect sugar canes from the cane beetle, but became a pest in the country.

When the Simpson family go to an Australian pub, Bart plays with a pocketknife at the table and a man asks him: "You call that a knife?", and as the man draws a spoon from his pocket he says: "This is a knife." The scene is a reference to a famous scene from Crocodile Dundee in which Mick Dundee is threatened by some thugs with a switchblade, and Mick takes out a bowie knife and says; "That's not a knife; that's a knife!" The Simpson family is shown a slide show by the US Department of State depicting a boarded up cinema with a sign out the front saying "Yahoo Serious Festival", in reference to the Australian actor and director Yahoo Serious. Wez, one of the characters from the 1981 film Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, is seen in the Australian mob that chases Bart and Homer to the American Embassy.