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These devastating cliffhangers were eventually resolved - one way or another.
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00:00The Simpsons has outlived presidents, monarchs, religious leaders, and even entire countries,
00:06making us mostly laugh the entire time. And while the show is most famous for the big jokes and
00:11in-your-face humour that it throws at viewers at a rapid pace, there are also subtler moments in
00:17The Simpsons that are far more important than they first appear. So with that in mind, I'm
00:21Josh from WhatCulture.com and this is The Simpsons, moments more important than you realised.
00:26Homer becomes safety inspector. In the season 1 episode, Homer's Odyssey, Homer loses his job at
00:33the Springfield power plant after causing an accident at work. After his dismissal,
00:38Homer falls into a deep depression and even contemplates suicide. However, after seeing
00:43his family nearly get run over, he finds a new purpose in life and becomes an advocate for safety
00:48in the town. This results in Homer being rehired by Mr. Burns as the power plant safety inspector.
00:54And at the time, who would have thought that Homer would still be working in that same job
00:59over three decades later? Homer's job title has come up a few times across the show's history
01:05and has played its part in the plots of some episodes. It has also become a key part of his
01:10character and it all stems from one episode in the show's very first season.
01:15And considering that pretty much everything resets in Springfield after an episode ends,
01:19it's remarkable that Homer's profession has remained consistent over the years.
01:24Tom Landry's hat. In the classic season 8 episode, You Only Move Twice, Homer gets a new job in the
01:30town of Cypress Creek. His new boss is none other than Hank Scorpio, business tycoon and the world's
01:37greatest supervillain. Despite his dastardly intentions, Scorpio inspires a new level of confidence
01:43in Homer. And this, in turn, inspires him to make an extravagant purchase. In doing so,
01:50he buys himself a hat that is signed and was worn once by legendary NFL player and coach Tom Landry.
01:57He then wears the hat while working, instructing his colleagues as if he were Landry coaching a team.
02:04It's a funny gag in the episode and a neat easter egg for American football fans,
02:08but who would have guessed that this hat would become a recurring figure in the show?
02:13The hat itself turns up in season 9's Bart Starr, where Homer becomes the coach of his son's
02:19Little League team. It appears again in numerous sports-themed episodes, including when Marge wears
02:25it to make Homer's fantasy football picks for him. Used as a motif by the writers when they want to
02:30show
02:30a character taking sports seriously, the Tom Landry hat has far surpassed its predicated lifespan.
02:37Sideshow Bob's Family
02:38Sideshow Bob is, of course, one of the Simpsons' greatest recurring characters.
02:43Originally beginning life as Krusty the Clown's long-suffering sidekick,
02:47Bob takes on a dark edge when he is revealed to have framed the Harlequin for armed robbery.
02:53Over the years, Bob has become one of the show's most reliable villains,
02:56as he goes to more and more extreme lengths to get revenge on the person who sent him to prison
03:01in the first place, that of course being Bartholomew J. Simpson.
03:05The character got a nice little bit of backstory in season 8 when we were introduced to his brother
03:10Cecil as well, voiced by David Hyde Pierce. And this is very important because the casting
03:16is a very meta nod to another classic comedy show. That's because Pierce plays Niles Crane
03:23in Frasier, the brother of the title character. And who plays Frasier Crane? Well, it's none other
03:29than Sideshow Bob's own voice actor, Kelsey Grammer. Not only is this a very clever,
03:34very subtle joke, but it also acts as foreshadowing for another member of Bob's family to come.
03:40See, in season 19's Funeral for a Friend, we meet Bob and Cecil's father, as voiced by the late
03:47John Mahoney. And who is John Mahoney? Well, of course, he's the actor who plays Frasier and
03:53Niles' father in Frasier, which is just, yeah, it's brilliant. Jam's Head takes over the quickie
03:58mart. In the episode Homer the Heretic, Apu leaves his young nephew Jam's Head in charge of the quickie
04:04mart while he's away. After proclaiming that he's been waiting for this day to finally come,
04:09the young boy then pulls out a shotgun and aims it at some shoplifters.
04:14Now, the youngster must have gotten a taste for business that day, as 24 years later,
04:19in now grown-up Jam's Head once again takes over the store. In the season 27 episode Much Apu About
04:26Something, Jam's Head, or Jay for short, acquires his father Sanjay's shares in the business,
04:31and Jay transforms it into an all-natural health store and ousts his uncle as its head.
04:37For a modern episode of the show to go this far back in time to bring a character back is
04:41kind of
04:42admirable, and it was a great decision to give long-term viewers a neat little payoff to this
04:46character, rewarding them for their loyalty over so many years. In doing so though, we've kind of
04:52all got to just agree to not think about how Jay has grown up, but Apu has stayed the same
04:58age.
04:59Yeah, Simpsons logic isn't real logic after all. Don't stick your arm out the window.
05:04As the grouchy owner of Springfield's military antique store, Herman Herman, yes that is his real
05:10name, is one of the Simpsons' most recognizable figures, owing to the fact that he only has one
05:16arm. When Bart first meets him in season 1, he asks the rather impertinent question of how Herman
05:22lost his arm. The store owner replies, implying that it was ripped off by a truck when he stuck it
05:28out
05:28the window of a bus. This suitably freaks Bart out, but he probably shouldn't have been too surprised
05:34by this tale, as he'd actually heard it before. In the aforementioned Homer's Odyssey, Bart goes on a
05:40field trip with his class to the power plant, and before the children leave on the school bus,
05:45Mrs. Krabapple warns them about sticking their appendages out of the window because of a young
05:49man who had his arm torn off by a truck. Now, who does that sound like? It's clear that the
05:56writers were foreshadowing Herman's appearance with this line, he was meant to play a much bigger
06:00role in the series than he actually did. Nevertheless, it's still a neat little tidbit.
06:05Homer's Secret Genius
06:06The writing team on The Simpsons is full of maths nerds. There's even been a book written about all
06:13the different mathematical references in the show, and one such example is in the season 10 episode
06:19The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace, in which Homer becomes obsessed with inventing something to rival
06:25Thomas Edison. In one scene, we see him writing equations on a chalkboard, and this might just
06:30seem like a random collection of numbers to the untrained eye, but to the mathematical geniuses
06:35out there, or those of us who looked it up on Google, this is very close to one of science's
06:40greatest recent breakthroughs. That's because Homer has actually written an equation to solve the
06:46mass of the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle important in the world of particle physics.
06:52In 2012, the bosom was finally discovered after years of searching, and yet Homer wrote his
06:57equation in 1998. Now this suggests that The Simpsons Patriarch is actually a genius, something
07:04that is proven two seasons later when it's discovered that Homer's genius IQ is being
07:10inhibited by a crayon lodged in his brain. Was this a clever bit of foreshadowing, or was
07:16it just writer David S. Cohen messing about? You decide. Chunkylover53. Homer isn't always the
07:23world's greatest father. In fact, he's rarely ever even a decent father, let alone the best on the
07:29planet. And he realizes this in season 14's The Dad Who Knew Too Little, and hires a private
07:36investigator to learn more about Lisa's life. When he's talking to the PI, Homer gives out his email
07:42address, which is chunkylover53 at aol.com. An extended joke is made at the address's expense,
07:49but in the real world, it's actually no laughing matter. See, writer Matt Selman had actually
07:54registered the chunkylover53 handle before the episode aired. He wanted to see if anyone would
08:00actually email it, and this was definitely before the peak of the internet when we know they definitely,
08:05definitely would. And naturally, even at the time, people did. Once the episode aired, Selman checked
08:12the inbox and found that it was full. Selman then started to reply to the emails with witty responses,
08:18but this got understandably quite tiring after a while and he started to use a stock response instead.
08:24However, what began as a nice little bit of fan service almost got Selman in big trouble when an
08:28account with the name chunkylover53 used a fake link to an online exclusive episode of the show,
08:35or so people thought, to actually install malware on people's computers. Patty's sexuality.
08:42Though Smithers finally came out in season 27, Marge's sister Patty beat him by a full decade
08:47when she came out in the episode There's Something About Marrying. In this episode she comes to Homer
08:52for help as he's the only person in town who will perform same-sex weddings. The episode also deals
08:58with Marge's troubling response to her sister's revelation and her eventual acceptance of who she is.
09:04Although she probably should have figured it out as there were plenty of signs before this.
09:10See, in Treehouse of Horror 3, Patty says there goes the last lingering thread of my heterosexuality
09:15upon seeing Homer naked. The biggest canon clue to Patty's sexual preferences though came in the episode
09:22Jaws Wired Shut, where she and Smithers could be heard participating in a pride parade from inside
09:28the closet. What was just a throwaway gag to begin with hinted not only at Patty's future revelation then,
09:35but also at Marge's future obliviousness. As in Jaws Wired Shut, she also says that it would be great if
09:41the
09:41man and woman in the closet got together. Oh Marge, B-Sharp's royalties. Have you ever wondered how the
09:49Simpsons family can even afford the lifestyle they have? Three kids, two pets, two cars, a large house,
09:56paying for grandpa to live in the retirement home, and we know how expensive that is from The Sopranos,
10:02all their trips out abroad and all their many vacations, all on a single income. How the hell do
10:09they do it? Well, the simple answer is Homer still gets royalties from his time in the B-Sharps. As
10:15revealed in the season 5 opener, Homer's Barbershop Quartet, Homer used to be part of a very successful
10:21musical group alongside Principal Skinner, Apu, and Barney. Chief Wiggum was also there for a little
10:26bit, but don't mention that, he's still a bit bitter. The B-Sharps, as they were known, were a total
10:32sensation of their time. They topped the charts, performed at national events, and even won a Grammy.
10:37They may have disbanded after just a month or so on top, but presumably their songs are still being
10:43played somewhere. Thus, Homer must receive some royalty checks. Now it might not be a lot of money,
10:49but it would certainly be enough to support his family and afford them the comfortable life that
10:54they enjoy. Macca's influence on Lisa
10:57Sir Paul McCartney is one of the most influential musicians of all time. As a member of the Beatles,
11:03he helped shape modern music as we know it, and influenced generations of fellow singers and
11:08players to come. He, along with his first wife Linda, also revolutionized vegetarianism with their
11:14range of meat-free products. Oh, and he also single-handedly changed The Simpsons forever.
11:20See, Paul and Linda made a guest appearance in the episode Lisa the Vegetarian, where they helped
11:25convince the Simpson child to stick to her anti-eat-meating stance. And after this episode,
11:31Lisa never willingly eats meat again, and that's all down to the former Wings frontman. As one of
11:37the conditions for coming on the show, McCartney requested that Lisa must not revert back to being
11:42a meat-eater for the rest of the series. And so, the writers obliged, and Lisa's character was changed
11:49forever. Now, the idea of Lisa Simpson eating meat seems laughable these days, as her vegetarianism is
11:55so deeply ingrained in her character. However, it took the writers seven years to get there,
12:00and even then, they required a push from one of the most famous men on the planet.
12:05Homer owns the Denver Broncos. Homer is able to fund his family's eccentric lifestyle
12:10through royalty checks from his days in the B Sharps. It is a fanciful theory for sure,
12:15but if that crazy idea doesn't suit you, then how about this one involving an NFL franchise?
12:19In the much-praised Season 8 episode, You Only Move Twice, Homer receives a gift from his former
12:24boss, the megalomaniacal supervillain Hank Scorpio. After Homer inadvertently assisted
12:29Scorpio in his quest for world domination, the mega-rich nutjob decided to splash some cash and buy
12:34his former employee, the Denver Broncos. This comes after a conversation where Homer revealed to
12:39Scorpio that his dream was to one day own the Dallas Cowboys. Well, you've got to start somewhere,
12:44I suppose. Many Simpsons fans online then have suggested that this might be yet another source
12:48of income for the family. Owning a football team would rake in some serious coin, and the Broncos
12:53have only gotten better since You Only Move Twice was released, or at least so I'm told.
12:57So yeah, it kinda turns out Hank was a nice guy after all. Well, if you discount all of the
13:01people
13:01that he murdered in cold blood, but uh, who's counting? The Olmec head.
13:05In Season 2's Blood Feud, Bart saves Mr. Burns' life when it's discovered that the two share the same
13:10rare blood type. To thank the boy and his family for keeping him alive, Burns sends them the generous
13:15gift of a thank you card. There wasn't even a check inside. This escalates then to the point
13:20where the billionaire's about to fire Homer when he realizes the error of his ways. To make up for
13:25a rubbish first present, he sends the Simpsons family a very unique offering. In fact, he bestows
13:30upon them a colossal Olmec head, a large carving of a human head in the style of the Olmec people
13:35of ancient Mesoamerica. Whilst the family are initially baffled by the head, they do eventually
13:40accept it when Bart decides he likes it. Although, to be fair, he was happy with the crowbar used to
13:45open
13:45the crate in the first place. While you might have thought this was just a one and done affair,
13:48the head has appeared in the background of dozens of episodes over the show, most often in the family
13:53basement. And seeing it in newer episodes is a nice reminder of the show's humble beginnings,
13:57even if the head itself doesn't actually do anything.
14:00Mary Spookler
14:01This episode of The Simpsons is kinda all over the place. Thankfully, it's called Apocalypse Cow,
14:06which is a name so great that it kinda makes up for all of its other shortcomings. In said episode,
14:10Bart ends up raising a baby cow, going mad in a field, then rescuing it from slaughter.
14:15He does this with the help of Mary Spookler, the most intelligent offspring of Cletus and Brandine.
14:19Although, that's damning with faint praise of the highest order.
14:22There's a plot where Mary and Bart almost get married as well, but the episode remains mostly
14:27about the cow. This all changes though when Mary comes back into Bart's life five seasons later.
14:32In Moonshine River, another great title, Bart tries to convince Mary to be in a relationship with him,
14:37after he figures that he's only got so many chances left at love. But wait, isn't Bart like 10?
14:42If he's got no chance at love, then I guess the rest of us are just screwed.
14:46Well, Mary herself turns up a few more times across the show, most notably in the episode
14:50Love is a Many Splintered Thing. Few could've expected though that Mary would appear in multiple
14:54episodes of the show when she first arrived, but hey, that's young love for you I guess.
14:58Homer becomes sterile.
15:00The second and final appearance of Homer's half-brother Herb, so far anyway,
15:03comes in an episode called Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?
15:06While this story ends with Herb patenting a baby translator in an attempt to rebuild his fortune,
15:11it starts with Homer getting some rather bad news about his swimmers. See, a medical examination
15:16reveals that years of working in close proximity to nuclear radiation has left Homer sterile. Now,
15:21Homer and Marge didn't plan to have any more kids anyway. Well, that was the case for 21 seasons,
15:27until the episode Adventures in Baby Getting came along. In this one, Marge reveals her hidden desire
15:32to have another child, only for Homer's sterility to be re-revealed. And we're not sure why, I mean,
15:37considering she'd known about it for over two decades.
15:40Maud at Lisa's Wedding
15:41When The Simpsons first did an episode set in the future, it was fine. It was cool to see older
15:46versions of our favourite characters and what the world of tomorrow looked like. Now though,
15:50they've done this trope all the flaming time and it gets really, really boring because nobody cares
15:55about Bart's stupid kids, but the episode where we first get a glimpse of things to come is Lisa's
15:59Wedding from Season 6, when the middle Simpson kid comes across a fortune teller in the woods.
16:04Set in the long-distant future of 2010, we follow a grown-up Lisa and her ill-fated
16:09engagement as snobby Englishman Hugh Parkfield. Guests at the doomed wedding include a wheelchair-bound
16:14Christy, a recently defrosted Mr. Burns, Ned and Maud Flanders, and wait a second, Maud Flanders?
16:20The same Maud Flanders that would be killed off an episode first broadcast in the year 2000? How
16:25the hell can this be? Well, Maud's appearance in this episode proves that the Fortune Terra is
16:29talking a load of BS and has no idea what she's on about. But of course,
16:34we'd only know that once Maud actually did bite the dust.
16:36Marge's Gambling Problem
16:38Every so often in The Simpsons, something will happen to a character that permanently
16:42affects their personality. This happens to Marge in Springfield, or How I Learn to Stop Worrying
16:46and Love Legalized Gambling. Aside from having one of the longest episode names in the history of the
16:51show, it also shows Marge developing a gambling habit by spending too much time playing the slots.
16:56The ending of this episode is actually quite dark as well, as Marge's issues don't get resolved,
17:00and she just has to live with them, a startlingly realistic approach to portraying addiction.
17:05Despite the bleakness of this ending though, many fans just assumed that we would never hear about
17:09Marge's problems ever again, but oh boy do we. Her issues with gambling come up time and time again,
17:15more often than not for comic effect. There's a joke about throwing vodka in Maggie's face after a
17:19game of Candyland that would be funny if it weren't so alarming, and Marge even goes full Danny Ocean
17:24and joins a team of card counters to help fix the church in Season 26.
17:28Principal Skinner's Prison Number
17:30Now this one is actually kind of really clever. It's a well-known joke that Principal Skinner's
17:34old Vietnam prisoner helmet, as shown in the episode Homer's Barbershop Quartet,
17:38displays the number 24601. And of course, this is the same number that Jean Valjean is branded with
17:43in the musical Les Miserables. And yeah, yeah, we know it was a book first, but honestly,
17:47who has time to read all of that? Whilst this might just seem like the writers nodding to their
17:52favourite stage show, or I guess book, but I don't believe it, the comparisons between Skinner and
17:56Valjean run much deeper than just a number. For instance, after being released from prison,
18:01Valjean must assume a new identity in order to advance in society, and under his new name,
18:06he eventually becomes the respected mayor of a large town. Now think about Seymour Skinner,
18:11real name Armin Tamzerian. He too took on a new name and used it to achieve a position of influence
18:15in the community, and like his literary counterpart, his world also crumbles when his secret is found out.
18:21Clues about Skinner's deception were there all along, and we just never saw them.
18:25Lisa and Nelson. Ralph Wiggum, Hugh Parkfield,
18:28Daniel Radcliffe's Edward Cullen parody, freaking Millhouse. When it comes to guys,
18:33Lisa Simpson is fresh out of luck. And all of this is without mentioning Nelson Muntz,
18:38with whom Lisa had a brief attraction to in the episode, Lisa's Date with Destiny.
18:41Well, as it turns out, this romance was far from brief, as it has cropped up a bunch of different
18:46times over the show's subsequent episodes. In fact, Nelson is often shown displaying favouritism
18:51towards Lisa, leaving her out of his bullish actions, and he even goes to some pretty extreme
18:55lengths, for him anyway, to impress her, including reading some books. The idea of the pair ending up
19:01together actually came full circle in the season 34 episode when Nelson met Lisa, which imagines the
19:06life of the two if they got together in adulthood. And this came a whole 26 years after she and
19:11Nelson
19:11first became an item. This love story has been one of the most enduring and surprising in the show's
19:16entire history. Maybe they'll pay it off fully one day, or maybe Nelson will leave Lisa at the
19:20altar to throw coleslaw at Skinner's house again, I don't know.
19:23Homer in a coma
19:24Now this one is purely speculative, but the theory really does hold some water. In an episode titled
19:30So It's Come to This, a Simpsons clip show, Bart decides to prank his old man by seriously
19:34shaking up a can of beer. However, Bart did such a good job that when Homer opened the can,
19:38it exploded with the force of a neutron bomb. This left Homer in a vegetative state for seven
19:43weeks and caused him to lose 5% of his brain. But did the coma do even more damage to
19:48our beloved
19:48patriarch than we thought? Well a popular fan theory is that Homer never woke up at all in
19:53that every episode after this one takes place in his head. And before you call everyone crazy,
19:58there is some serious evidence to back this up. Not only would this explain why the plots of the
20:02show get more outlandish over the years and why the timelines don't match up, but in the episode
20:06Homer the Heretic, God actually tells Homer that he'll die in six months. And the clip show aired
20:12almost exactly six months after Homer the Heretic. So are we reading too much into it? Probably.
20:17Is it compelling anyway? You bet your ass it is. The first door. Homer's signature expression door
20:23became so popular that it even entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2001. Whilst the phrase did
20:28exist long before the Simpsons came along, door was definitely popularized by Homer's voice actor.
20:34His delivery of the word is iconic, which makes it all the more impressive that he actually came up with
20:38it all on his own. As is now a folklore whilst recording for the Simpsons when it was just a
20:42shot on the Tracy Ullman show, it was one innocent line marked annoyed grunt that eventually became the
20:48iconic doll that we know and love today. Little did anyone know at the time that a piece of television
20:53had just been made by this weird improvisation, but the saying and the show are now so synonymous with
20:58each other that you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't immediately associate the sound with
21:02Springfield's most famous resident.
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