Being the longest-running American animated series in history, The Simpsons has many examples of this trope.
- Examples not tied to any particular decade:
- The show's earliest seasons occasionally referred to Marge as "Mrs. Homer J. Simpson". In the early 1990s, it was still the norm for married women to be referred to as "Mrs. (full name of spouse)", a naming convention that became much less common and almost never used on its own after the mid-'90s.
- Similarly, for most of the show's run, not a single recurring married woman or mother has a job (and even later on, the few who do tend to work at the school or have other jobs that were common for women in the 50's.) Lindsey Naegle, the one "career woman" in the early seasons, has it as her defining character trait and specifically hates kids; one-off episodes where Marge gets a job are similarly treated as strange temporary outliers. Even in the 80's and 90's when the show was getting started this was already a bit unusual, since two-income families were already the norm for the middle class; in the modern day it seems bizarre.
- The '80s & The '90s:
- Many have noted
that the '90s lifestyle of the Simpsons seems like a luxury by the standards of the 2020s given the rising cost of living outpacing wages. Although Homer makes only $25,000 annually and Marge is a housewife, the family lives in a large two-story house with individual (big) bedrooms for each child, owns two cars, and can go on regular vacation trips. Even counting for financial liberties, this lifestyle on that sort of budget was plausible in the late '80s and early '90s, but beginning in the late-'90s, it would become increasingly unrealistic due to several factors, most notably the Great Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s. Nowadays, anyone with Homer's income (even when adjusted for inflation) would likely be working a non-unionized menial job and could only afford at best a one-bedroom apartment. - The advent of caller ID aside, the early Running Gag of Bart's prank calls to Moe's Tavern relies on the assumption that the only way to get in touch with someone at a bar is to call the bar and ask for their name, which will seem odd to any viewer too young to remember a time before cell phones entered common usage. This may be why the gag was phased out over the years.
- In the very first episode, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", which aired in 1989, being the only episode of The Simpsons proper (as opposed to shorts in The Tracey Ullman Show) to air in the '80s, Santa's Little Helper's backstory is that he was angrily abandoned by his owner after losing a greyhound race, before being taken in by Bart and Homer. Greyhound racing would heavily decline after this episode due to a declining audience and pressure from animal rights groups. One of their biggest complaints, which the staff didn't know at the time, was how many dogs really were being left abandoned when their viability for racing was over. Many states have since banned dog racing completely; as of 2023, West Virginia is the only state with legal dog racing.
- In "The Crepes of Wrath" (1990), the family takes in a foreign-exchange student from Albania who turns out to be a communist spy.
- In "Some Enchanted Evening" (1990), Marge and Homer sleep on a waterbed in the motel room with Marge and Homer commenting on how jiggly it is. As this is the first episode produced (though not the first to be aired), waterbeds were much more common during the 1980s and it's during the 1990s that waterbeds become a relic of the past and are largely replaced with foam mattresses.
- "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge" (1990) is a parody of the moral panic the series received upon its premiere (as well as Terry Rakolta's campaign to cancel Married... with Children) with Marge forming a concerned parents group. While the focus of attention shifted to other cartoons and video games soon after, these kinds of campaigns lost steam by the later years of the decade.
- "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment" (1991) was made at a time cable was an expensive novelty, while there's considerable excitement for a boxing match featuring Drederick Tatum, who (just like Mike Tyson) is not referred to as an ex-con, but as a "new face" in the sport.
- The series frequently referenced The Cosby Show, as the two were Dueling Shows until 1992, with the character of Doctor Hibbert, a clear Bill Cosby reference, and "Saturdays of Thunder" in 1991, which is mostly focused on Homer trying to model himself after Cosby's advice, being probably the biggest examples. As a result, they date themselves pretty heavily: not only because of the celebrity reference but because they consistently center on Bill Cosby's public image of the time of a kindly, moral patriarch with a good sense of humor and an old-fashioned attitude. After Bill Cosby was convicted of sexual assault allegations in 2018, a lot of those references aged very poorly; in particular, the line "Cosby's First Law of Intergenerational Perversity" is pretty much fossilized.
- "I Married Marge" (1991), Homer and the kids think that Marge will have another baby. Bart suggests naming the new baby "Kool Moe Dee", after a well-known rapper of the early 1990s who is now virtually forgotten. Lisa also suggests the name Ariel after the then-most recent Disney Princess.
- The Germans who buy the power plant from Burns in "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk" (1991) introduce themselves as a West German and an East German; each had a "big company", and now, after unification, they both share a "very big company". The reference was, obviously, a lot more relevant at the time of first broadcast, immediately after Germany reunified.
- The Super Bowl broadcast on "Lisa the Greek" (1992) features a fairly amateur (by today's standards) half-time show, while Troy McClure announces he's going to appear in a new show that will premiere after the game. Both staples would be gone in a few years, being respectively replaced by lavish spectacles headlined by pop artists and football-themed episodes of hit shows. The game featuring the Washington Redskins also serves as an example, as the team has since changed their name to the Commanders due to the previous name's connotations.
- One of the hobbies Bart has quickly lost interest in in "The Otto Show" (1992) is listening to a short-wave radio set. When this episode aired, the widespread use of internet streaming was still in the future and many children asked for short-wave sets in order to experience the novelty of listening to foreign countries' short-wave stations.
- "Lisa the Beauty Queen" (1992) features a junior beauty pageant, which in the early '90s would be seen as cuddly, if somewhat eccentric little contests, instead of being considered rowdy, borderline disturbing "skin shows" with girls being maneuvered by their near-tyrannical mothers. The pageant is also sponsored by Laramie cigarettes both as a way to get around the broadcast advertising bannote and to replace its controversial cartoon moose mascot. By the end of the 1990s, all tobacco advertising (including event sponsoring) was prohibited in the U.S. partly because of the fallout from the Joe Camel controversy.
- "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie" (1992): With movies and TV shows being readily available online and the "films on-demand" option on many modern cable packages, Bart would nowadays be perfectly able to watch "The Itchy & Scratchy Movie" without having to go to the movie theater and Homer would have to use parental controls to keep Bart from seeing the movie online and on-demand, but even then, Bart is tech-savvy enough to watch it via piracy. Even the VHS existed when the episode first aired, right down to Snake being disappointed he didn't steal a VCR in VHS format in that episode, allowing Bart to watch the movie on video, making it already an unintentional period piece in 1992!
- "Brother from the Same Planet" (1993): By the Turn of the Millennium, 1-900-numbers fell out of fashion after stronger regulations killed most of these services, so this episode's B-plot may seem alien to those who were too young to remember when they were popular. Ditto for the record and tape club scams where the first 10 albums are a penny before the prices are jacked up (which, in a world of people streaming and legally — and illegally — downloading music, has all but vanished).
- "The Front" (1993) has an ending gag depicting an elderly Homer and Marge attending their 50-year high school reunion in 2024. So much time has passed since then that, as of this writing, 2024 is now the current year.
- "$pringfield (1993):
- Sears (where Homer had previously been caught stealing watches from) has had its popularity and ad revenue plummet in The New '10s; as of 2021, it's down to just 29 stores and is on the verge of vanishing completely.
- Siegfried and Roy (the magician duo who inspired the Ernst and Gunther characters) retired their long-running show in 2003 after the latter's real-life tiger attack left him disabled (though the actual attack made the one in this episode relevant when it happened on October 3, 2003).
- Younger viewers may have to look up who Gerry Cooney is and why Otto punched him out.
- In "Bart Gets Famous" (1994), when Bart becomes Krusty the Clown's personal assistant, he is given a cell phone and is shown answering a call during class. Back then, the joke was that only important people had cell phones (and that cell phones in the 1990s were big and unwieldy). These days, with smaller cell phones and kids having them, the joke isn't all that funny or revolutionary and comes off as odd that a ten-year-old would have such a big cell phone.
- "Burns' Heir" (1994) lampshades the phenomenon, where Krusty delivers a pizza to Mr. Burns while his show is supposed to be airing live by airing a rerun instead, claiming that no one will notice. Bart then turns to a nearby TV to watch said rerun, which immediately dates itself to 1982 when Krusty drops his act after two seconds to announce that the Falkland Islands have just been invaded.
- "Lisa on Ice" (1994): One scene is a Take That! to the Apple Newton's terrible handwriting recognition system, wherein Dolph attempts to write "Beat Up Martin" but has it registered as "Eat Up Martha". The Newton was discontinued in 1998 after Steve Jobs returned to the company, though this scene was apparently referenced often internally by Apple engineers when developing the iPhone's keyboard.
- "Homie the Clown" (1995): Homer (in his Krusty guise) gives an award for "Most Promising New Cable Series" to reruns of Starsky & Hutch. At the time, cable was seen as a dumping ground for old movies and shows while "premium" channels such as HBO were prohibitively expensive, often charging extra for special events. By the late 90s and early 00s, cable broadened its appeal while "premium" services became cheaper and dropped the PPV angle, turning instead to original productions.
- "Round Springfield" (1995) falls into this partly for the same reason as "Bart Sells His Soul", with a joke about the "Ultimate Pog" which bears the likeness of Steve Allen - like the above episode from a season later, it was made at the height of the pogs craze, and the "outdated fad" is supposed to be Steve Allen.
- "Bart Sells His Soul" (1995) is dated almost entirely around its treatment of pogs as being current and trendy rather than a goofy, nostalgic reference to something nobody can believe was ever popular. It's more amusing in hindsight, since the show does make a joke around the "outdated and forgotten fad" angle — but directs it at ALF through the medium of pogs ("Remember ALF? He's back! In pog form."). It does end up being somewhat correct by accident, as the main person espousing pogs is Milhouse.
- "Two Bad Neighbors" (1996):
- The fact that President Bush is referred to simply as "George Bush" rather than "George H.W. Bush", "Bush Senior", or "Bush 41" to differentiate him from his son (whose name drop in this episode was a coincidence) firmly dates the episode to pre-2000.
- The main plot became this when Barbara Bush died in April 2018, followed by George's own death seven months later. The ending where Homer becomes friends with Gerald Ford had already become this when Ford died in December 2006. Mikhail Gorbachev's impromptu appearance with a housewarming gift became this after his passing in August 2022.
- The episode "Homerpalooza" (1996) focuses on the pop culture at the time, more precisely on alternative rock, hip-hop, and the first incarnation of Lollapalooza (here fictionalized as "Hullabalooza"). Among the episode's guest stars were The Smashing Pumpkins, including drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, who was fired from the band two months after the episode aired after the band's touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin (who doesn't appear in "Homerpalooza") died of an overdose while taking drugs with him. In another scene, the record store clerk has no idea about Apple computers, one year before Steve Jobs returned to the company. That said, the overall plot of the episode — about Homer feeling like he's out of the loop with current trends and desperate to prove that he's still 'hip' — is one that will remain timeless; the fact that the trends in question are no longer relevant only makes the episode's central theme about how being cool is overrated stand out that much more. One scene in particular, a flashback in which a teenage Homer gets into a fight with his dad over the '70s pop music he listens to, has gained new currency in the internet age for this reason.Homer: You wouldn't understand, Dad. You're not 'with it'.
Abe Simpson: I used to be 'with it', and then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I'm with isn't 'it', and what's 'it' seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you!
Homer: No way, man. We're gonna keep on rocking forever! Forever! Forever! <cut to present day> Forever. Forever. Forever... - The "hip" kids Lisa makes friends with in "Summer of 4 Ft. 2" (1996) embody the "indie" atmosphere of the time as much as the Hullabalooza acts.
- In "You Only Move Twice" (1996), one way that Cypress Creek Elementary School is shown to be incredibly advanced is that they have their own website. On the DVD Commentary, the writers admit that this is one of the show's most-dated jokes, as anything and everything (legal or otherwise) has a website (or, at the very least, an account with a social media site, like Twitter or Facebook), and the novelty of advancement has worn off significantly.
- During the same episode, Homer tells Hank Scorpio that he dreams of owning the Dallas Cowboys, and is very disappointed in the end after he discovers that Hank Scorpio got him the Denver Broncos instead. At the time, the Cowboys had recently won 3 Super Bowls in a 4-year span, while the Broncos were a Butt-Monkey in the NFL, having lost all their prior Super Bowl appearances in blowouts. Since this episode aired, the Cowboys haven't even made their conference championship, while the Broncos have had 4 Super Bowl appearances, winning 3 of them (one of which, Super Bowl XXXIII, was the subject of season 10's "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday" in 1999). So, to modern viewers, it seems like Homer did well after all.
- "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" (1997) is a perfect encapsulation of the nineties' obsession with Totally Radical characters with attitude and the desperate (and usually failed) attempts by corporations to appeal to kids of the time with forced hipness. It still works fairly well, though, as a major point to Poochie's character is that he's based on the few ideas of what the kids are doing that could trickle upward into the executive's office — meaning that as the years go on, he becomes even more pathetically outdated.
- "The Last Temptation of Krust" (1998) deals with Krusty's family-friendly (and rather politically-incorrect) brand of comedy no longer being considered funny in an era when "alternative" comedy was establishing itself in the mainstream. At the end of the episode, Krusty is offered a "Canyonero", a parody of SUVs at a time these were gaining popularity.
- In "Lard of the Dance" (1998), Lisa's new classmate Alex has a cellphone. It was supposed to serve as an indicator of how mature and grown-up she is, or at least is attempting to act. Today, with cellphones being far more common (to the point that some kids her age may actually have one, whether or not it was at their parents' insistence), viewers these days are probably more likely to complain about how bulky and primitive 1990s cell-phones looked instead of the idea of a second-grader actually having a cell-phone in the first place. Alex's fashion "sense" (and her eagerness on hooking up with boys) would have been common, if quite scandalous in the late '90s and 2000s, but it becomes downright cringe-worthy on the eyes of the 2010s.
- "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace" (1998) features Homer fawning over Thomas Alva Edison as the greatest inventor of all time. In later years, it became more well-known that many of his "inventions" were actually created by his European immigrant employees (most notably Nikola Tesla's work on the electric lamp), his sole output in many cases being taking the credit for them, and his generally less-savory behaviors (i.e. patent-trolling in the film industry or his propaganda campaigns against alternating current) became more well-known. While it's not implausible for someone to continue to idolize Edison, it seems like the sort of thing Lisa, if nobody else, would point out.
- "Beyond Blunderdome" (1999): The episode is a Mel Gibson vehicle. Gibson complains that people love him too much and that violence is dead in cinema (he partly blames the "swing revival", now seen as part of the "corporate reaction" on the music industry of the late '90s against the alternative boom). He ruins his career by filming a hyper-violent adaptation of a classic story beloved by many. This is not an ironic statement. Also, while in Hollywood, Marge sees Robert Downey Jr. in a shootout with police and thinks they're filming a movie, to which Bart replies that there are no cameras. This was a joke. Back in the day. A joke on the Latin American dub about Ricky Martin being a heartthrob like Mel would become this as the Puerto Rican singer came out as gay in 2010.
- Many have noted
- Turn of the Millennium:
- In general, the series would make far less topical references during the 2000s, only doing it in the case these were very pervasive and had a long-term impact (such as the burst of the dot-com bubble in the dawn of the decade, The War on Terror during the middle years, and the Great Recession during the latter half). According to producer and showrunner Al Jean, the show largely avoided making political jokes during seasons 13 (2001-02) and 14 (2002-03) due to the September 11th attacks leaving American politics in such an erratic state that they were worried those episodes would immediately get outdated. Thus, the only episode during that time that satirized American politics was season 14's "Mr. Spritz Goes To Washington" (2003), which mocked the American political system as a whole more than anything specific.
- "Missionary Impossible" (2000) has Homer on the run from PBS after he can't fulfill a $10,000 pledge. Among the PBS characters who chase Homer are Mister Rogers whose show stopped production at the end of 2000 and the Teletubbies who had one of PBS's biggest shows in the late '90s. The Simpsons continued to lampoon the Teletubbies in the Turn of the Millennium, even after they had fallen into obscurity.
- "Kill the Alligator and Run" (2000) features the "party-hard" youth culture of the '90s and '00s at its pre-9/11 peak, even having Kid Rock perform and MTV actually broadcasting music (including a joke about the age of their VJs). The episode also began with a reference to the Militia of Montana.
- "Day of the Jackanapes" (2001) features a parody of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? during the manic success that show enjoyed in its first few months.
- "New Kids on the Blecch" (2001). Though it aired in 2001, Production Lead Time dates the episode to 1999-2000 — not only does the Boy Band parody N Sync (who have a guest appearance in the episode) and the Backstreet Boys, but there's a scene with New York City having one of its buildings destroyed, dating the episode to pre-September 11note . There's also a reference to Everybody Loves Raymond.
- "Homer the Moe" (2001): The "M" nightclub is a time capsule of the trends of the late 1990s and early 2000s, featuring post-modern art (pronounced post-mó), "Cool Britannia" fashions and Moe's amazement at one of his new patrons owning a cellphone.
- "Special Edna" (2003) has Martin getting beaten up by his fellow classmates because he convinced Edna to have the students type out their reports rather than hand-write them. Back then, it wasn't so easy to get your hands on computers and such, but nowadays, it's the preferred method to type reports over hand-writing them now that people have much easier access to computers, laptops, and printers. If this moment was seen in one of the more recent episodes, Martin's classmates would be thanking him instead.
- "Barting Over" (2003) has Homer revealing via a set of photos he once showed Bart as a baby from a balcony only to drop him off, parodying a then-recent incident involving Michael Jackson and his infant child, which became mostly forgotten after Jackson's death.
- "The Bart Of War" (2003): The episode ends with the people at the Isotopes game singing "O Canada", with the line "True patriot love in all thy sons command". In 2018, Canada voted to amend the line to the gender-neutral "in all of us command".
- "The Regina Monologues" (2003): The Simpsons decide to bring Madonna back home to the U.S.A. and kidnap her in a travelling bag. This is a reference to Madonna's marriage to Guy Ritchie (and related move to Britain), which lasted from 2000 to 2008.
- "Marge vs. Singles, Seniors, Childless Couples and Teens, and Gays" (2004) has Lindsay Naegle expressing her desire for profanity on broadcast television. During the second half of the '90s and early '00s, American networks increasingly pushed the envelope, with the inclusion of full nudity and blue language, most famously the sex scenes and the constant use of "shit" on NYPD Blue, being the next logical step... until the Super Bowl halftime scandal (which occurred just weeks after the episode's first airing) largely put an end to that. Even as cable and later streaming productions continued to push the boundaries well into R-rated territory, broadcast television have retreated into PG levels of sex and language while keeping PG-13 levels of violence.
- "Co-Dependents' Day (2004): The episode's B-plot is a Take That! aimed at George Lucas and the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, reflecting the feelings many fans had at that time. By The New '10s, audiences were looking much more favorably at the PT, in light of both the animated series The Clone Wars, which expanded upon the Prequels, and the more-divisive reception to the Sequel Trilogy, which was produced without Lucas's involvement.
- In "Simple Simpson" (2004), one of the acts at the county fair is a hyper-patriotic country singer who tells the audience to buy his records or else al-Qaeda will win. Not to mention that the episode itself is a parody of Spider-Man, down to the "upside-down kiss" scene.
- "Bart-Mangled Banner" (2004) is a 22-minute Take That! aimed at the Patriot Act. Also it references the then-popular CNN debate show "Crossfire" with "Headbutt". "Crossfire" would be cancelled not long after the episode aired (though it did get a brief revival in 2013-2014) and CNN would soon move away from those kinds of "head-butting debate shows"
- In "There's Something About Marrying" (2005), the main plot of the episode concerns the topic of same-sex marriage, which is now legal throughout the States as of 2015.
- "Mobile Homer" (2005) has Marge buying discount groceries, which is portrayed as a desperate measure, especially considering the episode aired at a time the "credit prosperity" of the late 90s and early-mid 00s was at its peak. Beginning the following year, and particularly after the 2008 crisis, bargain-hunting became commonplace (and remained so even after the recession ended), while "generic" brands are no longer seen as a sign of acute financial distress.
- "Future Drama" (2005) has Professor Frink refer to Astrology as the "Tampa Bay Devil Rays" of sciences, referring to the perennial Butt-Monkey of Major League Baseball, whom at the time the episode aired had never had a winning season in the entirety of their franchise's existence. Three years after the episode's airing the team would change their name to simply the "Tampa Bay Rays" and would win the American League Pennant, and have since shaken their laughing stock reputation to become one of the perennial contenders in the American League East Division.
- "Milhouse of Sand and Fog" (2005) deals in part with Maggie (and then Homer) getting chicken pox, with the varicella vaccine having only become widespread in 2002. There is also a parody of The O.C. halfway through the episode.
- "You Kent Always Say What You Want" (2007) parodies the raunchy programming the Fox network was known for during the 2000s. There is also a fleeting reference to YouTube's "star rating" system, which was soon after replaced by the "like/dislike" system.
- The Simpsons Movie (2007) features references to Happy Feet, An Inconvenient Truth, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?, Harry Potter, Green Day performing the theme song at the beginning, and a joke about "President Schwarzenegger", all of which date the movie to the mid/late-2000s.
- "He Loves to Fly and He D'ohs" (2007) involves Mr. Burns swallowing a comically small cellphone, at a time it was thought mobiles would eventually become microscopic. Years later, with the rise of smartphones and touchscreens, the trend reversed into larger phones.
- "E Pluribus Wiggum" dates itself during the 2008 presidential campaign, apart from featuring then-famous celebrities like Fred Thompson and Dennis Kucinich. Also, Barack Obama isn't even mentioned in the episode at all, as the episode was likely written before he announced his candidacy.
- "Any Given Sundance" (2008) was made at a time the Sundance festival dominated the "indie" side of the movie industry (with many a mainstream film of the late 2000s taking some cues from the sentimental and gritty films that became synonymous with the festival — Nelson's documentary being a parody of the style). By the following decade, "indie" filmmaking would move from the fringes of the industry, and other festivals such as Telluride, the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival), and Banff (which was briefly mentioned in the episode) have stolen Sundance's thunder, while the cloying "kitchen-sink films" of the 2000s became a mildly embarrassing memory.
- The plot of "Lost Verizon" (2008) deals with Bart not having a cellphone and has a moral about the downsides of Marge's over-vigilant parenting. At the time, it was becoming commonplace for kids to have mobile phones, while the rise of "helicopter parenting" has made it less socially acceptable for parents to not monitor their children's activities. The latter plot’s dissonance has since been flipped on its head, as it’s beginning to be acknowledged just how harmful helicopter parenting is to children.
- In "Mypods and Boomsticks" (2008), Homer becomes suspicious about the family of Bart's new Muslim friend, dating it to the more paranoia-filled days of The War on Terror, before people became more apathetic and less Islamophobic about it. There's also a parody of Apple with only a passing reference to the iPhone (launched a year earlier), Lisa getting an iPod, which looks like the Touch version of it, before its discontinuation in 2019 and its last update in 2022, as well as of its founder Steve Jobs, who would pass away in 2011.
- "Lisa the Drama Queen" (2009) prominently features Josh Groban's music while Fall Out Boy plays the series theme during the closing credits. Groban's sophisticated brand of pop and FOB's raw style of pop-punk would become quite dated a few years later.
- "No Loan Again, Naturally" (2009) directly alludes to the mid/late-2000s financial crisis, with the family defaulting their mortgage for the umpteenth time, but the bank is now unable to give them yet another loan. Thus, they end up facing homelessness.
- In "Homer the Whopper" (2009), Jeff the Comic Book Guy is told that the film based on his superhero comic Everyman (starring Homer) was so bad, the projectionist hung himself with the last reel. A few years on, physical means of film distribution were replaced by digital formats.
- "Bart Gets a 'Z'" (2009) has Mrs. Krabbappel taking advice from The Answer, an obvious parody of The Secret and other self-help media that thrived in the late 2000s. Her replacement meanwhile is clearly a proto-hipster eager on technology to the point of having an iPhone. Also, everybody in Bart's class owns either phones with touchscreens or QWERTY keypads (including Nelson of all people).
- The HD remake of the show's intro, first introduced in "Take My Life, Please", has a subtle moment of this. When Marge accidentally hits Homer with her car (as opposed to the previous intro, where he runs through the garage and into the house in time) she's shown to be distracted with her phone. The phone in question is a flip phone, which were already in the process of being overtaken by 2009, and just a few years later would be almost entirely irrelevant.
- The New '10s:
- In general, the show regained its 90s-era knack for parodying whatever is in the spotlight beginning in the 21st season (2009-10).
- "Elementary School Musical" (2010) features the "hipster" culture then on the rise while having the cast of Glee in a cameo.
- "The Day The Earth Stood Cool" (2012) revolves around Portland "hipster" culture (though it uses the term "cool" instead) and has a scene in which an Bland-Name Product version of American Apparel opens up in Springfield, when American Apparel was at the height of its popularity. The new neighbors also read the print edition of The Onion, which converted to an online-only format in 2013.
- One episode isn't really timely (Homer meeting his childhood pen pal), but the title nails it to the early 2010s: "YOLO" (2013).
- "Specs In The City" (2014) parodies Google Glass, perhaps overestimating the attention the device actually got.
- "The Musk Who Fell from Earth" (2014) involves Tesla's Elon Musk trying to reshape Springfield while befriending Homer. This was made at a time Musk's generation of tech tycoons were revered by the American public, whereas this wouldn't be the case a few years later (Musk in particular became a punchline for "eccentric inventor" and Corrupt Corporate Executive jokes, and would become a complete laughingstock by the time he bought Twitter, fired most of its employees, changed its name to X, and basically made it less fun for everyone).
- "The Serfsons" (2017) is a parody of medieval fantasy, popularized by Game of Thrones. While it would be relevant for another couple years, season 8 and the series finale has since annihilated any relevance it ever had, although House of the Dragon did give it a second shot at life.
- "Haw-Haw Land" (2017) is an obvious spoof of La La Land, featuring Ed Sheeran voicing Lisa's love interest. At the end of the episode, Marge complains that it was supposed to parody Moonlight (2016), referencing the controversy over Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty announcing the wrong winner for Best Picture at that year's Academy Awards ceremony.
- "Bart vs. Itchy & Scratchy" (2018) takes jabs at "pop feminism" and the trend of making "all-female" versions of existing properties, as well as the resulting boycotts from male fans.
