10 The Simpsons Characters Who Were KILLED OFF!

However you slice it, Maude Flanders' death was the most significant passing in the history of The Simpsons.

Perhaps Maude wasn't the biggest character, and didn't necessarily have many iconic moments whenever she popped up alongside her husband Ned, but her death was seemingly so random, and so avoidable, that it genuinely changed the course the show was on.

Maude met her maker in "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily", the fourteenth episode of season 11, after she was struck by a rogue t-shirt fired from a t-shirt cannon while standing on the top row of the Springfield Speedway grandstand. It was a ridiculous way to kill the character, but perhaps no more ridiculous than the reason the showrunners made the decision to remove her in the first place.

According to legend, The Simpsons writers murdered Maude Flanders over a pay dispute with Maggie Roswell, the voice actor who had brought the character to life for so many years. In the words of her grieving husband, that's a "dilly of a pickle".