The Simpsons: 10 Important Details That Are Almost Never Mentioned
So THAT'S why Milhouse's parents look so similar.
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00:00 As with most long-running animated series, The Simpsons' writers have maintained a
00:04 sensibly fluid and elastic approach to their ongoing continuity, whereby what happens in
00:09 one episode won't necessarily be picked up in the next.
00:12 But at the same time, sometimes an episode makes a declarational implication so fascinating
00:17 that its absence in future episodes is totally bafflingly bizarre.
00:21 But many fans never forget, and will routinely bring these details up at every possible opportunity.
00:28 And so, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, here with 10 important details
00:32 that are almost never mentioned in The Simpsons.
00:36 10.
00:37 The Simpsons' Home has a Rarely Seen Rumpus Room
00:41 As much as even a casual Simpsons fan likely assumes they know The Simpsons' home like
00:45 the back of their hand, it's easy to forget that there's an extra room in the house
00:49 we rarely catch a glimpse of.
00:51 Behind the garage and next to the kitchen is a rumpus room - a recreation room, basically.
00:56 It was first seen in the Season 2 episode "Itchy and Scratchy in Marge" and has appeared
01:00 in a grand total of just eight of the Simpsons episodes to date.
01:03 The room's shockingly meagre showing throughout the show was eventually mocked in the Season
01:07 25 episode "White Christmas Blues," where Marge tells Homer, "Well, there's a rec
01:12 room off the kitchen, but sometimes it's there and sometimes it isn't.
01:15 Our house is very odd that way."
01:16 Nobody involved with the show has offered up notable comment on the room or why it's
01:21 been so fleetingly included throughout the series, which only makes its existence that
01:25 much weirder.
01:26 9.
01:27 Herb's Baby Translator Would Have Totally Changed the World
01:31 While The Simpsons has a fairly loose approach to its own internal continuity, one of its
01:35 most societally wide-reaching implications occurred in Season 3's classic episode "Brother,
01:41 Can You Spare Two Dimes?"
01:42 The episode marks the second appearance of Homer's half-brother, Herb, who invents a
01:46 device which can translate baby babble into articulate, spoken English, allowing parents
01:50 to respond directly to their children's needs.
01:53 The product is unsurprisingly an instant hit and brings Herb great wealth once again, yet
01:57 the device's existence has never been mentioned again, nor has it even appeared in easter
02:02 egg form in any episode.
02:04 Presumably, the writers realized that the world-changing inevitability of such a device
02:08 was just too challenging to deal with.
02:10 Even so, for all intents and purposes, this hardware absolutely exists in the show's
02:14 universe and would have fundamentally altered child-rearing around the globe.
02:19 8.
02:20 Scorpio Seized Control of the East Coast Few one-off Simpsons characters have made
02:25 as much of an impact as the legendary Bond-villain-esque megalomaniac Hank Scorpio, who appeared in
02:31 Season 8's "You Only Move Twice."
02:33 The last time we physically saw Scorpio, he donned a flamethrower while fleeing the impending
02:38 US Army, and at episode's end, a newspaper revealed that he'd managed to seize America's
02:42 East Coast.
02:43 While this is obviously meant to be a throwaway gag, we've never canonically seen Scorpio
02:48 since, nor has this plot thread ever been resolved either way.
02:52 Despite abandoning his Globex HQ, Scorpio evidently still had the resources to take
02:57 control of a major chunk of the US landmass, which is home to around 120 million people.
03:03 Much like Herb's baby translator, the implications of Scorpio facing off against the US government
03:08 are just too messy for the show to address in any major way, so fans are basically left
03:12 to assume whatever they want.
03:14 Maybe Scorpio still holds the East Coast, or perhaps the Army took it back.
03:18 7.
03:19 Barney Has a Mystery Relative We Never See Again
03:22 The earliest episodes of The Simpsons include a lot of experiments and throwaway moments
03:26 that ultimately weren't crystallized in the show's canon moving forward, with one
03:30 involving the presence of a small child in Barney Gumbel's life.
03:34 Early on in the second season episode "Principal Charming," keep a close eye on the line at
03:38 the DMV, and you can see Barney standing in line with a young boy on his shoulders, whose
03:43 hands are covering Barney's face.
03:45 This boy has never been seen in the show since, leaving eagle-eyed fans to speculate on whether
03:50 Barney has a secret son who he later abandoned, per his drinking problems.
03:54 It's of course entirely possible this is the child of a relative or friend, but given
03:58 that there's never been a mention of Barney having siblings, and he isn't exactly overflowing
04:02 with friends who would willingly leave a kid with him, it could very well be his own son.
04:07 Though Season 4's Selma's Choice revealed Barney to have fathered countless children
04:11 through his regular donations to the local sperm bank, this second's long glimpse at
04:15 a child implies Barney may have had and sadly abandoned his own child in the past.
04:21 6.
04:22 Janie and Lisa are former best friends
04:25 It's easy to forget that Lisa's best friend in the show's earliest seasons was Janie,
04:29 who was steadily phased out as the series went on, to the extent that she's basically
04:33 a background character these days.
04:35 Though Janie and Lisa's friendship was hardly a flawless, conflict-free one, Janie memorably
04:40 mocks Lisa for becoming a vegetarian.
04:42 A concerted effort was made by the show's writers to downplay their interactions without
04:47 ever offering an explanation as to why.
04:50 Obviously, it's incredibly common for friends to naturally drift apart during their formative
04:54 years, and Janie certainly wasn't ever a front-line fixture in even the show's earlier
04:58 days, but it's still a little odd that their apparent rift was never categorically addressed
05:03 on screen.
05:04 5.
05:05 Characters age at totally different rates
05:08 One of the show's most discussed aspects by fans, yet one that's rarely directly addressed
05:13 in the show itself for somewhat self-evident reasons, is the characters' general lack
05:17 of aging.
05:18 The overwhelming majority of The Simpsons' characters simply haven't aged in some 33
05:22 seasons, no matter that the passage of time is regularly marked in various ways, such
05:27 as characters having birthdays.
05:29 The characters mostly being frozen in time has also resulted in backstories being retconned
05:33 and updated over the years to reflect time's passage, though there are a few instances
05:37 where supporting characters have indeed grown up while everyone else remained the same age.
05:42 The most notable example is surely Apu's nephew, Jay, who appears as a child in Season
05:47 4's Homer the Heretic, and then reappears as a young adult in Season 27's Machu Picchu
05:52 about something.
05:53 Selma Bouvier's adopted daughter, Ling, has also progressed from a baby to a toddler,
05:58 which is especially amusing considering that Maggie Simpson has remained a baby for more
06:02 than three decades.
06:03 This is definitely one of those things that fans just need to roll with, though it is
06:07 fun to consider the possible metaphysical explanation for some characters aging while
06:11 others don't.
06:12 4.
06:13 Lisa is an Elon Musk fangirl
06:17 In terms of Simpsons episodes that have aged like milk left out in the sun on a scorching
06:21 hot day, they don't get much worse than 2015's The Musk Who Fell to Ur.
06:26 The episode revolves around entrepreneur Elon Musk, who pays a visit to Springfield and
06:30 spends a lot of time with the Simpsons.
06:32 Yet the episode largely consists of the writers cosying up to Musk and effectively lionising
06:37 him as a ne'er-do-wrong super genius.
06:39 It doesn't help that Musk has little comedic timing and what passes for a storyline goes
06:43 nowhere interesting, but its most egregious sin?
06:47 Turning Lisa into an acolyte in the cult of Musk.
06:50 Lisa refers to Musk as "possibly the greatest living inventor" and while the man's industrial
06:55 achievements aren't to be sniffed at, Lisa's uncritical brown-nosing of a figure who has
06:59 increasingly shown himself to be problematic isn't a great look.
07:03 Granted, the episode was released at the peak of Musk's fandom, before the tide of public
07:07 opinion began to turn against him.
07:09 Yet considering the state of Musk's personal reputation these days, the show's writers'
07:13 room would probably rather you forget Lisa ever blindly championed him.
07:17 While fans have criticised the Lady Gaga-centric episode "Lisa Goes Gaga" for its own celebrity
07:22 worship, at least in Gaga's case she's a seemingly harmless public figure.
07:26 Furthermore, it doesn't feel like she straight-up paid the Simpsons team to make an episode
07:30 extolling her alleged virtues.
07:31 Never forget.
07:32 3.
07:33 The Disappearance of Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz
07:37 Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz are undeniably two of the most popular and entertaining supporting
07:42 characters from The Simpsons' first decade on the air.
07:46 A washed-up actor and shyster lawyer respectively, both voiced terrifically by the late, great
07:51 Phil Hartman.
07:52 Both characters were tragically retired in the late 1990s following the devastating murder
07:56 of actor Hartman, and though the show has since recast some dead voice actors, in Hartman's
08:01 case the decision was made to usher McClure and Hutz out of Springfield.
08:05 And due to the sudden nature of Hartman's death, the characters make totally unassuming
08:09 exits from the show, with their absences remaining unexplained to this very day.
08:14 While it is of course entirely possible that people like McClure and Hutz would simply
08:18 move away to pursue opportunities elsewhere, especially if McClure's career ticked upwards
08:23 or Hutz got disbarred, it's certainly odd that their departures were never mentioned
08:27 in even a cursory fashion.
08:29 2.
08:30 Milhouse's Parents are Cousins
08:33 It was long speculated by fans that something odd was up with Milhouse's parents, given
08:37 the frankly worrying physical resemblance they bear to one another in terms of hair
08:42 colour, glasses, and even the shape of their faces.
08:44 Well the truth finally came out in Season 26's Let's Go Fly a Coot, which while mercifully
08:49 not revealing the pair to be siblings, confirmed that Kirk and Luanne Van Houten are indeed
08:54 cousins, and Milhouse has a forked tongue as a result.
08:58 Of course it happened to Milhouse, of all people.
09:01 There have admittedly been several wink wink references to this possibility throughout
09:05 the show, such as Luanne mentioning that she's from Shelbyville, where it is indeed legal
09:09 to marry your cousin, but the outright confirmation seemed like the show's writers finally throwing
09:13 fans a phone, presumably with the hope that they would then shut up about it for good.
09:18 1.
09:19 There's Only One Bridge Out of Springfield
09:22 Matt Groening and company have been relatively careful to not reveal too much concrete information
09:27 about Springfield's geography, namely its precise place in the US and especially the
09:31 state it exists in.
09:33 Yet one of Springfield's most peculiar confirmed details is that the only road access out of
09:37 the city is by way of a single bridge, Springfield Bridge, due to the overabundance of corruption
09:43 in the city's operational infrastructure.
09:45 The bridge was even destroyed by a comet in Season 6's Bart's Comet, though soon enough
09:49 rebuilt.
09:50 While this is all obviously intended as a satire of what happens when the wrong people
09:54 are put in charge of a city's money, it's fascinating that tens of thousands of people
09:58 rely on a single bridge to travel in and out of the city.
10:01 Really though, you're better off just thinking of Springfield as a geographically fluid location
10:05 that isn't tethered to a totally fixed design or topography.
10:09 And that concludes our list.
10:10 If you can think of anything that we missed, then do let us know in the comments below
10:13 and while you're there don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
10:18 Also head over to Twitter and follow us there and I can be found across various social medias
10:21 just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
10:23 I've been Ellie with WhatCulture, I hope you have a magical day and I'll see you real soon.