The "Itchy & Scratchy" cartoon "Butter Off Dead" was, according to Jean, "completely improvby director MacMullan. Usually, the episodes are too "narrow" for there to be any room for improvisation, but MacMullan was an exception, since her improvisations "always turned out great". The writers came up with the cartoon's title and its "template", however "the way the death proceeded and the different digestion[s" were "All Lauren name="Jean" /> The sequence in which Pinsky is reading the poem was "very hard to do", since the animators did not have access to computers at the time. One of the audience members in the scene was designed after staff writer Matt Warburton.