Numerous schemes have been proposed to incorporate a bulk forcing term into the lattice Boltzmann equation. In this paper we present a simple and straightforward comparative analysis of five popular schemes [Shan and Chen, Phys. Rev. E 47, 1815 (1993); Phys Rev Lett. 81, 1618 (1998); He et al., Phys. Rev. E 57, R13 (1998); Guo et al., Phys. Rev. E 65, 046308 (2002); Kupershtokh et al., Comput. Math. Appl. 58, 965 (2009)] in which their differences and similarities are identified. From the analysis we classify the schemes into two groups; the behaviors of the schemes in each group are proven to be identical up to second order. Numerical test simulating the two-dimensional unsteady Taylor-Green vortex flow problem demonstrate that all five schemes are of comparable accuracy for single-phase flow. However, for two-phase flow the situation is different, which is demonstrated by incorporating these schemes into different Shan-Chen-type multiphase models. The forcing scheme in the original Shan-Chen (SC) multiphase model turns out to be inaccurate in terms of the resulting surface tension for different density ratios and relaxation times. In the numerical tests, a typical equation of state and interparticle interactions including next-nearest neighbors were incorporated into the SC model. Our results confirm that the surface-tension values obtained from the original SC lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) simulation depend on the value of the relaxation time τ. For τ<0.7Δt, the surface tension agree well with the analytical solutions. However, when τ>0.7Δt, the surface tension turns out to be systematically larger than the analytical one, exceeding it by more than a factor of 2 for τ=2Δt. In contrast, with the application of the scheme proposed by He et al., the SC LBM produces very accurate surface tensions independent of the value of τ. We also found that the densities of the coexisting liquid and gas can be adjusted to match those at thermodynamic equilibrium if the particle interaction term includes next-nearest-neighbor contributions. The obtained results will be useful for further studies of two-phase flow with high density ratios using the SC LBM approach.