Going into it's record-breaking 27th season (just let that sink in for a second), The Simpsons returned to San Diego Comic Con in full force on Saturday.

Among the Ballroom 20 panel was creator Matt Groening, executive producers Al Jean and Matt Selman, supervising director Mike Anderson, long-time director David Silverman and the legendary voice behind Bart Simpson, Nelson Muntz, and Ralph Wiggum, Nancy Cartwright (making her Comic-Con debut!).

Also, as a special guest, director Guillermo del Toro joined the panel, re-screening his Halloween couch gag from a couple years back. When asked what inspired his self-referential title sequence, Del Toro joked, "Many, many lonely nights as a kid." The filmmaker also noted that there's one reference fans still haven't caught, and that's nod to 1977's The Car, starring James Brolin.

From there, the panel segued into a fan Q&A -- and as an added bonus, Groening handed out Simpsons memorabilia to each questioner.

More Futurama/Simpsons crossovers? "Well, I'll have to talk to myself about that," Groening joked. "It's possible, it's possible. Fans of Futurama are still watching the show on Netflix. You know how everything gets rebooted? Futurama will get rebooted someday. We'll see."

Another attendee asked about the recent Family Guy/Simpsons crossover and the process of merging the two shows together. "It was really fun to be able to do this," Groening said. "We love everyone in the FOX family. It was a Family Guy episode. My part in it was just looking at the script and going, 'Yep, sounds good.'"

Added Cartwright, "We gathered together and did a table read of it, and that was the most ridiculously fun aspect of it for me... It was actually really fun meeting and playing with them." Silverman also chimed in, noting the back-and-forth between the two animation teams and making sure the disparate animation styles meshed well together.

Will the notorious one-off character Hank Scorpio return? "I think that's probably the most-asked for character on the show," Jean said, adding that he and the rest of the crew would love to have voice actor Albert Brooks come back to reprise the fan-favorite character.

When asked if there was an actor they wanted on the show that hadn't been on yet, Jean joked, "Guillermo del Toro," to which Del Toro enthusiastically replied, "I want to play Bumblebee Man's brother! Seriously, every time I have lunch with this panel, I pitch that!"

Random fun fact from Groening! When the title theme was first recorded, Groening and Elfman had to record the "zzz" portion of "The Simpsoooons..." title chorus because it sounded to much like "The Simpsoooon..."

Closing out the panel, Groening and co. teased a bit of the upcoming "Treehouse of Horror XXVI" with two clips.

The first was from the anticipated Sideshow Bob segment, which we learned will feature Bob (voiced as always by Kelsey Grammer) accomplishing his one goal in life: to kill Bart Simpson. In the video, we saw Bob bringing a very-dead Bart back to life, Frankenstein-style, only to kill him again, and again... and again. "We're both going to be soar tomorrow!" Bob cackles, before the footage cuts to a gruesome montage of Bart deaths.

The second, much shorter clip was from a segment called "Homerzilla," which portrayed Homer as an old-school black-and-white Godzilla running amok on a cheap, miniaturized city set and swinging model plane models on strings like yo-yos.

The Simpsons returns September 27 on FOX.