You Only Move Twice - Production

Production

The original concept for the episode came from a story idea by Greg Daniels and the writing staff came up with three major concepts. The first involves the Simpson family moving out of Springfield, which the writers initially hoped would fool the audience into thinking it was a permanent move. As a result, they tried to work in as many characters as they could during the first act of the episode to make it seem that the family really was leaving. The second involved Homer getting a new job for an employee-friendly, silicon valley type, modern boss who would stand in contrast with Mr. Burns, an authoritarian, 19th century style boss. The third was that Homer's new boss, despite being friendly and personable, would be a supervillain in the mold of Ernst Stavro Blofeld. This element was meant to be in the background and Homer would be oblivious to it.

The writers sought to give every family member their own story. The writing staff debated the story about Marge's descent into alcoholism because they found it depressing. There was originally another involving Grampa, wherein he is left behind in Springfield and receives recorded greeting phone calls. The plot went on for four sequences, all of which were cut from the episode for time but later included in the DVD release. Cypress Creek was called "Emerald Caverns" during much of production, but the name was changed because the writers felt that "Cypress Creek" had more of a "Silicon Valley" feel.

The show's writers did not worry too much about perfecting Scorpio's lines because they knew Brooks would rewrite or ad lib new ones. Entire parts of Scorpio's dialogue, such as his hammock speech, are Brooks's lines and not the writers'. Dan Castellaneta described how, after he prepared something for Homer to say in response to Brooks's new Scorpio lines, Brooks would deliver totally different lines in the next take. Josh Weinstein said Homer's reactions are exactly like someone talking to Albert Brooks. In all, his recordings amounted to over two hours in length. Brooks voiced the character Russ Cargill in The Simpsons Movie and for "about a week", he was to reprise the role of Scorpio, but the staff felt that creating a new character was a better idea.

The animators needed to design completely new sets for the episode. Christian Roman, John Reiss, and Mike Anderson storyboarded the episode. In the original animatic, Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II were not present, so the animators went back and added them, even though they are not a part of the story. It is a common misconception that Scorpio's design was modeled after Richard Branson, which it was not. The final design, which underwent an overhaul, was hailed by the writers as "the perfect madman". All of the students in Bart's remedial class were initially given hair modeled on Ralph Wiggum's, but the staff felt that the children looked "kinda troubled", so their designs were altered.

The man whom Homer tackles, James Bont, was initially supposed to just be James Bond, but Fox's lawyers precluded them from using that name. The writers went with "Bont" because they felt it was the most similar name that they could legally use.