The Simpsons (animation)/YMMV

• Acceptable Political Targets:
  • In the show's early days, both the US Democrat (as ineffectual and mired by infighting) and Republican parties (as greedy and selfish) were bashed fairly evenly but as time passed, starting sometime around Season 12, the show really amped up its cruelty towards right-wing politics, outright portraying them as Card-Carrying Villains who would burn everything to the ground for the sake of their own power. This is to be expected given that Matt Groening and Al Jean have both confessed that most, though admittedly not all, of the staff is "of liberal bent" combined with Groening's famous hatred for the US Republicans.
  • Aside from Lisa, the show does take a few whacks at left-wing activists, usually painting them as straw characters who are so devoted to their activism that they ignore the human cost of their actions and are easily offended whenever someone, usually Lisa, raises even a single question.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Moe. Is he a socially inept Jerk with a Heart of Gold who just wants to be loved, or a hidden psychopath who can go postal any second? There is evidence for both alternatives.
  • Burns. Is he a Knight Templar whose pursuit of power and money is based on a sincere belief that he would deserve such power and money more than others, or is he a Corrupt Corporate Executive whose relatively kind moments are exclusively insincere?
  • Is Homer really as stupid as he seems? There are times where he's surprisingly intelligent.
  • Unlike the approachable fellow of the TV series who just happens to be the (reluctant at times) subordinate of a Corrupt Corporate Executive, the Smithers of the arcade game version is nearly just as big of a Jerkass as his boss, and a jewel thief to boot, kidnapping a baby just because she turned the diamond he was stealing into her new pacifier. Could be a case of Characterization Marches On, as this game was made fairly early in the show's run.
    • He also has similar Jerkass tendencies in the game Bart vs. The World. Most notably, he had to remind Mr. Burns of his vow to exterminate the Simpson family after the latter got second thoughts about rigging the contest in Bart's favor (less out of moral concerns and more because he felt Bart's shoddy artwork didn't really make the rigging worth it), something that he never did on television. If anything, Smithers in the show frequently rewards the Simpsons for the help they've given him and is quite cordial towards them.
  • Bart:
    • A well-meaning prankster who sometimes goes too far, or a budding sociopath? Newer episodes suggest the latter.
    • It is possible that Bart is going increasingly insane, because throughout the series he was abused by many other characters (Homer, Sideshow Bob, Mr. Burns, his preschool teacher, french winemakers, Lisa and the entire population of Springfield in "The Boys of Bummer") and the hell he was put through for no reason has made him a worse person. Also read Jerkass Woobie, Complete Monster and Moral Event Horizon entries for more details.
    • How dumb is he? While some episodes, like "Duffless", show him to be empirically dumber than a hamster, there are several episodes, such as "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood", where he shows he can be an Instant Expert if properly motivated and he successfully deduced Sideshow Bob's first two schemes. Given that "Brother's Little Helper" diagnosed him with ADD, it might simply be that Bart isn't getting the right kind of support.
  • Lisa:
    • Is she the Only Sane Man or a preachy, self-righteous bitch? Or is she just a kid cursed with more insight and intelligence than most of her community has and has yet to realize that sometimes you can't change a situation no matter how hard you fight it?
    • Is she truly the smartest, or one of the smartest, kids in town, or does she just happen to benefit from being Big Fish in a Tiny Pond due to Springfield's poor education system? Lisa is said to have an IQ of 156 and she's certainly a smart girl and a hard worker, smart enough to join MENSA and organize city-wide projects, but some episodes, such as "Waverly Hills, 9-0-2-1-D'oh" suggest that were she placed in a better school, she would be above average at best. A third theory opines that while she is very intelligent, what she lacks is a gut instinct to leap beyond logic, not being able to quickly think on her feet and adapt to new chaos like Bart can.
  • Is Marge a cheerful Cloudcuckoolander or a secretly depressed Stepford Smiler having to deal with Homer? It's possible that the former is a coping mechanism for the latter.
  • Cracked.com's After Hours opines that Springfield, thanks to many characters surviving what should be fatal wounds and characters like Raphael somehow doing every job in town, is a giant clone study with Shelbyville, which has a bizarro version of all of Springfield's citizens, being the control group.
  • Like Lisa, how intelligent is Martin Prince? He's certainly a very devoted student who loves to work, but how much of his GPA is due to his own brain power, and how much is due to him sucking up to his teachers?
  • In the episode "Lisa's Pony", the owner of the horse stables appears rather polarizing; her stuffiness either gives off the impression that she is only so self carried and punctual to the point of appearing to be cold and distant, or she is a two faced coldhearted pompous hag with a rich facade whose undercurrent of feelings are so controlled that she can claim anything.
• Anvilicious:
  • Most plots/subplots involving Lisa.
  • Post Season 23 episodes are a combination of this and We're Still Relevant, Dammit!.
• Base Breaker: There are several but none as prominent as Marge Simpson. The major point of contention seems to be how justified people think her constant meddling in other's lives and acting as the self-elected Moral Guardian. One camp loves how this shows her as a strong and loving mother, while the other casts her as more of a hypocritical, "Stop Having Fun!" Guys meddler who manipulates the lives of others. The fact that she can easily be read as a Take That towards feminists only furthers the divide.
  • Lisa Simpson. She's either loved for being a smart and sensitive child character, or hated for being a Soapbox Sadie.
  • Bart Simpson, following his Flanderization. One side waves off his actions as those of a child and that he's not really any different from Homer. The other says that he's devolved into a complete sociopath given that, unlike Homer, Bart knows full well and revels in how much of a jerk he can be.
  • Frank Grimes. Either he's looked on fondly as, the writers intended, an ordinary man who was Driven to Suicide by Homer's ineptitude. Or he was an Entitled Bastard who foolishly died after he waged a war on the man who did his best to befriend him.
• Big Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • "The Front" (a season four episode where Bart and Lisa write episodes for "The Itchy and Scratchy Show" while Homer takes a night school class to make up for his lost remedial science credit) ends with a thirty-second "comedy" short called, "The Adventures of Ned Flanders". Word of God admitted that it was just there because the episode ran short, but also that the writers enjoyed it so much that they were tempted to finish every episode with a short, each starring a different minor character. This later became the basis for the episode "22 Short Films About Springfield".
  • And the Flintstones part (where Homer sings the Flintstones theme as he's driving home from work) at the beginning of Marge vs. the Monorail is one of the series' most popular BLAM.
  • In "Deep Space Homer", Homer somehow turns into Richard Nixon during liftoff.
• Black Hole Sue: Lisa could be this in certain episodes. Fortunately it was dialed back considerably since Season 19 and she's allowed to be wrong or naive sometimes now.
• Broken Base: One of the largest (if not the largest) one(s) yet, counting from season 2 with focusing on the people from Springfield outside of the Simpson family, season 4 when they switch from Klasky Csupo (because of the studio's contract with Viacom (mostly Nickelodeon)) to Film Roman, season 8 with Frank Grimes, season 12 with panda rape, season 14 with going away from cells and moving into digital coloring and season 20 with the move to HD.
  • Milhouse x Lisa or Nelson x Lisa. Even the writers seem divided on it. In the future episodes, Lisa's married to, and has a daughter with, Milhouse, but doesn't seem super happy with him and still talks to Nelson.
  • Lisa vs Bart. Fans of one will amplify their sympathetic tendencies to paint them as The Woobie and the negative traits of the other to make them the villain. In the show, it's a fairly equal trade-off as each one takes their turn playing both roles.
  • The first season finale, "Some Enchanted Evening". It's either the best episode of the season or the worst.
• Character Rerailment:
  • Zig-zagged with Homer Simpson. It's not unheard of for him to revert to his pre-Season 11 Bumbling Dad characterization but he'll just as readily be Jerkass Homer. It all depends on what the plot needs.
  • Ned Flanders (the Trope Namer for Flanderization) can sometimes revert to his less flanderized self Depending on the Writer.
  • Much like Homer, the writers zig-zag this with Lisa. Episodes produced after The Simpsons Movie have made attempts to write her as the isolated intellectual that she was during the Golden Age but the Soapbox Sadie/Granola Girl of the Dork Age is still very likely to rear her head.
  • The writers have a long-standing problem in trying to do this with Bart. When the series first started, the mischievous Bratty Half-Pint was a Breakout Character who took the world by storm. But as time passed, Bart was viewed as rather tame compared to his later peers. As a result, attempts to recapture Bart's original persona are either met with boredom compared to the antics of characters like Stewie Griffin or complaints that the writers, in an attempt to recapture Bart's notoriety, have taken him over lines that even Stewie Griffin wouldn't cross.
• Crosses the Line Twice: If we tried to list all the controversies this show sparked, we wouldn't know where to start.
• Designated Hero: Homer Simpson is often this starting sometime in the eighth season though the degree varies wildly based on the episode in question. Earlier, he was more of a well-intentioned bumbling idiot than an outright Jerkass.
• Designated Villain:
  • Homer in "Homer's Enemy". Homer was boorish and unprofessional in the episode's first act but he bore no malice. He was in fact the most welcoming to Frank Grimes. When he found that Frank hated him, Homer went out of his way to make amends and look professional but the episode keeps trying to push Frank's hatred of him as the right point of view.
  • Sometimes when Bart discovers a talent for something or one-ups Lisa, the show treats him like he's the bad guy because Lisa's upset and jealous over it. Depending on the episode, he either gives up his talent ("Jazzy and the Pussycats") to make Lisa happy, or Lisa comes around and the two make amends ("Girly Edition").
• Dork Age: Some consider the Mike Scully-era and Al Jean-era episodes to be this. The former due to Flanderization and dumb plots, the latter for being Anviliciously liberal and trying too hard to be socially and politically relevant (which has caused episodes to age badly).
  • Season 11 due to its attempts to change the status quo, most of which never stuck or were quickly undone.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • The fandom has a tendency to give Sideshow Bob this treatment, playing up his Angst while playing down the fact that his life goal is to murder Bart, a little boy.
  • Snake Jailbird gets this to a lesser extent.
  • Mr. Burns. While some episodes do paint him a lonely old man who wants to be loved, not to mention that he's the source of 99% of all jobs in Springfield, it shouldn't be forgotten that he's also a spiteful Grumpy Old Man who lives off The Power of Hate and once blocked out the sun to maintain his monopoly on power distribution.
  • Bart Simpson. While not a villain, some fans will readily defend anything he does on the fact that he's a ten-year old boy who is just engaging in tomfoolery, turning a blind eye to the fact that he often engages in borderline sociopathic behaviour and most of the hell he receives is Laser-Guided Karma.
• Dude, Not Funny:
  • The panda rape in "Homer vs. Dignity".
  • Frank Grimes' death. The man gets forgotten about at his own funeral, because the man he despised in life (with good reason) fell asleep and said something mildly amusing. Unless you find it hilarious.
  • Bart's Disproportionate Retribution courtesy of the citizens of Springfield (causing him to nearly commit suicide) in "The Boy Of Bummer". This episode was aired around the time bullying-related suicides were on the rise.
    • And after incidents like Phoebe Prince's suicide, it went from this to a borderline Moral Event Horizon on behalf of the writers.
  • Homer's treatment of Flanders in "When Flanders Failed" borders on this until Homer realizes what a dick he's been and sets to righting his wrong.
  • "Love is a Many Strangled Thing" as a whole. Stopping Homer's strangling of Bart would be all well and good, but instead his therapist and Dennis Rodman torture him until he's a whimpering mess, causing Bart to go full sociopath as he takes advantage of Homer no longer being able to punish him. Homer suffers serious nightmares as a result (including picturing himself as Precious and Michael Jackson). The resolution? Finding the now-homeless therapist and taking what little supplies he has and bonding over the man's misery.
  • Bart is a mischievous little brat, hence his name, but sometimes he just goes too far. In "My Sister, My Sitter", Bart pushes Lisa so far that she practically has a nervous breakdown and nearly loses a career in babysitting that is never seen or heard from again; and in The Secret War of Lisa Simpson, he causes millions of dollars in property damage by lining up a load of police megaphones and saying 'Testing!' into them, the resultant shockwave demolishing the town. While this is Played for Laughs, Bart is still sent to military school for it.
  • The Simpsons has also invoked this trope this in Real Life. In "A Streetcar Named Marge", a song was sung about how bad New Orleans was. After complaints, the writers relented and wrote an 'apology' in the form of a chalkboard gag in "Homer the Heretic"'s title sequence, stating 'I will not defame New Orleans'.
    • Similarly, in the episode "Sweets and Sour Marge", Chief Wiggum remarks 'Even the fire doesn't want them' after some Butterfinger bars are thrown on a fire, only for the fire to spit them out. This was intended as satire, but Nestlé, who had been in a partnership with The Simpsons for a good few years, did not take the joke lightly. They pulled out of the partnership, leading yet another public-chalkboard-statement to appear in the episode after the next, "Half-Decent Proposal": 'I will not bite the hand that feeds me Butterfingers.
  • Grampa being shunned by Springfield and attempting suicide in "Million Dollar Abie".
  • Homer strangling Bart in the cases where Bart is unable to fight back. (Half the time, he does.)
  • The second half of "Miracle of Evergreen Terrace", which several reviewers considered too mean-spirited to be funny.
  • Also, the depiction of the military in the Simpson episode "G.I. (annoyed grunt)" would qualify as well. There was even at least one scathing negative review for how the armed forces were essentially treated like dirt, also implied they trick kids into joining, and the fact that they attempted to satirize the Military given what was going on at the time (such as the Abu Grahab incident) made it worse.
  • Lisa's borderline-sociopathic treatment of Bart in "On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister". Even if Bart had been pretty nasty to her at the beginning of the episode, she took it too far.
  • Most of Moe's suicide attempts, though a few tend to Cross the Line Twice.
  • A shot in the season 24 episode "A Tree Grows in Springfield" showing a picture of Kirk and Luanne arguing with Milhouse appears to be cutting his arm with a butter knife, which went unnoticed until it was brought to attention on Simpsons fan forum and hive of cyber-bullies NoHomers in January 2015.
  • The bullying Lisa experiences in "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson", particularly near the end where she freezes and slips during a dangerous final endurance test and the boys start shouting for her to slip, fall, and possibly be killed! While Lisa's no stranger to being bullied, this goes above and beyond the usual heckling and snubbing she experiences at Springfield Elementary. Thankfully, Bart puts a stop to it by cheering Lisa on and she's able to finish without another incident.
• Ear Worm:
  • The theme song.
  • Stretch Dude and Clobber Girl!
  • Hank Scorpio's theme song.
  • The Itchy & Scratchy theme song.
• Ethnic Scrappy: Apu thanks to the 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu that alleged Apu to be a racist, and outdated, caricature of South Indian culture.
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • Sideshow Bob. Originally he was going to be a one-shot villain, but has kept coming back. He has been voted the 66th greatest villain of all time.
  • For one-shot examples, Hank Scorpio and Frank Grimes count.
  • Fat Tony, Lionel Hutz, Disco Stu and Troy McClure. Like Bob, the writers figured each character would make one-shot appearances, but kept bringing them back because 1) they enjoyed them so much, and 2) the voice actors had a blast doing them.
• Family-Unfriendly Aesop: The moral of "Lisa the Drama Queen" was likely meant to be "keep your fantasies and reality separate and don't let the former take over completely," but the way it played out came off as "escapism can and will transform your life for the worse, so you'd best stick to reality no matter how much it sucks."
• Fan Dumb: Been around so long that even professional reviewers get away with outstandingly negative reviews over the most trivial crap.
• Fan Nickname: Jerkass Homer is the nickname that fans of the classic episodes give to post-Flanderization Homer.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Sort of a Friendly Enemy with Family Guy. While everyone will accept that Family Guy was inspired by The Simpsons, the argument is whether Family Guy is a Shallow Parody that deserves no love or whether, following the The Simpsons undergoing Seasonal Rot, Family Guy is now a better show, usually based off the argument that Family Guy has adapted to socio-cultural changes better, with The Simpsons frequently being accused of having We're Still Relevant, Dammit! episodes.
  • In a similar situation with Matt Groening's later Futurama. Most fans like both but those who are more Futurama fans do resent that their high-quality show ended with less than ten seasons while The Simpsons, despite its Seasonal Rot, kept going for over thirty.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • The episode "The Principal and the Pauper", as well as giving the Reset Button at the end of the episode, is widely hated and disregarded by fans.
  • Another much-hated episode is "A Star is Burns", not so much for being poorly written (it does have a few Funny Moments), but for being made pretty much to advertise The Critic. Simpsons fans hated it for that reason, Groening had his creator's credit removed from the episode, and even fans of The Critic didn't like the episode, mostly due to the fact that Jay Sherman become an über-talented Nice Guy.
  • "That '90s Show" for pretty much destroying the entire show's canon. Possibly Canon Dis Continuity as well, as the events of it are never brought up again.
  • "The Boys of Bummer" for being universally hated.
  • To a lesser extent, some fans ignore any Sideshow Bob episodes where he has a wife and son. It helps that they were either left out or played down in Bob's appearances following their introduction.
  • "Lisa Goes Gaga" given how much screentime Lady Gaga gets. Not helping was how unnecessarily cruel some people found it towards Lisa and that it's viewed as a shining example of We're Still Relevant, Dammit!.
  • As such a long last lasting show, there have been a few episodes that could have serviceably been the Grand Finale. A good example is people ignoring everything that came after "Behind the Laughter", Season 11's finale as it, even if it was a BLAM Episode, provided a good ending for the family. Another popular one is Season 23's "Holidays of Future Passed" given that it was originally conceived as a Grand Finale and neatly wrapped up many of the lingering issues.
• Fetish Retardant: Marge's hairdo and voice. If it weren't for them, she'd be as pretty as the show implies her to be.
• Fountain of Memes: When The Simpsons first came out, almost everything that Bart, then the main character, said and/or did became a meme.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • The Season 23 finale, "Lisa Goes Gaga", is often a celebrity guest-starring on The Simpsons going too far, given Gaga's overt Adam Westing and how the episode promotes her. In truth, guest stars in this manner has been a staple of the show since the start. The differences are that Gaga is largely As Herself - for example Stan Lee in "I Am Furious (Yellow)" Adam Wested as a Cloudcuckoolander - and the episode is largely driven by what Gaga does - whereas Stan Lee, although he had a pretty noticeable impact on the plot, wasn't the main driver of it. Likely not helping "Lady Goes Gaga" is that it's often seen as heralding guest stars in this manner, most infamously Season 26's "The Musk Who Fell to Earth".
  • One of the show's biggest criticisms is its reliance on a Halfway Plot Switch. The most infamous example probably being "Simpson Safari" (S12E17), an episode that sees the Simpsons travel to Africa and engage in wacky adventures... for an episode that started out as a bag-boy strike. But this was a hallmark of the show since its first season. "There's No Disgrace Like Home", the fourth episode, for example starts as the family going to Mr. Burns's garden party only to swerve to them in shock therapy. The difference is that earlier transitions were much smoother and realistic. "There's No Disgrace Like Home" has Homer embarrassed by the family and encourage them to go to therapy as a result whereas "Simpson Safari" had Homer find his old lunchbox which had a winning contest prize in it.
• Friendly Fandoms: Gets along well with some fans of King of the Hill due to some fans of both shows having a powerful distaste for Family Guy and American Dad!.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment:
  • Go back and watch the season seven episode "Two Bad Neighbors" (especially the part where Homer tricks George Bush, Sr. into thinking that his sons, George Bush, Jr. and Jeb Bush are outside) and the season nine episode "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson" and try to laugh at them now that America has gone through eight years of George Bush, Jr. and doesn't have the World Trade Center towers anymore. Even the writers on the DVD commentaries for both episodes have pointed this out (on the "Two Bad Neighbors" commentary, they admitted that they didn't know George Bush, Sr. had a son who shared his name — much like the audience who first saw the episode in 1996 — and chalked it up to Homer being a moron and on the "City of New York..." commentary, the writers felt really bad for putting in the line about how all the jerks are in the first tower of the World Trade Center). Also, the season twelve episode "New Kids on the Blecch" near the end of the third act has one scene in which LT Smash goes to New York, with a brief shot of the WTC towers, to destroy the M.A.D. magazine building which Bart has visited before already in the season nine episode already mentioned.
  • Other episodes that are harder to watch now than they were years ago: "Much Apu About Nothing," (Arizona's harsh illegal immigrant laws are much like the ones from this episode - though this can also fall under Older Than You Think), "Bart of Darkness" and "Realty Bites" (Maude is feared to be dead in both episodes — then season 11 had her Killed Off for Real).
  • "Treehouse of Horror X" used a Millennium Bug segment to make a joke about Dick Clark being a robot that basically breaks down once Y 2 K hits, which played off a common perception at the time that Clark never seemed to age and was almost inhumanly cheerful at all times. Four years later, once he suffered a stroke that took an obvious toll on his looks and behavior, it's hard to remember that time.
    • It's even worse in April 2012, as Dick Clark had died around that time.
  • Watching this interview reminded this troper of the Season 11 episode "Eight Misbehavin'," when Apu's wife, Manjula, gives birth to their octuplets. In the episode, Apu and Manjula, left without resources to raise their children are approached by the owner of the Springfield Zoo, who promptly puts the children in a nursery and puts them on display as a zoo attraction. Interestingly, the episode also satirized the media attention given to the Mc Caughey septuplets (born in 1997) and the tourist attraction of the Dionne quintuplets (born in 1934).
  • The scene in "Lisa's Date With Density" where Nelson beats up Milhouse badly enough to hospitalize him after he gave Nelson a love note from Lisa is much harder to watch after the highly publicized rash of suicides from anti-gay bullying and the murder of Lawrence King.
  • In "Realty Bites", Marge and the kids make up a song to help her study for real estate test. The final lyrics? "...thanks to Fannie Mae / They back your bank!" Flash forward to 2008, where the American economy tanked in part due to the housing crisis - with a number casting suspicious glances at Fannie Mae's practices.
  • During the credits for "All Singing, All Dancing", Snake repeatedly shoots his gun to get the music to stop playing. The first time he shoots, it occurs over Phil Hartman's name. Phil was murdered the same year. Coincidence, yes, but definitely eerie in reruns.
  • In "Brush with Greatness", Ringo Starr mentions he'll take his time answering every piece of fan mail. In 2008, Ringo would say he would no longer accept any more fan mail.
  • The "Simpsons Spinoff Showcase" ends with Troy Mc Clure answering the question "How will they stay fresh and funny after eight years?" He shows off several stale sitcom gimmicks like weddings, long lost siblings, large breaks from realism and even a spoof of The Great Gazoo which will keep the series fresh from Season 9 and beyond. Season 9 is generally considered to be the point where The Simpsons started its downfall by trading in strong storytelling and characterization for wacky plots and cartoon hijinx.
  • In "Team Homer", we see Homer possessing the obviously stolen Academy Award given to Dr. Haing S. Ngor for The Killing Fields, with Ngor's name crossed out and Homer's written in. That joke lost all humor only a month after it originally aired, after Ngor got murdered, so viewers unaware that this aired before it happened would think Homer killed Ngor for the award. In syndication, the scene was changed to show that the award belonged to Don Ameche, who had died a few years earlier but of natural causes.
  • YMMV of course on whether it is Funny Aneurysm Moment or Hilarious in Hindsight, but some of the jokes regarding Quimby's Expy status of the Kennedys will seem somewhat painful after Ted Kennedy's death and the end of the Kennedy family for good.
  • In a Spring Break related episode where Bart gets a fake license, Homer, while subbing in for Bart's regular prank calls to Moe, has his prank call ("Eura Snotball") backfire due to Moe repeating the name to him for clarification and state, a'la Moe's regular threats to Bart, "When I get a hold of you, I'm going to staple a flag to you and mail you to Iran!" The line becomes significantly less funny following the Iranian controversy with the Iranian Nuclear Weapons program with the potential use against the United States and its allies, as well as attempting to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador on American Soil.
  • Chief Wiggum once makes a comment that he'll get shot three days before retirement. Fast forward to 2012 when a New Hampshire police chief was killed just days before retirement.
  • "The Boys Of Bummer" became even more hated after more and more bullying-related suicides got media exposure.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Lisa, who is rather divisive in her native USA, is the most popular character in the show in Japan.
  • And then there's Willie. While certainly not disliked in the USA, he obviously has a much bigger following in Scotland.
• Growing the Beard: Season 1 is characterized as being So Okay It's Average, but the series gains traction in Season 2 and hits its stride by Season 3, exhibiting enhanced writing, refined animation, and well-rounded character development.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In "Lisa's Substitute," Homer tries to console Lisa about Mr. Bergstrom leaving. He says that he's lucky to have never lost someone special to him because everyone special to him is under his roof. It's a sweet moment for Homer, but a few years later we learn that his mother was in hiding and that he actually thought she had died when he was a kid. Al Jean on the DVD Commentary even acknowledged the trope and that the Retcon makes Homer look unintentionally bad.
  • Apu and Manjula's relationship, full stop. They first met due to an Arranged Marriage, but when they finally met they turned out to have excellent chemistry and honestly cared about each other. Consider the episode "I'm With Cupid" where they have a fight, and to apologize Apu showers Manjula with gifts in the days leading to Valentine's. Now go look at how the relationship went after Apu's affair, where Manjula's defining trait is being a bitter, hateful harpy and Apu is treated as the ultimate Henpecked Husband. Even worse, the strain in their relationship started with the birth of the octuplets, which the Simpsons were responsible for (pretty much all of them slipped Manjula fertility drugs). Which means that the breakdown of Apu's marriage and the hell he's been through is all their fault...
    • Made even worse when you consider that during their wedding (ironically, in the Simpsons' own backyard), Manjula even suggests to Apu that if their marriage "doesn't work out [they] can always get a divorce."
  • In "Bart to the Future", Lisa is the President of the United States in the year 2030. On her first day, it's mentioned that her administration is broke thanks to succeeding Donald Trump's disastrous presidency. Guess who won the 2024 US election. And the episode came out long before even Trump's first presidency. According to the writers, they made Trump the former president because it "just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom. It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane."
  • In "Holidays of Future Passed", in Season 23, Ned mentions that Homer, accidentally, killed Edna. Two seasons later, The Character Died with Her.
  • In "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy", Lisa, in her attempts to convince the creator of Malibu Stacy to do something about how misogynistic the doll has become, notes that she'd "be mortified if someone ever made a lousy product with the Simpson name on it." Well fast forward about a decade and most of the fanbase thinks that Seasonal Rot has resulted in a lousy product with the Simpson name on it.
• Hate Dumb: A lot of the hate the series receives comes in this flavour.
  • If you know Spanish, here you have a challenge. Go to YouTube and look for videos from the series dubbed in Spanish, both in Spaniard Spanish and Latin American Spanish. If you find A SINGLE VIDEO in which in its comments there's NOT a raging war between Spaniards and Latin Americans bitching each other about which of the two Spanish dubs is better (including racist and xenophobic comments on both parts), buy yourself a medal. You've just completed a quest which rivals that of the freaking Holy Grail.
    • The saddest part of all is that both dubs are awesome on their own right! You could say this argument put the "Dumb" in Hate Dumb.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: The Bittersweet Ending of "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy". Though Lisa failed to spark a feminist revolution in pop culture, in the 21st century, more female characters that are not overtly sexualized or adhere to feminine stereotypes have spread to mainstream media.
• Hell Is That Noise: The background music at the end of "Rosebud".
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Flaming Homer/Moe episode centers around a mixed-drink spiked with cough syrup. Flash forward a few years: Purple Drank
    • Could also be considered Harsher in Hindsight when you realize people such as Pimp C have died from Drank related deaths
  • After Maude's death Ned goes on a date with Edna Krabappel. Fast forward to Season 23, they are now a couple.
  • "I think Homer gets stupider every year." Can you even recognize him anymore?
  • In one episode, Krusty re-invents himself as a caustic observational comedian, who eventually sells out to pitch for a enormous SUV, "The Canyonero." Denis Leary is a real-life caustic observational comedian who has recently become the pitchman for the enormous Ford F-150.
  • This tribute to The Cosby Show.
  • This quote from the episode "Trash of the Titans":

Homer: Good news, everyone! I got in a fight with the garbage men and they're cutting off our service!

• One episode guest-starring Mel Gibson as himself plays on the idea that he is so admired by the public that it makes him uncomfortable. "Cops won't even give me tickets!" he says. Awkward...
  • In the Treehouse of Horror short "Clown Without Pity", a naked Homer has run screaming from the bathtub, passing by Marge and her sisters as he streaks through the house. Patty quips "There goes the last lingering thread of my heterosexuality." Years later, she comes out of the closet.
  • "You Only Move Twice" ends with Homer becoming owner of the Denver Broncos, and Homer's upset because they were a terrible team. Two years after the episode aired the Broncos won the Superbowl.
  • In "The Devil and Homer Simpson" segment of Treehouse of Horror IV, Homer, voiced by Dan Castellaneta, is forced to spend the day in hell, in the "Hell Labs Ironic Punishment Division". In the pre-Series Finale of Futurama, Dan Castellaneta voices the Robot Devil, who deals out what he believes to be ironic punishments. Note that the episode "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings" aired in 2004, and "Treehouse of Horror IV" aired in 1993.
  • In the 1996 episode "Homerpalooza", Homer tells a record store clerk about the Us Festival ("The what festival?") and its organizer, Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computers. "What computers?" is the reaction. This was the dark days at Apple, right before Steve Jobs returned. At the time, Apple was really seen as being on the way out.
    • A similar situation happened in "Itchy and Scratchy Land" where John Travolta is shown reduced to working as a bartender in a 70s themed bar. The episode was released in the same year that Pulp Fiction came out, which massively revitalized Travolta's career.
  • In "Bart Gets an F," Bart worries about having to repeat the fourth grade and even has a fantasy sequence where he has been stuck there for decades. That was in 1990, and he's still in the fourth grade over twenty years later.
  • In "Bart Gets Hit by a Car" Satan tells Bart that's he's not supposed to die until the next time the Yankees win the pennant. This was back in the early 90s when the Yankees were a mediocre team but now it's just laughable.
  • In "Secrets to a Successful Marriage", Homer, when attempting to teach a class regarding marriages, ends up espousing secrets of Homer and Marge's marriage by identifying themselves as "Mr. and Mrs. X", and then accidentally revealing Mr. X's identity, which eventually had him exiled from the house. Later, in the episode "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes", Homer once again adopts the name Mr. X to reveal secrets, this time to the entire population of Springfield relating to various misdeeds that other Springfielders committed, eventually ended up revealing his true identity, and then was exiled to the island (ironically for making up a conspiracy that actually existed).
  • In 2005, a Simpsons book was published called "Comic Book Guy's Book of Popular Culture". On one page, it lists a number of things that are on CBG's mind. One of the items listed is, "Secret fondness for My Little Pony." Fast-forward a few years later...
  • The episode "Homer Goes to College" has a combination of this and Technology Marches On. In the episode, Bart and Lisa are understandably highly furious that the nerds rudely interrupted their watching of Scratchy finally getting revenge on Itchy. Especially since Krusty said "WHOA!! They'll never let us show that again, not in a million years!" Thanks to YouTube and the special features sections on DVD's, now they can watch it all they want.
  • In the DVD commentaries, they mention a gag from an early episode that becomes an entire plot later on. In a season 4 episode, Homer and Marge run into Artie Ziff at a reunion and Artie admits he's a millionaire. Homer says "I bet you wouldn't trade it all for a weekend with my wife." 9 years later, Artie offers Homer a million dollars for a weekend with Marge. In the episode where Marge and Homer are framed for murder, Homer is told he could be a prison snitch to escape the death penalty. Three years later, Homer was a prison snitch. In a season six episode, Bart wants to go to Alaska when Homer becomes a pilot. Guess what the second act of The Simpsons Movie is about. The list goes on and on.
  • YMMV for this or Funny Aneurysm Moment, but in "The Ned Zone" (the Halloween mini-episode where Ned apparently gets the ability to foresee someone's death by touching them a'la The Dead Zone) has Ned Flanders remarking after reading a newspaper headline for Rosie O Donnell's show being cancelled that he apparently predicted, but then he mentions that he didn't need psychic powers to predict that outcome. This burn against the quality of Rosie O Donnell's old talk show (as well as its prior cancellation) becomes absolutely hysterical after her revived talk show ends up cancelled due to a large lack of viewership on the Oprah Winfrey Network, and it being cancelled before they had a proper season finale.
  • The episode where Homer gets kicked out of an all-you-can-eat restaurant for eating too much? Ladies and gentlemen, the real life Homer Simpson.
  • In "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson", Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie see a Broadway musical called "Kicking It!", which was inspired by Robert Downey, Jr.'s troublesome behavior at the time. The lyrics have gotten even funnier in light of Charlie Sheen's behavior in 2011-12.
  • In "Bart to the Future", Lisa is America's "first straight female president", taking over from Donald Trump's disastrous presidency. And while Trump's first successor, Joe Biden, was a man, his running mate Kamala Harris became America's first female vice-president. Kamala even dressed like Lisa.
• Ho Yay: Smithers' relationship with Burns can be seen in this context. It was eventually confirmed that he was canonically in love with Burns.
  • Lenny and Carl, with a dose of "have we mentioned that we're heterosexual?".
  • Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers once talked about eating a penis-shaped cake from both ends until their lips met in the middle. And then there are clips like this.
• Jerkass Woobie: As nasty as Bart is, he can be considered this at times, as he's been trapped in a well ("Radio Bart"), nearly killed by Burns ("Curse of the Flying Hellfish") and Groundskeeper Willie ("Girly Edition"), Driven to Suicide ("The Boys of Bummer"), cruelly dumped by a girl on fault of his friend ("The Good, The Sad, and the Drugly"), and held a grudge against by Sideshow Bob (who has tried to "kill [him] so many times it's not funny anymore"). The list goes on and on.
  • Mr. Burns is generally an evil Jerkass, but some of his focus episodes show some genuine humanity. In "Monty Can't Buy Me Love," for example, he is honestly trying to be a better person and earn the people's love. It gets worse in the episode "American History X-Cellent" where it implies that the reason Mr. Burns became such a misanthropic miser was because he often was walked over and had people abuse any tolerance he might have had to goof off or do stuff against what he wanted.
  • Selma, in episodes like "Selma's Choice" and "A Fish Called Selma".
  • Lisa starting around Season 10. She may be a self-righteous Soapbox Sadie, but she also has to contend with a father who may love her but can be incredibly insensitive and stubborn, a mother who loves her but wants her to fit into the same mold she grew up with, a brother who likes to pick on her for laughs, and a school full of bullies and apathetic teachers. Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you consider that putting up with this for 8 seasons may have led to her later behavior. She can't take it anymore, so she's lashing back the only way she knows how.
• Just Here for Godzilla: As the Seasonal Rot progressed, some only began tuning in for "Treehouse of Horror".
• Magnificent Bastard: Sideshow Bob. His murder schemes are considerably clever; they just happen to get thwarted by circumstance.
  • Fat Tony (along with much of Springfield's organized crime community as a whole) seems to qualify for this trope as well, though not quite as clearly as Bob.
    • Though, unlike Bob, Fat Tony can point to actual accomplishments.
  • And the Springfield Cat Burglar, from "Homer The Vigilante," though a one-shot character, arguably qualifies too. He manages to steal from several homes very sneakily, (the in-story newspaper states that he struck at least 15 homes) and is implied to have done so without waking up any of their occupants; he also distracts the pets with food. He leaves a Calling Card, too, and yet this doesn't lead back to him. His identity is revealed when Abe Simpson finds a suspiciously large gem on Malloy's coffee table, but that he would even think to look could probably be attributable to "mistaking" Malloy coming into his room for the cat burglar coming into his room earlier on. Also, once caught, he returns the items he stole and speaks very kindly about the rest of Springfield. He gets put in jail anyway, and tells the police that he buried millions of dollars' worth of money under a big T. Idiotically enough, the police as well as the whole town rush to the site, not bothering to leave anyone behind to supervise his cell. As such, when they get to the big T, instead of finding the money, they find a letter stating that the money isn't really there and that he's used this time to escape from jail.
• Memetic Mutation: Oh so many, it now has its own section.
• Moral Event Horizon: In an early episode, "Crepes of Wrath," Bart is treated like a slave by two mean winemakers in France. At first, this is amusing as we see Bart get what's coming to him for his brattiness. However, it fades when you see Bart sleeping with nothing so much as a blanket after reading a letter from his mother as the abuse he is suffering begins to sink in. When the winemakers finally force Bart to drink wine doctored with antifreeze, putting him in real danger of being killed or blinded, the louts sail over the moral line and all your sympathy goes to the boy, which makes his eventual escape and revenge all so sweet.
  • Also, in "Curse of the Flying Hellfish" it's revealed that Mr. Burns and Abe Simpson are the two surviving members of their unit from World War 2, and that the last surviving member would get to keep a case of old paintings stolen from German homes during the war. Not content to leave which of them survives to chance, Burns hires an assassin to kill Abe, though the assassin fails to kill him. Later on, Bart convinces Abe to go with him to retrieve the treasure instead, but Burns shows up too and takes the paintings at gunpoint. When Bart calls Burns a coward and an embarrassment to the name Hellfish, Burns points the gun at Bart's head. Abe says Burns can take the paintings so long as he does not hurt the boy; Burns says he would rather do both, and then kicks Bart into the empty case and kicks the empty case into the water. That's right, even when Burns could have taken the art without hurting the child, he attempts to drown the child anyway, for no apparent reason other than that the child insulted him. Furthermore, Burns gets away with these attempted murders as well. And when Abe corners Burns...

Burns: Don't kill me! Abe: I ain't gonna kill ya. That'd be cowardly. Monty Burns cowardly.

• Sideshow Bob manages to avoid this for eighteen seasons straight. However, he finally crosses it when he decides to get people to hate Bart while he's on trial, fake his death, and, with the help of his whole family, burn Bart alive in a coffin being pushed into a furnace. Fortunately, he is caught and, along with the rest of his family, is sentenced to 87 years in prison.
  • The population of Springfield in "The Boys Of Bummer".
  • The Preschool Teacher's treatment of Bart in "Lisa Sax". She's the reason why Bart is Bart today.
  • Homer crosses this in The Movie when he dumps a silo full of pig waste into Lake Springfield after the town just cleaned it up, and as a result causes a nuclear apocalypse that leads to the town being confined in a dome. He grabs his family and flees to Alaska to avoid owning his mistake, then refuses to help them when they want to go back to save Springfield from being nuked off the map. It takes Marge leaving him and taping a Dear John message over their wedding video, plus a hallucination brought on by an Inuit Shaman's therapy to make him realize what an asshole he's been, and he spends the rest of the movie pulling himself back from the MEH to do the right thing. It takes a few tries, but with a little help he manages to get it done.
• Most Annoying Sound: The family's Stock Screams to some. After so many years on air, they have lost their impact.
  • Barney's belching for those who don't find it hilarious.
• More Popular Spinoff: To The Tracey Ullman Show.
• My Real Daddy: With such a long-running series with many writers, several showrunners and Loads and Loads of Characters, this has happened. For example, while Matt Groening created the family and several other familiar characters (such as Krusty), Sam Simon deserves a lot of credit for fleshing them out during the development from the shorts to the series. Animators/directors David Silverman, Wes Archer and Rich Moore are also credited with reworking the initial character designs and defining the overall look of the series.
• Never Live It Down: Do the Bartman...

"That is so 1991."

• • Lampshaded in "Skinner's Sense of Snow." Bart gets a look at his student record and reads the way he was originally characterized:

"'Underachiever and proud of it.' How old is this thing?"

• • Lisa's more Granola Girl / Soapbox Sadie moments will never be forgotten by her detractors who readily use them, along with most episodes painting her as being in the right, to justify her being a Creator's Pet.
  • Seymour Skinner being revealed as an impostor in "The Principal and the Pauper."
  • Willie's "Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys" line. He hates all races, including the Scots, but a lot of people remember him solely for that anti-French remark. Which was the only time he ever mentioned the French.
  • The most infamous example has to be the Season 18 episode "The Boys of Bummer." After Bart fails to catch a fly ball and costs Springfield the Little League Championship, he suddenly becomes a pariah to the whole town. He's ultimately Driven to Suicide with the angry mob continuing to harass him after the suicide fails. Even those who drew some enjoyment at the episode's Black Comedy consider it a low point for the show.
  • The town's willingness to hang the entire Simpson family, even Maggie, for Homer's blunder in The Simpsons Movie is also not something that anyone is likely to forget.
• Nightmare Fuel: The Treehouse Of Horror comic book series. Like the TV episodes, but with very little comedy.
• Nightmare Fuel Vanity Plate: The Gracie Films Logo, due to the sudden darkness and the woman saying "shhhh".
  • Flanders screaming like a girl. YMMV though, since it's funny to some.
• Older Than They Think: Adam West was Adam Westing seven years before Family Guy premiered in "Mr Plow".
  • Homer's "D'oh! was Dan Castellaneta's nod to Jimmy Finlayson, an actor featured in many Laurel and Hardy productions over half a century earlier. Castellaneta recalled that Finlayson's characters often exclaimed "dohhhhhhh!" when exasperated, so he threw it in for the "annoyed grunt" directions in scripts. (He had to shorten it due to time constraints, though.)
• Overshadowed by Controversy: As hard as it may seem to believe following shows like Family Guy and South Park, The Simpsons was once defined by the fact that it was controversial and ruffled so many feathers thanks to Bart and Homer's Anti Role Model tendencies.
  • "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson", aired just four years before 9/11, has a moment set in the Twin Towers where a background character utters the infamous line of "They stick all the jerks in tower one!". As a result, that line is cut out or the episode is simply pulled from re-runs altogether.
  • "The Principal and the Pauper", the infamous episode where Seymour Skinner is revealed to be an impostor named "Armin Tamzarian", is not only hated for its nonsensical and continuity breaking plot, but for the infamous case of Creator Backlash, Matt Groening outright calling it "a mistake" on the DVD commentary. It's also infamously known as the point where everyone regards the golden age of The Simpsons to have ended. Discussions about it mainly amount to calling out what a stupid idea it was.
  • "Homer vs. Dignity" is known for absolutely nothing but the infamous implication that a Panda raped Homer.
  • Many episodes where the family leaves America can generate controversy due to racial stereotypes being used to portray the other countries. None generated quite so much controversy as "Blame It on Lisa" for portraying Rio de Janeiro as a hedonistic crime-filled slum of a city, exaggerating several stereotypes about Brazil and even incorporating the culture of neighbouring countries to paint an inaccurate picture of the city. It was so bad that a Rio tourism board actually planned to sue Fox for defamation, only standing down due to the First Amendment protecting parodies.
  • Following The Problem with Apu, Apu himself as many Southern Asians decried him as an inaccurate portrayal of their culture who was also voiced by a white man. It didn't help that Matt Groening was very defensive about the criticism but the issue was eventually smoothed over when Hank Azaria offered his apologies and stepped down from the role.
• Overused Running Gag: The Parody Names being constantly used in the Al Jean-era episodes.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: With the exceptions of the Konami arcade game, The Simpsons Hit and Run and The Simpsons Game, most Simpsons games are regarded as So Bad It's Horrible at their worst or So Okay It's Average at their best.
• Rooting for the Empire:
  • There are many fans who root for Mr. Burns to succeed in his plots against Lisa. Reasons can range from arguing that Burns is a Designated Villain ("The Burns and the Bees" is the most often cited example in this regard), the argument that for his faults, Burns' businesses near single handedly keep the town running and Lisa's Soapbox Sadie tendencies threatens many jobs, or that they're just so anti-Lisa that they want Burns, no matter how vile his scheme, to win.
  • There are several fans who also root for Bart to win in the Sibling Rivalry with Lisa. While Bart is a brat, many relate to him being The Unfavorite compared to Lisa. Even those who can't or don't fully hate Lisa have been known to cheer when Bart humiliates/gets one up on her.
  • Related to Bart, given his Flanderization, there are some fans who honestly wish that Sideshow Bob would just sink the knife in already.
  • Hank Scorpio. He may be a literal Bond villain but he's so Affably Evil and charming that many fans cheered his taking over the East Coast.
• The Scrappy: Depending on the viewer, any character can be this. Not really helped by the fact that shifting personas mean that characters can go back and forth about this in successive episodes or even the same episode. The most discussed cases are:
  • Marge after Flanderization, to more than a few viewers, because she's a rather boring housewife stereotype who doesn't let her own family (or even the people in Springfield) have any fun. It doesn't help that her very existence can be seen as a Take That at feminists or a good example of the 21st century's "Karen" stereotype.
  • Lisa. It's already bad that a case could be made for her being a Creator's Pet, but it gets worse whenever she forces everyone to follow her beliefs. Usually in an episode about her learning to respect other's beliefs, which the writers unfortunately keep recycling due to the show's long run.
  • On the flipside, some people think Bart goes too far and has gone from a funny hellraiser to just plain annoying, especially when she show tries to blame his tendencies on his family. While Homer is a pretty shitty dad sometimes and both his parents favor Lisa, it's rare that Bart takes responsibility for his own bad behavior rather than blaming his family.
  • Gil Gunderson, for not being funny and having no personality other than being pathetic. He's Demoted to Extra now thankfully.
  • Mr. Burns, when he leans too much into Cartoonish Supervillainy rather than the Jerkass Magnificent Bastard he usually is.
  • Chief Wiggum, when his behaviour gets out of hand, and is more a danger (especially when it's about people's lives) then simply a comic relief.
  • Mayor Quimby has a bit the same reason as Chief Wiggum, in the earlier episodes he was just a JFK Expy that only was there for comic relief. Now he is overused, also puts the entire town in danger only to have himself get richer and the JFK jokes are starting to becoming insulting.
  • Ralph Wiggum, when the jokes about him are more disturbing than funny.
  • Sideshow Mel because every time something happens in the presence of a crowd, he's always to one to give a comment in a very hammy way.
  • Rich Texan.
  • Lindsay Naegle, for being obnoxious.
  • Homer, for various reasons.
  • Ned Flanders to some, when the Flanderization got out of hand.
    • Rod and Todd can be sometimes even worse than their father.
  • Dr. Marvin Monroe, his raspy voice is unbearable to hear and was becoming a strain on Harry Shearer's voice. Even Matt Groening disliked the character and retired him because of this.
  • Some fans despise Sideshow Bob's wife and son, due to how jarring their presence tends to be. Notably, in Bob's appearances since "Funeral for a Fiend," they have not appeared or been referenced.
  • One time example and also in-universe example is Birch Barlow in "Sideshow Bob Roberts".
• Seasonal Rot: One of the most infamous cases in Western media.
  • Season 9, though still highly esteemed and considered part of the series' golden age, is often regarded as the tipping point. This shift is attributed to Mike Scully assuming the role of showrunner, the introduction of less robust plots and humor, an emphasis on Homer's more negative traits, and the inclusion of the series' contentious episode, "The Principal and the Pauper."
• Seinfeld Is Unfunny: The very early seasons were seen as edgy, subversive and shocking, to the point where the then President of the United States (George H.W. Bush) used the Simpsons as an example of a bad family. To people who grew up watching shows like South Park or Rick and Morty, the Simpsons family indulges in tame humour and has zero noteworthy problems. The Family Guy crossover alone shows that The Simpsons‍'‍ style of Black Comedy doesn't match up to its later peers.
• So Okay It's Average: Seasons 9 and 10, in between the "golden age" and the Dork Age.
  • Most episodes from season 24 got this kind of reception as well.
• Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: Lisa can come across as a Granola Girl and/or a Know-Nothing Know-It-All at times, but the causes she champions for; such as preserving the natural world, transitioning to cleaner fuels or cherishing and nurturing gifted intellects; are all very important.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: When the series first started, episodes and plots were fairly divided amongst the Simpson family. However, in real-life, Bart became the Breakout Character for several years. While the writers kept things fair during this period, Bart nonetheless became the face of the show for the network and such. For example, "Bart Gets an F" was not the first episode of Season 2 to be produced, but it was aired first because of his popularity. The show eventually shifted to focus more on Homer than Bart, let alone the rest of the family.
  • Lisa, in the episodes where the writers decide to use her to make some sort of political or ethical point.
• Strawman Has a Point: Homer, Bart and Lisa fall into this a lot. They can often be blunt and deliver uncomfortable truths, but they're also often right about the issue at hand.
• Surprise Creepy: "Homer Loves Flanders", "Rosebud", and "Boy Scoutz N Da Hood" are ordinary episodes with endings that count as Nightmare Fuel.
  • "Yokel Chords" ending implies that Dark Stanley, who murdered a lot of children in gruesome ways was actually real
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A lot of fans think that new episodes are wasted, because typically they spend 5 or 10 minutes setting up things that seem that they will be the main plot of story, but later they are forgotten and rest of the episode has nothing to do with the beginning, while in older episodes the main plot was set during the beginning of the episode, not the middle of it. For example the episode "I Don't Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" starts with Marge yelling at Homer for not going to Lisa's award ceremony, Homer decides to prove her wrong and wants to make sure that he is in the auditorium before anyone else. This seems to be the main plot of the episode, but when it is forgotten and the main plot is about Marge and bank robber and has nothing to do with Homer getting to Lisa's ceremony.
  • "Homer The Whopper" could have been a funny episode about the making of a superhero movie in the vein of "Radioactive Man", but instead focuses on the overused plot of Homer sticking to another diet, with all the movie stuff happening in the b-plot.
  • "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily". It could have been a Tear Jerker Crowning Moment of Heartwarming episode, but more than half of it was Homer setting up Ned with horrible new girlfriends.
  • A common sentiment is that the show, rather than showing Lisa wanting to shut down the nuclear plant, could instead have her campgain to fix it, as a fully functioning nuclear plant can be a great benefit to the environment.
• Toy Ship: In "Bart's Friend Falls in Love" there's Milhouse van Houten and Samantha Stanky, who was then dragged to an all-girls' convent school thanks to Bart revealing the relationship to her father. In "The Bart Wants What It Wants", he also had a relationship with Greta Wolfcastle after she was dumped by Bart, but in the end she dumped Milhouse along with Bart, lacking interest in both of them. Also, Milhouse has a crush on Lisa Simpson, as well, in a few past episodes.
  • Lisa Simpson herself has several relationships with a few characters in several episodes: In "I Love Lisa", Lisa went on a play date with Ralph Wiggum, who then became friends afterwards; she has short-lived relationship with Nelson Muntz in "Lisa's Date with Density", but in later episodes he helps her from time to time; and Luke Stetson in "Dude, Where's My Ranch?", but broke up with him due to Lisa's jealousy against Clara (who is revealed to be Luke's sister). In The Simpsons Movie, there's Colin whom Lisa has a crush on, however since then after the end of the movie, what became of their relationship is a mystery. Subverting this trope, she also has a crush on an older teen activist named as Jesse Grass in "Lisa the Tree Hugger".
    • In the season 22 subplot of the episode "Homer Scissorhands", Lisa rejects Milhouse's declaration of love to her causing Milhouse to get depressed. However, the new girl in school named Taffy was impressed by him and both he and she walked off together, which causes Lisa to develop jealous feelings for her and causes her to spy on both Milhouse and Taffy. By the end, Taffy dumps Milhouse knowing that he still has feelings for Lisa. Confused that he's denied a relationship with another girl or Lisa, Lisa herself tried to find the words to explain to him why she acted that way, but she only replied in the only way she could: A kiss on his lips out of pity. With this kiss alone, could this provoke the rise of Lisa X Milhouse shippers?
  • Despite his strong concern for cooties, Bart Simpson has his own encounter with many relationships with girls: Terri or Sherri, whom Bart has an affection to (according to Homer); Jessica Lovejoy, the daughter of Timothy and Helen Lovejoy, in "Bart's Girlfriend"; Greta Wolfcastle, daughter of Ranier Wolfcastle of McBain Fame in "The Bart Wants What It Wants"; Gina Vendetti in "The Wandering Juvie"; Jenny in "The Good, the Sad, and the Drugly"; and Nikki McKenna in "Stealing first Base". Most of them ended in breakups while others are unresolved. However, in the episode "New Kid on the Block", Bart does have a crush on Laura Powers who is in her teens, which subverts this trope. Same for Darcy, who is also in her teens, in "Little Big Girl", in which she thinks of Bart as a teen adult before Bart tells her the truth, before they get married, that he is really ten years old, and even then went through with getting married anyways for the sake of her unborn child (she evidentially slept with a Norwegian exchange student, and she's pregnant). Only reason he didn't is because both of their parents stopped them (having somehow managed to reach Utah in time upon finding out), and Darcy's parents suggested they raise her child as if she was one of her mother's children (the mom was pregnant at the time) to cover up her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, thus making the marriage unnecessary anyways. He also almost married Mary, Cletus' daughter, for the sake of his prized cow, due to some misunderstandings about hillbilly traditions. They both called it off in the end (they both know they're way too young for that). They had pretty good Ship Tease moments in the episode, however.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: Common in early 00s-episodes, with a comedic A plot and a Slice of Life B plot, or vice-versa.
• Ugly Cute: Moe.
• Uncanny Valley: The grotesque animation style in the Tracy Ullman shorts.
• Unfortunate Implications: Homer's treatment of Marge can be at best mean and at worst abusive. It also doesn't help that the creators seem to want to hammer the message that a husband can be awful to his wife and she will always forgive him in the end.
  • That said one could argue this is balanced in later seasons, where Marge's own increasing Jerkass traits make her less than pleasant towards Homer at times as well, (eg. The Strong Arms Of Ma or Don't Fear The Roofer, where for once Homer is being rather docile and sympathetic to Marge's callousness).
  • Also sometimes subverted, such as when we find out that the woman Patty wants to marry is male. He explains why he was hiding [to be a lady golfer] and why he hid it from her ...you fell in love with me as a woman. When he asks if she will marry him anyway, the music swells, and despite previously being not at all interested in men, it looks like she might...

Patty: Hell no! I like girls! Wedding guests pause, then applaud.

• • Another one involving Marge: her obsession with housework is a little ridiculous even for a TV show character. Cases in point: the episode "You Only Move Twice", where she's so bored by the lack of housework (it was all being done for her) that she turns to alcohol for something to do; and the later one "Skinner's Sense of Snow", where she says watching the female circus contortionists assume their unique positions was giving her ideas... for housework. If Marge were in the same situation as Cinderella, she'd be probably happy about it. (Despite that, there was a magazine where on the cover, Marge stood in for the famous picture of Rosie the Riveter).
    • That's the joke, although it is a fairly dark one. When she should be happy, she never is. Once she's become an alcoholic in "You Only Move Twice" she actually says "I'm drinking a glass of wine every day. I know doctors say you should have a glass and a half, but I just can't drink that much!"
  • Julio and Grady, two minor characters that are so stereotypically gay they can sometimes make Brian's cousin Jasper look tame. They're widely disliked by LGBT fans of the show.
  • Patty is the only confirmed lesbian on the show, but is almost always portrayed as ugly and unpleasant.
    • Well, her straight twin acts and looks the exact same way.
      • But Selma's had a few Jerkass Woobie and Pet the Dog moments. Patty? Not so much.
  • Am I the only one who think Eleanor Abernathy's background story suggests that she turned into Crazy Cat Lady because she was a career woman who never found herself a man?
    • I dunno, IIRC she worked both as a doctor and a lawyer, both jobs are pretty stressful by themselves, let alone together. Not to mention that, with the amount of time that would use, it would be pretty hard to have a social life.
  • The writers have a bad habit of getting gay and transgender people mixed up.
  • "Homer The Heretic" can be seen as having a very anti-atheist/anti-agnostic message.
    • And the majority of the more recent episodes are insanely anti-religious, particularly Christian (one of the big criticisms of Flanderization).
  • The episode "Marge vs. Singles, Seniors, Childless Couples and Teens, and Gays" portrays anybody who doesn't have kids of their own as a borderline Complete Monster who hates kids and is wasting their life.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The show, despite showing technological advances, has never quite moved past its 1980s starting life, still having references to Grampa and Skinner be Refugees from Time, as they're always stated to be veterans of World War II and the Vietnam War respectively, or Mayor Quimby being a Take That at JFK. All of these were quite cutting edge in the late 1980s and early 1990s but as time passed, their relevance on society waned to the point that some younger viewers might have no idea what the show is supposed to be referencing.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Bart can sometimes be this, often when Lisa is Unintentionally Unsympathetic. He's a brat sure, but given his abusive father and that he's Always Second Best next to his sister, more than a few fans found him the easier party to root for.
  • Though Lisa isn't immune to receiving this either. For all that she can be hit with the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys stick, often times her attitudes can make her seem like the Only Sane Man in the setting or that people's reaction to her is a bit too much considering that she's an eight-year old girl. A good example occurs in the infamous "Lisa Goes Gaga". While Lady Gaga might have had good intentions, and Lisa might have been a bit harsh in her denouncement of the pop star, Gaga was not the type of help Lisa needed in that episode. Combined with how Gaga all but forced her help onto Lisa, who did not want it, and Lisa had every right to be angry. Not helping was how Anti-Protagonist Morality forced Lisa to suddenly realize how "ungrateful" she'd been to the person who's constant distractions had prevented her from working through her feelings in a healthy manner.
  • The big problem with "Homer's Enemy" was that Homer fell victim to this. While Frank Grimes wasn't wrong in what he said about Homer, the episode was meant to be how a normal person (Frank) would react to Homer's antics in the workplace, namely hating him for having a comfortable life despite his boorishness. Thing is, Homer was only ever Innocently Insensitive towards Grimes and when he learnt that Grimes hated him, he spent the rest of the episode trying to make amends. Homer was also the only person to show any concern towards Frank during his psychotic breakdown despite Frank's earlier humiliating Homer in front of his own family.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Given that this can be a Sadist Show in its darker moments, just about everyone has been hit with this at one point or another.
  • Lisa in the second half of "On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister." Bart was a jerk to her, sure, but her sadistic enforcement of the restraining order she filed against him was definitely taking it too far.
  • Marge can often come across as this usually when she's acting as Moral Guardians or "Stop Having Fun!" Guys or a victim of Values Dissonance. In "Homer's Night Out" for example, she shames Homer for dancing with a belly dancer at a bachelor party, claiming he set a bad example for Bart. Discounting the fact that Homer didn't know Bart was there or took the photo, that's what you're supposed to do with a dancer. Homer's "crime" was being a perfect gentleman to the dancer.
  • The most infamous case in the series however might have been the title character of "Homer's Enemy", Frank Grimes himself. Frank's Hilariously Abusive Childhood was sad but at the end of the day, that suffering had turned him into an Entitled Bastard who felt he deserved to be in a higher position than Sector 7G because of it. And while his frustrations at Homer were understandable, it's important to remember that Homer was constantly trying to reach out and befriend Grimes, even showing concern during his psychotic breakdown. Frank by contrast gave Homer a "The Reason You Suck" Speech in his own home in front of his own family.
• Values Dissonance: Being a worldwide phenomenon, the show often runs into this trouble with its focus on an American family. American values don't always translate perfectly to other countries and some international viewers can be left scratching their heads at why some plots are so radical and groudbreaking to the people of Springfield. "$pringfield" for example focuses on the town legalizing gambling. Something which was already legal in many non-US countries when the episode aired.
  • The show being one of the Long Runners has resulted in this being a side-effect of Lisa's character. Lisa has always been a progressive individual who champions for social justice but as society becomes more enlightened and progressive, later audiences can be left struggling to see why the Springfielders see Lisa as on the far left. She may have been far left to an audience of the 1990s but to an audience of the 2010s, her views are nothing too extreme. Heck, some of the causes that the family roll their eyes at in the '90s, like pride parades or boycotting companies, are things they freely support or take part in come the 2010s.
  • Apu. When he started out, Indian Americans took any representation they could get. But as time passed, and Apu became little more than a collection of outdated Indian American stereotypes, along with several other minorities being represented through characters of wealth while Apu was depicted as a dishonest cheapskate who lived in Perpetual Poverty. Combined that he was voiced by a white person with the thickest accent possible and he quickly became an Ethnic Scrappy. Other minority characters have shades of this attitude as well, such as Luigi, but Apu is without a doubt the most prominent recipient of this trope.
• Values Resonance:
  • Season 6's "Homer Badman", which skewers the overly sensationalist nature of mass media, is still as relevant today as it was back in 1994.
  • "Bart the General" from season 1 feels pretty fresh in the 2010s because of the bullying problems making headlines.
  • Lisa's various causes; clean energy, higher standards of education, equal rights for all; are just as relevant in the 21st century as in the 20th. Though it can often skew into Values Dissonance as some of the fringe causes that she champions so passionately for in earlier seasons, such as making a girl's toy that isn't overly sexualized, have become much more mainstream and can leave later viewers wondering what all the fuss was about.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Kang and Kodos are brother and sister.
• We're Still Relevant, Dammit!: A common complaint about the post-movie seasons is their overemphasis on being "modern" which often comes across as weird and forced.
  • Pretty much any plotline involving politics.
• What an Idiot!: Homer. Oh dear God, Homer. One example comes from Season Nine's "The Joy Of Sect", after watching a promotional picture for the Movementarians:

Homer: Wait, I'm confused. So the cops knew that internal affairs was setting them up? Movementarian: What are you talking about? There's nothing like that in there! Homer: Sorry, when I get bored I make up my own movie. I have a short attention span.

• • To reiterate: he got confused by the plot of his own imaginary movie...
  • Bart once poured sodium tetrasulfate onto the school's grass to write his name in big letters. Skinner catches him and expresses amazement that Bart thought he could get away with it.

Bart: Maybe one of the other Barts did it. Skinner: There are no other Barts! Bart: Uh-oh.

• • At some point, one has to wonder why Marge lets Homer handle basic things, such as paying taxes. Several plots could have been avoided altogether if she'd brought her level-headedness to the initial situations.
• What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: This show deals very bluntly with subjects like animal abuse, child abuse, murder, organized crime, sex, torture, and war, but because it's animated, it's frequently mistaken for a children's show.
• WTH? Casting Agency: Marge's French dub voice is actually much more scratchy and irritating, to the point it's virtually impossible to understand her.
• The Woobie: Moe, especially in one episode, where he falls in love with a short person called Maya. They were going to get married but she was offended when Moe tried to make himself shorter for her. His one chance at happiness was gone.
  • In the 500th episode, after everyone moves to the Outlands, Skinner is left behind in town. He decides to wait and hope someone comes for him, but he won't go inside because he's worried they might not find him. Then Bart comes in a wooden helicopter bike, and lets down a rope. Bart makes sure he hits the Jebediah statue, and both of the nuclear plant's pylons (or whatever). Even after all that, all he says is "It's nice to be wanted." Actually pretty touching.
  • Smithers. Poor guy.
  • Frank Grimes, who ends up being Driven to Suicide.
  • Iron Woobie: The mere fact that Mrs. Krabappel hasn't suffered a complete and total nervous breakdown from having Bart as a student shows just how resilient she truly is.
  • Homer as well. He gets severely injured frequently, but that never changes his long term cheery attitude.
  • Santa's Little Helper, at least in "Dog Of Death." The expense of the surgery needed to save his life generates resentment towards him among the Simpson family, so he runs away, gets taken to the pound, and then gets adopted by Burns, who proceeds to torture him, then brainwashes him into being a Right-Hand Attack Dog, then sics him on Bart... the memories of Bart overcome the brainwashing, though.
  • Gil was probably created with this trope in mind, but he ended up being a scrappy.
  • Ralph Wiggum, to fans who know kids with special needs.
  • Milhouse, especially in earlier episodes.
  • Lisa, at times bordering on Jerkass Woobie. Sure, she can be self-righteous and try to force her views on people, and she can be pretty awful to her family. But at the same time, they can be pretty insensitive to her (whether or not they mean to) and for all her intelligence and awareness, she's a little girl who doesn't fit in with her society. She holds onto her integrity by refusing to change, but that just makes her even more miserable when she can't get others to change either. She loves her family, but living with them is a struggle.
  • Ned Flanders, if you really think about it. As a child he had issues with his lazy beatnik parents who never bothered to discipline him, so they took him to a doctor for 8 months of continual spanking until he was repressed as all hell. He loses his house, loses a wife, loses another wife...yeah. He may be a fundamentalist asshole, but can you blame him for snapping after going through so much? (Especially losing Edna, who proved to actually be a good influence on him and his boys by inspiring him to change and loosen up a bit.)
  • Marge. She's a wet blanket, but she also grew up with a mother who forced her to smile when she didn't feel like it, her older sisters bossed her around and treated her like crap, and while she loves her family and doesn't regret spending her life with Homer, he and all of their kids are a handful and she has no choice but to play the wet blanket. She also doesn't seem to have any friendships that last more than an episode. Her whole life is spent making sure her family doesn't explode, and sometimes even her best efforts can't stop something terrible from happening.
  • Hans Moleman is a recurring victim of hit-and-runs, footballs in the groin, catching fire, and other painful mishaps. He was also an alcoholic to the point where it aged him horribly (even if he may not actually be 31 as he claims to be), his radio show is all about the agony that he lives in, and no one's gay for him.

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