The most hilarious and cromulent Simpsons in-jokes in history.
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00:00Whilst The Simpsons' fierce mainstream popularity went a few years ago, there is still no denying
00:06the enormous impact that Matt Groening's legendary animation has had across the world.
00:12The Simpsons has winked at the audience many, many times over the course of its 33 seasons to date,
00:18drawing attention to its own creation and speaking to very specific portions of its
00:23viewer base through brilliantly sly niche humour. In-jokes work precisely because we,
00:28as humans, love to know something that others don't. It makes us feel special and smart,
00:34and The Simpsons has exploited that with great intelligence and humour.
00:38And so, with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture,
00:42here with 10 genius in-jokes in The Simpsons.
00:4510. Paul and Linda McCartney's Lentil Soup Recipe
00:49The Season 7 episode Lisa the Vegetarian is an all-time favourite amongst fans and
00:55critics alike, and contains some memorable guest appearances from Paul and Linda McCartney
01:01as themselves. While talking to Lisa, Paul explains that he's so committed to animal rights
01:07that if you play his song Maybe I'm Amazed backwards, you'll be able to hear the recipe
01:12for a really ripping lentil soup. This alone seems like a nod to the Beatles' song Revolution 9,
01:18which had alleged hidden messages when played backwards, but it's also a nod to the general
01:24satanic panic of the 1980s, where Christian groups accused rock bands of hiding subliminal
01:30messages in their songs. Yet the episode does one better during its closing credits sequence,
01:36which are in fact set to Maybe I'm Amazed. Those few who bother to actually heed Paul's
01:41advice and play this modified version of the song backwards would indeed hear McCartney
01:46reciting a recipe for lentil soup. Even better, Paul can be heard saying
01:51By the way, I'm alive, in reference to the urban legend that he actually died in 1966
01:58and was replaced by a lookalike. Season 10's Homer to the Max may not be
02:05a classic Simpsons episode, but it does contain one of the series' low-key cleverest inside gags.
02:13Early in the episode, Homer makes a crack about animated TV shows, saying
02:17Networks like animation because they don't have to pay the actors' squat.
02:21A moment later, Ned Flanders appears at the window and spouts his single line of dialogue
02:25for the entire episode. Plus, they can replace them and no one can tell the diddly difference.
02:30The cherry on top here is that this clearly isn't the work of regular Ned voice actor
02:36Harry Shearer. It's a different voice that is markedly, hilariously different.
02:41Number 8. Animators cutting corners. Season 4's The Front sees Bart and Lisa
02:47write an episode of the Itchy & Scratchy show and submit it under Grandpa Simpson's name,
02:52resulting in him being hired as a staff writer. The entire episode is a brilliant,
02:58relentless slew of in-jokes about both the animation industry and The Simpsons itself,
03:03and perhaps the standout gag occurs when Bart and Lisa visit Itchy & Scratchy studios.
03:08While being toured around, Lisa mentions how expensive it must be to produce cartoons,
03:13to which company head Roger Myers Jr. replies,
03:16well, we cut corners. Sometimes to save money, our animators will reuse the same backgrounds
03:22over and over and over again. And just at that moment, anyone paying even the faintest attention
03:28will surely notice that the hallway they're walking down is itself recycled, featuring the
03:33same cleaning lady indoor on a loop. It may not be subtle, but it is clever, and more importantly,
03:40very funny. Number 7, The No Soap Radio. Fan favourite season 4 episode Homer,
03:46The Heretic, features a gag you might have seen dozens of times and never really understood,
03:51but laughed anyway. While Homer is singing Tom Jones' Delilah in the shower, we linger briefly
03:57on a shower radio bearing the label No Soap Radio. While the label seems to be a reference to the
04:02fact that the radio is waterproof, being in the shower and all, it's actually a reference to the
04:07surreal practical joke known as No Soap Radio. The prank involves telling a joke where the
04:13punchline has absolutely no relation to the setup, with the joke teller and bystanders in on the
04:19joke, acting like it's hilarious and ridiculing the recipient for failing to understand it.
04:25Now, at its core, No Soap Radio is an experiment on social norms, and particularly in the notion
04:31of conformity, given the number of targets of the prank who will begin to laugh just so that
04:37they don't appear stupid. Now, even today, No Soap Radio isn't a widely known gag, but before the
04:44internet in 1992, when this episode aired, you'd have to be a pretty clever cookie to have caught
04:50onto it unprompted. Number 6, Seymour's Cameo. Much as many might not believe it, many Simpsons
04:57fans haven't seen Futurama, save for the crossover episode Simpsorama, which aired during the
05:03Simpsons' 26th season. And while the episode as a whole is a fairly broad cross-pollination of Matt
05:09Groening's two most beloved animated shows, there is one killer gag which left Futurama fans
05:15heartbroken, and everyone else none the wiser. At one point in the episode, we see Homer Simpson
05:20bend at Fry and Leela, crossing the street to Panucci's Pizza, a Futurama staple that's somehow
05:26now in Springfield. And for a second, we focus on a small dog briefly waking up and falling back
05:32asleep. Those who don't watch Futurama will be absolutely oblivious, but even the most casual fan
05:37won't ever forget that dog. That dog is Seymour, Fry's pet, who in one of the series' most
05:43heart-wrenching episodes, Jurassic Bark, is shown waiting faithfully for a missing Fry to return,
05:50ultimately dying of old age before finding out that Fry fell into a cryotube. Now, this devastating
05:55revelation was admittedly retconned in the Futurama film, Bender's Big Score, but to many fans it
06:01remains the series' emotional high point. Seeing Seymour waking up and just barely missing Fry as
06:07he walks past was then like twisting the knife in fans' aching hearts. As a small bout of solace,
06:14this episode is at least accepted to be non-canon by many.
06:19Number 5. Sneed's Feed and Seed. Season 11's EIEI-annoyed grunt boasts one of the most infamous
06:27in-jokes in the show's history, so much so that it has become an internet meme in recent years.
06:33The iconic scene sees Homer pulling up to a convenience store called Sneed's Feed and Seed,
06:39with lettering below it reading, formerly Chuck's. This seems harmless and forgettable enough until
06:45you consider the very lewd implications of the signage. Given that Sneed, Feed and Seed all rhyme,
06:52it can be inferred that Chuck's version also rhymed, and if we're following the same lettering
06:57convention, with each subsequent word starting with F and S, well, you can guess what it might
07:03have said. Now, this all started as a rumour, but the episode's writer did eventually confirm it as
07:09genuine on Twitter. There's hiding a filthy joke in plain sight, and then there's burying
07:15one so ingeniously deep that even most adults don't notice it. Number 4. Pixar's A113 easter egg.
07:23A113 is one of the most iconic in-jokes in animation history, used primarily by Disney and
07:31Pixar employees to immortalise the classroom where they learned the craft of character animation.
07:37A113 has, as a result, appeared in easter egg form in countless Disney-Pixar movies,
07:42video games and TV shows, and this includes The Simpsons. One of Pixar's most successful
07:48directors, Brad Bird, got the ball rolling by including A113 as Krusty the Clown's prison
07:54number in Krusty Gets Busted, and it also appeared as mugshot and prison uniform numbers
08:00for Sideshow Bob in the episodes Cape Fear and Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming.
08:05Additionally, it was also visible as Bart's mugshot number in the music video for the
08:091990 hit song Do The Bartman. Given the numerous Disney-Pixar personnel who cut their teeth working
08:16on The Simpsons, including Wreck-It Ralph and Zootopia director Rich Moore, there's been quite
08:22the connection forged between the two properties. Number 3. Homer's burnt tongue. Season 20's
08:29Father Knows Worst offers a wink-wink gag that at once is extremely naughty, but is also designed
08:35to go sailing over kids' heads, and also underlining Marge's endearing naivety.
08:41While at the carnival, Homer burns his tongue after accidentally eating a flaming stick and
08:46being tricked into drinking lighter fluid by Bart. His tongue is put in a cast, at which point Dr
08:51Hibbert warns Marge, I'm afraid his tongue will be in that cast for a few weeks. It may put something
08:57of a cramp in your lovemaking. The obvious implication that Homer won't be giving Marge
09:01any oral stimulation for a few weeks is blissfully ignored by her, who replies,
09:06no it won't. If he wants me to do something, he'll just write it down. Even with the mention
09:11of lovemaking, this is a pretty G-rated child-friendly joke on the surface, but any
09:17adult watching will be cracking up at the strange sweetness of Marge's response. Number 2. A perfectly
09:24cromulent word. Season 7's Lisa the Iconoclast opens with Lisa's class watching a film about
09:31Springfield's founding father, Jebediah Springfield, who utters the town's iconic motto,
09:36a noble spirit embiggens the smallest man. At this point, we cut to Mrs Krabappel and
09:42Miss Hoover with the former asking, embiggens, I'd never heard that word before moving to
09:47Springfield, to which Hoover replies, I don't know why, it's a perfectly cromulent word.
09:52Later in the episode, Principal Skinner also says of Homer's town crier audition,
09:57he's embiggened that role with his cromulent performance. The joke here is of course that
10:01while embiggens is a word that was created by the show's writers room, so too was cromulent,
10:08despite being used here as an adjective. And yet, cromulent seems plausible enough that most
10:14viewers probably just assumed that it was in fact a word and they just didn't know what it meant,
10:18as opposed to embiggens, whose meaning is implied through its context. This is a perfect example of
10:25a snake eating its own tail joke, whilst also ingeniously toying around with how we use and
10:31understand language. Number one, brevity is wit. Some of the best jokes have layers of understanding
10:38which allows people to interpret them on different levels, and that is absolutely the case with this
10:44killer gag in season three's Mr Lisa Goes to Washington. The episode includes the Reader's
10:50Digest parody magazine Reading Digest, which holds a children's essay writing contest that
10:55Lisa enters. The welcome sign includes a quotation, brevity is wit, which is a clear contraction of
11:02Polonius's iconic quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet, brevity is the soul of wit. Now on the surface,
11:08this is a clever meta joke about abbreviation, but if you were alive in the 1980s and 1990s,
11:14then you might remember Reader's Digest as the very popular magazine known for republishing
11:21articles from other magazines, but in highly condensed form. And the Simpsons banner here is
11:26first and foremost a direct reference to that. Quite literally, the soul of the Shakespeare
11:31quote has been omitted. I mean, jokes don't get much cleverer and more multifaceted than that.
11:37And that concludes our list. If you can think of any that we missed, then do let us know in
11:41the comments below, and while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that
11:45notification bell. Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across
11:50various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with WhatCulture,
11:54I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.