Pretty much every sitcom on the air today does a Halloween episode, complete with characters decked out in ridiculously elaborate costumes. It's a tradition that owes a lot to ABC's classic sitcom Roseanne — though during the show's first season back in 1988, the network balked at the Conner family's celebration of all things kooky, spooky, and ooky.

"For a while, they refused to let us have a Halloween episode, because they said the Bible Belt doesn't like Halloween, that they think it's satanic, so they didn't want it on ABC," Roseanne Barr tells Yahoo TV. "And we're like, 'Are you crazy? People trick-or-treat, you know. It's a big holiday. They were very kind of fundamentalist about it, but you know, that was the first dragon we slayed on the Roseanne show."

View photos Roseanne (Roseanne Barr) and Becky (Lecy Goranson) in 'Roseanne' More

The first Halloween episode, "BOO!, debuted 25 years ago. "I always liked playing a witch," explains Barr. "And my birthday is right after Halloween, on November 3, so I always would carry over Halloween to my birthday. My birthday cake always had a witch on it, just because it was leftover sh-- from Halloween, but I liked it."

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And her love of the holiday carried over to the Conners, who went all-out with decorations, elaborate costumes, trick-or-treat goodies, and, most memorably, annual competitions to see who could play the best tricks or scare each other the most. "John Goodman made it up. John said the reason the Conners were poor is because they spent all their money on Halloween," Barr says with a laugh.

"BOO!" set the standard for future Roseanne Halloween installments, with the Conners using everything from their kitchen table to their washing machine to turn their Lanford home into a haunted house for trick-or-treaters. And it featured the first of Dan and Roseanne's annual battles of holiday trickery, from Roseanne's "Fair Maiden of Fright" gag involving Dan's potential business client to Dan, "The Master," using a hockey mask and chainsaw to surprise Roseanne in the garage. "Darlene dropping dead. That wasn't in there [originally]," says director John Pasquin. "That was something that we came up with in rehearsal, and she just, like a shot, dropped over. And the reveal of Laurie Metcalf in the tray underneath the kitchen table was great… The whole cast just invested so much into the episode."

View photos Jackie (Laurie Metcalfe) and Roseanne (Roseanne Barr) in 'Roseanne' More