The Simpsons opening sequence couch gag is shown, before the credits are displayed on a new widescreen flat panel television. Sometimes, the flat panel television falls to the floor and breaks, but unlike "Bart Gets a Z", the episode will begin then anyway. In the 500th episode, the opening sequence was a montage of all previous couch gags. Creator Matt Groening developed a lengthy opening sequence for the first season of "The Simpsons", in order to cut down on the animation necessary for each episode, but devised the two gags as compensation for the repeated material each week. In the first of the original
The Simpsons opening sequence the scenes shown in titles are "very fanciful, far-fetched. None of the things he depicts are true. That statement should be self-evident, but I will emphatically state it." After the positive response to the opening sequence by Banksy, creator Matt Groening and Jean came to Canadian animator and creator of "The Ren & Stimpy Show", John Kricfalusi and asked him if he could do something similar for the episode "Bart Stops to Smell the Roosevelts". Originally, they only wanted him to do the storyboards and then let their regular crew animate it, but Kricfalusi insisted on doing the animation himself,