The Simpsons: 10 Hidden Jokes Everybody Missed
4. Simpsons Writer Gets Sectioned
John Swartzwelder is a fan-favourite Simpsons writer, the brains and the pen behind classic episodes like Homer’s Enemy and You Only Move Twice, but most fans could pass him in the street without recognising him.
This is why very few picked up on it when the scribe made a cameo in the season eight episode Hurricane Neddy. In the scene where the Simpsons visit Flanders at Calmwood Mental Hospital, they pass a paranoid, mustachioed man in the corridor.
This man was supposed to be Swartzwelder, written into the show as a mental patient by his fellow scribes because he was notoriously reclusive.
At the end of the episode, when Ned is being released back into society, a man in the crowd can be seen bearing a placard that reads 'Free John Swartzwelder', so the likeness was no mere coincidence.