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Even more tiny moments that changed the course of Springfield history.
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00:00The Simpsons is a show so massive in every conceivable way that you could make an entire
00:04list based on the tiny, seemingly insignificant details that helped shape its progress. In fact,
00:10we already did just that, but one wasn't enough. So we've channeled our inner Springfielder to
00:15once again get down to the nitty gritty of Matt Groening's most famous creations to look at the
00:20show's most unassuming but important moments. I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and this is The Simpsons,
00:2510 more moments more important than you realized. 10. Homer owns the Denver Broncos
00:31In our previous list on the topic, we discussed the idea that Homer is able to fund his family's
00:36eccentric lifestyle through royalty checks from his days in the B-Sharps. It is a fanciful theory
00:41for sure, but if that crazy idea doesn't suit you, then how about this one involving an NFL franchise?
00:47In the much-praised Season 8 episode, You Only Move Twice, Homer receives a gift from his former boss,
00:52the megalomaniacal supervillain Hank Scorpio. After Homer inadvertently assisted Scorpio in his
00:57quest for world domination, the mega-rich nutjob decided to splash some cash and buy his former
01:02employee, the Denver Broncos. This comes after a conversation where Homer revealed to Scorpio
01:07that his dream was to one day own the Dallas Cowboys. Well, you've got to start somewhere,
01:11I suppose. Many Simpsons fans online then have suggested that this might be yet another source
01:16of income for the family. Owning a football team would rake in some serious coin, and the Broncos have
01:20only gotten better since You Only Move Twice was released, or at least so I'm told. So yeah,
01:25it kind of turns out Hank was a nice guy after all. Well, if you discount all of the people that
01:29he murdered in cold blood, but uh, who's counting? Number 9, The Olmec Head. In Season 2's Blood Feud,
01:35Bart saves Mr. Burns' life when it's discovered that the two share the same rare blood type. To thank
01:40the boy and his family for keeping him alive, Burns sends them the generous gift of a thank you card.
01:45There wasn't even a check inside. This escalates then to the point where the billionaire's
01:49about a fire homer when he realizes the error of his ways. To make up for a rubbish first present,
01:54he sends the Simpsons family a very unique offering. In fact, he bestows upon them a
01:59colossal Olmec Head, a large carving of a human head in the style of the Olmec people of ancient
02:04Mesoamerica. Whilst the family are initially baffled by the head, they do eventually accept it
02:08when Bart decides he likes it. Although, to be fair, he was happy with the crowbar used to open the
02:13crate in the first place. While you might have thought this was just a one-and-done affair, the head has
02:17appeared in the background of dozens of episodes over the show, most often in the family basement.
02:22And seeing it in newer episodes is a nice reminder of the show's humble beginnings, even if the head
02:26itself doesn't actually do anything. Number 8, Mary Spookler. This episode of The Simpsons is kind of
02:32all over the place. Thankfully, it's called Apocalypse Cow, which is a name so great that it
02:36kind of makes up for all of its other shortcomings. In said episode, Bart ends up raising a baby cow,
02:41going mad in a field, then rescuing it from slaughter. He does this with the help of Mary Spookler,
02:46the most intelligent offspring of Cletus and Brandine. Although, that's damning with faint
02:50praise of the highest order. There's a plot where Mary and Bart almost get married as well,
02:54but the episode remains mostly about the cow. This all changes though when Mary comes back into
02:59Bart's life five seasons later. In Moonshine River, another great title, Bart tries to convince
03:04Mary to be in a relationship with him after he figures that he's only got so many chances left at
03:09love. But wait, isn't Bart like 10? If he's got no chance at love, then I guess the rest of us are just
03:14screwed. Well, Mary herself turns up a few more times across the show, most notably in the episode
03:19Love is a Many Splintered Thing. Few could have expected though that Mary would appear in multiple
03:23episodes of the show when she first arrived, but hey, that's young love for you, I guess.
03:27Number 7, Homer Becomes Sterile
03:29The second and final appearance of Homer's half-brother Herb, so far anyway,
03:33comes in an episode called Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes? While this story ends with Herb patenting a
03:38baby translator in an attempt to rebuild his fortune, it starts with Homer getting some rather bad news
03:43about his swimmers. See, a medical examination reveals that years of working in close proximity
03:48to nuclear radiation has left Homer sterile. Now, Homer and Marge didn't plan to have any more kids
03:53anyway. Well, that was the case for 21 seasons, until the episode Adventures in Baby Getting came
03:59along. In this one, Marge reveals her hidden desire to have another child, only for Homer's sterility to
04:04be re-revealed. And we're not sure why, I mean considering she'd known about it for over two decades.
04:10Number 6, Maud at Lisa's Wedding
04:12When The Simpsons first did an episode set in the future, it was fine. It was cool to see older
04:17versions of our favourite characters and what the world of tomorrow looked like. Now, though,
04:21they've done this trope all the flame and time, and it gets really, really boring, because nobody
04:25cares about Bart's stupid kids. But the episode where we first get a glimpse of things to come
04:29is Lisa's Wedding from Season 6, when the middle Simpson kid comes across a fortune teller
04:34in the woods. Set in the long-distant future of 2010, we follow a grown-up Lisa and her ill-fated
04:40engagement as snobby Englishman Hugh Parkfield. Guests at the doomed wedding include a wheelchair-bound
04:45Christy, a recently defrosted Mr. Burns, Ned, and Maud Flanders, and, wait a second, Maud Flanders?
04:51The same Maud Flanders that would be killed off an episode first broadcast in the year 2000?
04:55How the hell can this be? Well, Maud's appearance in this episode proves that the fortune terror is
05:00talking a load of BS and has no idea what she's on about. But of course, we'd only know that once
05:05Maud actually did bite the dust. 5. Marge's Gambling Problem
05:09Every so often in The Simpsons, something will happen to a character that permanently
05:13affects their personality. This happens to Marge in Springfield, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying
05:18and Love Legalized Gambling. Aside from having one of the longest episode names in the history of the
05:23show, it also shows Marge developing a gambling habit by spending too much time playing the slots.
05:27The ending of this episode is actually quite dark as well, as Marge's issues don't get resolved,
05:32and she just has to live with them, a startlingly realistic approach to portraying addiction.
05:37Despite the bleakness of this ending though, many fans just assumed that we would never hear about
05:41Marge's problems ever again, but oh boy, do we. Her issues with gambling come up time and time again,
05:46more often than not for comic effect. There's a joke about throwing vodka in Maggie's face after a
05:50game of Candyland that would be funny if it weren't so alarming, and Marge even goes full Danny Ocean
05:55and joins a team of card counters to help fix the church in season 26.
06:00Number 4. Principal Skinner's Prison Number
06:02Now this one is actually kinda really clever. It's a well-known joke that Principal Skinner's
06:07old Vietnam prisoner helmet, as shown in the episode Homer's Barbershop Quartet,
06:11displays the number 24601. And of course, this is the same number that Jean Valjean is branded with
06:16in the musical Les Miserables. And yeah, yeah, we know it was a book first, but honestly,
06:20who has time to read all of that? Whilst this might just seem like the writers nodding to their
06:24favourite stage show, or I guess book, but I don't believe it, the comparisons between Skinner and
06:29Valjean run much deeper than just a number. For instance, after being released from prison,
06:33Valjean must assume a new identity in order to advance in society, and under his new name,
06:39he eventually becomes the respected mayor of a large town. Now, think about Seymour Skinner,
06:43real name, Armin Tamzarian. He too took on a new name and used it to achieve a position of
06:48influence in the community, and like his literary counterpart, his world also crumbles when his
06:53secret is found out. Clues about Skinner's deception were there all along, and we just
06:56never saw them. Number 3, Lisa and Nelson
06:59Ralph Wiggum, Hugh Parkfield, Daniel Radcliffe's Edward Cullen parody, freaking Milhouse. When it
07:05comes to guys, Lisa Simpson is fresh out of luck. And all of this is without mentioning Nelson
07:10Muntz, with whom Lisa had a brief attraction to in the episode Lisa's Date with Destiny. Well,
07:15as it turns out, this romance was far from brief, as it has cropped up a bunch of different times
07:20over the show's subsequent episodes. In fact, Nelson is often shown displaying favoritism towards
07:24Lisa, leaving her out of his bullish actions, and he even goes to some pretty extreme lengths for him
07:29anyway to impress her, including reading some books. The idea of the pair ending up together
07:34actually came full circle in the Season 34 episode when Nelson met Lisa, which imagines the
07:39life of the two if they got together in adulthood. And this came a whole 26 years after she and
07:44Nelson first became an item. This love story has been one of the most enduring and surprising in
07:49the show's entire history. Maybe they'll pay it off fully one day, or maybe Nelson will leave
07:53Lisa at the altar to throw coleslaw at Skinner's house again, I don't know.
07:57Number 2, Homer in a Coma. Now this one is purely speculative, but the theory really does hold some
08:02water. In an episode titled So It's Come to This, a Simpsons clip show, Bart decides to prank his old
08:07man by seriously shaking up a can of beer. However, Bart did such a good job that when Homer opened the can,
08:13it exploded with the force of a neutron bomb. This left Homer in a vegetative state for 7
08:17weeks and caused him to lose 5% of his brain. But did the coma do even more damage to our
08:22beloved patriarch than we thought? Well, a popular fan theory is that Homer never woke up at all,
08:27and that every episode after this one takes place in his head. And before you call everyone crazy,
08:32there is some serious evidence to back this up. Not only would this explain why the plots of the show
08:36get more outlandish over the years and why the timelines don't match up, but in the episode
08:40Homer the Heretic, God actually tells Homer that he'll die in 6 months. And the clip show aired
08:46almost exactly 6 months after Homer the Heretic. So, are we reading too much into it? Probably.
08:52Is it compelling anyway? You bet your ass it is.
08:54Number 1, The First Door. Homer's signature expression,
08:58door, became so popular that it even entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2001. Whilst the phrase
09:03did exist long before The Simpsons came along, door was definitely popularized by Homer's voice actor.
09:08His delivery of the word is iconic, which makes it all the more impressive that he actually came up
09:12with it all on his own. As is now folklore whilst recording for The Simpsons when it was just a
09:17shot on the Tracy Ullman show, it was one innocent line marked annoyed grunt that eventually became
09:23the iconic door that we know and love today. Little did anyone know at the time that a piece
09:27of television had just been made by this weird improvisation, but the saying and the show are now
09:32so synonymous with each other that you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't immediately
09:36associate the sound with Springfield's most famous resident.
09:39So, that's our list. I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below. Did you ever
09:42think more about these important Simpsons moments, and are there any other unassuming ones that had
09:46huge effects that I missed off here? Let me know, and while you're down there, if you could,
09:50please give us a like, share, subscribe, and head over to whatculture.com for more lists and
09:53news like this every single day. Even if you don't though, I've been Josh,
09:56thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.
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