The Plight Before Christmas/Trivia

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Trivia

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Trivia

• Table read date: Unknown.
• This was the last episode to air in 2022.
• The title is a reference to the disambiguation The Night Before Christmas.
• This was the most recent episode to have any writing involvement from Kelvin Yu, who has since served as a consulting producer, until "The Twinnening."
• This episode features the record number of guest actors credited under 'also starring' on the end credits with 13 individuals listed. It also features the joint-highest overall number of cast members specific to the episode at 18 tied with "Glued, Where's My Bob?" which only had 12 guest actors due to Larry Murphy being credited in the starring cast. It is also the first episode since "Worms of In-Rear-ment" where Larry Murphy is not credited in the starring cast.
• Acting debut of poet Saeed Jones, Jones is best known for his poetry collection Prelude to Bruise and his memoir How We Fight for Our Lives which won the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction in 2019.
• Guest stars Rachel Dratch and Tina Fey were both cast members at the same time on the long-running sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (although the characters they voice don't have any scenes together).
• Unlike other even number-coded episodes in the CASA production season, John Dylan Keith scored this episode instead of Elegant Too. Additional music credits also appear for "Around the Tree" which was written by creator Loren Bouchard and showrunner Nora Smith and performed by R&B singer H.E.R. (credited under her real name Gabriella Wilson), and additional music arrangements by Courtney Swain.
  • A full-length version of "Around the Tree" was nearly completed in time for a release around Christmas 2022 according to Bouchard.
  • H.E.R also voices the character Aliah in the episode.
• Louise calls Tina, "Tina-ly Dickson," after the latter tried to convince her sibling to submit a genuine poem. This is a reference to the American poet, Emily Dickson.
• Louise's poetry recital takes place at the same library from "Y Tu Ga-Ga Tambien."
• The song performed by the sixth-graders is "Mishima / Closing" from the soundtrack to Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters composed by Philip Glass. Glass's Twitter account later acknowledged the fact in a tweet sent on December 19, 2022.
  • The arrangement from the episode was released digitally as a single on August 4, 2023. Phillip Glass announced the release on July 26, 2023.
• When Doug asks Bob where he went, he asks if he went to a world where he didn't exist, got thrown out of a bar or jumped off a bridge. This is in reference to the classic 1946 Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life.
• The border of Gene's ornament on the Christmas tree appearing in the final scene is blue instead of red, as it usually is. Louise's ornament is only brown.
• Following the production logos on the original Fox premiere, a dedication to writer Kelvin Yu's mother, "IN MEMORY OF BETTY YU," appeared. According to Bouchard, Betty died on December 9, 2022, two days before the episode premiered.
• This episode is now the highest rated of any in the show on IMDb, beating the previous record holders: "The Hauntening" and "Glued, Where's My Bob?" from Season 6.
• Sheila Merkins makes her first appearance since "The Hurt Soccer," though as an illustration.
• On July 12, 2023, it was announced that this episode had been nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards, giving the show its twelfth consecutive nomination in that category. It later lost to The Simpsons.
  • It is the second Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program lost to The Simpsons. The first is when "Just One of the Boyz 4 Now for Now" received a nomination for the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards.

Goofs

• Bob's mouth is briefly invisible in his dialogue after Linda exclaims it's "the worst day of [her] life" in the beginning scene at the restaurant, showing the background behind him.
• Bob appears in the audience in two separate moments. The first is right after the scene where he got in the taxi and the other is when he is making his way back to the school.
• One of the people in the audience at the sixth-grade performance is simultaneously at the poetry reading.