Every Death In The Simpsons Ranked
19. Fred Kanneke (Million-Dollar Abie)
The episode "Million Dollar Abie" starts with Springfield trying and failing to get a pro football franchise and ends with Grampa becoming a matador, but not before trying to end his own life.
To give some more context - or any context really - it was Grampa who cost the town its football team and the resulting shame leads him to take this rather depressing choice. He visits a Doctor who hooks him up to a "diePod", but Chief Wiggum and the police break up the illegal procedure before it is complete.
Shortly before Grampa is plugged into the machine, his doctor tells him he'll be following in the footsteps of "Socrates", "Ernest Hemingway", and "Fred Kanneke". When Grampa asks "Who's Fred Kanneke?", the doctor replies "My last appointment" and a body is wheeled out on a gurney. If that wasn't funny enough, later on Wiggum remarks to the Doctor "I think you know my brother-in-law, Fred Kanneke?" Classic comedy, right there.
Fred's death adds nothing to the plot of this episode, but the weight of a man choosing to end his own life is a heavy one, even if the show used it as just a cheap gag.