It was bound to come up. Actually, there have been many references to Disney of one kind or another. First of all, they often spell it Diz-Nee so as to avoid being squashed by the cartoon world’s Big Brother. Plus, “The Itchy and Scratchy Show” is often depicted as a Disney product. There’s even Itchy and Scratchy Land — which is broken up into its constituent parts: Torture Land, Explosion Land, Searing Gas Pain Land, and, of course Unnecessary Surgery Land. This is a pretty comprehensive list of Disney references in the Simpsons (though they misspelll “Diz-Nee” at the top of the page).
My favorite swipe at Walt from the Simpsons came in the short film “The Roger Meyers Story” which profiles the Walt-esque creator of Itchy and Scratchy. The narrator explains:
Roger Meyers senior, the gentle genius behind Itchy and Scratchy, loved and cared about almost all the peoples of the world. And he, in turn,
was beloved by the world, except in 1938 when he was criticized for his
controversial cartoon, “Nazi Supermen Are Our Superiors”.
While the “Nazi Supermen Are Our Superiors” line is funny, what I find hilarious is the fact that he “loved and cared about almost all the peoples of the world.”