10 Times The Simpsons Ruined Homer's Life

As The Simpsons fans will know, Homer isn’t exactly the most competent and reliable resident of Springfield. The family’s bumbling patriarch has brought the whole town to the brink of destruction many times over. His misadventures and bizarre schemes have had tremendous consequences, both on a Springfield-wide scale and on the individual lives of his family, friends and acquaintances.

We already know all of this, though. After all, Homer’s antics are the often-surreal glue that hold the show’s plots together. Without Homer’s adventures, it’d be a show about Marge walking down the street and growling in disapproval at everything she sees that she doesn’t like (which is most things). Like mother, like daughter.

Having said all of this, though, Homer Simpson isn’t just an inadvertent (usually) tool of everyone else’s misfortune. He’s fallen foul of his family’s own deeds too. Through the course of the show’s long run to date, everyone from Bart to the tiny Maggie and his rarely-seen mother Mona Simpson have ruined his life. Let’s take a look at some of the most heinous crimes against Homer in the show’s history.

In Season 2’s “Simpson and Delilah,” Homer stumbles upon a revolutionary cure for baldness: a wonderdrug named Dimoxinil. Immediately wanting to try the product for himself, he hurries to the drug store, only to learn that it costs $1,000. Unable to afford the price (and with a little persuasion from the ever-trusty Lenny), he arranges an underhand deal to get some Dimoxinil from the Power Plant’s medical insurance program (which doesn’t cover this sort of thing, naturally).

With his luxurious, because he’s worth it new locks, Mr. Burns mistakes Homer for a vibrant young man who can revitalize the plant, making him an executive. His new assistant, Karl, is super supportive of Homer, who actually feels like a success for the first time in his life. Naturally, then, Bart is on hand to ruin everything, stealing the wonderdrug and using it to try and grow a beard to impress his buddies.

Homer catches him in the act and charges into action, causing Bart to drop the bottle and spill its content onto the floor. This is probably the most dejected we’d ever seen Homer at this point in the show, as he furiously tells his wayward son, “I’m not going to kill you, but I’m going to tell you three things that are going to haunt you for the rest of your days. You’ve ruined your father, you’ve crippled your family, and baldness is hereditary!”