10 Times The Simpsons Blatantly Trolled The Audience
1. "Bart's Biggest Prank Ever" - Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song
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At the height of its popularity, The Simpsons was a global phenomenon and a ratings juggernaut. So, for its one hundredth episode fans naturally presumed the series would go all out, but what they didn’t know is that behind the scenes the writers had decided to return to the smaller scale character comedy of earlier seasons, rather than the show’s recent zany tone.
As such, what was advertised as Bart's biggest prank ever, a milestone moment set to celebrate the hundredth episode, turned out to be... Bringing family pet Santa's Little Helper to school.
This entirely benign incident was ultimately a hyped-up misdirect which nonetheless gave rise to the episode’s real plot, a poignant little tale of Skinner’s firing and re-hiring.