 This episode originally encountered trouble when the color version came back from Korea . With only six weeks to the airdate the writers made almost 100 line changes , a very rare occurrence . It was decided to completely overhaul the episode after a poorly received screening with the writing staff . The tombstones that appeared at the start of and during the episode were abandoned in later episodes because it was becoming increasingly difficult to think of ideas . A subtle tombstone joke in this episode is in the scene where two zombies are crawling out of their graves . The names Jay Kogen and Wolodarsky ( two of The Simpsons writers who worked on the episode ) are written on the tombstones , but both are misspelled . The " King Homer " segment is one of Matt Groening 's all @-@ time favorite stories from the Treehouse of Horror series . Al Jean was also quite worried about this segment because it was the longest running black @-@ and @-@ white segment they had ever aired , and he thought that some people might be concerned that their televisions were broken . The " He ( Flanders ) was a zombie ? " line , created by Mike Reiss , is , in the opinions of the writers , one of the all @-@ time classic lines from the series . 
