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1This page covers tropes found in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''.
2
3TheSimpsons/TropesAToB | TheSimpsons/TropesCToD | '''Tropes E To H''' | TheSimpsons/TropesIToM | TheSimpsons/TropesNToR | TheSimpsons/TropesSToZ | [[YMMV/TheSimpsons YMMV]]
4
5----
6
7[[foldercontrol]]
8!!Tropes with their own pages
9[[index]]
10* [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness/TheSimpsons Early Installment Weirdness]]
11* [[EpicFail/TheSimpsons Epic Fail]]
12* [[EvenEvilHasStandards/TheSimpsons Even Evil Has Standards]]
13* [[EyeScream/TheSimpsons Eye Scream]]
14* [[Flanderization/TheSimpsons Flanderization]]
15* [[Foil/TheSimpsons Foil]]
16* [[GroinAttack/TheSimpsons Groin Attack]]
17* [[HalfwayPlotSwitch/TheSimpsons Halfway Plot Switch]]
18* [[Hypocrite/TheSimpsons Hypocrite]]
19* [[HypocriticalHumor/TheSimpsons Hypocritical Humor]]
20* [[ImageSource/TheSimpsons Image Source]]
21[[/index]]
22
23!!Other Tropes
24[[folder:E]]
25* EarlyBirdCameo: Apu's wife Manjula is seen in the season seven episode "Much Apu About Nothing" in a flashback. She doesn't become a character proper until two seasons later.
26** Similarly, Mona Simpson has two flashback appearances (in season two's "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" and season six's "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy") before her starring role in season seven's "Mother Simpson".
27* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:
28** First were the Tracey Ullman shorts, the earlier ones with very skewed character models compared to what we know. Then come the first season or so, most of which is very different in tone and humor style to everything that came after it. In particular, there's the Simpsons episode "There's No Disgrace Like Home" (in which Homer is actually ashamed of his family being dysfunctional, something that would be more in character for Marge or Lisa in later episodes). The writers' commentary cheerfully admits that everything in the episode is "wrong" compared to later seasons, though that still doesn't stop it from having a scene that continues to be extremely popular, where the Simpsons all give each other shock therapy. Finally, there's the Art Evolution bump (though minor) when production switched to HD in season 20.
29** Also notable is the completely different, more gruff voice Creator/DanCastellaneta uses for Homer during the shorts and first part of the first season. The original voice of Homer was based rather closely on Walter Matthau. As well, after the first three seasons (after the initial craze died down) the writers realized that Homer was a much better character for generating plots, as long as they kept him fairly unpredictable and dumb. This was lampshaded with a "viewer's letter" saying that "I think Homer gets stupider every year." Castellaneta actually says on several commentaries that he never really made a decision to change the voice; he just kept trying his best to match the voice he used in the previous episode, and it slowly changed to one that fit the writing better.
30*** Quite a few characters had noticeably different voices in the first couple of seasons or so. Mr. Burns sounds somewhat more Ronald Reaganesque, Moe is more akin to Al Pacino and Chief Wiggum vocally resembles David Brinkley.
31** The Season 1 title sequence has some noticeable differences to the one used for Seasons 2-20. The sequence opens with clouds that attempt to look more realistic (though in practise they just look like paint smudges); various buildings are colored in differently; Springfield Elementary School is next to Mostly Painless Dentistry instead of Candy Most Dandy; the booth next to Homer is occupied by a man who looks like an older, white-haired version of Homer instead of Mr. Burns and Smithers; Milhouse, Sherri and Terri, and Mr. Largo are the only recurring characters (though Krusty appears on some [=TVs=] in the background) seen in the sequence; Bart steals a bus stop sign rather than skating through a crowd of series regulars (also meaning that the Season 1 version of the theme lacks the saxophone segment that was included from Season 2 onwards, when Bart skates past Bleeding Gums Murphy); there's a shot of Lisa cycling down Evergreen Terrace that was replaced with a rapid pan featuring nearly all the remaining ancillery characters; the characters arrive home in the order Lisa-Homer-Bart-Marge instead of Homer-Bart-Lisa-Marge (with the result that Lisa doesn't nearly cycle into Homer); and Homer doesn't audibly scream at Marge's approaching car at all in the first few episodes, and then later does so with a stock scream, before finally using one provided by Creator/DanCastellaneta.
32** Noteworthy are the early appearances of black Smithers with blue hair (though that was only due to an inking error, he was never actually intended to be black) and Lou the cop (who switched from being yellow to being black).
33** At the start of "Homer's Odyssey" Sherri and Terri are antagonizing Bart. Originally, this was going to be a running thing, but later Nelson was made Bart's full-time bully and if Sherri and Terri ever antagonize anyone it's usually Lisa.
34** In the first few episodes of season 1 (in production order) such as "Some Enchanted Evening", "Bart the Genius", and "Homer's Odyssey", many of the background colored drawings are gradient. The gradients are probably mistakes caused by inconsistent thickness in the cel paint.
35** Season 2 made heavy use of overlapping dialog. This was more or less abandoned starting in season 3.
36** One effect of the show's status as a {{Long Runner|s}} is that some younger viewers consider the first several ''seasons'' this.
37** Long Story Short: If you watched the later Seasons before the earlier Seasons... It's gonna seem like a fever dream. Especially when you compare the Later seasons teeth to earlier ones.
38*** On the specific issue of the animation style, the first three seasons stand out. From season four, it stayed roughly in the same ballpark until the permanent switch to digital ink and paint in season fourteen.
39** Nelson has a few examples.
40*** His trademark laugh was three "Haws" instead of two.
41*** He had a different [[https://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Weasels bully posse]] before he started hanging out with Jimbo, Kearny, and Dolph.
42*** He was more willing to bully Lisa, who later on became his MoralityPet, and "Bye Bye Nerdy" established that he and the other bullies [[EveryoneHasStandards drew the line]] [[WouldntHitAGirl at tormenting girls]].
43** Martin used to be a tattle tale and more antagonistic towards Bart. After season 2, while he was still a Teacher's Pet, he was more of a NiceGuy.
44** In season one, Bart and Milhouse had other friends named [[https://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Richard Richard]] and [[https://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Lewis Lewis.]] After a while, they were DemotedToExtra while Bart's friend circle consisted of Nelson and occasionally Martin.
45** Seasons 5-9 for the most part ditched the show's full title sequence -- cutting it down to the title card, the shot of the Simpsons arriving at their house, and then the CouchGag -- in order to encourage the writers to fit more gags and/or storyline content into the episodes. Afterwards, the show reverted to using the full title sequence, and even later still, began making use of much longer and more elaborate Couch Gags.
46* EarlyPersonalitySigns:
47** Lisa is seen changing her own diapers at Maggie's age, demonstrating that she was always smart, talented, and resourceful.
48** Bart is seen lighting Homer's clothes on fire as a baby, showing that he's always been a naughty kid.
49* EarpieceConversation: There's a gag where Kent Brockman gets fed lines this way even when he's socialising.
50* EarthAllAlong: Parodied and {{Trope Name|rs}}d in Troy [=McClure=]'s musical ''[[Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968 Stop the Planet of the Apes I Want to Get Off!]]''.
51* EasilySwayedPopulation: The people of Springfield don't seem to know what to think or do about themselves. Case-in-point: in "The Joy of Sect", the ''ENTIRE TOWN'' is taken over by a fundamentalist cult.
52* EasilyForgiven: Homer gets kicked out of Moe's bar forever in "Fear of Flying". Before long he's back there and nobody remembers he was tossed out.
53* EasyRoadToHell: Parodied and subverted as Bart is on his way to Heaven on an escalator after being hit by a car, but gets sent to Hell for not holding onto the handrail and for spitting over the side, then gets let back to Earth as the devil realizes it's not his time yet.
54* EatTheCamera: Most notably Homer in "Simpson Safari," and Bart in "Treehouse of Horror II" and "The Bob Next Door."
55* EatingLunchAlone:
56** Lisa, in "Father Knows Worst"; nobody will let her sit with them. Which is odd, because Lisa's clearly had friends before.
57** In "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson" she has to eat alone in the mess hall because she's ostracized for being the only girl at military school. (P.S.: The cadets are planning to throw their meatballs at her.)
58* EccentricTownsfolk: All of Springfield.
59* EdgyBackwardsChairSitting: Dr. Xander does this in "Love Is A Many Strangled Thing" to show Homer how serious he is.
60* ElNinoIsSpanishForTheNino: "The Italian Bob" episode has Sideshow Bob scream "Vendetta!" at the Simpsons for ruining his hiding in Italy as a non-criminal. Marge looks in the Italian-English Dictionary and says "Vendetta means... vendetta!", causing all the Simpsons to scream in terror.
61* ElderAbuse: It's sometimes shown that the Springfield Retirement Castle where Abe "Grandpa" Simpson lives has rather neglectful staff in many episodes when it comes to the residents' emotional needs. In one episode, the staff even destroy the Wii Lisa gave them. Also Homer would seemingly be happy to leave his father in there and never see him at all; at one point Homer even tried to light a pile of junk on fire, which his dad was buried in. It was implied he knew his father was in said pile of junk.
62* ElderlyAilmentRambling:
63** In "The Devil Wears Nada", the supervisor of Sector 7G retires, and Mr. Burns announces that, "much as what was formerly my kidney is now my heart", he's promoting his replacement from within.
64** In one Butterfinger commercial, Grampa gets woken up by a loud crunch and tells Lisa to stop biting her Butterfinger bar. When she tells him she isn't eating it, he mutters "Darn osteoporosis".
65* ElephantsAreScaredOfMice: Subverted at Apu's wedding. When a mouse runs out in the elephant's path, the elephant recoils for a moment... and then proceeds to deliberately step on it.
66* ElongatingArmGag: Part of the show's EarlyInstallmentWeirdness is that the animation of the early episodes have more of a cartoonish flair than later ones. This leads to arms stretching implausibly on occasion, such as [[https://frinkiac.com/img/S01E13/726710.jpg Bart putting the Happy Little Elves tape into the VCR]] in "Some Enchanted Evening", and [[https://frinkiac.com/img/S01E05/78177.jpg Lisa snatching a cupcake away from Homer]] in "Bart the General".
67* EmbarrassingRelativeTeacher: Marge briefly became Bart's subtitute teacher after he drove all the other subs away. She calls him "sweetie" in class.
68* EmbarrassingPyjamas: Subverted in one episode where Bart charges out of the house in his pyjamas, expecting a snow day. However, there's actually been "a bout of unseasonable warmth." Jimbo mocks him with "Nice jammies, Simpson. Did your mommy buy them for ya?" To which Bart replies, "Of course she did. who else?" much to Jimbo's chagrin.
69* EmbarrassingSlide: A non-sexual one occurs in "Bart vs. Australia," where Evan Conover (a representative from the U.S. Department of State) shows the Simpsons a slideshow of America's love affair with Australian culture in the 1980s. The last slide shows Fidel Castro seen through the crosshairs of a sniper rifle with the words "Plan B." Conover calmly snatches the slide, says, "Oops, let's pretend we didn't see that!", and swallows it.
70* EmergencyTaxi: Done in-universe in an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon. When Scratchy finally catches Itchy and blows him up with more dynamite to eliminate a small town, he whistles for a cab to immediately escape the mouse's demise.
71* EmployeeOfTheMonth:
72** The episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS5E15DeepSpaceHomer Deep Space Homer]]" features a variant with the "Employee of the Week" award. Homer is hoping to win the award, since he is the only employee to not have won it yet and the company handbook states that each employee must win it regardless of their incompetence. To his dismay, however, the award ends up going to an inanimate carbon rod instead.
73** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS3E5HomerDefined Homer Defined]]", he actually does win Employee of the Month after saving the power plant from a catastrophic meltdown. This comes with perks like a reserved parking space next to Mr. Burns. Notably, the hall of fame of the previous Employees of the Month are all Waylon Smithers.
74* EmptyQuiver: In "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming", Sideshow Bob steals a 10 megaton nuclear bomb and uses to hold Springfield hostage, forcing it to shut down all television broadcasts.
75* EncouragedRegifting: One ChristmasEpisode, had Homer forgetting to get Marge a present. He searches town for something, but everything is either closed or sold out. Homer returns home, sad that he can't give Marge a present. However, Marge tells him that she knew he would forget to get her a gift. That's why her gift to Homer is a present he can give to her.
76* EndOfEpisodeSilliness:
77** Done a fair bit, e.g. "Monty Can't Buy Me Love", where Mr. Burns captures the Loch Ness Monster. The episode ends with the monster working at a casino, and it and Homer talk about the low quality of the casino's cocktails.
78** Mr. Burns and Smithers bathing a manatee at the end of "Bonfire of the Manatees".
79** Homer having to perform in the zoo act at the end of "Eight Misbehavin'".
80** Grandpa's retinas detaching while playing peek-a-boo with Maggie in "Lisa's Sax".
81** Bart tricking Homer into trying to open a Girltech Turbo Diary in "The Dad Who Knew Too Little".
82* TheEndOrIsIt: In "Natural Born Kissers", Bart and Lisa discover a film reel with an alternate ending for the movie "Casablanca", where it shows "The End" on screen, but then adds a question mark. CaptainObvious Bart points out that they left the door open for a sequel.
83* EnemyMine: Itchy and Scratchy once teamed up to fight UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler. Itchy killed Scratchy immediately afterwards. In a ''Treehouse of Horror'' episode, they decide to team up against Bart and Lisa after they laugh at their pain.
84* EnormousEngagementRing: In "The Real Housewives of Fat Tony", Selma marries the maffia boss Fat Tony. However, the wedding was not real and the ceremony was held in Italian, and she was only his house mistress. Fat Tony's real wife laughs at the size of Selma's ring, which is a ring of a mistress. The wife's ring is huge and the gem is as big as her fist.
85* EntertainmentAboveTheirAge: "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment", when Homer gets an illegal cable hook-up, he leaves the Top Hat Channel (which is said to have a lot of erotic movies) on. Bart (who is only ten) watches it and loves it, so he charges the boys in the neighborhood to watch some stuff on it with him.
86* EpicFail: Several examples, most notably in "Homer The Smithers" when Homer somehow sets a bowl of cereal on fire.
87* EpisodeCodeNumber: [=20th=] Century Fox Television has [[http://www.simpsonsarchive.com/guides/pcodes.html a tradition]] of using funky episode coding schemes that change roughly every decade, and being a LongRunner, ''The Simpsons'' provides an excellent case study of them:
88** The first production season was coded 7Gxx, "7G" being the code assigned internally to ''The Simpsons''. This followed a system that dated back to at least the 1960s (with minor changes along the way): the first two characters were the series code and the last two were the episode number.
89** The second through ninth production seasons were coded from 7Fxx to 9Fxx, then from 1Fxx to 5Fxx. The code system was overhauled in 1991 to have the first character represent the calendar year and the second be the series code, "F" being the one assigned to ''The Simpsons''. A separate production run of four episodes made during the seventh season and aired during the eighth and ninth seasons were coded 3Gxx.
90** The tenth production season onwards were coded yABFxx, where "y" is the season letter (starting at A for 10; a number would normally go there, but ''The Simpsons'' was already beyond nine seasons at that point) and "ABF" is the new series code for ''The Simpsons''. "I", "O", "Q" and "U" were initially skipped, but with "Z" being reached in 2020, "Q" will be used next and the other skipped letters may or may not be used as they figure out how to keep the code going.
91* EpisodeDiscussionScene: ''The Simpsons'' uses this from time to time as well, and again, largely parodically.
92** "Bart the General" has Bart's "war is neither glamorous nor fun" speech at the end.
93** "The Springfield Files" is an ''Series/TheXFiles'' parody with Creator/LeonardNimoy guest-starring for the intro.)
94* EroticEating:
95** Parodied in "Old Money", as Grampa and Beatrice flirt by consuming pills in a suggestive manner.
96** Also when Selma tries to find a man as per her Aunt Gladys' last request, during a date video taping, Selma chews on a (lit) cigarette and sticks out her tongue where the cigarette is now tied in knots (the only reason she can do that without feeling pain is revealed in season three's "Black Widower" where she told Sideshow Bob that a childhood accident where a bottle rocket went up her nose permanently destroyed her sense of taste and sense of smell. Then again, she has been smoking for a long time, which Selma also did when she was a kid.)
97** And inverted into FanDisservice when Patty and Selma find out that they can suck the many-days-dead conches and hermit crabs out of their shells to clean their seashell collection.
98** After eating dinner, Marge and Ned Flanders both eat strawberries dipped in whipped cream more erotically in "The Devil Wears Nada". Even the promotional artwork for the episode shows this.
99** "The Sweetest Apu", At the Kwik E Mart, Apu tries to break up with the Squishee lady until she eats a liquorice and spells out "Do Me" when taking it seductively out of her mouth causing Apu to lose control of himself.
100%% * EscapeConvenientBoat: Parodied at least twice.
101* EscapedAnimalRampage:
102** In the episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E7MargeGetsAJob Marge Gets a Job]]" a wolf escapes from Krusty's TV show. He then attacks Bart at school, who tries to warn Mrs. Krabappel, but just as in "[[CryingWolf The Boy Who Cried Wolf]]" nobody believes the previous liar anymore.
103** In "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds" Kent Brockman is reading the news:
104--->'''Kent Brockman:''' In today’s news, a two-ton rhino escaped from the Springfield zoo. But zoo officials were quick to act, and Petunia, as she is known, is safely back in captivity. In other news, a three-ton rhino that escaped from the zoo last week is still at large.
105** "Screaming Yellow Honkers": Marge gets a Canyonero and develops a bad case of road rage. The climax is Homer accidentally releasing a pack of rhinos from the zoo and Marge having to use the SUV to corral them in and save her family.
106* EskimosArentReal:
107** Bart refers to Music/MichaelJackson on a list of fictional things adults make up to scare children. Interestingly, [[NegativeContinuity in an earlier episode]] Bart was a big Michael Jackson fan.
108** In an episode where they find the skeleton of what looks like an angel, Lisa postulates via ImagineSpot that it may be a Neanderthal who had been attacked by two big fish biting each of his arms simultaneously.
109--->'''Wiggum:''' Everybody's heard of an angel, who ever heard of a "neanderthal?"
110** Homer says that vampires are made up, just like gremlins and Eskimos in "Treehouse of Horror IV."
111** In "Homer vs. the 18th Amendment", Homer dismisses prohibition as something that happened in the movies.
112* EspeciallyZoidberg: In "Brother From Another Series":
113-->'''Sideshow Bob:''' Madam, your children are ''no more''.... ''[camera pans back to reveal he's holding Bart and Lisa by the ears]'' than a pair of ill-bred troublemakers!\
114'''Homer:''' Lisa too?\
115'''Sideshow Bob:''' ''Especially'' Lisa! But '''especially''' Bart!
116* EvasiveFightThreadEpisode: At the end of "The Great Wife Hope", Bart challenges Lisa to a fight to settle the bad blood between them. They jump at each other and the scene freezes and breaks to the start of the credits, only to [[SubvertedTrope subvert the trope]] and unfreeze a few seconds later as Lisa lays Bart out with a single punch.
117* EvenEvilHasStandards:
118** Though not so much "evil" as a [[ExtremeDoormat doormat]] to an evil character, Smithers rarely objects to the business practices of [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Mr. Burns]] (since he's somewhat in love with him), except for when they're [[MoralEventHorizon exceptionally evil]], crossing the line between everyday villainy and cartoonish supervillainy. During the "Who Shot Mr. Burns" two-parter, Burns plans to block sunlight from reaching Springfield so that the residents of the town would have one less alternative source of heat and light.
119--->'''Burns:''' Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing -- block it out!\
120'''Smithers:''' Good God!\
121'''Burns:''' Imagine it, Smithers. Electric lights and heaters running all day long.\
122'''Smithers:''' But, sir! Every plant and tree will die! Owls will deafen us with incessant hooting! [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking The town's sundial will be useless!]] I don't want any part of this project, it's unconscionably fiendish.\
123'''Burns:''' I will not tolerate this insubordination! There has been a shocking decline in the quantity and quality of your toadying, Waylon, and you will fall into line, now!\
124'''Smithers:''' No, Monty, I won't. Not until you step back from the brink of insanity.\
125'''Burns:''' I will do no such thing. You're fired.
126** Smithers does something similar in "Sideshow Bob Roberts", where he goes behind Mr. Burns' back and gives a clue about how Bob was actually elected (hint: Ghost Voter) because he felt Bob's policies were against his "choice of lifestyle" (note: remember the hints from Smithers throughout the series).
127** In "The Bob Next Door", the prisoners who try to grope Marge through the bars of their cells ''instantly'' quiet down and stop the moment she tells them all she's married.
128** Inverted in "Fear of Flying": During Moe's prank day, Barney and Lenny arrange for a cobra to bite Moe and set his apron on fire, respectively, and they all get a laugh. However, when Homer pulls a harmless prank by slightly unscrewing the sugar container to result in it spilling over the Tavern, everyone in the tavern ended up disgusted with Homer and had him banned permanently from the bar (at least according to the episode).
129** Through just as corrupt, which has been exposed time and again, Mayor Quimby also has his limits. A known example of this was in "Who Shot Mr. Burns: Part 1", he tries to calm the crowd despite being just as outraged about Burns plot to block the sun from Springfield. In fact, to the point, despite being told that many people are carrying weapons he doesn't try to have them confiscated.
130* EverybodyCries: In "Pygmoelian", Moe believes himself to be ugly when he discovers his picture on the Duff calendar has been covered up. Carl tries to reassure him by pointing out Homer, Lenny, and Barney's flaws in comparison to Moe's. This results in Homer, Lenny, Barney, and Moe breaking down in tears. Carl lampshades the situation, BreakingTheFourthWall in the process.
131-->'''Carl:''' ''([[AsideGlance glances]] to the viewer)'' [[AsideComment See, this is why I don't talk much.]]
132* EverybodyHelpsOutDenouement: SubvertedTrope. The episode "Homer the Great" seems to be ending this way, with Homer deciding to use his power as TheChosenOne to have the order help out around the community...but they all hate it so much, they [[StartMyOwn found another order]], based on not having Homer as a member.
133* EverybodyLaughsEnding:
134** Lampshaded, of course. In "So It's Come To This: A Simpsons Clip Show", Homer awakens from a coma thinking it's still April Fool's Day. It's actually been a couple of months since then, and he's lost 10% of his brain. After the fade out while everybody laughs at the last lame joke ("Me lose brain? Uh-oh!"), the last thing you hear is Homer saying "Why I laugh?"
135** Parodied at the end of the episode where Sideshow Bob attempts to romance (and kill) Selma by opening a gas line: Bart closes by saying "Now let's get out of this gas-filled hallway before we all suffocate." Everyone laughs, presumably from the effects of the gas leak.
136** Parodied in "Last Exit to Springfield", where the main characters are gathered in a dentist's office and laugh very loudly at a mildly amusing joke, then it is revealed that the doctor left the laughing gas on.
137** Parodied in one of the Halloween episodes, where, after destroying an evil wig, Chief Wiggum quips "Now THAT'S what I call a bad hair day!" Everyone cracks up except for Marge, who [[LampshadeHanging points out]] that Apu and Moe are dead... but drops her protest when [[LateToThePunchline she gets the joke]], and joins in the laughter.
138** Used also in the ''Wiggum P.I.'' segment of the episode "The Simpsons Spinoff Showcase", ending in a 70's freeze frame of Wiggum, Skinner, and Ralph laughing at Skinner's OneLiner, capped with a wacky brass coda.
139** In "Homer's Enemy", everyone laughs at Grimes' funeral.
140* EveryoneIsSatanInHell: Stealthily invoked in "Bart Star", when Rodd and Todd of all people are wearing football jerseys with numbers 66 and 6 respectively. They even stand side-by-side in one shot just to drive the gag home.
141* EveryoneMustBePaired: Discussed by Marge in "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS13E4AHunkaHunkaBurnsInLove A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love]]".
142->'''Marge:''' It's about time Mr. Burns found a woman. I can't stand to see a man single.\
143'''Lisa:''' Some people enjoy being alone, Mom.\
144'''Marge:''' No, everyone should be paired up.
145* EveryoneOwnsAMac: Macintosh-style computers are fairly prominent on the show, usually coming from "Mapple", although [[CelebrityParadox Apple Computer has occasionally been mentioned over the years]]. It's [[JustifiedTrope justified]] in that the Mac was a popular computer with animators as far back as the early 90s, when the show was in its' infancy...
146** It goes as far back as in "Homer Defined" from Season 3, when the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant is close to a meltdown and the employees begin looting, one of them is seen with a Macintosh SE all-in-one desktop.)
147** Whenever one of the family is using a desktop, it appears to be an iMac with a colored casing. In many earlier cases, it's based off an iMac G3, which often came in color casings, but in more recent seasons the iMacs are based off flat panel designs.
148** In Season 7's "Homer the Smithers," Waylon Smithers is shown to be using an early 90s-style Mac desktop.
149** In recent seasons, Lisa is often shown to have her own flat-panel iMac desktop computer in her room.
150** In "The D'oh-cial Network", Springfield Elementary's computer lab is shown to [[TwoDecadesBehind still be using]] colored iMac G3s and ''Apple Lisa desktops''.
151** In "Yellow Subterfuge," Bart can be seen at one point using Pro Movie on a laptop, which is a parody of Apple's Final Cut Pro video-editing software.
152** In many cases since the late 90s when a computer operating system is shown, it's usually based off Mac OS 8 or OS 9. This continued even long after Apple actually dropped support for Mac OS 9 in 2002, although recent seasons have often shown an operating system resembling the modern Mac OS being used.
153* EveryPizzaIsPepperoni: In any episode where pizza is shown, it's always pepperoni.
154* EverythingMakesAMushroom: The camera pans out to show that it's only a few inches tall.
155* EverythingsBetterWithSparkles:
156** Mr. Sparkle.
157** Bart's earring in "Simpson Tide". Sparkle sparkle!
158* EvilCannotComprehendGood: A major theme with [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Mr. Burns]]. The most obvious case of this, though, is in "The Old Man And Lisa" when Burns is so tired of his usual advisors, who are such [[ExtremeDoormat doormats]] that they don't even let Burns know when he's making a mistake, that he decides to hire Lisa instead, probably realizing that [[SoapboxSadie Lisa isn't really one to hold back]]. Repeatedly in the episode, Burns mistakes some of Lisa's moral advice for practical advice, but for the most part the moral option happens to be the more practical option anyway. This pattern, however, is broken when Lisa mentions to Burns that sometimes sea life gets caught in trash like 6-pack holders; obviously, Lisa considers this a bad thing, but [[ComicallyMissingThePoint Burns doesn't even seem to realize that Lisa does]]. (Or {{alternativ|eCharacterInterpretation}}ly, perhaps he realizes he does and [[ManipulativeBastard PRETENDS not to realize it]] so as to piss off Lisa.) So, instead of gathering the 6-pack holders to dispose of them, he gathers them up to make giant improvised fishing nets out of them and gather large quantities of sea life. It gets worse when Burns shows Lisa the factory where said sea life is [[NightmareFuel mashed into a slurry]] that Burns refers to as "Lil' Lisa Slurry." Lisa calls him out on this.
159-->'''Lisa:''' You're not just evil, you're worse than evil. ''Even when you think you're being good, you end up being even more evil.''
160* EvilGloating: [[SmugSnake Mr. Burns]] is known for doing this, (Springfield's organized crime community is relatively less prone to it) but an especially [[KickTheDog sickening]] example is in "Who Shot Mr. Burns part 1". [[spoiler:At the town hall meeting about Burns' plan to block out the sun, Bart is telling the people at the meeting about how his dog was crippled by Burns' oil drilling operation; Bart shows the town the dog's cast and everything, and Burns walks in at this exact moment and says ''"oh, those wheels are squeaking a bit; perhaps I could sell him a little oil!"'']]
161* EvilLaugh:
162** Bart Simpson's laugh is pretty evil, even when he's laughing about something innocent.
163** Mr. Burns has several styles of evil laughter.
164** Sideshow Bob has one heck of a evil laugh.
165** Kang and Kodos also have their own, as well.
166** Lisa Simpson herself has her own share of evil laughter in a few episodes. In "Girly Edition", after elaborating a scheme against Bart, Lisa has an evil laugh which was comically followed by their monkey helper's own evil laugh, creeping out Lisa. Also, in "Last Exit to Springfield", after she has braces installed leading to a spoof of the Joker's laugh from the 1989's Creator/TimBurton ''Film/{{Batman|1989}}'' film.
167** Marge Simpson has a more raspy one herself in "All's Fair in Oven War" in which she sabotages her opponents food with Baby Ear Medicine. Also, she gives one in the third segment of TOH IV in which she reveals that she's the head vampire.
168** Even Homer himself has one in a few episodes such as "Flaming Moe's", "When Flanders Failed", and "The Fat and the Furriest" when he makes a big cotton candy ball with caramel on it.
169** "Bart Sells his Soul": Milhouse has one himself in this episode when begged by Bart to give him his soul back, but with a price: Fifty bucks.
170** "Whacking Day": Skinner has one himself after tricking Bart, Jimbo, Nelson, and Dolph in receiving mountain bikes only for him to forget to turn off the microphone causing everyone to hear.
171** Groundskeeper Willie has one himself in the second segment of TOH VI "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace".
172** Hank Scorpio himself definitely gives one in "You only Move Twice".
173* EvilOldFolks: While most of the senior citizens are just cranky and incompetent, Mr. Burns is evil enough for all of them.
174%%* EvilSoundsDeep: Sideshow Bob. Also Mr. Burns, though moreso in his earlier appearances (especially "Homer's Odyssey").
175* EvilStoleMyFaith: In the episode "Last Exit to Springfield," when the school photographer gets Lisa to smile for her school photo and sees the horrible 19th century style braces she's wearing (because there's no dental plan at the Power Plant where Homer works) he {{gasp}}s out "There is no god!"
176* EvilTaintedThePlace: [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] when Marge sells a murder house to her neighbors without explaining the history of the property. Of course, Marge feels guilty about this soon after the transaction, and she decides to offer them their deposit back the next time she meets with them. When she finally goes to explain and apologize about the omission she discovers that they already have found out about it. They aren't angry at her about it and are in fact delighted with the house's history. The most troubling part about it is, the neighbors exhibit a bus load of horror movie tics during the conversation. Marge and the audience can't tell if they're just joking or if an actual remnant of evil exists within the property.
177* ExactWords:
178** Subverted in "The Twisted World of Marge Simpson":
179--->'''Marge:''' Homer! Did you tell the mafia they could eliminate my competitors with savage beatings and attempted murder?\
180'''Homer:''' In ''those'' words? Yes.
181** In the episode "My Sister, My Sitter", Lisa is in charge of Bart who tries to subvert her. When Lisa demands he goes to bed, she finds him bouncing on Homer and Marge's bed. Bart brags, "You didn't say which bed."
182* ExactlyWhatIAimedAt: Bart is in a military school where they teach him to handle a grenade launcher. He hits the first four targets, but the fifth shot goes spiralling over the horizon. When the instructor tells him he missed, Bart smiles and says, "Did I?" Cut to Principal Skinner back in Springfield standing by the smoking crater that used to be his car.
183* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin:
184** Many episodes feature titles which directly describe what will occur in the episode: "Bart Gets Hit By a Car", "Krusty Gets Busted", "Bart Gets an F", "Bart's Friend Falls in Love", "Krusty Gets Kancelled", "Homer Loves Flanders", "Bart Gets an Elephant", "Bart Sells His Soul", and "All Singing, All Dancing". As the show leaned more towards parody titles, this trend has decreased significantly.
185** In-universe example: "It Ate Everybody".
186* ExceededTheGoal: In "King Size Homer", Homer sets up a goal to reach 300 pounds so he can get on disability. His efforts end with him going 15 pounds beyond his goal.
187* ExecutiveMeddling: Parodied InUniverse and given quite a TakeThat in ''Everyman''. The reason Everyman was so popular was that he was otherwise a loser with an unathletic body. Homer is casted for the movie precisely because of he being overweight. But meddlers decide that Homer needs to go through a physical conditioning. It works, but then - it being Homer - it fails. The final result [[spoiler:a 200 million dollar superhero movie in which the main actor swaps between very muscular and very fat every two frames. It's so terrible that it forces Comic Book Guy to give it CreatorBacklash.]]
188* ExerciseExcuse: In the episode "22 Short Films About Springfield", Skinner is about to go out his window to buy burgers and pretend he cooked them (because he burnt his roast), when Chalmers enters. Skinner claims he was stretching his leg on the windowsill.
189* {{Exergaming}}: Lisa buys such a game for a retirement home.
190* ExplosiveStupidity: In "Three Men and a Comic Book", there is a flashback to Mrs Glick's brother Asa, who dies in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI when he pulls the pin on a grenade and then delivers and extended AndThisIsFor speech, with the emphasis on extended.
191* {{Exposition}}: Lampshaded in "Bart's Inner Child" when the family arrives at the Brad Goodman seminar:
192-->'''Homer:''' Well, here we are at the Brad Goodman lecture.\
193'''Lisa:''' We know, dad.\
194'''Homer:''' I just thought I'd remind everybody. After all, we did agree to attend this self-help seminar.\
195'''Bart:''' What an ''odd'' thing to say...
196* ExpressLaneLimit: In the episode "The Principal And The Pauper", Edna throws away some items from her cart so she can join Marge and Agnes in a line to gossip.
197* ExecutiveBallClicker: When Homer starts his internet business he sets up a home office on the dining room table, including one of these. His "business" consists largely of him sitting at the table playing with it.
198* {{Expy}}: Julio is essentially Agador Spartacus, Hank Azaria's character from ''Film/TheBirdcage''.
199* ExpyCoexistence: The show has a habit of creating expies to real life characters or works of fiction that have already been established to exist. While the most prominent character case is probably how boxing promoter Lucius Sweet and real life boxing figure Don King apparently coexist together despite Homer memorably lampshading how they're exactly the same person, ("Wow, you know Lucius Sweet?! He's exactly as rich and as famous as Don King and looks just like him too!") but there are also other cases, such as the show creating "Cosmic Wars", (a near identical copy of ''Franchise/StarWars'') when it wanted to mock the ''Star Wars'' prequels, despite the fact that ''Star Wars'' had been established to exist in the Simpsons universe multiple times, including Homer briefly getting a job as a bodyguard for Mark Hamill.
200%%* ExtraExtraReadAllAboutIt: "Be Sharps sing on rooftop!"
201* ExtremeDoormat:
202** Bart becomes one (at Lisa's suggestion, no less) in "Bart's Inner Child", when the rest of Springfield start acting as impulsive as him.
203--->'''Bart:''' Sounds good, sis. Just tell me what to do.
204** Smithers is professionally a toady to Mr. Burns.
205* EyebrowWaggle: Milhouse manages to pull this off so well that Principal Skinner considers it a violation of school etiquette.
206-->'''Milhouse:''' Oh, Lisa! I've got an extra seat, and you've got an extra lunch. ''[chuckles]'' Catch my drift? ''[chuckles, waggles eyebrows]''\
207'''Principal Skinner:''' Milhouse! Lower those eyebrows! ''[Milhouse lowers one eyebrow]'' And the other one! ''[Milhouse lowers the other one]''
208* EyeCam:
209** Homer, and lampshaded as he argues with the effect itself when it let him pass out at the wrong time.
210** In "Lisa's Pony", Homer was driving, absolutely groggy after his night shift in Kwik-E-Mart, having not slept for days. Naturally, he fell asleep. The Eye Cam shaped effect showed closing his eyelids and transitioned the scene to a dream sequence in Slumberland.
211** In "Make Room for Lisa", Lisa is in a sensory deprivation tank and sees the world from Homer's perspective. Lisa-as-Homer is falling asleep during a ballet recital. Shown with Eye Cam.
212** When Bart is being put under anaesthesia for his appendix operation in "Round Springfield", his eyes are closing and his point of view is visualized with this eye-shaped cam effect.
213* EyeScream:
214** Homer nearly gets his eye sucked out of its socket when he gets careless with a grease trap, though Homer doesn't actually feel it.
215** Homer gets a bucket stuck on his head, and has Bart drill holes in it to see. "Whoops."
216** "The Scorpion's Tale": After taking the manufactured drugs that were made from a flower that Lisa discovered, its side effects causes both of Abe's eyes to ''literally'' pop out shocking the Simpson family. Same goes for those who also took the drug.
217** A RunningGag with Lenny. Various objects often find a way to hurt his eyes.
218%%* EyeShock: Several times in "Homer to the Max".
219[[/folder]]
220
221[[folder:F]]
222* FaceplantingIntoFood:
223** At the beginning of "Holidays of Future Passed", Marge gets the family ready for their Christmas card photo after Thanksgiving dinner is over. She raises a sleeping Grampa's face from a plate of mashed potatoes and puts on him Santa hat which, combined with a potato "beard", makes him look like the big guy.
224-->'''Grampa:''' I'm Santa? Oh, now I'll never die!
225** The first segment of [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS13E1TreehouseOfHorrorXII Treehouse of Horror XII]] has Bart gaining a very long neck after becoming affected by a GypsyCurse which Homer had been given. Eventually, he can't take it anymore and commits suicide by faceplanting into his cereal.
226** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS10E4TreehouseOfHorrorIX Treehouse of Horror IX]]", Homer ([[ItMakesSenseInContext possessed by Snake's hair]]) rips Moe's heart out with a corkscrew. Moe groans "[[MajorInjuryUnderreaction Aw, for cryin' out loud]]", and falls headfirst into his bowl of cereal.
227* FailedAttemptAtDrama: Mr. Burns' attempted SmokeOut goes wrong and ends with him angrily throwing the money he was attempting to steal.
228* FakeIdentityBaggage:
229** "Homie the Clown" revolves around Homer becoming a regional Krusty performer. He looks so much like Krusty that people mistake him for the real deal and treat him like a celebrity. Unfortunately, the disguise also fools mob boss Fat Tony whom Krusty owes money to. Worse, when Fat Tony's goons grab Homer, he protests he isn't Krusty but Homer Simpson... except the goons also have an issue with Homer too. Homer keeps throwing out fake names (including Barney Gumble and Benedict Arnold), but each time he does so the goons have a reason to rough up the identity he gives.
230** At the end of "Bart Star", the police show up looking for Nelson. Thinking Nelson is wanted for a petty offense, Bart claims to be Nelson to get out of playing junior football. However, the charge is actually for burglary and arson, and Bart ends up getting a ride to the slammer.
231** In "Double, Double, Boy in Trouble", Bart [[PrinceAndPauper switches places]] with a rich lookalike named Simon Woosterfield. But the swap turns out to be a trick by Simon to escape his stepsiblings who are plotting to kill him for his inheritance.
232* FakeOrgasm:
233** In the episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS3E23BartsFriendFallsInLove Bart's Friend Falls in Love]]", Bart's class watches a sex ed film narrated by Troy [=McClure=] and starring bunnies, during which Edna Krabappel casually accuses the female bunny of faking an orgasm.
234---> '''Troy [=McClure=]''': Then came the big day. Fluffy and Fuzzy got married! That night came the honeymoon...\
235'''Kids''': Ewwww!\
236'''Mrs. Krabappel''': ''[Puffing a cigarette]'' She's faking it.
237** {{Parodied|Trope}} in "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E14BrotherFromTheSamePlanet Brother from the Same Planet]]". Homer asks Bart if he remembers the fun times they used to have together when he would push Bart on a swing, but Bart dismissively says he was "faking it."
238---> '''Homer''': ''[Gasp]'' Liar!\
239'''Bart''': Oh yeah? Remember this? ''"Higher, dad! '''Higher!''' Wheeeeee... '''WHEEEEEE...''' Push harder, dad, c'mon! Higher! '''Higher!''' Faster!"''\
240'''Homer''': Stop it! Stop it! ''[Covering his ears and running away]'' '''STOP IT!'''
241* FakingAndEntering: After Bart accidentally sets fire to the Christmas tree and destroys all of the family's presents, he claims that a burglar broke in and stole everything.
242* FakingTheDead: Done by Homer and Krusty in different episodes.
243* FallingInLoveMontage: Utilized in "A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love", "Rome-Old and Juli-Eh", and "Dumbbell Indemnity". All feature a different licensed song played over the montage.
244* FamilyFriendlyMatureContent:
245** In "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment", an early-era episode, Bart caught sight of ''The Top Hat Channel'', a BrandX of ''The Playboy Channel'', and charged other kids to sneak into his living room and watch it. He even wore a top hat for showmanship.
246* FamilyPortraitOfCharacterization:
247** ''Series/TheTraceyUllmanShow'' short "Family Portrait" has the Simpsons' attempts at taking a family portrait be ruined, usually by Homer's incompetence or Bart making faces. The final portrait shows Homer strangling Bart, Marge taken aback, and Lisa and Maggie making faces at the camera. Fitting for a wacky sitcom family.
248** Subverted in "And Maggie Makes Three", which begins with the kids noticing that there are no pictures of Maggie in the family album. Homer tells the story of how he had to give up his dream job of running a bowling alley when Maggie was born and beg for his job back at the power plant. [[spoiler:The photos of Maggie are all in Homer's work station where he needs the most cheering up; they cover up a sign that reads "Don't forget, you're here forever" so that it reads "Do it for her".]]
249* FamilyRelationshipSwitcheroo: In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS18E12LittleBigGirl Little Big Girl]]", when Darcy's mother finds out about Darcy's pregnancy, she suggests a solution is to lie to the neighbors and say that one of the babies is hers and that the babies are twins.
250* FanDisservice: Numerous instances of Homer and sometimes Barney either naked or scantily-clad.
251* FanService:
252** Marge when she accidentally gets breasts implants and when she becomes the sole focus of a sexy calendar. Even several "Treehouse of Horror" segments qualify. The show features some sexy one-episode women also.
253** For the dude-lovers out there, Duffman, especially when shown coming out of the shower, and Ned Flanders (StupidSexyFlanders)
254* FanDumb: Amusingly used in-universe with the Comic Book Guy.
255* TheFantasticFaux: Near the end of "Treehouse of Horror XIV", Lisa fiddles with a cosmic stopwatch and turns her family into different versions of themselves, including the Fantastic Four, with Homer as The Thing, Marge as the Human Torch, Bart as Mr. Fantastic, and Maggie as The Invisible Woman.
256* FantasyTwist: The show seems to almost specialise in these. For instance, Homer's fantasy about a theme park in his backyard named "Homerland USA" consists of a shabby old thing made largely out of mattresses. And his fantasy about having two wives -- which is mostly about getting twice as much housework done -- turns sour when out of nowhere he gets stung by a bee. And his fantasy about having a private plane ends with him finding that the cockpit is empty. Meanwhile, Bart's dream of rock stardom includes becoming a drunken, drug-addled shambles who has alienated all his friends (but he ''still'' thinks it's awesome). The list goes on and on.
257* FastFoodNation:
258** There is a "Fast Food Boulevard", an entire area filled with fast food restaurants, most notably Krusty Burger.
259** In "Sweets n' Sour Marge", after Springfield is named the "world's fattest town", Marge realizes there's sugar in practically everything the townspeople eat, prompting her to declare war on the sugar industry.
260* FastKillingRadiation: In the episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS13E5TheBlunderYears The Blunder Years]]", we learn that the dead body that Homer found as a kid was [[spoiler:Wayland Smithers' father]]. He died when he [[spoiler:went into the power plant's core without a HazmatSuit on and died within seconds of radiation poisoning]].
261* TheFatEpisode:
262** Although Homer is already pretty fat to begin with, a key plot point of "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS7E7KingSizeHomer King Size Homer]]" has Homer deliberately gain weight to be considered obese, so his job would consider him disabled and allow him to work from home.
263** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS16E17TheHeartbrokeKid The Heartbroke Kid]]", after a snack-vending machine is installed in Springfield Elementary, Bart develops an addiction for the snacks, causing him to quickly gain weight in a three-week period. After he gets a heart attack, the rest of the family [[StagingAnIntervention stages an intervention]] in order to get Bart sent to a FatCamp.
264** "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS33E5LisasBelly Lisa's Belly]]" is a downplayed example. Lisa and Bart both gain weight due to the use of steroids that gives them a big belly, leaving Lisa (in Marge's words) "chunky". Bart loses the weight after getting in with the bullies and exercising, but the storyline is dropped in the next episode featuring Lisa.
265* FatAndSkinny: Fat Tony and his cousin Fit Tony.
266* FatCamp:
267** When Bart went to Kamp Krusty, Martin and others went to "Image Enhancement Camp."
268--->'''Krusty:''' For you fat kids, my exclusive program of diet and ridicule will really get results!
269** Another example appears during Marge's episode-long flashback in "The Way We Weren't", where young Homer is mistaken for an escapee. PlayedForLaughs, as the only way out of the camp [[FelonyMisdemeanor is up a gentle slope]].
270** A third example features in the episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS16E17TheHeartbrokeKid The Heartbroke Kid]]". This time, it's PlayedForDrama: the cost of sending Bart there forces the other Simpsons to convert the house into a hostel for German backpacker s.
271%% * FateDrivesUsTogether
272* FatteningTheVictim: In "Treehouse of Horror XI", the piece "Scary Tales Can Come True" is a spoof of "Literature/HanselAndGretel" starring Lisa and Bart. The witch tries to fatten up the kids and it certainly helps her that Bart willingly bastes himself.
273-->'''Lisa''': Oh, this is horrible!\
274'''Bart''': [eating candy] Horribly delicious.\
275'''Lisa''': You know, she's only fattening you up so she can eat you.\
276'''Bart''': Eh. What are you gonna do?
277* FauxAffablyEvil:
278** Mr. Burns is clearly the most evil character in the show; even other Simpsons supervillains like Sideshow Bob eventually get redeemed; (see "Day Of The Jackanapes") Burns, on the other hand, is described within the show as irredeemable, (see "The Old Man And Lisa") and has some pretty extreme KickTheDog moments. However, his villainy is dealt with lightly most of the time.
279** Hank Scorpio is the poster supervillain for this trope.
280--->'''Scorpio:''' Hey, Homer, what's your least-favourite country: Italy or [[CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys France]]?\
281'''Homer:''' France.\
282'''Scorpio:''' Ha ha ha!... Nobody ever says Italy... *adjusts the aim of his death ray*
283** Scorpio's unique in that he's a completely NiceGuy to anyone who isn't his target.
284--->'''Scorpio:''' Homer, on your way out, if you could kill someone it would help me a lot.
285%% * FauxHorrific
286* FauxtivationalPoster: Marge puts up a "Hang in There, Baby!" poster in "The Twisted World of Marge Simpson" to motivate herself. But after a bad day of selling pretzels...
287-->'''Marge:''' Copyright: 1968. Determined or not, that cat must be long dead. That's kind of a downer...
288* FearInducedIdiocy:
289** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E12MountainOfMadness Mountain Of Madness]]", Mr. Burns makes a fire drill, but only Homer actually escapes, the rest just [[IgnorantAboutFire run around the building in fear]], saying things like "Fire! Fire!".
290** In one episode, [[CloudCuckoolander Ralph Wiggum]] says that he's so scared he's forgotten how to [[BringMyBrownPants wet his pants]].
291* FeigningIntelligence: In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS5E10Springfield $pringfield]]", Homer comes across Creator/HenryKissinger's glasses and acts like they're [[SmartPeopleWearGlasses Brainy Specs]], reciting the Scarecrow's "Sum of the Square Root" speech from ''Film/TheWizardOfOz''.
292-->'''[[ItMakesSenseInContext Guy in Restroom Stall]]:''' ''[in response to said speech]'' That's a ''right'' triangle, you idiot!
293%% * FellOffTheBackOfATruck: It really did!
294* FelonyMisdemeanor: Homer aghast at Marge for mixing polyapolane with polyurethane recyclables in "The Old Man and the Lisa".
295* FemaleGroinInvincibility: {{Averted}} in the "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS19E3MidnightTowboy Midnight Towboy]]" episode. A female [[NewAgeRetroHippie child therapist]] crumples over in pain when Marge knees her in the crotch.
296* {{Fetish}}:
297** Marge seems to have a thing for Homer's bomber jacket he wore as "Mr. Plow."
298** She also seems to be turned on by reading about a celebrity's personal accomplishments and activities.
299** She also likes watching him practice killing snakes for Whacking Day.
300** The elbow thing.
301** And apparently when Homer nibbles on her earlobe.
302** For a more extreme example: Troy [=McClure=] and his "love" of fish.
303--->'''Mobster:''' ''I thought you said he was dead, boss!''\
304'''Fat Tony:''' ''No, I said he sleeps with the fishes.''
305%% * {{Fiction 500}}: Mr. Burns.
306* FictionalConstellations:
307** In one episode, Homer gets an orphan to be a "Bigger Brother" to, and the following exchange occurs.
308--->'''Pepe:''' Tell me more! I want to know ''all'' the constellations.
309--->'''Homer:''' Well, there's... Jerry the Cowboy. And that big dipper looking thing is Alan... the Cowboy.
310** In "Bart's Comet" Principal Skinner points out some constellation to Bart: First is "The Chariot Race", which consists of a ''single star''. Then "The Three Wise Men", which looks like an improbably detailed constellation of Film/TheThreeStooges.
311* FictionalFlag: Springfield's unknown state has a generic tricolor with the ironic statement "Not just another state".
312* FictionalProvince: WordOfGod is that the Simpsons live in North Tacoma.
313* FictionalSocialNetwork: In the episode "The D'oh-cial Network" has Lisa creating a friending network called Springface.
314* FictionalVideoGame:
315** A recurring game in the show is "Earthland Realms," a Simpsons version of ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', which becomes the major focus of an RPGEpisode named "Marge Gamer". In stark contrast to the actual [=WoW=], nearly everyone in the game looks and acts almost exactly like they do in 'reality'... Apu even runs a shop in the game.
316** There was the ''VideoGame/PunchOut''-like 'Super Slugfest' from "Moaning Lisa", 'Bonestorm' and 'Lee Carvello's Putting Challenge' from the shoplifting Christmas episode and the ''VideoGame/CrashBandicoot''-esque game ('Dash Dingo') Lisa plays in the episode where she stays home from school.
317** Moving on to fictional arcade games, standouts include: 'My Dinner With Andre', 'The Touch of Death', 'Billy Graham's Bible Blaster', 'Escape From Death Row', and 'Larry the Looter'.
318** In one episode, Bart and Lisa play a "Foul Play" pinball with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn.
319--->'''Bart:''' "The graphics are great -- the ball looks so real!"
320** Another time, Homer plays a pinball called "Devil's Advocate" to avoid an argument with Marge.
321** Furthermore, one of the {{Couch Gag}}s involves the family in a PinballGag with a table called "Couch Gag Chaos".
322* FifteenMinutesOfFame: A common plot device. See the trope page for details.
323* FilchingFoodForFun:
324** "Lemon of Troy": Boys from Springfield and Shelbyville argue over a lemon tree and its lemons. Both groups think the tree belongs to their town. One day Bart and co. find the tree is entirely without the fruit, and later the whole tree gets stolen.
325** "The Marge Ian Chronicles": Flanders builds a chicken coop to get fresh eggs. After stealing some of them, Homer decides he wants fresh eggs himself and builds his own coop. However, he and Bart soon realize part of the superior taste is the thrill of stealing, leading Homer to blow the whole thing off.
326* FilePhotoGag: A perennial joke. To wit:
327** [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] in "Homer Defined", when Smithers pulls up an old file photo of Homer on hand at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant in which he still has hair.
328** In "Marge Vs. The Monorail": A photograph of Homer with his mouth stuffed with dozens of cigarettes somehow became his file photo at the local news station.
329** In "Who Shot Mr. Burns, Part Two", the file photo the police have of Homer shows him with a black eye, a bandage on his head, and wearing a "Haig in '88" t-shirt.
330** "The Springfield Files": Channel 6 News uses a file photo of Homer that shows him with his tongue stuck to a lamppost.
331** "Simpson Tide": Channel 6 again shows Homer in Red Square, dressed to the nines in a ushanka and fur coat doing That Russian Squat Dance with a bottle of vodka in one hand. Especially bad considering he's accidentally steered a nuclear submarine into Russian territory.
332** "Treehouse of Horror IX": After his death at the hands of Snake!Homer, Channel 6 shows a photo of Moe Syzlak caught hitching up his pants while coming out of an outhouse.
333** In "A Tale of Two Springfields", the "file photo" of Homer and his friends sitting on a stoop spoofs The Who's album cover of Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy.
334** In "The Great Louse Detective", it shows a picture of Homer angrily shaking his fist at a Gorilla in his cage at a zoo, who has somehow gotten a hold of Homer's pants.
335** "Marge and Homer Turn a Couple Play": Yet another Channel 6 appearance, with a distressed Marge holding a drunken, drooling, beer-hat wearing Homer in the famous position of Michaelangelo's La Pieta.
336** In the episode "Any Given Sundance", Principal Skinner pulls out a file labeled "Simpson" and brings up a newspaper clipping of Homer fighting a giant octopus with the headline, "Aquarium to stop serving beer" as Skinner comments on how he's a local character of note.
337* FinancialTestOfFriendship: In the episode "The Old Man and Lisa", bad investments cause Mr Burns to temporarily lose all his money and be thrown out of his mansion. His right hand man, Smithers tells him his best immediate action is to move in with him, even continuing to dote over him and refer to him formally as "Sir" despite Lenny now being his employer and Burns essentially being Smithers' lodger without rent pay.
338* FinaleSeason: A very unusual, subverted example, combined with PostScriptSeason. While an explicit end to the Simpsons was not planned from the start (the creators didn't actually expect the show to be all that successful, let alone become the phenomenon it did), and the show does not have strict story arcs, the entire cast and crew (as well as many fans) expected the show to end after season 8 (with maybe an extra 1-2 seasons at the most). The show was starting to decline in quality and cultural relevance, and the show's increasing absurdity and lack of subtlety was starting to [[BrokenBase divide viewers]]. So while season 8 was not officially a Finale Season (and ended up not being one), it has almost all the properties of one:
339** Various plot threads are wrapped up:
340*** [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E16BrotherFromAnotherSeries Sideshow Bob is finally redeemed]] and saves the lives of both Bart and everyone in Springfield...or at least, he tried to, since the dam broke anyway.
341*** Skinner and Krabappel find love with each other, as well as Bart finally warming up to his nemesis. The romance was likely added to give the two most pathetic characters happiness in the end.
342*** Ned Flanders's sunny, eternally optimistic demeanor is finally shattered, and we learn his true demons.
343** Down-to-earth plots are thrown out the window (The family moves away and Homer has a James Bond supervillain for a boss, Bart works in a burlesque house, Homer becomes a bootlegger, the family gets a Film/MaryPoppins Expy for a nanny, Homer tries to become the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, and Homer meets the cast of the X-Files to track down an alien, just to name a few). While less realistic plots were decently prevalent in earlier seasons, it was never so common or obvious. The showrunners Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein admit that they were experimenting because they assumed the show was coming to an end and they would be the final showrunners, or that they would be succeeded by a final showrunner who would then wrap up everything else and bring the show to an end.
344** Various jump-the-shark moments are present (Milhouse's parents get divorced and stay divorced by the end of the episode), or are parodies of jump-the-shark moments:
345*** "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E14TheItchyAndScratchyAndPoochieShow The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show]]" was basically an allegory for the show itself, its fanbase, and its declining relevance, quality, and ratings, as well as creating Roy, a composite parody of RememberTheNewGuy and CousinOliver, two common symptoms of JumpingTheShark.
346*** [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E24TheSimpsonsSpinOffShowcase The spin-off showcase]] makes a joke at the end about what's ahead for Season 9, which include many stereotypical moves of what a series does once it starts its decline (supernatural elements, contrived and nonsensical weddings, and inexplicably lost and found family members).
347** The show basically does a DeconstructiveParody of itself with [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E23HomersEnemy Frank Grimes]], showing how the show has basically become a world that revolves around Homer Simpson getting away with wacky antics, instead of a relatable satire of working-class American life. This kind of deconstructive introspection is not usually something a show does unless it is winding itself down.
348* FingerInTheMail:
349** In the episode "Pranksta Rap", Bart pretends to be kidnapped and makes a call to the rest of the family while posing as the kidnapper. Homer immediately demands that the kidnapper send body parts to prove that he really has Bart. Marge objects.
350** When the Simpsons find Mr. Burns's beloved teddy bear from his childhood, Bart suggests they send Burns one of its eyes.
351---> '''Bart:''' He'll pay more money if he thinks the bear's in danger.
352** A disturbing example is discussed in "Homer Goes to Prep School" where Homer flatly says that he wouldn't pay ransom for Bart in the event of his son being kidnapped and would likely feed an ear cut off Bart to the dog. Even more disturbingly, Bart is fine with this, aside from telling his father that the dog wouldn't eat his ear unless it was wrapped in cheese.
353* FinishingEachOthersSentences: Agnes Skinner says this trope complementing her relationship with Comic Book Guy in "Worst Episode Ever" when they meet Homer and Marge.
354%% * FireAndBrimstoneHell: Seen in too many episodes to count.
355* FireAlarmDistraction:
356** In "A Test Before Trying", Bart convinces Skinner to pull the fire alarm to clear out the building and give Bart one more day of studying for an important exam.
357** In "To Cur With Love", Bongo (Homer's old dog) saves Homer from having to take a test by pulling a fire alarm, then doing the same again when Homer has to take a dental check-up. The next shot after this is Homer's school on fire, with everyone presumably inside still thinking that [[CryingWolf it was another false alarm]].
358* FirehouseDalmatian: In the episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS11E2BrothersLittleHelper Brother's Little Helper]]", Milhouse meets the Springfield Volunteer Fire Department's Dalmatian at a fire safety event at the school. He asks Moe if the dog can do any tricks, but Moe says the dog's so inbred that he can barely stand up, and surely enough the dog collapses on the ground.
359* FirstDayOfSchoolEpisode:
360** In "Bart the Genius", Bart is mistaken for a genius and has his first day at a gifted school.
361** In "Lisa's Sax", a flashback shows the kids' first day at Springfield Elementary.
362* FirstGirlAfterAll: It turns out that Homer and Marge met as children (and were each-other's FirstKiss), but didn't recognise each other due to different physical traits (Homer had an eye-patch, Marge's signature blue bee-hive was brown and straight due to an attempt at straightening it leaving it burnt).
363* FirstGrayHair: This happens to Marge when she finds one gray hair in her blue beehive.
364* FirstKiss: Lisa had her first kiss with Nelson, [[ShutUpKiss when she wouldn't stop talking.]]
365* TheFlappingDickey: This shows up as part of Krusty's comedy schtick. Each time he does the flapping dickey gag, though, it is outright mocked for being cliche and old-fashioned, showing Krusty's desperation to get a laugh. For example, in ''The Last Temptation of Krusty'', the bit is called out by name and goes right alongside a racist [[{{Yellowface}} Chinaman]] skit.
366* FlashbackStares:
367** Moe is fond of these, to Barney's confusion.
368** Bart's "Wonder Years" moments.
369* FlexibilityEqualsSexAbility: Subverted in "Skinner's Sense of Snow." While watching circus acrobats and contortionists, Marge whispers to Homer that they're giving her ideas. The idea turns out to be using flexibility to clean the house easily.
370* FlippingHelpless: When Selma takes Bart & Lisa to Duff Gardens, Surly (one of the costumed mascots, dressed as a Duff Beer bottle) falls over and can't get back up again.
371* FloorboardFailure:
372** When Homer was joining the [[BrotherhoodOfFunnyHats Stonecutters]] he had to take part in an InitiationCeremony while blindfolded.
373--->'''Number One:''' All Stonecutters must take the Leap of Faith. If you survive this five-story plunge, your character will be proven.\
374''[Homer whimpers]''\
375'''Moe''': Happy landings! ''[pushes him]''\
376''[Homer falls two feet onto the floor; everyone laughs]''\
377''[the floor collapses and Homer falls through with a yell and a crash -- five times consecutively]''\
378'''Homer:''' ''[from the bottom]'' I think I have to do it again. My blindfold came off.
379** Another Simpsons episode has Homer & Marge talking about the terrible shape their house is in, and just then Bart falls halfway into the kitchen from the 2nd floor. Marge pushes him back up the newly created hole with a broom handle.
380** And in the episode "Lisa's Wedding", Lisa's fiance Hugh falls through the floor of the addition Homer built onto the house. Thankfully, the compost heap cushioned his fall.
381* FlowersOfRomance: Played with in a Valentine's Day episode. Homer ends up getting stuck under a plane that flies through a rose plantation, winding up absolutely covered in roses. The plane then flies over the Simpson house and Homer gets stuck on the clothesline, and winds up spinning around and depositing the roses at Marge's feet. Homer then lands in front of Marge on one knee with a rose held in his mouth. Marge finds the whole thing romantic; Homer thinks he has a collapsed lung.
382* FloweryElizabethanEnglish:
383** When they're at a Renaissance Faire.
384--->'''Doris:''' Yon meat, 'tis sweet as summer's wafting breeze.\
385'''Homer:''' Can I have some?\
386'''Doris:''' Mine ears are only open to the pleas of those who speak [[YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe ye olde English.]]\
387'''Homer:''' Sweet maiden of the spit, grant now my boon, that I might sup on suckling pig this noon.\
388'''Doris:''' Whatever.
389** Also spoken by the Mensa group (in character as Renaissance people) in "They Saved Lisa's Brain":
390--->'''Comic Book Guy:''' Verily, I declare that the earth revolves around the sun, and not t'other way 'round.\
391'''Lindsay:''' Stop looking down my blouse, Copernicus.\
392'''Comic Book Guy:''' Forsooth, mine eyes doth rove of their own accord.
393* FlushTheEvidence: In "Love, Springfieldian Style", Lisa as Nancy Spuggen and Nelson as Sid Vicious get hooked on chocolate [[GRatedDrug as if it were cocaine or heroin]]. Their chocolate spree involves them snorting lines, cooking (melting chocolate powder on spoons), and flushing chocolate bars down the toilet when the police come a-knocking.
394* FlushingToiletScreamingShower: Happens to Homer in "Bart Vs. Australia", when Bart keeps flushing the toilet to see what direction the water drains.
395* FrenchAccordion: In "Homer Simpson in Kidney Trouble", one of the members of the "Ship of Lost Souls" is a Frenchman with an accordion (which he says he stole from a blind monkey).
396* AFoggyDayInLondonTown: In ''Treehouse Of Horror XV'' the third segment is a parody of the Jack the Ripper time period, with Bart and Lisa acting as a Sherlock Holmes and Watson ripoff investigating crimes in Victorian London where the fog is looming everywhere.
397* FollowInMyFootsteps: In "Like Father, Like Clown", it's revealed that Krusty and his dad, Hyman, hadn't talked for 25 years because Krusty became an entertainer instead of following in Hyman's footsteps as a man of the faith.
398-->'''Homer:''' Boy, you don't have to follow in ''my'' footsteps.\
399'''Bart:''' Don't worry; I don't even like using the bathroom after you.\
400'''Homer:''' [[RunningGag Why you little- ]]!
401* FollowTheChaos: Subverted when Homer tries to find Bart and his pet elephant via a train of destruction... only to discover that the trail of damaged houses he'd been following was caused by a twister.
402* FoodPills: The future episode "Holidays of Future Passed" parodies this, where Future Marge adds water to a pill... which turns into a recipe card for a cake. She then takes the ingredients out of the cupboard.
403* AFoolForAClient: In the episode "The Regina Monologues" Homer represented himself instead of hiring a barrister. Marge allowed it because she didn't think Homer's chances were good enough to be damaged by the decision. Not surprisingly, Homer managed to offend the judge, jury and British public at large even further (he was on trial for crashing into the Queen's carriage)-ending up in the Tower of London.
404* FootPopping: In "The Springfield Connection", Homer is concerned that by Marge being the cop, he'll become the woman of the house. Marge reassures him that Homer's still the man of the house and kisses him... only for Homer to lift one of his legs while doing so.
405* ForciblyFormedPhysique: Viciously deconstructed by the ShowWithinAShow "Itchy and Scratchy", which is in many ways a response to shows like ''WesternAnimation/HermanAndKatnip'' and its more popular, LighterAndSofter cousin ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry''. While Scratchy is frequently subjected to the same brand of slapstick as Tom and Katnip, the results are less about temporary comedic deformity than extreme pain, horrifying screams, and some rather stomach-turning injuries that toe the line between BloodyHilarious and outright {{Gorn}}.
406* ForeignExchangeStudent:
407** Bart becomes a foreign exchange student in France while the Simpsons family get Adil, who turns out to be a spy.
408** Üter Zörker from Germany. He's full of chocolate!
409* ForeignCussWord: One of Bart's catchphrases is "Ay carumba!" As "The Kid is All Right" reveals, it's Spanish for "Hot damn!"
410* {{Foreshadowing}}:
411** Done ''extremely'' subtly in "Homer's Barbershop Quartet". Principal Skinner picks up a crude helmet labeled, "Prisoner 24601" and mentions how he wore one just like it in Vietnam. 24601 is a reference to [[Literature/LesMiserables Jean Valjean]], who was released from prison and lived under an assumed name. Many, ''many'' episodes later, we get "The Principal and the Pauper".
412** Patty's lesbianism was foreshadowed many times before the reveal:
413*** While it's non-canon and PlayedForLaughs, "Treehouse of Horror III" has Patty remark (in response to a [[BrainBleach naked Homer]]) "There goes the last lingering thread of my heterosexuality."
414*** Patty is seen exiting the burlesque house in "Bart After Dark".
415*** Though not referred to by name, Patty (and fellow homosexual character Smithers) are seen in the "Staying in the Closet" parade float in "Jaws Wired Shut".
416--->'''Smithers:''' We're gay, we're glad.
417--->'''Patty:''''But don't tell Mom and Dad!
418** A meta example happens with the themed episode blocks that are played on the FXX channel. Ever since the show started airing on that channel back in 2013, there have been hand-picked episode blocks that have a specific theme in common. The themed blocks that air on Sundays in particular are always related to the new episode that is going to debute on Fox later that night.
419* ForgedLetter: Bart creates a boyfriend for his teacher Mrs Krabappel and writes her letters based on his parents' old love letters, pretending to be a guy called "Woodrow".
420* ForgingScene:
421** Parodied when a [[AddedAlliterativeAppeal big burly blacksmith]] is shown hauling molten metal and clanging away with large tools, in order to build... a tiny key that unlocks Bart's chains.
422%%** Also, the commercial for the Krustyburger Ribwich.
423* ForgingTheWill: When Marge's great-aunt Gladys dies she leaves a {{Video Will|s}}. The lawyer edits it to say "I leave my lawyer $50,000." A look from the family lets him know they don't believe it, but he says "You'd be surprised how often that works, you really would!"
424* ForgottenAnniversary: Homer is guilty of this. Very, very guilty of this.
425* ForgottenBirthday:
426** Bart forgot Lisa's birthday in "Stark Raving Dad".
427** The family forgot Homer's birthday in "The Springfield Files". Turns out it's the same day as the dog's, whom the family immediately lavish attention on.
428--->'''Homer:''' Lousy lovable dog.
429* ForgottenFirstMeeting: Marge & Homer met when they were circa 10 years old at summer camp and shared their first kisses together. When they met again in high school neither recognized the other (in part because one had very different hair and the other had an eye-patch when they first met).
430%% * ForgotToFeedTheMonster: Mr. Burns' League of Evil.
431%% * ForInconveniencePressOne: in "Bart of Darkness".
432* FormalFullArrayOfCutlery:
433** In the episode ''The mansion family'', the Simpsons look after the house of Mr. Burns during his absence. At dinner time, they use all the cutlery available, despite Marge thinking it's a bit sophisticated to eat hamburgers. She wonders what the eleventh fork (very long) is for, and in Homer's opinion it's a good butt-scratcher.
434** A flashback in "The Way We Weren't" shows Marge's time in an all-girls' etiquette camp, where she and her friends are learning to eat with ''33'' forks.
435--->'''Headmistress:''' Young lady, this is not an olive fork. here's a simple trick to help you remember. ''[jabs fork into Helen's hand]''
436%% * FormerTeenRebel: Principal Skinner.
437* FormulaForTheUnformulable: When Homer gets a brain upgrade, he mathematically proves the non-existence of God while working out a plan for a flat tax. Even his hyper-religious neighbor Ned can't find any errors in it.
438* FormulaBreakingEpisode: "22 Short Films About Springfield" is a series of short subject clips not recycled from other shows. It also includes the memetic Seymour and Skinner short.
439%% * ForTheFunnyz
440* FoulCafeteriaFood: In befitting the SuckySchool status of Springfield Elementary, the food served there is disgusting. This includes beef hearts, horse testicles, and shredded newspapers. One memorable "Treehouse of Horror" episode also had the cafeteria serve [[ImAHumanitarian the students themselves]] to solve the issue of overcrowding in the detention room.
441** Played with in "Father Knows Worst", where Homer starts eating only cafeteria food because, after an accident turns his taste buds hyper-sensitive, the extreme blandness of said food is the only thing he can tolerate.
442* FoulFirstDrink: In "Bart's New Friend", Homer is hypnotized into believing he's 10 years old again and does not remember anything he's done past that age. When Dr. Hibbert gives him a sample of beer to test the strength of the hypnotism, [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness Homer instantly spits it out and complains about the flavor]].
443* FourFingeredHands:
444** Endlessly lampshaded.
445--->'''Homer:''' Marge honey, I've got five words to say to you! ''[holds up his right hand and lifts one finger per word]'' Greasy Joe's Bottomless Barbecue... ''[realizes he needs his left hand]'' Pit.
446** In "Bart's Friend Falls in Love", Lisa shows Bart an article about how in another 1,000 years, man will have an extra finger (making five total). Bart places his hand over the artist's rendering and says "Eeew, freak show."
447** When Homer finds out his father is dating Marge's mother he expresses fear that due to the incest his kids will (among other changes which make their kids more realistic) have five fingers on each hand.
448* FourthWallGreeting: Troy [=McClure=] always addresses the camera in his introductions.
449-->'''Troy [=McClure=]:''' Oh, hi there! Welcome back to our Spin-Off Showcase!
450* FrameUp: In "Krusty Gets Busted", Sideshow Bob dresses as Krusty and robs the Kwik-E-Mart, angry about Krusty mistreating him.
451* TheFreakshow: Homer joins the Lollapalooza equivalent in one episode in an act where he catches a cannonball with his stomach.
452* TheFreelanceShameSquad: Humorously exaggerated in an older episode. Bart already didn't want to go clothes shopping with his mom, but then Marge has to go and throw open his changing room door and leave it open on him, stripped to his tighty-whities. Predictably, everyone in the store points at Bart and guffaws at his embarrassment, one guy even yelling, "Look at that stupid kid!"
453* FreePrizeAtTheBottom: At least two episodes revolve around prizes found at the bottom of breakfast cereals. Of note is the jagged metal "O" that Bart ate with his bowl of Krusty-O's. Then at the end of that episode, the new prize is ''[[RefugeInAudacity flesh-eating]] [[NightmareFuel bacteria]].''
454* FreeRangeChildren: Bart and Lisa are only ten and eight respectively, yet get in all sorts of adventures more suited for teenagers or adults.
455* FreeWheel: Parodied. After Abe crashes Homer's car and consequently has to walk along the neighborhood, a hub cap manages to roll alongside him, ''even though the crash happened the previous day''. Abe just tells it to "go home", and it seems to oblige.
456* FrenchJerk:
457** The winemakers with whom Bart stays in "The Crepes of Wrath"; also, the waiter from "The Boy Who Knew Too Much".
458--->'''Freddie Quimby:''' Say it, Frenchie! Say "[[HahvahdYahdInMyCah chowdah!]]"
459** When a French chef tells him to "get lost", Flanders responds, "A rude Frenchman? Well, I never!"
460* FreudianCouch:
461** In "Fear of Flying", Marge sees a therapist and she lies down on the couch in her office.
462** Spoofed in "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer" when we think Homer is talking to a psychiatrist on a Freudian Couch about if Marge is his soulmate. The view widens and it turns out he's at a furniture store, and the man isn't a psychiatrist.
463** It's been used as a Couch Gag, when Homer rushes in the door, lies on the couch, and begins confessing to his psychotherapist.
464* FreudianExcuse: ''Everyone'' in Springfield has issues. Most of them stem from childhood.
465** Bart was told from an early age by teachers that he wouldn't amount to anything, and he was overshadowed by his gifted younger sister. His misbehavior is the only way he feels he can stand out.
466** Homer's mother left him to join the hippy movement, something he blamed himself for. Also, his father was pretty shockingly verbally abusive. [[spoiler:ALSO, he once stumbled upon a dead body while swimming, which was pretty traumatizing.]] Lack of encouragement led to his slack-off behavior, and he started finding comfort in food and alcohol.
467** Flanders' parents never disciplined him and let him run wild. To rein him in, they turned him over to a psychologist who spanked him for months on end, after which he adopted his usual chipper mannerisms and totally repressed his real feelings.
468** Reverend Lovejoy once earnestly wanted to help people but was driven to not giving a damn from Ned's incessant calls for spiritual guidance over trivial things like coveting his own wife.
469** Marge's fear of flying comes from seeing her father as a male flight attendant (steward). Parodied, because this huge breakthrough in her therapy is followed by a montage of other traumatic plane-related incidents.
470* FreudianSlipperySlope:
471** This instance is seen during "The Last Temptation of Homer", as Homer and Mindy are in the elevator:
472--->'''Mindy:''' I guess we'll be going down together, I mean getting off together, I mean...\
473'''Homer:''' That's OK. I'll just push the button for the stimulator, I mean, elevator.
474** In "The Sweetest Apu", Homer caught Apu cheating on his wife, and tells Marge about this. Their plans to play badminton with them, Apu and Manjula, the very next day is, put mildly, quite awkward:
475--->'''Marge:''' What's the score?\
476'''Homer:''' Dirty love. I mean, thirty love! I mean, anyone for penis? Errr, I'll just get the shuttlecock. Oop!
477* FridgeLogic:
478** Invoked in "Skinner's Sense of Snow" when the students look up Skinner's salary.
479--->'''Nelson:''' Hey, look how much money Skinner makes. $25,000 a year!\
480'''Students:''' WOW!\
481'''Bart:''' ''[calculating]'' Let's see, he's forty years old times 25 grand- whoa, he's a millionaire!\
482'''Skinner:''' I wasn't a principal when I was ''one''!\
483'''Nelson:''' Plus, in the summer, he paints houses.\
484'''Milhouse:''' He's a ''billionaire''!
485* FrustratingLie:
486** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E1KampKrusty Kamp Krusty]]", when Homer promises Bart he can go to summer camp if he gets good grades, Bart tries to change his report card.
487--->'''Homer:''' A+!? [[NobodysThatDumb You really don't think much of me do you]]?\
488'''Bart:''' [[BluntNo No, sir]].\
489'''Homer:''' [[DoWrongRight You know, a "D" turns into a "B" so easily]]. You just got greedy.
490** In [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E17LastExitToSpringfield "Last Exit to Springfield"]], Ralph tries to lie to the dentist Dr Wolfe about brushing his teeth three times a day. Dr Wolfe picks up on the lie immediately and asks him, "Why must you turn my office into a house of lies?", causing Ralph to break down and sob, "I don't brush! I don't brush!"
491** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS16E12GooGooGaiPan Goo Goo Gai Pan]]", the Simpsons and Selma go to China so Selma can adopt a baby while Homer [[FakeRelationship poses as her husband]] in front of the Chinese adoption agent, Madam Wu. When Madame Wu asks what Homer does for a living, Homer was going to say he works in a nuclear power plant but realizes that since they don't know him, he can be whatever he wants. When he sees an acrobatic performance display in the street, he claims he's a Chinese acrobat, which causes Marge and Selma to gasp at his lie, with Marge facepalming and shaking her head. This ends up backfiring on Homer when Madam Wu asks him to substitute for a performer in a Chinese acrobatics display, and Selma forces him to do it so their cover isn't blown.
492** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS19E1HeLovesToFlyAndHeDohs He Loves to Fly and He D'ohs]]", after Bart discovers that Homer failed to get his dream job and kept it a secret from the family, he convinces Homer to tell the truth to Marge because she started buying expensive groceries. When Homer calls Marge to tell her the bad news, he hears how sad she is and delays telling her the truth, causing Bart to facepalm and shake his head. He plans to tell her on a private jet to lessen the impact of the truth.
493* FullyAutomaticClipShow: Several examples in the clip show episodes.
494* FunHatingConfiscatingAdult:
495** Stacy Lavelle, the woman who invented Malibu Stacy, is implied to be this. When Lisa tracks her down, she opens her electric gate to let Lisa in. A neighbor boy takes the opportunity to get his frisbee.
496--->'''Boy:''' All right! I've been waiting nine years to get my frisbee back. ''[He throws it, but it goes right back inside]'' Aw!
497** Springfield Elementary has a whole room full of stuff confiscated from students over the years.
498* FuneralCut:
499** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E23HomersEnemy Homer's Enemy]]", Frank Grimes loses it and starts acting as dumb as he thinks Homer is, including handling electrical wires without safety gloves. The camera [[ReactionShot cuts to the others' reaction]] to Grimes being shocked off-screen, then cuts again to his funeral.
500** In [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS10E18SimpsonsBibleStories Simpsons Bible Stories]]", King David ([[UniversalAdaptorCast Bart]]) is thrown out of town by Goliath (Nelson) and meets Ralph Wiggum (portraying a shepard), who idolises him. David tells him that he is no longer his hero, so Ralph walks into the sunset, intending to face Goliath himself. Cut to the gravestone. [[spoiler:Later on however, Goliath gets killed by a gravestone to the neck... Ralph's gravestone. It turns out Ralph isn't dead after all.]]
501** Subverted in "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS10E6DohInTheWind D'oh-in' In The Wind]]", where Homer tries to become a hippie. Homer had accidentally ruined an entire shipment of his hippie friends' juice business and secretly tried to save it by harvesting vegetables from their secret garden. He learns too late that the vegetables in question were drugged, and this attracted the police to the farm, willing to kill them. Homer makes a RousingSpeech and places flowers in the policemen's rifles, but the last rifle goes off as he is placing the flower into it. Scene cuts to a graveyard which is right next to a hospital, but it turns out Homer is in the hospital.
502** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS15E9IAnnoyedGruntBot I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot]]":
503*** The real Snowball II (not Snowball V a.k.a. Snowball II) dies in a classic ThatPoorCat when Dr. Hibbert runs her over off-screen. The next scene shows a gravestone marked Snowball II and a yet-to-be-buried shoe box.
504*** Snowball III is found floating in an aquarium. Then it cuts to Snowball III's headstone.
505*** Coltrane (aka Snowball IV) jumps out the window when Lisa plays her saxophone. Then it cuts to the headstone marked Coltrane.
506* FunnyFlashbackHaircut:
507** Doctor Hibbert is the best of all examples of this trope. As a Main/RunningGag, whenever he's shown in flashback, he has a different hairstyle, including a FunnyAfro in The70s, dreadlocks with beads and a Mr. T-style Mohawk at different points in The80s, and a high-and-tight in The90s.
508** A flashback to Mr. Burns' childhood shows him with enormous golden curls, a visual reference to a stereotypical image of a wealthy boy in TheGay90s.
509* FunWithAcronyms: In "The Mysterious Voyage Of Homer", Homer thinks the lighthouse keeper is named Earl. It turns out it's a E.A.R.L. - Electronic Automatic Robotic Lighthouse.
510* FunWithFlushing:
511** A FlashBack episode had baby Bart flush Homer's wallet, then his keys down the toilet - but he knew exactly what he was doing.
512** An early episode had Bart flushing a cherry bomb down a toilet, which blows Principal Skinner's mother off of her seat while using it.
513** "Deep Space Homer" featured a literal toilet joke and a jab at ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'' rolled into one.
514* FunWithPalindromes: The members of Mensa have new palindrome discoveries on their meeting agenda. Comic Book Guy's mention of "Rise to vote, sir" is misinterpreted as an actual request for a democratic procedure.
515* FunnyAnsweringMachine: The episode "This Little Wiggy" has a subplot of Homer and Marge trying to come up with a funny message for the answering machine.
516* FunnyForeigner: Many, but Apu, Üter, Groundskeeper Willie are some of the most prominent examples.
517* FurBikini: During the opening of a show called "Eye On Springfield".
518* FurnitureAssemblyGag: In "Mom And Pop Art", Homer purchases a home barbecue pit, but the box accidentally opens and all the materials drop into the wet cement. Homer frantically tries to put it together ("English side ruined, must use French instructions... ''Le grill''? What the hell is that!?"), and it ends up as a pile of mismatched parts. Unable to get it refunded, it accidentally gets uncoupled from the back of Homer's car and it hits the car of Astrid Weller, a conceptual artist who praises his handiwork as outsider art.
519* FuryFueledFoolishness: The episode "Homer's Enemy" has the one-time character Frank Grimes losing it after being fed up with the antics of the nuclear plant, especially by Homer, with the last straw being Homer winning a contest aimed for children. Grimey, as Homer calls him, goes crazy and stupidly breaks all of the rules at the plant, trashing his boss, and him dying by touching the high voltage wires.
520* {{Futureshadowing}}: The season 2 episode "The Way We Was" has this exchange, after Homer reads a pamphlet advertising the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant:
521-->'''Young Homer:''' ''Me?'' In a ''nuclear power plant?'' ''[chuckles]'' Ka-'''''BOOM!'''''
522[[/folder]]
523
524[[folder:G]]
525* GagSeries: Slid into this territory by Season 4, went completely off the rails by Season 9, and smashed said rails into bits by Season 11.
526* GaiasLament: Played for laughs in the episodes "Lisa's Wedding" and "Future-Drama." In the former, trees are extinct, and the latter, Alaska is a tropical paradise.
527** Also "The Burns and the Bees": During a daydream, Homer envisions a future world without honey, which is decaying and horrible.
528** The ending to "Rosebud" depicts Earth as a barren desert in the year 1,000,000 A.D. It's also ruled by [[Film/PlanetOfTheApes1968 damn dirty apes]].
529* GainaxEnding:
530** The ending of "Boy Meets Curl".
531** "The Great Money Caper" also may count: [[spoiler:Before Lisa could explain why the town, media and police officials had "nothing better to do" than show Bart and Homer the consequences of their actions, Otto runs through the courtroom doors, shouting, 'Surf's Up!' and the episode ends with everyone surfing]].
532** "Homer Goes to Prep School" ends with a meteor covered in zombies that's making its way towards Springfield.
533** The ending to "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes", where the entire family is exiled to "the island" for life.
534** The end of "Cue Detective" where Nelson trades a washing machine to Marge in exchange for the smoker, which cuts to his wedding, which then cuts to post-apocalyptic Springfield where the survivors are attacked by mutant pigs, and then bee-like aliens reclaim the smoker. Yeah.
535* GamesOfTheElderly: In the episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS10E20TheOldManAndTheCStudent The Old Man and the "C" Student]]" Bart GotVolunteered to work at the Springfield Retirement Castle, where he finds Grandpa Simpson and the other residents doing thing like play bingo and other boring-to-Bart things. Even when Bart tries to get the residents to do more exciting things, he is surprised that they do genuinely enjoy bingo.
536--> '''Bart:''' I don't get it, Grampa. If you guys like all that boring stuff why did you follow me out here?
537* TheGamblingAddict: Marge develops an addiction to slot machines when gambling is legalised in Springfield. Notably, she never gets over it either, which is lampshaded at the end.
538* GangOfBullies: Dolph, Jimbo, and Kearney. Nelson joins them sometimes.
539* GardenHoseSquirtSurprise: At the end of one episode, Bart does this to Homer several times, getting him in the eye, the ear, the other eye, etc.
540* {{Gasp}}: Parodied in "Bart the Mother". Marge reads a letter stating that Bart and Lisa are included in Who's Who of American Students. Homer gasps... except it's simply a gear-up for a belch and has nothing to do with surprise.
541* GassyGastronomy:
542** One episode has Bart sent to a religious school, where he's asked to recite a psalm and starts the "musical fruit" rhyme. Cut to the teacher chasing Bart with the rest of the class, thinking Bart is a demonic entity.
543--->[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymgOhE0mNWE AVERT YOUR EYES, CHILDREN! He may take on other forms!]]
544** In "Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment", Homer attempts to brew his own alcohol in the basement, and the stills end up combusting. He tries to hide the explosions from Marge by blaming the smoke on "that bean I had for dinner" (note the singular).
545** Barney Gumble is legendary for his tendency to belch a lot, especially since he’s TheAlcoholic.
546* GayAesop: In "Homer's Phobia", Homer unknowingly befriends a gay man, (wrongly) fearing that Bart was gay, and various other things along those lines. He ends up getting saved from a herd of angry reindeer by the gay guy. He learns from this that he shouldn't be afraid if Bart is gay, because gay people can still be good people.
547* TheGeneralissimo: "All hail Krull and his glorious new regime!"
548* GenderIncompetence:
549** The female members of the family are depicted as being far more competent than male ones. This goes to the point that the men are rendered as bungling idiots (Homer and sometimes Bart) while the women are rendered as innately clever, cunning, wise, or even good in a fight (Marge, Lisa, and Maggie).
550** {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in one episode, where it's revealed that it's a genetic trait for Simpson men to end up as stupid losers. Simpson women, on the other hand, are invariably geniuses. Notably, the [[ArtisticLicenseBiology Simpson gene]] [[LamarckWasRight responsible for the male Simpson's stupidity]] [[CanonDisContinuity is never mentioned again]], and future episodes [[RetCon give other explanations for Homer and Bart's stupidity,]] like a crayon lodged in Homer's brain and (in Bart's case) a combination of ADHD, a pathological need for attention, and a generally bad experience during his first day at school; a woman heavily implied to be Homer's older half-sister was about Homer's intellect. Although Homer and Bart are usually shown as being less intelligent than Marge or Lisa, they're perhaps more likeable (at least until Homer's {{Jerkass}} tendencies went into orbit) and socially adept, balancing things out somewhat.
551* GenerationalTrauma:
552** This comes up occasionally in the show where it's noted that Homer's abusive treatment of Bart stems in part from his own father Abe's abusive treatment of him.
553** [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS9E6BartStar "Bart Star"]]: Homer is initially critical of Bart's peewee football abilities, until he realises how Abe was similarly critical of his gymnastics talent, which ended up sabotaging one of his routines. He therefore resolves to be more supportive and encouraging towards Bart. Not only does this sudden change of behaviour ''immediately'' [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness cause Bart to panic, assuming it's a "trap"]], but Homer takes it too far in the other direction, ignoring Bart's obvious lack of talent (and his own protests about said lack of talent) in favour of making the team's new quarterback. All things told, things go worse for Bart than they would have if Homer had remained his usual {{Jerkass}} self.
554* GeniusBurnout:
555** Lisa Simpson is a [[AdorablyPrecociousChild preciously brilliant eight year old]] with aspirations to attend a top-tier university. Despite this, she has a deep-seated fear of ending up a failure. Various FlashForward episodes depict her as either attending a prestigious college / going into politics or being stuck in Springfield married to Milhouse.
556** In a DocumentaryEpisode depicting various kids in Springfield and how their lives have changed over the years, a character named Eleanor Abernathy is seen to be on a fast track to success, earning both legal and medical degrees. A first JumpCut shows her to be exhausted and relaxing with a glass of wine and her feline pet, saying she's thinking of getting another cat. Another JumpCut reveals that she became the recurring CrazyCatLady, saying random nonsense and throwing cats at people.
557* GenreBlindness: "Bart's Inner Child" contains an interesting example. It appears to be played straight, then it's subverted, and then it's played straight for real. A trampoline bounces from the bottom of the cliff. It lands on Homer and pushes his body into the cliff, trapping him there. Then this happens:
558-->'''Homer:''' If this were a cartoon, the cliff would break off now.\
559''[the day turns into the night, and Homer is still trapped.]\
560'''Homer''': I'm thirsty!\
561''[the cliff finally breaks off.]''
562%% * GentlemanThief: Malloy in "Homer the Vigilante".
563* GeographicFlexibility: [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield Springfield]] has it in spades.
564* GeorgeWashingtonSleptHere: Several examples with Jebediah Springfield.
565%% * GetAHoldOfYourselfMan
566* GetARoom:
567** After an episode in which Bart Simpson goes from embarrassed by his grandfather to having just rescued Nazi treasure from the depths and from Mr Burns, Bart gives his grandfather an unembarrassed hug. Then a pampered German aristocrat drives by and shouts "Hey, fun boys, get a room!"
568** The trope also appears in "Money BART" as an incest joke by Nelson about Bart and Lisa.
569** Subverted at the end of "Waverly Hills 9-0-2-1 D'oh!" in which Bart yells this at Homer and Marge making out in his treehouse:
570--->'''Bart:''' Get a room!\
571'''Homer:''' C'mon, boy, be cool.\
572'''Bart:''' But...\
573'''Homer:''' ''Be cool'', or you're grounded!
574* GetOut: Marge has kicked Homer out of the house on more than one occasion. "Homer's Night Out" and "Secrets of a Successful Marriage" are two examples.
575* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: At the end of the episode "Fraudcast News", Willie notes that the new tractors are all "shite". They got away with this in the first airing, but that line was cut in all subsequent broadcasts.
576* GettingTheBabyToSleep: After he and his wife have Octuplets, Apu has to strap on a body harness which simulates teats on a sow as the only way to feed them and keep the babies all quiet.
577* GhostlyAnimals: Among some of the ghosts which visit Bart in the episode "Flanders' Ladder" are the cats Snowball II and III, and Coltrane.
578* GiantMedicalSyringe: One episode had Bart get a bunch of novelty props glued to his face. After being taken to Dr. Hibbert, Hibbert pulls out one of these and proclaims he can treat it with "a series of ''painful injections'' directly into Bart's spine!", resulting in Bart sweating in terror and causing the props to fall off. Hibbert then reveals that the sweat dissolved the glue, and that the syringe was actually a button applicator.
579-->'''Bart:''' [[LampshadeHanging Couldn't you have just turned up the heat a little?]]
580-->'''Dr. Hibbert:''' Oh, heavens no! It had to be terror sweat!
581* GiftOfSong: In the episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS3E1StarkRavingDad Stark Raving Dad]]", to make up for [[ForgottenBirthday forgetting Lisa's birthday]], Bart performs an original song with help from a stranger who calls himself Music/MichaelJackson. He reflexively starts out with insults when composing it, but "Michael" convinces him to make it a heartfelt birthday wish instead.
582* GiftShake: In a Christmas episode, by shaking Lisa's present, Bart is not only able to tell that she's getting a sweater, but also that it's hand-knitted and yellow.
583* GiganticGulp:
584** One episode features a giant beer mug at an Oktoberfest celebration. Marge decides to nurse the drink but ends up drunk.
585** In the episode "A Star is Burns," Barney wins a film contest and swears that he is giving up alcohol. The curtain behind him is then pulled away to reveal is prize: a lifetime supply of Duff beer (in a semi-trailer truck).
586--->'''Barney:''' ''[tearing away his sleeve]'' JUST HOOK IT TO MY VEINS!!
587** Parodied in "Bart vs. Australia".
588--->'''Homer:''' Hey! Give me one of those famous giant beers I've heard so much about.\
589''[the bartender places a can of beer the size of a keg on the counter, Homer is visibly upset]''\
590'''Bartender:''' Something wrong, Yank?\
591'''Homer:''' No. It's pretty big... I guess.
592* GilliganCut: Subverted in the episode "Gone Maggie Gone" when Maggie ends up abducted by a convent, Lisa suggests someone get in disguised as a nun. Homer insists he won't do it, and then the cut is to him still saying he won't do it, while Lisa works ongetting ready to enter.
593* GirlOfTheWeek:
594** Bart and Lisa have occasional love interests, or at least someone romantically interested in them.
595** Also a not-romantic example with Lisa when she befriend some one-episode girls.
596* GirlsNightOutEpisode: The episode "Marge on the Lam", in which Marge and Ruth Powers go on a girls' night out which ends up becoming a parody of ''Film/ThelmaAndLouise''.
597* GivingUpOnLogic: Frank Grimes memorably did this after his frustration with Homer made him lose his mind.
598* GlassSmackAndSlide: In "Natural Born Kissers", at one point, Marge operates a hot air balloon while a naked Homer dangles from an anchoring line. The wind carries the balloon over a church with a sloping glass ceiling. Homer smacks against the glass, then slides upward along it as the balloon tows him. The reverend directs the congregation to admire the parquet floor to avoid staring at naked Homer. It doesn't help that the friction causes Homer to wail, "Ow! My ass!"
599* TheGlomp:
600** Happens in the beginning of the episode 'Flaming Moe's' in one scene in which Bart gets glomped and kissed by Susan, one of Lisa's friends, in a 'Truth or Dare' game.
601** "Marge in Chains": In one of the conjugal visit trailers, Marge aggressively glomps Homer for sex, which then turns over the trailer.
602--->'''Homer:''' Honey, I don't know what you're feeling, right now. So I don't want to push anything. We can just hold hands or sit and talk...\
603''[Marge, overwhelmed with feelings of lust, immediately glomps Homer aggressively]''\
604'''Homer:''' Whoa!
605* GloveSlap: In season 11, the episode "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)". Homer does this while challenging various people to duels around Springfield after viewing a ''{{Franchise/Zorro}}'' movie in the theater. Complete with a parody song of the same name, derived from "Love Shack."
606* GoodPolicingEvilPolicing:
607** The Springfield Police (of which Chief Clancy Wiggum is the most regular member to appear) is constantly portrayed as buffoonish at absolute best and [[PoliceBrutality actively malicious]] [[DirtyCop and corrupt]] at worst, occasionally showing shades of LethallyStupid. When any other character tries to police the streets of Springfield (Marge in "The Springfield Connection" and Homer in "Poppa's Got a Brand New Badge", to give examples) they actually do a good job at being proper enforcers of law and order at first, but are inevitably ground down by the corruption that [[CrapsackWorld permeates the entire town]] and throw the towel, letting Wiggum [[StatusQuoIsGod retake his role]].
608** In "Homer Vs. The Eighteenth Amendment", Wiggum is kicked out of the police service for his inability to enforce dry law and replaced by Federal agent Rex Banner, who is comparatively more competent at doing this assignment but is also a RabidCop who hurts a lot of people as collateral damage and [[SelectiveEnforcement only cares to enforce the dry law]], allowing Fat Tony to keep dealing other drugs.
609** In the episode "Homer the Vigilante", Wiggum and the Springfield Police show their customary levels of idiocy when trying to investigate the robbing spree of a GentlemanThief but in the climax Wiggum, [[DumbassHasAPoint in a rare moment of competence]], points out that as much AffablyEvil the thief was he still stole things and he needs to be arrested (which he then does), while the VigilanteMilitia led by Homer does anything [[ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything but enforce the law]], beating up people at random and letting the thief rob a museum while they were having a kegger. Notably, neither side actually figures out where the thief is until Grandpa Simpson points out that one of the tenants [[BeneathSuspicion in the Springfield retirement home]] acts very odd [[ClueEvidenceAndASmokingGun and has a lot of loot in his room]].
610* GoToSleepEnding: Several episodes have an ending like this; usually with Homer and Marge.
611* GoToYourRoom:
612** Used frequently ("Bart vs. Thanksgiving", "Bart the Daredevil", "Bart Gets an Elephant", "Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment", etc.) with an interesting inversion in "Lisa the Vegetarian":
613--->'''Lisa:''' If you'll excuse me, I'm going to my room.\
614'''Homer:''' That's it, go to your room!
615** The Simpsons also had a time when Homer said Bart shouldn't go to his room since all of his toys are in there. He instead tells him to go into the garage. A few moments later Bart passes by the window on a lawnmower with several police cars chasing him.
616** Kirk Van Houten says this to his son Milhouse after trying to translate a writing on the wall that he wrote on (Trab Pu Kcip) in "Brother from the Same Planet":
617--->'''Kirk:''' What did we tell you about writing on the walls. Go to your room!
618* GodGuise:
619** When Apu's getting married, Homer tried to put a stop to the wedding by dressing as Ganesha. No one is fooled (indeed, anyone with a passing familiarity with Hindu mythology would know he got the characterisation all wrong).
620--->'''Indian Wedding Guest:''' You are not Ganesha! Ganesha is graceful!
621** In another episode, Bart plays with his Mr. Microphone by telling Rod and Todd next door (who were listening to the radio) that he's God, and tells Rod to walk through a wall which he will make vanish. So Rod walks into the wall.
622* GodHelpUsAll: Chief Wiggum says this in "Dumbbell Indemnity" when Homer (who drove Moe's car into the ocean) hasn't surfaced from the water yet:
623-->'''Chief Wiggum:''' That car thief can't hold his breath forever.\
624'''Lou:''' And if he can, Chief?\
625'''Chief Wiggum:''' Then God help us all!
626* GodivaHair: Homer's fantasy of Mindy in "The Last Temptation of Homer" results in this. Of course, this is a parody of Creator/SandroBotticelli's famous painting, ''Art/{{The Birth of Venus|Botticelli}}''.
627* GodlySidestep: God is about to tell Homer the meaning of life when the episode ends.
628* GogglesDoSomethingUnusual: The Beer Goggles from "Selma's Choice" cause the viewer to see any woman as a supermodel.
629* GogglesDoNothing: The {{Trope Namer|s}} happens in an instance where goggles fail to protect their wearer's eyes.
630* GoingColdTurkey:
631** Homer goes for 30 days without drinking beer in "Duffless".
632** Bart plans to stop seeing Jessica in "Bart's Girlfriend", though he doesn't even make it through a day because he has to see her when he goes to church.
633** In "Brother From The Same Planet", Lisa does this to get over her obsession with the Cory Hotline.
634* GoneHorriblyRight:
635** In one episode, Mr. Burns forces Mr. Smithers to take a vacation, and since he likes his job, to avoid having this happen again Smithers looks for the most incompetent person possible to take his place, so naturally he picks Homer. This turns out to work all too well, as Homer is so terrifyingly incompetent that he scares Burns into learning to take care of himself, so after Smithers comes back, Burns no longer needs him and thus fires him.
636** In episode "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge", Marge protested against the Itchy & Scratchy Show in order for it to be more child-friendly so as to set better examples for impressionable young children. When she succeeds, not only do the younger kids start going by the positive examples set by the said cartoon, the older kids disliked the redone version of the cartoon to the point of spending more time outdoors and doing more positive and healthier things as well. Though not very bothered, Marge admits it wasn't what she expected.
637** After Apu and Manjula get married, Manjula wishes for herself to have a child. She succeeds...but since she took fertility drugs, she ends up having eight children, not just one.
638* GoodAngelBadAngel: I am evil Homer! I am evil Homer!
639* GoodIsNotDumb: Ned Flanders, at least in the earlier episodes.
640* GoodIsNotNice: Lisa's rightful condescension towards some characters can seem uncalled for [[ItMakesSenseInContext if you're not familiar enough with the context]].
641* GoodLuckGesture:
642** "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?": Homer crosses his fingers on both hands when he's expected to receive the First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.
643--->'''Homer:''' ''[crossing fingers]'' Please, please, please, please, please!\
644'''Lisa:''' Dad, you know you won!\
645'''Homer:''' Don't jinx it!
646** When kids of Springfield Elementary take a career aptitude test and are getting their results, Martin crosses his fingers and chants "Systems analyst... systems analyst" before getting the result of [[spoiler:systems analyst]].
647** In "Missionary: Impossible", Lisa Jr. crosses her fingers when she says she wants to give up gambling. She doesn't hide it behind her back so her wish is probably sincere and she really hopes to stop.
648%% * GoodOlBoy: The Rich Texan.
649* {{Gorn}}: "A Tale of Two Springfields", for example, has Homer's stomach ripped open, displaying his intestines and all, after being attacked by a badger.
650* GoshDangItToHeck: Flanders, until a rant-inducing slight "broke" him; the earlier season had a pseudo-version because most of that language ''was'' considered horrible for TV then.
651* GossipEvolution: In "The PTA Disbands", Bart wants to rile up the teachers, so he tells one of the teachers that Skinner says the teachers will crack any minute. That teacher tells another teacher, who tells another teacher, so that by the time it got to Edna (who was leading the group's strike), it had become "Skinner says the teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher."
652-->'''Ms. Krabappel''': Well! We'll show him, especially for that purple monkey dishwasher remark!
653* GossipyHens: Many of Springfield women are shown to be this, but particularly Marge's regular [[WithFriendsLikeThese group of "friends", lead by Helen Lovejoy]] who take every opportunity they find to make snippy remarks at her.
654* {{Goth}}: Lisa in "Smart and Smarter".
655-->'''Milhouse:''' What are you now Lisa? An Oakland Raiders fan?\
656'''Lisa:''' It's called "Goth", eternally clueless one. My new name is "Ravencrow Neversmiles."\
657'''Milhouse:''' Cool. We could be Goth together. We'll go to the cemetery and summon the Dark Lord by kissing and junk.\
658'''Lisa:''' Okay... but first you must apprentice, by kissing the Goddess Ironica. Who lives in this rock.\
659''[Lisa picks up a rock and hands it to Milhouse]''\
660'''Lisa:''' ''[sneaking away]'' Do it for an hour, hour and a half.\
661'''Milhouse:''' Yes, my mistress.
662* GothGirlsKnowMagic: Invoked and subverted in the episode "Rednecks and Broomsticks" where Lisa befriend three young wicca. When the three teen girls are arrested, suddenly, half the town becomes blind and the girls are blamed. Turn out that they are innocent and the cause of blindness was not the magic.
663* GottaHaveItGonnaStealIt: "Marge Be Not Proud" focuses on Bart getting caught while trying to steal a copy of ''Bonestorm'', and how this changes Marge's relationship with him.
664* GourmetPetFood: {{Inverted}} in [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS3E11BurnsVerkaufenDerKraftwerk "Burns Verkaufen Der Kraftwerk"]]. Bart opens a can of "Carrot Cat Food" which is advertised as 88% ash and 12% carrots. They are actually quite common ingredients, though certainly not in those proportions. Snowball II is understandably disappointed when the food lands in her dish with a puff of gray dust.
665* GracefulLandingClumsyLanding: A CouchGag has Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie safely parachute onto the couch while Homer crashes on his face due to his parachute failing to open.
666* GradeSkipper:
667** Lisa Simpson. She's smart for her age, certainly, but only brilliant by comparison with Springfield's stupid children and horrible school system. When she gets the opportunity to study at Waverly Hills, an elementary school with actual standards and quality, Lisa finds that she's only a B student, rather than the straight As she got at Springfield Elementary, which traumatizes her. In another episode, she gets to skip to the third grade early, but finds it difficult (made more embarrassing for her because Bart was demoted a grade and found it easy):
668--->'''Principal Skinner:''' 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.\
669'''Lisa:''' [[StatusQuoIsGod Big fish! Big fish!]]
670** "Lisa's Rival": The titular character is a girl who's one year younger than Lisa and is in the same class as her because of grade-skipping.
671** "Future-Drama": [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture It seems Lisa will recover from the trauma of being in the same year as Bart]]. She'll graduate two years earlier, making her graduate the same year Bart will.
672* GrammarCorrectionGag: In "Bart the Genius", after Bart gives a confession letter to Dr. J. Loren Pryor that he was faking being a genius:
673-->'''Pryor:''' You know... you misspelled "confession".
674* GrammarNazi:
675** Linguo, Lisa's science project in "Trilogy of Error".
676** "Simpson Tide": In a subversion of the trope, Homer tries to be one towards the drill sergeant by correcting his correct usage of "nuclear" with the wrong "newk-uhy-lur".
677** WNBA superstar Lisa Leslie in "Pray Anything":
678--->'''Bart:''' Lisa Leslie, you got game!\
679'''Lisa Leslie:''' I think you mean, I ''have'' game. Try to speak correctly.\
680'''Bart:''' You go, girl!\
681'''Lisa Leslie:''' Yes, I will depart, lest your bad grammar rub off on me.
682* GrapesOfLuxury: Smithers feeds peeled Spanish peanuts to Mr. Burns while the latter was recovering from injuries. It's an homage to Alex's grape-eating fantasy in ''Film/AClockworkOrange''.
683* GRatedDrug: Lots.
684** Bart and Milhouse at one point drank a large, extra sugary Squishy and tripped out for the following scene.
685** Perhaps the most notable example is the Tomacco plant Homer accidentally created in "E-i-e-i-(Annoyed Grunt)," resulting in a reverse case of RealLifeWritesThePlot when an actual farmer managed to breed the plant in real life after the episode aired.
686* GreenAesop:
687** Lisa is very pro-recycling in "The Old Man and the Lisa". Of course, given this show, the aesop is parodied and subverted many times, including how Mr. Burns took Lisa's recycling advice at face value and ended up butchering oceans of animals just to make his slurry (Mr. Burns: "Not a single animal was wasted.").
688** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS21E19TheSquirtAndTheWhale The Squirt and the Whale]]", Lisa and Homer try to stop some sharks from attacking whales, but some environmental activist teach them that's just a part of the circle of life. In their eyes, a true animal activist respects the natural order of ''all'' animals and [[PredationIsNatural their instincts]], and it is wrong to protect one animal if it means killing another.
689* GreenAroundTheGills: This happened to Bart in "Homer's Night Out", after being disgusted by some vile-looking seafood.
690* GreenEyedEpiphany: A variant with Lisa towards Milhouse in "Homer Scissorhands".
691* GreenGators: Crocodilians in the show usually come in different shades of green. For example, Captain Jack from "Kill the Alligator and Run" is an alligator with an emerald green back and a pale green underside. Subverted in "Havana Nice Weekend", which showed brown alligators.
692* GreetingGestureConfusion: In the episode "Replaceable You", when Bart and Martin win the science fair, Bart offers Martin a fist bump, but Martin misinterprets it and [[IKissYourHand kisses his fist]] instead.
693* GrillingPyrotechnics: It's often the result of stupidity and disregard for safety, so of course Homer has done it at least once.
694** Played with in "Lisa the Vegetarian." Homer empties a bottle and a half of lighter fluid on the grill, but it lights normally.
695* GroinAttack:
696** "Bart Star": Bart, wearing a cup, goads Milhouse into kicking his crotch in. Milhouse repeatedly does so, to which Bart merely yawns. Eventually:
697--->'''Marge:''' Milhouse, stop that!
698*** Then Nelson comes by and kicks Bart there so hard he ''breaks'' his cup.
699** The infamous "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTCEPBDekH4 Man Getting Hit by Football]]" short film shown in the film festival episode "A Star is Burns". Homer, upon seeing it, says "The contest is over, give that man the $10,000!", even though it was pointed out that this wasn't ''America's Funniest Home Videos''. Homer replies, laughing the whole time, "but... the ball... his groin... it works on so many levels!"
700*** At the end of the episode, Homer's comedic taste is vindicated when a remake of the film starring George C. Scott wins the Best Actor Oscar.
701*** [[WesternAnimation/TheCritic Jay Sherman]] also got hit by a football in the same episode.
702** Homer Simpson himself is at the end of a variety of attacks to the groin, in the episodes 'Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington', 'Bart the Mother', 'Little Big Mom ', 'Tennis The Menace', 'Mom and Pop Art', 'Ice Cream of Margie (with the Light Blue Hair)', 'Goo Goo Gai Pan', 'You Gotta Know When to Golem', 'Million Dollar Abie ', 'Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes', 'Reaper Madness' and 'Weekend at Burnsie's', as well as in The Simpsons Movie, where he gets kicked in the crotch by a tree.
703** In "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes", an episode spoofing ''Series/{{The Prisoner|1967}}'', Homer returns home only to be attacked by his own German body double. As the evil Homer tries to strangle him, Homer counters with this attack, reasoning that "If I know me, he won't like being ''kicked in the crotch!''"
704** In 'Homer to the Max', The "fat and stupid" version of the 'fictional' Homer Simpson (From the show 'Police Cops'), falls from a great height and lands on a cactus.
705** In "Lisa the Iconoclast", a flashback shows George Washington using his wooden false teeth to bite infamous pirate Hans Sprungfeld, a.k.a. Jebediah Springfield, on the family jewels.
706** Sideshow Bob and Bart fall from the "new" Springfield Dam, and Bob lands straddling a large, protruding pipe. It's implied to be ''very'' painful, as Bob doesn't even scream, he just stares forward blankly, as still as a statue.
707** In an unusual female example, Marge knees a female [[NewAgeRetroHippie child therapist]] in the crotch. Appropriately, the woman crumples over in pain.
708** Comic Book Guy gets kicked in the crotch by Nelson in the episode 'Lisa the Drama Queen', and Krusty gets bombarded by snowballs to the nuts in the episode 'Simpsons Christmas Stories'.
709** Although it's offscreen, in "Lisa's First Word" a toddler Bart jumps off the TV trying to land on a sleeping Homer's stomach. When Bart makes the jump it implies he jumped a little too low and it cuts to Homer screaming in pain.
710** Subverted in ''Beyond Blunderdome'', as during shooting of Rainier Wolfcastle's Saving Irene Ryan (Which Homer, Mel Gibson, and studio executives interrupted due to a chase between the executives and Homer/Gibson in regards to an edited film), Rainier's character is carrying Irene Ryan through a battlefield while she's kicking and screaming, and it is implied that she's kicking him in the crotch, [[MadeOfIron yet his only reaction is "...and stop kicking me there!"]]
711** In "Million Dollar Abie", Bart is helping Grandpa train to be a bullfighter by pretending to be the bull, using a pair of horns strapped to his bicycle's handlebars. He misses Abe, but heads right for Homer, who's bent over doing something else. Bart manages to brake in time, but then Homer turns around and walks groin-first into the horn, complete with a cartoonish "doink" sound effect, and falls over clutching at himself.
712** "The Greatest Story ever Doh'ed": Bart gets groined by Dorit, the daughter of Jakob the tourist, and from Lisa herself; both in the art of Krav Maga.
713** "The Wandering Juvie" had a female prisoner, played by Creator/SarahMichelleGellar no less. When Bart goes over to where the female juvies are held he makes the mistake of trying to hit on them, which leads to him being tied up, a big girl pulling a switchblade from her hair to cut Bart's pants off, and these words.
714--->'''Gina:''' I'm Gina. Touch my fence again and puberty's gonna be very boring.
715*** Later after having the misfortune of being stuck with the same girl as his dance partner at the juvie dance, Bart gets a kick to the balls for trying to talk back to her.
716* GrossoutFakeout: In the episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS18E14YokelChords Yokel Chords]]", as Bart tells the story of Dark Stanley, the lights suddenly go off. When they come back on, the kids get horrified at the apparent sight of a dead Bart with his brains spilling out of his head. After they run off screaming, Bart gets up, revealing that the "brains" were actually spaghetti.
717* GrossUpCloseUp:
718** In "$pringfield", the camera zooms in on Smithers's face, where we see a bunch of germs that say in unison: "Freemasons run the country!"
719** Mr. Burns's face in "Monty Can't Buy Me Love".
720** Grandpa's forehead in "Whiskey Business".
721** In "Havana Wild Weekend", Abe decides to give Maggie one last look at him before leaving. We sees Maggie's point of view, resulting in a rather grotesque image of Grandpa. Maggie promptly blanks it out of her memory.
722* GroupieBrigade: Of elderly female opera fans in "Homer of Seville".
723* GuiltInducedNightmare:
724** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS3E4BartTheMurderer Bart the Murderer]]", Bart becomes an errand boy for the Springfield Mafia and has them confront Principal Skinner for giving him detention. When Skinner goes missing the next day and it's assumed the mafia killed him, Bart has a nightmare of himself being haunted by Skinner and sent to the electric chair.
725** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS18E2JazzyAndThePussycats Jazzy and the Pussycats]]", Lisa goes to an animal shelter and adopts a cute puppy over a more homely-looking dog. That night, Lisa dreams of that dog scolding her for not adopting him because of his appearance, prompting her go back the next day and take him home.
726* GushingAboutGuestStars: Parodied in The Simpsons when Jay Sherman from The Critic appears in "A Star Is Burns". When this aired, creator Matt Groening, took his name off the producers credits because he was against the crossover in the first place when Fox requested it, feeling it was a shameless ratings stunt. This joke is likely a reference to that.
727->Homer: Bart Simpson, meet Jay Sherman, the critic.
728->Jay: Hello.
729->Bart: Hey, man. I really love your show. I think all kids should watch it! [turns away] Eww, I suddenly feel so dirty.
730
731** Appears increasingly from so since the 10th series or so, often with characters be announced with "(Profession) (Name)"! Notable examples include Lady Gaga, Michelle Obama (though she is just a soundalike) and Elon Musk.
732[[/folder]]
733
734[[folder:H]]
735* HaHaHaNo:
736** "The Bart Wants What It Wants" has this:
737--->'''Ranier:''' Bart, your little tie makes me smile.\
738'''Bart:''' Excuse me, but you don't sound as tough as you do in the movies.\
739'''Ranier:''' ''[threatening]'' If you don't shut your big yap, I will rip off your face and use it as a napkin.\
740''[pause, and then everyone laughs]''\
741'''Ranier:''' [serious again] Laughing time is over.
742** Also from "Lisa on Ice":
743--->'''Homer:''' OK, son, just remember to have fun out there today. And if you lose, I'll kill you!\
744''[everyone laughs]''\
745'''Bart:''' ''[good-humored]'' Oh, Dad.\
746'''Homer:''' ''[looks menacingly at Bart]''\
747'''Bart:''' ''[cringes]''
748* HairballHumor: A running gag is Snowball II coughing up hairballs.
749*  HairMemento: In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS6E18AStarIsBurns A Star is Burns]]", Homer feels inadequate compared to their houseguest [[WesternAnimation/TheCritic Jay Sherman]], so he tells Marge to leave him for Jay and cuts off a piece of her hair to remember her by.
750-->'''Homer''': It's just you and me now, lock of hair.
751* HairRaisingHare: Homer draws bunny faces on electrical sockets to scare Maggie away from touching them. When Marge points out that Maggie's not scared of rabbits, Homer replies, "She will be."
752* HalfwayPlotSwitch: [[HalfwayPlotSwitch/TheSimpsons Constantly]]. Even lampshaded a few times.
753-->'''Homer:''' ''[on a rickety boat about to go over a waterfall]'' So, do you think they settled that bag boy strike yet?
754* HalfWittedHillbilly: Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel and family.
755* HallOfMirrors: In the episode "The Dad Who Knew Too Little", the climactic fight happens in a mirror maze in a homage to the movie "The Lady From Shanghai".
756* HammeredIntoTheGround: In a homage to the Road Runner cartoons, when Homer tried to get rid of a trampoline by throwing it off a cliff outcropping it bounces back up, then falls on him pounding him into the rock. Then he falls out the bottom of the outcropping to the bottom of a ravine.
757* HamToHamCombat: Homer (Creator/DanCastellaneta) vs. Meathook (Creator/JohnGoodman) in "Take My Wife, Sleaze".
758* TheHandIsGod:
759** In one episode, Ned Flanders prays for divine intervention to save his son Todd, who is floating down a river. A branch falls, damming up the river and saving Todd, then a hand is seen in the sky making the "OK" sign.
760** In the episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS10E18SimpsonsBibleStories Simpsons Bible Stories]]", God appears in the "Adam and Eve" segment as a giant hand from the sky. It's actually the hand of Ned Flanders, who is providing the voice for God in that segment.
761* HandingOverTheCrapSack: In the future timeline episode "Lisa's Wedding", the family try to impress Lisa's British boyfriend by raising the Union Jack flag, only for it to set alight on a bug zapper. After desperately trying to put it out by stamping on it and dumping compost on it, Homer then meekly gives the remains to the mortified boyfriend as a gift.
762%% * HandsGoDown
763* HandyFeet: Rita [=LaFleur=] from "Gone Abie Gone" can play the piano with her toes.
764* HangingJudge: Judge Constance Harm, a ''Series/JudgeJudy'' parody.
765* HangingUpOnTheGrimReaper: In ''WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS15E1TreehouseOfHorrorXIV XIV]]'' (during the segment "Reaper Madness"), the Grim Reaper comes to the Simpson house to take Bart's soul. After a goofy chase scene, Homer saves his son by [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu bludgeoning the Reaper to death]].
766* HaplesslyHiding: In "Cape Fear", Sideshow Bob follows the Simpsons to Terror Lake by [[UndersideRide strapping himself to the bottom of their car]]. On the way, Homer drives over several speed bumps, dumps some hot coffee over the side, and gets the random idea to plow through a cactus patch.
767-->'''Homer:''' Hey kids, wanna drive through that cactus patch?\
768'''Bart:''' Yeah!\
769'''Lisa:''' Yeah!\
770'''Bob:''' No!\
771'''Homer:''' [[FailedASpotCheck Oop! Two against One!]]\
772''[drives through the cactus patch at Sideshow Bob's expense]''
773* HappilyFailedSuicide: A man jumps off the ledge of a building just as a massive ball of humanity comes rolling by. The tone of his voice implies that he is pleased with the result.
774-->Goodbye Cruel World! ''[falls into the ball]'' Hello ironic twist!
775* HappilyMarried: Homer and Marge sorta, Ned and Maude until she dies.
776* HappyHarlequinHat: when Homer talks a couple of late-middle-aged hippies into going on a "good old fashioned freak-out" he wears one of these while freaking the normals.
777-->'''Homer:''' Have no fear, the Cosmic Fool is here, to blow the lid off your conformist, button-down world!
778* HardTruthAesop: "Bart Gets An F" shows off a rare side of school in media: even if you study your hardest and try your best (like Bart does), you can still fail. That said, progress is still progress no matter how small, and should be celebrated.
779* HarmlessLiquefaction: Bart is furious with Homer for picking him up so late, and has an ImagineSpot of Homer's face melting.
780--->'''Homer:''' Now how 'bout a hug?!
781* HateAtFirstSight: Frank Grimes dislikes Homer from their first meeting, an impression that just gets worse and worse until he accidentally electrocutes himself in a fit of rage at how the universe seems to bend over backwards for Homer.
782* HateCrimesAreASpecialKindOfEvil: "Homer Badman" has Homer being accused of sexual harassment by his babysitter, Ashley Grant, who mistakes Homer's action of pulling a valuable gummi off her rear end as groping. This leads to Homer being labeled and harassed all over the media as a social pariah with protesters camping over their lawn and following him to his job to [[IrrationalHatred voice their opinions]].
783-->'''Talk Show Host''': [[InsaneTrollLogic "It's okay; your tears say more than real evidence ever could."]]
784* HatedItemMakeover:
785** In one episode, Marge and her son Bart play an online game together. When Marge gives Bart's character's room a Franchise/HelloKitty makeover, he gets mad (since Bart is playing a tough warrior) and kills Marge's avatar.
786** In "Summer of 4'2", the friends Lisa makes while at a beach house redecorate the family car with seashells as a gift. Lisa is genuinely touched; Homer, on the other hand...
787--->'''Homer:''' Sweet, merciful crap! My car!
788--->[Next shot is the car surrounded by seagulls as they drive back home.]
789* HaveAGayOldTime:
790** Common with Mr. Burns, due to his age. An example from "Monty Can't Buy Me Love":
791--->'''Rude:''' When was your first gay experience?\
792'''Burns:''' Oh, well, when I was six, my father took me on a picnic. That was a gay old time! Oh-ho, I ate my share of wieners that day.
793** Homer also gets one in "The Telltale Head":
794--->'''Homer:''' You know, Bart, when I was your age, I pulled a few boners.
795** Ned Flanders does it in "Bart the Lover", though it's not clear whether it's this or HypocriticalHumor, as he was lecturing Homer on swearing in front of his children at the time.
796--->'''Ned:''' Now, some of us pull a few boners now and then, go off half-cocked, make asses of ourselves...
797* HeartBeatsOutOfChest: Moe Szyslak does this in the episode "Saddlesore Gallactica" after seeing a beautiful woman. However, he notes that this shouldn't be happening to his heart and is likely a serious emergency.
798* HeavenlyConcentricCircles: In the [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS17E4TreehouseOfHorrorXVI "Treehouse Of Horror XVI"]], Lenny dies and goes to his personal version of Heaven. All of the angels take the form of Carl and hover on the clouds positioned in concentric circles that lead to a light sphere.
799* TheHedonist: "Bart's Inner Child" had a self-help guru convince everyone in the town to be like this. It ends badly.
800* HeelFaceTown:
801** North Haverbrook, which had [[GhostTown nearly all of its citizens move away]] and the remaining residents disillusioned after buying Lyle Lanley's scam in "Marge vs the Monorail." In the end of the episode, a mob of angry citizens came to assault and lynch Lyle when he suffered the misfortune of his plane making a layover in that same town. Cue many seasons later in the episode "Little Big Girl," where the town underwent a massive renovation with Lyle's money.
802** In "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson", a flashback shows that Homer went to New York City in The70s; while there, Homer got most of his possessions stolen (including a CorruptCop stealing his suitcase), got a load of garbage dumped on him by Creator/WoodyAllen, and was chased by a pimp when a banana peel he flung landed on the pimp. Later in the episode the Simpson family visits present-day (1997) New York City, and it is shown as being greatly improved, much cleaner and safer than the 70s flashback version.
803* HeelRealization:
804** Lisa in "Make Room For Lisa". Though it's debatable that she was certainly justified for being angry at Homer for snoring loudly during an opera.
805** Bart in "Bart vs. Thanksgiving" when he realizes he hurt his sister's feelings by knocking her centerpiece into the fireplace.
806** A minor one in "Radioactive Man". After losing the role of Fall Out Boy, Nelson gives his trademark "Ha-Ha" to his reflection.
807--->'''Nelson:''' Hey... that hurts... no wonder no one came to my birthday party...
808* HeinousnessRetcon: Kamp Krusty as a whole undergoes this in "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS28E15KampKrustier Kamp Krustier]]". In the original "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS4E1KampKrusty Kamp Krusty]]", the campers were treated genuinely cruelly, being forced to eat gruel, sleep in freezing barren shacks, and manufacture wallets in what Lisa described as "a Dickensian sweatshop", with Mr. Black, the camp's owner, being a CardCarryingVillain who revels in his awful treatment of the kids. In "Kamp Krustier", despite the premise being them being traumatised by the experience, the camp's actual cruelty and slave labour are forgotten about and the kids' bad memories of it are reduced to FauxHorrific PokeThePoodle offences like having to watch a bad production of ''Film/TheParentTrap'' with the one seemingly genuine trauma [[spoiler:a kid drowning trying to escape, turning out to be a mistake]], while Mr. Black is nowhere to be seen and never mentioned. Also, Jimbo, Dolph, and Kearney are depicted as having taken part in the rebellion against the camp when in the original episode, they were the counsellors that the other kids were rebelling against following suffering their vicious abuse.
809* HeldBackInSchool:
810** The show really did enjoy this trope. "Bart Gets An F" focuses on Bart's attempts to avoid it happening. Lisa goes up a grade and Bart goes down in another in "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Bart vs. Lisa vs. The Third Grade]]".
811** Bart was knocked back to Kindergarten when Sideshow Bob became mayor.
812** Kearney, one of the bullies, is actually a grown adult.
813* HelicopterFlyswatter: In "Thirty Minutes over Tokyo" the plane that the Simpsons are on going home gets attacked by Godzilla.
814-->'''Pilot:''' Uh, folks, we're experiencing some moderate Godzilla-related turbulence at this time, so I'm going to go ahead and ask you to put your seat belts back on. When we get to 35 thousand feet, he usually does let go, so from there on out, all we have to worry about is Mothra, and, uh, we do have reports he's tied up with Gamera and Rodan at the present time. Thank you very much.
815%% * HenpeckedHusband: Charles Heathbar (played by Creator/RickyGervais) from "Homer Simpson, This Is Your Wife".
816* HereWeGoAgain: Said by the family at the end of "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming" when Grampa approaches on a motorcycle and said he's gonna haul ass to Lollapalooza. The same thing was said by Vanessa Redgrave in a sitcom earlier in the episode.
817* HeroicBSOD:
818** After Mr. Burns revokes giving 3 free donuts to each worker per day:
819--->'''Homer''': ''[sobbing passionately]'' You... can't... do... that.
820** Similarly, Homer freaks out when the high school science teacher sets a donut on fire in "The Front".
821--->'''Homer:''' ''[weakly]'' This is NOT happening! This is NOT happening!
822* HeroicDolphin: Subverted when Bart, Homer, Flanders and his kids stranded at sea and being approached by dolphins; Flanders is relieved, stating that dolphins always help people lost at sea; but the dolphins merely chitter that they are all going to die, giggle a bit, and then leave.
823* HeroWorshipper: Bart idolizes Krusty, and as he himself put it, has based his whole life on his teachings.
824* HesBack:
825** In "Blood Feud", Mr. Burns is dying from hypohemia, and Bart donates his blood to save him. He dictates his epitaph in [[LargeHam an increasingly hammier way]] as he recovers, culminating with him getting up and exclaiming, "Smithers, I'm back!"
826** Burns again in "The Fool Monty." Burns becomes childlike and an amnesiac after a failed suicide attempt. Visiting his old mansion jogs back his memory. He then sits menacingly on a chair made of skulls and says in a sinister voice, "Daddy's home."
827* HeterosexualLifePartners:
828** Lenny and Carl, Homer's co-workers.
829--->'''Lenny:''' Even Bart was splashing the cash. He once paid $100 to me and Carl [[HoYay to kiss each other.]]\
830'''Carl:''' Hey did we ever get that money?\
831'''Both:''' [concerned look]
832** Mr. Burns and Smithers would also count, at least from Mr. Burns' point of view.
833* HeyLetsPutOnAShow: In "Grift of the Magi", Skinner decides to produce a school play in order to convince Mr. Burns to donate enough money for the school to re-open.
834* HiddenDepths: Almost everyone has shown these at one time or another. Bound to happen, what with over 22 years of shows.
835* HideAndNoSeek: Bart uses this as a pause button for his reluctant playdate with Ralph Wiggum, giving himself a chance to clean the syrup stains off of all his toys.
836-->'''Ralph:''' I've been in [the hallway closet] for two hours, and Bart ''still'' hasn't finded me!
837* HighDiveEscape: Big Daddy makes one in the "Chief Wiggum, P.I." segment of "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase".
838* HigherEducationIsForWomen: A flashback episode revealed Marge went to college after high school while Homer formed a grunge band. Similarly, a very realistic flashforward shows Maggie and Lisa at college while Bart works a blue-collar job.
839* HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs: Parodied in "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer". In the episode, Homer eats some [[ICantBelieveItsNotHeroin "merciless peppers of Quetzalzacatenango"]] and goes on a hallucinatory trip, complete with colourful {{Mayincatec}} imagery and a coyote SpiritAdvisor, who urges him to "find his soulmate". Homer eventually figures out, unsurprisingly, that [[spoiler:Marge is his soulmate]]. It remains unclear whether his trip had supernatural qualities, or whether it was just the sort of regular hallucination Homer often has.
840* HighFiveLeftHanging: In one episode with Homer and Reverend Lovejoy being interviewed by Kent Brockman, Homer makes a joke about gay marriage and requests a high five from Lovejoy but Lovejoy refuses to accept it.
841* HighVoltageDeath: At the end of the episode “Homer's Enemy” Frank Grimes outraged at how Homer is constantly rewarded for his stupidity, goes insane, and starts mockingly mimicking risky things Homer would do and saying he's “Homer Simpson”. [[spoiler:While doing this he grabs a high voltage cable without safety gloves in Homer's office and unintentionally electrocutes himself to death, ironically committing suicide.]] Grimes is also the page image for this trope.
842* HindenburgIncendiaryPrinciple: There's an episode where Barney Gumble pilots a blimp and crashes it. In an apparent reference to the Hindenburg crash, Kent Brockman says "oh, the humanity!"
843* HintDropping: Marge, to Homer laying in a hammock in "Mom and Pop Art":
844-->'''Marge:''' You know, Homie, a lot of men use their Saturdays to do things around the house; hint, ''hint''!\
845'''Homer:''' But Marge, I'm not like other men. That's why you buy my pants at that special store!
846* HistoricalCharacterConfusion: In "Eeny Teeny Maya Moe", Marge phones Moe's and asks for Homer. Moe tries to cover by saying that he thought she was asking for Heimlich Himmler, the guy who invented the Heimlich maneuver. When Marge says they are different people, Moe claims they are both in the tavern.
847* HistoricalCharactersFictionalRelative:
848** Krusty the Clown is half brothers with Luke Perry and Mr. Burns is the natural brother of Creator/GeorgeBurns.
849** When Lisa looks at a tabloid while waiting in line at the Kwik-E-mart, she says "I wonder what cousin Jessica's up to."
850* HistoricalDomainCrossover: One ''Treehouse of Horror'' had Billy the Kid leading a gang of historical villains, including the most evil German in history — Kaiser Wilhelm!
851* HistoricalDomainSuperperson: One "Treehouse of Horror" story featured a guest appearance by Creator/LucyLawless, playing herself. At the end of the story, she grabs Bart and Lisa and flies off with them, revealing that she has superpowers.
852* HistoricalFiguresInArchivalMedia: In the episode "Gone Boy", Bart watches footage of UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy's Inaugural Address after falling inside of a bunker.
853* HistoricalRapSheet:
854** [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Charles Montgomery Burns]] has done many atrocities during his long life, including such monstrosities as being [[StockUnsolvedMysteries the one who made]] UsefulNotes/AmeliaEarhart disappear, collaborating with the Nazis, and stealing a [[ZillionDollarBill Trillion Dollar Bill]] that would have helped fund reparations on Europe after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII (and thus made [[CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys the French]] hate America from then on).
855** Abe Simpson, as part of a group confessing to various deeds of ArsonMurderAndJaywalking, claims that he was the one who canceled ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''.
856* HistoricalRelationshipOverhaul: Referenced in "Magical History Tour", which has Marge telling the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (played by Bart) being sabotaged by Antonio Salieri (Lisa as "Sally Eri"). At the end, Lisa brings up that the two composers had a good relationship in real-life, and that Marge took the plot from ''Film/{{Amadeus}}''.
857* HockeyMaskAndChainsaw: As part of a StabTheSalad gag.
858* HoistByHisOwnPetard: Sideshow Bob openly describes his plan failing like this in "Funeral For A Fiend".
859* HoldingBothSidesOfTheConversation: Homer impersonating Marge in the bank, when he's trying to remove their life's savings.
860* HollywoodBoardGames:
861** Marge is generally very in tune with her baby daughter Maggie's needs and methods of communication. As such, when the pair are playing ''TabletopGame/{{Pictionary}}'' against Marge's sisters, Marge can decipher Maggie's wobbly drawings just fine.
862** [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS1E2BartTheGenius "Bart the Genius"]]: The family playing ''TabletopGame/{{Scrabble}}'' is used to cement their personalities and intelligence level. Marge is average, as she has a good vocabulary but is unaware of more obscure words such as "ID". Lisa, the genius {{Bookworm}}, is winning the game with her ample vocabulary. By contrast, Homer ignores words such as "OXIDIZE" and is constantly telling his family to not engage in ScrabbleBabble. Bart is equally ignorant and isn't even interested in the game, showing he is inattentive and BookDumb. Also, he's willing to cheat because he does invent a word when it's his turn.
863** [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS14E17ThreeGaysOfTheCondo "Three Gays of the Condo"]]: Homer is definitely not the brightest bulb. Therefore, it's just like him to mistake his family trying to get him to stop drinking for a fun game of ''TabletopGame/{{Pictionary}}''. Mind you, what they show him is a drawing of himself drunk out of his brains and surrounded by his crying family. Bart has to tell him they were StagingAnIntervention.
864** [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E6AMilhouseDivided "A Milhouse Divided"]]: Luann and Kirk van Houten, whose marriage is in its last legs, have been exchanging underhanded insults throughout the Simpsons' dinner party. Luanne has her RageBreakingPoint in the middle of a ''TabletopGame/{{Pictionary}}'' game. It's triggered by her inability to guess just what the hell that oblong shape her husband has made means. When Kirk points out it's supposed to be a drawing of "dignity", she loses it and accuses him of having lost his dignity since marrying her. Kirk challenges to depict "dignity", which she does so marvelously that some comments it's "worthy of Webster's".
865** Homer and/or Bart are often seen creating weird game hybrids with [[CalvinBall nonsensical rules]]. Both of them are BookDumb but also occasionally creative, especially if they want to have fun. They do this with ''TabletopGame/{{Scrabble}}'' and ''TabletopGame/{{Battleship}}'' in [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS13E13TheOldManAndTheKey "The Old Man and the Key"]]. Comically, Homer takes it way too seriously, mourning the soldiers who die when a ship is sunk.
866* HollywoodLaw:
867** "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS5E20TheBoyWhoKnewtooMuch The Boy Who Knew Too Much]]", about Mayor Quimby's nephew being tried for assault, illustrates (and {{lampshade|Hanging}}s) how crazy the legal process is in Springfield. Witnesses are bribed in open court, and [[RuleOfFunny no one cares]]. The judge reopens the case knowing that doing so is grossly unconstitutional, but she "just can't say no to kids". But even aside from that, the things that ''aplan failing es are quite inaccurate. First, the jury is made up entirely of major cast members, when by rule no juror can be personally connected to any other juror (or the defendant, plaintiff, or any witnesses) -- that's a key part of keeping the jury impartial. Principal Skinner's presence on the jury illustrates the problem and serves as a plot point -- potential witness Bart is afraid to admit that he saw what really happened, because in doing so he would admit to a school official that he was skipping school. His dad Homer is on the jury too, because TheMainCharactersDoEverything, and Apu is on the jury despite not yet being a U.S. citizen. Finally, the presence of new evidence which could have changed the original verdict usually ''does'' allow the case to be reopened.
868** "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS13E2TheParentRap The Parent Rap]]" shows that [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure Judge Snyder]] and [[HangingJudge Judge Harm]] are both incompetent, for opposite reasons. Snyder is ''way'' too lenient, willing to let Bart off with a scolding for an admitted felony (it is suggested he's the reason Bart tends to get away with everything). Harm, on the other hand, is way too strict, handing down sentences that would likely be considered torture (and later, commits a ''very'' serious legal taboo, presiding over a case dealing with a crime where she was the victim). The episode also shows Judge Harm presiding simultaneously over juvenile and regular criminal courts (which doesn't happen in real life for the same reason you don't see an OmnidisciplinaryLawyer), as well as Snyder replacing Harm in the middle of the hearing (which wouldn't happen without the first judge's agreement, and Harm very much did ''not'' agree).
869** Cruel and unusual punishment seems to be legal in the town, such as flogging, being catapulted out of the city, and torture for remembering that Skinner is not the real Skinner.
870** When Homer and Ned Flanders get married to a couple of hookers in Las Vegas, and the hookers return in "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS13E7BrawlInTheFamily Brawl in the Family]]", Harm refuses to allow them to get the marriages annulled because bigamy is legal under Nevada law. But many real life Las Vegas marriages are usually annulled for reasons Homer and Ned can claim -- they were extremely drunk and already married.
871** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS7E15BartTheFink Bart The Fink]]", Krusty gets indicted over tax evasion, so [[IntimidatingRevenueService the IRS]] [[WorkOffTheDebt has his salary heavily garnished until he pays his back taxes]], which is expected to take the rest of his life. Inexplicably, they also take most of his show's budget, which is not legal (Krusty doesn't own the station) and is a stupid idea (the show can't make any money if they can't make anything for people to watch).
872** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS17E21TheMonkeySuit The Monkey Suit]]", Flanders and Lovejoy browbeat Skinner into teaching Creationism at school, and later the mayor approves a law that makes it illegal to teach the Theory of Evolution. ''[=McLean=] vs Arkansas Board of Education'' in 1981 established that teaching creationism in schools is against the Constitution, so it should have been easy for Lisa to force the issue, though you do hear about states like Kansas trying to replace evolution with creationism and considering how everyone in Springfield is backwards and anti-intellectual (they once tried to burn Principal Skinner at the stake because of his claims that the Earth revolves around the sun), the writers probably thought it would be best just to forget that piece of Supreme Court history.
873** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS13E8SweetsAndSourMarge Sweets and Sour Marge]]", Marge files a lawsuit against a major sugar manufacturer, and after hearing her case Judge Snyder passes a law banning sugar from Sprinfield. A judge is only supposed to interpret existing laws, preside over trials and pass judgement, NOT make up new ones at his whim. Lampshaded at the end when Snyder strikes down the ban after acknowledging that he had no authority to enact it.
874** "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS21E22TheBobNextDoor The Bob Next Door]]": Sideshow Bob intends to kill Bart at a fictional location called Five Corners where five states' borders meet, in such a way that the crime takes place in all five states (Bob stands in the first, fires the gun in the second, the bullet travels through the third, hits Bart in the forth, who falls dead in the fifth), thus making it impossible to prosecute. In actuality, crossing state lines like this would result in Bob being charged ''federally'' with first-degree murder, with a probable death sentence given the child victim and premeditation. Also, most of the land at the real-life Four Corners is part of Native American reservations, which are federal criminal jurisdiction by default. (The Four Corners Monument, which is located hundreds of feet from where the borders actually meet due to a surveying error, is administered by the Navajo Nation.)
875** In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS7E13TwoBadNeighbors Two Bad Neighbors]]" both Bush and Ford are shown with Secret Service agents, since per the Former Presidents Act of 1958, every ex-President is entitled to lifetime Secret Service protection (provided they weren't impeached). However, Bush, and Ford driving are inaccurate, since an ex-President would not ever be allowed to drive a car themselves in real life; also when Homer goes to confront Bush, Bush asks the agents to stand down, which would never happen in real life, when the Secret Service would keep Homer at an arm's length from Bush to guard him.
876* HollywoodMagnetism: One prank Bart pulls involves two pieces of metal in the bottom of Principal Skinner's shoes and a pair of horseshoe magnets under the stage, which Bart manipulates to make Skinner do a wild dance. In reality, the magnetic field wouldn't be strong enough to pass through that much wood.
877* HomageDerailment:
878** Treehouse of Horror:
879*** The "Treehouse Of Horror III" segment "King Homer", a parody of ''Film/KingKong'', re-creates the scene of the ape (this time played by Homer) climbing the Empire State Building with Marge in hand... And then he gives up after getting too winded. Marge points out he should eat more vegetables and [[ImAHumanitarian fewer people]].
880*** In the "Treehouse Of Horror XII" segment "Night Of The Dolphin", Lisa frees a dolphin from a Sea World knock-off, in the process, recreating the moment from ''Film/FreeWilly'' of the whale leaping over the boy. Only in this one, Lisa's face gets smacked by the tail.
881** "When You Dish Upon A Star" opens with a ''WesternAnimation/YogiBear'' parody, with Homer and Bart as Yogi and Boo Boo, respectively, in the act of picnic basket theft. When confronted by Ned Flanders as Ranger Smith? Homer straight-up mauls him like a real bear would.
882* HonestAdvisor: Mr. Burns once hires Lisa to advise him after listening to yes-men nearly ruins him.
883* HonestyAesop: Subverted in the episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS3E16BartTheLover Bart the Lover]]": Bart screws with Mrs. Krabappel by replying to her personal ad, pretending to be a man interested in her and then standing her up for their date. [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone Guilt-ridden]] after seeing her reaction, he goes to his family for help.
884-->'''Homer:''' Boy, you've got to go to your teacher and tell her the truth.
885-->'''Marge:''' No, that would humiliate her.
886-->'''Homer:''' I thought that's what you wanted to hear.
887* HonkingArrivingCar:
888** Played with in [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS2E12TheWayWeWas "The Way We Was"]]. Teenage Homer is walking on the side of the road, after he ran out of money to pay for his limousine rental for the prom, and Marge arrives in her own car to offer Homer a ride, after Artie Ziff brought her back home. However, Homer initially mistakes Marge's friendly tooting of the horn on her arrival for some blowhard driver being overly aggressive.
889--> [Toot Toot!]
890--> '''Homer''': Shut up!
891--> [Toot Toot!]
892--> '''Homer''': I'm over as far as I can go!
893--> [Toot Toot!]
894--> '''Homer''': Alright! Alright! I'll ''walk in the MUD!''
895** Also played with in a flashback from [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS3E12IMarriedMarge "I Married Marge"]], as Homer arrives to take Marge out on a date while she's talking to her mother and sisters.
896-->'''Marge:''' You don't know Homer like I do. He's sensitive and sweet.
897-->'''Homer:''' ''(HONK!)'' [[InstantlyProvenWrong Marge! Get your butt out here!]]
898** In [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS11E5EIEIAnnoyedGrunt "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)"]], The SouthernGentleman honks a novelty car horn when he arrives outside the Simpsons home in his RV at dawn for his duel with Homer.
899** In [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS13E13TheOldManAndTheKey "The Old Man and the Key"]], after Lisa comments that they have no way of traveling to Branson, Missouri, a novelty horn interrupts, and a bus headed to Branson, MO stops directly in front of the Simpsons' house. However, when Ned, Rod, and Todd Flanders get on the bus, Homer insists that they "wait for the next one."
900** In [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS16E5FatManAndLittleBoy "Fat Man and Little Boy"]], Goose Gladwell makes several entrances in a wacky CoolCar while sounding a novelty horn that plays "La Cucaracha."
901** In [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS18E1TheMookTheChefTheWifeAndHerHomer "The Mook, The Chef, The Wife, and Her Homer"]], the arriving car horn is heard [[RuleOfThree three times]] in the FellOffTheBackOfATruck gag. Homer honks a horn as he pulls into his driveway in a new pickup truck which he says fell off a truck, "You know, a truck-truck." A deeper truck horn is heard, and Bart pulls up in a car carrier loaded with pickup trucks that he says "fell off a truck-truck-truck." Then, an even deeper truck horn blares as the "truck-truck-truck" loaded with car carriers pulls up.
902%% * {{Housewife}}: Marge.
903* HouseFire: In at least two episodes:
904** "Homer the Heretic": Homer falls asleep while smoking a cigar, and a hot ash ignites one of his girlie magazines, causing a fire that heavily damages the house.
905** "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace": Bart's new fire truck sprays water on an overloaded outlet, causing a fire that destroys the Christmas tree and the presents underneath.
906** Also the episode where Homer passes out trying to blow out his birthday candles ("Homerazzi"). After the fire department shows up, they suggest buying a fireproof safe.
907--->'''Homer:''' Or we COULD just try to be more careful with fire.\
908'''Firefighter:''' Sir, this is the 4th time we've been called out this month.\
909'''Homer:''' Um, yeah. But one of those times, I accidentally called 9-1-1 and I was too embarrassed to admit it, so I set the house on fire.
910* HouseInspection: In [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS7E3HomeSweetHomediddlyDumDoodily "Home Sweet Homediddily-Dum-Doodily"]], Principal Skinner is convinced that something wrong is going on at the Simpson place[[note]]after seeing Bart in a burlap sack and Lisa shoeless, covered in mud, and lisping[[/note]] and sends Child Services to look in. They find the house is a mess, with stacks of decades-old newspapers, Maggie drinking from the dog's water dish, and Grandpa asleep on the sofa in his own filth. Of course, the whole thing is an insane coincidence, but they still take the kids away and put them with the Flanders.
911* HouseSquatting:
912** When Homer pretends to be rich in order to impress the director of "Springfield Up" (a parody of ''Series/{{Up}}'') he moves his family into Mr. Burns' mansion while Burns is out of town.
913** In "You Only Move Twice" the Simpsons move away to another town. When they come back they find that Otto has moved into their empty house along with his girlfriend.
914** In "The Ziff Who Came To Dinner", the family discovers that Artie Ziff (the multi-millionaire StalkerWithACrush obsessed with Marge) had been squatting in their home for some time now, living in the attic and surviving by eating mold. Turns out that the investments that made him rich had all burst and he needed a place to dodge the IRS.
915* HowAboutASmile:
916** A variant occurs in "Black Widower" when Sideshow Bob is chewing out a hotel bellboy:
917--->'''Sideshow Bob:''' I WANTED A ROOM WITH A FIREPLACE, YOU BLASTED MONKEY! ''[realizes Selma is capturing him on camera]'' Oh, Selma dear... I was just chatting with my good friend... ''[looks at his name tag]'' Dennis! Now, smile for the camera, there's a good lad! ''[Dennis struggles to produce a nervous smile]''
918** In "Last Exit To Springfield", Lisa ends up wearing giant hideous braces. She ends up hearing this from the photographer at school picture day. He regrets suggesting it after seeing her teeth.
919* HowDidYouKnowIDidnt: Provides the page quote.
920-->'''Bart:''' Dad! You killed the zombie Flanders!\
921'''Homer:''' He was a zombie?
922* HowTheCharacterStoleChristmas:
923** Homer in "Tis the Fifteenth Season" has the misguided idea that people would be a lot happier if they were free of material possessions, so he steals the Christmas presents of everybody in town. It doesn't go over well.
924** Homer also steals all the Funzos under the tree of every house in town in "Grift of the Magi", with Bart and Lisa's help. Apparently, Homer has saved three Christmases, ruined eight, and two were "kind of a draw".
925%% * HuddleShot: Seen in "Bart Star" and "Children of a Lesser Clod".
926* HugAndComment: Krusty and Sideshow Mel embrace after their ShowWithinAShow is back on the air. Then Mel murmurs "I love you Krusty", prompting him to recoil.
927%% * HumanLadder
928* HumanMail: In "Bart on the Road", Bart and his friends travel home in a shipment crate.
929* HummerDinger:
930** The episode "The Last Temptation of Krust" features the Canyonero. The truck's commercial jingle makes up the page quote. Homer complains that it's a women's car when he finds that his "F-series" model has lipstick holders built in instead of lighters, and proceeds to give it to Marge.
931** In another episode, [[TheAhnold Rainer Wolfcastle]] talks about his enormous Hummer with Homer.
932--->''Homer:'' What kind of gas milage do you get?\
933'''Wolfcastle:''' One highway, zero city.
934* TheHunterBecomesTheHunted: Mr. Burns says this while playing ''VideoGame/MsPacMan''.
935* HulkSpeak: A horse in "E-i-e-i-(Annoyed Grunt)" that has become addicted to [[GRatedDrug Tomacco]] falls into this, with terrifying results.
936-->'''''TOMACCOOOOO!'''''
937* HustlingTheMark: In one episode, Homer is hustled at checkers by a chicken. The bird was apparently clever enough to lose the first few games to build up Homer’s confidence.
938%% * TheHyena: Dr. Hibbert.
939* HyperventilationBag: Lisa did this once when she met a girl she thought was smarter than her.
940* HypnoFool: Used a few times. In the episode "The Blunder Years", Homer is regressed to 12 years old through hypnosis, which triggers a repressed memory that makes him scream incessantly until the next day. In the episode "Day of the Jackanapes", Bart is hypnotised by Sideshow Bob to blow up both himself and Krusty.
941* {{Hypocrite}}:
942** Many Lisa episodes will have her take a stand that's a complete flip-flop of her usual stance or the stance she took in a previous episode.
943** In “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge” Marge successfully forces the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon show to censor its violence. However when the same people who allied with her over this take issue with the nudity of Michaelangelo’s sculpture “David“ she defends the statue and is eventually forced to concede that it is hypocritical to censor one and not the other.
944** In "Krusty Gets Busted", it is revealed that Krusty, a spokesman for children's literacy, is actually illiterate:
945--->'''Prosecutor:''' Krusty, will you point out Exhibit B?\
946'''Krusty:''' Huh, wh- what do you mean?\
947'''Prosecutor:''' The one with the big "B" on it.\
948'''Krusty:''' Uh, uh---\
949'''Prosecutor:''' What's the matter, can't you read?\
950'''Krusty:''' ''[distraught]'' No, I can't, I'm totally illiterate! Are you happy?\
951'''Prosecutor:''' Could it be that the "king of children's literacy" is illiterate himself?\
952'''Krusty:''' Is it a crime to be illiterate?\
953'''Prosecutor:''' Alright, alright, so Krusty, this is a "B", and this is Exhibit B: betting slips! Indicating to this court that you have lost substantial amounts of money wagering on sports events.\
954'''Krusty:''' Is it a crime to bet on sporting events?\
955'''Prosecutor:''' Yes, it is!
956* HypocrisyNod: Sideshow Bob makes one of these in his televised rant against television.
957* HypocriticalHumor: Any "outsourcing" jokes, considering the animation of the show is done in South Korea.
958** InUniverse, Homer gets rightfully pissed off at Abe when Abe tells him "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS6E10GrampaVsSexualInadequacy You were an accident]]!" Marge points out that Homer tells that to Bart all the time, which Homer defends as being "cute" when ''[[MoralMyopia he]]'' [[MoralMyopia does it]].
959* HypotheticalFightDebate:
960** In the episode "Husbands And Knives", Bart asks Milo, the owner of a new comic book shop in town, who would win: ComicBook/{{The Th|ing}}ang or [[ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk the Mulk]]. Milo asks Bart what ''he'' thinks. Bart is impressed that a comic shop owner would encourage discussion rather than pontificating.
961** In the episode "Homer Goes To College", a group of nerds are tying up the phone line because some guy thinks [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration Captain Picard]] is better than [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Captain Kirk]] and naturally [[SeriousBusiness this just won't stand]].
962[[/folder]]

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