For the first time in who knows how long, the infamous couch gag for "The Simpsons" annual "Treehouse of Horror" episode — this year's, airing Sunday night, is XXIV (or 24 in modern numerals) — was done by someone way outside of the usual Matt Groening team.

Apparent "Simpsons" superfan and Hollywood horror director Guillermo del Toro was picked for the job, and today his spooky handiwork is in. Not surprisingly, the sequence is chock full of movie references, but would you have guessed that most of 'em would be his own? 

While del Toro did pay serious homage to some of the the genre's greats like Alfred Hitchcock with "The Birds" and Stephen King with "The Shining" and H.P. Lovecraft's hideous monsters, he also made sure to include plenty of mini-tributes to his own collection of works, like "Hellboy," "Blade II," "Mimic," "Cronos" and "Pan's Labyrinth."

For the latter, he featured Burns as the Pale Man who feasts on fairy Smithers just after he helps clean those weird hand-eyes of his. Pretty funny.

"I really wanted to land the connections between the [show’s] set pieces and the titles and some of the most iconic horror movies, and intersperse them with some of my stuff in there for pure joy," del Toro explained to Entertainment Weekly.

Apparently, he had such a ball with this short that he's now interested in doing a whole "Treehouse" episode down the road, provided he gets to get freaky with it. "It would be great to make a Treehouse of Horror that is really scary — that actually makes you shiver," he said. Is the animated primetime TV world ready for that?

Also, which movie references did you spot in the couch gag?

Also Check Out: Ranked: The Films of Guillermo Del Toro from Worst to Best