The Old Man and The Lisa - Production

Production

The episode was based on a story idea pitched by David X. Cohen, although it was written by John Swartzwelder, who had written many of the Simpsons episodes that have environmental themes. This habit led to him being called the "conscience of the staff" despite being a "self declared anti-environmentalist." It was because of this that he was given such episodes, because the staff felt that he would give them just the right amount of sarcasm. In the original script for the episode, he described the recycling center as "a couple of hippies surrounded by garbage". Two alternate original titles for the episode were Cohen's "Lisa and Burns" and Swartzwelder's "Burns Goes Broke".

The writers had wanted an episode where Burns becomes bankrupt and shows what Burns would be like as a person in the real world. The idea with the recycling plant was that Burns did not have any sort of evil plan, he just could not help being himself. Burns really was trying to change and this was reflected in the end when he tried to give Lisa her share of the profits, with Lisa refusing. Burns was drawn without his trademark scowl for this episode. The staff joked about this being a suitable series finale, due to the episode ending with Homer suffering from another heart attack after Lisa tells Homer what 10% of Burns' $120,000,000 check really is.

Professional wrestler Bret Hart guest starred in the episode as himself, and he was very insistent that he be shown wearing his pink wrestling outfit. He explained that "It's so cool to be part of a show that makes people laugh really, really hard." The media, aware that the animated Hart would want to purchase Mr. Burns' home, mistakenly anticipated that "Bret offers to wrestle him for the place." Later, Hart moved on to do voice work on the animated television series Jacob Two-Two. The press noted that at that time Hart was "no stranger to cartoon-land," having been "immortalized" by "The Old Man and the Lisa".