10 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About The Simpsons
1. The One Episode Matt Groening Completely Disowned
Streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ have made it all too easy to skip through the opening credits of a show. However, there is often key information hidden within these first minutes, like the fact that Matt Groening’s name has been removed entirely from ‘A Star Is Burns’.
The season six outing is not a bad episode by any stretch, in fact, it is actually very strong. The town goes into a frenzy over a film festival that ultimately brings in Jon Lovitz’s Jay Sherman to judge. He moves in with the Simpsons for a short time while he is in town and is absurdly punished by Patty and Selma for bad-mouthing MacGyver.
Sherman was never, of course, an original Simpsons character. Instead, he was the main character in ‘The Critic’, a series created and produced by The Simpsons’ own Al Jean, Mike Reiss, and James L. Brooks, thus essentially making the episode something of a crossover.
This upset Matt Groening. He had no affiliation with The Critic, despite many assuming he did thanks to labels of ‘from the producers of The Simpsons’. He didn’t like that an episode of The Simpsons was being treated as an ad for a show that wasn’t even his. He tried to stop the episode from airing altogether, but when this failed, he instead settled for completely disowning it and removing his name from the titles.