10 Simpsons Secrets You Never Knew

The Simpsons has become the blueprint for making a successful sitcom. The show was created by Matt Groening, who up till that point, had just created the successful comic strip Life is Hell (which ran until 2012).

Groening devised the show as a parody of the average working-class family, centering on the Simpsons, a nuclear family, consisting of husband-and-wife Homer and Marge and their three kids, Bart, Lisa and Maggie.

The premise originated as a series of shorts, which debuted on The Tracey Ullman Show, which Groening was working on at the time. The series was then given a full-series treatment, becoming a 22-minute sitcom broadcast on Fox.

Even so, no-one could have predicted that this show would become the biggest TV series of all time. After 31 years on air, The Simpsons holds the record for being the longest-running TV series of all time, running for over 600 episodes.

However, have you ever wondered what was happening behind the scenes? Have you ever wanted to know some of the show’s biggest secrets? It's time to shine a light on some of the show’s secrets that even the fans didn’t know.

Out of all of Matt Groening’s projects (including Futurama and Disenchantment), The Simpsons is largely considered his most autobiographical.

And, in fact, a lot of the characters’ names are named after Groening’s own family - Homer and Marge were his real-life parents and Lisa and Maggie were his sisters. Even Aunt Patty is actually named after his real-life sister.

Another quick fact for you - Bart (the only Simpsons family member that was not named after a real-life person) was named so because it is actually an anagram of “brat”. Seems quite fitting, really.