So THAT'S why Milhouse's parents look so similar.
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00:00As with most long-running animated series, The Simpsons' writers have maintained a
00:04sensibly fluid and elastic approach to their ongoing continuity, whereby what happens in
00:09one episode won't necessarily be picked up in the next.
00:12But at the same time, sometimes an episode makes a declarational implication so fascinating
00:18that its absence in future episodes is totally bafflingly bizarre.
00:21But many fans never forget, and will routinely bring these details up at every possible opportunity.
00:28And so, with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, here with 10 important details
00:32that are almost never mentioned in The Simpsons.
00:3610.
00:37The Simpsons' home has a rarely-seen rumpus room
00:41As much as even a casual Simpsons fan likely assumes they know The Simpsons' home like
00:45the back of their hand, it's easy to forget that there's an extra room in the house
00:49we rarely catch a glimpse of.
00:52Behind the garage and next to the kitchen is a rumpus room, a recreation room, basically.
00:56It was first seen in the Season 2 episode Itchy and Scratchy in Marge, and has appeared
01:00in a grand total of just eight of the Simpsons episodes to date.
01:03The room's shockingly meagre showing throughout the show was eventually mocked in the Season
01:0825 episode White Christmas Blues, where Marge tells Homer,
01:11"...well, there's a rec room off the kitchen, but sometimes it's there and sometimes it
01:15isn't.
01:16Our house is very odd that way."
01:17Nobody involved with the show has offered up notable comment on the room or why it's
01:21been so fleetingly included throughout the series, which only makes its existence that
01:25much weirder.
01:269.
01:27Herb's Baby Translator Would Have Totally Changed the World
01:31While The Simpsons has a fairly loose approach to its own internal continuity, one of its
01:35most societally wide-reaching implications occurred in Season 3's classic episode Brother
01:41Can You Spare Two Dimes?
01:42The episode marks the second appearance of Homer's half-brother, Herb, who invents a
01:46device which can translate baby babble into articulate spoken English, allowing parents
01:51to respond directly to their children's needs.
01:53The product is unsurprisingly an instant hit and brings Herb great wealth once again, yet
01:58the device's existence has never been mentioned again, nor has it even appeared in easter
02:02egg form in any episode.
02:04Presumably, the writers realised that the world-changing inevitability of such a device
02:08was just too challenging to deal with.
02:10Even so, for all intents and purposes, this hardware absolutely exists in the show's
02:15universe and would have fundamentally altered child-rearing around the globe.
02:198.
02:20Hank Scorpio Seized Control of the East Coast
02:24Few one-off Simpsons characters have made as much of an impact as the legendary Bond
02:27villain-esque megalomaniac Hank Scorpio, who appeared in Season 8's You Only Move Twice.
02:33The last time we physically saw Scorpio, he donned a flamethrower while fleeing the impending
02:38US Army, and at episode's end, a newspaper revealed that he'd managed to seize America's
02:43East Coast.
02:44While this is obviously meant to be a throwaway gag, we've never canonically seen Scorpio
02:48since, nor has this plot thread ever been resolved either way.
02:52Despite abandoning his Globex HQ, Scorpio evidently still had the resources to take
02:57control of a major chunk of the US landmass, which is home to around 120 million people.
03:03Much like Herb's baby translator, the implications of Scorpio facing off against the US government
03:08are just too messy for the show to address in any major way, so fans are basically left
03:12to assume whatever they want.
03:14Maybe Scorpio still holds the East Coast, or perhaps the Army took it back.
03:187.
03:19Barney has a mystery relative we never see again
03:22The earliest episodes of The Simpsons include a lot of experiments and throwaway moments
03:26that ultimately weren't crystallized in the show's canon moving forward, with one
03:31involving the presence of a small child in Barney Gumbel's life.
03:34Early on in the second season episode, Principal Charming, keep a close eye on the line at
03:39the DMV and you can see Barney standing in line with a young boy on his shoulders, whose
03:43hands are covering Barney's face.
03:45This boy has never been seen in the show since, leaving eagle-eyed fans to speculate
03:50on whether Barney has a secret son who he later abandoned, per his drinking problems.
03:54It's of course entirely possible this is the child of a relative or friend, but given
03:58that there's never been a mention of Barney having siblings and he isn't exactly overflowing
04:03with friends who would willingly leave a kid with him, it could very well be his own son.
04:07Though Season 4's Selma's Choice revealed Barney to have fathered countless children
04:12through his regular donations to the local sperm bank, this second's long glimpse at
04:15a child implies Barney may have had, and sadly abandoned, his own child in the past.
04:216.
04:22Janie and Lisa are former best friends
04:25It's easy to forget that Lisa's best friend in the show's earliest seasons was Janie,
04:30who was steadily phased out as the series went on, to the extent that she's basically
04:34a background character these days.
04:36Though Janie and Lisa's friendship was hardly a flawless, conflict-free one, Janie memorably
04:41mocks Lisa for becoming a vegetarian.
04:43A concerted effort was made by the show's writers to downplay their interactions without
04:48ever offering an explanation as to why.
04:50Obviously, it's incredibly common for friends to naturally drift apart during their formative
04:54years, and Janie certainly wasn't ever a front-line fixture in even the show's earlier
04:59days, but it's still a little odd that their apparent rift was never categorically addressed
05:03on-screen.
05:045.
05:05Characters age at totally different rates
05:08One of the show's most discussed aspects by fans, yet one that's rarely directly addressed
05:13in the show itself for somewhat self-evident reasons, is the characters' general lack of
05:17aging.
05:18The overwhelming majority of The Simpsons' characters simply haven't aged in some 33
05:23seasons, no matter that the passage of time is regularly marked in various ways, such
05:27as characters having birthdays.
05:29The characters mostly being frozen in time has also resulted in backstories being retconned
05:33and updated over the years to reflect time's passage, though there are a few instances
05:37where supporting characters have indeed grown up while everyone else remained the same age.
05:42The most notable example is surely Apu's nephew, Jay, who appears as a child in Season
05:474's Homer the Heretic, and then reappears as a young adult in Season 27's Much Apu
05:52About Something.
05:53Selma Bouvier's adopted daughter, Ling, has also progressed from a baby to a toddler,
05:58which is especially amusing considering that Maggie Simpson has remained a baby for more
06:02than three decades.
06:04This is definitely one of those things that fans just need to roll with, though it is
06:07fun to consider the possible metaphysical explanation for some characters aging while
06:12others don't.
06:134.
06:14Lisa is an Elon Musk fangirl
06:17In terms of Simpsons episodes that have aged like milk left out in the sun on a scorching
06:21hot day, they don't get much worse than 2015's The Musk Who Fell to Err.
06:26The episode revolves around entrepreneur Elon Musk, who pays a visit to Springfield and spends
06:31a lot of time with the Simpsons, yet the episode largely consists of the writers cosying up
06:35to Musk and effectively lionising him as a ne'er-do-wrong super genius.
06:39It doesn't help that Musk has little comedic timing and what passes for a storyline goes
06:44nowhere interesting, but its most egregious sin?
06:47Turning Lisa into an acolyte in the cult of Musk.
06:51Lisa refers to Musk as possibly the greatest living inventor, and while the man's industrial
06:55achievements aren't to be sniffed at, Lisa's uncritical brown-nosing of a figure who has
06:59increasingly shown himself to be problematic isn't a great look.
07:03Granted, the episode was released at the peak of Musk's fandom, before the tide of
07:07public opinion began to turn against him, yet considering the state of Musk's personal
07:11reputation these days, the show's writers' room would probably rather you forget Lisa
07:15ever blindly championed him.
07:17While fans have criticised the Lady Gaga-centric episode Lisa Goes Gaga for its own celebrity
07:22worship, at least in Gaga's case she's a seemingly harmless public figure.
07:26Furthermore, it doesn't feel like she straight up paid the Simpsons team to make an episode
07:30extolling her alleged virtues.
07:333.
07:34The Disappearance of Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz
07:38Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz are undeniably two of the most popular and entertaining supporting
07:43characters from The Simpsons' first decade on the air.
07:46A wash-up actor and shyster lawyer respectively, both voiced terrifically by the late, great
07:51Phil Hartman.
07:52Both characters were tragically retired in the late 1990s following the devastating murder
07:57of actor Hartman, and though the show has since recast some dead voice actors, in Hartman's
08:01case the decision was made to usher McClure and Hutz out of Springfield.
08:05And due to the sudden nature of Hartman's death, the characters make totally unassuming
08:10exits from the show, with their absences remaining unexplained to this very day.
08:14While it is of course entirely possible that people like McClure and Hutz would simply
08:19move away to pursue opportunities elsewhere, especially if McClure's career ticked upwards
08:23or Hutz got disbarred, it's certainly odd that their departures were never mentioned
08:27in even a cursory fashion.
08:302.
08:31Milhouse's parents are cousins
08:33It was long speculated by fans that something odd was up with Milhouse's parents, given
08:38the frankly worrying physical resemblance they bear to one another in terms of hair
08:42colour, glasses, and even the shape of their faces.
08:44Well, the truth finally came out in Season 26's Let's Go Fly a Coot, which while mercifully
08:50not revealing the pair to be siblings, confirmed that Kirk and Luann Van Houten are indeed
08:55cousins, and Milhouse has a forked tongue as a result.
08:58Of course it happened to Milhouse, of all people.
09:01There have admittedly been several wink-wink references to this possibility throughout
09:05the show, such as Luann mentioning that she's from Shelbyville, where it is indeed legal
09:09to marry your cousin, but the outright confirmation seemed like the show's writers finally throwing
09:14fans a phone, presumably with the hope that they would then shut up about it for good.
09:181.
09:19There's only one bridge out of Springfield
09:22Matt Groening and company have been relatively careful to not reveal too much concrete information
09:27about Springfield's geography, namely its precise place in the US, and especially the
09:32state it exists in.
09:33Yet one of Springfield's most peculiar confirmed details is that the only road access out of
09:38the city is by way of a single bridge, Springfield Bridge, due to the over-abundance of corruption
09:43in the city's operational infrastructure.
09:45The bridge was even destroyed by a comet in Season 6's Bart's Comet, though soon enough
09:49rebuilt.
09:50While this is all obviously intended as a satire of what happens when the wrong people
09:54are put in charge of a city's money, it's fascinating that tens of thousands of people
09:58rely on a single bridge to travel in and out of the city.
10:01Really, though, you're better off just thinking of Springfield as a geographically fluid location
10:05that isn't tethered to a totally fixed design or topography.
10:09And that concludes our list.
10:10If you can think of anything that we missed, then do let us know in the comments below.
10:14And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
10:18Also head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias
10:22just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
10:24I've been Ellie with WhatCulture, I hope you have a magical day and I'll see you real soon.