History AluminumChristmasTrees / TheSimpsons

* The Canyonero F-Series from "Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers'". Seems kinda ridiculous ([[ValuesDissonance and a bit sexist]]) that there would be cars marketed to women, right? Well, meet the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_La_Femme Dodge La Femme]], a rare version of the first generation Dodge Lancer offered only in 1955 and 1956. Not only was it a trim level of a car explicitly marketed to women, the La Femme came with a lipstick case (which was inside of a purse that matched the car's interior), not unlike how the F-Series came with a lipstick applicator in the cigarette port.

* In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E22KrustyGetsKancelled Krusty Gets Kancelled]]", a drunken Barney chants "We want Chilli Willi!" as the Music/RedHotChiliPeppers dispute with Moe, who booked them to play in his bar. This is a StealthPun on the group [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilli_Willi_and_the_Red_Hot_Peppers Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers,]] whose members included a [[RetroActiveRecognition pre-]][[Music/TheResidents Residents]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakefinger Snakefinger.]]

* In "Bart's Not Dead", Bart's improvised detail about Jesus riding a rainbow horse is taken straight from ''Heaven is for Real,'' one of the NearDeathExperience-based bestsellers being parodied in this episode.

* When Creator/GaryColeman is seen working as a security guard for a toy company in the episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS11E9GriftOfTheMagi Grift of the Magi]]", it probably just seemed like a rather strange way to write him into the episode and like they were poking fun at the actor's size, but it was actually a very topical joke. Coleman really did work as a security guard for a while, gaining news attention about a year before the episode aired when he assaulted a fan who was pestering him for an autograph and insulting him while he was on patrol.

* "Bart on the Road" left a few people surprised to learn that the Sunsphere in Knoxville, Tennessee is actually [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunsphere real,]] and really was built for when Knoxville hosted the World's Fair in 1982. Never used as wig-storage, though.

* In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS2E14PrincipalCharming Principal Charming]]," Marge brings up the time that Homer dragged the family to visit the Bowler's Hall of Fame in St. Louis, Missouri to see a car shaped like a giant bowling pin, with Homer reminscing of a picture of it. At the time of the episode's first airing, the Bowling Hall of Fame was a real museum in St. Louis, and did have a car shaped like a bowling pin displayed there (though Homer's picture depicts the bowling pin standing up, rather than on its side). The museum has since moved to Arlington, Texas.

* In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS11E3GuessWhosComingToCriticizeDinner Guess Who's Coming To Criticize Dinner?]]", Homer gets hired as a food critic for the The Springfield Shopper newspaper and is introduced to their TV critic, but Homer gets upset with him, blaming him for getting two shows that Homer enjoyed, ''Platypus Man'' and ''The Cosby Mysteries'', cancelled. These were, in fact, real shows that aired during the mid-90s (the ending of "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS6E25WhoShotMrBurnsPartOne Who Shot Mr. Burns?: Part 1]]" spoofed the latter with a FourthWallPsych).

* "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS5E1HomersBarbershopQuartet Homer's Barbershop Quartet]]" features the titular group, the Be Sharps, managing to become well-known celebrities and even win a Grammy (for whatever that's worth). While it seems absurd that a band operating in a genre associated with the 30s could have top-billboard hits in the 80s, there really was an ''a capella'' craze during the period when the Be Sharps would have been active.

** Grampa's claim that Sauerkraut used to be known as Liberty Cabbage seems like one of his usual tall-tales about the olden days (perhaps with a hint satire based on the then-recent renaming of French Fries to Freedom Fries). However, Sauerkraut really was marketed as Liberty Cabbage during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, due to concerns the American public would reject a product with a German name. A similar mentality lead to calling hamburgers "Salisbury steak", before that was used for a different dish entirely.

** Bart, Lisa, Milhouse, Nelson, and Ralph at the focus group wanting a down to earth show with magic robots while being able to win things by watching doesn't sound so far off from either anime or sentai/Power Ranger premises, and even the Pokemon anime allowed for a costless alternative for something to win for watching the show in the "Who's That Pokemon?" commercial break cutaways.

* The episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E10LisasFirstWord Lisa's First Word]]" flashed back to 1984 and included a running gag about Krusty's burger chain going broke due to an Olympic promotion that didn't anticipate the Communist boycott of those games; specifically, that customers would get a free Krusty Burger for every gold medal won by the American teams. And with America's top competitors sitting it out that year...[[DidntThinkThisThrough yeah.]] As [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19334_the-5-biggest-disasters-in-history-marketing-ideas.html Cracked points out]], that actually happened to UsefulNotes/McDonalds that year.

* In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS6E4ItchyAndScratchyLand Itchy & Scratchy Land]]", Bart thought it was ridiculous that the gift shop had no "Bart" vanity license plates, but they did have "Bort" ones. [[http://www.everydayfamily.com/baby-names/name/bort/ "Bort"]] is a real name.

** Homer at one point declares that if they want to save Poochie as a character, he needs to be "louder, angrier, and have access to a time machine." [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers That last one]] sounds like a completely random Homer-ism, right? Not quite: it's a reference to ''Series/FamilyMatters'', where Steve Urkel built a time machine in the eighth season, a common point brought up by viewers who saw him as a CreatorsPet and a herald of the show becoming DenserAndWackier to maintain interest (a major running theme of the episode).

* In "Guess Who's Coming To Criticize Dinner?", Homer gets hired as a food critic for the The Springfield Shopper newspaper and is introduced to their TV critic, but Homer gets upset with him, blaming him for getting two shows that Homer enjoyed, ''Platypus Man'' and ''The Cosby Mysteries'', cancelled. These were, in fact, both real shows (the ending of "Who Shot Mr. Burns?: Part 1" spoofed the latter with a FourthWallPsych).

* The ''Transclown-O-Morphs'' gag where the clown robot tells kids to "buy my cereal!" in [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/TheSimpsonsS19E17ApocalypseCow "Apocalypse Cow"]] is only a ''slight'' exaggeration of how real cartoons in the 50's through the 70's would shill for their corporate sponsors. Before legislation was passed limiting the quantity and method of advertising in children's programming, cartoons really ''would'' grind the story to a halt for an in-show commercial.

** "The Simpson Family Smile-Time Variety Hour" is very closely based on ''Series/TheBradyBunchVarietyHour'', between the cheesy G-rated comedy, the C-list guest stars, the baffling use of an existing set of characters, the weird musical numbers done by people who don't seem all that well-trained, and the blatant use of TheOtherDarrin by replacing a main cast member with someone who looks nothing like her whatsoever. Chances are, you only know about that show because of this episode; it's a perennial placer on "worst shows of all time" lists.

* In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS11E6HelloGutterHelloFadder Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder]]", while at the bowling alley, Lenny mentions that his banana split cost him $7.10, a joke referencing the dreaded 7-10 pin split during tenpin bowling. It's actually not uncommon for bowling alley snack bars to sell banana splits with this price as a humorous reference to every bowler's worst nightmare.

* While most people today think that the reference to UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump being President of the United States in the episode "[[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/TheSimpsonsS11E17BartToTheFuture Bart To The Future]]" (which aired in March 2000) "predicted" Trump's eventual election to the presidency, Trump was actually involved in his first unsuccessful presidential campaign at the time. He ran as a candidate for the Reform Party for the 2000 election, but ended his campaign after four months with Pat Buchanan being selected as the Reform candidate.

* In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E22KrustyGetsKancelled Krusty Gets Kancelled]]", a drunken Barney chants "We want Chilli Willi!" as the Music/RedHotChiliPeppers dispute with Moe, who booked them to play in his bar. This is a StealthPun on an actual group: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilli_Willi_and_the_Red_Hot_Peppers Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers]]. Their guitarist was a regular contributor to Music/TheResidents' works.

* In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS7E12TeamHomer Team Homer]]", Skinner shares a story about his imprisonment during the Vietnam War, specifically remembering "a thin stew of fish, vegetables, prawns, coconut milk, and four kinds of rice. I came close to madness trying to find it here in the States, but they just can't get the spices right!". Skinner's describing a real Vietnamese dish called Thai Tom Kha Goong.

* In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS10E22TheySavedLisasBrain They Saved Lisa's Brain]]", where the smartest members of Springfield took political power over the town, Skinner announces that Springfield will convert to metric clocks. This seems like an example of the group's snobbery but metric time was an actual concept. During UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution, there was an active campaign to rid France of any trace of its former regime which included remaking the clock and calendar to fit the metric system meaning 10 seconds in a minute, 100 minutes in an hour, 10 days in a week and so on. Since the common French weren't prepared for the transition, metric time was a complete disaster.

* It's easy to write off Truck-O-Saurus, the gigantic robotic T-Rex that eats cars in "Bart the Daredevil", as just a typical example of the show's satirical takes on American entertainment, but it's actually a direct parody of [[https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/robosaurus-car-eating-dinosaur-toy Robosaurus]], a giant robot built by Doug Malewicki that has toured around the world at various stunt shows since the early 1990s. If anything the version depicted in the show is actually more ''subdued'' than the actual Robosaurus show.
* While most people today think that the reference to Donald Trump being President of the United States in the episode "Bart to the Future" (which aired in March 2000) "predicted" Trump's eventual election to the presidency, Trump was actually involved in his first unsuccessful presidential campaign at the time. He ran as a candidate for the Reform Party for the 2000 election, but ended his campaign after four months with Pat Buchanan being selected as the Reform candidate.

* While most people today think that the reference to Donald Trump being President of the United States in the episode "Bart to the Future" (which airied in March 2000) "predicted" Trump's eventual election to President, Trump was actually involved in his first unsuccessful Presidential campaign at the time.

* In "The Otto Show", Homer finds a can of Billy Beer in one of his old jackets. Surprisingly, this is an actual beverage, which started being produced in 1977.

* In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsWhoShotMrBurns Who Shot Mr. Burns: Part 2]]", it's revealed that Maggie Simpson shot Mr. Burns as he was trying to take away her lollipop (in his struggle, his gun fell into her lap and went off, wounding him). Sounds silly, doesn't it? Though as ''Series/{{Mythbusters}}'' has demonstrated, taking candy from a baby is not as easy as it sounds.

* In "The Milhouse of Sand and Fog", the Simpsons throw a "pox party" when [[ChickenpoxEpisode Maggie gets chickenpox]], so that [[GettingSickDeliberately other kids can catch it]], since chickenpox is worse for adults than children. This may seem like some absurd ritual made up for ''The Simpsons'', but some people actually do this (though it's become rarer since the advent of the chickenpox vaccine).

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