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* SanitySlippage: In "Kill the Aligator And Run", Homer takes a longevity quiz on his issue of "Self-Test Monthly" and learns he has three years to live. Fearing he'd die in his sleep, he stays awake and ends up hallucinating that people on TV are threatening to kill him and thinking that he won't die if he becomes a mother.
-->'''Homer:''' [[MadnessMantra Can't sleep, gonna die. Can't sleep, gonna die.]]
-->'''Homer:''' [[MadnessMantra Can't sleep, gonna die. Can't sleep, gonna die.]]
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* SequentialSymptomSyndrome: In "One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish", Homer eats fugu and thinks he's going to die. He experiences the five stages of grief as quickly as Doctor Hibbert can recite them.
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* UnwinnableJokeGame: A recurring Minigame in ''TheSimpsons'' video games, "Larry The Looter", is completely unwinnable. Immediately after looting the electronics store (the only store it's possible to loot), [[ShopliftAndDie Larry is gunned down by the angry store owner.]]
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* WholePlotReference: ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', ''TheDeparted'', ''MrAndMrsSmith'', ''Film/MaryPoppins'', ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', ''{{Dracula}}'', ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'', ''Film/SidAndNancy'', ''Disney/LadyAndTheTramp'', ''Film/ThelmaAndLouise'', ''RearWindow'', ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', ''Series/TwentyFour'', ''Film/TheShining'', ''MyMotherTheCar'', ''Film/BatmanBegins'', ''Film/KingKong'', ''TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau''...
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* WholePlotReference: ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', ''TheDeparted'', ''MrAndMrsSmith'', ''Film/MaryPoppins'', ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', ''{{Dracula}}'', ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'', ''Film/SidAndNancy'', ''Disney/LadyAndTheTramp'', ''Film/ThelmaAndLouise'', ''RearWindow'', ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', ''Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', ''Series/TwentyFour'', ''Film/TheShining'', ''MyMotherTheCar'', ''Film/BatmanBegins'', ''Film/KingKong'', ''TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau''...
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* YourWorstNightmare: In a "Treehouse of Horror", Bart and Lisa, in a parody of ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', are being terrorized by Groundskeeper Willie in their dreams.
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* YourWorstNightmare: In a "Treehouse of Horror", Bart and Lisa, in a parody of ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', ''Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', are being terrorized by Groundskeeper Willie in their dreams.
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** In "Mommie Beerest", a health inspector named Frankie is pale as a result of eating Moe Syszlak's pickled eggs and dies.
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* WholePlotReference: ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', ''TheDeparted'', ''MrAndMrsSmith'', ''Film/MaryPoppins'', ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', ''{{Dracula}}'', ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'', ''Film/SidAndNancy'', ''Disney/LadyAndTheTramp'', ''Film/ThelmaAndLouise'', ''RearWindow'', ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', ''Series/TwentyFour'', ''TheShining'', ''MyMotherTheCar'', ''Film/BatmanBegins'', ''Film/KingKong'', ''TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau''...
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* WholePlotReference: ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', ''TheDeparted'', ''MrAndMrsSmith'', ''Film/MaryPoppins'', ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', ''{{Dracula}}'', ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'', ''Film/SidAndNancy'', ''Disney/LadyAndTheTramp'', ''Film/ThelmaAndLouise'', ''RearWindow'', ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', ''Series/TwentyFour'', ''TheShining'', ''Film/TheShining'', ''MyMotherTheCar'', ''Film/BatmanBegins'', ''Film/KingKong'', ''TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau''...
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'''Bart''': You mean the [[TheShining Shining]].\\
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'''Bart''': You mean the [[TheShining [[Film/TheShining Shining]].\\
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* WalkThroughTheCamera:
** "Selma's Choice" Bart and Lisa try to get Selma off a bench and ride a rollercoaster.
** "Much Apu About Nothing" near the beginning where Homer tries to get beer from the fridge. "Let's all calm down. Everyone's going to be just fine. As long as I have enough beers."
** "Selma's Choice" Bart and Lisa try to get Selma off a bench and ride a rollercoaster.
** "Much Apu About Nothing" near the beginning where Homer tries to get beer from the fridge. "Let's all calm down. Everyone's going to be just fine. As long as I have enough beers."
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Trope was renamed
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* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotHeinous: Homer aghast at Marge for mixing polyapolane with polyurethane recyclables in "The Old Man and the Lisa".
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Removing wick to Did Not Do The Research per rename at TRS.
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* SpellMyNameWithAnS: Frequently in the subtitles -- "Crusty the Clown" instead of "Krusty the Klown", "Mo" instead of "Moe", and most egregiously, "Crabapple" instead of "Krabappel". Obviously the subtitlers DidNotDoTheResearch.
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* SpellMyNameWithAnS: Frequently in the subtitles -- "Crusty the Clown" instead of "Krusty the Klown", "Mo" instead of "Moe", and most egregiously, "Crabapple" instead of "Krabappel". Obviously the subtitlers DidNotDoTheResearch.
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* WorldsSmallestViolin Lenny loses the bow
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* WorldsSmallestViolin WorldsSmallestViolin: Lenny loses the bowbow.
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** And of course this bit from one of the Treehouse of Horrors.
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** And of course this bit from one ''Treehouse of the Treehouse of Horrors.Horror V''.
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'''Bart''': Oh you mean the [[TheShining Shining]].\\
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'''Bart''': Oh you You mean the [[TheShining Shining]].\\
* WritingLines: The chalkboard gags.
** From ''Treehouse of Horror XX'':
-->'''Jimbo''': The classics called! They want their costumes back!
-->'''Jimbo''': The classics called! They want their costumes back!
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** In the new opening: Lenny Carl are changing the "days without an accident" one higher, then the Quitting Time Horn goes off and Homer runs out, knocking them over in the process.
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** In the new third opening: Lenny Carl are changing the "days without an accident" one higher, then the Quitting Time Horn goes off and Homer runs out, knocking them over in the process.
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sp
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** Homer and Marge marry shortly after she gets pregnant, in a chappel appropriately named "Shotgun's Pete".
** The Tom Sawyer's episode features a literal shotgun wedding, with Marge running away the the moment Abraham Simpson lowers the gun years after.
** The Tom Sawyer's episode features a literal shotgun wedding, with Marge running away the the moment Abraham Simpson lowers the gun years after.
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** Homer and Marge marry shortly after she gets pregnant, in a chappel appropriately named "Shotgun's Pete"."Shotgun Pete's".
** The Tom Sawyer's episode "Simpson Tall Tales" features a literal shotgun wedding, with Marge remembering hers and running away the the moment Abraham Simpson lowers thegun gun, years after.
** The Tom Sawyer's episode "Simpson Tall Tales" features a literal shotgun wedding, with Marge remembering hers and running away the the moment Abraham Simpson lowers the
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* ShotgunWedding:
** Homer and Marge marry shortly after she gets pregnant, in a chappel appropriately named "Shotgun's Pete".
** The Tom Sawyer's episode features a literal shotgun wedding, with Marge running away the the moment Abraham Simpson lowers the gun years after.
** Homer and Marge marry shortly after she gets pregnant, in a chappel appropriately named "Shotgun's Pete".
** The Tom Sawyer's episode features a literal shotgun wedding, with Marge running away the the moment Abraham Simpson lowers the gun years after.
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* SecretSanta: In "'Tis the Fifteenth Seasons", Homer gets an extravagant present from his secret Santa (Carl). Homer forgets to bring something for Lenny, since he's Lenny's secret Santa, so he goes to a snack machine and [[ConvenienceStoreGiftShopping buys him some Certs]].
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** A recent shout out to FamilyGuy (the not-quite-dead ostrich) is notable because the two shows tend to ignore each other.''{{
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** A recent shout out to FamilyGuy WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy (the not-quite-dead ostrich) is notable because the two shows tend to ignore each other.''{{
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* SignificantBirthdate: In Season 10's "Viva Ned Flanders," Homer casually mentions that Barney's birthday is the same as [[AdolfHitler Hitler]]'s [April 20th] ([[EditedForSyndication in syndicated reruns and on the Season 10 DVD version, the date was changed to July 15th, and the celebrity whom Homer knows has that birthday is Lassie the dog]]).
to:
* SignificantBirthdate: In Season 10's "Viva Ned Flanders," Homer casually mentions that Barney's birthday is the same as [[AdolfHitler Hitler]]'s Hitler's]] [April 20th] ([[EditedForSyndication in syndicated reruns and on the Season 10 DVD version, the date was changed to July 15th, and the celebrity whom Homer knows has that birthday is Lassie the dog]]).
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[[/folder]]
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--> '''Homer''': Marge, tell ''Bart'' I just want to drink a nice glass of syrup like I do every morning.
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--> '''Homer''': Marge, tell ''Bart'' I ''Bart I'' just want to drink a nice glass of syrup like I do every morning.
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* VandalismBackfire: Bart is angry at Lisa, and darkly announces that as vengeance, he tore the head off of a stuffed animal named Mr. Honey-Bunny. Lisa then reminds Bart that that was ''his'' beloved childhood toy.
-->'''Bart:''' ''Agh!'' Mr. Honey-Bunny! (''places the head back on and kisses it desperately'')
-->'''Bart:''' ''Agh!'' Mr. Honey-Bunny! (''places the head back on and kisses it desperately'')
to:
* VandalismBackfire: Bart is angry at Lisa, and darkly announces that as vengeance, he tore the head off of a stuffed animal named Mr. Honey-Bunny. Lisa then reminds Bart that that was ''his'' beloved childhood toy.
toy.
-->'''Bart:''' ''Agh!'' Mr. Honey-Bunny! (''places the head back on and kisses itdesperately'') desperately'')
-->'''Bart:''' ''Agh!'' Mr. Honey-Bunny! (''places the head back on and kisses it
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* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Colin, from [[TheSimpsonsMovie the movie]] most notably, and Janey Handerson, Lisa's friend who seemed to get pushed aside so the [[IntelligenceEqualsIsolation "Lisa has no friends"]] running plot could happen.
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* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Colin, from [[TheSimpsonsMovie [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsonsMovie the movie]] most notably, and Janey Handerson, Lisa's friend who seemed to get pushed aside so the [[IntelligenceEqualsIsolation "Lisa has no friends"]] running plot could happen.
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* WholePlotReference: ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', ''TheDeparted'', ''MrAndMrsSmith'', ''Film/MaryPoppins'', ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', ''{{Dracula}}'', ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'', ''Film/SidAndNancy'', ''Disney/LadyAndTheTramp'', ''Film/ThelmaAndLouise'', ''RearWindow'', ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', ''Series/TwentyFour'', ''TheShining'', ''MyMotherTheCar'', ''Film/BatmanBegins'', ''KingKong'', ''TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau''...
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* WholePlotReference: ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', ''TheDeparted'', ''MrAndMrsSmith'', ''Film/MaryPoppins'', ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', ''{{Dracula}}'', ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'', ''Film/SidAndNancy'', ''Disney/LadyAndTheTramp'', ''Film/ThelmaAndLouise'', ''RearWindow'', ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', ''Series/TwentyFour'', ''TheShining'', ''MyMotherTheCar'', ''Film/BatmanBegins'', ''KingKong'', ''Film/KingKong'', ''TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau''...
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[[/folder]]
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* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome: Parodied in "The PTA Disbands" -- the original writer's pitch was, as the title suggests, a story about the Springfield Parent-Teacher Association threatening to disband because of a dispute between the parents and teachers. The episode was rewritten into one about the Springfield Elementary teachers going on strike because of a dispute with Skinner, but a reference to the original storyline was inserted, with a parent seemingly committing suicide by jumping out of a tall building because he thought the PTA had disbanded. Ned Flanders then revealed that the PTA hadn't actually disbanded, and the jumper then climbed back in through the window in relief.
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* WaterHoseRodeo: This occurs in "Last Exit to Springfield", due to Mr. Burns's incredibly weak strength.
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* VerbThis: In Homer's revised ending to Mel Gibson's remake of ''MrSmithGoesToWashington'':
-->'''Senator Paine:''' I believe the Senator has yielded the floor.\\
'''Mr. Smith:''' Yield this, Senator Paine.
-->'''Senator Paine:''' I believe the Senator has yielded the floor.\\
'''Mr. Smith:''' Yield this, Senator Paine.
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* SignificantBirthdate: On season 10's "Viva Ned Flanders," Homer casually mentions that Barney's birthday is the same as [[AdolfHitler Hitler]]'s [April 20th] ([[EditedForSyndication in syndicated reruns and on the season 10 DVD version, the date was changed to July 15th, and the celebrity whom Homer knows has that birthday is Lassie the dog]]).
to:
* SignificantBirthdate: On season In Season 10's "Viva Ned Flanders," Homer casually mentions that Barney's birthday is the same as [[AdolfHitler Hitler]]'s [April 20th] ([[EditedForSyndication in syndicated reruns and on the season Season 10 DVD version, the date was changed to July 15th, and the celebrity whom Homer knows has that birthday is Lassie the dog]]).
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* SilenceYouFool: One example near the end of the second act from the episode 'Bart sells his Soul':
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* SignificantMonogram: Subverted/averted with Marge, who in her high school days was a StrawFeminist known as Marge Bouvier; since her marriage to Homer and assumption of the name Marge Simpson, she has been (by and large) rather tolerant of her new position as the [[CloserToEarth voice of reason]] Homer rarely heeds.
* SilenceYouFool: One example near the end of the second act from the episode'Bart sells his Soul':"Bart Sells His Soul":
* SilenceYouFool: One example near the end of the second act from the episode
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* WomenAreWiser: Marge and Lisa to Bart and (especially) Homer.
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* VandalismBackfire: Bart is angry at Lisa, and darkly announces that as vengeance, he tore the head off of a stuffed animal named Mr. Honey-Bunny. Lisa then reminds Bart that that was ''his'' beloved childhood toy.
-->'''Bart:''' ''Agh!'' Mr. Honey-Bunny! (''places the head back on and kisses it desperately'')
-->'''Bart:''' ''Agh!'' Mr. Honey-Bunny! (''places the head back on and kisses it desperately'')
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* WeDidntStartTheBillyJoelParodies: "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0PJYqzht3s They'll Never Stop the Simpsons]]", a [[TheJimmyHartVersion Jimmy Hart Version]] at the end of the 2002 "Gump Roast" episode (so far, [[LongRunner they seem to be right]]).
to:
* WeDidntStartTheBillyJoelParodies: "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0PJYqzht3s They'll Never Stop the Simpsons]]", a [[TheJimmyHartVersion Jimmy Hart Version]] SuspiciouslySimilarSong at the end of the 2002 "Gump Roast" episode (so far, [[LongRunner they seem to be right]]).
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* WholePlotReference: ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', ''TheDeparted'', ''MrAndMrsSmith'', ''Film/MaryPoppins'', ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', ''{{Dracula}}'', ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'', ''Film/SidAndNancy'', ''Disney/LadyAndTheTramp'', ''Film/ThelmaAndLouise'', ''RearWindow'', ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', ''Series/TwentyFour'', ''TheShining'', ''MyMotherTheCar'', ''[[Film/TheDarkKnightSaga Batman Begins]]'', ''KingKong'', ''TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau''...
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* WholePlotReference: ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', ''TheDeparted'', ''MrAndMrsSmith'', ''Film/MaryPoppins'', ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', ''{{Dracula}}'', ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'', ''Film/SidAndNancy'', ''Disney/LadyAndTheTramp'', ''Film/ThelmaAndLouise'', ''RearWindow'', ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', ''Series/TwentyFour'', ''TheShining'', ''MyMotherTheCar'', ''[[Film/TheDarkKnightSaga Batman Begins]]'', ''Film/BatmanBegins'', ''KingKong'', ''TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau''...
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* UnwantedGlassesPlot: Bart gets thick glasses to correct his lazy eye in "The Last Temptation of Homer". Along with hair salve, throat spray, and heightened shoes, making him look and sound like a stereotypical nerd.
--> '''Martin''': Your appearance is comical to me!
--> '''Martin''': Your appearance is comical to me!
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* UncertainDoom: The fate of Artie Ziff.
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** Also played straight in that Marge could have been a LifeInHell rabbit in disguise. Early in the series, Matt Groening was planning to reveal that Marge was hiding rabbit ears under her hair, but the idea was scrapped either due to inconsistencies, or because [[BeyondTheImpossible it was too silly even for]] TheSimpsons. [[http://www.rubbercat.net/simpsons/marge-rabbit-sprites.png This idea is immortalized in the Arcade Game.]]
to:
** Also played straight in that Marge could have been a LifeInHell rabbit in disguise. Early in the series, Matt Groening was planning to reveal that Marge was hiding rabbit ears under her hair, but the idea was scrapped either due to inconsistencies, or because [[BeyondTheImpossible [[EveryoneHasStandards it was too silly even for]] TheSimpsons. [[http://www.rubbercat.net/simpsons/marge-rabbit-sprites.png This idea is immortalized in the Arcade Game.]]
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** In one episode, Krusty's face turns blue when a remote-controlled gag bow tie spins rapidly and uncontrollably, choking off the air supply from his lungs to his windpipe while in the middle of hosting his show.
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** In one episode, "Brother's Little Helper", Krusty's face turns blue when a remote-controlled gag bow tie spins rapidly and uncontrollably, choking off the air supply from his lungs to his windpipe while in the middle of hosting his show.
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* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: Marge and the van Houtens have blue hair. Marge actually dyes her hair that color, though it's assumed from flashbacks to her childhood that she ''was'' a natural blue.
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* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: Marge and the van Houtens have blue hair. Marge actually dyes her hair that color, though it's assumed from flashbacks to her childhood that she ''was'' a natural blue.blue(until she turned 17).
-->'''Homer''': She's been gray as a mule since she was 17.
-->'''Homer''': She's been gray as a mule since she was 17.
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* UnicornsAreSacred: In [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixzhgsY6lQY this]] couch gag, the workers manufacturing the Simpsons merchandise are depicted as miserable slaves made to work for cruel masters at Fox. There is a unicorn chained up in the underground sweatshop, looking malnourished and unhappy.
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** In "Selma's Choice", Lisa is pale from hypothermia after swimming in the beery river at Duff Gardens.
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** In "Selma's Choice", Lisa is pale from hypothermia after swimming in the beery river at Duff Gardens. In the same episode, Homer later turns pale when he falls ill from eating a tainted or stale sub sandwich.
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** In "Thirty Minutes over Tokyo", Homer's face turns magenta as a result of red tide poisoning from eating a can of expired plankton.
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----
-> View the main page [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons HERE]]
--> Tropes A-B [[TheSimpsons/TropesAToB HERE]]
--> Tropes C-D [[TheSimpsons/TropesCToD HERE]]
--> Tropes E-H [[TheSimpsons/TropesEToH HERE]]
--> Tropes I-M [[TheSimpsons/TropesIToM HERE]]
--> Tropes N-R [[TheSimpsons/TropesNToR HERE]]
----
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:S]]
* SadistTeacher: Bart's kindergarten teacher. You do NOT tell a five-year-old boy that the moral of The Ugly Duckling is that there is hope for everyone but him.
* SadisticChoice: Parodied in "Rosebud" with an example more trivial than most. Burns takes over all television networks available to Springfield, telling the whole town that he's not giving them back their television until someone steals Maggie's teddy bear and puts it on his desk. Cut to an angry mob outside the Simpson home stealing the teddy bear from her, only to return it out of regret once they see Maggie, visibly upset, trying to crawl over to take it back.
* SafetyWorst: In one episode, Homer becomes so obsessed with child-proofing that everything on the playground is covered in bubble-wrap, and he then regrets it when he learns that [[SpoofAesop children not being injured means doctors make less money and child injury greeting card factories close down.]]
* SamusIsAGirl: Parodied in ''Homer Of Seville'' when Homer is saved by a motorcyclist opera fan and TheReveal is overplayed by the woman and by Homer. The former says it too overdramatically and the latter says it with DullSurprise and with a comparison to TheTwilightZone.
** In "Girls Just Want to Have Sums", Lisa (disguised as a boy named Jake Boyman) reveals that she's actually a girl to the entire school.
* SapientCetaceans: In a TreehouseOfHorror episode dolphins invade the land and take over. They can speak English.
-->Snorky: ''[in high pitched voice]'' [[EloquentInMyNativeTongue Snorky ... talk ... man ...]] ''[clears throat and reverts to deep male voice]'' I'm sorry, let me start over. Eons ago, dolphins lived on the land. Then your ancestors drove us into the sea, where we suffered for millions of years. I, King Snorky, hereby banish all humans to the sea!
* SawStarWarsTwentySevenTimes: In the episode "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie," Milhouse brags about seeing the ''Itchy & Scratchy'' movie 15 times and Nelson brags that he saw it 17 times. Bart (who has been grounded from seeing the movie after failing to watch Maggie) tries to joke that the two must have been sick of seeing it and ends up getting chased by Nelson and Milhouse.
* SayMyName: "Mendooooozzzaaaaa!"
** [[CatchPhrase "SKINNER!"]]
*** [[PhraseCatcher "S-Superintendent Chalmers!"]]
** "Barrrrrrttttttttt!!!"
*** Even Lisa says his name whenever Bart pisses her off or pranks her.
** '''Marge''': Homer!
*** Marge also says "Homie/Homey" whenever she kisses or has sex with Homer.
* ScaleModelDestruction: Mr. Burns stomps on a model of Springfield Godzilla style.
* ScamReligion: Movementarianism.
** In the same episode ("The Joy of Sect"), Mr. Burns attempts to create his own religion after he hears that the Movementarian's leader has tax exempt status. The unveiling ceremony [[GoneHorriblyWrong went horribly wrong]], however, as a wayward spark from a firework destroyed his costume, and he fell from the balcony trying to put himself out.
---> '''Lenny:''' Meh. He's alright, but he's no bowl of Special K!
* {{Scandalgate}}: Subverted where Kent Brockman reveals that the trial of Mayor Quimby's nephew for assaulting a waiter is being dubbed by the media as "Beat Up Waiter":
-->'''Kent Brockman:''' This reporter suggested "Waitergate" but was shouted down at the Press Club.
* SceneryCensor: Demonstrated with Marge's portrait of Mr. Burns, where something thin always obscures his tiny penis.
** "Natural Born Kissers" features much of this in the final act when Homer and Marge are trying to find cover while naked.
* SchmuckBait: In the fourth Treehouse of Horror, Bart come across a lever for a [[SuperHappyFunTropeOfDoom "Super Happy Fun Slide"]] while escaping some vampires. He even lampshade it before he pulls it and slides right into the clutches of the undead and his own vamping. Homer nearly does the same later in the episode.
--->'''Bart''': I know I shouldn't, but when will I be here again?
** In another early Treehouse of Horror episode, the aliens' cookbook "How to Cook For Forty Humans" caused Lisa to think they were going to eat The Simpsons, first thinking the dust covered title was "How to Cook Humans" until Kang blew some dust off to reveal that it said "How to Cook For Humans" until Lisa blew more dust off revealing "How to Cook Forty Humans" before the final dust was blew off revealing its full title. Unfortunately, Lisa's distrust ruined their chances of being pampered by the alien civilization and they were returned to Earth.
* [[invoked]] TheScrappy: in "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", Poochie is a new ''[[ShowWithinAShow Itchy & Scratchy]]'' character voiced by Homer, who is TotallyRadical (and in Itchy's face) even in his [[AndKnowingIsHalfTheBattle post-episode aesops]]. No-one likes him, and is hastily canned, leading to the ShooOutTheNewGuy trope.
* ScoutOut: The Junior Campers in "Boy Scoutz 'n the Hood".
* ScreamsLikeALittleGirl: Homer does it the most, but Ned's screaming actually sounds like a woman's (his singing as well, which Bart finds disturbing [because he found it attractive]).
* SdrawkcabName: Mr. Burns "disguises" himself as "Mr. Snrub" in "A Star is Burns".
--> '''Smithers''': I like the way "Snrub" thinks!
** In the credits of ''Treehouse of Horror VII, Dan Castellaneta's name is spelled backwards.
* SecondPersonAttack: In "Husbands and Knives", a triple Second-Person Attack is made by Art Spiegelman, Daniel Clowes and Alan Moore, who all simultaneously punch Comic Book Guy when he was trying to destroy a rival comic book store that's ruining his business.
* SecretIngredient:
** Marge's secret ingredient for pork chops is salt.
** The secret ingredient for making a Flaming Homer cocktail is "Krusty Brand Non-Narkotik Kough Syrup".
* SeeYouInHell: "...from Heaven." ("Two Dozen and One Greyhounds", Lovejoy)
** "See you in Hell, candy boys!" (throws explosive) ("Homer Badman", Homer)
** "See you in Hell, God bless this house." ("Mom and Pop Art", Bart)
** "See you in Hell, dinner plate." ("The Cartridge Family", Homer)
** "Thank you for coming! I'll see you in Hell!" ("Homer the Vigilante", Apu)
** "I'll see you in Hell yet, Homer Simpson!" ("Treehouse of Horror IV", Flanders/Satan)
** "See you in Hell." "Still pushing that boulder?" "Uh-huh." ("Treehouse of Horror III", various zombies returning to their graves)
* SelectiveEnforcement: In one episode, Barney and Lenny play pranks on Moe which involve setting him on fire and setting a cobra on him. Homer, in an attempt to join in the "harmless" fun loosens the lid on a sugar shaker. He gets kicked out of the bar.
* SelfServingMemory: In $pringfield, when Homer accuses Marge of being against the casino, flashes back to a very bizarre scene. Also used by Burns and Bart in the trial in Bart Gets Hit By a Car.
** In "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace", Homer claims that Marge told him to quit his job and become an inventor, or she'd torch the house.
* SeniorSleepCycle: Homer's father even falls asleep mid-sentence.
* SensitiveGuyAndManlyMan: Milhouse and Bart.
* SequelEpisode: "Brawl in the Family", which followed up on Homer's second marriage to Amber from "Viva Ned Flanders".
** Similarly, "Papa Don't Leach" is a follow-up to "Colonel Homer".
** "My Mother the Carjacker" and "Mona Leaves-a" follows up on the "Homer's mother" plot thread started in "Mother Simpson".
** The earliest example would probably be "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?" being a follow up to "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"
** "The Great Louse Detective", which was a follow-up to "Homer's Enemy".
* SerenadeYourLover: It happens a lot-- see trope page.
* SesameStreetCred: Celebrity voices have been rumored to line up for years to get on the show. Even playing themselves.
* SesquipedalianLoquaciousness: Homer in "Bart's Friend Falls In Love", after getting a subliminal vocabulary-building tape since they were out of weight-loss tapes.
* SeverelySpecializedStore: A borderline example appears in "When Flanders Failed". Ned Flanders opens The Leftorium, a store with left-handed products for left-handed people; despite having a wide range of products, it initially fails due to interference by Homer.
* SexyDiscretionShot: Not shying away about sex even when left to the imagination, this trope happens in several episodes:
** The episode "Grade School Confidential" has Principal Skinner and Edna Krabappel having a conversation, eating applesauce, and then making out in Edna's apartment only to have sex on the kitchen floor; thus explained with the Charlie Brown Wax Candle burning down to it's feet.
-->'''Edna''': Seymour, swallow that applesauce and kiss me.
-->'''Skinner''': I'm afraid I already swallowed it while you were talking.
*** They fooled around that night, they didn't have sex. Later in that very episode, Skinner reveals that he is a virgin. According to the DVD commentaries, that was truthful and not some trick.
** "Insane Clown Poppy": In Krusty's flashback about how Krusty met Sophie's mother in the Gulf War, we see Krusty and her kissing and embracing each other in a army tent and then it pans to the window shot of the burning torches in the desert which 'burned out' like candles in the morning.
-->'''Krusty''': There was your mother -- looking like a beautiful mirage. Maybe it was the anthrax in the air, maybe it was the fact that the Arab women weren't biting, whatever it was, it was magic.
** "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington": The still 'far out' shot of the "Ye Olde Off-Ramp Inn" when Mayor Quimby has sex with one of his lady friends.
-->'''Mayor Quimby''': Vote Quimby, vote Quimby, vote Quimby, VOTE QUIMBY! [orgasmic moan]
** "She Used to Be My Girl": After rescuing Chloe, Barney is rewarded with pity sex in which we see the shot of the helicopter humping up and down.
** "Treehouse of Horror XVI": Happens at the end of the second segment, "Survival of the Fattest", in which after everyone dies by Mr. Burns hunting rifle on a reality show with Homer surviving and after Marge bops both Burns and Smithers with two frying pans, both of them immediately have sex only to have commentator Terry Bradshaw as the 'Discrection' shot.
** Subverted in "Lisa's First Word" which [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPNxZno3YaM&feature=related happens in this scene]]:
-->'''Bart''': Mom, what was my first word?
-->'''Marge''': Hmmm...
-->[Flashback to baby Bart walking on his parents having sex]
-->'''Baby Bart''': [[PrimalScene Ay caramba!]]
-->[Returns to present]
-->'''Marge''': I don't think I remember.
** "The Devil Wears Nada": Near the end in which Marge (after eating strawberries with whipped cream and spending a brief but near-kiss moments twice with Ned in the Simpsons house) and Homer (back from his trip with Carl in Paris) immediately have sex, as usual. Cut to shaking family pictures in the living room, cut to SLH and a white dog(similar to the Lady and the Tramp dog) nose rubbing in the doghouse, and finally cut to birds forming the shape of a heart.
** "Dangerous Curves": In a scene in this flashback episode, Ned and Maude (seducing him modestly) kiss and then turn out the lights while Homer and Marge, unmarried, are separated in different rooms.
** Subverted in the flashback episode "And Maggie Makes Three" in this scene after Homer and Marge spent a romantic evening celebrating their new life:
-->'''Homer''': [sighs] I love you, Marge.
-->'''Marge''': I love you too, Homey.
-->'''Homer''': Everything in our lives is finally perfectly balanced. I hope things stay exactly like this forever.
-->'''Marge''': Mm hmm.
-->["Seconds later" scene shows lots of little Homer sperm bumping their heads and going "D'oh! D'oh!"]
-->[one breaks through the egg and goes "Woo hoo!"]
-->[scene switch to present day, Homer swimming like a sperm]
-->'''Marge''': Did you have to be so graphic?
-->'''Homer''': It's OK, Marge: they pave the way for this kind of filth in school.
** "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy". After telling Abe about how weak their sex life is, Abe gives Homer some tonic to improve his sex life with Marge leading to shots of a train going into a tunnel, a rocket blasting off, and hot dogs falling in a factory which pans back to reveal Bart, Lisa and Maggie in a movie theater watching stock footage of all three:
-->'''Lisa''': Whaddya think Mom and Dad are doing right now?
-->'''Bart''': I dunno.
*** Later in the episode, the same goes for many other married couples who took the tonic leaving Bart, Lisa, and Milhouse to believe different conclusions:
-->'''Bart''': OK, it's not 'painfully' clear the adults are 'definitely' paving the way for an invasion by the saucer people.
-->'''Milhouse''': You fool! Can't you see it's a massive government conspiracy? Or have they gotten to you too?
-->[he and Bart start wrestling]
-->'''Lisa''': Hey! Hey, hey, stop it! Stop it! Why are you guys jumping to such ridiculous conclusions? Haven't you ever heard of Occam's Razor? "The simplest explanation is probably the correct one."
-->'''Bart''': [condescending] So what's the simplest explanation?
-->'''Lisa''': I don't know. Maybe they're all reverse vampires and they have to get home before dark.
-->'''Everyone''': Aah! Reverse vampires! Reverse vampires!
-->[Lisa sighs]
*** And later:
-->'''Bart''': So finally, we're all in agreement about what's going on with the adults. Milhouse?
-->'''Milhouse''': [steps up to blackboard] Ahem. OK, here's what we've got: the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people --
-->'''Bart''': Thank you.
-->'''Milhouse''': -- under the supervision of the reverse vampires --
-->'''Lisa''': [sighs]
-->'''Milhouse''': -- are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner. [sotto voce] We're through the looking glass, here, people...
** "I Married Marge": In this flashback episode in how Bart was born, Homer and Marge make out in the minature golf castle:
-->'''Marge''': Maybe it's the champale talking, but I think you're pretty sexy.
-->'''Homer''': Really? It <must> be the champale talking.
-->[Homer and Marge kiss]
-->'''Marge''': What if we get caught?
-->'''Homer''': Don't worry. This castle is impregnable.
*** Then after that, a golfer putts a golf ball into the 'free game' hole which flashes.
** "Catch 'Em If You Can": Near the end of the episode in which Homer and Marge finally make love, which we don't see explicitly, in an inflated castle floating in the Niagara River.
** "The Boys of Bummer": Happens in the subplot of the episode. When trying to steal back their mattress from the Lovejoys' bedroom, Homer and Marge stare at each other seductively. Then it cuts outside to the Lovejoys arriving home excited to make love once again before spotting Homer and Marge in their bedroom. Then cuts back to the bedroom and we see Homer and Marge immediately naked between the sheets.
** The very end of "Colonel Homer" in which Homer and Marge are making out and before they have sex, Homer throws his white cowboy hat toward the screen blacking it out till the credits appear.
** "Black Widower": Happens after the end of Sideshow Bob and Selma's honeymoon video:
-->'''Sideshow Bob''': Oh, Selma dear. You and your little camera. Whaddya say we shut it off for awhile...
-->'''Selma''': ...and make love?
-->[Selma removes the sheets revealing her nude]
-->'''Sideshow Bob''': [sighs] I suppose.
-->[tape ends]
-->'''Marge''': Aww, that's sweet.
** "Some Enchanted Evening": Happens at the very end with these lines during the credits:
-->'''Homer''': Can we make up again?
-->'''Marge''': Oh, my goodness.
** "A Star is Born Again": After a concert, Ned Flanders, after consulting bible verses before he engages into pre-marital sex with Sara Sloane, makes out with her on the picnic carpet. Then it cuts to sunrise and it pans down showing both Ned and Sarah naked under the sheets along with their clothes lying on the grass.
** Subverted in "The Haw-Hawed Couple". Happens at the beginning when Lisa complains about Bart drinking coffee(which is Pepsi, Bart claims) when they hear Homer and Marge arguing only for it to turn out to be a fake tape recording to distract Bart and Lisa, while the real Homer and Marge prepare to make love. When they do, they quickly took off their bed pajamas and Marge accidentally hits the 'play' button with her slippers causing it to play "A Horse With No Name". This leaves Bart and Lisa to curiously open the door to see what's 'really' going on [[PrimalScene only for Bart to feel traumatized]] [[TheTalk ever since Homer told him about the 'facts of life']] [[ContinuityNod in "All's Fair in Oven War"]].
-->'''Milhouse''': Trust me Bart, it's better to walk in on both your parents than on just one of them.
** "Bart's Friend Falls in Love": Happens in the Troy [=McClure=] Fuzzie Bunny sex education film Mrs Krabappel shows to her students:
-->'''Troy (from film)''': That night came the Honeymoon.
-->[sexual music plays]
-->'''Class''': [[PrimalScene Eww!]]
-->'''Edna''': She's faking it.
** Treehouse of Horror XVIII: Near the end of "Mr. and Ms. Simpson" in which Homer and Marge kiss each other passionately realizing they're more attracted then ever, after killing Chief Wiggum together. Then it cuts to both of them lying on Wiggum's body seen naked in the morning.
-->'''Marge''': What a wonderful night.
** "A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love": Happens when Homer takes a shot of Burns' aphrodisiac and races home carrying Marge to their bedroom. Then it cuts to both of them naked in the bed.
** "The Burns and the Bees": To keep Lisa's bees from becoming extinct, Homer and Moe conduct a plan to mate them using Africanized bees. When they put the queen in the bottle before covering it with a cloth, both Homer and Moe spice up the moment lighting candles and dimming the lights with the song "Sea of Love" playing in the background.
-->'''Moe''': Got the queen?
-->'''Homer''': Yep, and she's ready for a night of anonymous sex with multiple partners. [laughs]
-->'''Moe''': [Moe puts queen in Africanized bee water bottle and covers it] Now let's give them some privacy while they get down with the buzziness.
-->[Homer and Moe play "Sea of Love" record, light candles and dim lights]
-->'''Moe''': [sighs] If they was me, they'd be done by now.
** "The Scorpion's Tale": Subverted when Abe sleeps on the floor with Homer and Marge making love as noticed with their feet moving, despite Abe harshly compmenting them.
* ShakingHerHairOut:
** Parodied in Marge's novel ''The Harpooned Heart''; the book's heroine wears her hair under a bonnet but her lover pulls it off and lets it out. Since she has Marge's hairstyle, instead of falling down it shoots up.
** Played straight in "Last Tap Dance in Springfield" with Lisabella, the [[HotLibrarian librarian.]]
* SheIsNotMyGirlfriend: Inverted in "I Love Lisa". [[TheSimpsons Lisa Simpson]] to Ralph Wiggum. On a date. On live television. Preceded by a BigNo.
-->'''Bart:''' You can actually pinpoint the second when his heart rips in half!
* SheetOfGlass: Subverted in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge": Marge's out-of-control car heads towards two workers carrying a giant sheet of glass. However, instead of the car smashing the glass to pieces, she merely knocks the glass down to the ground. The workers pick it up and comment on how sturdy the glass is.
** Parodied in "Bart's Elephant", in which two workers manage to avoid having their sheet of glass get hit by both Stampy and Bart, then toss it into a recycling bin carelessly.
* ShippedInShackles:
** Burns was given the Hannibal Mask treatment once when he was dragged into court for illegally dumping radioactive waste in "Marge vs. the Monorail."
** Bart, after being falsely assumed to have stolen the church's collection plate money, is given the Hannibal treatment at next week's service.
--> '''Marge''': We really shouldn't have let them do this. It can't be helping his self esteem.
* ShoeShineMister: The creator of ''Itchy & Scratchy'' is a homeless hobo who makes a living in part by shining shoes. After he successfully sues I&S Studios for all their money, he lives in a mansion, where he hangs out in front offering people a shine.
* ShootTheShaggyDog: in "Homer the Moe", Homer throwing his unfinished robot away.
--> '''Robot:''' ''"Father, give me legs..."''
--> ''(Homer throws it away)''
--> '''Robot:''' ''"Father..."''
--> ''(Homer shakes his head)''
--> ''(the robot drags itself off-screen with its "arms")''
* ShootTheTelevision:
** One episode sees Bart and Lisa write a script for an [[TheItchyAndScratchyShow "Itchy & Scratchy"]] cartoon that ends with Scratchy's head (now just a skull) going through a ceiling and into Elvis Presley's television set. Elvis promptly produces a revolver and shoots Scratchy's skull through the TV.
** The trope is [[InvertedTrope inverted]] in the episode "The Cartridge Family", where Homer uses the new revolver he bought to ''turn the TV on''. Hilariously, the image that comes on the screen when it does turn on is of a cowboy, having been shot, falling off a roof.
** In "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", Chief Wiggum, [[ThePeteBest after he had been kicked out of The Be Sharps]], becomes so upset while watching Johnny Carson that he begins wildly shooting the TV in a fit of rage. It then becomes apparent that Wiggum had accidentally left the remote control in his gun holster and got that and his gun confused for the other.
* ShootingGallery: "The Springfield Connection," with Wiggum pointing out the unarmed victims Marge didn't shoot (the mom with her baby and the blind man in the doorway).
** In "The Cartridge Family," Homer joins his NRA buddies at a shooting range. We see him make some very clean shots through a series of soda cans. Pull out to reveal that Homer just took out the display at the snack stand.
* {{Shotacon}}: Happens briefly in "Homerazzi" in which Homer in the Celebrity Nightspot takes many snapshots there including a snapshot of Milhouse, who is ten years old, and Rich Texan's daughter Paris Texan (Based off Paris Hilton), who is probably twenty years old, 'making out'. Also earlier in the episode, she kissed Bart on the cheek, who is also ten, when Bart annoys her for Homer to take a pictures both of them.
** Subverted In "The Devil Wears Nada", in which Both Milhouse and Nelson commented and looked at a sexy pin-up calender featuring Marge which embarasses Bart.
-->'''Edna''': Class, today we're going to talk about Washington crossing the Delaware.
-->'''Nelson''': I'd like to watch Bart's mom washing her underwear.
-->'''Edna''': The British were led by general Howe.
-->'''Nelson''': I'd give Bart's mom a general wow.
-->'''Bart''': Knock it off. That's my mom you're talking about.
-->'''Nelson''': Keep-away with Bart's mom.
-->[Throws calendar to Milhouse]
-->'''Milhouse''': Mrs. S., you can tuck me in anytime.
-->'''Bart''': Okay, buddy, lower the eyebrows, Nice and easy.
-->[Milhouse lowers eyebrows, but then raises his left one up again; Bart hits him with slingshot]
-->'''Milhouse''':Ow, it's stuck! I'll have a quizzical expression for the rest of my life.
-->'''Nelson''': I'd like to get quizzical with Bart's mom.
-->'''Bart''': Shut up!
-->[Bart starts a fight with Nelson and ends up in Skinner's office]
** Averted in "Bart the Lover" in which Bart pranks Edna in revenge by writing letters to her, pretending to be "Woodrow", until Edna wants to see Woodrow in person. However, in the third act of the episode, this quote from Edna subverts it after Bart realizes what he's done:
-->'''Edna''': Bart, you're the closest thing to a man in my life. And that's so depressing, I think I'm going to cry.
** Subverted in "The Cartridge Family" in which one of the prostitutes at the 'Sleep Easy Hotel' talks to Bart:
-->'''Prostitute''': Lookin' for a good time, sailor?
-->'''Bart''': I certainly am.
-->'''Marge''': No you're not! [drags Bart inside the motel, then sticks her head out the door] He's really not.
** Parodied and subverted in the "Yokel Chords" subplot. Dr. Stacey Swanson develops a close bond with Bart during the psychiatry session when she plays video games with him and reads Mad Libs to him in order to understand more about him and his family. In the second session, thanks to Marge using funds for Homer's breast reduction surgery to relieve Bart of his depression of not seeing Dr. Swanson, Bart reveals more to her about his family including how he got the name "Dark Stanley" which was Bart getting hit on the head with a Stanley hammer by Homer. The session ends and Bart is finally happy, but Dr. Swanson now starts to feel sad that he's leaving her, leading her to see her own psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Bogdanovich.
** "The New Kid on the Block" has Bart having a crush on Ruth Powers' daughter, Laura Powers, while in "Little Big Girl", Bart makes out with Darcy (who is fifteen years old; five years older than Bart) in Homer's car after driving her to a drive in theatre.
* ShouldHaveThoughtOfThatBeforeX:
-->'''Principal Skinner''': Over here, Simpson! The detention room is dangerously overcrowded so you'll be spending your time in the cafeteria.
-->'''Student''': Oxygen running out...
-->'''Principal Skinner''': Yes, you should have thought of that before you made that paper airplane.
** Aside from that example, TheSimpsons provides another example that sort of toys with this. In "Lost Our Lisa", Lisa can't go to the Isis Exhibit because Marge has to take Bart to the hospital to get the novelty items he glued to his face removed, leading to this exchange:
-->'''Lisa''': Oh! It's the last day of the Isis exhibit!
-->'''Bart''': Well, you should have thought of that BEFORE I glued all this stuff to my face!
** In "Mobile Homer", the movie Marge watches features dialog of this.
--> '''Man''': I'm afraid your husband had no life insurance.
--> '''Woman''': But what will I do?!
--> '''Man''': You should've thought of that ''before'' you married a dead man!
* ShoutOut: Listing all the examples would fill a book, but notably the creators have said that they have parodied Film/CitizenKane so many times that one could recreate the entire movie just from TheSimpsons clips. They have also said the same about the first two Film/TheGodfather movies.
** A recent shout out to FamilyGuy (the not-quite-dead ostrich) is notable because the two shows tend to ignore each other.''{{
** ''{{Cheers}}'' has been explicitly given a ShoutOut a few times. One obvious nod is when Homer was looking for a new bar, and found Cheers, with suspiciously named characters "Sam-like character", "Woody-like character", and so on. In ''Flaming Moe's'', a Diane {{Expy}} works at Moe's. She leaves, causing Moe to comment, "She left to pursue a movie career. Frankly, I think she was better off here."
** The series has at least twice alluded to the movie ''Film/{{Speed}}''. In one episode, Homer used the video loop trick to skip work. When he told Lenny and Carl where he got the idea from and described the movie, he couldn't remember its name and called it "The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down". In another one, Bart and Lisa MissedTheBus and Marge tried to catch up with it but Otto thought Marge wanted to race him. Milhouse said it looked like Speed 2 except that it had a bus instead of a boat.
* ShowWithinAShow: ''TheItchyAndScratchyShow''.
** ''TheKrustyTheKlownShow'', which usually airs ''Itchy and Scratchy'', as well.
* ShrunkenOrgan: Mr. Burns' heart has been shown as a shriveled black lump that beats every now and again. Additionally, after crawling out from beneath a landslide, Mr. Burns tilted his head and banged his ear in hope of clearing out the gravel from his other ear. The gravel came flying out that ear, along with his walnut-sized brain.
* ShutUpKiss: Nelson gives one of these to Lisa in "Lisa's Date With Density" when she won't stop talking. However, after a couple seconds, Nelson begins to enjoy the kiss.
* SickEpisode: None of these occupy the entire episode, but: Homer gets food poisoning in "Selma's Choice". Lisa gets the mumps in "Bart's Dog Gets an F". Everybody except Lisa gets queasy from eating organic foods in "A Star is Torn". Lisa gets a cold in "Lisa Gets an A".
* SicklyGreenGlow: Anything radioactive.
* SignificantBirthdate: On season 10's "Viva Ned Flanders," Homer casually mentions that Barney's birthday is the same as [[AdolfHitler Hitler]]'s [April 20th] ([[EditedForSyndication in syndicated reruns and on the season 10 DVD version, the date was changed to July 15th, and the celebrity whom Homer knows has that birthday is Lassie the dog]]).
** WordOfGod says Bart's birthday is [[AprilFoolsDay April 1st]].
* SilenceYouFool: One example near the end of the second act from the episode 'Bart sells his Soul':
-->'''Homer''': Bart, you didn't finish your spaghetti and Moe balls!
-->'''Homer's brain''': Silence, you fool. It can be ours!
-->'''Homer''': [eating] Run, boy! Run! Run for your life, boy!
** Also, Bart says one to Lisa after she teases him about Laura and Bart in the episode 'The New Kid on the Block':
-->'''Bart''': Maybe Laura could watch us.
-->'''Lisa''': Oh, I get it. [seductively] Bart, the babysitter's here. Let me tuck you in. [making smacking noises]
-->'''Bart''': Silence!
** Again in 'Skinner's Sense of Snow':
-->'''Skinner''': All right, that's it. I'm writing all your names on the detention list in my mind.
-->'''Bart''': Silence, Seymour. We're in charge now.
** And again in 'Girly Edition'
-->'''Lisa''': Bart, get out of my anchorchair.
-->'''Bart''': Silence, Octopussy.
** And again in 'Lisa the Skeptic' but from the so-called angel when it's revealed that it's not an apocalypse but instead turns out to be an opening for the Heavenly Hills shopping mall in Springfield:
-->'''Lisa''': Well, there you go. I hope you all learned a valuable--
-->'''Angel''': Silence! Prepare for the end... the end of high prices! Behold, the grand opening of the Heavenly Hills Mall.
** Also one from Mr. Burns in 'Homer's Enemy', as well, when criticizing Frank Grimes in his office.
** From "Sunday, Bloody Sunday":
-->'''Wally''': Well, I'm convinced. Tell you what, Mr. Murdoch. Let's just split the difference. The boys and I will just crouch here quietly, and take it easy on the snacks ...
-->'''Murdoch''': Silence! [he throws something on the ground, and two puffs of smoke appear, revealing three policemen] Seize them!
*** The trope also appears in the Gracie Films logo sequence in this episode, as well.
** From "New Kids on the Bleech"
-->'''Skinner''': Are you adequately prepared to rock?
-->[The audience cheers wildly]
-->'''Skinner''': SILENCE!
** This trope also appeared in a few Treehouse of Horror episodes: TOH VII segment, "Citizen Kang", has Kang (or is it Kodos?) say this trope, TOH VIII segment, "The HΩmega Man", has Mutant Sideshow Mel saying this trope (subverted in that Mel quickly follows with: "...You're talking too loud."), TOH X has Maggie(in a different voice) say this to Lisa in the episode's couch gag, and near the end of the TOH XI first segment, "G-G-Ghost D-D-Dad", has the devil say "Silence, Sinner!" to ghost Homer.
* TheSilentBob: Maggie
* SilentOffer: In "Bart Gets Hit By a Car", Homer sues Burns for hitting Bart while in a car. After Burns destroys Homer's credibility in the eyes of the jury, he offers to settle with Homer.
-->'''Burns''': I'm going to write a figure on this piece of paper. It's not quite as large as the last one, but I think you'll find it fair. \\
''[Burns draws a giant zero]''
--> '''Hutz''': I think we should take it.
* SilentSnarker: Again, Maggie
* SimilarSquad: It's been used several times: a nice version of the family, a cooler version of Bart and Lisa, the inbred version of Springfield in Shelbyville.
* SimpleCountryLawyer:
** When Homer addresses the church congregation about Ned's age in "Viva Ned Flanders", Homer admits he's not a "fancy big city lawyer", to which the congregation gasps.
** When ranting against the recent area code changes in "A Tale of Two Springfields," Homer takes on the mannerisms of and sticks his thumbs under dynamite straps, as though they were suspenders, like a country lawyer.
** The lawyer from "The Monkey Suit" falls into this trope as well.
---> '''Lawyer''': As the chick said to her mama, "I hope I don't cluck up!" (audience says "Awwwww")
* SimultaneousArcs: "Trilogy of Error".
* SitcomArchNemesis: Homer has Ned Flanders, and Bart has Sideshow Bob (and for some reason, Dr. Demento).
** Maggie has Gerald, the baby with the uni-brow.
* ShamedByAMob: Burn in "Who Shot Mr. Burns, Part 1".
* SkinnyDipping: In "500 Keys", Homer remembers going skinny dipping with Duff Man. This might be how he ended up with the key to the Duff brewery.
* SkywardScream: [=McBain=], during one of his movies, after his partner is fatally shot:
--> '''[=McBain=]''': MENDOZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
** An example from "Bart Gets Famous", after Homer thinks Bart turned into a box:
--> '''Homer''': DAMN YOU! A BOX!!!
** And another when Bart and his elephant are missing. Homer had made a deal to sell the elephant, prompting:
--> '''Homer''': He took Bart too? That wasn't part of the deal blackheart! THAT WASN'T PARRRRT!
* SlapYourselfAwake: Bart smacks himself to stay awake studying in the episode where he actually buckles down and tries to get a passing grade.
* SlowLoadingInternetImage: Comic Book Guy is seen downloading a nude image of Captain Janeway. Just as it gets revealing, a popup for Homer's internet service appears, leading Comic Book Guy to remark "Hmm... the Internet King. [[TheInternetIsForPorn Perhaps he can provide faster nudity."]]
* SmallNameBigEgo: The town of Springfield itself. Listing everything with "Springfield" in the name would be a fruitless endeavor. Hell, they even have the Hollywood sign-style "SPRINGFIELD" spelled out on the mountainside!
* SmallTownRivalry: Between Springfield and Shelbyville.
* SmartPeopleKnowLatin: To cover going on a road trip, Bart tells his family he's going to the National Grammar Rodeo.
-->'''Lisa''': I'm the best student in school, how come I never heard about this competition? \\
'''Bart''': Maybe because you are, as we say in Latin, a "dorkus malorkus." \\
'''Lisa''': That's not Latin. Mom, Bart's faking it. \\
'''Marge''': Lisa, you've had your glory. Now it's Bart's turn.
* SmartPeopleWearGlasses: Homer finds glasses in one episode and immediately starts acting smart, even though the math he starts reciting is nonsense.
** His screw-up itself was a ShoutOut to ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'', where the Scarecrow makes the same mistake (uncorrected).
* SmellySkunk: Homer's sprayed by some skunks after his panda rape in "Homer vs. Dignity".
** "Sleeping With The Enemy": In revenge for teasing her, Lisa gets Nelson to play a prank on Terri and Sherri by giving them a present with a skunk inside which sprays them both.
** Also used in "Ten Minutes Over Tokyo" when Marge gets a question wrong on a Japanese game show.
* SmokingHotSex: Season 15 episode, "The Ziff Who Came to Dinner", has this trope in one scene with Artie Ziff and Selma after they had quick sex with Selma smoking.
** "Regarding Margie": Happens near the end of the second act [[SexDressed with Skinner and Edna seen with their ragged clothes on after sex]] and Edna smoking a cigarette afterwards.
-->'''Skinner''': You know, I think about you all the time.
-->'''Edna''': Birthday's over, Seymour.
* SmugSnake: Mr. Burns sometimes takes this trope to ridiculous extremes. For example, one episode involved a plan on Burns' part to [[KickTheDog block sunlight from reaching Springfield]], and a town hall meeting was held about it. During the meeting, the town was being shown what Burns' oil drilling operation did to Bart's pet dog, who was shown needing to use wheels just to walk down the hallway. Burns walks in at EXACTLY this moment, and, with a big smirk on his face, says this:
-->'''Burns''': Oh those wheels are squeaking a bit. Perhaps I could sell him a little oil.
* SnubByOmission: have done this to Homer twice, with the Employee of the Week awards (which he loses to an inanimate carbon rod), as well as the Town Pride Awards (which everyone gets but him).
* SoapboxSadie: Lisa.
* SoapWithinAShow: "Search For the Sun", which was featured in numerous episodes.
** Also "It Never Ends."
* SockItToThem: When Homer and his buddies become a vigilante force because the police can't catch the ClassyCatBurglar stalking the neighborhood, Jimbo joins. He's told that his WeaponOfChoice should be sack full of door knobs. A news anchor interviewing Homer later mentions that beatings with such a weapon have skyrocketted.
* SolarPoweredMagnifyingGlass: Referenced in Marge's monologue at the end of "Marge vs. the Monorail".
-->And that was the only folly the people of Springfield ever embarked upon. Except for the Popsicle stick skyscraper. And the 50-foot magnifying glass. ''[the sun focused through the magnifying glass sets the Popsicle stick skyscraper on fire]'' And that escalator to nowhere.
* SoldiersAtTheRear: In "Simpson Tide", Homer joined the US Naval Reserve expecting it to be like this. It doesn't quite go according to plan.
* SolemnEndingTheme: "Mother Simpson".
* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: "22 Short Films About Springfield".
* SorryOciffer: Homer and Barney get stopped by Chief Wiggum because he thinks they're both drunk (he's right). Then he asks Homer to dance and he does pretty well...Until Barney asks Wiggum to use the Breathalyzer.
* SorryToInterrupt: Played with in "The Great Money Caper":
--> '''Marge''': (enters the kitchen) Why are you frosting that old throw pillow?
--> '''Homer''': I could ask ''you'' the very same question!
--> '''Marge''': Uh... should I just back out of the room?
--> '''Homer''': Would you? (Marge leaves)
* SoundEffectBleep: Done in "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?" when Homer is driving and swearing at other drivers. Even worse, there are impressionable kids with him. Worse still, he's swearing at an ''ambulance''.
** Also present in other episodes like "Flaming Moe's" (on a TV program Homer was watching), "Homer and Apu" (in one of the scenes with James Woods), and "Treehouse of Horror IX" (the fact that one of the shorts features ''The JerrySpringer Show'' says it all).
* SpecialGuest: The show holds the Guinness World Record for Most Guest Stars Featured in a TV Series. They even got TonyBlair (when he was still Prime Minister) and ReclusiveArtist ThomasPynchon, which was the only time his voice has been broadcast in the media.
* SpellMyNameWithAnS: Frequently in the subtitles -- "Crusty the Clown" instead of "Krusty the Klown", "Mo" instead of "Moe", and most egregiously, "Crabapple" instead of "Krabappel". Obviously the subtitlers DidNotDoTheResearch.
* SphereEyes: A majority of characters.
* SpinOff: Of ''The Tracey Ullman Show''. And the whole concept is spoofed in the episode "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase".
* SpinTheBottle: The beginning of "The Way We Weren't" has Bart, Milhouse, Terri and Sherri (along with their cousin who has a crush on Bart) play this game in Bart's Treehouse. Milhouse spins the bottle and stops at Terri/Sherri's cousin. When Milhouse attempts to kiss her, he [[AccidentalKiss accidentally kisses Homer]] instead when he climbed Bart's Treehouse.
** In "Colonel Homer", after being locked in the room with Lurleen Lumpkin and being kissed by her, flashbacks of Homer's kissing attempts is seen, when in his childhood, he is seen playing this game only to get slapped by the girl who the bottle is stopped at.
* SpinningPaper: Used all the time. One time, this was lampshaded with the headline: "Spinning newspaper injures printer."
* SpitTake:
** In "Lisa's Date With Density", Milhouse interrupts Lisa's confession on her crush on Nelson by taking a suave drink of milk. When she finishes, he spits it back into his straw, causing the carton to explode.
** {{Invoked|Trope}} by Homer in "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" when he sees the price of a top-of-the-budget computer and reacts by grabbing a cup of coffee, drinking it, and spitting it out.
* TheSponsor: In the Season 4 episode "Marge in Chains", Lionel Hutz calls upon David Crosby when he's tempted by "...that bottle of delicious bourbon. Brownest of the brown liquors..."
* SpoofAesop: The end of "Blood Feud" has the family debating on what the moral of the story is, and eventually giving up by saying it was just a bunch of stuff that happened.
** "Tennis the Menace" has one delivered by Homer, after all four have been replaced by professional tennis players on the court: "It's better to watch stuff than to do stuff."
* StabTheSalad: Several times, memorably in Sideshow Bob's first escape, Homer kept scaring Bart by wielding large deadly implements for innocent things.
* StalkerWithoutACrush: The Old Man And Lisa has Burns going broke because of his YesMan underlings, and feeling convinced that hiring Lisa would get him back on track what with her integrity. However, Lisa refuses to work for him, because she is convinced he does not deserve to be helped. Burns, in turn, follows her around in a very stalkerish manner, begging that she take the job.
* StartMyOwn: Bart starts his own casino after getting kicked out of Burns's casino in "$pringfield", putting Squeaky Voiced Teen in his place.
* StatusQuoIsGod: Played straight most of the time, occasionally subverted.
** Got a big LampshadeHanging in "Pygmoelian", where Moe's face is crushed by a falling backdrop, undoing the MagicPlasticSurgery that made him handsome and [[SnapBack reverting him to normal]]. The last scene has Moe asking why he got his old face back instead of being deformed; the episode ends before he can say "It makes no sense."
** From "Bart vs Lisa vs the Third Grade"
--> '''Skinner''': Well, if this episode has taught us anything, it's that nothing works better than the status quo. Bart, you're promoted back to the fourth grade.
--> '''Bart''': Yay!
--> '''Skinner''': And Lisa, you have a choice. You may continue to be challenged in third grade or return to second grade and be merely a big fish in a small pond.
--> '''Lisa''': Big fish! Big fish!
--> '''Homer''': [satisfied] The status quo.
** "The Principal and the Pauper", anyone? The episode ends with the town agreeing that they should ignore the new real Seymour Skinner and stick with the fake one that they've known for years, including his own mother.
** We now have a worse with "Donnie Fatso" After killing Fat Tony off his cousin Fit Tony takes over, puts on weight, and becomes known as Fit Fat Tony, or Fat Tony for short.
** A similar (more minor) case with the death of Snowball II. Lisa finds replacement cats and eventually came upon an identical cat who she calls her "Snowball II" rather than "Snowball V" (to save money on a new dish). Lampshaded when Principal Skinner overhears this and Lisa replies with his real name mentioned above.
** The Season 22 episode "The Blue and the Gray". Marge stops dying her hair and lets it revert to a natural gray color. This causes an uproar throughout the family and the town residents, and makes Marge the subject of many stereotypes about seniors. [[spoiler: As it turns out, her sisters, Patty and Selma, have been dyeing their hair too.]] At the end, Marge goes back to blue, and everyone [[spoiler: except Homer, in an interesting blue twist, he dyes what's left of his hair blue]] laughs it off and life in Springfield goes on as normal.
* StealthPun: Any title with "Annoyed Grunt" in the title.
** The captain's name in "Simpson Tide" is Tenille.
* {{Sting}}: Used many, many times in the show by composer Alf Clausen.
* StockFootage: "Another Simpsons Clip Show" not only is a ClipShow, but also re-uses old animation in new contexts and with new dialog. Only a few short scenes were animated specifically for this episode.
** Aside from that, the earlier seasons had a few scenes reused. For instance, footage of Homer comforting a concerned Marge from the end of "Lisa's Substitute" was later reused in "Bart the Murderer". And "Marge on the Lam" has a brief scene of Bart saying "We don't need a babysitter." that is clearly from season 2. A list of reused animation can be found [[http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/lists/recycled here.]]
* StockholmSyndrome: Homer and his two kidnappers in "Blame It On Lisa".
--> '''Homer''': Listen, um... I made a little scrapbook to remember the kidnapping. I'm still working on it but, uh, as you can see I've-- Aw, look, this is that cigarette butt you burned me with.
--> '''Kidnapper One''': You slept like a baby that night.
--> [Everyone shares a laugh]
--> '''Homer''': Haha, I remember that, yeah.
--> '''Marge''': [arriving to deliver ransom money] Homer, why are you laughing?
--> '''Kidnapper Two''': He has the Stockholm Syndrome. He has come to identify with his captors.
--> '''Homer''': [excitedly] They let me stay up alllll night!
* StockLateralThinkingPuzzle: From "The Simpsons 138th Spectacular":
--> '''Announcer''': Which popular Simpsons characters have died in the past year? If you guessed Bleeding Gums Murphy and Dr. Marvin Monroe, you are wrong. They were ''never'' popular.
* StockNinjaWeaponry: The Comic Book Guy tries to win back his clients by offering them "Ninja Weapons" to buy. We get glimpses of katana, kusarigama and shuriken among other things.
* StockScream: In "Million Dollar Maybe", there's a video game on the fictitious Funtendo Zii console where every enemy kill would result in the WilhelmScream.
* StoppedCaring: Reverend Lovejoy at his worst.
* StraightGay: Waylon Smithers.
* StrangeMindsThinkAlike: In the episode where Homer gets a new assistant who turns on him and takes his job, he uses a secret Flanders told him to turn the tables. When asked where he learnt the secret, he declines to say, but states the initials are S.F. She immediately recognizes this as Stupid Flanders.
* StrawFan: Comic Book Guy.
* StrawmanPolitical: On both sides, though Republicans get the brunt of it.
* StrawVegetarian: Lisa tries to convince everyone not to eat meat at Homer's barbeque and eventually throws away the roasted pig. At the end of that episode, Lisa learns from Paul and Linda [=McCartney=] not to be judgemental about non-vegetarians, after which she mostly settles down — but it [[AesopAmnesia doesn't stop her occasionally lapsing into aggression in later episodes]], [[RuleOfFunny mostly as jokes.]]
* StripperCopConfusion: Chief Wiggum, but he goes along with the assumption for the money.
* StuckOnASkiLift: This happens to Homer. He tries to get off but ends up hanging upside down. ("Come on, gravity! You used to be cool!")
* StuffedIntoATrashcan: Bart in "Bart the General"; Milhouse and Homer in "24 Minutes" (though in the latter's case, it's actually a dumpster).
* StupidCrooks: In "Dumbbell Indemnity", Moe spends so much money on things for his new girlfriend that he decides to come up with a plan with Homer to steal his car, have it destroyed, and collect the insurance money. Homer steals Moe's car and is supposed to leave it on the train tracks, but he gets sidetracked by a showing at a drive-in theater for a movie about a monkey who is president. Having missed the train, Homer decides to drive the car off a cliff in plain view of everyone, including the police, which gets himself arrested.
--> '''Moe:''' Homer, you moron.
--> '''Homer:''' Homer, you ''genius!''
* SubvertedTrope: The show subverted most of these tropes at one point or another.
* SuckECheeses: Wall E. Weasel's.
* SuckySchool: Springfield Elementary.
* SuddenAnatomy: When a sub-plot hinges on Homer not remembering Marge's eye color, a ''Simpsons'' character is drawn with irises for the first time.
* SuddenSchoolUniform
* SummerCampy: "Kamp Krusty".
* SuperBowlSpecial: In the 2010 Super Bowl, there's the Coca-Cola commercial featuring Mr. Burns losing his money, followed by Apu giving him a Coke.
* SuperFunHappyThingOfDoom
--->'''Homer:''' [[SchmuckBait Ooh! Super Fun Happy Slide!]]
* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: "Separate Vocations" used a sound-alike to "Axel F Theme" from ''BeverlyHillsCop''.
** Sideshow Bob's theme is a sound-alike to the theme in ''CapeFear''.
** "Itchy & Scratchy Meets Fritz the Cat" (seen in "The Day the Violence Died") used a musical cue that's very similar to one heard in Earth, Wind & Fire's "Shining Star".
* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: In "Behind the Laughter", after Lisa reveals that Homer gave her anti-growth hormones:
--> '''Homer''': That's ridiculous. How could I even get all five necessary drops into her cereal? ({{Beat}}) What?
* SustainedMisunderstanding: From "Marge vs. The Monorail":
--> '''Marge''': Homer, there's someone here who can help you!
--> '''Homer''': Is it Batman?
--> '''Marge''': No, he's a scientist.
--> '''Homer''': Batman's a scientist.
--> '''Marge''': ''It's not Batman''!
** In "Bart After Dark":
--> '''Marge''': I'm here to share my moral outrage. But this time it's not about that giant inflatable "Dos Equis" bottle. It's about a certain house in our town.
--> '''Moe''': Yeah, well what's wrong with this house? Is it the plumbing?
--> '''Marge''': No. It's a house of ill fame. A house of loose ethics.
--> '''Kent Brockman''': Is there a building code violation? A drainage issue? A surveying error?
--> '''Marge''': (annoyed) The house is perfectly fine!
--> '''Chief Wiggum''': Well, then quite bad-mouthing the house!
--> '''Otto''': Yeah, leave the house alone!
** From "Much Apu About Nothing":
--> '''Lisa''': You know, in a way, all Americans are immigrants. Except, of course Native Americans.
--> '''Homer''': Yeah, Native Americans like us.
--> '''Lisa''': No, I mean American Indians.
--> '''Apu''': Like me.
--> '''Lisa''': No, I mean...
* TheSwearJar: Homer having to deal with one of these whilst he's building a doghouse for Santa's Little Helper. He ends up shouting things like "Fiddle-dee-dee!" after stepping on rusty nails, and puts enough money into the jar to enable the purchase of a rather large and cosy doghouse — which is good, since the one Homer built sucked.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:T]]
* TheTag: Seen in some of the newer episodes.
* TagAlongActor:
** In one episode, James Woods researches the job of a Kwik-E-Mart employee as a reference to ''The Hard Way''.
** Another episode had Mr. Burns hire MichaelCaine to impersonate Homer in order to convince Bart that he (Homer) didn't love him (Bart) any more. Later in the episode Homer [[BrickJoke mentions]] that Caine had followed him around trying to get a handle on his character.
* TakeThat: Several different targets, frequently for unknown reasons. For example, Arby's must have pissed some of the writers off really good, being the recipient of at least 4 cheap shots.
** Even Christianity gets a big-time TakeThat in the form of a [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything apparent reference to it]] in "Don't Have A Cow, Mankind"
-->'''Marge''': We have the chosen one!
-->'''Soldier''': Welcome, son! To survive, all we must do is eat your flesh.
-->'''Marge''': Hold it right there, bub! What kind of civilized people eat the body and blood of their saviour?
-->''Cue Reverend Lovejoy looking visibly awkward.''
** The ''Amendment to Be'' cartoon details how if the amendment does not get through they'll sue Ted Kennedy, and claim he's gay if he fights back. This sounds suspiciously (as is, it is) the grubby tactics used by Senator JoeMccarthy.
* TakeThatAudience: "Bye Bye Nerdie" ends this way.
* TakingTheBullet: Apu takes a bullet for James Woods in "Homer and Apu".
** In a parody of the trope, Homer jumps in front of Bart to get hit with the baptismal water in "Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily."
** Homer also practices taking a bullet while in bodyguard training in "Mayored to the Mob".
* TakingYouWithMe: In "Deep Space Homer", one of the astronauts says that if he dies, he's taking Homer to hell with him.
* TarAndFeathers: Happens to Homer in "At Long Last Leave".
** Also to Grandpa in "Bart of Darkness".
-->'''Grandpa''': [appearing in doorway] Gonna be in the tub for a while.
* TheTalk: In the episode, "All's Fair in Oven War", Homer gives one to Bart, traumatizing him and the rest of the springfieldian children when it spreads like a virus.
* TalkingToHimself: Half the cast is voiced by the same three or four people.
* TalkingWithSigns: Seen in "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace" (part of Treehouse of Horror VI"): After seeing Groundskeeper Willie (playing the role of Freddy Kruger) for the first time, Bart holds up a sign that reads: "Eep."
* TheTapeKnewYouWouldSayThat: Subverted in "I'm Goin' to Praiseland": While on a rollercoaster ride, the coaster stops and a King David animatronic asks the kids in the coaster who disturbs King David. Nobody responds and a couple seconds later, King David says, "...Silence!"
** The foundation repair instructional video from "Marge Gets a Job":
--->'''Troy [=McClure=]:''' Now, do you have extruded poly-vinyl foam insulation?\\
'''Homer:''' No.\\
'''Troy [=McClure=]:''' Good.
* TheTeamWannabe
* TeenageWasteland: "Das Bus", which was a parody of ''LordOfTheFlies''.
* TelegraphGagSTOP: In "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacey":
--> Western Union X) SPR CGN PO=SPRINGFIELD 1 935= OCT 11 PM 6\\
Mr. Simpson STOP Your constant letters are becoming a nuisance STOP\\
If you do not cease I will be forced to pursue legal action STOP\\
Boris Karloff Hollywood CALF.
* {{Telethon}}: The set-up to "Missionary: Impossible"
--> '''Rupert Murdock''': You just saved my network!
--> '''Bart''': Wouldn't be the first time!
* TellHimImNotSpeakingToHim: In "Lisa the Vegetarian", Homer and Lisa engage in this, and quickly drag Marge and Bart into it.
--> '''Homer''': Marge? Since I'm not talking to ''Lisa'', would you please ask her to pass me the syrup?
--> '''Marge''': Dear, please pass your father the syrup, Lisa.
--> '''Lisa''': Bart, tell Dad I will only pass the syrup if it won't be used on any meat product.
--> '''Bart''': You dunkin' your sausages in that syrup homeboy?
--> '''Homer''': Marge, tell ''Bart'' I just want to drink a nice glass of syrup like I do every morning.
--> '''Marge''': Tell him yourself, you're ignoring Lisa, not Bart.
--> '''Homer''': Bart, thank your mother for pointing that out.
--> '''Marge''': Homer, you're not, not talking to me, and secondly, I heard what you said.
--> '''Homer''': Lisa, tell your mother to get off my case!
--> '''Bart''': Uhhh, Dad. Lisa's the one you're not talking to.
--> '''Homer''': Bart! Go to your room.
--> '''Lisa''': Why don't you just eat him, Dad?!
* TemporaryBlindness: Marge gets this in "Gone Maggie Gone" after looking at the sun during a solar eclipse and burning her retinas.
* TemptingFate: From "Homer at the Bat":
--> '''Mr. Burns''': There's no way I can lose this bet. Unless, of course, my nine all-stars fall victim to nine separate misfortunes and are unable to play tomorrow. But that will never happen. Three misfortunes, that's possible. Seven misfortunes, there's an outside chance. But ''nine'' misfortunes? I'd like to see that!
** He didn't get nine, just eight.
* ThanatosGambit: Homer spreads his mother's ashes, sabotaging Mr. Burns's missile launch.
** Also, there's Sideshow Bob's fake funeral, a ploy to kill Bart when he's saying goodbye to his old nemesis.
* ThatDidntHappen: From "Bart the Mother":
-->'''Homer:''' ''(watching Bart's bird eggs hatch)'' Oh man, this is the most exciting thing I've ever seen since Halley's Comet collided with the moon.\\
'''Lisa:''' That never happened, Dad.\\
'''Homer:''' ''Sure'' it didn't...
* ThatLiarLies: "You're lying! You're lying! What makes you lie?"
** "You liar! You don't have a home business. Why would you make up a lie like that?"
* ThemeNaming: Most of the last names of Simpsons side characters come from street names in Portland, Oregon (Matt Groening's hometown), such as Flanders, Quimby, and Terwilliger.
* ThereAreNoRules: In "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation", the rules at Rock n' Roll Fantasy Camp are: "Rule #1: There are no rules. Rule #2: No outside food."
* ThermometerGag: In "Marge Gets A Job"
-->'''Grandpa Simpson:''' "Oral thermometer, my eye! Think warm thoughts, boy, 'cause this is mighty cold."
* ThickLineAnimation: Homer's flashback to the previous night in "The War of The Simpsons".
* ThingOMeter: Many times-- Sarcasm-O-Meter, Monster-O-Meter, Love-O-Meter
* ThirteenIsUnlucky: The Treehouse Of Horror story "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace" starts "on the thirteenth hour of the thirteenth day of the thirteen month" with a meeting to discuss the misprinted calendars bought by the town.
--->'''Homer:''' Lousy Smarch weather!
* ThisIsForEmphasisBitch: Of all people, Mr. Burns before dueling Rich Texan in a scavenger hunt.
** Another episode the family is touring a stamp museum when they come to a talking stamp of Alexander Graham Bell saying he's the inventor of the telephone. Next to him is a talking stamp of Elisha Gray who claims it was stolen from him, to which Bell replies "Read the patent, bitch!"
* ThisJustIn: In "The Joy of Sect", Kent Brockman is negatively editorializing about The Movementarians, but is soon handed some papers from off-screen.
--> '''Kent Brockman''': Ladies and gentlemen, I've just learned of a change in the station's management. Welcome, Movementarians! Continue to improve our lives! I love you, perfect Leader.. and new CEO of KBBL broadcasting!
* ThisLoserIsYou: Homer and to a ''much'' greater extent, Frank Grimes.
* ThreeShorts: Besides the annual Treehouse of Horror episodes, the following taken on the three shorts format:
** ''Simpsons Bible Stories''
** ''Trilogy of Error'' (though this one is debatable, as all three stories are interconnected at points)
** ''Tales From the Public Domain''
** ''Margical History Tour''
** ''Simpsons Christmas Stories''
** ''The Wettest Stories Ever Told''
** ''Revenge is a Dish Best Served Three Times''
** ''Love, Springfieldian Style''
** ''Four Great Women and a Manicure'' (this one is actually four stories, due to the new commercial formatting for season 20 and beyond. This aspect is also lampshaded)
* ThroughAFaceFullOfFur: He has no fur on his face technically, but in "Mobile Homer", Homer's face turns blue from a lack of oxygen when a garage door repeatedly lifts up and down on him while he's lain in the garage's doorway, crushing his windpipe (or chest), caused by a book he tries throwing at a spider hits the garage door button instead.
** In "Bart On The Road", Homer's face turns red frontally for a moment, after learning from Lisa of Bart and his friends' trip to the World's Fair, before angrily yelling some muffled obscenities while wearing a nuclear plant suit's helmet.
** In "Stop or My Dog Will Shoot", Bart gets a python he names Strangles for a pet in place of Santa's Little Helper and Homer's whole head turns red, when Strangles wraps his coils around his neck, after Homer does the strangling routine with Bart.
** In a Simpsons short from The Tracey Ullman Show ("Bath Time"), Bart is turned blue entirely and is shivering from the cold water with which Homer runs, and fills the bathtub. Bart regresses to his normal color when he mixes the hot water with the cold.
** In "Home Sweet Home Diddily-Dum-Doodily", Rod and Todd turn pale in horror at the violence in an Itchy and Scratchy short they just watched with Ned, Bart and Lisa.
** In "Selma's Choice", Lisa is pale from hypothermia after swimming in the beery river at Duff Gardens.
** In the couch gag of "Bart Stops To Smell The Roosevelts", a John Kricfalusi/Spumco-esque Homer turns red when he thinks he broke wind, but Bart, who along with other members of the nuclear family were redesigned by John K. and Spumco here, placed a whoopee cushion in his spot on the couch on which he sits. Typically, Bart laughs at the prank and Homer gets ticked off, strangling Bart and as he does this, Bart's face gradually turns blue.
** In one episode, Krusty's face turns blue when a remote-controlled gag bow tie spins rapidly and uncontrollably, choking off the air supply from his lungs to his windpipe while in the middle of hosting his show.
** In "Lisa's Substitute", Martin Prince is later seen pale from the pressure and stress of running against Bart in the classroom presidential campaign.
** In "The Ten Per-Cent Solution", Homer gets green-faced when he lies on the floor, acting as a bloated corpse.
* ThrowingOutTheScript: Homer rips up his notes, then realizes he can't think of anything to say and tries to put them back together again.
* ThrowItIn: A number of times, various cast members have ad-libbed lines during recordings. Perhaps the most well-known example is Homer's "I am so smart! I am so smart! S-M-R-T! I mean, S-M-A-R-T!" Dan Castellaneta misspelled by accident, but went with it because Homer is stupid.
* TickertapeParade: In "Deep Space Homer", the carbon rod credited with saving the space shuttle from burning up in Earth's atmosphere gets a tickertape parade in its honor.
** In "The Twisted World of Marge Simpson", Marge stages a tickertape parade to avoid littering laws when she throws flyers for her pretzel business off the buildings.
--> '''Chief Wiggum''': Welcome back, space girl. (sniffs)
* TimeForPlanB: In "Trash of the Titans", Springfield's contingency plan, aka "Plan B", is to move the entire town five miles down the road.
* TiredOfRunning: Homer, in "Beyond Blunderdome", eventually grows tired of running away from the studio execs who want to stop he and Creator/MelGibson from screening the alternate ending version of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", and decides to fight back instead.
* TitleTheAdaptation
* TitleDrop: Parodied in "Thank God It's Doomsday" during the fictional movie "Left Below":
--> '''Man''': [[{{Anvilicious}} The virtuous have gone to heaven]], and the rest of us have been... ''left below''.
** Also parodied in "Take My Wife, Sleaze" while Homer watches a movie which closely resembles a real one:
--> '''Mother''': Oh, I don't know what's the matter with Jimmy. He won't do his homework, he only salutes the flag with one finger, and he comes home every night with other peoples' blood on his shirt.
--> '''Father''': He's a rebel, I tell you, a rebel without a cause... [[RebelWithoutACause just like that boy in that popular movie we saw.]]
* TitleMontage: "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular" features a montage of couch gags from previous episodes as part of its opening sequence.
* ToadLicking: Homer in episode "Missionary: Impossible" is depicted at one point lying on a hammock and picking up toads at random and licking them to get high while stranded on a South Pacific island.
-->'''Bart:''' Dad, are you ''licking toads?''
-->'''Homer:''' I'm not ''not'' licking toads!
* TomatoSurprise: Referenced in Homer's poem:
-->There once was a rapping tomato\\
That's right, I said "rapping tomato"\\
He rapped all day, from April to May\\
And also, guess what, ''[[NarratorAllAlong it was me.]]''
* TongueOnTheFlagpole: One of the winter hazards faced by Lewis and Clarke (a.k.a. Lenny and Karl) in "Magical History Tour".
** And Homer gets his tongue stuck to the ice sculpture at Otto's wedding.
** And in "The Springfield Files", Channel 6 News uses a file photo of Homer that shows him with his tongue stuck to a lamppost.
** In "My Fair Laddy'', Bart stores Lisa's saxophone in the freezer and then hands it to her. Her tongue gets stuck when she attempts to blow it
* TonightSomeoneDies: The promos for "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily" literally asked: "Who will ''die''?", and proceeding to list off a bunch of potential victims. Unfortunately, word got out before the episode aired that Maude would be the unfortunate one, so these promos didn't generate the expected suspense.
* {{Tontine}}: In "The Curse of the Flying Hellfish", it's revealed that Abe Simpson and Mister Burns served together during World War II, and their squad (the Flying Hellfish) acquired a set of priceless German paintings, with the agreement that the last member of the Hellfish to die would get them. It ends [[spoiler:when government officials and the descendant of the person they stole the paintings from arrive and reclaim them for the German. The descendent is not too worried about their safety, either.]]
* TooManyBabies: Apu and Manjula.
* TooMuchInformation: After Lisa is promoted to third grade in "Bart vs. Lisa vs. The Third Grade", Bart blurts out:
--> '''Bart''': She's not so great! She got diarrhea when we went to Carlsbad Caverns!
* TooQuirkyToLose: Bart entered a school science fair with an entry called "Can Hamsters Fly Airplanes?" Even though his "experiment" clearly did not prove or disprove any hypothesis, Principal Skinner was so charmed by the sight of a hamster wearing flight goggles and a scarf and sitting in a model airplane that he pronounced Bart the winner.
* TooSmartForStrangers: Poor Ralph Wiggum... He just doesn't get the point of these.
* TorchesAndPitchforks: Quite often. The citizens of Springfield '''love''' rioting.
** Most notably in TheMovie in which [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters Loads And Loads Of Bit Players]] are featured in such a scene.
** Lampshaded by [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure Skinner]], of all people
---> '''Skinner''': ''Ah, there's no justice like Angry Mob Justice.''
* TrainStationGoodbye: Lampshaded.
* TranquillizerDart:
** Bart has just been "taken" by a monkey at a local zoo, and Homer tries to save him by putting a tranq-dart into a tube and putting it into his mouth. He then inhales, and it gets self-explanatory after that.
** Subverted in another episode when Barney is shot with a ''bear'' tranquilizer dart. He actually pulls out the dart and drinks the remaining sedative before passing out.
* TranslationYes: In "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo", Homer's "D'oh!" is much longer in Japanese.
* TravelMontage: Seen in "Dog of Death" when Santa's Little Helper goes off on his own; a map of the locations he travels to is shown while "PeterAndTheWolf" plays.
* TreeBuchet: Homer launched a rabbit into the horizon with one of these.
* TribalFacePaint: Appears in the ''LordOfTheFlies'' parody episode, naturally.
* TripleNipple: In "Kamp Krusty", Lisa uses Krusty the Clown's superfluous third nipple to confirm his identity.
* {{Troll}}: Milhouse claims to be one in the "Homer the Whopper" episode in which the Comic Book Guy says he posted his comic on the internet and names some accounts that deride it. Bart tells him that they were just "lame-os" and Milhouse says "Two of them were me!"
* {{Troperiffic}}: You'd be hard pressed to find a series more troperrific than this.
* TrueLoveIsBoring: Zig-zagged. Despite the amount of separations (and a divorce at one point), Homer and Marge are still together.
* {{Trope2000}}: The Spine-Melter 2000 from "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?"
* TrouserSpace: Scorpio's offer of sugar and cream to Homer in "You Only Move Twice".
* TWordEuphemism: From the episode "Bart Star":
-->'''Bart''': Give me a "B"?
-->'''Nelson''': I won't give you a "B", but I'll rip you a new "A"!
* TwoRightsMakeAWrong: Apu and his wife Manjula end up with octuplets, almost going broke due to the resulting expenses, when every member of the Simpson family independently decides to help along their desire to conceive by secretly slipping them fertility drugs.
* TwoShotsFromBehindTheBar: Moe keeps a sawed-off shotgun handy in case of cheapskate customers or when he loses his temper, which happens ''all'' the time.
* TryingNotToCry: Marge says she didn't want to cry in "Kamp Krusty" when she and the family have the last meal together before Bart and Lisa go off to summer camp. She immediately starts crying when Homer, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie start hungrily eating.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:U]]
* UndeadAuthor: Groundskeeper Willie's story about the miner's strike.
* UndersideRide: Sideshow Bob does it in "Cape Feare" in a parody of the scene in ''CapeFear''.
* UnexpectedInheritance: "Selma's Choice"
* UnexplainedRecovery: In "Simpsons Bible Stories":
--> '''Bart''': (to Ralph) I thought you were dead!
--> '''Ralph''': Nope!
** In "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife", Dr. Marvin Monroe appears at a book signing. When asked where he's been all these years, he replies that he's been very sick. Of course, we've seen his gravestone in previous episodes, [[HandWave but never mind.]]
* UnfortunateImplications: InUniverse example: When Krusty was doing one of his comedy gigs on TV, the show he was doing was "Krusty Komedy Klassics." When he turns around and saw the sign on the stage, he realized in shock that it also had the same acronym as the Ku Klux Klan, causing Krusty to giggle nervously and say [[OhCrap "Not good..."]] before the (obviously) offended audience decided to [[ProducePelting throw objects at him]].
* TheUnpronounceable: Parodied with Apu's last name (Nahasapeemapetilon) many times.
** Selma: *Refusing to marry Apu* [My name's] already long enough without Nahasapet-apeet-whatever.
** Chief Wiggum: Homer Simpson, you are under arrest for the murder of Moe Szyslak and Apu Nahasa... pasa... ah, just Moe. Just Moe.
** When Apu joins The Be Sharps, their agent tells him that his name will never fit on a marquee, and says "From now on, you're Apu Du Beaumarchaise". Apu replies "It is an insult to my culture and my country, but [[SureWhyNot okay]]."
** In the first Treehouse of Horror special, one of the aliens remarks that in order to pronounce his name correctly, he'd have to rip out their tongue.
* UnreadablyFastText: Done in "The Simpsons 138th Spectacular" when the show pays tribute to everyone who makes The Simpsons possible; a ton of names scroll up the screen for only three seconds at a really fast pace.
** In "Bart's Comet", Kent Brockman closed his news broadcast by saying, "The following people are gay:", which prompted a ridiculously fast scrolling list.
** In "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses", a TV ad about the phone book cover contest repeatedly flashes the address for which to send the photos, due to the "Where Is Springfield?" RunningGag.
** In "Homer Badman", the TV show "Rock Bottom" admits to making some journalistic mistakes over the years, and a fast list of said mistakes scrolls up the screen.
* UnroboticReveal: In the show's parody of ''Series/RobotWars'', after completely failing to build a battlebot, Homer covers himself in armour plating and enters the arena himself.
* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: Homer, who gets less sympathetic as the show ages.
* UpToEleven: Krusty quotes this trope for word at the beginning of ''The Man In Blue Flannel Pants''.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:V]]
* VehicularSabotage: In order to smoke out a person trying to kill Homer, he is made the King of the Mardi Gras parade. The person trying to kill him as tampered with the brakes of his float so he can't stop.
* VerbalTic: Ned Flanders adds "diddly" to his words.
** He even writes it.
---> '''Homer:''' (reading) "Hi-diddly-ho, neighb-" Oh jeez, he actually ''wrote'' "diddly"!
*** ...and a later episode revealed that Flanders' VerbalTic is the result of suppressing his anger.
* VertigoEffect: Seen more in the earlier seasons, such as "Principal Charming" (parodying {{Vertigo}}), "Bart Gets Hit By a Car" (when the camera zooms in on Marge), "Lisa's Substitute" (when the camera zooms in on Lisa when she's shocked to see Miss Hoover back), and "Treehouse of Horror" (when Lisa first sees the UFO).
* VictoryByEndurance: Homer has Homer Simpson Syndrome ("ohh, why me!?") where his brain is surrounded by 1/8 inch more cushioning fluid than usual, making him the perfect boxer. He just waits for the other guy to tire himself out punching him, at which point Homer can just push the other guy down for a KO.
* VideoPhone: One episode taking place in the future, "Lisa's Wedding," showcased a conversation between Lisa and Marge using a "picture phone." Marge kept forgetting that Lisa could see her over the phone, and her body language made it more obvious to tell when she was lying.
* VideoWills: Used a couple times, once in "Selma's Choice" where Lionel Hutz dubbed over the deceased Bouvier's voice (Hutz told Marge she'd be surprised with the number of times the trick works), and again in "Mona Leaves-a" with Mona:
--> '''Mona''': If you're watching this right now, I am dead. Or if not, you've gotten into my stuff. But if I'm dead, this is my will. And if I'm not, get out of my stuff.
** Homer also attempted to film one in "One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish":
---> '''Homer:''' Hi, Maggie! I'm speaking to you from beyond the grave. ''(makes ghostly noises and laughs)'' Hope that didn't scare you.
* VignetteEpisode: Many, most notably the Tree House of Horrors series
* VinylShatters: The episode "The Itchy And Scratchy Movie" has Bart breaking records for kicks.
* ViolentGlaswegian: Groundskeeper Willie.
* VocalEvolution: Dan Castellaneta originally voiced Homer by doing a Walter Matthau impersonation; around the halfway point of season 2, he began to give him new vocal inflections and a larger range. Any similarities to Matthau were essentially abandoned by "Blood Feud".
** Nelson began with a very high-pitched voice. However, around season 7, Nelson began to have a deeper, scratchier voice.
* TheVoiceless: Maggie, with a couple exceptions. In "Lisa's First Word", she utters her first word: "Daddy." In "Treehouse of Horror V", she is voiced by James Earl Jones in one of the alternate universes Homer created: "This is ''indeed'' a disturbing universe."
** Lampshaded in "Lisa's Wedding" when a teenage Maggie keeps trying to talk (or sing), but is either interrupted before she can say anything or has her mouth full of food and is unintelligible.
* VolleyingInsults: In "Worst Episode Ever" when Agnes and Comic Book Guy first meet:
--> '''Agnes''': Out of the way, tubby!
--> '''Comic Book Guy''': Oh ''pardon me'', Oldie Hawn!
--> '''Agnes''': Oh OH! Why you ''ill-mannered'' sack of crap!
--> '''Comic Book Guy''': Oh ''goodie''. Now I know whatever happened to Baby Jane.
--> '''Agnes''': You are the ''rudest'' man who ever... [[MoodWhiplash bought me dinner!]]
--> '''Comic Book Guy''': Correction; I do not believe I have ever bought you... (realizes) Oh.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:W]]
* WackyCravings: In the 'In the Na'Vi' segment of "Treehouse of Horror XXII", Kang reveals that pregnancy is particularly difficult for females of his species as their planet has no pickles and their only ice cream is butterbrickle.
* TheWallsAreClosingIn: When spoofing ''TheTenCommandments'' and the story of Moses, Milhouse and Lisa (as Moses and Aaron) are thrown in a room with [[SpikesOfDoom spiked]] walls that close in on them. However, the spikes have all been installed opposite each other, so that the walls stop when the tips touch, leaving plenty of room for them to climb to safety (and for Lisa to remark, "Slave labor. You get what you pay for.").
* WalkOnTheWildSideEpisode:
** This happens to Marge on many occasions, ranging from running from the law with her friend after stealing her ex's car, taking part in a monster truck rally and gaining road rage from a Canyonero. [[DrivesLikeCrazy Driving]] seems to be her recurring BerserkButton.
** In "Separate Vocations", Lisa becomes a delinquent after getting "Homemaker" in an IneptAptitudeTest and being told that she'll never become a professional Jazz musician due to her stubby fingers. This culminates with her committing an expulsion worthy offense (stealing all of the teachers' guides) to which Bart takes the fall, not wanting her to ruin her life.
* WasntThatFun: Said by Bart when the family goes to Itchy and Scratchy Land and survive a rather deadly roller-coaster that ended in the family jumping out of the way of a buzz saw onto mattresses.
** In "Brother From Another Series", Bart wants to go again after he, Lisa, and Sideshow Bob rode down the drainage pipe.
--> '''Bart''': Let's go again! Let's go again!
--> '''Lisa''': (still catching her breath) NO!
* WastefulWishing: In the monkey's paw segment of "Treehouse of Horror II", Homer uses his wish by asking for a turkey sandwich. He regrets it when he realizes the turkey's a little dry.
** In "Homer and Apu", Homer wastes his three questions to the C.E.O. of the Kwik-E-Mart by asking three times if the man is ''really'' the head of the Kwik-E-Mart.
* WateringDown: In "The Crepes of Wrath", the French winemakers dilute their wine with antifreeze, then test it on Bart.
* WeAllLiveInAmerica: Quite some examples. One example is when the Simpsons visit Ireland, and the local police cars have ''"POLICE"'' written all over them instead of ''"GARDA"''.
* WeAreExperiencingTechnicalDifficulties: Seen many times when something goes wrong during Kent Brockman's or Krusty the Clown's broadcast.
* WeDidntStartTheBillyJoelParodies: "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0PJYqzht3s They'll Never Stop the Simpsons]]", a [[TheJimmyHartVersion Jimmy Hart Version]] at the end of the 2002 "Gump Roast" episode (so far, [[LongRunner they seem to be right]]).
* WelcomeToTheBigCity: When Homer first goes to New York, he's robbed several times and falls into a sewer while being chased by a pimp.
* WelcomeToTheRealWorld: Homer goes through a mysterious portal behind the bookcase and ends up doing this at the end of the seventh-season "Treehouse of Horror VI."
* WellIntentionedExtremist: Sideshow Bob. For example, the whole reason he framed Krusty was to provide 'Quality Children's Entertainment'. Yes, and because he got shot out of a cannon.
* WeShouldGetAnotherTape: In "Alone Again, Natura-Diddly", Homer films Ned's dating video on a tape featuring Marge giving birth to Maggie.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Parodied in-universe. The CorruptCorporateExecutive of a young-adult book publisher claimed that the original draft of Literature/{{Twilight}} was Bella falling in love with a {{Golem}}.
** Also played straight in that Marge could have been a LifeInHell rabbit in disguise. Early in the series, Matt Groening was planning to reveal that Marge was hiding rabbit ears under her hair, but the idea was scrapped either due to inconsistencies, or because [[BeyondTheImpossible it was too silly even for]] TheSimpsons. [[http://www.rubbercat.net/simpsons/marge-rabbit-sprites.png This idea is immortalized in the Arcade Game.]]
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome: Parodied in "The PTA Disbands" -- the original writer's pitch was, as the title suggests, a story about the Springfield Parent-Teacher Association threatening to disband because of a dispute between the parents and teachers. The episode was rewritten into one about the Springfield Elementary teachers going on strike because of a dispute with Skinner, but a reference to the original storyline was inserted, with a parent seemingly committing suicide by jumping out of a tall building because he thought the PTA had disbanded. Ned Flanders then revealed that the PTA hadn't actually disbanded, and the jumper then climbed back in through the window in relief.
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotHeinous: Homer aghast at Marge for mixing polyapolane with polyurethane recyclables in "The Old Man and the Lisa".
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Colin, from [[TheSimpsonsMovie the movie]] most notably, and Janey Handerson, Lisa's friend who seemed to get pushed aside so the [[IntelligenceEqualsIsolation "Lisa has no friends"]] running plot could happen.
** ''The Simpsons'' is a gold mine of this trope. A lot of the people the Simpsons have met (besides the celebrities) and the things the Simpsons or Springfield have disappeared and are no longer mentioned, or are mentioned later on, but only en passant.
** A subversion is with Mike Scioscia. He appears in "Homer at the Bat" and suffers from acute radiation poisoning in the end. He appears '''MUCH''' later in "[=MoneyBART=]", eighteen years later, and when Marge reminds him that he suffered from poisoning, he said "I did. But it ended up giving me super-managerial powers."
** {{Lampshaded}} now and then, such as in "Homerazzi," where Homer complains about celebrities not acknowledging him in any way after their first meeting. (Betty White then approaches him and asks him questions about the family.) Another episode has Homer mention "my seldom-seen half-brother Herb."
** This trope was essentially why "Mother Simpson" was produced, as the then current writing team couldn't believe that Homer's mother had never been seen outside of a couple flashback cameos.
* WhatHaveIDone: Bart sawing off the Jebadiah Springfield statue head in 'The Tell Tale Head'.
* WhatsAHenway: From "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase":
--> '''Marge''': I said we were having a special ''guest'' tonight: Mr. TimConway!
--> '''Homer''': What's a Tim Conway?
--> '''Tim Conway''': Oh, about 120 pounds.
* WheelOfPain: Homer is forced to work one that [[MundaneUtility turns the wheel of a cupcake display in the cafeteria]].
* WhenIWasYourAge: A perennial favorite of Grandpa Simpson.
* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: The ending of "Bart's Dog Gets an F" features still screen pictures and text of what happened to some of the dogs after obedience school.
* WhiteDudeBlackDude: Homer watches a black comedian do one of these routines in "Homer and Apu".
--> '''Homer''': (laughing) It's true, it's true! We're so lame!
** And [[SmallReferencePools tries one himself]] in "Monty Can't Buy Me Love"
--> '''Homer''': White people have names like ''"Lenny"'', while black people have names like ''"Carl"''.
* WhoWritesThisCrap: In "Faith Off", Kent Brockman complains about the writing on the teleprompter.
--> '''Kent Brockman''': Big game fever is reaching a fever pitch as the fevered rivalry between Springfield U. and Springfield A&M spreads like wildfever. This is writing?
--> '''Intern''': Sorry, Kent, I lost my thesaurus.
--> '''Kent Brockman''': (muttering) "Lost your thesaurus." You'll lose more than ''that''. In preparation for the big game, Springfield Stadium has caught additional seating capacity fever.
** In "Children of a Lesser Clod", Krusty complains about the writing at the award ceremony. It turns out Mr. Teeny is his writer.
--> '''Krusty''': Now, every year we find one good Samaritan so deserving that not recognizing him would make Santa Claus himself vomit with rage. Ugh, who writes this stuff?!
* WhoaBundy: In one episode Homer, Moe, Apu and Barney Whoa Bundied when deciding upon the name of their barbershop quartet, minus the hand raising/lowering.
* WholeEpisodeFlashback: "The Way We Was", "The Way We Weren't", "That '90s Show", "Dangerous Curves", "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story", the episodes about the birth of the kids ("I Married Marge", "Lisa's First Word", and "And Maggie Makes Three").
** Also "Dancin' Homer", which begins with Homer at the bar telling his friends about his short-lived stint as a baseball mascot. There's really no reason for the episode to be told in flashback, but it was done that way because the writers didn't know how to end the episode.
* WholePlotReference: ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', ''TheDeparted'', ''MrAndMrsSmith'', ''Film/MaryPoppins'', ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', ''{{Dracula}}'', ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'', ''Film/SidAndNancy'', ''Disney/LadyAndTheTramp'', ''Film/ThelmaAndLouise'', ''RearWindow'', ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', ''Series/TwentyFour'', ''TheShining'', ''MyMotherTheCar'', ''[[Film/TheDarkKnightSaga Batman Begins]]'', ''KingKong'', ''TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau''...
** This appears the most often in the Halloween episodes.
* WhosWatchingTheStore: Seen in "Lisa the Beauty Queen" when both Apu and Sanjay are at the beauty pageant. Marge asks them who's watching the Kwik-E-Mart, and the scene cuts to Jimbo, Dolph, and Kearney stealing the Squishy machine.
* TheWildcats: Parodied in "Bart Star":
--> '''Ned''': Who are we?
--> '''Football team''': The Wildcats!
--> '''Ned''': Who are we gonna beat?
--> '''Football team''': The Wildcats!
* WilliamTelling: In "The Cartridge Family," after Bart finds the handgun Homer acquired stowed in the freezer, he aims it at Milhouse who sticks an apple in his mouth. Marge manages to find the two just before Bart could pull the trigger.
* WindowWatcher: In an early episode of The Simpsons Homer takes the whole family out on a Window Watching escapade in order to demonstrate to them that their family's personal interactions aren't normal.
* WithOrWithoutYou: Homer gives these occasionally. The follow-through, eh, not so much.
* WorkingOnTheChainGang: The episode "Kill The Alligator And Run" sees the entire family (yes, even Maggie) sentenced by the State of Florida to forced labor on a chain gang after Homer kills an alligator named "Captain Jack" (the Florida town's most famous resident) and addresses the jury at their trial as "Drunken Hicks."
* TheWorldMocksYourLoss: After Ned lost his wife he sees couples dancing and having fun at the [[FictionalHoliday Jellyfish Festival]].
-->Marge: Poor Ned. This is his first Jellyfish Festival alone.
-->Homer: I know. And it doesn't get any easier from here. There's the Tongue-Kissing Festival, Cinco de Ocho, the Hobo Oscars, days just made for lovers. Not widowers...lovers.
* TheWorstSeatInTheHouse: In "The Homer They Fall," Marge's seat for Homer's [[TheBoxingEpisode big boxing match]] was directly behind a pillar, so she couldn't see anything.
* WorldsSmallestViolin Lenny loses the bow
* WorstWhateverEver: Comic Book Guy is the TropeMaker.
* WorthlessForeignDegree: Apu works in the Kwik-E-Mart despite being a top-of-the-class computing scientist back in India.
* WraparoundBackground: Lampshaded in "The Front" when Roger Meyers Jr. says that a common way to keep costs down on a cartoon is to re-use the same backgrounds over and over again... meanwhile, he, Bart, and Lisa walk by the same background numerous times.
* WriteWhatYouKnow: "Marge Be Not Proud" was based on a real experience that happened to Mike Scully, the writer of the episode.
* WriteWhoYouKnow: The Simpsons are named after Matt Groening's RealLife relatives, except Bart, whose name was chosen as an anagram of "brat". Other characters (such as Flanders) are named for streets near where Matt Groening grew up. Krusty the Klown was based on a real clown called Rusty Nails, who Matt Groening said kind of frightened him as a kid.
** InUniverse example: Bart based the character in his web cartoon series Angry Dad on Homer Simpson, as well as a sidekick based on Lisa (A bit of an InUniverse ThrowItIn moment, as he created her so the person she's based on, Lisa Simpson, won't complain about the series' ripping off on Homer). Homer was initially not to happy with it, although after it was revealed that his angry reactions are the only reason he's still alive, he allows Bart to continue with the series, although only under the condition that he only does it semi-based on real experiences.
* WritersSuck: "The Front," "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show," and "Homer to the Max" have a lot of jokes about how awful television writers are (especially the ones who work on cartoons).
** In "Bart vs. Lisa vs. The Third Grade", Homer laments the wave of reality shows, and blames the writers and actors for pricing themselves right out of the business.
* WritingAroundTrademarks: Lampshaded by the ''Film/MaryPoppins'' parody, who says she's an original creation like 'Ricky Rouse' and 'Monald Muck'.
** And of course this bit from one of the Treehouse of Horrors.
---> '''Willie''': You got the Shinning!\\
'''Bart''': Oh you mean the [[TheShining Shining]].\\
'''Willie''': Shh, you wanna get sued?
* WrongSideOfTheTracks: Turns up a bit; in fact, the quality of life in Springfield shifts from white suburbia to abject poverty ''literally'' around the division of a single set of train tracks.
* WroteTheBook:
** In "The Great Money Caper", Homer and Bart walk around Springfield conning people with the help of a book called "A Child's Garden of Cons". Later, Abe joins them in their grifting, saying he wrote the book on flimflamming. Bart verifies.
** In the Spinoff Showcase's Lovematic Grandpa segment, Moe claims to have written the book on love. Abe responds, "Yeah, 'All Quiet on the Western Front'."
[[/folder]]
[[folder:X]]
* XCalledTheyWantTheirYBack: In "Homer the Clown", Krusty gets a call from GeorgeCarlin, who is suing him for stealing his "Seven Words You Can't Say on TV" bit. Krusty ends the call by saying, "Well, excuuuse me!"
-->'''Receptionist:''' SteveMartin on four.\\
'''Krusty:''' Ten grand.
* XDaysSince
** In the new opening: Lenny Carl are changing the "days without an accident" one higher, then the Quitting Time Horn goes off and Homer runs out, knocking them over in the process.
** A prison holds a sign counting the number of days since the last break.
** A redneck bar has a sign counting the number of days without a tornado. And it's reset between scenes.
** When Apu takes his citizenship test, the sign outside says something like "130 years without a civil war".
* XtremeKoolLetterz: Krusty's Komedy Klassic, whose initials provided a funny, yet [[UnfortunateImplications unfortunate implication]] ("K.K.K? ''That's'' not good!") Made worse by the fact that the letters are in white and the TV special itself was set at the Apollo Theater, where ''Showtime At the Apollo'' (a variety show featuring black performers) is filmed.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Y]]
* {{Yakuza}}: After Homer hires the Mafia to help Marge's pretzel business, the Investorettes hire the Yakuza to fight back.
* YankTheDogsChain: In "Moaning Lisa", Bart keeps winning against Homer in a boxing video game. Homer gets lessons from a kid at the video arcade and that night, he uses the tips to wallop Bart in the game, but just before he's about to deliver his finishing blow, Marge unplugs the TV. So Homer didn't technically win the match, and Bart announces his retirement from the game.
* YawnAndReach: Homer tries to teach it to Abe in "Lady Bouvier's Lover". Skinner does this to Patty in "Principal Charming", but she doesn't like it.
--> '''Patty''': Don't be stupid.
* YesMan: Smithers.
** Smithers is more of a subversion, though. Some of Burns' [[KickTheDog more extreme schemes]] had Smithers actually standing up to him, even risking getting fired for it. Then again, Smithers did go back to working for Burns later in the episode.
* YouAnsweredYourOwnQuestion: Homer: "Operator! Give me the number to 911!"
** Played with in "Bart's Girlfriend":
--> '''Bart''': Why the crap do we have to go to church anyway?!
--> '''Marge''': You just answered your own question with that commode mouth.
* YouAreATreeCharlieBrown: Bart and Milhouse play sheep.
* YouAreInCommandNow: Homer ends up in command of a nuclear sub in "Simpson Tide".
* YouCantHandleTheParody: They've used it at least three times. The first is in "Secrets of a Successful Marriage":
-->'''Homer''': You want the truth? You want the ''truth''?! You can't ''handle'' the truth! [[Film/{{Patton}} 'Cause when you reach over]] and put your hand into a pile of goo that was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do.
** and from "Sideshow Bob Roberts":
-->'''Sideshow Bob''': You want the truth? You can't handle the truth! No truth-handler, you! I deride your truth-handling abilities!\\
'''Judge''': Will you get to the point?
** and from "Mommie Beerest":
-->'''Jack playing card''': You can't handle the twos!
* YouGetMeCoffee: Lisa wanted to be in a jazz band but was told she could sit in a chair instead.
* YouGetWhatYouPayFor: In the second segment of "Simpsons Bible Stories", which spoofs the story of Moses, Lisa and Milhouse escape a badly designed DeathTrap. Lisa notes, "Slave labor. You get what you paid for."
* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: Marge and the van Houtens have blue hair. Marge actually dyes her hair that color, though it's assumed from flashbacks to her childhood that she ''was'' a natural blue.
* YouJustRuinedTheShot: Becky appears to be torturing the family in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge".
* YouMakeMeSic: In "Bart the Genius", after Bart gives a confession letter to Dr. J. Loren Pryor that he was faking being a genius:
--> '''Pryor''': You know... you misspelled "confession".
* YouMightRememberMeFrom: Troy [=McClure=] says this virtually every time he appears, even when he's on a date.
* YouMonster
** Bart to Mr. Burns in "Who Shot Mr. Burns (Part 1)": "You twisted old MONSTER!"
** Homer will drop this one for any reason. '''Any'''.
* YouMustBeThisTallToRide: Bart attempts to subvert the trope by applying ice cream bars to the bottom of his shoes to meet the height requirement. It gets played straight when the ride starts and he nearly falls out going through a loop because he is not big enough for the safety bar to catch him.
* YoungerThanTheyLook:
** Homer Simpson: In season four's "Lisa the Beauty Queen," Homer tries his luck at the school carnival's "Guess Your Age and Weight" booth. The fortuneteller guesses that Homer is 53 years old and 420 pounds. Homer laughs at the man and reveals that he's 36 years old and 239 pounds. Later episodes would have Homer as 38 or 39, depending on writer.
** Hans Moleman: During the Alc-Anon meeting in season four's "Duffless," Hans reveals that he's 31 years old (which is true, according to his driver's license on "Selma's Choice" that shows he was born in August of 1961. It would make him around 31 at the time of the episode's premiere -- 1991), implying that Hans Moleman's alcohol addiction has rapidly aged him. As usual, NegativeContinuity has discredited this, as Hans was seen at the Springfield Retirement Home in "The Old Man and the C Student" and in "Little Girl on the Big Ten," a character pointed out that Hans was 80. Though given Moleman's [[ButtMonkey status]], and how incompetent just about ''every'' laborer in Springfield seems to be...
** Mr. Burns: Before "Homer the Smithers," Burns revealed that he was 81 years old and looked older because he went bald around the time he was in college. After "Homer the Smithers", it's since been retconned that he looks his age (or is older than he looks) and has had a head of hair as recently as the sixties.
*** Mr. Burns' age following "Homer the Smithers" has tended to vary. Generally, it was established since then that Burns is 104 years old, although in the S15 episode "Fraudcast News", Burns is 89 years old. Again, this depends on the writer.
* [[YouLookFamiliar You Sound Familiar]]: Albert Brooks has voiced a number of guest characters over the years, including Cowboy Bob ("Call of the Simpsons"), Jacques ("Life on the Fast Lane"), Brad Goodman ("Bart's Inner Child"), Hank Scorpio ("You Only Move Twice"), Tad Spangler ("The Heartbroke Kid"), and Russ Cargill (''The Simpsons Movie'').
** Jon Lovitz has appeared as Artie Ziff (several episodes), Professor Lombardo ("Brush with Greatness"), Aristotle Amadoupolis ("Homer Defined"), Llewellyn Sinclair ("A Streetcar Named Marge"), [[TheCritic Jay Sherman]] ("A Star Is Burns"), and Enrico Irritazio ("Homerazzi"). In "The Ziff Who Came to Dinner", all these characters just happen to be in Moe's Tavern at the same time.
* YourFavorite: Matt Groning's favorite candy bar is Butterfinger, the reason he allows the characters to sell them.
* YourHeadASplode: Once in a reference to ''JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'', as well as an ExplosiveDecompression.
** In "And Maggie Makes Three", Homer's head suddenly explodes during the WholeEpisodeFlashback, which is immediately revealed to be Bart hijacking the story. When the flashback resumes... Homer is still headless, crying about how his perfect life is ruined.
--->'''Marge:''' Homer, you had a head.\\
'''Homer:''' Check. ''(Flashback-Homer's head reappears)''\\
'''Marge:''' And your bottom was a little bigger.\\
'''Homer:''' Aw. ''(Flashback-Homer's ass grows)''
* YourMom: In "Starship Poopers" (part of "Treehouse of Horror IX"), Kang delivers one of these to Homer while on The JerrySpringer Show.
--> '''Kang''': Well (bleep) hyperbolic parabaloid (bleep) yo mama!
* YourWorstNightmare: In a "Treehouse of Horror", Bart and Lisa, in a parody of ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', are being terrorized by Groundskeeper Willie in their dreams.
* YouWouldDoTheSameForMe: In "Homer the Heretic", Ned says this to Homer after he saves Homer from a burning house. In a daydream, Homer thinks differently, though he responds: "That's right, old friend."
* YouSayTomato: Marge says "foilage" instead of "foliage".
** Homer correcting Lisa: "It's spelled 'nucular', honey."
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Z]]
* ZanyScheme: Homer performs these, constantly.
--> '''Homer''': Now, the only antidote to a zany scheme... is an even zanier scheme!
--> '''Nerd''': Why does it have to be "zany"?
* ZettaiRyouki: [[http://babysimpson.co.uk/gallery/grabs/lisa/lisa463.gif Lisa]] in "Lisa Simpson, This Isn't Your Life".
** Also Greta Wolfcastle in the beginning of "The Bart Wants What It Wants" when Bart saves her from bullies.
* {{Zeerust}}: Parodied numerous times.
* ZillionDollarBill: Mr. Burns was said to own a trillion-dollar bill - and did! Now Fidel Castro has it.
* ZombieApocalypse: Two Treehouse of Horror stories have this: one where Bart uses an occult spell book to try and reanimate Snowball I and another where Krusty Burger's latest sandwich turns the people into "munchers" (cannibalistic zombies).
[[/folder]]
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-> View the main page [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons HERE]]
--> Tropes A-B [[TheSimpsons/TropesAToB HERE]]
--> Tropes C-D [[TheSimpsons/TropesCToD HERE]]
--> Tropes E-H [[TheSimpsons/TropesEToH HERE]]
--> Tropes I-M [[TheSimpsons/TropesIToM HERE]]
--> Tropes N-R [[TheSimpsons/TropesNToR HERE]]
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[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:S]]
* SadistTeacher: Bart's kindergarten teacher. You do NOT tell a five-year-old boy that the moral of The Ugly Duckling is that there is hope for everyone but him.
* SadisticChoice: Parodied in "Rosebud" with an example more trivial than most. Burns takes over all television networks available to Springfield, telling the whole town that he's not giving them back their television until someone steals Maggie's teddy bear and puts it on his desk. Cut to an angry mob outside the Simpson home stealing the teddy bear from her, only to return it out of regret once they see Maggie, visibly upset, trying to crawl over to take it back.
* SafetyWorst: In one episode, Homer becomes so obsessed with child-proofing that everything on the playground is covered in bubble-wrap, and he then regrets it when he learns that [[SpoofAesop children not being injured means doctors make less money and child injury greeting card factories close down.]]
* SamusIsAGirl: Parodied in ''Homer Of Seville'' when Homer is saved by a motorcyclist opera fan and TheReveal is overplayed by the woman and by Homer. The former says it too overdramatically and the latter says it with DullSurprise and with a comparison to TheTwilightZone.
** In "Girls Just Want to Have Sums", Lisa (disguised as a boy named Jake Boyman) reveals that she's actually a girl to the entire school.
* SapientCetaceans: In a TreehouseOfHorror episode dolphins invade the land and take over. They can speak English.
-->Snorky: ''[in high pitched voice]'' [[EloquentInMyNativeTongue Snorky ... talk ... man ...]] ''[clears throat and reverts to deep male voice]'' I'm sorry, let me start over. Eons ago, dolphins lived on the land. Then your ancestors drove us into the sea, where we suffered for millions of years. I, King Snorky, hereby banish all humans to the sea!
* SawStarWarsTwentySevenTimes: In the episode "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie," Milhouse brags about seeing the ''Itchy & Scratchy'' movie 15 times and Nelson brags that he saw it 17 times. Bart (who has been grounded from seeing the movie after failing to watch Maggie) tries to joke that the two must have been sick of seeing it and ends up getting chased by Nelson and Milhouse.
* SayMyName: "Mendooooozzzaaaaa!"
** [[CatchPhrase "SKINNER!"]]
*** [[PhraseCatcher "S-Superintendent Chalmers!"]]
** "Barrrrrrttttttttt!!!"
*** Even Lisa says his name whenever Bart pisses her off or pranks her.
** '''Marge''': Homer!
*** Marge also says "Homie/Homey" whenever she kisses or has sex with Homer.
* ScaleModelDestruction: Mr. Burns stomps on a model of Springfield Godzilla style.
* ScamReligion: Movementarianism.
** In the same episode ("The Joy of Sect"), Mr. Burns attempts to create his own religion after he hears that the Movementarian's leader has tax exempt status. The unveiling ceremony [[GoneHorriblyWrong went horribly wrong]], however, as a wayward spark from a firework destroyed his costume, and he fell from the balcony trying to put himself out.
---> '''Lenny:''' Meh. He's alright, but he's no bowl of Special K!
* {{Scandalgate}}: Subverted where Kent Brockman reveals that the trial of Mayor Quimby's nephew for assaulting a waiter is being dubbed by the media as "Beat Up Waiter":
-->'''Kent Brockman:''' This reporter suggested "Waitergate" but was shouted down at the Press Club.
* SceneryCensor: Demonstrated with Marge's portrait of Mr. Burns, where something thin always obscures his tiny penis.
** "Natural Born Kissers" features much of this in the final act when Homer and Marge are trying to find cover while naked.
* SchmuckBait: In the fourth Treehouse of Horror, Bart come across a lever for a [[SuperHappyFunTropeOfDoom "Super Happy Fun Slide"]] while escaping some vampires. He even lampshade it before he pulls it and slides right into the clutches of the undead and his own vamping. Homer nearly does the same later in the episode.
--->'''Bart''': I know I shouldn't, but when will I be here again?
** In another early Treehouse of Horror episode, the aliens' cookbook "How to Cook For Forty Humans" caused Lisa to think they were going to eat The Simpsons, first thinking the dust covered title was "How to Cook Humans" until Kang blew some dust off to reveal that it said "How to Cook For Humans" until Lisa blew more dust off revealing "How to Cook Forty Humans" before the final dust was blew off revealing its full title. Unfortunately, Lisa's distrust ruined their chances of being pampered by the alien civilization and they were returned to Earth.
* [[invoked]] TheScrappy: in "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", Poochie is a new ''[[ShowWithinAShow Itchy & Scratchy]]'' character voiced by Homer, who is TotallyRadical (and in Itchy's face) even in his [[AndKnowingIsHalfTheBattle post-episode aesops]]. No-one likes him, and is hastily canned, leading to the ShooOutTheNewGuy trope.
* ScoutOut: The Junior Campers in "Boy Scoutz 'n the Hood".
* ScreamsLikeALittleGirl: Homer does it the most, but Ned's screaming actually sounds like a woman's (his singing as well, which Bart finds disturbing [because he found it attractive]).
* SdrawkcabName: Mr. Burns "disguises" himself as "Mr. Snrub" in "A Star is Burns".
--> '''Smithers''': I like the way "Snrub" thinks!
** In the credits of ''Treehouse of Horror VII, Dan Castellaneta's name is spelled backwards.
* SecondPersonAttack: In "Husbands and Knives", a triple Second-Person Attack is made by Art Spiegelman, Daniel Clowes and Alan Moore, who all simultaneously punch Comic Book Guy when he was trying to destroy a rival comic book store that's ruining his business.
* SecretIngredient:
** Marge's secret ingredient for pork chops is salt.
** The secret ingredient for making a Flaming Homer cocktail is "Krusty Brand Non-Narkotik Kough Syrup".
* SeeYouInHell: "...from Heaven." ("Two Dozen and One Greyhounds", Lovejoy)
** "See you in Hell, candy boys!" (throws explosive) ("Homer Badman", Homer)
** "See you in Hell, God bless this house." ("Mom and Pop Art", Bart)
** "See you in Hell, dinner plate." ("The Cartridge Family", Homer)
** "Thank you for coming! I'll see you in Hell!" ("Homer the Vigilante", Apu)
** "I'll see you in Hell yet, Homer Simpson!" ("Treehouse of Horror IV", Flanders/Satan)
** "See you in Hell." "Still pushing that boulder?" "Uh-huh." ("Treehouse of Horror III", various zombies returning to their graves)
* SelectiveEnforcement: In one episode, Barney and Lenny play pranks on Moe which involve setting him on fire and setting a cobra on him. Homer, in an attempt to join in the "harmless" fun loosens the lid on a sugar shaker. He gets kicked out of the bar.
* SelfServingMemory: In $pringfield, when Homer accuses Marge of being against the casino, flashes back to a very bizarre scene. Also used by Burns and Bart in the trial in Bart Gets Hit By a Car.
** In "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace", Homer claims that Marge told him to quit his job and become an inventor, or she'd torch the house.
* SeniorSleepCycle: Homer's father even falls asleep mid-sentence.
* SensitiveGuyAndManlyMan: Milhouse and Bart.
* SequelEpisode: "Brawl in the Family", which followed up on Homer's second marriage to Amber from "Viva Ned Flanders".
** Similarly, "Papa Don't Leach" is a follow-up to "Colonel Homer".
** "My Mother the Carjacker" and "Mona Leaves-a" follows up on the "Homer's mother" plot thread started in "Mother Simpson".
** The earliest example would probably be "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?" being a follow up to "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"
** "The Great Louse Detective", which was a follow-up to "Homer's Enemy".
* SerenadeYourLover: It happens a lot-- see trope page.
* SesameStreetCred: Celebrity voices have been rumored to line up for years to get on the show. Even playing themselves.
* SesquipedalianLoquaciousness: Homer in "Bart's Friend Falls In Love", after getting a subliminal vocabulary-building tape since they were out of weight-loss tapes.
* SeverelySpecializedStore: A borderline example appears in "When Flanders Failed". Ned Flanders opens The Leftorium, a store with left-handed products for left-handed people; despite having a wide range of products, it initially fails due to interference by Homer.
* SexyDiscretionShot: Not shying away about sex even when left to the imagination, this trope happens in several episodes:
** The episode "Grade School Confidential" has Principal Skinner and Edna Krabappel having a conversation, eating applesauce, and then making out in Edna's apartment only to have sex on the kitchen floor; thus explained with the Charlie Brown Wax Candle burning down to it's feet.
-->'''Edna''': Seymour, swallow that applesauce and kiss me.
-->'''Skinner''': I'm afraid I already swallowed it while you were talking.
*** They fooled around that night, they didn't have sex. Later in that very episode, Skinner reveals that he is a virgin. According to the DVD commentaries, that was truthful and not some trick.
** "Insane Clown Poppy": In Krusty's flashback about how Krusty met Sophie's mother in the Gulf War, we see Krusty and her kissing and embracing each other in a army tent and then it pans to the window shot of the burning torches in the desert which 'burned out' like candles in the morning.
-->'''Krusty''': There was your mother -- looking like a beautiful mirage. Maybe it was the anthrax in the air, maybe it was the fact that the Arab women weren't biting, whatever it was, it was magic.
** "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington": The still 'far out' shot of the "Ye Olde Off-Ramp Inn" when Mayor Quimby has sex with one of his lady friends.
-->'''Mayor Quimby''': Vote Quimby, vote Quimby, vote Quimby, VOTE QUIMBY! [orgasmic moan]
** "She Used to Be My Girl": After rescuing Chloe, Barney is rewarded with pity sex in which we see the shot of the helicopter humping up and down.
** "Treehouse of Horror XVI": Happens at the end of the second segment, "Survival of the Fattest", in which after everyone dies by Mr. Burns hunting rifle on a reality show with Homer surviving and after Marge bops both Burns and Smithers with two frying pans, both of them immediately have sex only to have commentator Terry Bradshaw as the 'Discrection' shot.
** Subverted in "Lisa's First Word" which [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPNxZno3YaM&feature=related happens in this scene]]:
-->'''Bart''': Mom, what was my first word?
-->'''Marge''': Hmmm...
-->[Flashback to baby Bart walking on his parents having sex]
-->'''Baby Bart''': [[PrimalScene Ay caramba!]]
-->[Returns to present]
-->'''Marge''': I don't think I remember.
** "The Devil Wears Nada": Near the end in which Marge (after eating strawberries with whipped cream and spending a brief but near-kiss moments twice with Ned in the Simpsons house) and Homer (back from his trip with Carl in Paris) immediately have sex, as usual. Cut to shaking family pictures in the living room, cut to SLH and a white dog(similar to the Lady and the Tramp dog) nose rubbing in the doghouse, and finally cut to birds forming the shape of a heart.
** "Dangerous Curves": In a scene in this flashback episode, Ned and Maude (seducing him modestly) kiss and then turn out the lights while Homer and Marge, unmarried, are separated in different rooms.
** Subverted in the flashback episode "And Maggie Makes Three" in this scene after Homer and Marge spent a romantic evening celebrating their new life:
-->'''Homer''': [sighs] I love you, Marge.
-->'''Marge''': I love you too, Homey.
-->'''Homer''': Everything in our lives is finally perfectly balanced. I hope things stay exactly like this forever.
-->'''Marge''': Mm hmm.
-->["Seconds later" scene shows lots of little Homer sperm bumping their heads and going "D'oh! D'oh!"]
-->[one breaks through the egg and goes "Woo hoo!"]
-->[scene switch to present day, Homer swimming like a sperm]
-->'''Marge''': Did you have to be so graphic?
-->'''Homer''': It's OK, Marge: they pave the way for this kind of filth in school.
** "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy". After telling Abe about how weak their sex life is, Abe gives Homer some tonic to improve his sex life with Marge leading to shots of a train going into a tunnel, a rocket blasting off, and hot dogs falling in a factory which pans back to reveal Bart, Lisa and Maggie in a movie theater watching stock footage of all three:
-->'''Lisa''': Whaddya think Mom and Dad are doing right now?
-->'''Bart''': I dunno.
*** Later in the episode, the same goes for many other married couples who took the tonic leaving Bart, Lisa, and Milhouse to believe different conclusions:
-->'''Bart''': OK, it's not 'painfully' clear the adults are 'definitely' paving the way for an invasion by the saucer people.
-->'''Milhouse''': You fool! Can't you see it's a massive government conspiracy? Or have they gotten to you too?
-->[he and Bart start wrestling]
-->'''Lisa''': Hey! Hey, hey, stop it! Stop it! Why are you guys jumping to such ridiculous conclusions? Haven't you ever heard of Occam's Razor? "The simplest explanation is probably the correct one."
-->'''Bart''': [condescending] So what's the simplest explanation?
-->'''Lisa''': I don't know. Maybe they're all reverse vampires and they have to get home before dark.
-->'''Everyone''': Aah! Reverse vampires! Reverse vampires!
-->[Lisa sighs]
*** And later:
-->'''Bart''': So finally, we're all in agreement about what's going on with the adults. Milhouse?
-->'''Milhouse''': [steps up to blackboard] Ahem. OK, here's what we've got: the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people --
-->'''Bart''': Thank you.
-->'''Milhouse''': -- under the supervision of the reverse vampires --
-->'''Lisa''': [sighs]
-->'''Milhouse''': -- are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner. [sotto voce] We're through the looking glass, here, people...
** "I Married Marge": In this flashback episode in how Bart was born, Homer and Marge make out in the minature golf castle:
-->'''Marge''': Maybe it's the champale talking, but I think you're pretty sexy.
-->'''Homer''': Really? It <must> be the champale talking.
-->[Homer and Marge kiss]
-->'''Marge''': What if we get caught?
-->'''Homer''': Don't worry. This castle is impregnable.
*** Then after that, a golfer putts a golf ball into the 'free game' hole which flashes.
** "Catch 'Em If You Can": Near the end of the episode in which Homer and Marge finally make love, which we don't see explicitly, in an inflated castle floating in the Niagara River.
** "The Boys of Bummer": Happens in the subplot of the episode. When trying to steal back their mattress from the Lovejoys' bedroom, Homer and Marge stare at each other seductively. Then it cuts outside to the Lovejoys arriving home excited to make love once again before spotting Homer and Marge in their bedroom. Then cuts back to the bedroom and we see Homer and Marge immediately naked between the sheets.
** The very end of "Colonel Homer" in which Homer and Marge are making out and before they have sex, Homer throws his white cowboy hat toward the screen blacking it out till the credits appear.
** "Black Widower": Happens after the end of Sideshow Bob and Selma's honeymoon video:
-->'''Sideshow Bob''': Oh, Selma dear. You and your little camera. Whaddya say we shut it off for awhile...
-->'''Selma''': ...and make love?
-->[Selma removes the sheets revealing her nude]
-->'''Sideshow Bob''': [sighs] I suppose.
-->[tape ends]
-->'''Marge''': Aww, that's sweet.
** "Some Enchanted Evening": Happens at the very end with these lines during the credits:
-->'''Homer''': Can we make up again?
-->'''Marge''': Oh, my goodness.
** "A Star is Born Again": After a concert, Ned Flanders, after consulting bible verses before he engages into pre-marital sex with Sara Sloane, makes out with her on the picnic carpet. Then it cuts to sunrise and it pans down showing both Ned and Sarah naked under the sheets along with their clothes lying on the grass.
** Subverted in "The Haw-Hawed Couple". Happens at the beginning when Lisa complains about Bart drinking coffee(which is Pepsi, Bart claims) when they hear Homer and Marge arguing only for it to turn out to be a fake tape recording to distract Bart and Lisa, while the real Homer and Marge prepare to make love. When they do, they quickly took off their bed pajamas and Marge accidentally hits the 'play' button with her slippers causing it to play "A Horse With No Name". This leaves Bart and Lisa to curiously open the door to see what's 'really' going on [[PrimalScene only for Bart to feel traumatized]] [[TheTalk ever since Homer told him about the 'facts of life']] [[ContinuityNod in "All's Fair in Oven War"]].
-->'''Milhouse''': Trust me Bart, it's better to walk in on both your parents than on just one of them.
** "Bart's Friend Falls in Love": Happens in the Troy [=McClure=] Fuzzie Bunny sex education film Mrs Krabappel shows to her students:
-->'''Troy (from film)''': That night came the Honeymoon.
-->[sexual music plays]
-->'''Class''': [[PrimalScene Eww!]]
-->'''Edna''': She's faking it.
** Treehouse of Horror XVIII: Near the end of "Mr. and Ms. Simpson" in which Homer and Marge kiss each other passionately realizing they're more attracted then ever, after killing Chief Wiggum together. Then it cuts to both of them lying on Wiggum's body seen naked in the morning.
-->'''Marge''': What a wonderful night.
** "A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love": Happens when Homer takes a shot of Burns' aphrodisiac and races home carrying Marge to their bedroom. Then it cuts to both of them naked in the bed.
** "The Burns and the Bees": To keep Lisa's bees from becoming extinct, Homer and Moe conduct a plan to mate them using Africanized bees. When they put the queen in the bottle before covering it with a cloth, both Homer and Moe spice up the moment lighting candles and dimming the lights with the song "Sea of Love" playing in the background.
-->'''Moe''': Got the queen?
-->'''Homer''': Yep, and she's ready for a night of anonymous sex with multiple partners. [laughs]
-->'''Moe''': [Moe puts queen in Africanized bee water bottle and covers it] Now let's give them some privacy while they get down with the buzziness.
-->[Homer and Moe play "Sea of Love" record, light candles and dim lights]
-->'''Moe''': [sighs] If they was me, they'd be done by now.
** "The Scorpion's Tale": Subverted when Abe sleeps on the floor with Homer and Marge making love as noticed with their feet moving, despite Abe harshly compmenting them.
* ShakingHerHairOut:
** Parodied in Marge's novel ''The Harpooned Heart''; the book's heroine wears her hair under a bonnet but her lover pulls it off and lets it out. Since she has Marge's hairstyle, instead of falling down it shoots up.
** Played straight in "Last Tap Dance in Springfield" with Lisabella, the [[HotLibrarian librarian.]]
* SheIsNotMyGirlfriend: Inverted in "I Love Lisa". [[TheSimpsons Lisa Simpson]] to Ralph Wiggum. On a date. On live television. Preceded by a BigNo.
-->'''Bart:''' You can actually pinpoint the second when his heart rips in half!
* SheetOfGlass: Subverted in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge": Marge's out-of-control car heads towards two workers carrying a giant sheet of glass. However, instead of the car smashing the glass to pieces, she merely knocks the glass down to the ground. The workers pick it up and comment on how sturdy the glass is.
** Parodied in "Bart's Elephant", in which two workers manage to avoid having their sheet of glass get hit by both Stampy and Bart, then toss it into a recycling bin carelessly.
* ShippedInShackles:
** Burns was given the Hannibal Mask treatment once when he was dragged into court for illegally dumping radioactive waste in "Marge vs. the Monorail."
** Bart, after being falsely assumed to have stolen the church's collection plate money, is given the Hannibal treatment at next week's service.
--> '''Marge''': We really shouldn't have let them do this. It can't be helping his self esteem.
* ShoeShineMister: The creator of ''Itchy & Scratchy'' is a homeless hobo who makes a living in part by shining shoes. After he successfully sues I&S Studios for all their money, he lives in a mansion, where he hangs out in front offering people a shine.
* ShootTheShaggyDog: in "Homer the Moe", Homer throwing his unfinished robot away.
--> '''Robot:''' ''"Father, give me legs..."''
--> ''(Homer throws it away)''
--> '''Robot:''' ''"Father..."''
--> ''(Homer shakes his head)''
--> ''(the robot drags itself off-screen with its "arms")''
* ShootTheTelevision:
** One episode sees Bart and Lisa write a script for an [[TheItchyAndScratchyShow "Itchy & Scratchy"]] cartoon that ends with Scratchy's head (now just a skull) going through a ceiling and into Elvis Presley's television set. Elvis promptly produces a revolver and shoots Scratchy's skull through the TV.
** The trope is [[InvertedTrope inverted]] in the episode "The Cartridge Family", where Homer uses the new revolver he bought to ''turn the TV on''. Hilariously, the image that comes on the screen when it does turn on is of a cowboy, having been shot, falling off a roof.
** In "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", Chief Wiggum, [[ThePeteBest after he had been kicked out of The Be Sharps]], becomes so upset while watching Johnny Carson that he begins wildly shooting the TV in a fit of rage. It then becomes apparent that Wiggum had accidentally left the remote control in his gun holster and got that and his gun confused for the other.
* ShootingGallery: "The Springfield Connection," with Wiggum pointing out the unarmed victims Marge didn't shoot (the mom with her baby and the blind man in the doorway).
** In "The Cartridge Family," Homer joins his NRA buddies at a shooting range. We see him make some very clean shots through a series of soda cans. Pull out to reveal that Homer just took out the display at the snack stand.
* {{Shotacon}}: Happens briefly in "Homerazzi" in which Homer in the Celebrity Nightspot takes many snapshots there including a snapshot of Milhouse, who is ten years old, and Rich Texan's daughter Paris Texan (Based off Paris Hilton), who is probably twenty years old, 'making out'. Also earlier in the episode, she kissed Bart on the cheek, who is also ten, when Bart annoys her for Homer to take a pictures both of them.
** Subverted In "The Devil Wears Nada", in which Both Milhouse and Nelson commented and looked at a sexy pin-up calender featuring Marge which embarasses Bart.
-->'''Edna''': Class, today we're going to talk about Washington crossing the Delaware.
-->'''Nelson''': I'd like to watch Bart's mom washing her underwear.
-->'''Edna''': The British were led by general Howe.
-->'''Nelson''': I'd give Bart's mom a general wow.
-->'''Bart''': Knock it off. That's my mom you're talking about.
-->'''Nelson''': Keep-away with Bart's mom.
-->[Throws calendar to Milhouse]
-->'''Milhouse''': Mrs. S., you can tuck me in anytime.
-->'''Bart''': Okay, buddy, lower the eyebrows, Nice and easy.
-->[Milhouse lowers eyebrows, but then raises his left one up again; Bart hits him with slingshot]
-->'''Milhouse''':Ow, it's stuck! I'll have a quizzical expression for the rest of my life.
-->'''Nelson''': I'd like to get quizzical with Bart's mom.
-->'''Bart''': Shut up!
-->[Bart starts a fight with Nelson and ends up in Skinner's office]
** Averted in "Bart the Lover" in which Bart pranks Edna in revenge by writing letters to her, pretending to be "Woodrow", until Edna wants to see Woodrow in person. However, in the third act of the episode, this quote from Edna subverts it after Bart realizes what he's done:
-->'''Edna''': Bart, you're the closest thing to a man in my life. And that's so depressing, I think I'm going to cry.
** Subverted in "The Cartridge Family" in which one of the prostitutes at the 'Sleep Easy Hotel' talks to Bart:
-->'''Prostitute''': Lookin' for a good time, sailor?
-->'''Bart''': I certainly am.
-->'''Marge''': No you're not! [drags Bart inside the motel, then sticks her head out the door] He's really not.
** Parodied and subverted in the "Yokel Chords" subplot. Dr. Stacey Swanson develops a close bond with Bart during the psychiatry session when she plays video games with him and reads Mad Libs to him in order to understand more about him and his family. In the second session, thanks to Marge using funds for Homer's breast reduction surgery to relieve Bart of his depression of not seeing Dr. Swanson, Bart reveals more to her about his family including how he got the name "Dark Stanley" which was Bart getting hit on the head with a Stanley hammer by Homer. The session ends and Bart is finally happy, but Dr. Swanson now starts to feel sad that he's leaving her, leading her to see her own psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Bogdanovich.
** "The New Kid on the Block" has Bart having a crush on Ruth Powers' daughter, Laura Powers, while in "Little Big Girl", Bart makes out with Darcy (who is fifteen years old; five years older than Bart) in Homer's car after driving her to a drive in theatre.
* ShouldHaveThoughtOfThatBeforeX:
-->'''Principal Skinner''': Over here, Simpson! The detention room is dangerously overcrowded so you'll be spending your time in the cafeteria.
-->'''Student''': Oxygen running out...
-->'''Principal Skinner''': Yes, you should have thought of that before you made that paper airplane.
** Aside from that example, TheSimpsons provides another example that sort of toys with this. In "Lost Our Lisa", Lisa can't go to the Isis Exhibit because Marge has to take Bart to the hospital to get the novelty items he glued to his face removed, leading to this exchange:
-->'''Lisa''': Oh! It's the last day of the Isis exhibit!
-->'''Bart''': Well, you should have thought of that BEFORE I glued all this stuff to my face!
** In "Mobile Homer", the movie Marge watches features dialog of this.
--> '''Man''': I'm afraid your husband had no life insurance.
--> '''Woman''': But what will I do?!
--> '''Man''': You should've thought of that ''before'' you married a dead man!
* ShoutOut: Listing all the examples would fill a book, but notably the creators have said that they have parodied Film/CitizenKane so many times that one could recreate the entire movie just from TheSimpsons clips. They have also said the same about the first two Film/TheGodfather movies.
** A recent shout out to FamilyGuy (the not-quite-dead ostrich) is notable because the two shows tend to ignore each other.''{{
** ''{{Cheers}}'' has been explicitly given a ShoutOut a few times. One obvious nod is when Homer was looking for a new bar, and found Cheers, with suspiciously named characters "Sam-like character", "Woody-like character", and so on. In ''Flaming Moe's'', a Diane {{Expy}} works at Moe's. She leaves, causing Moe to comment, "She left to pursue a movie career. Frankly, I think she was better off here."
** The series has at least twice alluded to the movie ''Film/{{Speed}}''. In one episode, Homer used the video loop trick to skip work. When he told Lenny and Carl where he got the idea from and described the movie, he couldn't remember its name and called it "The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down". In another one, Bart and Lisa MissedTheBus and Marge tried to catch up with it but Otto thought Marge wanted to race him. Milhouse said it looked like Speed 2 except that it had a bus instead of a boat.
* ShowWithinAShow: ''TheItchyAndScratchyShow''.
** ''TheKrustyTheKlownShow'', which usually airs ''Itchy and Scratchy'', as well.
* ShrunkenOrgan: Mr. Burns' heart has been shown as a shriveled black lump that beats every now and again. Additionally, after crawling out from beneath a landslide, Mr. Burns tilted his head and banged his ear in hope of clearing out the gravel from his other ear. The gravel came flying out that ear, along with his walnut-sized brain.
* ShutUpKiss: Nelson gives one of these to Lisa in "Lisa's Date With Density" when she won't stop talking. However, after a couple seconds, Nelson begins to enjoy the kiss.
* SickEpisode: None of these occupy the entire episode, but: Homer gets food poisoning in "Selma's Choice". Lisa gets the mumps in "Bart's Dog Gets an F". Everybody except Lisa gets queasy from eating organic foods in "A Star is Torn". Lisa gets a cold in "Lisa Gets an A".
* SicklyGreenGlow: Anything radioactive.
* SignificantBirthdate: On season 10's "Viva Ned Flanders," Homer casually mentions that Barney's birthday is the same as [[AdolfHitler Hitler]]'s [April 20th] ([[EditedForSyndication in syndicated reruns and on the season 10 DVD version, the date was changed to July 15th, and the celebrity whom Homer knows has that birthday is Lassie the dog]]).
** WordOfGod says Bart's birthday is [[AprilFoolsDay April 1st]].
* SilenceYouFool: One example near the end of the second act from the episode 'Bart sells his Soul':
-->'''Homer''': Bart, you didn't finish your spaghetti and Moe balls!
-->'''Homer's brain''': Silence, you fool. It can be ours!
-->'''Homer''': [eating] Run, boy! Run! Run for your life, boy!
** Also, Bart says one to Lisa after she teases him about Laura and Bart in the episode 'The New Kid on the Block':
-->'''Bart''': Maybe Laura could watch us.
-->'''Lisa''': Oh, I get it. [seductively] Bart, the babysitter's here. Let me tuck you in. [making smacking noises]
-->'''Bart''': Silence!
** Again in 'Skinner's Sense of Snow':
-->'''Skinner''': All right, that's it. I'm writing all your names on the detention list in my mind.
-->'''Bart''': Silence, Seymour. We're in charge now.
** And again in 'Girly Edition'
-->'''Lisa''': Bart, get out of my anchorchair.
-->'''Bart''': Silence, Octopussy.
** And again in 'Lisa the Skeptic' but from the so-called angel when it's revealed that it's not an apocalypse but instead turns out to be an opening for the Heavenly Hills shopping mall in Springfield:
-->'''Lisa''': Well, there you go. I hope you all learned a valuable--
-->'''Angel''': Silence! Prepare for the end... the end of high prices! Behold, the grand opening of the Heavenly Hills Mall.
** Also one from Mr. Burns in 'Homer's Enemy', as well, when criticizing Frank Grimes in his office.
** From "Sunday, Bloody Sunday":
-->'''Wally''': Well, I'm convinced. Tell you what, Mr. Murdoch. Let's just split the difference. The boys and I will just crouch here quietly, and take it easy on the snacks ...
-->'''Murdoch''': Silence! [he throws something on the ground, and two puffs of smoke appear, revealing three policemen] Seize them!
*** The trope also appears in the Gracie Films logo sequence in this episode, as well.
** From "New Kids on the Bleech"
-->'''Skinner''': Are you adequately prepared to rock?
-->[The audience cheers wildly]
-->'''Skinner''': SILENCE!
** This trope also appeared in a few Treehouse of Horror episodes: TOH VII segment, "Citizen Kang", has Kang (or is it Kodos?) say this trope, TOH VIII segment, "The HΩmega Man", has Mutant Sideshow Mel saying this trope (subverted in that Mel quickly follows with: "...You're talking too loud."), TOH X has Maggie(in a different voice) say this to Lisa in the episode's couch gag, and near the end of the TOH XI first segment, "G-G-Ghost D-D-Dad", has the devil say "Silence, Sinner!" to ghost Homer.
* TheSilentBob: Maggie
* SilentOffer: In "Bart Gets Hit By a Car", Homer sues Burns for hitting Bart while in a car. After Burns destroys Homer's credibility in the eyes of the jury, he offers to settle with Homer.
-->'''Burns''': I'm going to write a figure on this piece of paper. It's not quite as large as the last one, but I think you'll find it fair. \\
''[Burns draws a giant zero]''
--> '''Hutz''': I think we should take it.
* SilentSnarker: Again, Maggie
* SimilarSquad: It's been used several times: a nice version of the family, a cooler version of Bart and Lisa, the inbred version of Springfield in Shelbyville.
* SimpleCountryLawyer:
** When Homer addresses the church congregation about Ned's age in "Viva Ned Flanders", Homer admits he's not a "fancy big city lawyer", to which the congregation gasps.
** When ranting against the recent area code changes in "A Tale of Two Springfields," Homer takes on the mannerisms of and sticks his thumbs under dynamite straps, as though they were suspenders, like a country lawyer.
** The lawyer from "The Monkey Suit" falls into this trope as well.
---> '''Lawyer''': As the chick said to her mama, "I hope I don't cluck up!" (audience says "Awwwww")
* SimultaneousArcs: "Trilogy of Error".
* SitcomArchNemesis: Homer has Ned Flanders, and Bart has Sideshow Bob (and for some reason, Dr. Demento).
** Maggie has Gerald, the baby with the uni-brow.
* ShamedByAMob: Burn in "Who Shot Mr. Burns, Part 1".
* SkinnyDipping: In "500 Keys", Homer remembers going skinny dipping with Duff Man. This might be how he ended up with the key to the Duff brewery.
* SkywardScream: [=McBain=], during one of his movies, after his partner is fatally shot:
--> '''[=McBain=]''': MENDOZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
** An example from "Bart Gets Famous", after Homer thinks Bart turned into a box:
--> '''Homer''': DAMN YOU! A BOX!!!
** And another when Bart and his elephant are missing. Homer had made a deal to sell the elephant, prompting:
--> '''Homer''': He took Bart too? That wasn't part of the deal blackheart! THAT WASN'T PARRRRT!
* SlapYourselfAwake: Bart smacks himself to stay awake studying in the episode where he actually buckles down and tries to get a passing grade.
* SlowLoadingInternetImage: Comic Book Guy is seen downloading a nude image of Captain Janeway. Just as it gets revealing, a popup for Homer's internet service appears, leading Comic Book Guy to remark "Hmm... the Internet King. [[TheInternetIsForPorn Perhaps he can provide faster nudity."]]
* SmallNameBigEgo: The town of Springfield itself. Listing everything with "Springfield" in the name would be a fruitless endeavor. Hell, they even have the Hollywood sign-style "SPRINGFIELD" spelled out on the mountainside!
* SmallTownRivalry: Between Springfield and Shelbyville.
* SmartPeopleKnowLatin: To cover going on a road trip, Bart tells his family he's going to the National Grammar Rodeo.
-->'''Lisa''': I'm the best student in school, how come I never heard about this competition? \\
'''Bart''': Maybe because you are, as we say in Latin, a "dorkus malorkus." \\
'''Lisa''': That's not Latin. Mom, Bart's faking it. \\
'''Marge''': Lisa, you've had your glory. Now it's Bart's turn.
* SmartPeopleWearGlasses: Homer finds glasses in one episode and immediately starts acting smart, even though the math he starts reciting is nonsense.
** His screw-up itself was a ShoutOut to ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'', where the Scarecrow makes the same mistake (uncorrected).
* SmellySkunk: Homer's sprayed by some skunks after his panda rape in "Homer vs. Dignity".
** "Sleeping With The Enemy": In revenge for teasing her, Lisa gets Nelson to play a prank on Terri and Sherri by giving them a present with a skunk inside which sprays them both.
** Also used in "Ten Minutes Over Tokyo" when Marge gets a question wrong on a Japanese game show.
* SmokingHotSex: Season 15 episode, "The Ziff Who Came to Dinner", has this trope in one scene with Artie Ziff and Selma after they had quick sex with Selma smoking.
** "Regarding Margie": Happens near the end of the second act [[SexDressed with Skinner and Edna seen with their ragged clothes on after sex]] and Edna smoking a cigarette afterwards.
-->'''Skinner''': You know, I think about you all the time.
-->'''Edna''': Birthday's over, Seymour.
* SmugSnake: Mr. Burns sometimes takes this trope to ridiculous extremes. For example, one episode involved a plan on Burns' part to [[KickTheDog block sunlight from reaching Springfield]], and a town hall meeting was held about it. During the meeting, the town was being shown what Burns' oil drilling operation did to Bart's pet dog, who was shown needing to use wheels just to walk down the hallway. Burns walks in at EXACTLY this moment, and, with a big smirk on his face, says this:
-->'''Burns''': Oh those wheels are squeaking a bit. Perhaps I could sell him a little oil.
* SnubByOmission: have done this to Homer twice, with the Employee of the Week awards (which he loses to an inanimate carbon rod), as well as the Town Pride Awards (which everyone gets but him).
* SoapboxSadie: Lisa.
* SoapWithinAShow: "Search For the Sun", which was featured in numerous episodes.
** Also "It Never Ends."
* SockItToThem: When Homer and his buddies become a vigilante force because the police can't catch the ClassyCatBurglar stalking the neighborhood, Jimbo joins. He's told that his WeaponOfChoice should be sack full of door knobs. A news anchor interviewing Homer later mentions that beatings with such a weapon have skyrocketted.
* SolarPoweredMagnifyingGlass: Referenced in Marge's monologue at the end of "Marge vs. the Monorail".
-->And that was the only folly the people of Springfield ever embarked upon. Except for the Popsicle stick skyscraper. And the 50-foot magnifying glass. ''[the sun focused through the magnifying glass sets the Popsicle stick skyscraper on fire]'' And that escalator to nowhere.
* SoldiersAtTheRear: In "Simpson Tide", Homer joined the US Naval Reserve expecting it to be like this. It doesn't quite go according to plan.
* SolemnEndingTheme: "Mother Simpson".
* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: "22 Short Films About Springfield".
* SorryOciffer: Homer and Barney get stopped by Chief Wiggum because he thinks they're both drunk (he's right). Then he asks Homer to dance and he does pretty well...Until Barney asks Wiggum to use the Breathalyzer.
* SorryToInterrupt: Played with in "The Great Money Caper":
--> '''Marge''': (enters the kitchen) Why are you frosting that old throw pillow?
--> '''Homer''': I could ask ''you'' the very same question!
--> '''Marge''': Uh... should I just back out of the room?
--> '''Homer''': Would you? (Marge leaves)
* SoundEffectBleep: Done in "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?" when Homer is driving and swearing at other drivers. Even worse, there are impressionable kids with him. Worse still, he's swearing at an ''ambulance''.
** Also present in other episodes like "Flaming Moe's" (on a TV program Homer was watching), "Homer and Apu" (in one of the scenes with James Woods), and "Treehouse of Horror IX" (the fact that one of the shorts features ''The JerrySpringer Show'' says it all).
* SpecialGuest: The show holds the Guinness World Record for Most Guest Stars Featured in a TV Series. They even got TonyBlair (when he was still Prime Minister) and ReclusiveArtist ThomasPynchon, which was the only time his voice has been broadcast in the media.
* SpellMyNameWithAnS: Frequently in the subtitles -- "Crusty the Clown" instead of "Krusty the Klown", "Mo" instead of "Moe", and most egregiously, "Crabapple" instead of "Krabappel". Obviously the subtitlers DidNotDoTheResearch.
* SphereEyes: A majority of characters.
* SpinOff: Of ''The Tracey Ullman Show''. And the whole concept is spoofed in the episode "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase".
* SpinTheBottle: The beginning of "The Way We Weren't" has Bart, Milhouse, Terri and Sherri (along with their cousin who has a crush on Bart) play this game in Bart's Treehouse. Milhouse spins the bottle and stops at Terri/Sherri's cousin. When Milhouse attempts to kiss her, he [[AccidentalKiss accidentally kisses Homer]] instead when he climbed Bart's Treehouse.
** In "Colonel Homer", after being locked in the room with Lurleen Lumpkin and being kissed by her, flashbacks of Homer's kissing attempts is seen, when in his childhood, he is seen playing this game only to get slapped by the girl who the bottle is stopped at.
* SpinningPaper: Used all the time. One time, this was lampshaded with the headline: "Spinning newspaper injures printer."
* SpitTake:
** In "Lisa's Date With Density", Milhouse interrupts Lisa's confession on her crush on Nelson by taking a suave drink of milk. When she finishes, he spits it back into his straw, causing the carton to explode.
** {{Invoked|Trope}} by Homer in "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" when he sees the price of a top-of-the-budget computer and reacts by grabbing a cup of coffee, drinking it, and spitting it out.
* TheSponsor: In the Season 4 episode "Marge in Chains", Lionel Hutz calls upon David Crosby when he's tempted by "...that bottle of delicious bourbon. Brownest of the brown liquors..."
* SpoofAesop: The end of "Blood Feud" has the family debating on what the moral of the story is, and eventually giving up by saying it was just a bunch of stuff that happened.
** "Tennis the Menace" has one delivered by Homer, after all four have been replaced by professional tennis players on the court: "It's better to watch stuff than to do stuff."
* StabTheSalad: Several times, memorably in Sideshow Bob's first escape, Homer kept scaring Bart by wielding large deadly implements for innocent things.
* StalkerWithoutACrush: The Old Man And Lisa has Burns going broke because of his YesMan underlings, and feeling convinced that hiring Lisa would get him back on track what with her integrity. However, Lisa refuses to work for him, because she is convinced he does not deserve to be helped. Burns, in turn, follows her around in a very stalkerish manner, begging that she take the job.
* StartMyOwn: Bart starts his own casino after getting kicked out of Burns's casino in "$pringfield", putting Squeaky Voiced Teen in his place.
* StatusQuoIsGod: Played straight most of the time, occasionally subverted.
** Got a big LampshadeHanging in "Pygmoelian", where Moe's face is crushed by a falling backdrop, undoing the MagicPlasticSurgery that made him handsome and [[SnapBack reverting him to normal]]. The last scene has Moe asking why he got his old face back instead of being deformed; the episode ends before he can say "It makes no sense."
** From "Bart vs Lisa vs the Third Grade"
--> '''Skinner''': Well, if this episode has taught us anything, it's that nothing works better than the status quo. Bart, you're promoted back to the fourth grade.
--> '''Bart''': Yay!
--> '''Skinner''': And Lisa, you have a choice. You may continue to be challenged in third grade or return to second grade and be merely a big fish in a small pond.
--> '''Lisa''': Big fish! Big fish!
--> '''Homer''': [satisfied] The status quo.
** "The Principal and the Pauper", anyone? The episode ends with the town agreeing that they should ignore the new real Seymour Skinner and stick with the fake one that they've known for years, including his own mother.
** We now have a worse with "Donnie Fatso" After killing Fat Tony off his cousin Fit Tony takes over, puts on weight, and becomes known as Fit Fat Tony, or Fat Tony for short.
** A similar (more minor) case with the death of Snowball II. Lisa finds replacement cats and eventually came upon an identical cat who she calls her "Snowball II" rather than "Snowball V" (to save money on a new dish). Lampshaded when Principal Skinner overhears this and Lisa replies with his real name mentioned above.
** The Season 22 episode "The Blue and the Gray". Marge stops dying her hair and lets it revert to a natural gray color. This causes an uproar throughout the family and the town residents, and makes Marge the subject of many stereotypes about seniors. [[spoiler: As it turns out, her sisters, Patty and Selma, have been dyeing their hair too.]] At the end, Marge goes back to blue, and everyone [[spoiler: except Homer, in an interesting blue twist, he dyes what's left of his hair blue]] laughs it off and life in Springfield goes on as normal.
* StealthPun: Any title with "Annoyed Grunt" in the title.
** The captain's name in "Simpson Tide" is Tenille.
* {{Sting}}: Used many, many times in the show by composer Alf Clausen.
* StockFootage: "Another Simpsons Clip Show" not only is a ClipShow, but also re-uses old animation in new contexts and with new dialog. Only a few short scenes were animated specifically for this episode.
** Aside from that, the earlier seasons had a few scenes reused. For instance, footage of Homer comforting a concerned Marge from the end of "Lisa's Substitute" was later reused in "Bart the Murderer". And "Marge on the Lam" has a brief scene of Bart saying "We don't need a babysitter." that is clearly from season 2. A list of reused animation can be found [[http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/lists/recycled here.]]
* StockholmSyndrome: Homer and his two kidnappers in "Blame It On Lisa".
--> '''Homer''': Listen, um... I made a little scrapbook to remember the kidnapping. I'm still working on it but, uh, as you can see I've-- Aw, look, this is that cigarette butt you burned me with.
--> '''Kidnapper One''': You slept like a baby that night.
--> [Everyone shares a laugh]
--> '''Homer''': Haha, I remember that, yeah.
--> '''Marge''': [arriving to deliver ransom money] Homer, why are you laughing?
--> '''Kidnapper Two''': He has the Stockholm Syndrome. He has come to identify with his captors.
--> '''Homer''': [excitedly] They let me stay up alllll night!
* StockLateralThinkingPuzzle: From "The Simpsons 138th Spectacular":
--> '''Announcer''': Which popular Simpsons characters have died in the past year? If you guessed Bleeding Gums Murphy and Dr. Marvin Monroe, you are wrong. They were ''never'' popular.
* StockNinjaWeaponry: The Comic Book Guy tries to win back his clients by offering them "Ninja Weapons" to buy. We get glimpses of katana, kusarigama and shuriken among other things.
* StockScream: In "Million Dollar Maybe", there's a video game on the fictitious Funtendo Zii console where every enemy kill would result in the WilhelmScream.
* StoppedCaring: Reverend Lovejoy at his worst.
* StraightGay: Waylon Smithers.
* StrangeMindsThinkAlike: In the episode where Homer gets a new assistant who turns on him and takes his job, he uses a secret Flanders told him to turn the tables. When asked where he learnt the secret, he declines to say, but states the initials are S.F. She immediately recognizes this as Stupid Flanders.
* StrawFan: Comic Book Guy.
* StrawmanPolitical: On both sides, though Republicans get the brunt of it.
* StrawVegetarian: Lisa tries to convince everyone not to eat meat at Homer's barbeque and eventually throws away the roasted pig. At the end of that episode, Lisa learns from Paul and Linda [=McCartney=] not to be judgemental about non-vegetarians, after which she mostly settles down — but it [[AesopAmnesia doesn't stop her occasionally lapsing into aggression in later episodes]], [[RuleOfFunny mostly as jokes.]]
* StripperCopConfusion: Chief Wiggum, but he goes along with the assumption for the money.
* StuckOnASkiLift: This happens to Homer. He tries to get off but ends up hanging upside down. ("Come on, gravity! You used to be cool!")
* StuffedIntoATrashcan: Bart in "Bart the General"; Milhouse and Homer in "24 Minutes" (though in the latter's case, it's actually a dumpster).
* StupidCrooks: In "Dumbbell Indemnity", Moe spends so much money on things for his new girlfriend that he decides to come up with a plan with Homer to steal his car, have it destroyed, and collect the insurance money. Homer steals Moe's car and is supposed to leave it on the train tracks, but he gets sidetracked by a showing at a drive-in theater for a movie about a monkey who is president. Having missed the train, Homer decides to drive the car off a cliff in plain view of everyone, including the police, which gets himself arrested.
--> '''Moe:''' Homer, you moron.
--> '''Homer:''' Homer, you ''genius!''
* SubvertedTrope: The show subverted most of these tropes at one point or another.
* SuckECheeses: Wall E. Weasel's.
* SuckySchool: Springfield Elementary.
* SuddenAnatomy: When a sub-plot hinges on Homer not remembering Marge's eye color, a ''Simpsons'' character is drawn with irises for the first time.
* SuddenSchoolUniform
* SummerCampy: "Kamp Krusty".
* SuperBowlSpecial: In the 2010 Super Bowl, there's the Coca-Cola commercial featuring Mr. Burns losing his money, followed by Apu giving him a Coke.
* SuperFunHappyThingOfDoom
--->'''Homer:''' [[SchmuckBait Ooh! Super Fun Happy Slide!]]
* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: "Separate Vocations" used a sound-alike to "Axel F Theme" from ''BeverlyHillsCop''.
** Sideshow Bob's theme is a sound-alike to the theme in ''CapeFear''.
** "Itchy & Scratchy Meets Fritz the Cat" (seen in "The Day the Violence Died") used a musical cue that's very similar to one heard in Earth, Wind & Fire's "Shining Star".
* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: In "Behind the Laughter", after Lisa reveals that Homer gave her anti-growth hormones:
--> '''Homer''': That's ridiculous. How could I even get all five necessary drops into her cereal? ({{Beat}}) What?
* SustainedMisunderstanding: From "Marge vs. The Monorail":
--> '''Marge''': Homer, there's someone here who can help you!
--> '''Homer''': Is it Batman?
--> '''Marge''': No, he's a scientist.
--> '''Homer''': Batman's a scientist.
--> '''Marge''': ''It's not Batman''!
** In "Bart After Dark":
--> '''Marge''': I'm here to share my moral outrage. But this time it's not about that giant inflatable "Dos Equis" bottle. It's about a certain house in our town.
--> '''Moe''': Yeah, well what's wrong with this house? Is it the plumbing?
--> '''Marge''': No. It's a house of ill fame. A house of loose ethics.
--> '''Kent Brockman''': Is there a building code violation? A drainage issue? A surveying error?
--> '''Marge''': (annoyed) The house is perfectly fine!
--> '''Chief Wiggum''': Well, then quite bad-mouthing the house!
--> '''Otto''': Yeah, leave the house alone!
** From "Much Apu About Nothing":
--> '''Lisa''': You know, in a way, all Americans are immigrants. Except, of course Native Americans.
--> '''Homer''': Yeah, Native Americans like us.
--> '''Lisa''': No, I mean American Indians.
--> '''Apu''': Like me.
--> '''Lisa''': No, I mean...
* TheSwearJar: Homer having to deal with one of these whilst he's building a doghouse for Santa's Little Helper. He ends up shouting things like "Fiddle-dee-dee!" after stepping on rusty nails, and puts enough money into the jar to enable the purchase of a rather large and cosy doghouse — which is good, since the one Homer built sucked.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:T]]
* TheTag: Seen in some of the newer episodes.
* TagAlongActor:
** In one episode, James Woods researches the job of a Kwik-E-Mart employee as a reference to ''The Hard Way''.
** Another episode had Mr. Burns hire MichaelCaine to impersonate Homer in order to convince Bart that he (Homer) didn't love him (Bart) any more. Later in the episode Homer [[BrickJoke mentions]] that Caine had followed him around trying to get a handle on his character.
* TakeThat: Several different targets, frequently for unknown reasons. For example, Arby's must have pissed some of the writers off really good, being the recipient of at least 4 cheap shots.
** Even Christianity gets a big-time TakeThat in the form of a [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything apparent reference to it]] in "Don't Have A Cow, Mankind"
-->'''Marge''': We have the chosen one!
-->'''Soldier''': Welcome, son! To survive, all we must do is eat your flesh.
-->'''Marge''': Hold it right there, bub! What kind of civilized people eat the body and blood of their saviour?
-->''Cue Reverend Lovejoy looking visibly awkward.''
** The ''Amendment to Be'' cartoon details how if the amendment does not get through they'll sue Ted Kennedy, and claim he's gay if he fights back. This sounds suspiciously (as is, it is) the grubby tactics used by Senator JoeMccarthy.
* TakeThatAudience: "Bye Bye Nerdie" ends this way.
* TakingTheBullet: Apu takes a bullet for James Woods in "Homer and Apu".
** In a parody of the trope, Homer jumps in front of Bart to get hit with the baptismal water in "Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily."
** Homer also practices taking a bullet while in bodyguard training in "Mayored to the Mob".
* TakingYouWithMe: In "Deep Space Homer", one of the astronauts says that if he dies, he's taking Homer to hell with him.
* TarAndFeathers: Happens to Homer in "At Long Last Leave".
** Also to Grandpa in "Bart of Darkness".
-->'''Grandpa''': [appearing in doorway] Gonna be in the tub for a while.
* TheTalk: In the episode, "All's Fair in Oven War", Homer gives one to Bart, traumatizing him and the rest of the springfieldian children when it spreads like a virus.
* TalkingToHimself: Half the cast is voiced by the same three or four people.
* TalkingWithSigns: Seen in "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace" (part of Treehouse of Horror VI"): After seeing Groundskeeper Willie (playing the role of Freddy Kruger) for the first time, Bart holds up a sign that reads: "Eep."
* TheTapeKnewYouWouldSayThat: Subverted in "I'm Goin' to Praiseland": While on a rollercoaster ride, the coaster stops and a King David animatronic asks the kids in the coaster who disturbs King David. Nobody responds and a couple seconds later, King David says, "...Silence!"
** The foundation repair instructional video from "Marge Gets a Job":
--->'''Troy [=McClure=]:''' Now, do you have extruded poly-vinyl foam insulation?\\
'''Homer:''' No.\\
'''Troy [=McClure=]:''' Good.
* TheTeamWannabe
* TeenageWasteland: "Das Bus", which was a parody of ''LordOfTheFlies''.
* TelegraphGagSTOP: In "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacey":
--> Western Union X) SPR CGN PO=SPRINGFIELD 1 935= OCT 11 PM 6\\
Mr. Simpson STOP Your constant letters are becoming a nuisance STOP\\
If you do not cease I will be forced to pursue legal action STOP\\
Boris Karloff Hollywood CALF.
* {{Telethon}}: The set-up to "Missionary: Impossible"
--> '''Rupert Murdock''': You just saved my network!
--> '''Bart''': Wouldn't be the first time!
* TellHimImNotSpeakingToHim: In "Lisa the Vegetarian", Homer and Lisa engage in this, and quickly drag Marge and Bart into it.
--> '''Homer''': Marge? Since I'm not talking to ''Lisa'', would you please ask her to pass me the syrup?
--> '''Marge''': Dear, please pass your father the syrup, Lisa.
--> '''Lisa''': Bart, tell Dad I will only pass the syrup if it won't be used on any meat product.
--> '''Bart''': You dunkin' your sausages in that syrup homeboy?
--> '''Homer''': Marge, tell ''Bart'' I just want to drink a nice glass of syrup like I do every morning.
--> '''Marge''': Tell him yourself, you're ignoring Lisa, not Bart.
--> '''Homer''': Bart, thank your mother for pointing that out.
--> '''Marge''': Homer, you're not, not talking to me, and secondly, I heard what you said.
--> '''Homer''': Lisa, tell your mother to get off my case!
--> '''Bart''': Uhhh, Dad. Lisa's the one you're not talking to.
--> '''Homer''': Bart! Go to your room.
--> '''Lisa''': Why don't you just eat him, Dad?!
* TemporaryBlindness: Marge gets this in "Gone Maggie Gone" after looking at the sun during a solar eclipse and burning her retinas.
* TemptingFate: From "Homer at the Bat":
--> '''Mr. Burns''': There's no way I can lose this bet. Unless, of course, my nine all-stars fall victim to nine separate misfortunes and are unable to play tomorrow. But that will never happen. Three misfortunes, that's possible. Seven misfortunes, there's an outside chance. But ''nine'' misfortunes? I'd like to see that!
** He didn't get nine, just eight.
* ThanatosGambit: Homer spreads his mother's ashes, sabotaging Mr. Burns's missile launch.
** Also, there's Sideshow Bob's fake funeral, a ploy to kill Bart when he's saying goodbye to his old nemesis.
* ThatDidntHappen: From "Bart the Mother":
-->'''Homer:''' ''(watching Bart's bird eggs hatch)'' Oh man, this is the most exciting thing I've ever seen since Halley's Comet collided with the moon.\\
'''Lisa:''' That never happened, Dad.\\
'''Homer:''' ''Sure'' it didn't...
* ThatLiarLies: "You're lying! You're lying! What makes you lie?"
** "You liar! You don't have a home business. Why would you make up a lie like that?"
* ThemeNaming: Most of the last names of Simpsons side characters come from street names in Portland, Oregon (Matt Groening's hometown), such as Flanders, Quimby, and Terwilliger.
* ThereAreNoRules: In "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation", the rules at Rock n' Roll Fantasy Camp are: "Rule #1: There are no rules. Rule #2: No outside food."
* ThermometerGag: In "Marge Gets A Job"
-->'''Grandpa Simpson:''' "Oral thermometer, my eye! Think warm thoughts, boy, 'cause this is mighty cold."
* ThickLineAnimation: Homer's flashback to the previous night in "The War of The Simpsons".
* ThingOMeter: Many times-- Sarcasm-O-Meter, Monster-O-Meter, Love-O-Meter
* ThirteenIsUnlucky: The Treehouse Of Horror story "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace" starts "on the thirteenth hour of the thirteenth day of the thirteen month" with a meeting to discuss the misprinted calendars bought by the town.
--->'''Homer:''' Lousy Smarch weather!
* ThisIsForEmphasisBitch: Of all people, Mr. Burns before dueling Rich Texan in a scavenger hunt.
** Another episode the family is touring a stamp museum when they come to a talking stamp of Alexander Graham Bell saying he's the inventor of the telephone. Next to him is a talking stamp of Elisha Gray who claims it was stolen from him, to which Bell replies "Read the patent, bitch!"
* ThisJustIn: In "The Joy of Sect", Kent Brockman is negatively editorializing about The Movementarians, but is soon handed some papers from off-screen.
--> '''Kent Brockman''': Ladies and gentlemen, I've just learned of a change in the station's management. Welcome, Movementarians! Continue to improve our lives! I love you, perfect Leader.. and new CEO of KBBL broadcasting!
* ThisLoserIsYou: Homer and to a ''much'' greater extent, Frank Grimes.
* ThreeShorts: Besides the annual Treehouse of Horror episodes, the following taken on the three shorts format:
** ''Simpsons Bible Stories''
** ''Trilogy of Error'' (though this one is debatable, as all three stories are interconnected at points)
** ''Tales From the Public Domain''
** ''Margical History Tour''
** ''Simpsons Christmas Stories''
** ''The Wettest Stories Ever Told''
** ''Revenge is a Dish Best Served Three Times''
** ''Love, Springfieldian Style''
** ''Four Great Women and a Manicure'' (this one is actually four stories, due to the new commercial formatting for season 20 and beyond. This aspect is also lampshaded)
* ThroughAFaceFullOfFur: He has no fur on his face technically, but in "Mobile Homer", Homer's face turns blue from a lack of oxygen when a garage door repeatedly lifts up and down on him while he's lain in the garage's doorway, crushing his windpipe (or chest), caused by a book he tries throwing at a spider hits the garage door button instead.
** In "Bart On The Road", Homer's face turns red frontally for a moment, after learning from Lisa of Bart and his friends' trip to the World's Fair, before angrily yelling some muffled obscenities while wearing a nuclear plant suit's helmet.
** In "Stop or My Dog Will Shoot", Bart gets a python he names Strangles for a pet in place of Santa's Little Helper and Homer's whole head turns red, when Strangles wraps his coils around his neck, after Homer does the strangling routine with Bart.
** In a Simpsons short from The Tracey Ullman Show ("Bath Time"), Bart is turned blue entirely and is shivering from the cold water with which Homer runs, and fills the bathtub. Bart regresses to his normal color when he mixes the hot water with the cold.
** In "Home Sweet Home Diddily-Dum-Doodily", Rod and Todd turn pale in horror at the violence in an Itchy and Scratchy short they just watched with Ned, Bart and Lisa.
** In "Selma's Choice", Lisa is pale from hypothermia after swimming in the beery river at Duff Gardens.
** In the couch gag of "Bart Stops To Smell The Roosevelts", a John Kricfalusi/Spumco-esque Homer turns red when he thinks he broke wind, but Bart, who along with other members of the nuclear family were redesigned by John K. and Spumco here, placed a whoopee cushion in his spot on the couch on which he sits. Typically, Bart laughs at the prank and Homer gets ticked off, strangling Bart and as he does this, Bart's face gradually turns blue.
** In one episode, Krusty's face turns blue when a remote-controlled gag bow tie spins rapidly and uncontrollably, choking off the air supply from his lungs to his windpipe while in the middle of hosting his show.
** In "Lisa's Substitute", Martin Prince is later seen pale from the pressure and stress of running against Bart in the classroom presidential campaign.
** In "The Ten Per-Cent Solution", Homer gets green-faced when he lies on the floor, acting as a bloated corpse.
* ThrowingOutTheScript: Homer rips up his notes, then realizes he can't think of anything to say and tries to put them back together again.
* ThrowItIn: A number of times, various cast members have ad-libbed lines during recordings. Perhaps the most well-known example is Homer's "I am so smart! I am so smart! S-M-R-T! I mean, S-M-A-R-T!" Dan Castellaneta misspelled by accident, but went with it because Homer is stupid.
* TickertapeParade: In "Deep Space Homer", the carbon rod credited with saving the space shuttle from burning up in Earth's atmosphere gets a tickertape parade in its honor.
** In "The Twisted World of Marge Simpson", Marge stages a tickertape parade to avoid littering laws when she throws flyers for her pretzel business off the buildings.
--> '''Chief Wiggum''': Welcome back, space girl. (sniffs)
* TimeForPlanB: In "Trash of the Titans", Springfield's contingency plan, aka "Plan B", is to move the entire town five miles down the road.
* TiredOfRunning: Homer, in "Beyond Blunderdome", eventually grows tired of running away from the studio execs who want to stop he and Creator/MelGibson from screening the alternate ending version of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", and decides to fight back instead.
* TitleTheAdaptation
* TitleDrop: Parodied in "Thank God It's Doomsday" during the fictional movie "Left Below":
--> '''Man''': [[{{Anvilicious}} The virtuous have gone to heaven]], and the rest of us have been... ''left below''.
** Also parodied in "Take My Wife, Sleaze" while Homer watches a movie which closely resembles a real one:
--> '''Mother''': Oh, I don't know what's the matter with Jimmy. He won't do his homework, he only salutes the flag with one finger, and he comes home every night with other peoples' blood on his shirt.
--> '''Father''': He's a rebel, I tell you, a rebel without a cause... [[RebelWithoutACause just like that boy in that popular movie we saw.]]
* TitleMontage: "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular" features a montage of couch gags from previous episodes as part of its opening sequence.
* ToadLicking: Homer in episode "Missionary: Impossible" is depicted at one point lying on a hammock and picking up toads at random and licking them to get high while stranded on a South Pacific island.
-->'''Bart:''' Dad, are you ''licking toads?''
-->'''Homer:''' I'm not ''not'' licking toads!
* TomatoSurprise: Referenced in Homer's poem:
-->There once was a rapping tomato\\
That's right, I said "rapping tomato"\\
He rapped all day, from April to May\\
And also, guess what, ''[[NarratorAllAlong it was me.]]''
* TongueOnTheFlagpole: One of the winter hazards faced by Lewis and Clarke (a.k.a. Lenny and Karl) in "Magical History Tour".
** And Homer gets his tongue stuck to the ice sculpture at Otto's wedding.
** And in "The Springfield Files", Channel 6 News uses a file photo of Homer that shows him with his tongue stuck to a lamppost.
** In "My Fair Laddy'', Bart stores Lisa's saxophone in the freezer and then hands it to her. Her tongue gets stuck when she attempts to blow it
* TonightSomeoneDies: The promos for "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily" literally asked: "Who will ''die''?", and proceeding to list off a bunch of potential victims. Unfortunately, word got out before the episode aired that Maude would be the unfortunate one, so these promos didn't generate the expected suspense.
* {{Tontine}}: In "The Curse of the Flying Hellfish", it's revealed that Abe Simpson and Mister Burns served together during World War II, and their squad (the Flying Hellfish) acquired a set of priceless German paintings, with the agreement that the last member of the Hellfish to die would get them. It ends [[spoiler:when government officials and the descendant of the person they stole the paintings from arrive and reclaim them for the German. The descendent is not too worried about their safety, either.]]
* TooManyBabies: Apu and Manjula.
* TooMuchInformation: After Lisa is promoted to third grade in "Bart vs. Lisa vs. The Third Grade", Bart blurts out:
--> '''Bart''': She's not so great! She got diarrhea when we went to Carlsbad Caverns!
* TooQuirkyToLose: Bart entered a school science fair with an entry called "Can Hamsters Fly Airplanes?" Even though his "experiment" clearly did not prove or disprove any hypothesis, Principal Skinner was so charmed by the sight of a hamster wearing flight goggles and a scarf and sitting in a model airplane that he pronounced Bart the winner.
* TooSmartForStrangers: Poor Ralph Wiggum... He just doesn't get the point of these.
* TorchesAndPitchforks: Quite often. The citizens of Springfield '''love''' rioting.
** Most notably in TheMovie in which [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters Loads And Loads Of Bit Players]] are featured in such a scene.
** Lampshaded by [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure Skinner]], of all people
---> '''Skinner''': ''Ah, there's no justice like Angry Mob Justice.''
* TrainStationGoodbye: Lampshaded.
* TranquillizerDart:
** Bart has just been "taken" by a monkey at a local zoo, and Homer tries to save him by putting a tranq-dart into a tube and putting it into his mouth. He then inhales, and it gets self-explanatory after that.
** Subverted in another episode when Barney is shot with a ''bear'' tranquilizer dart. He actually pulls out the dart and drinks the remaining sedative before passing out.
* TranslationYes: In "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo", Homer's "D'oh!" is much longer in Japanese.
* TravelMontage: Seen in "Dog of Death" when Santa's Little Helper goes off on his own; a map of the locations he travels to is shown while "PeterAndTheWolf" plays.
* TreeBuchet: Homer launched a rabbit into the horizon with one of these.
* TribalFacePaint: Appears in the ''LordOfTheFlies'' parody episode, naturally.
* TripleNipple: In "Kamp Krusty", Lisa uses Krusty the Clown's superfluous third nipple to confirm his identity.
* {{Troll}}: Milhouse claims to be one in the "Homer the Whopper" episode in which the Comic Book Guy says he posted his comic on the internet and names some accounts that deride it. Bart tells him that they were just "lame-os" and Milhouse says "Two of them were me!"
* {{Troperiffic}}: You'd be hard pressed to find a series more troperrific than this.
* TrueLoveIsBoring: Zig-zagged. Despite the amount of separations (and a divorce at one point), Homer and Marge are still together.
* {{Trope2000}}: The Spine-Melter 2000 from "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?"
* TrouserSpace: Scorpio's offer of sugar and cream to Homer in "You Only Move Twice".
* TWordEuphemism: From the episode "Bart Star":
-->'''Bart''': Give me a "B"?
-->'''Nelson''': I won't give you a "B", but I'll rip you a new "A"!
* TwoRightsMakeAWrong: Apu and his wife Manjula end up with octuplets, almost going broke due to the resulting expenses, when every member of the Simpson family independently decides to help along their desire to conceive by secretly slipping them fertility drugs.
* TwoShotsFromBehindTheBar: Moe keeps a sawed-off shotgun handy in case of cheapskate customers or when he loses his temper, which happens ''all'' the time.
* TryingNotToCry: Marge says she didn't want to cry in "Kamp Krusty" when she and the family have the last meal together before Bart and Lisa go off to summer camp. She immediately starts crying when Homer, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie start hungrily eating.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:U]]
* UndeadAuthor: Groundskeeper Willie's story about the miner's strike.
* UndersideRide: Sideshow Bob does it in "Cape Feare" in a parody of the scene in ''CapeFear''.
* UnexpectedInheritance: "Selma's Choice"
* UnexplainedRecovery: In "Simpsons Bible Stories":
--> '''Bart''': (to Ralph) I thought you were dead!
--> '''Ralph''': Nope!
** In "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife", Dr. Marvin Monroe appears at a book signing. When asked where he's been all these years, he replies that he's been very sick. Of course, we've seen his gravestone in previous episodes, [[HandWave but never mind.]]
* UnfortunateImplications: InUniverse example: When Krusty was doing one of his comedy gigs on TV, the show he was doing was "Krusty Komedy Klassics." When he turns around and saw the sign on the stage, he realized in shock that it also had the same acronym as the Ku Klux Klan, causing Krusty to giggle nervously and say [[OhCrap "Not good..."]] before the (obviously) offended audience decided to [[ProducePelting throw objects at him]].
* TheUnpronounceable: Parodied with Apu's last name (Nahasapeemapetilon) many times.
** Selma: *Refusing to marry Apu* [My name's] already long enough without Nahasapet-apeet-whatever.
** Chief Wiggum: Homer Simpson, you are under arrest for the murder of Moe Szyslak and Apu Nahasa... pasa... ah, just Moe. Just Moe.
** When Apu joins The Be Sharps, their agent tells him that his name will never fit on a marquee, and says "From now on, you're Apu Du Beaumarchaise". Apu replies "It is an insult to my culture and my country, but [[SureWhyNot okay]]."
** In the first Treehouse of Horror special, one of the aliens remarks that in order to pronounce his name correctly, he'd have to rip out their tongue.
* UnreadablyFastText: Done in "The Simpsons 138th Spectacular" when the show pays tribute to everyone who makes The Simpsons possible; a ton of names scroll up the screen for only three seconds at a really fast pace.
** In "Bart's Comet", Kent Brockman closed his news broadcast by saying, "The following people are gay:", which prompted a ridiculously fast scrolling list.
** In "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses", a TV ad about the phone book cover contest repeatedly flashes the address for which to send the photos, due to the "Where Is Springfield?" RunningGag.
** In "Homer Badman", the TV show "Rock Bottom" admits to making some journalistic mistakes over the years, and a fast list of said mistakes scrolls up the screen.
* UnroboticReveal: In the show's parody of ''Series/RobotWars'', after completely failing to build a battlebot, Homer covers himself in armour plating and enters the arena himself.
* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: Homer, who gets less sympathetic as the show ages.
* UpToEleven: Krusty quotes this trope for word at the beginning of ''The Man In Blue Flannel Pants''.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:V]]
* VehicularSabotage: In order to smoke out a person trying to kill Homer, he is made the King of the Mardi Gras parade. The person trying to kill him as tampered with the brakes of his float so he can't stop.
* VerbalTic: Ned Flanders adds "diddly" to his words.
** He even writes it.
---> '''Homer:''' (reading) "Hi-diddly-ho, neighb-" Oh jeez, he actually ''wrote'' "diddly"!
*** ...and a later episode revealed that Flanders' VerbalTic is the result of suppressing his anger.
* VertigoEffect: Seen more in the earlier seasons, such as "Principal Charming" (parodying {{Vertigo}}), "Bart Gets Hit By a Car" (when the camera zooms in on Marge), "Lisa's Substitute" (when the camera zooms in on Lisa when she's shocked to see Miss Hoover back), and "Treehouse of Horror" (when Lisa first sees the UFO).
* VictoryByEndurance: Homer has Homer Simpson Syndrome ("ohh, why me!?") where his brain is surrounded by 1/8 inch more cushioning fluid than usual, making him the perfect boxer. He just waits for the other guy to tire himself out punching him, at which point Homer can just push the other guy down for a KO.
* VideoPhone: One episode taking place in the future, "Lisa's Wedding," showcased a conversation between Lisa and Marge using a "picture phone." Marge kept forgetting that Lisa could see her over the phone, and her body language made it more obvious to tell when she was lying.
* VideoWills: Used a couple times, once in "Selma's Choice" where Lionel Hutz dubbed over the deceased Bouvier's voice (Hutz told Marge she'd be surprised with the number of times the trick works), and again in "Mona Leaves-a" with Mona:
--> '''Mona''': If you're watching this right now, I am dead. Or if not, you've gotten into my stuff. But if I'm dead, this is my will. And if I'm not, get out of my stuff.
** Homer also attempted to film one in "One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish":
---> '''Homer:''' Hi, Maggie! I'm speaking to you from beyond the grave. ''(makes ghostly noises and laughs)'' Hope that didn't scare you.
* VignetteEpisode: Many, most notably the Tree House of Horrors series
* VinylShatters: The episode "The Itchy And Scratchy Movie" has Bart breaking records for kicks.
* ViolentGlaswegian: Groundskeeper Willie.
* VocalEvolution: Dan Castellaneta originally voiced Homer by doing a Walter Matthau impersonation; around the halfway point of season 2, he began to give him new vocal inflections and a larger range. Any similarities to Matthau were essentially abandoned by "Blood Feud".
** Nelson began with a very high-pitched voice. However, around season 7, Nelson began to have a deeper, scratchier voice.
* TheVoiceless: Maggie, with a couple exceptions. In "Lisa's First Word", she utters her first word: "Daddy." In "Treehouse of Horror V", she is voiced by James Earl Jones in one of the alternate universes Homer created: "This is ''indeed'' a disturbing universe."
** Lampshaded in "Lisa's Wedding" when a teenage Maggie keeps trying to talk (or sing), but is either interrupted before she can say anything or has her mouth full of food and is unintelligible.
* VolleyingInsults: In "Worst Episode Ever" when Agnes and Comic Book Guy first meet:
--> '''Agnes''': Out of the way, tubby!
--> '''Comic Book Guy''': Oh ''pardon me'', Oldie Hawn!
--> '''Agnes''': Oh OH! Why you ''ill-mannered'' sack of crap!
--> '''Comic Book Guy''': Oh ''goodie''. Now I know whatever happened to Baby Jane.
--> '''Agnes''': You are the ''rudest'' man who ever... [[MoodWhiplash bought me dinner!]]
--> '''Comic Book Guy''': Correction; I do not believe I have ever bought you... (realizes) Oh.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:W]]
* WackyCravings: In the 'In the Na'Vi' segment of "Treehouse of Horror XXII", Kang reveals that pregnancy is particularly difficult for females of his species as their planet has no pickles and their only ice cream is butterbrickle.
* TheWallsAreClosingIn: When spoofing ''TheTenCommandments'' and the story of Moses, Milhouse and Lisa (as Moses and Aaron) are thrown in a room with [[SpikesOfDoom spiked]] walls that close in on them. However, the spikes have all been installed opposite each other, so that the walls stop when the tips touch, leaving plenty of room for them to climb to safety (and for Lisa to remark, "Slave labor. You get what you pay for.").
* WalkOnTheWildSideEpisode:
** This happens to Marge on many occasions, ranging from running from the law with her friend after stealing her ex's car, taking part in a monster truck rally and gaining road rage from a Canyonero. [[DrivesLikeCrazy Driving]] seems to be her recurring BerserkButton.
** In "Separate Vocations", Lisa becomes a delinquent after getting "Homemaker" in an IneptAptitudeTest and being told that she'll never become a professional Jazz musician due to her stubby fingers. This culminates with her committing an expulsion worthy offense (stealing all of the teachers' guides) to which Bart takes the fall, not wanting her to ruin her life.
* WasntThatFun: Said by Bart when the family goes to Itchy and Scratchy Land and survive a rather deadly roller-coaster that ended in the family jumping out of the way of a buzz saw onto mattresses.
** In "Brother From Another Series", Bart wants to go again after he, Lisa, and Sideshow Bob rode down the drainage pipe.
--> '''Bart''': Let's go again! Let's go again!
--> '''Lisa''': (still catching her breath) NO!
* WastefulWishing: In the monkey's paw segment of "Treehouse of Horror II", Homer uses his wish by asking for a turkey sandwich. He regrets it when he realizes the turkey's a little dry.
** In "Homer and Apu", Homer wastes his three questions to the C.E.O. of the Kwik-E-Mart by asking three times if the man is ''really'' the head of the Kwik-E-Mart.
* WateringDown: In "The Crepes of Wrath", the French winemakers dilute their wine with antifreeze, then test it on Bart.
* WeAllLiveInAmerica: Quite some examples. One example is when the Simpsons visit Ireland, and the local police cars have ''"POLICE"'' written all over them instead of ''"GARDA"''.
* WeAreExperiencingTechnicalDifficulties: Seen many times when something goes wrong during Kent Brockman's or Krusty the Clown's broadcast.
* WeDidntStartTheBillyJoelParodies: "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0PJYqzht3s They'll Never Stop the Simpsons]]", a [[TheJimmyHartVersion Jimmy Hart Version]] at the end of the 2002 "Gump Roast" episode (so far, [[LongRunner they seem to be right]]).
* WelcomeToTheBigCity: When Homer first goes to New York, he's robbed several times and falls into a sewer while being chased by a pimp.
* WelcomeToTheRealWorld: Homer goes through a mysterious portal behind the bookcase and ends up doing this at the end of the seventh-season "Treehouse of Horror VI."
* WellIntentionedExtremist: Sideshow Bob. For example, the whole reason he framed Krusty was to provide 'Quality Children's Entertainment'. Yes, and because he got shot out of a cannon.
* WeShouldGetAnotherTape: In "Alone Again, Natura-Diddly", Homer films Ned's dating video on a tape featuring Marge giving birth to Maggie.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Parodied in-universe. The CorruptCorporateExecutive of a young-adult book publisher claimed that the original draft of Literature/{{Twilight}} was Bella falling in love with a {{Golem}}.
** Also played straight in that Marge could have been a LifeInHell rabbit in disguise. Early in the series, Matt Groening was planning to reveal that Marge was hiding rabbit ears under her hair, but the idea was scrapped either due to inconsistencies, or because [[BeyondTheImpossible it was too silly even for]] TheSimpsons. [[http://www.rubbercat.net/simpsons/marge-rabbit-sprites.png This idea is immortalized in the Arcade Game.]]
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome: Parodied in "The PTA Disbands" -- the original writer's pitch was, as the title suggests, a story about the Springfield Parent-Teacher Association threatening to disband because of a dispute between the parents and teachers. The episode was rewritten into one about the Springfield Elementary teachers going on strike because of a dispute with Skinner, but a reference to the original storyline was inserted, with a parent seemingly committing suicide by jumping out of a tall building because he thought the PTA had disbanded. Ned Flanders then revealed that the PTA hadn't actually disbanded, and the jumper then climbed back in through the window in relief.
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotHeinous: Homer aghast at Marge for mixing polyapolane with polyurethane recyclables in "The Old Man and the Lisa".
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Colin, from [[TheSimpsonsMovie the movie]] most notably, and Janey Handerson, Lisa's friend who seemed to get pushed aside so the [[IntelligenceEqualsIsolation "Lisa has no friends"]] running plot could happen.
** ''The Simpsons'' is a gold mine of this trope. A lot of the people the Simpsons have met (besides the celebrities) and the things the Simpsons or Springfield have disappeared and are no longer mentioned, or are mentioned later on, but only en passant.
** A subversion is with Mike Scioscia. He appears in "Homer at the Bat" and suffers from acute radiation poisoning in the end. He appears '''MUCH''' later in "[=MoneyBART=]", eighteen years later, and when Marge reminds him that he suffered from poisoning, he said "I did. But it ended up giving me super-managerial powers."
** {{Lampshaded}} now and then, such as in "Homerazzi," where Homer complains about celebrities not acknowledging him in any way after their first meeting. (Betty White then approaches him and asks him questions about the family.) Another episode has Homer mention "my seldom-seen half-brother Herb."
** This trope was essentially why "Mother Simpson" was produced, as the then current writing team couldn't believe that Homer's mother had never been seen outside of a couple flashback cameos.
* WhatHaveIDone: Bart sawing off the Jebadiah Springfield statue head in 'The Tell Tale Head'.
* WhatsAHenway: From "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase":
--> '''Marge''': I said we were having a special ''guest'' tonight: Mr. TimConway!
--> '''Homer''': What's a Tim Conway?
--> '''Tim Conway''': Oh, about 120 pounds.
* WheelOfPain: Homer is forced to work one that [[MundaneUtility turns the wheel of a cupcake display in the cafeteria]].
* WhenIWasYourAge: A perennial favorite of Grandpa Simpson.
* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: The ending of "Bart's Dog Gets an F" features still screen pictures and text of what happened to some of the dogs after obedience school.
* WhiteDudeBlackDude: Homer watches a black comedian do one of these routines in "Homer and Apu".
--> '''Homer''': (laughing) It's true, it's true! We're so lame!
** And [[SmallReferencePools tries one himself]] in "Monty Can't Buy Me Love"
--> '''Homer''': White people have names like ''"Lenny"'', while black people have names like ''"Carl"''.
* WhoWritesThisCrap: In "Faith Off", Kent Brockman complains about the writing on the teleprompter.
--> '''Kent Brockman''': Big game fever is reaching a fever pitch as the fevered rivalry between Springfield U. and Springfield A&M spreads like wildfever. This is writing?
--> '''Intern''': Sorry, Kent, I lost my thesaurus.
--> '''Kent Brockman''': (muttering) "Lost your thesaurus." You'll lose more than ''that''. In preparation for the big game, Springfield Stadium has caught additional seating capacity fever.
** In "Children of a Lesser Clod", Krusty complains about the writing at the award ceremony. It turns out Mr. Teeny is his writer.
--> '''Krusty''': Now, every year we find one good Samaritan so deserving that not recognizing him would make Santa Claus himself vomit with rage. Ugh, who writes this stuff?!
* WhoaBundy: In one episode Homer, Moe, Apu and Barney Whoa Bundied when deciding upon the name of their barbershop quartet, minus the hand raising/lowering.
* WholeEpisodeFlashback: "The Way We Was", "The Way We Weren't", "That '90s Show", "Dangerous Curves", "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story", the episodes about the birth of the kids ("I Married Marge", "Lisa's First Word", and "And Maggie Makes Three").
** Also "Dancin' Homer", which begins with Homer at the bar telling his friends about his short-lived stint as a baseball mascot. There's really no reason for the episode to be told in flashback, but it was done that way because the writers didn't know how to end the episode.
* WholePlotReference: ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'', ''TheDeparted'', ''MrAndMrsSmith'', ''Film/MaryPoppins'', ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'', ''{{Dracula}}'', ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'', ''Film/SidAndNancy'', ''Disney/LadyAndTheTramp'', ''Film/ThelmaAndLouise'', ''RearWindow'', ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', ''Series/TwentyFour'', ''TheShining'', ''MyMotherTheCar'', ''[[Film/TheDarkKnightSaga Batman Begins]]'', ''KingKong'', ''TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau''...
** This appears the most often in the Halloween episodes.
* WhosWatchingTheStore: Seen in "Lisa the Beauty Queen" when both Apu and Sanjay are at the beauty pageant. Marge asks them who's watching the Kwik-E-Mart, and the scene cuts to Jimbo, Dolph, and Kearney stealing the Squishy machine.
* TheWildcats: Parodied in "Bart Star":
--> '''Ned''': Who are we?
--> '''Football team''': The Wildcats!
--> '''Ned''': Who are we gonna beat?
--> '''Football team''': The Wildcats!
* WilliamTelling: In "The Cartridge Family," after Bart finds the handgun Homer acquired stowed in the freezer, he aims it at Milhouse who sticks an apple in his mouth. Marge manages to find the two just before Bart could pull the trigger.
* WindowWatcher: In an early episode of The Simpsons Homer takes the whole family out on a Window Watching escapade in order to demonstrate to them that their family's personal interactions aren't normal.
* WithOrWithoutYou: Homer gives these occasionally. The follow-through, eh, not so much.
* WorkingOnTheChainGang: The episode "Kill The Alligator And Run" sees the entire family (yes, even Maggie) sentenced by the State of Florida to forced labor on a chain gang after Homer kills an alligator named "Captain Jack" (the Florida town's most famous resident) and addresses the jury at their trial as "Drunken Hicks."
* TheWorldMocksYourLoss: After Ned lost his wife he sees couples dancing and having fun at the [[FictionalHoliday Jellyfish Festival]].
-->Marge: Poor Ned. This is his first Jellyfish Festival alone.
-->Homer: I know. And it doesn't get any easier from here. There's the Tongue-Kissing Festival, Cinco de Ocho, the Hobo Oscars, days just made for lovers. Not widowers...lovers.
* TheWorstSeatInTheHouse: In "The Homer They Fall," Marge's seat for Homer's [[TheBoxingEpisode big boxing match]] was directly behind a pillar, so she couldn't see anything.
* WorldsSmallestViolin Lenny loses the bow
* WorstWhateverEver: Comic Book Guy is the TropeMaker.
* WorthlessForeignDegree: Apu works in the Kwik-E-Mart despite being a top-of-the-class computing scientist back in India.
* WraparoundBackground: Lampshaded in "The Front" when Roger Meyers Jr. says that a common way to keep costs down on a cartoon is to re-use the same backgrounds over and over again... meanwhile, he, Bart, and Lisa walk by the same background numerous times.
* WriteWhatYouKnow: "Marge Be Not Proud" was based on a real experience that happened to Mike Scully, the writer of the episode.
* WriteWhoYouKnow: The Simpsons are named after Matt Groening's RealLife relatives, except Bart, whose name was chosen as an anagram of "brat". Other characters (such as Flanders) are named for streets near where Matt Groening grew up. Krusty the Klown was based on a real clown called Rusty Nails, who Matt Groening said kind of frightened him as a kid.
** InUniverse example: Bart based the character in his web cartoon series Angry Dad on Homer Simpson, as well as a sidekick based on Lisa (A bit of an InUniverse ThrowItIn moment, as he created her so the person she's based on, Lisa Simpson, won't complain about the series' ripping off on Homer). Homer was initially not to happy with it, although after it was revealed that his angry reactions are the only reason he's still alive, he allows Bart to continue with the series, although only under the condition that he only does it semi-based on real experiences.
* WritersSuck: "The Front," "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show," and "Homer to the Max" have a lot of jokes about how awful television writers are (especially the ones who work on cartoons).
** In "Bart vs. Lisa vs. The Third Grade", Homer laments the wave of reality shows, and blames the writers and actors for pricing themselves right out of the business.
* WritingAroundTrademarks: Lampshaded by the ''Film/MaryPoppins'' parody, who says she's an original creation like 'Ricky Rouse' and 'Monald Muck'.
** And of course this bit from one of the Treehouse of Horrors.
---> '''Willie''': You got the Shinning!\\
'''Bart''': Oh you mean the [[TheShining Shining]].\\
'''Willie''': Shh, you wanna get sued?
* WrongSideOfTheTracks: Turns up a bit; in fact, the quality of life in Springfield shifts from white suburbia to abject poverty ''literally'' around the division of a single set of train tracks.
* WroteTheBook:
** In "The Great Money Caper", Homer and Bart walk around Springfield conning people with the help of a book called "A Child's Garden of Cons". Later, Abe joins them in their grifting, saying he wrote the book on flimflamming. Bart verifies.
** In the Spinoff Showcase's Lovematic Grandpa segment, Moe claims to have written the book on love. Abe responds, "Yeah, 'All Quiet on the Western Front'."
[[/folder]]
[[folder:X]]
* XCalledTheyWantTheirYBack: In "Homer the Clown", Krusty gets a call from GeorgeCarlin, who is suing him for stealing his "Seven Words You Can't Say on TV" bit. Krusty ends the call by saying, "Well, excuuuse me!"
-->'''Receptionist:''' SteveMartin on four.\\
'''Krusty:''' Ten grand.
* XDaysSince
** In the new opening: Lenny Carl are changing the "days without an accident" one higher, then the Quitting Time Horn goes off and Homer runs out, knocking them over in the process.
** A prison holds a sign counting the number of days since the last break.
** A redneck bar has a sign counting the number of days without a tornado. And it's reset between scenes.
** When Apu takes his citizenship test, the sign outside says something like "130 years without a civil war".
* XtremeKoolLetterz: Krusty's Komedy Klassic, whose initials provided a funny, yet [[UnfortunateImplications unfortunate implication]] ("K.K.K? ''That's'' not good!") Made worse by the fact that the letters are in white and the TV special itself was set at the Apollo Theater, where ''Showtime At the Apollo'' (a variety show featuring black performers) is filmed.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Y]]
* {{Yakuza}}: After Homer hires the Mafia to help Marge's pretzel business, the Investorettes hire the Yakuza to fight back.
* YankTheDogsChain: In "Moaning Lisa", Bart keeps winning against Homer in a boxing video game. Homer gets lessons from a kid at the video arcade and that night, he uses the tips to wallop Bart in the game, but just before he's about to deliver his finishing blow, Marge unplugs the TV. So Homer didn't technically win the match, and Bart announces his retirement from the game.
* YawnAndReach: Homer tries to teach it to Abe in "Lady Bouvier's Lover". Skinner does this to Patty in "Principal Charming", but she doesn't like it.
--> '''Patty''': Don't be stupid.
* YesMan: Smithers.
** Smithers is more of a subversion, though. Some of Burns' [[KickTheDog more extreme schemes]] had Smithers actually standing up to him, even risking getting fired for it. Then again, Smithers did go back to working for Burns later in the episode.
* YouAnsweredYourOwnQuestion: Homer: "Operator! Give me the number to 911!"
** Played with in "Bart's Girlfriend":
--> '''Bart''': Why the crap do we have to go to church anyway?!
--> '''Marge''': You just answered your own question with that commode mouth.
* YouAreATreeCharlieBrown: Bart and Milhouse play sheep.
* YouAreInCommandNow: Homer ends up in command of a nuclear sub in "Simpson Tide".
* YouCantHandleTheParody: They've used it at least three times. The first is in "Secrets of a Successful Marriage":
-->'''Homer''': You want the truth? You want the ''truth''?! You can't ''handle'' the truth! [[Film/{{Patton}} 'Cause when you reach over]] and put your hand into a pile of goo that was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do.
** and from "Sideshow Bob Roberts":
-->'''Sideshow Bob''': You want the truth? You can't handle the truth! No truth-handler, you! I deride your truth-handling abilities!\\
'''Judge''': Will you get to the point?
** and from "Mommie Beerest":
-->'''Jack playing card''': You can't handle the twos!
* YouGetMeCoffee: Lisa wanted to be in a jazz band but was told she could sit in a chair instead.
* YouGetWhatYouPayFor: In the second segment of "Simpsons Bible Stories", which spoofs the story of Moses, Lisa and Milhouse escape a badly designed DeathTrap. Lisa notes, "Slave labor. You get what you paid for."
* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: Marge and the van Houtens have blue hair. Marge actually dyes her hair that color, though it's assumed from flashbacks to her childhood that she ''was'' a natural blue.
* YouJustRuinedTheShot: Becky appears to be torturing the family in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge".
* YouMakeMeSic: In "Bart the Genius", after Bart gives a confession letter to Dr. J. Loren Pryor that he was faking being a genius:
--> '''Pryor''': You know... you misspelled "confession".
* YouMightRememberMeFrom: Troy [=McClure=] says this virtually every time he appears, even when he's on a date.
* YouMonster
** Bart to Mr. Burns in "Who Shot Mr. Burns (Part 1)": "You twisted old MONSTER!"
** Homer will drop this one for any reason. '''Any'''.
* YouMustBeThisTallToRide: Bart attempts to subvert the trope by applying ice cream bars to the bottom of his shoes to meet the height requirement. It gets played straight when the ride starts and he nearly falls out going through a loop because he is not big enough for the safety bar to catch him.
* YoungerThanTheyLook:
** Homer Simpson: In season four's "Lisa the Beauty Queen," Homer tries his luck at the school carnival's "Guess Your Age and Weight" booth. The fortuneteller guesses that Homer is 53 years old and 420 pounds. Homer laughs at the man and reveals that he's 36 years old and 239 pounds. Later episodes would have Homer as 38 or 39, depending on writer.
** Hans Moleman: During the Alc-Anon meeting in season four's "Duffless," Hans reveals that he's 31 years old (which is true, according to his driver's license on "Selma's Choice" that shows he was born in August of 1961. It would make him around 31 at the time of the episode's premiere -- 1991), implying that Hans Moleman's alcohol addiction has rapidly aged him. As usual, NegativeContinuity has discredited this, as Hans was seen at the Springfield Retirement Home in "The Old Man and the C Student" and in "Little Girl on the Big Ten," a character pointed out that Hans was 80. Though given Moleman's [[ButtMonkey status]], and how incompetent just about ''every'' laborer in Springfield seems to be...
** Mr. Burns: Before "Homer the Smithers," Burns revealed that he was 81 years old and looked older because he went bald around the time he was in college. After "Homer the Smithers", it's since been retconned that he looks his age (or is older than he looks) and has had a head of hair as recently as the sixties.
*** Mr. Burns' age following "Homer the Smithers" has tended to vary. Generally, it was established since then that Burns is 104 years old, although in the S15 episode "Fraudcast News", Burns is 89 years old. Again, this depends on the writer.
* [[YouLookFamiliar You Sound Familiar]]: Albert Brooks has voiced a number of guest characters over the years, including Cowboy Bob ("Call of the Simpsons"), Jacques ("Life on the Fast Lane"), Brad Goodman ("Bart's Inner Child"), Hank Scorpio ("You Only Move Twice"), Tad Spangler ("The Heartbroke Kid"), and Russ Cargill (''The Simpsons Movie'').
** Jon Lovitz has appeared as Artie Ziff (several episodes), Professor Lombardo ("Brush with Greatness"), Aristotle Amadoupolis ("Homer Defined"), Llewellyn Sinclair ("A Streetcar Named Marge"), [[TheCritic Jay Sherman]] ("A Star Is Burns"), and Enrico Irritazio ("Homerazzi"). In "The Ziff Who Came to Dinner", all these characters just happen to be in Moe's Tavern at the same time.
* YourFavorite: Matt Groning's favorite candy bar is Butterfinger, the reason he allows the characters to sell them.
* YourHeadASplode: Once in a reference to ''JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'', as well as an ExplosiveDecompression.
** In "And Maggie Makes Three", Homer's head suddenly explodes during the WholeEpisodeFlashback, which is immediately revealed to be Bart hijacking the story. When the flashback resumes... Homer is still headless, crying about how his perfect life is ruined.
--->'''Marge:''' Homer, you had a head.\\
'''Homer:''' Check. ''(Flashback-Homer's head reappears)''\\
'''Marge:''' And your bottom was a little bigger.\\
'''Homer:''' Aw. ''(Flashback-Homer's ass grows)''
* YourMom: In "Starship Poopers" (part of "Treehouse of Horror IX"), Kang delivers one of these to Homer while on The JerrySpringer Show.
--> '''Kang''': Well (bleep) hyperbolic parabaloid (bleep) yo mama!
* YourWorstNightmare: In a "Treehouse of Horror", Bart and Lisa, in a parody of ''Film/ANightmareOnElmStreet'', are being terrorized by Groundskeeper Willie in their dreams.
* YouWouldDoTheSameForMe: In "Homer the Heretic", Ned says this to Homer after he saves Homer from a burning house. In a daydream, Homer thinks differently, though he responds: "That's right, old friend."
* YouSayTomato: Marge says "foilage" instead of "foliage".
** Homer correcting Lisa: "It's spelled 'nucular', honey."
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Z]]
* ZanyScheme: Homer performs these, constantly.
--> '''Homer''': Now, the only antidote to a zany scheme... is an even zanier scheme!
--> '''Nerd''': Why does it have to be "zany"?
* ZettaiRyouki: [[http://babysimpson.co.uk/gallery/grabs/lisa/lisa463.gif Lisa]] in "Lisa Simpson, This Isn't Your Life".
** Also Greta Wolfcastle in the beginning of "The Bart Wants What It Wants" when Bart saves her from bullies.
* {{Zeerust}}: Parodied numerous times.
* ZillionDollarBill: Mr. Burns was said to own a trillion-dollar bill - and did! Now Fidel Castro has it.
* ZombieApocalypse: Two Treehouse of Horror stories have this: one where Bart uses an occult spell book to try and reanimate Snowball I and another where Krusty Burger's latest sandwich turns the people into "munchers" (cannibalistic zombies).
[[/folder]]
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