The Cosby Show

When Rudy and her friends make a recording of spooky noises, then play it back while trying to scare Cliff, the noises on the tape go on much longer than when the kids recorded it. Did they use a tape with a recording loop?

Just as Cliff is coming home with the new drill and his Halloween favors, he comes through the back door to greet the kids and show them the "scary" things he bought. He comes in, slams the door, and it sounds like it shuts, but if you look closely, it doesn't shut. It bounces and reopens.

When Cliff and Clair have their big argument, Clair suggests that they sit down and write a list about what things the other person did or said to upset the other one. Yet in Clair's Sister, when her sister Sara read from a marriage advice book and mentioned that very method of problem solving, Clair and her mother, Carrie, laughed their heads off and called the author an idiot, saying that would never work. Why would she use a device she considers stupid?

When introducing his father Cliff says "this is my younger brother Russell Huxtable". In real life Bill Cosby actually has a younger brother named Russell.

If you notice, the home of Mrs. Hickson is the same home used for Col. Taylor in various episodes of A Different World.

When Clair talks about missing her children who've left home, Theo says he's going to keep on living at home, though Cliff says he wants to miss Theo. At te start of the next season, Theo "mistakenly" fails to mail his dorm fee check to NYU.

During the third flashback with Cillf and Clair on the sofa with the fruit, the music is slightly different from the music in the original episode.

Theo comments that he's old enough to go into the service and that Cliff has been waiting for a monumental screw-up to give him a reason to make Theo enlist. A year later during the season five episode "Lost Weekend", Cliff would try enlisting Theo in the service.

Kim says that she does not have any sisters. But in a later episode Rudy says that Kim went to see a horror movie with her older sister.

When Lionel comes in, we don't see him hanging any jacket, but when he goes out, he grabs one and puts it on. If it was Theo's he did not ask permission, and it would be too big, so this is a goof.

There are two jackets hanging (one pink on top of one blue). When we see Vanessa and her friend, Janet, fighting
Theo to get through the door and the pink jacket obviously falls down. When Dr. Huxtable comes in, the jacket is seen hung up again, but when he leaves, it is on the floor again.

In the opening scene, Vanessa pours a full glass of milk. In a shot a few seconds later, she is pouring the same glass about 1/4 full.

Geoffrey Owens was originally reluctant to impersonate Bill Cosby during the final scene of this episode. According to interviews, Geoffrey had to work on that scene for several days.

When Rudy asks Cliff to help her get the encyclopedia off the shelf, Cliff asks her if she's going to hide a note from her teacher in it. She did hide a note in another book during "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

Goof: Cliff and Clair are talking in the living room while Cliff is making a sandwich. As Clair asks Cliff if he would trust her with a sexy man, Cliff starts putting potato chips on his sandwich from a bowl. As he takes the chips out of the bowl, the level of chips goes down. When Cliff starts to ask Clair if she would trust him with a nineteen year old woman, the bowl is miraculously at the level it was at the beginning of the scene. But as Cliff finishes talking, the bowl is back to it previous level.

When Vanessa was showing Cliff her new dress, she was wearing a bangle on her right arm. That was the same bangle that Cliff gives to Clair in a later episode when Elvin, Martin and Cliff make a bet to see who is the most romantic.

When Cliff wakes up Denise, she says "Go away Sam," Cliff gets mad and Denise explains that Sam is her roommate Samantha...but, this season was the same season of the first season of A Different World, when Denise's roomates were Maggie and Jaleesa. Either the writers weren't thinking when they wrote this set-up or Denise was lying about who Sam was.

Lisa Bonet was pregnant in real life (with Zoe Kravits, her daughter with Lenny Kravitz), but the producers chose to hide her pregnancy rather than having it written into Denise's storyline.

Whatever happened to the promise Denise made to Clair in the Different World episode Clair's Last Stand, where she said she was going to get a summer job? When Clair asked her about it, Denise gave the lame excuse about being on vacation. Shouldn't Clair have been nagging Denise about getting a job for the last three months instead of just now?

Since she's quit school, it's assumed that Denise's new job is full time (40 hours). But it only pays $25 per week, which comes out to about 63 cents an hour. I'm not sure what the minimum wage was in 1988, but it had to have been more than that.