American Dad "Golden Turd" subplot

I saw last night that they continued that subplot with Roger’s Golden Turd (first started in Season One, “Homeland Insecurity”). I can’t figure out what movie they are alluding to with this subplot. The whole scene with the workers at the electrical substation is one I know I’ve seen before. Anybody know?

It was very similar to the plot in Lord of the Rings when Smigel’s friend first found the ring and Smigel killed him, back when they were still hobbits.

+1 huge nerd points for me.

I thought it was more or less the maltese falcon, every one that touches it has something bad happen to them, While Sam Spade is investigating the murder of his partner, he finds himself surrounded by a host of strange characters all after one thing - a statue of a falcon reputed to contain priceless jewels. Warning - avoid the Ted Turner colorized version of this movie.

or there was the old simpson episode with the monkey paw, same premise

there are a lot of things that something so great causes so much harm

The first scene wasn’t either of those, though… I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen Maltese Falcon, and the sequence from LOTR was different. It is possible that they are mixing references, using one movie for the first time, and then a different one for the second one. I can definitely see the LOTR similarity in the second scene, think of where Frodo and Galdalf are arguing over the ring…

The whole thing where a vaulable object is discovered by a pair of public works guys, the one kills the other one, and hides him under a tarp in the bed of the truck, and the cop is a friend of theirs rolling up, and the whole conversation that ensues; that is all from a movie I’ve seen, and I can’t place it.

The whole thing with the train was testing destiny compared with physical knowns off the real world. This is paralleled in the movie “Final Destiny” when Sean William Scott’s character is killed. Other train parallels occur in Stephen King’s book “The Waste Lands : The Dark Tower III”.

IIRC there were no trains in any of the LOTR trilogy, however I have not seen the deleted scenes so I could be mistaken.

I dont think that it is directly related to anything, I think they just wanted to create a sub-plot that was like a movie they could continue