When watching Hard Eight and first saw the "pants on fire" thing, I thought to myself: we are in the hands of a fun filmmaker here, I'm gonna enjoy this.
Fuck, why not throw that in there? It gets a laugh. If it was stupid, I would say it isn't supported, but it just works. As I said before in the Kill Bill thread, it's shit like this, and the Pussy Wagon keychain, that makes guys like PTA & QT so fucking great. They got a sense of humor about their work.