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 sensibly
00:04fluid and elastic approach to their ongoing continuity, whereby what happens in one episode
00:10won't necessarily be picked up in the next. But at the same time, sometimes an episode makes
00:15declarational implications so fascinating that its absence in future episodes is totally
00:20bafflingly bizarre. But many fans never forget, and will routinely bring these details up at every
00:27opportunity. And so, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture, here with 10
00:31important details that are almost never mentioned in The Simpsons.
00:3610. The 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 the
00:46back of their hand, it's easy to forget that there's an extra room in the house we rarely
00:50catch a glimpse of. Behind the garage and next to the kitchen is a rumpus room,
00:54a recreation room basically. It was first seen in the season 2 episode Itchy and Scratchy in Marge,
00:59and has appeared in a grand total of just 8 of the Simpsons episodes to date. The room's
01:04shockingly meagre showing throughout the show was eventually mocked in the season 25 episode
01:09White Christmas Blues, where Marge tells Homer, well, there's a rec room off the kitchen,
01:13but sometimes it's there and sometimes it isn't. Our house is very odd that way.
01:17Nobody involved with the show has offered up notable comment on the room or why it's been
01:21so fleetingly included throughout the series, which only makes its existence that much weirder.
01:269. Herb's Baby Translator Would Have Totally Changed the World
01:31While The Simpsons has a fairly loose approach to its own internal continuity,
01:35one of its most societally wide-reaching implications occurred in season 3's classic
01:40episode Brother Can You Spare Two Dimes? The episode marks the second appearance of Homer's
01:44half-brother Herb, who invents a device which can translate baby babble into articulate spoken
01:49English, allowing parents to 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 egg
02:02form in any episode. Presumably, the writers realised that the world-changing inevitability
02:07of such a device was just too challenging to deal with. Even so, for all intents and purposes,
02:12this hardware absolutely exists in the show's universe and would have fundamentally altered
02:17child-rearing around the globe. 8. Hank Scorpio Seized Control of the East Coast
02:23Few one-off Simpsons characters have made as much of an impact as the legendary Bond villain-esque
02:28megalomaniac 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 US
02:38army, and at episode's end, a newspaper revealed that he'd managed to seize America's East Coast.
02:43While this is obviously meant to be a throwaway gag, we've never canonically
02:47seen Scorpio since, 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 to assume
03:13whatever they want. Maybe Scorpio still holds the East Coast, or perhaps the army took it back.
03:187. Barney has a mystery relative we never see again
03:22The earliest episodes of The Simpsons include a lot of experiments and throwaway moments that
03:27ultimately weren't crystallized in the show's canon moving forward, with one involving the
03:31presence of a small child in Barney Gumbel's life. Early on in the second season episode
03:36Principal Charming, keep a close eye on the line at the DMV, and you can see Barney standing in
03:41line with a young boy on his shoulders, whose hands are covering Barney's face. This boy has
03:46never been seen in the show since, leaving eagle-eyed fans to speculate on whether Barney
03:50has a secret son who he later abandoned, per his drinking problems. It's of course entirely
03:55possible this is the child of a relative or friend, but given that there's never been a
03:59mention of Barney having siblings, and he isn't exactly overflowing with friends who would
04:03willingly leave a kid with him, it could very well be his own son. Though Season 4's Selma's
04:09Choice revealed Barney to have fathered countless children through his regular donations to the
04:13local sperm bank, this second's long glimpse at a child implies Barney may have had and sadly
04:18abandoned his own child in the past. Number 6. Janie 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, who was
04:30steadily phased out as the series went on, to the extent that she's basically a background character
04:35these days. Though Janie and Lisa's friendship was hardly a flawless, conflict-free one, Janie
04:40memorably mocks Lisa for becoming a vegetarian. A concerted effort was made by the show's writers
04:45to downplay their interactions without ever offering an explanation as to why. Obviously,
04:50it's incredibly common for friends to naturally drift apart during their formative years,
04:55and Janie certainly wasn't ever a frontline fixture in even the show's earlier days,
04:59but it's still a little odd that their apparent rift was never categorically addressed on screen.
05:04Number 5. Characters 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. The overwhelming majority of The Simpsons' characters simply haven't aged in some 33 seasons,
05:23no matter that the passage of time is regularly marked in various ways such as characters having
05:28birthdays. The characters mostly being frozen in time has also resulted in backstories being
05:33retconned and 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 4's Homer
05:48the Heretic, and then reappears as a young adult in Season 27's Much Apu About 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. This is definitely one of those things that fans just need to roll with,
06:06though it is fun to consider the possible metaphysical explanation for some characters
06:11aging while others don't. Number 4. Lisa is an Elon Musk fangirl
06:17In terms of Simpsons episodes that have aged like milk left out in the sun on a scorching hot day,
06:22they don't get much worse than 2015's The Musk Who Fell to Ur. The episode revolves around
06:27entrepreneur Elon Musk, who pays a visit to Springfield and spends a lot of time with
06:31the Simpsons, yet the episode largely consists of the writers cosying up to Musk and effectively
06:36lionising him as a ne'er-do-wrong super genius. It doesn't help that Musk has little comedic
06:42timing and what passes for a storyline goes nowhere interesting, but its most egregious sin?
06:47Turning Lisa into an acolyte in the cult of Musk. Lisa refers to Musk as possibly the greatest
06:52living inventor, and while the man's industrial achievements aren't to be sniffed at, Lisa's
06:57uncritical brown-nosing of a figure who has increasingly shown himself to be problematic
07:02isn't a great look. Granted, the episode was released at the peak of Musk's fandom,
07:06before the tide of public opinion began to turn against him, yet considering the state of Musk's
07:11personal reputation these days, the show's writers' room would probably rather you forget
07:15Lisa ever blindly championed him. While fans have criticised the Lady Gaga-centric episode
07:19Lisa Goes Gaga for its own celebrity worship, at least in Gaga's case she's a seemingly harmless
07:25public figure. Furthermore, it doesn't feel like she straight-up paid the Simpsons team
07:29to make an episode extolling her alleged virtues. Never forget.
07:333. The 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. A washed-up actor and shyster lawyer
07:48respectively, both voiced terrifically by the late, great Phil Hartman. Both characters were
07:53tragically retired in the late 1990s following the devastating murder of actor Hartman. And
07:58though the show has since recast some dead voice actors, in Hartman's case,
08:02the decision was made to usher McClure and Hutz out of Springfield. And due to the sudden nature
08:07of Hartman's death, the characters make totally unassuming exits from the show,
08:11with their absences remaining unexplained to this very day.
08:14While it is, of course, entirely possible that people like McClure and Hutz would simply move
08:19away to pursue opportunities elsewhere, especially if McClure's career ticked upwards or Hutz got
08:24disbarred, it's certainly odd that their departures were never mentioned in even a cursory fashion.
08:292. Milhouse's Parents are Cousins
08:33It was long speculated by fans that something odd was up with Milhouse's parents, given the frankly
08:38worrying physical resemblance they bear to one another in terms of hair colour, glasses, and even
08:43the shape of their faces. Well, the truth finally came out in Season 26's Let's Go Fly a Coot,
08:49which, while mercifully not revealing the pair to be siblings, confirmed that Kirk and Luanne
08:53Van Houten are indeed cousins, and Milhouse has a forked tongue as a result. Of course it happened
08:59to Milhouse, of all people. There have admittedly been several wink-wink references to this
09:04possibility throughout the show, such as Luanne mentioning that she's from Shelbyville, where it
09:08is indeed legal to marry your cousin, but the outright confirmation seemed like the show's
09:12writers finally throwing fans a phone, presumably with the hope that they would then shut up about
09:17it for good. 1. There's Only One Bridge Out of Springfield
09:22Matt Groening and company have been relatively careful to not reveal too much concrete
09:26information about Springfield's geography, namely its precise place in the US and especially the
09:32state it exists in. Yet, one of Springfield's most peculiar confirmed details is that the only
09:36road access out of the city is by way of a single bridge, Springfield Bridge, due to the over
09:42abundance of corruption in the city's operational infrastructure. The bridge was even destroyed by
09:46a comet in Season 6's Bart's Comet, though soon enough rebuilt. While this is all obviously
09:51intended as a satire of what happens when the wrong people are put in charge of a city's money,
09:56it's fascinating that tens of thousands of people rely on a single bridge to travel in
10:00and out of the city. Really though, you're better off just thinking of Springfield as
10:03a geographically fluid location that isn't tethered to a totally fixed design or topography.
10:09And that concludes our list. If you can think of anything that we missed,
10:12then do let us know in the comments below. And while you're there, don't forget to like and
10:15subscribe and tap that notification bell. Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there,
10:20and I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been
10:24Ellie with WhatCulture, I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.