Difficulties were getting this episode up to the minimum length of an episode, and many scenes were added in post-production. The episode starts with a repeat of a couch gag that was first used in the episode "Lisa's First Word", which is considerably longer than the typical couch gag. The crew added an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon, and a few mislead as to who was trying to kill Bart. Even with all these additions, the episode still ran short of time. This led to creating the rake sequence, which became a memorable moment of the episode, and the entire series. Originally, Sideshow Bob was supposed to step on only one rake after he stepped out from the underside of the Simpson family's car, but this was changed to nine rakes in a row. According to executive producer Al Jean, the idea was to make the scene funny, then drag the joke out so that it is no longer funny, and then drag it out even longer to make it funny again.