The Simpsons: 10 Secondary Characters Voiced By Hank Azaria

7. Cletus Spuckler (aka Slack-Jawed Yokel)

First Appearance: "Bart Gets An Elephant," Season 5. When Stampy, Bart's pet elephant, swatted a child with his trunk in the Simpsons' backyard, Lisa defended him, stating, "Yeah, well you'd be grumpy too if you were taken out of your natural habitat and gawked at by a bunch of slack- jawed yokels."Almost on cue, a stereotypical redneck with crooked teeth and dressed in a "wife-beater" and blue jeans poked his body into frame, pointed at Lisa, and exclaimed, "Hey, Ma: look at that pointy-hairded little girl. Hyuck." Springfield's most-famous slack-jawed yokel, Cletus Spuckler, was one of many go-to background characters for a quick laugh in his first half-dozen appearances. That changed with "22 Short Films About Springfield," when Cletus was given his own theme song ("Some folk'll never lose a toe, but then again some folk'll, like Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel") and a little story about his wife (sometimes sister/mother) Brandine turning down his gift of boots he found hanging from a telephone line. Cletus and Brandine are the parents of several dozen kids (the number floats between 30 to more than 50) some with fairly common names (Tiffany, Cody, two Heathers, and Ian, for example) to very unusual names (Crystal Meth, Rubella Scabies, Q-Bert, Stabbed-In-Jail, etc.) Like many Springfieldanites, Cletus holds several jobs: he's a fifth-generation dirt farmer, a moonshiners, he runs a vegetable shack, and he sells a variety of "animal parts." From a simple running gag, Cletus has evolved into a stand-alone character, and has been the subject of several episodes, including: Season 18's "Yokel Chords," in which Lisa tutors the Spuckler kids, leading to them joining 'The Krusty The Clown Show,' before Cletus spends all their earnings; Season 21's "Rednecks and Broomsticks," focused on his art of moonshining; and Season 24's "Love is a Many Splintered Thing", where his daughter Mary nearly married Bart. Funniest Moment: In Season 15's "The Wandering Juvie," Chief Wiggum was chasing Bart and fellow juvenile detention escapee Gina and came across Cletus, whittling on his front porch. Wiggum asked Cletus if he had seen two kids run by. Cletus: "I don't have such good memory since I drank my thermometer, but I whittles what I sees. Is this them? (Holds up a carving of Bart and Gina; continues whittling.) Uh, sometimes I whittles the future." (Shows a whittling of a bear mauling Wiggum; sure enough, a few scenes later, Wiggum is attacked by a grizzly bear.)