10. He Was Initially Based On A Wild Combination Of Holden Caulfield, Tom Sawyer, And Dennis The Menace
Everyone knows Bart Simpson as the skateboard riding prankster who likes Krusty Burgers, wields a slingshot in his back pocket, and hates school like how cats hate water. When creating the character, Matt Groening had actually went through quite a few iterations of Bart before finally settling on the final design. Originally created as something of a yellow-skinned Holden Caulfield, Bart was initially a mild and troubled youth who was filled with existential angst and was prone to inner monologues to himself. Groening then wanted to create an extreme version of a misbehaving kid and found inspiration from characters such as Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Dennis the Menace. Groening even found inspiration for the basis of Bart's attitude from his older brother, Mark. Upon casting Nancy Cartwright as Bart's voice actor however, Bart's character was immediately changed. Groening thought better about how to characterise Bart and decided to turn him into the street-smart joker that you all know and love whilst abandoning the Holden Caulfield angst, the racial mischievousness of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and everything annoying about Dennis the Menace (but he did keep the slingshot though).
My life story is nothing special. I haven't cured ebola, I'm nowhere near stopping terrorism, and I'm still working on that climate change problem.
Instead, all I've done so far is put a few hundred words together in an attempt to make people laugh.
You can follow me at @Fry_ying_pan but don't be offended if I don't tweet back. It's usually because I've spent too long trying to think up a witty response that the reply window has closed.
