14 Things Fox Wants You To Forget About The Simpsons

3. Smithers Used To Be Black

The changing ethnicity of Waylon Smithers is one of the great mysteries of The Simpsons. When the character, who works as Mr Burns' loyal assistant, first appeared back in Season 1's Homer's Odyssey, he was black.

However, when he next appeared in the show, and for every episode since, he was - like the majority of Springfield inhabitants - yellow. It's a pretty big shift, so why did the change happen?

There's actually no concrete answer as to what happened, with various people on the show saying various different things. Creator Matt Groening has simply said that it was "a mistake," while David Silverman offered the explanation that the character was supposed to be Burns' white sycophant, and that the writers/producers thought it'd be a bad idea to have a black character in such a subservient role.

The explanation that really stands out, though, comes from writer Jay Kogen, who during a Reddit AMA said: "Originally he was gay and black. And we actually drew him purple in his first show. But we thought it was too much so we just kept him gay."

It's a sad reflection of where TV - and indeed society - was at that point that a character couldn't be both black and gay, and there would (justifiably) be outrage if that happened today.