10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About The Simpsons
Wait, who almost played Sideshow Bob?!
When you think about animated TV shows, automatically your mind will go to The Simpsons almost immediately. It may not be the force it once was, but the Golden Age is unrivalled, and the sheer longevity of the show is something that no other can match, or will likely ever be able to match.
With 33 seasons and counting under its belt, and a total of over 700 episodes, Homer and his family have been around since the mid 1980’s. Even the superfans can’t claim to know everything that there is to know about the show, because there is just too much to know.
In all honesty, the number of people who have actually sat and watched every single episode of the show is painfully small, so the chance of anyone knowing all the minute details behind the scenes is all but impossible.
Buried in the utter avalanche of knowledge and facts about The Simpsons are some things that, even when you hear them you would struggle to believe. The last 33 years have been littered with fallouts behind the scenes, inspiration behind certain characters, and unrealised celebrity cameos are littered throughout the last 33 years...
10. Smithers Was Always Supposed To Be Yellow
Many of those that live in Springfield have grown and evolved over the years, changing in some way or another. Few have gone through this quite like Waylon Smithers however, as he was depicted as black in his first appearance, and has been yellow ever since his second.
This has always seemed like quite a strange alteration to make to a character after just one episode, with many fans asking why his skin colour was changed, but the truth is that Smithers was always intended to be yellow.
According to long time writer, director, and animator for The Simpsons, David Silverman, there was an error in ‘Homer’s Odyssey’ that led to Smithers being animated in the wrong colour. As this was his first appearance, it was assumed that this was his original design, but that was never the case.
Silverman stated that Smithers’ character as a sycophant to Mr. Burns was always the plan, and that the writers didn’t believe it would be a good idea for this particular character to be black. So just one episode later, Smithers was back to his original, yellow design.