A family sketched in a waiting room
In 1987 the cartoonist Matt Groening was sitting in the lobby of a television producer's office, waiting to pitch an idea. Realising at the last minute that he did not want to sign away the rights to his existing comic strip, he quickly sketched a new family and named them after his own. His father was called HOMER, his mother MARGE, and his younger sisters LISA and MAGGIE. BART, the one family member not named after a real person, is an anagram of brat.
The family first appeared in short cartoons, less than two minutes long, between the sketches on a comedy programme called The Tracey Ullman Show. They were so popular that in December 1989 they got a half-hour show of their own. It has been running ever since, making it the longest-running American scripted programme in prime time, with more than thirty-five series and well over seven hundred episodes.
Why everyone is yellow
Groening wanted the family to stand out. He reasoned that someone flicking through channels on a remote control would stop at a flash of bright yellow, so he coloured their skin that way. The animators also gave most characters an overbite and four fingers on each hand, which is quicker to draw than five and standard in cartoons.
D'oh, and a very small cast
Homer's cry of D'oh!, which appeared in the scripts simply as annoyed grunt, was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2001. Many of the show's voices come from a very small cast. Bart himself is voiced by a woman, Nancy Cartwright, and Dan Castellaneta, who plays Homer, also voices KRUSTY the Clown, BARNEY and the groundskeeper Willie.
Springfield, wherever that is
The family lives in Springfield, a name chosen because there are dozens of towns called Springfield across the United States, so nobody can say where it is. The show's writers have deliberately kept it a mystery for decades, giving it mountains, a beach, a desert and a nuclear power plant, and changing its neighbouring states from episode to episode. Groening later said he took the name from the town in an old television comedy, Father Knows Best.
The power plant is owned by Mr BURNS, whose loyal assistant is SMITHERS. Homer's neighbour Ned FLANDERS is relentlessly cheerful, Principal SKINNER runs Springfield Elementary, Chief WIGGUM leads the police, and his son RALPH says some of the show's oddest lines. Bart's best friend is MILHOUSE, and the school bully is NELSON, famous for his mocking ha-ha.
A show that seems to predict the future
The Simpsons has been running so long, and made so many jokes about the future, that people often point out episodes that seem to have predicted real events, from video calls on wristwatches to surprising election results. Most are coincidences, or jokes about things that were already being talked about at the time, but with over seven hundred episodes, some jokes were bound to come true.
The grid also holds APU, who runs the Kwik-E-Mart; MOE the barman; OTTO the school bus driver; LENNY, Homer's workmate; Marge's twin sisters PATTY and SELMA; the family cat, SNOWBALL; Homer's beloved DONUT; and DUFF, the brand of drink Homer is never without. Our cartoons page covers the animated shows that came before it.