8 Ways The Simpsons Movie Could Have Turned Out Completely Differently

4. The Truman Show-Inspired Movie

There were several Simpsons Movie story ideas put forward after the 2003 film idea sessions and prior to the movie entering the animation stage in 2006. In this time, Groening and his team threw multiple jokes and concepts back and forth in an attempt to see what would and wouldn't stick. One story idea in consideration in these preliminary stages involved a storyline inspired by 1998's reality television satire The Truman Show. In the Simpsons movie's proposed take on the story, the residents of Springfield would - in a meta-tastic twist - discover they were actually characters in a TV show. Groening eventually decided to reject the idea, however, as he thought the twist would take the show's self-awareness too far, and that Simpsons characters should "never become aware of themselves as celebrities". The Truman Show-esque plot wasn't discarded entirely, though - it was later used as the storyline for The Simpsons Movie's video game tie-in, The Simpsons Game.