10 The Simpsons Characters Who Were KILLED OFF!

The case of Dr Marvin Monroe is a strange one, even for The Simpsons. The rotund psychotherapist played a fairly prominent role during the first season of the show, appearing alongside America's favourite family in the episode 'There's No Disgrace Like Home', in which Homer, Marge and the kids check in to Monroe's Family Therapy Centre for a little light therapy.

Although the doc would appear in several other episodes it would largely be as a background character, never really featuring as a key character in any other seasons, until that is, he died.

Marvin Monroe's death was never seen, and would probably have gone unnoticed, if it hasn't been brought to our attention. This occurred during the rather underwhelming "138th Episode Spectacular" where episode host Troy McClure posed the question "Which popular Simpsons characters have died in the past year?", to which the answer was " If you said Bleeding Gums Murphy and doctor Marvin Monroe you are wrong, they were never popular."

The sudden and unexpected death of the character came as a shock to fans of the show, perhaps because of the nonchalant way the showrunners chose to do it. Sure, Marvin wasn't a key character, but he'd been seen around Springfield enough that it was an unusual choice to kill him off with zero acknowledgment.

Some time later, Matt Groening admitted he'd made the decision because the voice of the character hurt Harry Shearer's throat and also annoyed Groening. Monroe stayed dead for years, with his grave even appearing on screen. Bizarrely though, the decision would be made to resurrect him in the episode "Diatribe of a Housewife", where he reveals he had actually just been "very sick".

Alive or not in 2020, Marvin Monroe was very much killed off in 1995, which is why he makes the list here today.