- 15 minutes ago
The most hilarious and cromulent Simpsons in-jokes in history.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Whilst The Simpsons' fierce mainstream popularity went a few years ago, there is still no denying
00:06the enormous impact that Matt Groening's legendary animation has had across the world.
00:12The Simpsons has winked at the audience many, many times over the course of its 33 seasons to date,
00:18drawing attention to its own creation and speaking to very specific portions of its viewer base
00:23through brilliantly sly niche humour.
00:26In-jokes work precisely because we as humans love to know something that others don't.
00:32It makes us feel special and smart, and The Simpsons has exploited that with great intelligence and humour.
00:38And so, with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, here with 10 Genius In-Jokes in The Simpsons.
00:45Number 10. Paul and Linda McCartney's Lentil Soup Recipe
00:49The Season 7 episode, Lisa the Vegetarian, is an all-time favourite amongst fans and critics alike,
00:56and contains some memorable guest appearances from Paul and Linda McCartney as themselves.
01:02While talking to Lisa, Paul explains that he's so committed to animal rights that if you play his song
01:08Maybe I'm Amazed backwards, you'll be able to hear the recipe for a really ripping lentil soup.
01:14This alone seems like a nod to the Beatles song Revolution 9, which had alleged hidden messages
01:20when played backwards. But it's also a nod to the general satanic panic of the 1980s,
01:27where Christian groups accused rock bands of hiding subliminal messages in their songs.
01:32Yet the episode does one better, during its closing credits sequence, which are in fact set to Maybe I'm Amazed.
01:38Those few who bother to actually heed Paul's advice and play this modified version of the song backwards
01:44would indeed hear McCartney reciting a recipe for lentil soup.
01:48Even better, Paul can be heard saying,
01:51By the way, I'm alive, in reference to the urban legend that he actually died in 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike.
02:00Number 9. Flander's New Voice Actor
02:03Season 10's Homer to the Max may not be a classic Simpsons episode, but it does contain one of the series' low-key cleverest inside gags.
02:13Early in the episode, Homer makes a crack about animated TV shows, saying,
02:17Networks like animation because they don't have to pay the actors squat.
02:21A moment later, Ned Flanders appears at the window and spouts his single line of dialogue for the entire episode.
02:27Plus, they can replace them and no one can tell the diddly-ifference.
02:30The cherry on top here is that this clearly isn't the work of regular Ned voice actor Harry Shearer.
02:37It's a different voice that is markedly, hilariously different.
02:41Number 8. Animators Cutting Corners
02:44Season 4's The Front sees Bart and Lisa write an episode of the Itchy and Scratchy show
02:49and submit it under Grandpa Simpson's name, resulting in him being hired as a staff writer.
02:55The entire episode is a brilliant, relentless slew of in-jokes about both the animation industry
03:01and The Simpsons itself, and perhaps the standout gag occurs when Bart and Lisa visit Itchy and Scratchy
03:07Studios.
03:08While being toured around, Lisa mentions how expensive it must be to produce cartoons,
03:13to which company head Roger Myers Jr. replies,
03:16Well, we cut corners. Sometimes to save money, our animators will reuse the same backgrounds
03:22over and over and over again. And just at that moment, anyone paying even the faintest attention
03:28will surely notice that the hallway they're walking down is itself recycled, featuring the
03:34same cleaning lady and door on a loop. It may not be subtle, but it is clever, and more importantly,
03:40very funny.
03:41Number 7. The No Soap Radio
03:43Fan favourite Season 4 episode Homer The Heretic features a gag you might have seen dozens of
03:49times and never really understood, but laughed anyway. While Homer is singing Tom Jones' Delilah
03:55in the shower, we linger briefly on a shower radio bearing the label No Soap Radio. While the label
04:01seems to be a reference to the fact that the radio is waterproof, being in the shower and all,
04:05it's actually a reference to the surreal practical joke known as No Soap Radio. The prank involves
04:11telling a joke where the punchline has absolutely no relation to the setup, with the joke teller and
04:18bystanders in on the joke, acting like it's hilarious and ridiculing the recipient for failing to
04:24understand it. Now, at its core, No Soap Radio is an experiment on social norms, and particularly in the
04:31notion of conformity, given the number of targets of the prank who will begin to laugh, just so that
04:37they don't appear stupid. Now, even today, No Soap Radio isn't a widely known gag, but before the internet
04:44in 1992, when this episode aired, you'd have to be a pretty clever cookie to have caught onto it unprompted.
04:51Number 6. Seymour's Cameo
04:54Much as many might not believe it, many Simpsons fans haven't seen Futurama, save for the crossover
05:01episode Simpsorama, which aired during The Simpsons' 26th season. And while the episode as a whole is a
05:07fairly broad cross-pollination of Matt Groening's two most beloved animated shows, there is one killer
05:13gag which left Futurama fans heartbroken and everyone else none the wiser. At one point in the episode,
05:19we see Homer Simpson, Bender, Fry and Leela crossing the street to Panucci's Pizza, a Futurama staple that's
05:26somehow now in Springfield. And for a second, we focus on a small dog briefly waking up and falling
05:32back asleep. Those who don't watch Futurama will be absolutely oblivious, but even the most casual
05:37fan won't ever forget that dog. That dog is Seymour, Fry's pet, who in one of the series' most
05:43heart-wrenching episodes, Jurassic Bark, is shown waiting faithfully for a missing Fry to return,
05:49ultimately dying of old age before finding out that Fry fell into a cryotube. Now this devastating
05:55revelation was admittedly retconned in the Futurama film Bender's big score, but to many fans it remains
06:01the series' emotional high point. Seeing Seymour waking up and just barely missing Fry as he walks
06:08past was then like twisting the knife in fans' aching hearts. As a small bout of solace, this episode is
06:16at least accepted to be non-canon by many. 5. Sneed's Feed and Seed
06:22Season 11's EIEI annoyed Grunt boasts one of the most infamous in-jokes in the show's history,
06:29so much so that it has become an internet meme in recent years. The iconic scene sees Homer pulling
06:35up to a convenience store called Sneed's Feed and Seed, with lettering below it reading,
06:41formerly Chuck's. This seems harmless and forgettable enough until you consider the very lewd
06:46implications of the signage. Given that Sneed, Feed and Seed all rhyme, it can be inferred that
06:53Chuck's version also rhymed, and if we're following the same lettering convention with each subsequent
06:59word starting with F and S, well, you can guess what it might have said. Now this all started as a
07:05rumor, but the episode's writer did eventually confirm it as genuine on Twitter. There's hiding
07:12a filthy joke in plain sight, and then there's burying one so ingeniously deep that even most
07:18adults don't notice it. 4. Pixar's A113 Easter Egg
07:23A113 is one of the most iconic in-jokes in animation history, used primarily by Disney and Pixar
07:31employees to immortalize the classroom where they learned the craft of character animation.
07:37A113 has, as a result, appeared in Easter Egg form in countless Disney Pixar movies, video games
07:43and TV shows, and this includes The Simpsons. One of Pixar's most successful directors, Brad Bird,
07:50got the ball rolling by including A113 as Krusty the Clown's prison number in Krusty Gets Busted,
07:56and it also appeared as mugshot and prison uniform numbers for Sideshow Bob in the episodes Cape
08:02Fear and Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming. Additionally, it was also visible as Bart's mugshot number in the
08:08music video for the 1990 hit song Do the Bartman. Given the numerous Disney Pixar personnel who cut
08:15their teeth working on The Simpsons, including Wreck-It Ralph and Zootopia director Rich Moore,
08:21there's been quite the connection forged between the two properties.
08:25Number 3 Homer's Burnt Tongue Season 20's Father Knows Worst offers a wink-wink
08:31gag that at once is extremely naughty, but is also designed to go sailing over kids' heads,
08:37and also underlining Marge's endearing naivety. While at the carnival, Homer burns his tongue
08:43after accidentally eating a flaming stick and being tricked into drinking lighter fluid by Bart. His tongue
08:49is put in a cast, at which point Dr. Hibbert warns Marge,
08:53I'm afraid his tongue will be in that cast for a few weeks. It may put something of a cramp in your
08:58lovemaking. The obvious implication that Homer won't be giving Marge any oral stimulation for a few
09:03weeks is blissfully ignored by her, who replies, no it won't. If he wants me to do something,
09:09he'll just write it down. Even with the mention of lovemaking, this is a pretty G-rated child-friendly
09:14joke on the surface, but any adult watching will be cracking up at the strange sweetness of Marge's
09:22response. Number 2 A Perfectly Cromulent Word Season 7's Lisa the Iconoclast opens with Lisa's
09:29class watching a film about Springfield's founding father, Jebediah Springfield, who utters the town's
09:35iconic motto, a noble spirit embiggens the smallest man. At this point, we cut to Mrs. Crabapple and Miss
09:42Hoover with the former asking, embiggens? I'd never heard that word before moving to Springfield.
09:47To which Hoover replies, I don't know why, it's a perfectly cromulent word. Later in the episode,
09:53Principal Skinner also says of Homer's town crier audition, he's embiggened that role with his
09:58cromulent performance. The joke here is of course that while embiggens is a word that was created by
10:04the show's writer's room, so too was cromulent, despite being used here as an adjective. And yet,
10:11cromulent seems plausible enough that most viewers probably just assumed that it was in fact a word
10:17and they just didn't know what it meant, as opposed to embiggens, whose meaning is implied
10:22through its context. This is a perfect example of a snake-eating-its-own-tail joke, whilst also
10:28ingeniously toying around with how we use and understand language. Number 1 Brevity is wit
10:35Some of the best jokes have layers of understanding, which allows people to interpret them on
10:40different levels. And that is absolutely the case with this killer gag in Season 3's Mr. Lisa Goes to
10:47Washington. The episode includes the Reader's Digest parody magazine Reading Digest, which holds a
10:54children's essay writing contest that Lisa enters. The welcome sign includes a quotation,
10:59Brevity is wit, which is a clear contraction of Polonius' iconic quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet,
11:05Brevity is the soul of wit. Now, on the surface, this is a clever meta-joke about abbreviation,
11:11but if you were alive in the 1980s and 1990s, then you might remember Reader's Digest as the very
11:17popular magazine known for republishing articles from other magazines but in highly condensed form.
11:24And the Simpsons banner here is, first and foremost, a direct reference to that. Quite literally,
11:30the soul of the Shakespeare quote has been omitted. I mean, jokes don't get much cleverer and more
11:35multifaceted than that. And that concludes our list. If you can think of any that we missed,
11:40then do let us know in the comments below, and while you're there, don't forget to like,
11:44and subscribe, and tap that notification bell. Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there,
11:49and I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been
11:53Ellie with WhatCulture. I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.
Be the first to comment