by Jean's dissatisfaction with some network executives, who he felt took control over a television series he was working on before he returned to The Simpsons in 1999. "I had just worked on a show on another network [...] we had a show where there were a lot of notes from executives", Jean said of the inspiration for the scenes. The episode would originally have a different ending, but it was changed to its current iteration after the writers did not find the original ending humorous enough. When recording the DVD commentary however, Jean said that he was a bit dissatisfied with the new ending. "I think we did leave it a little hanging", he said. During one of the recording sessions for the episode, The Simpsons' staff recorded "Hullaba Lula", a version of the 1946 song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" with Grammer as Sideshow Bob on vocals. The song would originally be used in the episode, but the staff were not able to clear the rights for the song in time. It was therefore removed from the episode altogether, and remained unreleased until September 17, 2007, when it was included as a bonus track on the soundtrack album The Simpsons: Testify. Aside from Grammer, the episode also features American actor Gary Coleman as himself. Cultural references The episode's title is a play on the 1971 political thriller novel The Day of the Jackal, while its plot is based on the 1959 political thriller novel The Manchurian Candidate. Before filming an episode of his show, Krusty is stopped by the two network executives, who attempt to explain to him why the sitcom Seinfeld worked as a series. After Krusty has announced the cancellation of his show, a group of crying children are seen at the Krustylu Studios, where the show is filmed. The name of the studio is based on Desilu Studios, a television company based in Los Angeles. In an interview with Kent Brockman, Krusty says that he taped over all episodes of his show that Sideshow Bob was in with episodes of the reality court show Judge Judy. This is a reference to how NBC reused tapes of early episodes of The Tonight Show to film new programs. While in the Springfield Elementary School's tool-shed, Sideshow Bob accidentally steps on a rake and says "Rakes, my old arch-enemy." This is a reference to the scene, in the season 5 episode "Cape