However, while helping the children get their treats, he also takes them on a casual rampage of death and destruction: blowing up the mansion of Mr. Burns (depicted as a buzzard) before killing him and serving his cooked corpse to a homeless shelter; robbing Moe at his own place (where the Halloween buffet their father, Homer, attends is hosted), skinning him and using his flayed skin as a "Thnord"; robbing Apu and forcing him to spend time with his wife and octuplets; killing the Twrinches (Patty and Selma) at their DMV workplace and tossing car licenses to people waiting in line; blowing up town hall while wearing a Guy Fawkes mask; setting animals free from the zoo, and committing "aggravated floop-fluffel-cide", with Ralph Wiggum as one of his victims.

Alarmed at these events, the children manage to elude him with the aid of several monstrous animals; a "Three-Humped Gumbammel" (a Barney Gumble-esque camel who is real fast and humble, doesn't take tips and is never a grumbler), a "Krustiferous Krumbull" (a Krusty-esque bull who ends up being beheaded by a matador Sideshow Bob) and, finally, the Spanish-speaking "Bee-Man of Bumble" (a human-sized Bumblebee Man-esque bee with multicolored stripes on his body).

Marge comes home, unaware of what happened, and the children fake their mumps on the sofa by stuffing the collected candy in their mouths and have turned the Fat into a petticoat-like carpet.

In a circus in the 1930s, the self-serving strongman Homer gets his lover trapeze artist Marge to marry sideshow freak Moe after learning of the emerald ring he inherited from his mother on her death bed.

An epilogue is shown during the credits, revealing that Homer continued his career as the world's strongest duck until his death.

In October 2013, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Guillermo del Toro spoke about directing the opening of the episode, saying: "The Simpsons titles are so iconic and yet they've never been riffed in this vein.

I really wanted to land the connections between the [show's] set pieces and the titles and some of the most iconic horror movies, and intersperse them with some of my stuff in there for pure joy.

[5] Whilst taking the children out to get treats, the Fat blows up the town hall wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, a reference to the 2005 film V for Vendetta.

[4] "Dead and Shoulders" borrows the premise of the 1972 movie The Thing with Two Heads, which starred Ray Milland and Rosey Grier.

[4] At the end of "Dead and Shoulders" and at the beginning of "Freaks, No Geeks", Selma makes Bart help her sing "Mockingbird" from the 1994 comedy Dumb and Dumber.

[4] The episode as a whole received generally positive reviews, while Del Toro's opening sequence was critically acclaimed.