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YMMV / The Simpsons

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YMMV tropes for the The Simpsons series

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  • Accidental Aesop:
    • "Homer's Enemy": "Don't let your jealousy consume you and prevent you from accepting apologies from people who genuinely want to befriend you". The intentional Aesop is "Being the Only Sane Man actually sucks".
    • The DVD Commentary for "Trash of the Titans" states that the episode's Green Aesop was entirely unintentional.
    • Ned's overprotective treatment of his sons and their sheltered behaviour gives the lesson that kids need experience away from their parents from time to time in order to grow as people and learn hard lessons in wisdom for their adulthood. As flawed as Homer and Marge are, Bart, Lisa, and eventually Maggie will grow into well-adjusted, if reasonably flawed adults themselves, while Rod and Todd have warped views of the world and are vastly unprepared for adulthood due to their naivety and religious fundamentalism. Being overprotective can be just as damaging as being negligent.
  • Accidental Innuendo: One fan theorized that part of the show's popularity comes from how the spherical design of the characters' eyes look like breasts.
  • Adorkable:
    • Lisa Simpson, as smart as she is, is still a little girl, so she does have her moments of adorable dorkiness. She really loves her Malibu Stacy doll and on her Christmas list, she listed "pony" over and over again.
    • Milhouse has Nerd Glasses and is a naive, socially awkward boy who suffers some of the worst luck out of all characters. Not to mention his crush on Lisa Simpson.
    • Homer Simpson at times, at least when not being a complete jerk. He's awkward, not that smart, but his goofiness and love for Marge make him lovable. Also, just look at him when he was a child.
    • Ralph is an oblivious and innocent kid with a huge imagination who tends to make weird and inappropriate comments all the time. Despite his frequently stupid and odd behaviour, his father adores him.
    • Waylon Smithers is an older guy, but he counts due to his adorable vibe, his Nerd Glasses, and his traits of a perfect way of completing Mr. Burns.
    • Dr. Nick Riviera; he has a very happy-go-lucky personality and being so enthusiastic about his profession, despite the fact he is a quack.
    • Principal Skinner counts too, due to his neurotic and subservient personality, sheltered nature, and how much of a Momma's Boy he is.
  • Alternate Aesop Interpretation: A reoccurring Aesop of the future episodes is that if Bart doesn’t change his ways he will end up Future Loser. Given that every opportunity to change his life in the present ends up being sabotaged by his family, along with episodes such as Barthood and Mother And Child Reunion show him being successful after he shuts them out of his life. It could easily be construed that these episodes are actually about the dangers of staying in toxic relationships.
  • And You Thought It Would Fail:
    • Current showrunner Al Jean, when asked about the show's decline in quality, recalled someone saying the show declined in Season 2:
      Al Jean: Well, it's possible that we've declined. But honestly, I've been here the whole time and I do remember in Season 2 people saying, "It's gone downhill." If we'd listened to that then we would have stopped after episode 13 [of Season 1]. I'm glad we didn't.
    • The show itself at the time seem like it would be destined to fail, as it was an cartoon aimed at adults back when animated series were still mostly aimed at children, was a mid-season replacement, and moved to the same time-slot as The Cosby Show, which was considered suicide for any show at the time to compete against. Instead, it became a rating success overnight, got widespread acclaim, and has become the longest running sitcom and animated series in American television.
  • Angst? What Angst?: The offscreen death of Edna Krabappel in Season 25 was caused by her actress Marcia Wallace dying in real life due to complications from breast cancer and pneumonia. As a result, no cause of death for the character is given and the fact is only revealed fleetingly in The Tag for "The Man Who Grew Too Much," in which Edna's husband Ned Flanders and student Nelson Muntz talk briefly about how much they miss her. From there, the event was largely acknowledged indirectly or offhandedly, usually the context of Ned missing her, and despite the bond the show depicted between her and Bart (and the fact that his class subsequently went through several replacement teachers), it wasn't until some seasons later than an episode would explore Bart's reaction to the loss beyond an In Memoriam chalkboard gag in the first episode to air following Wallace's death.
  • Anvilicious:
    • Most of the later plots/subplots involving Lisa (though the only episode that had Lisa as a Soapbox Sadie that most fans don't object to is "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy", as the family calls her out on her activist behavior and she doesn't win in the end). Some have noted this was also a time when Groening used her as a mouthpiece for his views.
    • One of the worst Soapbox Sadie Lisa episodes is "Lisa the Skeptic", in which Lisa is extremely emphatic that religion and science cannot coexist, despite her consistently showing religious beliefs from the past (earlier) episodes.
    • "Bart vs. Itchy & Scratchy" basically has the lesson that reboots are unpopular mostly because its detractors are regressive towards socially-conscious changes and that it's okay for feminists to resort to vandalism and crime to further their cause.
  • Archive Panic:
    • If you watched all 600+ episodes back to back, it would take you almost two weeks. That's not including the movie or the comic along with its spin-offs which have been running since 1993.
    • When the show began airing in syndication on FXX in 2014, they aired all of the then-552 episodes in a non-stop, 12-day marathon called "Every Simpsons Ever."
  • Audience-Alienating Era: The earlier seasons ruthlessly mocked sitcom conventions, but the more recent ones generally play them straight, and the remaining satire tends to be in the form of blunt exposition, rather than being worked into the script. As a consequence of the show's age, reusing plots has also become a problem: Homer's terrible health, his and Marge's teetering marriage, and Lisa's Wangst have all been beaten to death over the years, but keep coming back regardless.
    • The episodes from Mike Scully's time as showrunner (Seasons 9-12) are accused of this due to Flanderization, crazy off-the-wall plots (and for some, too much focus on Homer, Lisa or Moe), and in Season 11, the show trying to be just like more "in-your-face" satirical cartoons like Family Guy and South Park just to keep up (though the writers saw it more as taking the piss out of those types of shows.) There were also issues with tone: Some of the episodes, including the infamous "The Principal and the Pauper" and "Saddlesore Galactica", tried to mock their own absurdity, but the parody was so subtle that it came across as Flanderization to some.
    • Al Jean's time as showrunner, Seasons 13-present: His first few seasons were attempts to imitate Seasons 3 through 7, but to some the show became a milder clone of Family Guy and South Park around Season 17 (coincidentally around the time that the former show was Un-Canceled). The heavy reliance on recycled plots, dated pop-culture references, and celebrity cameos throughout hasn't helped. Depending on the Writer characterization has also become a problem, especially with Homer and Bart: characters' personalities have been reduced to whatever the plot of the week requires. Some fans feel that this era has started to end with Season 33, where Matt Selman took co-showrunner duties alongside Al Jean; Season 33 introduced more creative, experimental, and introspective episode plots, while toning down the reliance on guest stars playing themselves and focusing more on its characterization of the main cast.
  • Badass Decay:
    • Originally, Mr. Burns was a powerful Corrupt Corporate Executive who compensated for his lackluster physical strength with a strong mind, capable of terrorizing all of Springfield while facing very little in terms of consequences. In the later seasons, Burns is little more than a doddering old man who can't do anything without Smithers' help and often fails victim to humiliating defeats, to the point that in one episode, he tries to stomp on an ant, and the ant pushes him over.
    • Bart has lost the distinct edge and attitude he was popularized for and is often helpless when faced with Homer's strangling. Best shown in The Simpsons Movie, where he spends most of it desperately wanting Ned Flanders to be his father instead.
  • Best Known for the Fanservice: The Season 20 episode, "How The Test Was Won", is better known as "the episode in which Marge makes out with Lindsey Naegle".
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
    • Homer's "The Land of Chocolate" Imagine Spot in "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk".
    • In "The Cartridge Family", the episode where Homer buys a gun, he brings it into the Kwik-E-Mart, which causes Apu to believe that he is going to rob him. He denies this, but then fantasizes what life would be like if he did rob the store, which somehow leads him to become a State senator (sitting in a rocking chair and sporting a monocle, no less) and for Marge to be a go-go dancer as a 60s-inspired jaunty tune nonsensically plays. When the Imagine Spot ends, it turns out Homer already paid for his stuff and is driving home. He decides he'll rob the Kwik-E-Mart next time, but then that never happens.
    • Homer's imagine spots in general often end up like this. "Homer Loves Flanders" has Homer being conned out of some money by Bart who deceived him into believing he had tickets to a football game. He was instead given a wig coupon, which then leads to an Imagine Spot featuring him wearing a "Marge" wig, imitating her voice and muttering to himself, "I don't need her at all anymore." note 
    • "Any Given Sundance" has Homer fantasize about what he thinks is a film festival after Lisa gets a letter saying her documentary has been accepted to be shown at one; he imagines anthropomorphic pieces of film having a Mexican-style celebration, only for anthropomorphic DVDs to show up and start shooting them. When it ends, it turns out that Homer had been imagining this for hours.
    • The above episode also has a moment where Skinner and Chalmers ride a sled, and end up going through a church with several brides who are taken along with them. When they question if this is really happening, one of the brides tells them they actually crashed and were knocked out, followed by a shot of them lying in the snow. This never gets brought up again.
    • Homer eating the Joe Millionaire promo in "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington".
    • In "Simpson Tide", in the middle of UN negotiations, the Russian ambassador reveals that the Soviet Union never broke up, and was only pretending to have dissolved. Cut to Red Square, where the floats in a parade all abruptly stop, and open up to reveal they were concealing tanks, Germany is no longer united, and Lenin rises from the dead, moaning "must... crush... capitalism".
    • In "The Front", the episode ends with a 30-second short called "The Adventures of Ned Flanders", a throwaway non-sequitur about the Flanders. This came about as the episode was short on runtime as written and needed something, anything to get it to the length needed.
    • Homer's encounter with the giant spider while trying to sneak out of the power plant in "Duffless". There's also the fact that Homer was following instructions in order to escape from work, which mentioned the spider and how it required a bible verse to get past, but there's no explanation for where the instructions or the spider even came from, and never gets brought up again.
    • In "Fear of Flying", Homer is banned from Moe's. A man in a nice suit and top hat, who otherwise looks exactly like Homer, enters and introduces himself as "Guy Incognito." The patrons, thinking that it's Homer in a Paper-Thin Disguise, beat him up and toss him out of the bar. As it turns out, it actually was a different person as Homer happens to walk by and see the unconscious doppelgänger. He comments on it before getting distracted by a dog with a puffy tail and the issue is never brought up again.
    • "I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say D'oh" featured a live-action performance by the Ned Flanders-inspired band Okilly Dokilly through the credits. There is absolutely zero context in the episode for this appearance and it disappears just as abruptly as it appears.
    • Bart imagining Homer melting in “Brother From The Same Planet”. Some have questioned why this scene wasn’t in a Treehouse of Horror episode, considering how disturbing it is. While we get that Bart was pissed, Homer melting just came right out of nowhere, and still manages to scare many a viewer.
  • Bizarro Episode:
    • Apart from having a title in Spanish, "El Viaje Misterioso De Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)" is mostly centered around Homer tripping from eating extremely hot peppers.
    • "Missionary: Impossible" is mostly set on a remote island, and ends with the reveal that it was all a PBS pledge drive within a show on FOX.
    • "Das Bus": The whole episode is a Lord of the Flies parody set on a tropical island, and ends with James Earl Jones saying there isn't really an ending, so let's just say Moe saved them.
    • "Behind the Laughter", the 11th season finale: It turns out the Simpsons were all actors playing themselves on the show, and that they had nearly broken up and stopped work on the show.
    • "Simpsons Bible Stories": The episode ends with the Apocalypse descending upon Springfield. As the Flanders ascend to Heaven, the Simpsons literally go to Hell.
    • "The Man Who Came to Be Dinner", where the Simpsons go to a crappy Disney-like theme park and ride a space attraction that takes them into outer space and Homer becomes the main course for Kang and Kodos.
    • "Saddlesore Galactica" became quite notorious for this, featuring the family yet again taking home a large animal (a horse, for the second time), magical jockeys and Lisa complaining to President Clinton about the school getting second place in a band contest.
    • The same for "A Tale of Two Springfields", which had the town divided in two because one half of it got its telephone prefix changed (and not even in a logical way).
    • The "Treehouse of Horror" episodes are this by design since they are non-canon Halloween episodes.
    • "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" starts with Homer starting an internet blog to expose mysteries. It soon devolves into nonsense including Homer being taken to a faraway island and replaced with a German double.
    • "Moe Goes from Rags to Riches" is a story told by Moe's bar rag, which is sentient and can speak.
  • Cant Unhear It: Go ahead. Read the comics (or some Simpsons fanfiction) without hearing the voices of each of the characters or even try to stop yourself from doing impressions of them. Best of luck.
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • Mr. Burns has done quite a lot of reprehensible things over the course of the series and he usually doesn't even get punished for them. However, when he does, it's largely satisfying. Particular examples include him being dropped into one of his own trap doors by Bart, whom he tried to make into his heir in "Burns' Heir", being shot by Maggie after he had been at his absolute worst in "Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part 1", and getting knocked out with one punch by Homer in "Homer the Smithers", who he had been treating like garbage the entire episode up until that point.
    • In the widely disliked "Boys of Bummer", Marge yelling at the whole town of Springfield for their horrible treatment of Bart for simply losing a baseball game has been said to be one of the, if not the only, few good things about the episode.
    • After several seasons of watching Principal Skinner be belittled and yelled at by Superintendent Chalmers for not being able to contain Bart Simpson's rampages, it can be extremely gratifying to see Principal Skinner finally stand up to him for a change in "Bart Stops to Smell the Roosevelts", telling Chalmers that he should just teach Bart himself if he thinks it's such an easy job. Chalmers' shocked reaction and the teachers outright cheering for Skinner make it even better.
    • In an odd way, if you've ever been upset about Springfield being completely incompetent at stopping the Simpsons' long line of destruction and chaos, seeing the whole family get banished by the entire town for everything they've done in "At Long Last Leave" isn't exactly awful, even if they (sorta) get reaccepted into society again by the end.
    • For those who see Lisa as a Spoiled Brat who always gets what she wants at the expense of others, watching her own plan completely backfire on her in "A Father's Watch" can be satisfying.
  • Character Perception Evolution:
    • Throughout the '90s and much of the 2000s, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon was generally praised as a positive and nuanced portrayal of a South Asian character, especially among first-generation immigrants from the region, thanks to him being a benevolent character who supports himself through a successful business. However, his reputation would grow increasingly divisive in the 2010s due to those same immigrants' descendants pointing out how his portrayal both created new stereotypes for South Asians while reinforcing old ones, not helped by the fact that he was voiced by a white man. Consequently, viewers today are split on whether Apu's portrayal is no different than the show's caricatured white cast or if his stereotypical traits, placed in the context of comparatively low minority representation in media, make him an Ethnic Scrappy.
    • Early on, Principal Skinner was not discussed much, and while his episodes were generally praised, he didn't have a fervent fanbase. Then "The Principal and the Pauper" came out and revealed that he was an imposter named Armin Tamzarian who took the place of the real Seymour Skinner, which turned his entire pre-established characterization on its head and created all sorts of disturbing implications in the process. This episode is widely considered the point at which the "Simpsons Golden Age" ended and the "Simpsons Dark Age" began. The shadow of the Tamzarian twist loomed large over Skinner for many years, and it was very hard to discuss him in Simpsons fandom without getting into debates over whether said twist added more depth to his character, or completely ruined it. The fact that the Dark Age would go on to use Skinner as a punching bag (breaking up his relationship with Edna Krabappel, making Bart’s pranks on him even nastier, and having him undergo severe Badass Decay) only made things worse. However, during the 2010s, Skinner would become a Fountain of Memes, and one particular meme involving him, “Steamed Hams”, caused a Newbie Boom of young fans to discover The Simpsons and adore it. And to a modern audience, Skinner ended up coming off as more sympathetic than he was intended to be in the pastnote . Not to mention, these new fans had the advantage of coming in after Matt Groening had declared "The Principal and the Pauper" to be non-canonical. Nowadays, Skinner is a massive Ensemble Dark Horse, and is so widely beloved that Universal Studios has begun producing and selling plush toys of him, which is a big deal for an adult human character who isn’t Homer, Marge, or Krusty.
    • In contrast to Skinner, Milhouse was an Ensemble Dark Horse for many years, with fans relating to his status as Bart's Butt-Monkey best friend, and even the writers admitting they enjoyed him more than Bart. During the 2010s however, Milhouse's reputation began to slide as changing social standards made his crush on Lisa increasingly unsettling, and fans noticed how unpleasant and overexposed he had became in the later years. Even his depiction in the Classic Era was viewed less fondly, as many now noted that he was rarely anything more than a Satellite Character for Bart who existed just to get humiliated if anything at all. While still not without his fans, it's hard to find people with the same level of devotion to him that there once was.
  • Crack Pairing: A few crack Epileptic Trees about Maude and both Marge and Helen have appeared over the years.
  • Common Knowledge:
    • It's often claimed of early seasons that Bart was the main character of the show, and only became more central as time went on, before the show reined in use of him and focused on its ensemble cast. In actuality, while Bart headlines quite a few episodes of the first season, it's only about five to six out of thirteennote , and he shares significant screentime in those episode with other members of the family (especially Homer). And far from being a Breakout Character, the second season saw Bart's screentime decline overall, with him being the definite main character in six out of twenty-three episodes. note  This is still one more than the five episodes Homer gets as the definite main character note , but not by much. Speaking of, even in the series premiere, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire," it's Homer who is more or less the protagonist. The misconception of Bart as the protagonist comes from the fact that he was by far the most popular and heavily-merchandised character at the time, so Fox loved to play him up in advertising (often for episodes where he turned out to be barely involved) or rerun episodes where he had a major role. They even went so far as to move "Bart Gets An F" to be the season premiere, because it's a Bart-focused episode, and built up the "Cosby/Bart Rivalry" for publicity. The idea of him being used less in later seasons is moreso the "Bartmania" fad running its course, and people watching the show to find that Bart isn't actually as heavily featured as advertisements of the time led on.
    • Most people believe that Bart's original shirt color was blue in The Tracey Ullman Show and early merchandise before being changed to orange in the main series. However, this is not entirely true, as the first short to feature Bart in his regular outfit was "Watching Television", which depicted him wearing a green shirt. In fact, throughout the duration of the Tracey Ullman shorts, the color of Bart's shirt was usually inconsistent and changed depending on the short. And even then, his trademark orange shirt was still the one most prominently featured.
    • Ask people what Sideshow Bob episodes are about, and they'll usually say "Bob trying to murder Bart." Of the various Bob episodes in the first eight seasons, only one ("Cape Feare") had Bob's primary scheme being to kill Bart; in all the others, it's at most a side scheme, and several have him not caring about Bart at all. If anything, they almost made a point to avoid him repeating schemes. After "Cape Feare", the first episode where Bob's primary motive is trying to murder Bart is "Funeral for a Fiend", which happens in the nineteenth season. By later seasons, that motive actually does become the focus of several of his episodes, usually while trying to lampshade that Bob has schemed to kill Bart countless times.
    • Smithers is usually portrayed as Mr. Burns' toadie, so much so that writers started writing gay jokes about it - except that the opposite is actually true. Smithers was the butt of gay jokes before he started being portrayed as a spineless boot-licker. Early episodes don't show Mr. Burns as a completely (and, it's been shown, literally) soulless Corrupt Corporate Executive, so he didn't really need a suck-up.
      • Speaking of whom, several people are under the impression that Mr. Burns raised Smithers as a child, and that Smithers' attraction to Burns is therefore Oedipal in nature. This is flagrantly untrue. While Smithers' father did work for Mr. Burns and died when Smithers was a baby, as seen in "The Blunder Years", the only interaction we see between Mr. Burns and baby Smithers is one scene where Mr. Burns holds him after Smithers Sr. hands him to Burns before making the Heroic Sacrifice that claimed his life. Nowhere in that episode does Mr. Burns state he would raise Smithers as his own, and Smithers has certainly never indicated that in any episode; all evidence points towards him having been raised solely by his mother, whom he values deeply.
    • Even many Simpsons fans describe The Itchy & Scratchy Show, a parody of cat and mouse cartoons like Tom and Jerry and Herman and Katnip, as a psychotic cat and mouse trying to kill one another, or even that the series mimics the typical structure of the cat being the aggressor and the mouse defending himself. Though Early-Installment Weirdness (particularly their appearances in the Tracey Ullman era) implied this to be the case, the series quickly settled on the gag being that Scratchy is never the aggressor and rarely even fights back, with Itchy seemingly murdering him for kicks.
    • The whole concept of Poochie in "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" as a character is often misunderstood that people like to compare him to a character that is deemed "not liked". If anything, Poochie has a very specific description with how he was conceived and shown in the episode. He was a result of a network scrambling for a way to revitalize a dying show with only one joke in it, using shoddy attempts to connect with an audience. Note that he wasn't even the result of test audiences, because the kids explicitly don't know what they want. He only appeared twice in Itchy and Scratchy; first for a bombastic introduction, and then to get killed off after he proved unpopular. Despite various conditions asked by Homer regarding Poochie, none of those actually happened as the character didn't appear in another Itchy and Scratchy short. This is to contrast Poochie analogies that implied those things happened.
    • Everyone "knows" that Fat Tony is the head of the Springfield Mafia. Not so. While he is a high-ranking member, he still answers to the family's actual boss, Don Vittorio DiMaggio. This is an understandable misconception, however, since DiMaggio rarely appears in person, so most episodes involving the Mafia have Tony play the role of leader.
    • The iconic Signature Scene from "Bart The Daredevil" where Homer falls down Springfield Gorge has been subject to multiple misconceptions:
      • Homer did not intentionally attempt to jump Springfield Gorge. While he threatened to do so in a desperate attempt to dissuade Bart, the actual jump was an accident resulting from Homer thoughtlessly standing on Bart's skateboard while lecturing him, causing him to unwittingly roll down the slope. This is not helped by future Call Backs making it sound like Homer did attempt the jump on-purpose.
      • The scene is often noted as the first time the series resorted to full-blown slapstick comedy at Homer's expense, in contrast to the relatively down-to-earth tone of the series up to that point. It's actually the other way around, the point of the scene is to subvert Amusing Injuries by showing what'd realistically happen were such a thing to happen in real life. Homer's fall (actually a prolonged tumble down multiple cliff faces) is entirely survivable if extremely painful, and he ends up in a full-body cast afterwards despite this.
      • Contrary to popular belief, the second time Homer fell down Springfield Gorge after falling out of the ambulance was never shown the first time the episode aired, nor was it the writers' intention to do so. That footage was created exclusively for "So It's Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show", produced two years later.
    • The show being an extreme Long Runner with an Audience-Alienating Era of over two decades and most of its Broken Base having only seen a fraction of its 750 (and counting) episodes makes it almost too easy to spread rumors about events in recent seasons.
      • Bizarro Episode "Lisa the Boy Scout," ostensibly a Clip Show of Simpsons footage deemed too bad to air, seems made to play into this tendency, with clips of Family Relationship Switcheroo reveals, "confirmations" of common Epileptic Trees, and other nonsensical, shark-jumping events begging to be circulated out-of-context. To bring it home, co-showrunner Matt Selman "live-tweeted" the episode in-character as an irate viewer describing the episode's non-canon sketches as if they were real events with bearing on the show. Plenty of Twitter users took the bait, with the result that you're hard-pressed to find a discussion of Modern Simpsons where someone doesn't chip in the information that the show recently revealed Bart's nerdy classmate Martin Prince to be an adult undercover cop posing as a ten-year-old.
      • Thanks to a screenshot from the episode "Double, Double, Boy in Trouble" that made the rounds on Twitter, a lot of casual viewers believe that Milhouse becomes a transgender Love Interest to Bart in one or more Flash Forward episodes. In fact, the characters shown in the screenshot aren't Bart and Milhouse at all, but part of a brief gag in which an adult Identical Stranger to Bart unsettles the real Bart by showing him a picture of his Milhouse-like wife.
    • It's often claimed that, following the release of The Problem With Apu and the subsequent controversy it generated around the character being an ethnic stereotype, Apu was subject to Chuck Cunningham Syndrome and never seen again. In actuality, Apu and his family continued to make background appearances in episodes produced years after the controversy, he just doesn't have any speaking lines.
      • The episode "Much Apu About Something", about Apu's nephew Jay buying the Kwik-E-Mart and accusing Apu of being an outdated stereotype, is often assumed to have been a response to the documentary. It actually came out a year before the documentary, a fact made obvious by how Jay's voice actor Utkarsh Ambudkar was interviewed in it and discussed details of the episode's production.
    • It's been claimed Lisa is the Author Avatar for Matt Groening. In fact, Groening's had little creative input on the show ever since he started working on Futurama. The only time he actually wrote for her was the Tracey Ullman shorts, when she was Bart's Distaff Counterpart.
    • A common refrain among fans is that the Simpsons acts as an Unintentional Period Piece of a better time for the American economy, when "one blue collar job right out of high school could let you afford a family of five and a big house." Inaccuracy of that to real-world economic statistics aside, this tends to ignore three crucial points about the titular family's living situation.
      • Homer is not a "blue collar worker" (literally; he wears a white shirt and tie to work). He's a nuclear safety inspector, a position that pays quite well in the real world and would ordinarily require a good degree of higher education. That Homer is blatantly unqualified for the job and only got it through blind luck and the incompetence of his superiors is pointed out repeatedly. "Homer's Enemy" even has his coworkers note that they have master's degrees in nuclear physics for their positions, and other episodes have revolved around Homer going to college to become qualified for it (albeit abridged because of Negative Continuity). Indeed, one episode makes it explicit that the pay is the only reason why Homer sticks with the nuclear plant despite making little secret of how little he enjoys working there; it's simply the only job he can get which is able to adequately support a wife and three kids.
      • The family were only able to afford a house because A: they live in Springfield, a small town considered a horrible place to live by the rest of the country at large (so property prices are probably very low; helps that it's fairly rural), and B. Grandpa Simpson sold his own house so they could make the down payment. Homer didn't buy it himself. He promptly stuck his dad in a retirement home. In spite of these two massive mitigating factors, the family's financial situation is still often depicted as pretty poor.
      • That the Simpsons live implausibly well is the entire joke (explicitly pointed out in "Homer's Enemy"). Conceived of in the 1980s, The Simpsons was always intended as a parody of sitcoms over the last thirty years depicting families as improbably well-mannered, content, and financially well-off, an overly whitewashed image of American life that had little resemblance to how most people actually lived. Transplanting some of those same circumstances to a household run by Homer Simpson was supposed to underline how absurd they were, even with the justifications above (which play on the realistic consequences for further comedy). Watching The Simpsons to get a good feel for working class American life in the 1980s and 1990s is like watching a parody of Friends and concluding that it accurately represented a time in the early 2000s United States where a single (bad) waitress could afford a massive Manhattan apartment.
    • Many fans like to point out that it was established in the episode "I Married Marge" that Bart was born in 1980, leading to many joking that the perpetually 10 year old Bart is technically as old or older than other people or things born or created in or after that year. However, this is not exactly true. In the aforementioned episode, Bart was conceived in 1980, specifically the same night Homer and Marge saw The Empire Strikes Back, which was released in late May of 1980. Given the average length of a pregnancy, Bart wouldn't have been born until early 1981. Indeed, this birth year matches with him having been 10 when the episode aired in 1991.
    • The concept of Flanderization is most commonly understood to be writers taking a minor early trait for a character and over time making it the focus of their entire personality, with this being what happened with Ned Flanders and religion. This is inaccurate however, as Ned's obsessive Christianity had always been his primary Running Gag as early as his first major role. What changed was the context - why originally his piety was just used as an extension of his larger role as Homer's Nice Guy Foil, later seasons would instead use his religious beliefs as a means of ridiculing conservative Christians, often turning him into a bible-thumping Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
    • Lisa is commonly understood as a friendless outcast at school with no real social peers. Except there's only one episode in the first eight seasons to portray her like this - while Lisa is never shown as especially popular like Bart often is, the majority of episodes do imply she has at least some measure of a general social circle, even if it's not an especially close one - multiple episodes show her having friendly interactions with Janey, she befriends Ralph and Allison at the end of their respective episodes, and another episode opens on her having a slumber party with her classmates. It's only after Flanderization set in that she begun being consistently portrayed as being completely friendless, perpetuating this misconception.
    • Homer is legendary for being continually fired or quitting his job at the Nuclear Plant to take on random new professions. Except, throughout the Classic Era, Homer only actually is fired fired once, in "Homer's Odessey", the third episode of the series (and first written), and he never quits outside of a flashback story [[note:]]He's laid off in "Burns Verkaufen Der Kraftwerk" after the plant comes under new management, but never gets a new job before he is rehired.[[/note]]. The majority of New Job Plot's are either implicitly or explicitly side-hustles he is doing atop his regular job at the plant (acting as Lurleen Lumpkin's manager, running a snow plow business, Krusty impersonator) or are related directly to Burns' business in some manner (working as a dealer at the casino Burns runs, filling in for Smithers as Burns' assistant on the former's request, being given a better offer at a rival company). It's only in the Denser and Wackier Scully era that Homer's propensity for new occupations becomes a series fixture.
  • Crazy Is Cool: Groundskeeper Willie, an insanely angry Scottish janitor who fistfights with animals, fought actual space invaders with a shotgun, and apparently thinks movies are real.
  • Creator Worship:
    • Matt Groening gets little of the blame for the series' decline (having only a "Creative Consultant" credit for most seasons) while James L. Brooks gets none (likewise having no real involvement in the series for most of its run, having an "Executive Creative Consultant" credit for the entire series).
    • Carolyn Omine developed this reputation during the run of Seasons 33 and 34, with many fans noting the episodes she handled were consistently among the strongest the series had seen in decades. Her departure from the position of co-showrunner only six episodes into Season 35 (the result of a pay dispute) was met with quite a bit of backlash as a result.
  • Delusion Conclusion:
    • One fan theory is that Homer is unconscious and dreaming the whole thing. This one is parodied in "Lisa the Boy Scout", where one of the "terrible unaired episodes" shown is Homer waking up after the events of "Bart the Daredevil" to learn that all of the following episodes were a dream.
    • Another popular theory states that the first seasons of the show actually happened — but eventually, Homer dies, and the remainder of the adventures are a Dying Dream of him slowly slipping away. The evidence given includes Homer's conversation with God at the end of Season 4's "Homer the Heretic"; when he asks for the meaning of life, God replies that he'll have to wait until he dies, and when Homer whines that he wants to know now, the Almighty replies "You can't wait six months?" Sure enough, six months later, the episode "So It's Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show" aired, which features Homer falling into a coma after Bart plays a prank on him. The "Homer is Dead" theory explains that the Simpson patriarch actually dies during this episode. It's commonly used as a justification for the show becoming Denser and Wackier over the years — the early seasons were more grounded in somewhat realistic plots, but as Homer's mind falls away further and further, increasingly bizarre events begin to occur.
    • Yet another theory suggests that the "Treehouse of Horror" episodes are all the result of nightmares being experienced by the eponymous family, as evidenced by the lack of continuity and the supernatural elements not featured in the main series. Especially since the segments on “Treehouse of Horror II” were their (candy-induced) nightmares.
  • Designated Hero:
    • Homer used to be a well-intentioned moron (though strangling Bart was a Running Gag since Season 1), but from Seasons 9-12, when Mike Scully ran the show, he becomes an outright Jerkass towards his family and friends, a trait that is still sometimes present, depending on the episode.
    • The use of Recycled Script also makes Lisa this, as she will often be presented as in the right or get a happy ending, yet when someone else does the exact same thing they are treated as a jerkass and shunned for it.
    • Marge’s status as the show's Designated Victim means that no matter the situation, she's treated as the wronged party. There are many situations where Marge goes along with Homer’s plans, does the same thing as him or something worse, yet she will always be treated as the victim or at least sympathetic, if it’s not outright ignored or Played for Laughs. What makes this worse is that there are episodes where Marge is clearly shown in the wrong only for the plot to go through a Halfway Plot Switch, so not only are her actions forgotten, but she usually ends up getting exactly what she wanted.
    • In general, many characters have been treated as in the right solely by virtue of being pit against Homer, even when they've acted just as standoffish, careless or hypocritical or play as much part in the episode's dilemma (this was more prone to occur in the earliest seasons, in later ones at least, Homer was allowed to pull a Jerkass Has a Point sometimes). Herb Powell for example blames and disowns Homer for bankrupting his company with a bad car design, despite it being as much his own fault for his bad management and putting him in charge unsupervised in the first place. When Herb later guilt trips the family into funding him, they agree and side with the idea it was completely Homer's fault. Even after Herb becomes a millionare again, he refuses to accept partial blame for his past endeavour and only reluctantly even forgave Homer despite helping him.
  • Designated Monkey: In the later seasons Bart is often depicted as a Butt-Monkey in a similar vein as Hans Moleman. This is lampshaded by Lisa in "The Man Who Grew Too Much" when she decided to work with Sideshow Bob because he only tried to kill Bart. However, unlike Moleman, Bart reacts to the abuse he suffers with more than Dull Surprise causing him to be Made Out to Be a Jerkass because it forces the Sympathetic P.O.V. character to suffer the consequences of their action. Basically, anytime Bart reacts negatively to, tries to subvert, or even is unable to function as a human stress ball the show invokes The Complainer Is Always Wrong and Honor Thy Abuser. Making things worse, the things happening to Bart will be called out when it’s done to another character, even by his abusers themselves.
  • Designated Villain:
    • The other girls, especially Sherri and Terri, in a lot of the "Lisa has no friends" episodes. They're often treated as shallow or straight up evil for kissing up to Lisa whenever she has something they want despite not actually liking her... but Lisa does exactly the same, trying to suck up to other girls that she only ever has contempt for simply because they're in a group, sometimes expressing this in the exact same scene. Lisa is never once called out or addressed for this and isn't subject to the disproportionate treatment the other girls get in a lot of other episodes for the apparent crime of not liking Lisa. Not to mention the twins and Janey in particular have occasionally done something nice or supported her such as in "I'm Spelling As Fast As I Can", yet Lisa's never done anything for them. As a result, it can make the other kids (even the usual Nice Girl, Allison) come off entirely justified whenever they rebuff Lisa. By this metric, the Treehouse of Horror XXVII segment “BFF RIP” actually seems logical by comparison.
    • Bart is Made Out to Be a Jerkass any time he is shown to be superior to Lisa at anything, to the point where giving up his talent for her is a recurring plotline. He's been given a What the Hell, Hero? with Marge blaming him for the consequence of Lisa's jealous antics, which ultimately convinces him to stay crippled by the end of the episode. Even when Bart is superior only because of prior knowledge, Lisa is still presented as justified in her resentment and he as wrong for retaliating, and he's also presented as wrong when the reverse is true and he resents Lisa when she proves to be superior in something he's good at.
  • Diagnosed by the Audience:
    • Many neurodivergent viewers view Bart Simpson as having hyperactive-impulsive type ADHD. This reading primarily focuses on his impulsive nature and his struggles in academia, which are shown to be independent of traditional laziness and actively impede his attempts to do better even when he tries his hardest (as shown in "Bart Gets an F"). Later episodes would outright state that he has ADHD, causing these fans to say “I Knew It!”.
    • A sizable portion of audiences interpret Lisa Simpson as being autistic. Much of this reading stems from her prodigious levels of knowledge (which among other things includes surprisingly eloquent language) and constant desire to both learn new information and repeat what she knows to others, often to the chagrin of her peers, her strong sense of justice that manifests in constant social activism, her heavy interest in playing the saxophone (which many interpret as both an outlet for stimming and a sign that music is a special interest of hers), and her struggle to fit in with her peers.
    • Principal Skinner is commonly interpreted as autistic by fans, due to his fixation on education and all of its mediocrities (right down to the school's hearing tests), his love of routine, his difficulty understanding innuendos, his stilted and formal way of speaking, and the fact that his mother Agnes smothers him and treats him like he's still a little kid, which is implied in some gags to have caused lasting issues for him (which is sadly Truth in Television for many autistic people).
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
    • Homer and Bart. Sometimes fans will excuse their actions when they were in the wrong, often when Homer or Bart hurt Lisa in some way, simply because they dislike Lisa or prefer Homer and Bart to other characters. It also applies to later seasons independently of Lisa — Bart often causes problems for himself or exudes an aura of Brilliant, but Lazy, but fans sometimes think the universe of the show or the writers just aren't cutting him a break.
    • Sideshow Bob gets this from some of the fandom. While he is canonically a bit of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, many fanworks gloss over his deliberate attempts to murder or otherwise harm people and turn him into a straight-up good guy with a heap of Dark and Troubled Past.
    • Mr. Burns is supposed to be the Big Bad of the show; a heartless Corrupt Corporate Executive who treats everyone else like mere pawns. However, Burns/Smithers shippers tend to sand off his edges and give him a Hidden Heart of Gold (or at least portray Smithers as his Morality Pet).
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: Many Lisa-focused plots have this as they often require ignoring or even an outright sacrifice of someone else's happiness (that person usually being Bart). There are even episodes where people are heavily injured and even killed, but ignored because Lisa got what she wanted. (It works the other way, too, with plenty of episodes that have had happy endings for everyone except Lisa, sometimes directly at her expense.)
  • Estrogen Brigade: Sideshow Bob surprisingly has quite a big one. Due to his Wicked Cultured nature and Kelsey Grammer’s lovely voice, there are a lot of women who find him sexy.
  • Ethnic Scrappy: Indian-Americans have a complicated relationship with Apu. Many have had to endure bullying in the form of people doing his stereotypical voice in front of them, while numerous actors have complained about having to endure thousands of auditions where they'd be asked to do some variation on the voice. Comedian Hari Kondabolu, who described the character as "a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my dad," famously released a documentary on the subject, The Problem With Apu, in 2018, where he and other performers of Hindi descent discuss their feelings about the show and the character, as well as the general lack of representation of Indians in American media that allows characters like Apu to be the only representation they get. Hank Azaria, who was aware of the controversy but declined an interview for the documentary (stating that he didn't want to speak on behalf of everyone working on the show), eventually said that he was willing to retire the character. Meanwhile, episodes which attempted to address this, such as "Much Apu About Something"note  and "No Good Read Goes Unpunished,"note  were both dismissed by these critics as petty and dismissive (Azaria himself also hated how dismissive the show was about those criticisms), while Matt Groening outright stated that he doesn't find Apu offensive at all.
    • As this early 2020 article has stated as of late, the show will no longer have non-white characters voiced by white voice actors.
    • The Brazilians in “Blame It On Lisa”. The episode has so many stereotypes about Brazilians that the Brazilian government complained, culminating in an apology being issued.
    • Bumblebee Man is actually Norwegian (despite his appearance) and speaks a very butchered “Spanglish”.
    • Speaking of Norwegians, the residents of Ogdenville are of Norwegian descent. When they arrive in Springfield, many people, including Homer, are hateful towards them. Marge even becomes shocked at Maggie saying “ja”.
    • The Canadians get this too. When Lisa meets Justin Trudeau, she temporarily gains this exaggerated Canadian accent. A Canadian version of Ralph Wiggum is wearing a dead seal. There is some self-deprecating humor as well, with the Newfoundlanders and the Québécois claiming that they always get made fun of.
    • In contrast, Scotland actually likes Groundskeeper Willie.
  • Evil Is Cool:

    F-L 
  • Fan Nickname:
    • "Jerkass Homer" is the nickname that fans of the classic episodes give to post-Flanderization Homer. Lampshaded in "Mommie Beerest" when Homer says, "Duh, that's me! Jerkass Homer!" and again in "E. Pluribus Wiggum" with "Jerkass Homer brand cigars."
    • Similarly, "Zombie Simpsons" for the post-classic seasons.
    • Due to Ralph Wiggum's famous comment in "Lisa Gets An 'A'", Superintendent Chalmers is often referred to as "Super Nintendo Chalmers", or occasionally "SNES".
  • Fandom Heresy: Not unlike the whole "prequels vs. the original series" debates, defense of any later episode will come across as this.
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • The Simpsons is one of the media franchises most well-known for having multiple foreign dubs in the same language, most notably two different Frenchnote  and Spanishnote  versions. However, due to the drastically different voice casts and approaches to Woolseyism between regional versions, the American and European fans are often at each other's throats about whose dub is superior.
    • The rivalry that pretty much all regions of fans have with fans of Family Guy and (to a lesser extent) South Park.
    • One sprang up with the Bojack Horseman fandom when "Mad About The Toy" beat out "Free Churro" for the 2019 Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program.
  • Fandom VIP: TheRealJims is the go-to guy when it comes to analyzing the show, thanks to his Simpsons Histories of the characters, Simpsons Mysteries of the show's puzzling elements, retrospectives of the seasons, among other things.
  • Fanon Discontinuity:
  • Fan-Preferred Couple:
    • Nedna is literally a fan-preferred couple: Fox held a vote to see if they should break up or become an Official Couple. Nedna won (but not before Marcia Wallace died, leaving Ned Flanders a widower once again). On the other hand, many fans, especially those who favor Seasons 1–9, feel it was a mistake to kill off Maude and see her as the real love of Ned's life, and reuniting Edna with her previous Love Interest, Principal Skinner, notably wasn't an option in the Nedna poll (something Skinner himself complained about in the episode that announced the poll result).
    • Nelson/Lisa is generally considered a better future outcome than Milhouse/Lisa, by fans and voice actors alike. So much so that in The Simpsons: Tapped Out, Nelson and Lisa spend significantly more time referencing their relationship than Milhouse does expressing his crush.
    • On the other side of the coin, Milhouse/Samantha Stankey is much more beloved than Milhouse/Lisa, due to the love the two shared in "Bart's Friend Falls in Love", and out of spite in regards to future seasons forcibly portraying him as a hopeless loser by having him go after The One That Got Away and winning her back against all odds.
    • Though the show has frequently showed Mr. Burns dating women and turning down Waylon Smithers’ advances, and episodes like “The Burns Cage” and “Portrait of a Lackey On Fire” have showed Smithers dating someone besides Mr. Burns, Burns x Smithers is an extremely popular ship in the Simpsons fandom, with more fanfics written about it than any other Simpsons ship on Archive Of Our Own. In fact, a few casual fans of the show have mistaken Burns and Smithers for mutual gay lovers.
    • After Edna hooked up with Ned Flanders, a few temporary love interests have been introduced for Skinner, and the writers have leaned more heavily into him being unhealthily attached to his mother. However, a big chunk of the fandom prefers to ship him with Superintendent Chalmers. Reasons for the uptick in “Chalmskinn” shipping include an increase in Ho Yay involving the two characters in the HD era, Chalmers’ hatred towards Skinner mellowing out into more of a Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic, the two of them making up and genuinely becoming friends in “The Road to Cincinnati”, and, of course, the increase in popularity the two characters received due to the memetic “Steamed Hams” segment.
    • The writers' decision to have Moe get engaged to former Girl of the Week Maya in "The Wayz We Were" was... divisive. While the majority of fans liked the idea of Moe getting a wife, many felt that Maya was a Satellite Love Interest with no personality outside of being a little person. Instead, a lot of Simpsons fans prefer to ship Moe with the similarly unlucky-in-love Selma Bouvier, a pairing which TheRealJims made a very convincing case for in one of his videos. It helps that if Moe married Selma, he'd literally be the Simpson kids' "Uncle Moe".
  • Fans Prefer the New Her: In "Large Marge", Marge is not happy when a plastic surgeon gives her breast implants meant for one of Mayor Quimby's female interns and she spends the whole episode fretting about them (while all the men drool and ogle at them), which of course means they're gone by the end of the episode. This one probably doesn't need any further explanation.
  • First Installment Wins: Some fans treat "Mother Simpson" as the only time Mona Simpson appears, as they feel her later appearances cancel out its very powerful Tear Jerker ending.
  • Fountain of Memes:
  • Genre Turning Point: It's impossible to overstate how revolutionary this show was. Not only was it one of the first mainstream western cartoons to be specifically written for adults, it was the Trope Codifier for animated sitcoms. In addition to that, the show's Laugh Track-free, subversive, and often meta humor had massive influence on sitcoms in general, animated or not.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
    • Lisa. She's a Base-Breaking Character in the United States, but Lisa is very popular with Japanese audiences, due to her studiousness and Buddhism. Promotional material for The Simpsons in Japan even portrays her as the main character. Bart on the other hand, is widely disliked there for his rebelliousness.
    • The show is extremely popular abroad, due to the extensive Woolseyisms involved in each foreign dub.
      • French Canadians love the series; it's one of the only foreign shows airing in French Canada to not only be dubbed into Canadian French, but to extensively use colloquial Québécois French accents and slang as opposed to the Standard French typically used in French-Canadian dubs.
      • In South America, this is pretty much the only non-Latin show to air nowadays in over-the-air channels (aside from the occasional Brazilian or Turkish soaps). The Simpsons Movie confirmed the show's popularity, being the highest-grossing movie of 2007 in Argentina, as well in the rest of the region, bringing back audiences to theaters after decades.
      • Note that the "classic" Latin American dub (until Season 15) was notable among imports for replacing most North American-centric references to more localized ones (as well as translated names). This largely ended after the (infamous) voice actor "switcheroo", with more recent episodes keeping the original references.
  • Growing the Beard: Handled in a variety of aspects.
    • While not considered bad, the first season seems jarringly different than other seasons to more recent viewers, due to the show's slower pace, Homer's voice, the quirks of the animation style, etc. The show starts solidifying their character designs in the second season and ramping up the visual humor, which hit its stride by the third season. The reason was largely financial: the initial Tracey Ullman shorts were done on the cheap (starting with a two-man animation team, one of whom was Matt Groening), and improved as more funding was added. The first season was a half-length trial - with the second season, they got a full whack of funding and were able to set down a regular writing and production cycle and firm up the designs.
    • The series' unique storytelling style (with the first third of the episode dwelling on a long series of possible plotlines before finally revealing the main story) was already developing during the third season, which many consider the beginning of The Simpsons' "golden era" ("Bart the Murderer" is a prime example, as Bart has a progressively worse and worse day until he runs into The Mafia, which then becomes the main story; another example is "Flaming Moe's", where Lisa is having a slumber party which Homer finds annoying, leading him to go to Moe's which is out of beer, which leads Homer to introduce his recipe to Moe, thus kick-starting the plot).
    • The fourth season saw an increase of Rapid-Fire Comedy while pathos was phased out. At the same time, the characters gradually adopted their "classic" characterizations.
    • Depending on who you ask many fans will consider Season 20 onwards to be the show Regrowing the Beard after a bad case of Seasonal Rot, or the show succumbing to Seasonal Rot after it re-Grew the Beard between Season 15 to 20, or the show just maintaining its long Seasonal Rot.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight: In "Worst Episode Ever", jokes are made about Comic Book Guy's single status, when Dr. Hibbert comments after he has a heart attack that the job of running a comic store is something he'd call "The Professional Widowmaker" except the owners are never married. Flashforward to Season 25's "Married to the Blob" and Comic Book Guy does end up Happily Married.
  • Hollywood Homely:
    • Selma and Patty are presented as being extremely unattractive in the show, but they don't look substantially different from their sister Marge, who's considered to be beautiful.
    • Smithers; this becomes a plot point in the episode "Flaming Moe." While Smithers is usually shown to be a merely average-looking, (if not mildly◊ pudgy◊ ) middle-aged man, in this episode, he's denied entry from a popular gay club for not being attractive enough.
  • Hollywood Pudgy: It's been mentioned on more than one occasion that Lisa's butt is apparently much bigger than most kids her age. This is despite the fact that the viewers can see that she pretty much has the same body type as most of the other kids.
  • I Knew It!:
    • Many fans on the Internet correctly predicted that the character who would die in "Clown in the Dumps" would be Krusty's dad Rabbi Krustofski, since this show doesn't have the guts to kill off a major character (unless the voice actor quit or died and a replacement can't be found).
    • Similarly, a lot of fans figured out that Patty would be the character who'd come out as gay in "There's Something About Marrying".
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The recurring Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario between Homer and Marge from the early seasons was revived after Homer Took a Level in Jerkass during the Al Jean years. While it was supposed to make the audience wonder why someone would put up with him, Marge increasingly became portrayed as extremely vindictive, to the point where she began looking like the abusive one at times.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Bart, Homer, Lisa and Grandpa Simpson. Depending on the Writer, Nelson Muntz, Moe, and Milhouse sometimes qualify.
    • Mr. Burns, whenever he tries to atone for what he's done (he usually gets rejected). There are also subtle hints throughout the show (such as in 'Homer's Night Out' and 'Burns' Heir') that despite his profound corporate greed and love of money, he's secretly a bitterly lonely old man who's despondent that he never got married or started a family of his own. He's also shown to not have many friends aside from Smithers; in 'Lady Bouvier's Lover,' only one person shows up to his wedding- and whenever the citizens of Springfield assume Mr. Burns has died, his death is always publicly celebrated.
    • Frank Grimes is another example. He's had a god-awful life after being abandoned by his parents, was such a No-Respect Guy that everyone laughed at his funeral, and had to work with Homer's stupid antics.
    • Selma. She's pretty aggressive, but she is a lonely woman, who does show herself to have a heart several times, and even Homer does sometimes experience her Hidden Heart of Gold.
  • Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Mr. Burns and Sideshow Bob, the two central antagonists, are considered to be very entertaining to watch — the former for being Laughably Evil and the latter for being Evil Is Cool. Ms. Hoover, Helen Lovejoy, and Agnes Skinner, on the other hand, are considered to be the most dislikable characters in the series for having no such stand-out qualities.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Some episodes are mainly watched for the crossovers with other shows:
    • "Mathlete's Feat" features a crossover Couch Gag with Rick and Morty, which was praised for staying true to the latter show's edgier tone.
    • Similarly, "My Way or the Highway to Heaven"'s Couch Gag is a crossover with Bob's Burgers and is considered one of the most iconic parts of the episode thanks to the latter characters' hilarious dialogue.
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Bart. Marge too, must run in the family.
  • LGBT Fanbase: The Simpsons has gained a substantial queer fanbase, because not only is there a lot of Ho Yay (especially between Burns and Smithers, Carl and Lenny, and Skinner and Chalmers), The Simpsons has been advocating for gay rights and featuring gay characters ever since Season 2, and the Season 7 episode "Homer’s Phobia" had a very clear-cut Gay Aesop during a time where that was very rare on television. In addition, the two most prominent gay characters on the show, Smithers and Patty, are regular people with traits outside of their sexuality and not over-the-top stereotypes, especially when you compare them to gay characters from later adult cartoons (such as Bruce and Jasper from Family Guy, Mr. Slave and Big Gay Al from South Park, and Xandir Wifflebottom from Drawn Together). In fact, some of the gay jokes on the show are so subdued that they are often mistaken for bona-fide Ship Tease by younger viewers.
  • Love to Hate: Mr. Burns and Sideshow Bob are incredibly sinister, yet they're so darn funny that they end up extremely entertaining because of it.

    M-S 
  • Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales:
    • A strange thing about Apu is that while he has been criticized by Indian-Americans or rather South Asian Americans (since even Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who aren't Indians are confused for the stereotype and accent), Apu is well-liked in India itself for the fact that Apu was one of the few Indian-origin characters in American TV, and that he was in the context of his time, non-stereotypical i.e. not defined entirely by religion, not overtly submissive, and generally shown with the same flaws and quirks as any Springfielder, compared to most Indian characters in Western media.
    • Apu has also been positively received by first-generation Indian immigrants in the United States, due to him showing that a first-generation immigrant is capable of running a successful business and supporting a loving family in spite of his ethnicity and dialect, which is seen as quite significant form of representation by a group of people forced to keep track of multiple languages at once and redefine how they're viewed by the people around them.
    • Many people in the LGBT community have a soft spot for Smithers, despite some of his more questionable misdeeds. It helps that he was an explicitly gay television character during a time when it was almost entirely unheard of, he's more of a Straight Gay rather than an outlandish stereotype, and in spite of his quirks, he's rather Adorkable and a relatively sympathetic character. In fact, a lot of people who unironically ship Burns/Smithers are LGBT in some way, with a lot of them being gay men who relate to Smithers and want him to succeed.
    • Lionel Hutz is also extremely popular among real-life lawyers due to his complete lack of ethics and legal skill and some of his quotes are commonly repeated as jokes among practicing attorneys.
    • Ned Flanders is popular among conservative Christians despite being a caricature of them. Pre-Flanderization, he was easily the nicest guy on the show and always portrayed as being very reasonable compared to his stubborn, selfish, and idiotic neighbor Homer. Sadly, after Flanderization, Christians turned away from the character recognizing he had become more of a hateful stereotype of them by the writers, though they have tried to tone this down over time and have him go back to his earlier cheery self.
    • Groundskeeper Willie is very popular in — yep, you guessed it — Scotland. Representatives of Aberdeen and Glasgow fought to have their respective cities recognised as his hometown and Glasgow City Council grudgingly removed him from their list of "Famous Glaswegians" when it was made official in-universe that he hailed from Kirkwall, Orkney. This is also thought to have given Orkney a tourism boost in the following years.
    • Additionally, despite some episodes being Banned in China ("Goo Goo Gai Pan" in China, "Thirty Minutes over Tokyo" in Japan and "Blame It on Lisa" in Brazil), "The Italian Bob" averted No Export for You in Italy: not only did it not get banned at all, but it has aired often due to it being funny and even has the Italian-born Maria Grazia Cucinotta reprising her role as Sideshow Bob's Italian wife Francesca (she's the VA for the character in both versions).
    • "Bart vs. Australia" is considered an excellent documentary in Australia, particularly for showcasing the game of Knifey-Spoony, and the Prime Minister drinking from a can of beer while lying naked on a lake in an old tire. One Australian is petitioning for the currency's name to be changed to dollarydoos. It's got over 60,000 signatures. Worth noting, however, that the episode was controversial when it first aired but became a cult classic over time. Prime Minister Andy in particular became a go-to reference during the reign of Tony Abbott, who — like many Australian PMs — had a great love of swimming and surfing, and was often coaxed by the press into giving statements on the beach while wearing only a Speedo. It's also common for Simpsons fan groups based in the country to use Tobias and Bruno (or at least their faces) in photoshopped memes involving Australian cultural references.
    • "Blame It on Lisa" is a very loved episode in Brazil. While it had controversy (many people grew to hate the show thanks to it, and eventually the episode was banned in Brazil for a few years), there are many Simpsons fans in Brazil who love the episode despite its inaccuracies, and even more thanks to the stuff they got right. It helps that Brazilians have low self-esteem and love making jokes about their own country. Special mention goes to the "Our money sure is gay" joke, where Homer's kidnappers get a briefcase full of pink and purple money bills. Brazilians said how they needed the Simpsons to realize that, in Brazil, bills of 5 Reais and 10 Reais are indeed purple and pink.
    • The episode "Blood Feud" has, at the end of the episode, Mr. Burns giving Bart an Olmec head. Though the writers made up most of the details regarding the giant stone head, a lot of archaeologists who specialize in studying the Olmec civilization wrote in to thank the show's staff for choosing Olmec rather than the usual Mayans and Aztec that had previously consumed nearly all mention of Mesoamerican pre-western history prior.
    • Kelsey Grammer, an avowed Republican, has played Sideshow Bob, an avowed homicidal Republican who wants to "lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king", for close to thirty years. Presumably Bob's sophistication nullifies the 'Republicans operate out of a Dracula castle' schtick. (It doesn't hurt his closest friends, writers, and castmates are gay.)
    • The character of Julio is very popular among both Cubans and Costa Ricans (his exact nationality is unclear) despite being gay and both countries been relatively conservative. The Bumblebee man is also very popular among Mexicans and Hispanics in general, probably in part because he is also an Affectionate Parody of beloved comedian Chespirito who is an icon of both Mexico and Latin America at large.
    • "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson" is beloved by New Yorkers, because it shows the best parts of New York and the worst parts. New Yorkers were also pissed when the episode was pulled for years from rotation post-9/11 due to the jokes about the World Trade Center.
    • The episode "Livin La Pura Vida" basically broke the Internet in Costa Rica, and it was even covered by many of the local newspapers and media as an important event. The Simpsons' popularity is a cultural phenomenon as in the rest of Latin America so to some, it was less this trope and more of a dream come true. The episode, to be fair, is pretty respectful and the country is more of a scenario than the subject of humor as in the Brazil and Australia episodes, however, should be remembered that there was already an antecedent with South Park's episode in which this trope was not fulfilled as even the government filed a complaint for the depiction of the country (and yes, the South Park episode does have some fans and defenders among the Costa Ricans but not so much as other examples of the trope, though most fans of the show just overlook the episode in question and enjoy the rest of the series).
    • In "D'Oh Canada," the Simpsons visit Niagara Falls, and during the drive through Upstate New York, Homer sings an unflattering musical number portraying the region as a Rust Belt wasteland. As the comments on the linked video suggest, the vast majority of Upstaters found the scene hilarious and were happy to see the show poke fun at their portion of the state and not just NYC. It also doesn't hurt that the scene included some surprisingly beautiful Scenery Porn despite its mocking tone.
  • Mis-blamed:
    • Since he became showrunner in Season 9, Mike Scully gets blamed for "The Principal and the Pauper" during that season. Except Scully was never involved in it. It was a left-over episode from Season 8, with Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein as showrunners, Steven Dean Moore was the director, and Ken Keeler was the writer.
    • Mike Scully also gets heavily blamed for the decline in quality of the show in general. It was not all his fault, however, as most of the Simpsons writing and production talent had been leaving, with a massive exodus after Seasons 7 and 8, with many more leaving after 9. Many left to start production on Futurama, others left for other Fox shows, and others left for other animation studios and creative ventures altogether. Scully also had to deal with the deaths of prominent script supervisor, and Lunchlady Doris voice actress, Doris Grau, and prominent recurring star Phil Hartman, who many considered to be part of the show's lifeblood. There was also the simple fact that Scully was handed a show with 8 seasons under its belt and this is a recipe for decline for any showrunner.
    • Lisa sometimes gets this from the fans, being blamed for Marge and Homer's bad parenting when fans feel they favor her over Bart. In "Lisa's Sax", many felt that Bart's unhappiness at school was shoved aside in favour of nurturing Lisa's gift. While the episode supports this to an extent, it's not really Lisa's fault as she was a toddler at the time and not consciously trying to steal their parents' attention.
    • Subverted with the claims from fans of classic animation that the show led the industry to move away from Deranged Animation in favor of the more conservative style of TV animation that became the norm from the 1990s onwards, with said fans even pointing to the rejection of the original, more cartoonish version of "Some Enchanted Evening" as proof that the show was trying to kill off that kind of animation. In actual fact, TV animation had for the previous quarter-century been the Limited Animation of studios like Hanna-Barbera and Filmation, with classic-style animation actually having a comeback in the early 1990snote . However, the popularity of The Simpsons did ensure that shows like Family Guy and King of the Hill would become de jure once the "classic animation" resurgence crashed at the end of that decade, but said crash was more to do with studio politics amid lack of audience interest and the emergence of CGI animation than anything to do with The Simpsons.
  • Moe:
  • More Popular Spin-Off:
    • This show started off as animated shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show. Although Ullman was a solid hit for the then-budding Fox network, it is today almost entirely forgotten outside the context of being The Simpsons' parent show (and even then, you'd be lucky to find many people aware of the show's origins outside it being mentioned in the show itself).
    • Likewise, the comics initially started out as a recurring feature in Simpsons Illustratednote , and the popularity of its final issue (which was a one-shot consisting entirely of comics) lead to the establishment of Bongo Comics shortly after, with the comics themselves lasting a good 25 years.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The heavenly choir at the beginning of the opening sequence.
  • My Real Daddy: While Matt Groening and James L. Brooks get the bulk of credit for creating the series, John Ortved in his book The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History argues that co-developer, producer and writer Sam Simon deserves at least an equal share of the credit for making the series as good as it was. Simon worked on the series for only the first four seasons but for contractual reasons he kept receiving credit and royalties from the show until his death from cancer in March 2015. Fans also credit director and animator David Silverman, who has been involved with The Simpsons since the early The Tracey Ullman Show shorts, for establishing and refining the show's visual identity. Silverman has been responsible for handling some of the show's most unique and challenging scenes, such as Homer's chili-induced hallucinations.
  • Narm Charm: The plentiful amount of Recycled Animation seen in the earlier seasons. Realizing the limited budget the show had back then and being able to pick out when a certain scene was reused (and badly dubbed over or otherwise ill-fitting) from a previous episode is something of an unofficial game for fans. One example includes both "Saturdays of Thunder" and "Radio Bart" from Season 3 featuring a top-down view of Homer bragging about Bart to Marge while they're laying in bed together with the latter episode's Looping Lines being pretty obvious.
  • Never Live It Down:
    • Lisa's profile quote in the arcade game: "Embrace nothingness!" She only said it once in the actual show but many fans know her best for saying just that.
    • Similarly Bart said "Cowabunga" in only a couple of instances in the original Tracey Ullman shorts and the second season, despite it being slapped on endless merchandise of the character. DVD commentary reveals the creative team were surprised he even said it in the actual series at all.
    • The townspeople are untrusted by fans ever since "Boys Of Bummer" premiered, despite them apologizing for treating Bart badly to the point Bart was nearly Driven to Suicide, especially since Bart took 78 tries just to see him get his confidence back. One particular case is Chief Wiggum for driving Bart back to the crowd for losing the game and was the one who taunted Bart into jumping off.
    • In "Homer Simpson in: Kidney Trouble", some fans can't forgive Homer for causing Abe's kidneys to burst just so he could watch a TV show. Especially since Homer repeatedly runs away from the kidney transplant that would save Abe's life.
    • Because her first prominent appearance depicted her as having a crush on Bart, Shauna is hated by many fans and accused of being a pedophile. This is in spite of the fact that later episodes have phased out this aspect of her character in favor of her being Superintendent Chalmers' Bratty Teenage Daughter who's constantly causing trouble. Furthermore, while she has been shown flirting with several people, her main squeeze seems to be not Bart, but Jimbo, who is her own age and whom she has an on-again-off-again relationship with.
  • Nightmare Retardant: The first act break of Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes has Homer being shot at, with the bullet coming towards his head and him screaming. Since it's a foregone conclusion that Homer will not be hit (being that he's one of the main characters), it's more funny than frightening.
  • No Problem with Licensed Games:
    • The arcade game and The Simpsons Hit & Run are regarded as classics, Bart's Nightmare is fairly decent, and the 2007 multi-platform game, despite camera issues, has some genuinely hilarious moments.
    • The pinball machine The Simpsons Pinball Party, which pinball fans commonly regard as one of the 21st century's best.
  • Older Than They Think:
    • Many of the commonly cited examples of how "The Simpsons predicted" various things are actually cases of the show simply doing then-topical jokes about things that still happen to be relevant today. Autocorrect had been a common word processing feature for a while when the "Eat Up Martha" gag was written, and it was specifically a swipe at the infamously lousy handwriting recognition function on the Apple Newton.note  The gag about Donald Trump becoming President in "Bart to the Future" was a reference to his short-lived campaign for the Reform Party nomination in 2000.
    • Years before the controversial Armin Tamzarian storyline, Barry Sonnenfeld faced similar outrage over his Uncle Fester/Gordon Craven storyline in the 1991 film The Addams Family. Originally, Sonnenfeld wanted to reveal that Uncle Fester was, in fact, a stranger named Gordon Craven all long, and the family would still accept him as their Uncle Fester, even after finding out that he's an imposter. However, the cast despised this revelation and forced Sonnenfeld to change the ending so that Gordon turned out to be the real Uncle Fester, after all.
  • Once Original, Now Common: Hoo boy, the impact this show had on pushing television content and what can be done with animated shows makes it the equal to, if not surpassing, Seinfeld. With the significant rise of more mature television The Simpsons can seem almost quaint and hard to understand the immense backlash. These days, it barely (but occasionally) raises a blip on the Moral Guardian's radar, thanks to Matt & Trey's South Park and Seth MacFarlane's cartoons being far more obscene across the board.
    • In the early years, this cartoon was criticized for being a cartoon with some language, shocking violence and smutty content (Groening never intended it to be targeted towards kids, the bright colors was intended to be attention grabbing). But such moments are actually few and far between, many episodes played out similar to the typical live action sitcom. It was more the animated styled violence (like Homer choking Bart) that confused many people, as that would be hugely inappropriate if it wasn't animated.
    • The animated family sitcom formula is Older than You Think (several references are made to The Flintstones as a predecessor), but the show banked on the family being the center of a surreal town with a colorful population and loads of characters that can drop in, drop out or even take the focus of an episode itself. The Rapid-Fire Comedy that they refined can be seen emulated in shows ranging from Scrubs to Malcolm in the Middle to Arrested Development to The Office (US) (Michael Scott is basically Homer Simpson, which made sense since creator Greg Daniels use to be a writer for the show).
    • The characters, specifically Bart and Homer, were seen as bad role models and horrible people in general. In reality, a lot of effort is made so that they seem relatable but have their own failings. Bart loves playing pranks and picks up some bad language from Homer but is subject to being bullied and can be sensitive in his own way, an early episode "Bart Gets an F" has him try studying for a test, STILL failing and slowly have an emotional breakdown. Homer can be aloof, lazy and inattentive to his family but also deals with a stressful, soul sucking job; he also adores his family more than he lets on and is often more excited for family outings than the kids.
    • The depiction of them as a Dysfunctional Family in an animated sitcom was seen as an assault on traditional family values, with George H. W. Bush famously even commented how the American family needs to be more like The Waltons rather than The Simpsons. But the show itself was intended to be a Deconstruction of the typical sitcom family, specifically The Cosby Show in showing attentive parents with only minorly inconvenient kids. Homer was designed to be a hard working dad who got burned out at work during the day and just wanted to have a beer and watch TV at home, only to get interrupted by troublemaking kids. Bart was a troublemaking, prank pulling kid with a potty mouth who nonetheless had issues with being bullied at school. The Itchy and Scratchy cartoons were a parody of the outlandish violence seen in classic Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, with even a reference to The Flintstones trying to remind audiences that the show is not as revolutionary as was claimed. The show itself started exaggerating various facets of its own style, but with many other animated shows taking the real life situations, violence and language to more extreme levels, it's hard to catch on to why this was controversial.
  • One-Scene Wonder:
  • Opinion Myopia: Even so much as suggesting latter-day episodes have a bit of spark in them is an incredibly easy way to provoke the steadfast feelings of fans of the older episodes. (But, of course, it actually works both ways: for those who tend play up the "Zombie Simpsons" ideology, there are also those who may deny any kind of flaws in the newer episodes whatsoever.)
  • Padding: The show's creative team readily admit that they do this, because episodes often don't end up timing out properly once all the elements get put together. This is why things like the Overly Long Gag and the Halfway Plot Switch became show staples. Bart's Prank Calls to Moe were specifically designed as standalone bits that could be dropped into an episode's storyline if they needed to fill time.
  • Periphery Demographic:
    • The Simpsons is very popular amongst vaporwave fans and artists. In fact, they spawned a YouTube phenomenon known as Simpsonwave.
    • In addition to the aforementioned LGBT Fanbase, Yaoi Fangirls have become prominent in the Simpsons fandom due to the amount of Ho Yay between its male characters. Burns/Smithers and Carl/Lenny are the most popular pairings with this subset (as they have the most Ho Yay between them, to the point where it sometimes genuinely feels like they are a romantic couple, and are not married to anyone else) and have spawned the most fanart, fanfics, and doujinshi. Chalmers/Skinner, Smithers/Moe, Bart/Milhouse, Flanders/Lovejoy, and Barney/Moe are also quite popular.
  • Play-Along Meme: Mr. Burns once put on a fake mustache and introduced himself as Mr. Snurb to promote the power plant. Notably, the usually-stupid citizens of Springfield recognized him at once, but fans still like to wonder about the enigmatic Mr. Snrub.
  • Polished Port: The XBLA and PSN port of the arcade game is basically arcade perfect.
  • The Problem with Licensed Games: With few exceptions, most Simpsons games are terrible, or at the very least, very difficult.
  • Recurring Fanon Character: Gumbly is an Original Character that many people photoshopped into images and scenes from the show, claiming that he was always there.
  • Replacement Scrappy:
    • Gil Gunderson, for Lionel Hutz. With Phil Hartman dead, Gil became the franchise's go-to "lawyer who is bad at his job", and many fans, who were unimpressed with Gil Gunderson's constant appearances, disliked this and felt that no one could replace the iconic Hutz.
    • Shauna Chalmers, for Laura Powers. While both are troublemaking older girls who Bart develops a crush on but who end up dating Jimbo instead, Laura Powers was a one-shot character from the classic era, who was more down-to-earth, wore modest and casual clothing, and mostly just liked to cause childish mischief. Shauna, however, was introduced in Season 20 and was more... exaggerated in regards to her bad behavior (she smokes cigarettes, shoplifts, shows her boobs to people, wears a midriff-baring outfit, regularly cheats on her boyfriends, sells weed, and has a tattoo), making it hard for people to sympathize with her or see her as someone young enough to be "compatible" with Bart. Thus, fans of Laura began to view Shauna as an inferior replacement and a bad influence on Bart.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Helen Lovejoy was initially hated by fans for being a whiny Moral Guardian who gossips about everyone. However, two factors caused her character to be re-examined: first, with Maude Flanders Killed Off for Real, Helen Lovejoy became Maggie Roswell's most prominent voice role once she returned to the show, allowing the writers to do a lot more with her and showcase a few Hidden Depths (such as her surprisingly-sweet relationship with her husband Timothy and her secret love of Goth fashion); and second, the Obnoxious Entitled Housewife archetype (which Helen is an example of) became a lot more prominent and true-to-life in the latter half of The New '10s, with many people having encountered at least one of them in their life, so Helen began to seem more realistic, if not eerily prescient of the "Karen" stereotype. Nowadays, she's more of a Love to Hate character, and even has several genuine fans who love her catty and sassy personality.
  • Rooting for the Empire:
  • Sacred Cow:
  • Seasonal Rot:
    • The general consensus is that the show stopped being good after either seasons eight, nine or ten. The tipping point is usually contingent on what season that one started watching the show, and what style of humor you enjoyed from it.
      • There is a very small, somewhat Vocal Minority that believe the show stopped being good after Season 5, and that the show should have ended around that point. While such a claim is absolutely insane to many fans, the style of humor and focus of the show did change somewhat noticeably around that time. Most of the original writing staff left after Season 4 ended, and the new showrunner for Seasons 5 and 6, David Mirkin, was far more focused on more outrageous jokes and situations. If one watched the show from the very beginning, and enjoyed the show for its more subtle comedy and down-to-earth relatability, such a shift might turn off said viewers. However, even THESE viewers will almost always claim Season 6-10 were far superior in quality to those afterward.
      • Season 8 is often cited as the last time The Simpsons created consistently good episodes, although a lot of people feel that this season is where the cracks started to show, due to the series taking on a Denser and Wackier tone and exaggerating characters' personality traits, such as Homer's stupidity. Despite this, almost NOBODY claims that this season should not be part of the classic era. Part of this was from the showrunners Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein experimenting with various ideas, as they (wrongly but understandably) believed the show was on its way out.
      • Season 9 is usually cited as the last good season, because, despite Mike Scully running the show and featuring the infamous episode "Principal and the Pauper" (which actually was a leftover Season 8 episode), Season 9 did have some good episodes like "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson" and "The Cartridge Family".
      • Season 10 is cited by some as the beginning of the Seasonal Rot, with others calling it the last good season (classic examples include "Thirty Minutes over Tokyo" and "Lisa Gets an "A""), as it was during the time Phil Hartman died (meaning no more Lionel Hutz or Troy McClure) and when it became obvious the writers were running out of ideas, in part due to Matt Groening working on Futurama, which debuted midway that season.
    • Many fans feel that Seasons 11 and 12 were the show's worst, with heavy reliance on bizarre plots, nonsensical twist endings, and tons of special guest stars. The Season 11 finale, "Behind the Laughter", is considered the era's bright spot, but Season 11 also featured three commonly-cited "worst episode ever" candidates: "Saddlesore Galactica", "Kill the Alligator and Run" and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge".
      • Despite this, there are some people who, despite admitting their lower quality, will STILL include the entire Scully era in the "classic era".
    • Seasons 13 to 20, when Al Jean (who previously held the position with Mike Reiss) succeeded Mike Scully as showrunner, are considered the era when the show turned into a Franchise Zombie. The common complaints are that it started imitating the humor styles of South Park and Family Guy and recycled plotlines from older episodes.
    • Season 21 onwards, with Matt Selman becoming Jean's assistant, have become controversial for following a similar path to the Scully years. Some observers felt there was an uptick in the show's quality in Seasons 19 & 20, with the writers seemingly re-energized by The Simpsons Movie to try out new ideas and polish up the scripts. This made the Denser and Wackier turn in Season 21 quite jarring.
    • Parodied in Don Hertzfeldt's Couch Gag, which depicts the characters in the year 10,535 as hideous, incoherent mutants capable only of voicing catchphrases, demands that you buy merchandise, and the occasional bit of Surreal Horror.
    • The foreign dubs went downhill in different seasons, depending on the language.
      • French viewers tend to see the rot only occurring around Seasons 19-20, considering Season 12 to 16 to be classic, regular Simpsons. This is due to 1) these seasons being aired a lot in french TV and 2) Superlative Dubbing, as after Season 19 and the movie, a major cast member Michel Modo (who voiced Seymour Skinner, Mr. Burns and Krusty the Clown notably) died and his replacement(s) never stood up to his incredible performance, allowing the French viewers to actually start seeing, in their eyes, the show declining in quality. Bart's actress recast was more a subject of Broken Base because of the replacement's very similar voice.
      • The European Spanish dub went downhill after Season 11, when Carlos Revilla (who voiced Homer and directed, produced and translated the dub) died. In later seasons, many of the actors either died, retired or left the studio (Abaira, which has since evolved into Iyuno SDI Group).
      • The Latin Spanish dub went downhill after Season 15, when the entire cast went on strike. This compounded with the quality decline of the show itself, as the original cast added several beloved jokes that were not part of the original version (such as "a la grande le puse Cuca" and "El parque de diversiones del futuro, en donde nada puede malir sal"). Most of the original actors would return in Season 32, along with the local jokes, a decision that was widely praised.
      • The Italian dub went downhill after Seasons 22 and 23. First, Bart and Marge were recast, then Tonino Accola (Homer's voice actor) died.
      • The Hungarian dub went downhill after Episode 29.14, when Jozsef Szekhelyi (Homer's voice actor) died and Balazs Simonyi (Bart) quit the series.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat:
    • The debate over whether Edna Krabappel would've been better off with her original boyfriend Principal Skinner or her later husband Ned Flanders is a hot topic in some circles.
    • Burnsmithers (Mr. Burns x Smithers) shippers are often targets of scorn from people who ship Smithers with anyone else. A lot of them openly gripe about how prevalent Burnsmithers is in fanart and fanfiction circles, and claim that the idea of a relationship between them is inherently problematic (ignoring the fact that Smithers wants to be with Burns more than anything else).
  • Signature Scene:
    • Homer shouting "D'oh!" when realizing he's done something stupid.
    • The couch gags.
    • The driveway scene from the opening leading to the couch gag.
    • Homer strangling Bart.
    • From the episode Bart the Daredevil Homer plumming down Springfield Gorge and hitting every single rock.
    • Bart writing on the chalkboard in detention and saying "Eat My Shorts" or "Don't Have a Cow, Man".
    • Homer's Enemy has:
      • Frank's visit to the Simpson house and his rant against Homer.
      • Frank's death at the end of the episode.
    • Homer sitting on the trunk of his car, in the middle of nowhere, and staring at the night sky after saying goodbye to his long-lost mother. And boy, did it made us cry!
    • The ending of Lisa's Substitute, specifically 'you are Lisa Simpson' note and Lisa and Homer's conversation.
    • The ending of Bart Gets An F.
    • Bart prank-calling Moe's Tavern.
    • Homer's hallucinations in Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer.
    • Who Shot Mr. Burns? has:
      • Mr. Burns slumped over the sundial.
      • The shooter revealed to be Maggie.
    • Ned Flanders finally snapping and giving an epic "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the entire town in Hurricane Neddy.
    • Sideshow Bob doing an Overly Long Gag involving multiple Rake Takes in Cape Feare.
    • The entire "Skinner and the Superintendent" skit/short/segment, also known as "Steamed Hams" from 22 Short Films About Springfield.
    • Homer attempting to build a backyard barbecue pit in Mom and Pop Art.
    • Homer getting stuck in the water slide in Brush With Greatness.
  • So Okay, It's Average:
    • Believe it or not, the post-Seasonal Rot episodes have their fans, even though their positive comments will often draw negative comparisons to the earlier seasons by fans of those seasons.
    • The first season often garners this reaction nowadays. It's generally considered superior to anything after Season 10 and most fans will include it as part of the show's golden age, but it also has Off-Model animation, slower pacing, and general Early-Installment Weirdness that make it a little bit less popular than Seasons 2-8.
  • Superlative Dubbing: The show had a short lived Swedish dub which was of surprisingly high quality with actors such as Annica Smedius, Louise Raeder and Lena Ericsson giving strong performances such as Bart, Lisa and Marge respectively alongside many other actors. About the only real weak point was Per Sanborgh as Homer who tried a bit too much to sound like Castellaneta rather than playing to his strengths.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song: The Stephen J. Cannell Productions logo jingle was parodied in "The Front" with the similar-sounding Itchy & Scratchy Productions jingle.

    T-Z 
  • Tear Dryer:
    • In "One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish", Homer believes he has 24 hours to live after eating a bad blowfish, and near the end, he seems to pass away in the middle of the night. Marge is devastated... but then she notices his drool is warm, which means he's alive.
    • In the first episode of Season 2, "Bart Gets An 'F'", Bart has been told that if he gets a failing grade on his upcoming test, he will be required to repeat the 4th grade. Bart actually cracks the books and studies, but reality hits Bart like a brick, and one Herculean effort does not make up for a lifetime of poor study habits. Bart gets an F. He breaks down crying, telling Mrs. Krabapple that he had really tried this time, and all she can do is try and comfort him. But then, just when it looks hopeless, Bart compares his loss to George Washington having to surrender to the French in 1754, an obscure bit of history. So impressed is Mrs. Krabapple about this applied knowledge, she gives him a bonus point on the test, which pushes him from an F to a D -, allowing him to pass.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: How longtime fans and animation students felt about the Title Sequence that has been in use since the LABFXX production season (i.e. Season 20 starting from "Take My Life, Please"). Two main instances stand out. The first one is Marge's animation during the supermarket scene, which went from elaborate movement to a simple turn of her head. It's understandable in context (her time was shortened in order to add in Gerald and Maggie fist shaking), but still. The second one is Homer getting hit by Marge's car and bursting through the door in the garage instead of him screaming at the sight of the car and running away from it via the same door.
  • Tough Act to Follow: Some of the criticism of the newer seasons comes from the extremely high expectations fans had after the first 8-10 seasons.
    • In an unusual way, this ended up crossing with Follow the Leader. Classic-era Simpsons successfully juggled a bunch of different comedy approaches, sometimes in a single episode. The animated shows that followed in its wake often emphasized one particular approach that The Simpsons pioneered. Family Guy picked up on the fast-paced gags and pop culture parodies, South Park picked up on the topical satire and irreverence, and King of the Hill picked up on the dry wit, layered storytelling, and comedy-with-a-heart. It's not a coincidence that the much-vilified Scully years (Seasons 9-12) were the first period that The Simpsons had to compete with all three of those shows, and with three different competitors all successfully copying one particular Simpsons trademark, The Simpsons faced a huge identity crisis.
  • Toy Ship: Mary Spuckler almost married Bart, due to the Spuckler family's backwards marital traditions. She's also the only one of his many love interests to be featured prominently in more than one episode.
  • Unconvincingly Unpopular Character: Bart Simpson gets this on the occasional episode. There's no doubt he's the coolest character on the show, but his popularity in school (or even with the rest of the town) runs the gamut from adored by everyone for how awesome he is, to being a loner whose only friend is Milhouse.
  • Unexpected Character: "BUY CRYPTO, SUCKERS!"note 
  • Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
    • The grotesque animation style of the earliest episodes (including the Tracey Ullman shorts) and in some episodes in which the Simpsons are depicted in another medium (claymation, live-action, as drawn by John Kricfalusi, as drawn by Bill Plympton, CGI, Lego, Robot Chicken-style stop-motion, etc)
    • The real-world celebrity cameos can come off as this, as they're always drawn as realistically as possible which clashes with the semi-abstract designs of the main and recurring cast.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: Since the writers enjoy playing fast-and-loose with morality and Sympathetic P.O.V., viewers might find characters who are not supposed to be in the right to be sympathetic anyway.
    • Bart, if you think about all the crap he goes through. Sure, he's a troublemaker and brat, but Homer strangles him constantly, he often feels ignored and useless in the face of Lisa's accomplishments, he's picked on at school, blamed for things other people have done, and of course Sideshow Bob keeps trying to kill him.
    • Homer can get this treatment as well (specifically if you don't consider him a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk Villain Protagonist [particularily in the later seasons], this even is used to justify his traits): Freudian Excuse, a menial job, being called out by everyone each time he does something wrong, and (earlier on) having Always Someone Better as a neighbor. One example of Homer being Unintentionally Sympathetic is "Homer's Enemy". Here we are supposed to side with Frank Grimes, but Homer spends the entire episode being nice to the guy (it's just that Frank's frustration towards Homer goes over his head) and yet Frank is a rude Jerkass to him out of anger that Homer's life is better than his, culminating in him attempting to humiliate Homer (which fails).
    • Edna Krabappel was supposed to be the bitter, cranky teacher who yelled at Bart for every misdeed of his, but over time it was hard not to pity her when you realized how bitter and lonely she was.
    • For just being mild jerks compared to the likes of Nelson, Shauna and many others, the things Sherri and Terri go through are far more over the top and not even limited to Treehouse of Horror episodes. They're constantly shoved aside despite having decent potential and whenever they are brought up for more than a single line per season, they're usually getting killed in an obvious middle-finger moment. Nobody else in show seems to actually be friends with them note . They might be the only characters in the entire show to have the "lucky" distinction of still being killed repeatedly even after their original voice actress passed away. On top of that, in the future they're shown no alternative but to be impregnated and abandoned by Nelson (implying they're doomed to the same existence as Mrs Muntz), and the few times they are friendly to Lisa, she ignores them. Because of this, the whole Alpha Bitch schtick comes off like an act from two losers who can't go even five appearances without something horrible happening to them. And to top it all off, the twins are treated as being irredeemably evil when the show puts sympathetic points than bullying teachers, abusers, scammers who swindle pensioners for a living and even Mr Burns, solidifying them as even more of an anti-Creator's Pet than Bart.
    • Even setting aside the episodes where they are played sympathetically, Patty and Selma have their fans among audience members who feel Homer is bad for Marge, seeing their constant pushing for Marge to dump him as understandable sisterly concern.
  • Unpopular Popular Character:
    • While the audience finds them lovable, it's made clear that most of the populace finds the Simpsons troublesome and/or dangerous. In the episode "Simpson Safari", this subtle exchange occurs:
      Homer: The Simpsons are going to Africa!
      Family: Yay!
      [In Africa, two tribesmen dance around a fire. Suddenly, one of them stops]
      Tribesman: What is it, N'gungo?
      N'gungo: Evil is coming.
      Tribesman: What shall we do, N'gungo?
      N'gungo: [puts his mask on the other tribesman's head] You are N'gungo now! [runs away screaming]
    • Milhouse is treated as a Butt-Monkey in-universe, but his fans treat him as a woobie.
    • Same goes for Seymour Skinner. His inability to sustain a girlfriend, overbearing mother, and PTSD are Played for Laughs on the show, but are often Played for Drama in fan works.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Kang and Kodos are brother and sister. Arguably justified as they are Starfish Aliens.
  • Vindicated by History:
    • The show's early internet fandom often regarded Seasons 1 to 4 as the show's "golden era", with 5 to 8 and onwards being highly contested. This orthodoxy was even acknowledged and discussed in the show. Today, it is uncontroversial to collectively hold up Seasons 1 to 8 as the show at its peak, with a fair few fans considering the second half of that period to be superior to the first half.
    • The Mike Scully era (1997-2001). Back when he was the show runner, a lot of fans thought it was a major decline in quality due to the change of tone that resulted. But now, some people consider his first two seasons (Seasons 9 and 10) part of the classic era (and others are even willing to include his ENTIRE tenure in the classic era), most likely due to Al Jean having the show runner position longer than the Scully, Oakley/Weinstein, Mirkin, Jean/Reiss, and Brooks/Groening/Simon years combined (15 years and counting). The fact the show has done quite a few outlandish episodes since Matt Selman became co-showrunner has helped the Scully era to look better.
    • Several of the show's most beloved episodes like "Kamp Krusty", "Itchy and Scratchy Land" and "Treehouse of Horror V" were heavily criticised when they first aired, but are now fondly remembered as part of the show's golden era.
    • The voice actors all agreed that "Marge vs. the Monorail" was one of the worst episodes they had ever done. Nowadays, it's often remembered as one of the best by fans.
    • Upon release, "Treehouse of Horror VI" was mostly remembered for the segment "Homer³", which featured 3D Visual Effects of Awesome that were rare for cartoons of the era, and was even nominated for an Emmy award. Nowadays, CGI cartoons are a dime a dozen, and views began to feel that the other two segments, "Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores" and "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace, have better told stories that were that were overshadowed during the day.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The first season's intro opened with a stratus cloud breaking away and dissolving into "The Simpsons" logo. The CGI effects from that era still hold up, even three decades later.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: This series has been thought of by some as being a children's show, despite the fact that it has dealt with adult subjects like animal abuse, child abuse, politics, alcoholism, sex, religion, class inequality, and juvenile delinquency, but back when it first aired, a lot of people didn't accept it as an adult cartoon because of how simplistic the animation and art was (and, for that matter, the very fact that it was animated), and trashed it for corrupting the younger generation due to the subject matter and having Bart Simpson (who, back then, was written as a more destructive, 1990s spin on Dennis the Menace) as the main focus of the stories. It also didn't help that Simpsons merchandise back then were sold as children's toys.
    • The Simpsons was even, in 1991, declared by Channel 4 to be the Greatest Kids' TV Show ever, despite not actually being a kids' show.
    • The Simpsons has been nominated for seventeen Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards for Favorite Cartoon, winning one in 2002.
    • Word of God says it was never meant to be a kids' show and the bright color scheme was meant as an attention-grabber for FOX executives and viewers who just happened to be channel surfing.
    • Even actual children's shows referenced The Simpsons as if they were in the same category. When The Fairly OddParents! aired Channel Chasers, they parodied The Simpsons in a way only viewers would recognize... only some of it was cleaned up, like changing Flanders from a Christian to a bearded hippie and making the Barney Gumble expy a gross, belching slob instead of a drunk, though he does go inside a place called "Mike's" (a parody of "Moe's Tavern") when he gets hit with radioactive slime and becomes a superheronote .
      • Before this, the characters made a cameo appearance in the celebrity version of the Sesame Street segment "Monster In The Mirror".
    • At one point, The Simpsons even aired on Cartoon Network in the Philippines. No, not [adult swim], daytime Cartoon Network.
    • This was done in-universe in the very first Treehouse of Horror, even though the subjects mentioned weren't actually for children.
      Homer: Oh, no, Marge! Come on, please!
      Marge: Homer, I'm not sleeping with the lights on. They're just children's stories. They can't hurt you.
    • Not helping is that Simpsons shorts were playing before Ice Age: Continental Drift and Onward.
    • Even This Very Wiki has made this mistake, as at one point, the Parental Bonus page contained examples from The Simpsons.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: "Bart-Mangled Banner"note  was criticized for being so heavy-handed against Republicans and conservatives that Seth MacFarlane could rewrite it as a Family Guy episode by just changing the names and no one would be able to tell the difference.
  • Win Back the Crowd: Season 33 saw a noticeable uptick in both critical and fan interest in The Simpsons. This season saw the well-liked long-time writer Matt Selman take over most of the showrunning duties, who many fans credit with the shift in the show's direction. Points of praise include an uptick in the number of heartwarming character-driven episodes while still balancing the satire, a much greater willingness to experiment with episode formats and presentations, a better incorporation of the show's always-modern setting while still paying full homage to its past, and a more positive relationship with the show's fandom.
  • Woolseyism: The French-Canadian dub has a tendency to replace some America-specific references with ones Canadians are more likely to understand. One famous example of this is the famous Steamed Hams scene, where instead of claiming steamed hams are an expression from upstate New York, Skinner says it's used in Quebec's Lac-Saint-Jean district, with Utica and Albany being replaced with Jonquière and Alma.
  • Writer Cop Out: Due to being a Long Runner in Seasonal Rot, this would be eventual.

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