Another 50 Interesting Facts About The Simpsons
We recently shared a piece detailing 50 interesting facts about The Simpsons that not even the most hardcore fan may know. Turns out there’s a lot of poindexters out there who knew a lot of them. Well we thought we’d challenge your feeble brains once more with another 50 facts:
1. Bart’s hair has nine points.
2. Actor Sheldon Leonard was the show runners’ first choice to voice Fat Tony. The part eventually went to Joe Mantegna, for which we are forever grateful.
3. The name ‘Bart’ was chosen since it is an anagram of ‘brat’.
4. The cast of The Simpsons staff sent flowers to South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker after airing their anti-Family Guy episode.
5. Dustin Hoffman was credited as Sam Etic (get it?) for his role as Mr Bergstrom in Lisa’s Substitute.
6. Time Magazine also named The Simpsons as ‘The Best TV Show Of The 20th Century’.
7. Anne Hathaway won a Primetime Emmy for outstanding voice performance for her portrayal of Princess Penelope in Once Upon a Time in Springfield.
8. The pilot episode Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire was the only full-length episode to air during the 80s, airing on December 17th, 1989. The follow episode, Bart the Genius, didn’t air until January 14th, 1990.
9. The word “D’oh” has never appeared in a script of The Simpsons. It’s always referred to as “annoyed grunt.”
10. Ringo Starr was the first Beatle to be a guest star on the show.
11. The character Karl was originally designed to look like Harvey Fierstein, however Fierstein refused, saying it wasn’t a good representation of the homosexual community.
12. For the episode Dead Putting Society, the animators visited a local mini golf centre to try and get a realistic grasp on the putting swing.
13. Besides the pilot (which sort of doesn’t count), The Telltale Head was the first episode to use a title card at the beginning.
14. Principal Skinner’s prisoner number in Vietnam, 24601, is also the same as Sideshow Bob’s prison number, as well as Jean Valjean from Les Misérables.
15. Maggie originally scanned through the register as $847.63, which was the average price of raising a baby for one month in the U.S in 1989.
16. After the show went HD, she now merely doubles the price from $243.26 to $486.52.
17. Catherine O’Hara (the mum from Home Alone) recorded dialogue for Moe’s assistant Colette in Flaming Moe’s, however the writers felt her voice didn’t suit the character and opted not to use it.
18. Due to being a ratings flop, the Arabic version of show, Al Shamsoons, was cancelled after only 34 episodes in 2005.
19. Bumblebee Man’s real name is Pedro.
20. The episode Kamp Krusty was set to be the basis for a Simpsons movie before being turned into just a regular episode. Oh what could have been.
21. Johnny Carson recorded his dialogue for Krusty Gets Kancelled the night after the 44th Primetime Emmy Awards.
22. The writers had a back-up line for Buzz Aldrin’s “second comes right after first” line in Deep Space Homer, in case he was offended by it. The back-up was “first to take a soil sample”, however Aldrin didn’t mind the original and therefore they went with it.
23. Itchy & Scratchy Land was a direct response to FOX, who at the time had tried to stop any more Itchy & Scratchy cartoons being included on the show.
24. Milhouse’s middle name is Mussolini.
25. Bleeding Gums Murphy was the first recurring character to be killed off on the show. This happened in the episode ‘Round Springfield.
26. Whilst Who Shot Mr. Burns? was in production, David Silverman was the only animator who knew that Maggie was the culprit.
27. The Who Shot Mr Burns? competition was one of the first to tie in elements of both TV and the internet, with FOX creating the website http://www.springfield.com, which was dedicated to the mystery.
28. Radioactive Man was the first Simpsons episode to be digitally coloured.
29. There is a statue portraying show writer John Swartzwelder outside the courtroom in the episode Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily.
30. Due to its touching nature, it was ordered that no promos air over the top of the closing credits of Mother Simpson.
31. Empire Magazine has named King Size Homer as the best episode of all time.
32. There aren’t actually 22 stories in 22 Short Films About Springfield, several stories had to be cut due to time constraints.
33. One of the dropped stories featured around Lionel Hutz. Damn.
34. No Doubt make a background cameo in Homerpalooza. Gwen Stefani’s brother Eric was an animator at the time, so he added them in.
35. Richard Nixon was the president who was originally going to move in across the road from The Simpsons at the end of Two Bad Neighbors, however it was changed to Gerald Ford after Nixon passed away not long before production started.
36. This isn’t much of a fact, but I still appreciate it. A video of Matt Groening having a conversation with a Homer Simpson hologram from the 2014 Comic Con:
37. Apparently due to the September 11 attacks, the episode The City Of New York vs Homer Simpson didn’t air on terrestrial TV in the UK until several years after it originally aired in the U.S.
38. Lots of Bob Newhart’s dialogue from Bart The Fink had to be cut because he spoke too slow.
39. The fathers of Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney only ever appear in the episode The Homer They Fall.
40. Hank Azaria based his performance of Frank Grimes on William H. Macy.
41. Rodney Dangerfield made some changes to the script of Burns Baby Burns during recording. Show runner Josh Weinstein kept the script and pen, and considers them as some of his most prized Simpsons possessions.
42. Once production wraps up on Season 31, there will have been 684 episodes in total, meaning it would take more than 10 days to watch every episode in succession.
43. The Simpsons Shorts were edited out of The Tracey Ullman Show in the UK, as there were feelings they wouldn’t translate to British audiences.
44. The cast members currently receive $315,000 US per episode, almost $7 million per season.
45. The episode Take My Life, Please was the first to be broadcast in high definition.
46. In third grade, show runner Al Jean actually received a valentine reading “I Choo Choo Choose You.”
47. The animators jokingly referred to the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon Steamboat Itchy as ‘Steamboat Lawsuit’, due to its similarity to the Mickey Mouse film Steamboat Willie.
48. Matt Groening is left-handed.
49. Dan Castellaneta makes a cameo in Space Jam.
50. The first script to be completed was for the episode Homer’s Odyssey.
Hope you learned a thing or two, or perhaps you’re also one of those poindexters who knows everything there is to know about this incredible show. I don’t begrudge you for it, you truly are the king of kings.
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