Characters / The Simpsons Extended Family

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Simpson Family

Grampa Abraham Jedediah "Abe" Simpson II

"I'm cold and there're wolves after me!"

Voiced by: Dan Castellaneta ^{Other Languages}Philippe Peythieu (European French), Jean-Louis Millette (Canadian French, Seasons 1-9), Hubert Gagnon (Canadian French, Seasons 9-27), Benoït Rousseau (Seasons 28-present)

Debut: "Grampa and the Kids"
Debut on The Simpsons: "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire"

Homer's elderly, cranky, senile father, a sergeant in WW2. For all Homer's failures as a father-figure, his father has proven he was worse.

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• Abusive Parents: There's at least one flashback that shows him strangling young Homer just like Homer now does to Bart. And one where Grampa's father Orville does it to him (whilst Orville's own father is strangling him too). Must be a Simpson trait. However, the main trait was that he was very emotionally abusive of Homer, often calling him a failure and overall not being an encouraging or supporting parent.
• Ambiguous Gender Identity: In "Cape Feare," after The Simpsons move away in order to escape from Sideshow Bob, Abraham needs to get into their old house because he needs his pills. At the end of the episode, he somehow turns into a woman due to not taking said pills.
• Ambiguously Bi: He obviously married a woman (even if the relationship was terrible), homophobic, and Homer even has some half-siblings due to Abe sleeping around. However...
  • He enjoys dreaming of being the Queen of the Old West (and marrying two gunslingers at the same time), and when he transforms into a woman after being off his meds, he is pretty excited about Jasper's interest in him.
  • In "Homer the Great", when Homer wants to join the Stonecutters' Lodge:
    Ok, I'm an Elk, a Mason, a Communist, the president of The Gay and Lesbian Alliance for some reason. Oh, here it is... The Stone Cutters.
  • In "Gorgeous Grampa", the Simpson family bids on a storage unit containing mysterious clothing and make-up, and Marge decides to lend her unconditional support to Grampa, only for him to reveal that in his younger days, he was a professional wrestler with a Gorgeous George gimmick.
  • "Mad About the Toy" reveals that Abe repressed questions about his sexuality for many years after being kissed by another man, due to believing homosexuality to be incompatible with masculinity and with any attraction to women. However, kissing the same man again causes him to conclude that he's 100% straight after all.
  • In a flashback in "Mothers and Other Strangers", when Mona, who is in disguise as a male doctor, gives him a kiss before leaving, Abe asks if they can talk, though it's unclear if he recognizes her as Mona.
• Awful Wedded Life: With Mona from the start and even before that. Abe was a neglectful and abusive man who treated Mona and Homer terribly. Mona found his flirtation annoying when they first met and he cheated on her with a carnival prostitute (whom he also impregnated) when they started dating. It boggles the mind that the two actually got married in the first place. In "Let's Go Fly a Coot," Abe claims he won her heart with a Grand Romantic Gesture, implying that it was pretty much the only thing she ever liked him for: he warns Bart to be himself when it comes to girls as winning someone over with atypical behavior can easily cover up fundamental incompatibility.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He may be a senile old man who spouts nonsense but when things gets serious, Grampa's old soldier instincts will kick in.
• Blood Knight: "Mad About the Toy" reveals that he enjoyed killing strangers when he was in the army and therefore never became a Shell-Shocked Veteran.
• Bowdlerization: Conversed in "You Kent Always Say What You Want". Grampa talks about how television in his day couldn't say the following words: booby, tushy, burp, fanny burp, water closet, underpants, hot dog, dingle-dingle, Boston marriage, LBJ, Titicaca, or front lumps.
• Butt-Monkey: Is often ignored, treated with contempt, and otherwise left to rot at the nursing home (which is implied to be just like the crooked home Homer saw on 60 Minutes) by his own son, after Grampa sold his old house (that he won during the 1950s quiz show scandal) and used the money to pay for the house Homer lives in now. Homer's treatment of Abe seems to reflect the emotional abuse and lack of support Abe provided for him in his youth. He is giving what he got.
• Character Development: Before Mona abandoned Homer, Abe was a couch potato who spent his days watching television, drinking beer, and neglecting his family. When Mona left, Abe is noticeably cleaner, responsible (albeit still neglectful and bitter), and making sacrifices for Homer's wellbeing.
• Characterization Marches On: Early seasons tended to show him as being an inattentive, drunk father towards Homer. A number of newer episodes have focused on softening him, showing him as a lonely man who watched many of his dreams go up in smoke and who often did more for his son than Homer ever knew. However, it is acknowledged that he is not perfect and that he made plenty of mistakes that affected Homer in the long run.
• Cool Old Guy:
  • In "The Curse of the Flying Hellfish", he performs a variety of feats to save Bart and take back the paintings from Mr. Burns.
  • This also includes his time as a pro wrestler! "You're the luckiest people in the world: you get to look at ME!" His moves included posing for a painted portrait in the middle of the ring, then grabbing it and smashing it over the babyface's head. He was a monster, and it was awesome.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Due to his senility, most of what he says is absolute nonsense. Some examples include supposedly fighting in World War I as a toddler and tying onions around his belt as a fashion accessory
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite the fact that he's senile, cranky and a bit of a harmless nuisance most of the time, on occasion, we can see just why he rose to the rank of Master Sergeant in the US Army and why he is not someone you mess with. In his one encounter with Mr. Burns he completely mops the floor with the old miser despite Mr. Burns having every advantage imaginable in the situation including being armed.
• Cruel Mercy: Give this to Monty Burns in "Curse of the Flying Hellfish", proving that he's still a badass underneath.
  Abe: I ain't gonna kill ya! That'd be cowardly! Monty Burns cowardly! I'm just gonna watch you squirm...
• Dad the Veteran: Abe served in the Army, Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force, and was in the Second World War.
• December–December Romance: Has had several, with Marge's mom, Beatrice, and a hoochie named Zelda.
• Disappeared Dad: Not to Homer but to Homer's illegitimate half-siblings - Abbey and Herbert - who were both born from his short-lived affairs.
• Disguised in Drag: Has dressed as a female on several occasions, including in 1942 when he dressed in drag and played for a female baseball team to avoid fighting in the war and another incident where he wore a dress for a while ("Oh, they had designers back then").
• Everyone Has Standards: While he was by no means a good father to Homer, he showed genuine anger towards Mona for abandoning Homer due to her criminal lifestyle, revealing that the only reason he lied about her death in the first place was that he didn't want Homer to live with the knowledge that his mother was a criminal.
• Fanboy: Of Matlock, like all the senior citizens of Springfield. He even votes for a new expressway to be named in his honor, in spite of it being in the way of his family's home.
• Fatal Flaw: Abe’s biggest failing is that he doesn’t handle adversity that well when it comes to relationships. When a relationship starts going downhill he just doesn’t seem to know how to fix it. He either ignores the problem or actively feeds into it. He did the former with Homer and the latter with Mona.
• Grandparent Favoritism: He has shown plenty of times to have more love and respect for his grandchildren than his son and in particular is closest to his oldest grandchild and only grandson, Bart.
• Grandparental Obliviousness: He often doesn't pay attention, which generally has bad consequences.
• Grumpy Old Man: Grumpier than Homer.
• Heel–Face Turn: Literal example, in "Gorgeous Grampa", he wrestled as Gorgeous Godfrey, a notorious heel, whom he played as a vain selfish man. Everyone hated him, save for Burns, so he retired. He came out of retirement per Burns's request, and began to enjoy being a bad guy. When Bart becomes his wrestling partner, he sees the effect it has on Bart's outlook, so he becomes a face, Honest Abe, for his last match.
• Hiding Your Heritage: In "The Color Yellow", Abe reveals that Virgil Simpson actually escaped from the slavers with Mabel Simpson and they eventually married. When Lisa asks why he hid this from the family, he reveals that he had to hide his heritage due to institutional racism.
• I Was Quite a Looker: "I was once the handsomest man in Albany, New York!"
• Jerkass Has a Point: While Abe is hardly a good parent, his anger towards Mona is justified. Abe is upset at Mona not because she left him, but more because she abandoned Homer. When Mona calls Abe out for lying to Homer about her being dead, he replies that this was better than telling him the truth, which was that she abandoned her family on impulse and didn't think twice about how it could affect her maternal responsibilities.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: At times, particularly in his younger days, despite being a gruff, uninterested father figure, he did dress up as Santa Claus for Christmas to cheer up Homer, and sold his house in order to allow Homer and Marge to buy a place of their own. And he does care about his grandchildren.
• Karma Houdini: He won his house on a crooked '50s game show. He then ratted on everybody and got off scot-free.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • It's often demonstrated that while he did sacrifice a lot for Homer, he was ultimately a disinterested, neglectful, unsupporting and sometimes downright emotionally abusive parent to Homer. Homer's own treatment of him now that he's a frail old man is in many ways Abe reaping what he's sown.
  • A throwaway line in "The Winter of His Content" mentions that he put his own father in a home and never visits him. This surprises Bart and Lisa, who didn't realise Great-Grandpa Orville was still alive.
• Medal of Dishonor: Apparently, he was so inept at clearing minefields that he was awarded the Iron Cross in World War 2 while serving in the US Army.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Even just the versions of his past that are confirmed as true (and not senile ramblings) by other characters should be self-contradictory. Apparently they're all true and none of them are true at the same time.
• The Münchausen: Although there is the occasional implication that his rambling and nonsensical stories are actually true, or at least have grains of truth in them. There is also at least one implication that he is actually aware that he is rambling nonsense, but does it anyways because he thinks his grandkids don't actually pay attention to his stories anyways.
  "You mean I have to think of an ending to this nonsense?!"
• Never My Fault: During a flashback in "Bart Star", Abe sneers at his son Homer that he would fail the gymnastics routine, which he does, despite the fact that it was Abe's fault for yelling at Homer that he would fail, which caused him to lose concentration during his routine and fall to the ground in a heap. To add insult to injury, Abe's bitter condemnation to Homer — immediately after yelling "You're gonna blow it" at him — is "That's what I get for having faith in you," which crushes Homer's confidence in a matter of seconds.
• Noodle Incident: He claims he once shot down a German plane. In 1995.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Zigzagged. When asked if he's stalling the FBI or just senile in "Mother Simpson", he says that he's doing both. On some occasions, Abe is shown to be exaggerating various traits such as senility, rather than faking them outright as most examples of this trope do, which is very good for catching people off guard.
• Papa Wolf: Quite protective of his grandson Bart, although not so much for his actual son, Homer.
  • Mr. Burns tries to drown Bart as a way of stopping Grampa from pursuing him. Grampa's response is to drive into the lake after Bart, free Bart from the box Mr. Burns had trapped him in and bring him back to the surface, and then pursue Mr. Burns by waterskiing with his bare feet to eventually reach Burns's boat. Cue the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
  • Despite his treatment towards Homer during his childhood, one episode shows that to prevent Mr. Burns killing Homer's beloved dog, Abe sent the dog to a farm upstate and allowed Burns to punish him instead.
• Parental Substitute: Abraham and Bart have more of a father-son relationship than either of them do with Homer, their actual respective son and father. The episode "Barthood" shows just how much Bart loves his Grampa, and they have bonded in other episodes.
• Parents as People: Abe is a complex character as a parent for Homer, he was neglectful of Homer's emotional needs and he rushed into marrying Mona and it soon became loveless and toxic. When Mona left, Abe thought it best to tell Homer that she died than tell him that Mona had to abandon him after making a law-breaking mistake without considering how it will impact her family. When Mona left, Grampa had to step up and fill the void that Mona left despite his own bitterness and rage on the matter. Despite his flaws, Abe does love Homer and made enough personal sacrifices to prove it.
• Perma-Stubble: Like Homer, he's one of the few characters who has a stubble beard. Must be a family trait because even adult Bart has the same beard line in some future episodes.
• Rambling Old Man Monologue: Practically the Trope Codifier.
  "So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now where was I … Oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. You couldn't get white onions because of the war; the only things you could get was those big yellow ones…"
  • Parodied twice: The first was in "Double, Double, Boy In Trouble", where in the middle of Grampa's ramble, "Bart" (actually Simon Woosterfield) exclaims shock and pride that Grampa shot a buffalo. Grampa then turns around and expresses shock that "Bart" was even listening to his ramble, and complains about now having to find an ending to his nonsense. The second is in "Thursdays with Abie" after Homer saves his life from an Ax-Crazy humanitarian journalist trying to kill him, and rewards Homer with the opportunity to have his "first ramble", indicating that it's a family tradition to have the Simpson males do rambling.
• Real Men Hate Affection: He does love his family, he's just too grumpy and bitter to express it in an emotionally healthy way.
• Refugee from Time: His background as a WWII veteran has never changed. Interestingly, the sixth season episode "Lisa's Wedding", set in 2010 (and aired in 1995), vaguely implied he was dead via his conspicuous absence, though nothing was said on the matter.
• Retired Badass: It turns out he's a World War II veteran and his stories about his fighting days are generally true (except for the one where he posed as a German cabaret singer and flirted with Hitler, until his fake boob popped out. The only true thing about that was that he wore a dress for a time in the 1940s and that the designers back then were better than the ones today). And apparently he also used to be a professional wrestler. It resurfaces when Burns tries to drown Bart during the hunt for the art tontine.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Provides the page image. Abraham "Grampa" Simpson has a pretty heavily eroded mind. This can range from simple forgetfulness to being completely divorced from reality. He once kept two policemen occupied by claiming to be the Lindbergh baby and wanting his "fly-fly dada". When the police ask if he's trying to stall them, or if he's just senile, he admits it's "a little from Column A, a little from Column B". This is consistently played for laughs.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: His conversations sometimes get dirtier than Homer's.
• Senior Sleep-Cycle: Always falls asleep mid-sentence, like when he's singing "The Funky Grampa" or when he complains about how bad Star Trek XII: So Very Tired was.
• Sergeant Rock: Abe was one of these in World War II.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: There are very occasional hints that part of the reasons for him being such a jerk is because he's this.
• Sissy Villain: As "Glamorous Godfrey", his heel of a wrestling persona.
• The Sixth Ranger: Occasionally fills this role, when the family isn't actively avoiding him.
• Solid Cartoon Facial Stubble: The brown area surrounding Abe's mouth is a shorthand way of animating his stubble.
• Took a Level in Kindness: During Homer's childhood, Abe was not exactly the best father or husband. In the present day, he is a much better person, especially to his grandchildren.
• Unexplained Recovery: He recovers from a variety of disturbing conditions.
• Unreliable Narrator: His stories have little to no truth in them. He even lied to Homer when he was 9 that Mona died while he was at the movies.
• Vague Age: "God only knows", as Marge puts it. To make it especially confusing, in "The Mansion Family", Kent Brockman is trying to determine the oldest person in town by having everyone stand up and then sit down when Brockman calls out a number greater than their age. At about eighty, Grampa sits down, and then at ninety, he stands up again. One episode says he's 83 (this obviously cannot be the case anymore since he's also a WW2 veteran). Another episode shows him as a young child during World War I, yet another says he was spanked as a child by Grover Cleveland, who died in 1908, those those could perhaps be Hand Waved away from his senility. Not helping are episodes showing he's got at least two decades on even-vaguer-aged Mister Burns.
• War Hero: Abe is usually this. How heroic he was exactly is Depending on the Writer.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: A good deal of Homer's personal problems stem from Abe's Abusive Parenting (which is portrayed as eerily similar to Homer's own treatment of Bart). In turn Homer stuffed him in a nursing home at the first call and often attempts to ignore his existence. They do get genuine moments of bonding at times however.
• When I Was Your Age...: He loves these.

Grandma Mona Penelope Simpson (née Olsen)

Voiced by: Glenn Close, Maggie Roswell, Tress MacNeille, Pamela Hayden

Debut: "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"

A militant hippie in her youth, she had to leave Homer and her husband alike when Homer was young because she made an enemy of Mr. Burns and fled into the hippy underground. Sincerely loves her family, and desperately wants to be with them. Dies in her third appearance.

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• Action Mom: She never let being a mother stop her from being a political activist, up to and including what are technically acts of eco-terrorism, like "bombing" Mr. Burns' germ weapons lab with antibiotics to kill off his microbe cultures.
• Awful Wedded Life: With Abe pretty much right from the start.
• Cool Old Lady: Especially in contrast with Homer's father. She's a hippie, educated and cultured, and she bonds with her grandchildren, especially book-smart Lisa who finally feels she is a Simpson.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: A deconstructed example. She had to leave her family when she helped Mr. Burns after her group sabotaged him, because he identified her as a criminal. While she did have good reasons for leaving the family, the reasons for the events leading up to it were the opposite. Mona did not balance her duties as a mother with her Granola Girl lifestyle and political activism properly, which would lead her to trouble with the law. When Abe calls Mona out following her first return, he reveals that his anger towards her was not over leaving him, but more over abandoning Homer. A couple of flashbacks show a glimpse of the period between her introduction to activism and disappearance, and shown that she had become a bit more negligent over time (though still better than Abe.)
• Doting Grandparent: Mona immediately bonds with her grandchildren when she first meets them, especially Lisa, who always treated herself as an outsider among the family, due to their intelligence. It is also reveals that Mona secretly visited her grandson's birth even when she is on the run.
• Dying Alone: Homer feels plenty of guilt over the fact he never got to forgive his mother before she died.
• Faking the Dead: She has faked her own death a couple times and, before that, Abe lied to Homer about Mona having died.
• Family Theme Naming: With her first-born granddaughter, Lisa. Together, their names create "Mona Lisa" - which are regularly used for puns in episode titles such a "Moaning Lisa" and "Mona Leaves-a". Matt Groening originally gave her name as "Penelope Olsen" on a family tree but the writers changed it to "Mona" (turning "Penelope" into her middle name) to create a connection between the two and explain where Lisa got her intelligence and activist personality from.
• Farmer and the Viper: The reason why she was forced to abandon her family, Mr Burns saw her identity when she had helped him up after he was trampled by the other hippies.
• Foil: To Abe. Abe is a senile, cranky, and unpleasant old man who goes off on wild tangents and generally annoys Homer and his family, albeit his wear and tear largely coming from all he has gone through with his family. Mona has aged with dignity, retained all of her faculties, and is someone Homer and his family loves to have around, though is left with an incredibly distant relationship due to her abandonment.
• Granola Girl: Deconstructed. Her extreme involvement in the hippie movement, as well as political activism, cost Mona her reputation with the law as well as her chance to be a mother to Homer.
• Greasy Spoon: She worked as a waitress at an Air Force station diner before becoming marrying Abe and becoming a housewife.
• I Was Quite a Looker: She was quite good-looking in her youth.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk:
  • Abe and Mona learned about Herb around the time they were married. Her response to this was to use it as an excuse to cheat on him invoking Good Adultery, Bad Adultery. However, she continued to hypocritically hold Herb over Abe’s head, even after she became pregnant and didn’t even know if Homer was Abe’s. Once Abe realized he would always be Forgiven, but Not Forgotten and Stopped Caring their resulting bad marriage caused her to eventually join the hippy movement where she never stopped cheating on him.
  • Her response to Homer accusing her of being a Disneyland Dad was to change her will not only manipulating Homer into putting himself and his family in danger, but showing that she did just come back to confront Burns.
• Missing Mom: Mona wants to be with her family, but her visits to Homer put the entire Simpson family at a risk of getting into trouble with the law, all because Mr. Burns had her criminalized for ruining a germ lab. Even worse, she got arrested a second time for a technicality that was arranged by Burns, and upon escaping the bus taking her to jail, was forced to abandon her family again.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: She stopped to help Mr. Burns up after he'd been trampled by her cohorts, following her hippie group's sabotage of his biological weapons. This made her a wanted criminal since they ended up getting her photo.
• The One That Got Away: Abe never really got over Mona, which becomes especially clear after her death.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: This is why she got into the hippie lifestyle; she was opposed to many of the decisions of big businesses and the government, and felt that she needed to do something about it, even if it made her a criminal.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: A meta example. "Mother Simpson" aired during the seventh season and averting the trope was the initial impetus to producing the episode. Showrunners Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein admitted surprise that in all those years the status of Homer's mother had never been given on-screen. (She had been seen a couple times in flashbacks, but her present-day whereabouts had never been mentioned until "Mother Simpson.") In an issue of Simpsons Illustrated, published years before Mona's debut, a reader wrote in asking where Homer's mom was. The editors said that Homer's mom "went to the grocery store one day and never came back".

Herbert "Herb" Powell

"[I]n America, you're never finished as long as you've got a brain in your head, because all a man really needs is an idea."

Voiced by: Danny DeVito

Debut: "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"

Herbert "Herb" Powell is Homer Simpson's seldom-seen long-lost older half-brother. He is first mentioned by Abraham Simpson when Homer comes to Abe's side after Abe suffers a heart attack. Herbert is also the half-uncle of Bart, Lisa, and Maggie.

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• The Alcoholic: It is implied that Herb drinks due to stress - in the EA mobile game Tapped Out, Herb has a number of drinking-based tasks.
• Cool Uncle: He is a really nice uncle to Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, even insisting that they call him "Unkie Herb".
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Responsible to Homer's Foolish.
• Hates Rich People: He is a Deconstruction as he himself is the rich and successful owner of Power Motors, but is a Self-Made Man who made his way to the top. His company consists of pretentious wealthy know-it-alls who he wears his contempt for on his sleeve. His downfall in fact comes from deciding to have his next car designed by Homer, a common man he believes is more in touch with his consumers, intentionally ignoring any concerns by his staff that this might fail. The project bombs, Powell Motors is bankrupt, and Herb's second appearance revolves around him trying to work his way back to success again.
  Herb: Why did I ever hire you Harvard dead-heads?
  Executive: Because you went there.
  Herb: Yeah, but Mommy and Daddy didn't pay my way. I had to work my way through, washing your dishes and scrubbing toilets!
  Executive: Oh yeah, I remember you.
• Hypocrite Has a Point: He has as much part in the bankruptcy of his company as Homer, leaving him to build the car and failing to manage and overlook development. On the other hand, he is right to blame Homer for going mad with power and making absurdly unproductive and expensive creative decisions, draining well above his funding after Herb specifically asked him to make a car "for the common man". Herb is as much a Pointy-Haired Boss as Homer proved to be, but he at least has common sense to make cars that can market to working class, and on paper wasn't wrong to assume Homer, an actual working class man who constantly has money woes, should have had the same logic.
• Ignored Epiphany: He blames his bankruptcy completely on Homer, and even when he regains his wealth, his closure is to forgive Homer for causing it. A gag in "Changing Of The Guardian" implies Herb actually habitually loses his fortune, seemingly never learning from his mistakes.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In "Brother Can You Spare Two Dimes". He treats Homer pretty badly (due to still not forgiving him) and only hunts him down to use his money, but he is a good uncle and gives every family member their own gift on top of paying the money back. And Herb eventually does forgive Homer, calls him "brother" again, and buys him the massage chair he wanted.
• Lonely at the Top: Herb is overjoyed to learn that he has a birth family and bonds with his nieces and nephew, and - in his role as CEO - allows Homer to design a car.
• Mean Boss: Herb is extremely dismissive and temperamental to his employees, viewing them as privileged idiots (in stark contrast to his own upbringing). This ends up his own undoing, as he refuses to take their warnings of Homer's incompetence seriously, and forces them to continue with his doomed project until it's too late. They apparently know not to give what people want.
• Never My Fault: Herb blames Homer for ruining his company despite putting him in charge, shelving all other projects and outright ignoring his employees' warnings, who despite being 'Harvard dead-heads' as he put it still know enough about business to be on the board of a car company. He also lives extremely lavishly, suggesting that his immediate destitution upon his company's bankruptcy was because he was living well beyond his means.
• Rags to Riches: In "Brother Can You Spare Two Dimes", Homer gives Herb $2,000 (from the power plant, as compensation for making him sterile from radiation), which Herb uses to build an invention that translates baby babble into comprehensible English, based on observations he made of Maggie Simpson. He proceeds to mass-produce his new product and regain his fortune. After going back to living a rich life, a throwaway line in "Changing of the Guardian" revealed he once more lost his fortune. Somehow.
• Riches to Rags: When Herb invites Homer to make a car, thinking he will have some idea of what the average man is looking for, Homer ignores all the advice he's given, while Herb ignores all the warnings from his advisors. The car has a horrible design aesthetic and a ridiculous price tag of $82,000. The car is called "blunder of the century", and sends the already ailing company into bankruptcy, and Herb into the street. While he manages to make his fortune back in Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?, he's back to being poor again in Changing of the Guardians.
• Self-Made Man: He grew up in Shelbyville Orphanage, washed cars for his college classmates to pay for his education and became a car manufacturer, with said classmates being now his board of directors.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With Homer. He is an intelligent, ambitious, charismatic, passionate, but also lonely person.
• Son of a Whore: Came about as a result of Grampa's fling with a carnival woman who'd do things Mona never would, like have sex for money. He was later adopted by the Powell family.

Bouvier Family

Grandpa Clarence "Clancy" Bouvier

Voided by: Harry Shearer

Debut: "The Way We Was"

Marge, Patty, and Selma's deceased father. He was of French origin.

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• Excellent Judge of Character: He is the only member of the family who preferred Homer over Artie as Marge's choice of prom date.
• Posthumous Character: He's already dead by the start of the show and is only seen in a few flashbacks.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Downplayed in "Fear of Flying". He worked as a flight attendant in an era when most of them were women. As a result, he was insecure about it and lied to Marge saying he was a pilot. Marge was also ashamed of this until her therapist told him that male flight attendants are more common in modern times which makes Clancy a trailblazer.
• Sir Swearsalot: Used to work as a baby photographer but his foul mouth cost him his job.
• Smoking Is Not Cool: He was a heavy smoker like Patty and Selma. Puffless reveals he died of lung cancer.
• Token Good Teammate: Other than Marge, Clancy seems to be only nice one among the Bouvier family despite his foul mouth.
• Vocal Evolution: Harry Shearer's voice for the character is basically all over the place. In his first appearance in "The Way We Was", he basically reuses his Marvin Monroe voice, then completely changes his voice for "Fear of Flying". Then he changes his voice again in "Homerzilla", though his brief line ("Lucky me") makes it difficult to tell what voice they were going for. He went back to a gruff voice in "Bart's Not Dead" and "Homer's Adventures Through the Windshield", both bearing little resemblance to Monroe.
• You Don't Look Like You: His design tends to change depending on the episode.

Grandma Jacqueline Ingrid Bouvier (née Gurney)

Voiced by: Julie Kavner

Debut: "Moaning Lisa"

Marge, Patty, and Selma's mother.

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• Abusive Parents: Of the Emotional variety, it's suggested that Marge's repressions and insecurities were to be blamed on Jacqueline pushing Marge to repress her feelings like a "good girl", with "Moaning Lisa" stating her motivation being that Margie needs to smile so everyone will know what a good mommy she has. There is also her allowing Selma and Patty to smoke so they'd be more popular.
• Beehive Hairdo: Identical to Marge's, but completely grey.
• Flat Character: She's Marge's grouchy mother but that's about it.
• I Was Quite a Looker: In her youth, she looked nigh-identical to Marge, even telling Abe she was a guy magnet, which irritated her friends to no end.
• Jerkass: One of the first things she's introduced as saying is telling Marge "you never do anything right".
• Makeup Is Evil: Back in The '70s, on Marge's prom night, Jacqueline has Marge pinch her cheeks to make them look rosier, urging her to try and break some capillaries. Marge asks if she can just use rouge instead. Jacqueline replies, "Ladies pinch, whores use rouge."
• Mysterious Past: In contrast to Grampa Simpson's extensive covering of his backstory, little is said or shown about Grandma Bouvier's past.
• Named After Somebody Famous: She shares her name with John F. Kennedy's wife.
• Not So Above It All: She joins in the rest of the family in singing the Armor Hot Dog song at Maggie's birthday, followed by the Chicken Tonight jingle.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: Doesn't think too highly of Homer, though even she thinks Patty and Selma go too far with their dislike of him.
• Old Shame: In-universe, she was once arrested for indecent exposure - showing her ankles at the beach.
• Parental Favoritism: Implied, Marge is very close to her mother and she doesn't think highly of Patty and Selma's attitude towards Homer.
• Parental Neglect: She continued to allow Patty and Selma to smoke because she thought it made them look cool, even after their father died of lung cancer.
• Secret-Keeper: On the topic of her husband's death. (He died of lung cancer.)
• Skewed Priorities: Despite her husband dying from lung cancer after being a smoker for most of his adult life, she keeps allowing Selma and Patty to smoke just because it makes them look cool. But in general her preoccupations with appearances and popularity and being a proper woman have pretty much negatively influenced all her daughters.
• Stepford Smiler: The flashback in "Moaning Lisa" shows that she instilled this mindset into Marge when she was younger.
• The Stoic: She is rarely seen emoting usually being very grouchy and aloof.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Lampshaded in a DVD commentary by Matt Groening, that they just "took Marge's model and squashed it a bit".
• Writers Cannot Do Math: Although it's technically possible, the ages given for Jacqueline and Marge at the beginning of the series (80 and 34, respectively) would mean that she gave birth to Marge at 45 or 46. Even later RetCons of Marge's age as being closer to 40 would only shave off a few years. Patty and Selma being only a few years older (as Selma's ticking biological clock is an important element of her own storyline) suggests that she mothered all of her children over the age of 40.
• Young Future Famous People: Not her, but her childhood friends included people like "little" Sylvia Plath.

Patricia "Patty" and Selma Bouvier

Voiced by: Julie Kavner ^{Other Languages}Véronique Augereau (European French), Chantal Baril (Canadian French, Patty), Johanne Garneau (Canadian French, Selma)

Debut: "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire"

Marge's older twin sisters, who are addicted to smoking and notoriously crabby. Both dislike Homer intensely, especially Patty, who hates almost all men.

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Tropes applying to both

• Berserk Button: Do NOT speak ill of MacGyver in their presence.
• Big Sister Bully: Both of them were this to Marge especially when they were younger. Marge's flashbacks have shown that she's pretty much gotten her doormat personality from Patty and Selma's constant bullying. This is mostly gone in the present, where both generally act less hostile than usual when speaking with Marge, and often express worry that Homer won't be able to sufficiently care for her. Despite this, Selma admits that at least part of her hatred of Homer was due to her jealousy over Marge getting married before her, showing that they still hold some hostility towards her but choose to convey it indirectly.
• The Bore: Across the first few seasons the kids fall asleep during a slideshow of their trip to Mexico and clearly don't enjoy being babysat by them while Marge was destressing at a spa considering when Homer picks them up, they run up to him and climb his legs.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Patty wears a pink dress and Selma wears a blue dress.
• Deadpan Snarker: Both, especially towards Homer.
• Divergent Character Evolution: They were originally nearly identical in every way, with one having a slightly darker hair color. Later on Patty has more of an afro hairstyle while Selma's was bell shaped. The personality tropes they have in common were apparent from the start, while the ones that differentiate them have developed over the course of the show. According to Marge "Patty has chosen a life of celibacy, Selma had celibacy thrust upon her." Subsequently, Patty was revealed to be a lesbian, while Selma has had multiple short-lived marriages.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Especially where Homer is concerned.
• Everyone Has Standards: They dislike Homer with a passion (though the dislike varies between them) but they're both willing to warn Marge when it looks like he might be targeted for seduction and rape ala The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Even if the thought of helping Homer disgusts them, the thought of him getting raped is a line they won't cross.
  Patty: It's an act of violence, not love.
• Fictional Fan, Real Celebrity: They are huge fans of MacGyver, so when they meet his actor, Richard Dean Anderson, they act like Loony Fans, going so far as to kidnap him.
• Flanderization: They went from just making mean jokes about Homer being fat, ugly, and a lousy father and husband who should never have knocked up their baby sister Marge to kidnapping him and locking him in a dirty bathroom a la Saw.
  • In earlier seasons, Patty was merely uninterested in dating, and actually had a serious relationship with Seymour Skinner before determining that she couldn't abandon Selma to a relationship with Barney. Later in the series, her disinterest in men was exaggerated... to the point that she became a lesbian.
  • At the same time, Selma was originally portrayed as a lonely singleton in her thirties, hoping to still find love. Later on her man-craziness and multiple failed marriages became a Running Gag, and she was married off to practically every single man in Springfield at some point or another, and always doomed for divorce.
• Formerly Fit: Back when they were younger, they had curvy hourglass figures (but still those bad attitudes, the voices, and those faces) and now they're very chubby.
• Hypocrite: Both of them frequently snipe at Homer for being fat, but Patty and Selma are far from being thin mints themselves. They also often mock him for being a loser and a failure, but their lives are hardly anything to brag about either.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: In addition to being Color-Coded for Your Convenience, Patty has a circular afro with triangular earrings, Selma has an M-shaped hairstyle with circular earrings (though in some early episodes, Selma's earrings were S-shaped).
• Jerkass: Once, they went so far as to murder Homer (technically they did so twice; in "the Great Louse Detective", they threw a cinderblock at a dummy, which tore the dummy's head off, thinking it was him). Marge has actually said they just wanted him to suffer.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Their low opinion of Homer isn't completely unwarranted. His antics do tend to result in trouble for the family, and their concerns about his ability to care for Marge are shown several times to have a basis in reality. This just isn't so obvious because they tend to harangue him anytime they meet, even when Homer is trying to be civil to them, resulting in Not Helping Your Case due to their sheer obnoxiousness. Their argument is further hurt by the fact that they've attempted to kill him more than once, while he's saved their necks at least once.
• Kavorka Man: Female examples. Many Springfieldians consider them to be ugly, and their personalities aren't anything to write home about either, yet they have dated many people over the years, with Selma in particular managing to find several different men willing to marry her
• Loony Fan: In "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore", they finally meet MacGyver star Richard Dean Anderson, who was actually in Springfield for a Stargate SG-1 convention, and he's less than thrilled speaking about MacGyver. So, they kidnap him.
• Maiden Aunt: Both embody the "bitter spinster" archetype to a T.
• Must Have Nicotine: They are very heavy smokers, and started at a very young age.
• My Biological Clock Is Ticking: In the early seasons, this defines Selma, who (as Marge famously puts it) "had celibacy thrust upon her". This is also why she frequently marries, in hopes that Mr. Right will provide her with children. Ironically the one time she was all set to have children with one of her husbands, that husband was Troy McClure and they were in a loveless, sham marriage, so she declined and ended the relationship. Eventually she gave up entirely and adopted a baby instead.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Out of the Bouvier sisters, Marge is nice (much more pleasant than her sisters), Patty is mean (the more embittered and spiteful of the twins), and Selma is in-between (initially cynical like Patty but has more Character Development and becomes slightly more sympathetic towards Homer).
• Obnoxious In-Laws: They hate Homer so much they've nonchalantly reacted to his heart attack then proceeded to find Marge a new man despite the fact that he hadn't died, bought a tombstone with "Homer J. Simpson. We are richer for having lost him.", tried to get him kicked out of town, and kidnapped/tortured him during his renewal of his vows with Marge. This doesn't even include the verbal insults. There are rare occasions where they (individually or together) get along with Homer, usually due to some extenuating circumstances.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: While the reason behind their dislike of Homer is very immature of Patty and Selma (due to resentment of their little sister getting married earlier than they have), they still aren't wrong for their dislike of him.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Not necessarily from each other although there are differences, but they're quite a bit different from Marge. Patty and Selma are fairly disagreeable, ugly, and completely oblivious to their own faults. Marge on the other hand is agreeable (sometimes to her detriment), attractive, and recognizes that she's not perfect. And then there's their opinions on Homer...
• Single-Minded Twins: Initially. Over time, both have developed more distinct personality traits as individuals, particularly Selma.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Towards Homer. While the two have professed multiple reasons to dislike Homer, there is always an undercurrent that they look down on him and view themselves as better than he will ever be. Homer is a bit bumbling, but manages to support the family in slightly above average comfort through his job at the nuclear plant, while Patty and Selma share an apartment while having jobs at the DMV, making any times they profess superiority towards him come across as largely unmerited.
• Smoking Is Not Cool: Selma provides the image for the page itself. They are also are very unpleasant company (especially to Homer).
• Smoky Voice: Due to being heavy smokers on top of Bouvier genetics, their voices are even raspier and much deeper than Marge's.
• The Stoic: They speak in apathetic, bitter groans at all times, especially in the earlier episodes. Later on, both, particularly Selma, are shown to be capable of having much more emotional reactions to certain things.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In earlier seasons, their abuse towards Homer was mostly in the form of verbal jabs and insults. In later seasons (notably in "The Great Louse Detective" and "Wedding for Disaster"), they're willing to flat-out murder him.
• The Unfettered: They will do anything to ensure that Marge divorces Homer, even if it ruins both of their lives (and their children's lives) in the process.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: In “Treehouse of Horror XII,” they use this tactic to hide the Pierce Brosnan/HAL 9000’s self-destruct drive. He’s so horrified at the prospect he resorts to trying to bludgeon himself to death rather than reach in after it.

Patty

• Ambiguously Gay: Was hinted at a few times before she came out.
• Does Not Like Men: While it's subverted with Selma who comes off like this at times, but is actually obsessed with finding a husband and having a child, Patty plays this trope straight.
• Foreshadowing: Patty is seen leaving the burlesque house in "Bart After Dark", and is in the "in the closet" float (along with Mr. Smithers) in the Gay Pride Parade in the beginning of "Jaws Wired Shut", as well as numerous other hints.
• Hates Being Touched: Zigzagged. She really doesn't like being touched in general, but she rather likes getting a foot rub, which is part of why she starts warming up to Seymour Skinner during their brief romance.
• Hate Sink: While Selma is shown time and time again to have Hidden Depths, Patty has little characterization outside of her hatred of Homer. Not only that, but it's also shown that she dominates her sister, and it's implied that she's holding Selma back from becoming a better person, a la Butthead to Beavis. It's clear that she was purposely made to be unlikable.
• Hidden Depths: She is fluent in several fantasy languages.
• If It's You, It's Okay: Patty's fixation with MacGyver may dance around Fridge Logic after the revelation that she's gay. This is lampshaded in The Simpsons Game, where she out-and-out says she's a lesbian "in general", but when it comes to MacGyver, she's "straight as an arrow". This also seems to be the case with Seymour, since Patty seemed to genuinely love him romantically and only broke up with him to be with Selma. Wait, not like that.
• Jerkass: She is by a long shot the more embittered and spiteful of the two. Especially when it comes to Homer.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While she is a bigger jerk than her sisters, she does love them both dearly. When Patty came out as a lesbian, it really meant the world to her to have Marge's acceptance.
• Pet the Dog: Patty softens up to Homer when she leaves Selma over an argument, and despite Homer's usual disdain (he bleaches his eyes when he sees her in the shower and preemptively bleaches Bart's eyes, who thanks him for it), she takes it because she knows taking her as a guest is hard. She also admits that she envies him and Marge for having so much while all she has is her twin sister.
• The Reveal: Patty is a lesbian.
• Satellite Character: For nearly half the series, Patty existed as the more callous of Marge's older sisters and nothing else while Selma received several focus episodes revealing her to be a sympathetic Jerk with a Heart of Gold. This was finally rectified later on when Patty came out as a lesbian and received a focus episode of her own, though she still remains the much less focused-on part of the pair. Later episodes would avert this by having Patty appear in a plot relevant role without Selma around.
• Tuckerization: Is named after Matt Groening's sister.
• Ungrateful Bitch: Even after it's revealed that she's a lesbian and Homer shows he is clearly more supportive of her than Marge initially was, despite this, Patty still shows nothing but utter contempt for him.

Selma

• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: While she does not like Homer, Selma has proven multiple times to be able to genuinely care for him. Likewise Marge admits to Patty that Homer prefers Selma over her.
• Character Development: Her relationship with Homer, which started out as pure vitriol, has improved as Selma has come to understand the hardships he has gone through.
• Demoted to Extra: Selma was a major secondary character in the first 8 seasons, with multiple spotlight episodes that fleshed her out into a tragic Jerk with a Heart of Gold struggling with her own loneliness. Later seasons would scale back her role dramatically, and she now rarely appears outside of occasional comic relief with Patty.
• Foil: To her twin sister Patty. While Patty has little characterization outside of her hatred of Homer, Selma is shown to have a lot of Hidden Depths, showing a lot of vulnerability with her desire to find a partner.
• Formerly Fat: When Selma becomes Fit Tony's mistress, she manages to get him to not kill her but convinces him to pay for her liposuction on various parts of her body, resulting in a shapelier figure.
• Friendly Enemy: Ever since the fiasco where she took the children to Duff Gardens, Selma begins to confide in Homer in matters of parenthood, and their hostility softens further when Homer saves her and Patty from being fired while smoking on the job. It is when Homer helps her become the adoptive mother of Ling that Selma truly comes to respect him, and even though she may not openly like the man, at worst she dislikes Homer a little less than Patty does now. Selma's antagonism towards Homer seems to noticeably disappear whenever Patty isn't around, implying that it's actually Patty who truly hates Homer and Selma merely goes along with it due to peer pressure. Homer likewise is far nicer to Selma when Patty isn't around and it's even stated in "Livin' La Pura Vida" that Homer actually feels sorry for Selma because she has to live with Patty.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Selma has admitted in the past that she is hostile to Homer because she was jealous that Marge was to able to get married whereas Selma has trouble going into relationships, let alone making them last.
• Innocent Beta Bitch: When compared to Patty. While the two are both jerkass especially towards Homer, Selma is shown as the nicer of the two who does show respect for Homer sometimes. Not only that, but she does want someone to love for fear of ending up alone.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She is shown to be much more capable of acting genuinely kind towards others than Patty is. Unlike Patty, who has grown to accept that she will never be happy and acts apathetic and callous as a result, Selma still desperately wants to find love and raise a family. This allows her to gradually grow to respect Homer and his devotion to his family over time, despite her initial hostility towards him.
• Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: She has multiple failed marriages under her belt, because she seems to keep falling for guys who are either jerkasses, morons, or scum. She first got married to "Sideshow" Bob Terwilliger because he was after her money — and apparently remarried & divorced him again offscreen at some point afterwards, married Troy McClure because he was handsome and feigned interest in her, dated (and thought she got married to) Fit-Fat Tony, got offscreen marriages (and divorces) to Lionel Hutz the incompetent lawyer and Disco Stu, and married Abraham Simpson, her sister's father-in-law. She's also dated Hans Moleman, Moe Syzlak and Barney Gumble, and slept with Apu, as well as with dotcom millionaire Artie Ziff (Marge's old boyfriend from High School).
• Marriage of Convenience: To Troy McClure for a period of time — because A: he has a certain unlawful sexual fetish and he wanted to have some way of refuting the rumors about it, and B: he thought it might be a boost to his career. She divorces him when he tries to have a baby with her, saying she couldn't bring a child into a loveless marriage.
• The Mistress: Selma becomes this to Fit-Fat Tony for an episode, although she has been led to believe she's actually his wife. She is heartbroken and angry with Fat Tony when she finds out... but then gets into a Cat Fight with another woman who also claims to be Fat Tony's wife.
• Noodle Incident: Selma's relationship and marriage to Disco Stu. Nobody knew about that until Stu danced into the room announcing that he got an annulment from the Catholic Church (and had a certificate in his hand to prove it).
• Parental Substitute: With some help from Homer (and a sympathetic Chinese bureaucrat), Selma adopts a baby girl named Ling. (Patty does help take care of Ling, too.)
• Serial Spouse: Big time. So far, she's been married to Sideshow Bob (twice, according to the banner shown at her wedding to Abe Simpson), Lionel Hutz, Troy McClure, Disco Stu, Abe Simpson and Fat Tony (or so she thought; he was actually just recognizing her as his official mistress).
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: In one Treehouse of Horror episode, she does this with the Ultrahouse computer's remote, much to its disgust. It proceeds to try and kill itself.

Ling Bouvier

Voiced by: Nancy Cartwright

Debut: "Goo Goo Gai Pan"

Selma's adopted baby daughter from China.

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• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: She hasn't been seen since "Puffless" in Season 27.
• Girlish Pigtails: Gains this thanks to Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome.
• My Beloved Smother: She gets a lot of flak by Selma trying to raise her to be overly perfect. She can play hula hoop, play the flute, acrobat around the house, and paint all at the same time. Ling is clearly trying to get others to help her from continuing doing this.
• Pink Means Feminine: Her clothing is mostly pink.
• Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Debuted as a baby, and is now a toddler despite Maggie still being an infant.

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