Pay close attention! For this list, we’ll be looking at Easter eggs, callbacks, and other fun items hiding in plain sight throughout this classic animated series.
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00:00 "The captain and I have proof that he's head of an international drug cartel."
00:03 "I don't wanna hear it, McBain! You're outta here!"
00:06 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the top 20 amazing small details in The Simpsons.
00:13 "Explain!"
00:14 "The similarities are subtle, but many."
00:16 For this list, we're looking at Easter eggs, callbacks, and other fun items hiding in plain sight throughout this classic animated series.
00:23 What subtle Simpsons details have you noticed? Let us know in the comments.
00:27 Number 20. Skittle Brow.
00:30 Given how much love Homer Simpson has for both beer and sweets,
00:33 it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that he's fond of a concoction that combines the two.
00:37 Feeling low after Bart quits the football team he's coaching, he goes to the Quik-E-Mart for a pick-me-up.
00:42 "I'm feeling kinda low, Appu. Got any of that beer that has candy floating in it? You know, Skittle Brow?"
00:48 However, Appu informs him that this product is not on the market.
00:52 Homer deals with this setback by purchasing the ingredients individually.
00:56 In the following season, the cash-strapped family goes to a 33-cent store.
01:00 Among the questionable merchandise for sale is Skittle Brow.
01:04 Hey, for only 33 cents, we'd try it.
01:07 Number 19. Special Inmate Number.
01:09 The Simpsons doesn't have a whole lot in common with Les Miserables,
01:13 but if you're a fan of either Victor Hugo's novel and/or its musical adaptation, you may have caught these references.
01:18 The number 24601 pops up on the show multiple times.
01:22 It's assigned to the diabolical Sideshow Bob when he's incarcerated.
01:26 "Dear number 24601, I need a man."
01:30 In another episode, Principal Skinner encounters his helmet from his experience as a prisoner of war,
01:35 bearing the same number.
01:37 "Still fits."
01:39 So what's the connection?
01:40 This is the same inmate number as that of tragic protagonist Jean Valjean.
01:44 If there's anyone who would appreciate this kind of highbrow reference, it's Sideshow Bob.
01:48 "Oh, Westminster Abbey. Edward the Confessor himself could not have done better."
01:53 Number 18. Out of the Closet
01:56 The episode "Homer's Phobia," guest-starring John Waters, won multiple awards, and it's easy to see why.
02:02 It's a great send-up of anti-gay attitudes and fear-mongering, combined with classic Simpsons goodness.
02:07 "Zap!"
02:09 "Hrrr!"
02:09 Homer, paranoid about Bart and how he expresses himself, starts to scrutinize his every action,
02:15 including his wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
02:17 When he asks Bart about where he got it, his response isn't exactly reassuring.
02:22 "Where'd you get that shirt?"
02:23 "I don't know. Came out of the closet."
02:26 "Uhhhh...huh."
02:28 Why? Because while Bart meant it in the sense of finding it in his bedroom closet,
02:32 Homer's over-suspicious brain interprets the phrase in a much different context.
02:36 And by the end of the episode, Bart has some questions.
02:40 "He thinks you're gay."
02:42 "He thinks I'm gay?"
02:43 [Music]
02:47 Number 17, Rashomon Reference
02:50 You don't have to be familiar with cinema from around the world to appreciate The Simpsons, but it sure does help.
02:55 In this episode, the family makes their way to Japan, where chaos predictably ensues.
03:00 "Your shows reward knowledge. We punish ignorance."
03:05 "Ignore what?"
03:06 "Ahhhh!"
03:07 Homer is initially pouting about the trip, so Marge attempts to lift his spirits with a movie reference.
03:12 "Come on, Homer. Japan will be fun. You like Rashomon?"
03:17 "That's not how I remember it."
03:18 If you've seen or even have a passing familiarity with this classic from Akira Kurosawa,
03:23 you know it's about the same story being told from four conflicting recollections.
03:28 [Speaking Japanese]
03:34 And Homer and Marge, it seems, have their own conflicting recollections about his enjoyment of that particular movie.
03:40 Maybe he prefers Seven Samurai.
03:43 Number 16, Moe's Unseen Bride
03:46 Bartender Moe Sislak is, to put it mildly, unlucky in love.
03:50 But that doesn't mean he doesn't try.
03:52 In one episode, Homer references a woman that Moe apparently wed and was subsequently left by.
03:57 "Whatever happened to your mail-order bride?"
04:00 "Uh, she got homesick for her old life, diving for tourist pennies in a Micronesian swamp."
04:05 "So her career got in the way."
04:07 Initially, this might just seem like a throwaway line, included to highlight just how lonely Moe is.
04:12 But there's actually a bit of foreshadowing.
04:15 A few episodes earlier, Moe is shown reading a catalog, looking for a potential spouse.
04:20 "Two people cannot fall in love sight unseen."
04:23 "Hold on there, I'm counting on that."
04:25 Then, some two decades later, the show revisited this topic in more depth for the episode,
04:30 "From Russia Without Love."
04:32 "Is this the residence of successful American businessman, uh, Moe Sislak?"
04:38 "Uh, who wants to know?"
04:39 If we had to guess, we'd say that most people's favorite part of Neapolitan ice cream is the chocolate.
04:48 "Mmm, chocolate."
04:50 "Salt!"
04:52 It's definitely Homer's favorite.
04:53 In the third season, Homer goes to the freezer craving one particular third.
04:58 Unfortunately, his hopes are dashed, not once, but twice.
05:02 Two seasons later, Bart is in the kitchen eating Neapolitan ice cream straight from the carton.
05:06 And sure enough, he's leaving everything but the chocolate untouched.
05:10 So, why were they bothering with buying the Neapolitan variety if no one was eating the other two flavors?
05:16 We may never know precisely why.
05:18 "Mmm, chocolate."
05:20 Getting music legends Paul and Linda McCartney to play themselves was a huge achievement for the show.
05:29 But the Beatles' involvement goes further than you might realize.
05:32 In this episode, Lisa meets the pair, bonding over their shared vegetarian ways.
05:37 Paul drops some knowledge about one of his most famous compositions.
05:40 "If you play 'Maybe I'm Amazed' backwards, you'll hear a recipe for a really ripping lentil soup."
05:45 And sure enough, the song plays over the credits, with some distorted vocals in the mix.
05:50 "Maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you."
05:54 "Shut up. We don't talk this way here."
05:56 Play it backwards, and you'll hear a lentil soup recipe from the legend himself.
06:01 "One medium onion, chopped. Two tablespoons of vegetable oil. One clove of garlic, crushed."
06:08 This might not have been part of the original studio version, but who says a perfect work can't be improved upon?
06:14 If you pay attention, you might notice that TV entertainer Krusty the Clown looks remarkably like Homer.
06:23 Just dressed up like a clown.
06:24 "I'm seeing double here. Four Krustys!"
06:27 Was this just a matter of the show not being creative in terms of character design?
06:31 It's actually originally something deeper.
06:33 The reason why Homer and Krusty look so alike is that initially, they were intended to be the same person.
06:39 The idea was that Krusty would be Homer's secret alter ego, further complicating Bart's adoration for the TV clown.
06:45 "He's a one and only. I mean, he invented the pie fight, the pratfall, and the seltzer bottle, as far as I know."
06:51 The show soon made it clear that Homer and Krusty were distinct characters.
06:55 However, it still touched upon the remarkable visual similarity they have to each other.
06:59 "Hey, I'm not gonna fuse that."
07:01 "Heh heh. Good one, Krusty!"
07:03 "Oh, crap."
07:05 Like many animated figures, the characters on The Simpsons have four fingers on their hands.
07:12 Well, most of them do.
07:13 "According to this magazine, in another million years, man will have an extra finger."
07:17 "Five fingers? Eww, freak show."
07:20 This holy figure, when depicted, is shown with five fingers on each hand,
07:24 as well as the iconic skin of countless other characters.
07:27 Maybe divinity in The Simpsons affords you an extra digit?
07:30 There are exceptions to this, however.
07:33 For instance, in a Halloween special, Mayan gods are shown with four fingers.
07:37 Truly, these kinds of complex questions are just too much for our mere mortal minds to handle.
07:42 "What's the meaning of life?"
07:43 "Homer, I can't tell you that."
07:46 "Come on."
07:47 "You'll find out when you die."
07:50 "I can't wait that long."
07:51 "You can't wait six months?"
07:53 "No, tell me now."
07:54 Number 11, Hidden Boast.
07:57 By and large, the characters on The Simpsons are not the smartest.
08:00 One exception is eccentric scientist Professor Frank, and even he has his share of blunders.
08:05 "You should all do what I say. My IQ is 199 for crying out loud."
08:09 "198, 197."
08:12 In a then-cutting-edge Halloween segment,
08:14 Homer finds himself transported to the mysterious third dimension, which Frank explains.
08:19 "Here is an ordinary square."
08:21 "Whoa, whoa, slow down, egghead."
08:23 In one fleeting moment, a grouping of numbers and letters, known as hexadecimal letters, appear behind Homer.
08:30 To the layperson, this might appear to just be something science-y to fill a frame.
08:34 But if you know anything about the encoding standard known as ASCII, it may have caught your eye.
08:39 Translated to ASCII, it reads "Frank Rules," and we wholeheartedly agree.
08:44 "This forms a three-dimensional object known as a cube, or a francahedron, in honor of its discoverer."
08:50 "Hey, hey."
08:52 Number 10 - Matt Groening's initials
08:54 The main Simpson family is so iconic that even people who've never seen a whole episode can name the characters on-site.
09:01 Most fans know that the Simpson family designs were no accident.
09:05 The bright yellow was chosen on purpose so that it would catch viewers' eyes while they flipped through channels,
09:10 and their weird hairstyles were implemented so the characters would be recognizable as silhouettes.
09:15 However, many may not have realized that creator Matt Groening has forever left his artist's mark directly on Homer's face.
09:22 That's because his initials are formed by the "M" in Homer's hair and the "G" on his ear.
09:28 Number 9 - Extended Retractions
09:30 The Simpsons loves to make use of scrolling jokes.
09:33 Lists that come and go in the blink of an eye.
09:35 Perhaps the cleverest instance of this is in the episode when Homer finds himself the victim of an exploitative news cycle over a misunderstanding.
09:43 After admitting their mistake, hard-hitting news show Rock Bottom publishes a number of retractions.
09:48 "Rock Bottom would like to make the following corrections."
09:50 It is insane the amount of jokes that can fit in three seconds,
09:56 including "Everyone on TV is better than you" and "If you are reading this, you have no life."
10:01 We hope that didn't cause too many hurt feelings.
10:04 "Well, VHS isn't what eats gasoline."
10:07 "And Ted Koppel is a robot."
10:09 Number 8 - Not-So-Secret Cameos
10:12 The show's writers also love injecting their own little in-jokes that only pay off for observant long-time or repeat viewers.
10:19 In the "Itchy and Scratchy" the movie episode for instance,
10:22 Lisa is waxing rhapsodic over how amazing the duo's animated movie is.
10:26 "And you wouldn't believe the celebrities who did cameos, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Jackson."
10:30 She says she's surprised by its anonymously credited cameos from stars like Michael Jackson and Dustin Hoffman.
10:37 Funnily enough, the two previous seasons of "The Simpsons" actually did include episodes with guest starring roles by both these superstars.
10:44 "You seem to be of the Jewish faith."
10:46 "Are you sure I'm Jewish?"
10:47 "Or Italian."
10:47 "I'm Jewish."
10:48 And both were uncredited at the time.
10:50 "Of course, they didn't use their real names, but you could tell it was them."
10:53 "Lisa."
10:55 Number 7 - Hans Molman's Age
10:57 Speaking of being rewarded for repeat viewing,
11:00 it seems like nobody caught this joke at first, which took three episodes to set up.
11:04 "Drinking has ruined my life. I'm 31 years old."
11:09 In the episode "Duffless", old-timer Hans Molman, the butt of a ridiculous number of jokes,
11:14 speaks up about how alcohol has ruined his life by declaring he is only 31 years old.
11:20 This is of course played for laughs because it obviously cannot be true.
11:24 However, keen-eyed fans noticed a close-up of his driver's license in a previous episode,
11:29 which lists his birth year as 1961.
11:32 Now, maybe that was a DMV mistake, but considering these episodes first aired in 1993,
11:37 the math adds up.
11:39 "Did I do wrong?"
11:40 Number 6 - Thelma's Last Theorem
11:42 And speaking of math, Thelma's Last Theorem is a 17th century problem that befuddled mathematicians,
11:48 who struggled for centuries to solve it.
11:51 You may ask yourself, "Why am I getting a math lesson? I'm here for The Simpsons."
11:55 Well, that's because grade-A buffoon Homer Simpson almost solved the hallowed enigma,
12:00 which actually finally was figured out by a mathematician in the 90s.
12:04 In the classic episode "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace",
12:06 Homer struggles to invent something in order to leave his mark on the world.
12:10 "I have here the four greatest inventions in the history of mankind."
12:16 And it's hilarious to see that Homer's random scribbles on his chalkboard are actually
12:21 almost but not quite the solution to a mysterious mathematical riddle.
12:25 Number 5 - Tom Landry's Hat
12:28 We all love a good recurring joke, and The Simpsons has the most subtle ones of all.
12:32 Nobody expected the late great NFL coach Tom Landry to be immortalized on the hit show
12:37 by way of his iconic fedora.
12:39 First, Tom Landry himself has a short cameo in season 7.
12:42 A season later, Homer finds and purchases Tom Landry's hat, which is somehow for sale.
12:47 "Alright team, it's the fourth quarter. The Lord gave us the Adams and it's up to us to make 'em dance."
12:53 Since then, the famous memorabilia has shown up on the heads of the Simpsons clan in various
12:58 sports-themed episodes.
12:59 Even Marge puts it on when she was coaching a fantasy football league.
13:03 Number 4 - Iconic Photography
13:05 The Simpsons is an iconic show, having become pop culture as much as it parodies and pays
13:11 homage to it, with innumerable film, TV, and music references in the show.
13:15 "This way, Mr. President!"
13:20 But for most people, some of the program's subtle imitations or recreations of famous pictures
13:25 and moments in history can be quite elusive to catch.
13:28 For example, the Simpsons clan fleeing Australia is lifted from the famous Vietnam War
13:32 Fall of Saigon photos, while Lisa being sworn in as Miss Springfield is inspired by the swearing-in
13:37 of Lyndon Johnson after the JFK assassination.
13:40 And let's not forget about Grandpa Simpson being grumpy at Woodstock.
13:44 "Boo!"
13:45 Number 3 - A113
13:48 Animation fans will probably already recognize this little Easter egg, as it appears in countless
13:53 movies, including many Disney-Pixar properties.
13:56 This is a favorite of many animators to hide in their work, as it's a reference to a classroom
14:01 at the California Institute of Arts.
14:03 Some Simpsons artists got their start there, and they choose to sprinkle these references
14:08 in the show's backgrounds.
14:09 Therefore, you can see A113 show up in an assortment of odd places, including license
14:14 plates, mug shots, and prison IDs.
14:17 We are almost certain that some of these have not even been noticed yet.
14:21 Get looking!
14:22 Number 2 - $847.63
14:26 In the most notable blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment from the show, Maggie famously passes
14:30 through the scanner at lightning speed in the opening credits, making it almost impossible
14:35 to see what she rang up as.
14:36 In the season 7 behind-the-scenes episode, they even poked fun at those fans who were
14:41 trying to decipher the code, claiming the hidden message says "NRA Forever".
14:45 "Just one of the hundreds of radical right-wing messages inserted into every show by creator
14:50 Matt Groening."
14:51 The truth is, however, that Maggie rings up at $847.63.
14:56 Apparently, the reason for the number is that it was the expected monthly cost of raising
15:01 a baby around the time the show premiered.
15:03 Needless to say, that number has gone up considerably since.
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15:24 Number 1 - The McBain Movie
15:26 Austrian super-hunk Rainier Wolfcastle would later become a regular character on The Simpsons.
15:31 But when he first showed up in season 2, he was just action superstar McBain, showing
15:35 up on movie and TV screens.
15:45 Similar to Itchy and Scratchy, the writers used these clips to poke fun at pop culture
15:49 and testosterone-fueled action movies, showing us random, over-the-top and violent clips
15:54 for McBain.
15:55 But how random were they?
15:57 What fans realized many years later is that if you string all these clips together, spread
16:02 out through the show's first few seasons, you actually get a complete, coherent and
16:07 pretty violent action film.
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