The Simpsons: 20 Best Movie Parodies

Far from being just a show about funny-looking yellow people spouting catchphrases, The Simpsons is a hugely metatextual series with every episode, particularly those made during the show's glory days back in the 1990s, containing a bucket-load of references and parodies of various films and TV shows.

Across the years, The Simpsons has made an art form of the spoof with the best ones going on to become famous moments from the show in their own right e.g. the brilliant The Birds homage with the babies in the day care centre from A Streetcar Named Marge. 

Sometimes, they also devote a whole episode to really take apart a single movie, such as in the more recent How I Wet Your Mother which, despite the title, is actually a great big swipe at Inception with the family going inside Homer's dreams (spoiler: there are a lot of doughnuts).

You could easily list a hundred examples but for the sake of brevity we have whittled it down, from over 26 years' and 574 episodes' worth of movie mickey-taking, to name our 20 best ever movie parodies to be found in The Simpsons.

Seen in: Co-Dependent's Day (Season 15, Episode 15)

After much hype, the Simpsons go to see the latest Cosmic Wars movie, Episode 1: The Gathering Shadow. 

But instead of lots of sci-fi thrills (summed up perfectly by Lisa as "shoom, shoom, waaaa-argh") it's just two hours of political debate, with a large portion taken up by a roll call of the film's bloated cast of characters including Jim-Jam Bonks ("that character's just a tired stereotype!") and an AT-AT reading a newspaper. 

As Comic Book Guy says, "Worst Cosmic Wars ever! I shall only see it three more times. Today."

Yes, The Phantom Menace is an easy target perhaps, but it’s always fun to poke holes at the oft-derided Star Wars prequel films (after all, the internet has never got bored with doing so for the past sixteen years).