Homer The Heretic - Production

Production

This episode originated when Al Jean commented to Mike Reiss, "We had a lot of luck with Homer stealing cable, which was based on the eighth commandment, so maybe we could look to other commandments. So we thought, 'Honor the Sabbath' would be a good one. So the 'Homer doesn't go to church' storyline was given to George Meyer." Reiss and Jean thought that as a lapsed Catholic, Meyer would "bring the proper degree of rage" to the episode. Meyer also had a lot of fun making the episode, thinking that most people could relate to the bliss of staying home from church, which to him was even better than missing a day of school or a set of booster shots. One of the main problems Meyer had writing this episode is that whenever Homer saw God, he had to have fallen asleep so that it appeared to be a dream. Meyer did not want to show that God was literally appearing to Homer. This resulted in him falling asleep so many times during the first draft of the episode that it was almost as if Homer had narcolepsy. This was also the first episode from season four that was read to the production team. Although first reads on previous seasons had not been well received by the production team, "Homer the Heretic" read very well, particularly some of the visuals in the third act such as the house on fire and Homer being rescued by Flanders.

This was the first episode of The Simpsons where the animation was produced by Film Roman. Up until this point, Film Roman had mostly worked on Garfield and Friends and Bobby's World episodes, and were not used to the speed with which Simpsons episodes were produced, however they quickly adjusted. Film Roman went on to do the animation for the rest of the series and eventually The Simpsons Movie. Previously, the animation was produced by Klasky Csupo.

The chalkboard gag for this episode, "I will not defame New Orleans", was made as an apology to the citizens of New Orleans after it was musically insulted in the previous episode.

Along with "Mr. Plow", another episode of the fourth season of the Simpsons, this is one of the few television episodes that prominently featured snow outside of Christmas or Thanksgiving centric episodes.

The abrupt cutting off of God's voice before he reveals the meaning of life was intended to be cut off by a voiceover promotion for whatever FOX program aired after The Simpsons. However, FOX did not pick up on this and so God's voice was instead cut off by the show's credits.