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* It's well established that Matt Groening exists in the universe of ''[[The Simpsons]]'', where he's the creator of ''[[Futurama]]''. This mostly averts the [[Celebrity Paradox]], but it makes you wonder...would ''[[Futurama]]'' still have gotten made if Groening hadn't become famous as the creator of the mega-hit ''[[The Simpsons]]''? Also: if he wasn't occupied with ''[[The Simpsons]]'' early in his career, did ''[[Futurama]]'' come out a lot earlier in this universe? Did ''[[Futurama]]'' start out as shorts on the Tracey Ullman Show? (Kind of makes you wonder what the 1989 versions of the cast look like...)
** Plausible answer: his career started with a different show in ''[[The Simpsons]]'' that, unlike ''[[The Simpsons]]'', eventually ended at, I dunno, season 7, and was fantastically popular. ''[[Futurama]]'' came afterwards, on a different network, that cancelled it after...say...fourteen episodes, just long enough for it to become a cult sensation.
** Probably the above scenario with the different show being ''[[Life in Hell]]'', the idea Groening originally intended to present to The Tracey Ullman Show before deciding against it at the last minute. Supported by the Life In Hell merchandise sometimes seen around Springfield, and offering an interesting take on [[What Could Have Been]].
* In "Marge on the Lam," why did Homer get ballet confused with seeing a little bear driving a mini-car at the circus?
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* This troper has always been annoyed by the ending of the episode [[wikipedia:The Front (The Simpsons)|"The Front"]]. Grampa wins a writing award for the Itchy & Scratchy episodes Lisa and Bart wrote with his name on them, and at the ceremony he goes off on a rant about how sick and horrible the cartoons (which he'd never seen before) are, and gets booed off the stage. Okay, whatever. But why does Lisa ''agree with him'' about a cartoon ''she helped write''?
** Maybe she wanted to express her creativity in a way that the public would see. As a child, and a fan of Itchy and Scratchy, she saw the medium of ghost writing episodes as a way of doing that. Sure the show goes against her morals, but at least her work got on TV. I watch some things that I wouldn't agree with in the real world, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop watching them. And before you go on about how she doesn't get any credit on the work, she's a child. Children don't get credit for writing professionally! Haven't you read [[Ender's Game]]?
** Didn't she satisfy her goals? Wasn't the basis of the plot that Lisa and Bart thought they could write better episodes than the ones they had been watching?
* Why did Homer and Marge take Bart off of the Focusyn? Sure, it was making him crazy, but he was ''completely correct'' about everything he freaked out about. Plus overdosing didn't appear to have any negative side effects.
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** Dr. Hibbert began attending a more "boisterous" church.
* Lisa and PETA. You'd think a girl like her would know about them. Then again, she does go back and forth between being wise beyond her years and having the mindset of a child. Plus, not that many people know much about PETA.
** Maybe Lisa believes all those crazy stories about PETA are just propaganda made up by the conservative media?
*** Didn't Bart say that Lisa was in PETA, after Marge refused to let him sign up for the army? "I think she just answers the phone", was Marge's response.
* In "In Marge We Trust", why did Ned keep running from the bullies throughout the night? Surely it would've been better to just give in and just ''let'' them beat him up?
** It wasn't just the fact that he kept running that was weird. Apparently, Ned's impressively ripped muscles are just for show.
*** Impressively ripped muscles or not, Ned is a total sissy. He wouldn't consider letting himself get beat up, or beating up the bullies as an option.
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***** Marry me.
*** In California at least, you have to have proof of insurance ''or'' a certain amount on deposit. Also, maybe Ned sees a difference between insurance-against-acts-of-man versus -against-acts-of-God.
** It's established in one episode that Ned is actually a senior citizen - chances are that he's already paid off any mortgage he originally took out on the house; and while he had a mortgage, he would've been required to have a certain minimum amount of insurance on the place by his mortgage lender, which he would have abided with; ditto with needing to have minimum insurance on his car. But he doesn't get any more insurance than is absolutely necessary (obviously he doesn't have any life insurance then).
** Real-life Muslims are against insurance for similar reasons, and usury is outlawed in Islamic countries. What do Muslims in the US do when buying a car? If they're super-religious, maybe they feel a little guilty while signing the papers. In Ned Flanders' case, just make that "very, very guilty".
*** Or they may set up a surety-bond, or certified deposit which many states allow as an alternative. It's also common for many Christian groups. Even the Amish.
***** There's actually no dilemma. The compulsory insurance required for driving is ''liability'' insurance i.e. the type that protects the other guy in case of an accident.
** Along with everything else, remember that the show has never been strong on continuity in the first place. In one episode, Rod and Todd tell Bart that Ned considers dice to be wicked, and they only move one space at a time when playing "Good Samaritan". And yet, in another episode that includes a flashback to the 1980s, Rod, Todd and Bart are shown playing the same board game with dice.
*** Well, Ned's religious fanaticism has increased so much over time that he's the namesake for [[Flanderization]]. It's possible that in the past he wasn't extreme enough to think that playing board games with dice is a sin. And even if we're supposed to think he's always been as extreme as he is, it's possible that it never occurred to him that it would be problematic to use dice for any reason - even for pure entertainment (as opposed to gambling)- until, say, he heard a televangelist say so.
**** Also note that in the flashback, the dice were in a plastic bubble that was shaken to move the dice, that is to say, kept the children from touching the wicked dice directly.
** Ned may only consider comprehensive insurance to be gambling. For legal purposes, you only need ''liability'' insurance to drive a car. Since liability insurance would only benefit anyone you crashed into instead of yourself, Ned's probably okay with that. ("It's more just spending money so the other person doesn't have a bad day-diddly-arino!")
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** It was caused by radiation from the Nuclear Power Plant and waste run-off from the other polluting industries that Springfield seems to hold.
** Actually, the way I heard it was that all the Simpsons' odd anatomical stuff, like yellow skin, overbite, and hair that's indistinguishable from skin, were because Groening's original drawings were intended just to give the animation crew a general idea. He was actually surprised when they copied his rough designs exactly.
*** Possibly, although Groening's [http://www.futurama-area.de/LiH/OComics/33.gif no stranger to overbites.]{{Dead link}}
** Matt's original drawings for The Simpsons (which he came up with in ten minutes while waiting outside James L. Brooks' office) were in black and white. It was the idea of one of the original colour designers on the ''Tracey Ullman Show'' (her name escapes me) to make them yellow. The idea was so they would look different from anything else on television. Matt loved the plan and considers it one of the keys to the show's early success. Conversely, he refused to colour the ''Futurama'' cast yellow because he wanted to send the message that the show wasn't just going to be "The Simpsons in space."
*** The yellow skin (and the blue hair etc.) was the idea of Gyorgyi Peluce.
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** Homer's mom has red hair (explainin Bart's hair, BTW) and Marge's hair is naturally blue. (BTW, ever notice how people with blue hir have blond children? Like in Sailor Moon?) Marge once burned her hair brown with an iron (Really) nd made her whole hair brown for that night.
*** Actually, (as far as I know) Marge's natural hair colour is unknown. The reason her hair is blue is explained by Homer in the episode "Secrets of a Successful Marriage"; "She's been as grey as a mule since she was seventeen".
**** In "Fear of Flying" Marge is depicted as a 4-7 year old to look exactly as she does today, except smaller. Same hair style, hair color, dress and pearls.
**** Didn't women that went grey used to dye their hair blue? Around the time Matt Groening's mother would have gone grey?
***** One of my older aunts did, a very dark blue, so you might be onto something.
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** Frink had an acid drill that could get trough anything. It was just outside the dome.
** They could've done when no one's watching like in [[The Great Escape]]. They were able to rescue Bart from the well by digging to the bottom.
*** Only because they had Sting to help...
* I have another question about the Movie. While it was a funny joke, how did Moe become Emperor of Springfield? It seems more like something Mr. Burns or Sideshow Bob would do.
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*** Because they had a Beta, and Snake stole it.
*** He probably did see it on DVD/VHS when he moved out, but pretended not to for Homer's sake.
*** He probably just wanted to finally see it on the big screen. It's unlikely Homer was willing or able to prevent him from never ever ever seeing it, but sometimes for some people a film on DVD just isn't the same as at the cinema, especially one hyped up so much like this one -- there's old movies I've seen that I'd drop everything to see at the cinema if I happened across a screening. He wasn't exactly hunting out the movie; they just happened to come across it, got to reminiscing and decided 'what the hell'? As for Homer's line, he could simply have been joking.
* In the movie, whatever became of the pig?
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*** What about the episode "King-Sized Homer" where Homer purposely gains weight so he can work from home? That wasn't a glandular problem.
**** [[What an Idiot!|Because he deliberately gained over 60 pounds of pure fat in days?]]
*** The glandular problem described doesn't make any sense. If you have a glandular problem, it causes you to gain weight, not weigh the same and look plump. If something is swollen, what is it swollen with?
*** There are plenty of developmental disorders, congenital conditions, and drugs (primarily steroids or other therapy to treat autoimmune disorders) that result in low muscle tone and high relative body fat. Not to mention edema, which is essentially fluid buildup (an extreme version of this is actually the cause of elephantiasis). I've always imagined him to have a cartoon-surrealist version of [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1288027 lost muscle tone and edema brought on by extreme inactivity.]
* Major [[Fridge Logic]] in the episode [[wikipedia:24 minutes|"24 Minutes"]] (the ''24'' parody episode): how could Jimbo stay unmasked with the stink bomb opened, if one single drop made the hamster suffer that way?
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* There was an episode where Homer headed up a bowling team, and Mr. Burns became a member because he sponsored it and could use his position to do so. With the exception of Mr. Burns, both teams seem to roll nothing but strikes. So, there comes a point where Homer's team is two points behind and Mr. Burns is the one that has to score the points. How does that work when it was shown that each of the Holy Rollers were as good as the good members of Homer's team?
** Homer's team seemed to have improved greatly over the course of the season. They might actually have been better than the Rollers when you consider that they made it to the league championship despite the handicap of having Burns on the team.
*** [[Comically Missing the Point|Yes, but if everyone on both teams but Burns was bowling a strike every turn, they should have been much further behind than two points.]] [[Wild Mass Guessing|Maybe God only gives Flanders strikes?]] What probably happened is that the Holy Rollers ''weren't'' bowling strikes every turn (strikes are, even for professionals, more or less luck) and that shot was just for a sight gag. Did we actually see the scorecard?
*** I don't think luck has much to do with a pro bowler gettting a strike any more than luck has anything to do with a professional in any other sport doing something he's practiced repeatedly.
** Speaking from experience, two really good bowlers can lift a mediocre bowler quite a bit. WE tied for second place and I was scoring just over 100 points a game. This is not as far fetched as it seems.
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* Why hasn't Ned become a man of the cloth himself? He obviously knows the Bible cover to cover and does the best he can to live by it. He isn't even Catholic so being married and having children isn't a problem. What is stopping him?
** A lot of gags hinge on his "Christian humility" being grotesquely hypertrophied; he really doesn't think much of himself. Why else would he treat Reverend Lovejoy as an authority on anything at all?
** Maybe he just doesn't have the time? He's a single father running his own business, after all.
** Ned isn't that much of a Bible expert. He forgets which animals the Four Horsemen ride and he seems to think God ''will'' flood the Earth again. [[Rule of Funny|Played for laughs, of course]].
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*** They didn't make their Schwarzenegger ersatz President because they wanted to strawman an actual Republican politician, and then they were too lazy to even make him match the real thing. So they just used Wolfcastle and then called him Schwarzenegger.
* Hmm, how and why would Mr. Burns, a self-proclaimed all-American man, have Red Chinese masters?
** I'm guessing it's a reference to ''[[The Manchurian Candidate (novel)|The Manchurian Candidate]]'', so maybe Mr. Burns underwent the same kind of brainwashing procedure as the soldiers in that movie? Even if there's no brainwashing explanation, this is still the same man who expressed no guilt about stealing a trillion dollars from the U.S. government, nor for his actions that resulted in the trillion dollars going into Fidel Castro's hands (just as he was about to give up on maintaining the communist regime because it was bankrupt.) If the Chinese paid Mr. Burns off, it fits with his character that he would do their bidding.
** You do know that Burns also made shells for the Nazis, like Oskar Schindler, don't you? Except that his worked, dammit!
*** I still like him more than George Steinbrenner.
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*** Just remember that Burns is Smithers' substitute father (after indirectly causing the death of his real father). He loves his "daddy", a little too much.
**** No evidence of him being a substitute father. Burns probably sent him to live with a foster family until he was old enough for boarding school. He was probably a mentor figure for the young Waylon.
** Love doesn't have to be rational.
*** That was actually kind of sweet.
** [[Word of God]] says that while Smithers is gay, he's really attracted to Mr. Burns, "if Burns was a woman, Smithers would be straight, he's a "Burnsexual"
*** Doesn't explain his dates with John and other gay men.
**** No, read what that says. He's gay because Burns is a man, and would be straight if Burns was a woman. His sexuality is determined by Burns' gender.
* What ''is'' wrong with Marge's sundaes?
** Cyanide. Or maybe it's the fact that she actually wants them to eat it. Would spinach have been so bad if your mom didn't dog you to eat it so much?
*** [[Comically Missing the Point|Hey, I ''like'' spinach.]]
** Or maybe it has blue hair in it, like the soup from the ''[[Mary Poppins]]'' parody or the casserole on the episode where Marge goes to jail for shoplifting.
**Two words: chocolate laxatives.
** On the subject of food, in the episode "Grade School Confidential", what was wrong with the oysters that it gave Martin's party guests terrible stomach-aches?
*** Seafood in general goes bad very easily if it's not properly refrigerated. The weather might have been too warm, and considering the [[Crapsack World]] this series is set in, the people handling the oysters probably didn't do a good job storing and transporting them.
**** That would explain why Martin's father was annoyed: "I told you we should have served cake instead of oysters!"
* In "To Surveil With Love", the British guy they hired brought together seven people to monitor Springfield to keep crime down. Seconds later, when we see the surveilance room next, only Marge and Ned Flanders are left. What happened to the other people who were supposed to monitor things?
** And how was it that nobody ever thought of knocking out the cameras until the end? The clearly didn't like the cameras being there.
** The others got bored with it and quit. They were volunteers; the city didn't have the budget to pay full-time officers to man the station. And the citizens were either too afraid to knock out the cameras or didn't want to. Remember the cameras were approved by nearly everybody at the town meeting.
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** They were giving the puppies away for free, actually. They just didn't want to give them to Burns, hence his dastardly scheme or stealing them out of the box while the Simpsons' backs were to him. In the end Lisa and Bart could see that Burns loved the puppies like any good owner, so they let him keep them. Homer was depressed because they turned out to be champion racers. As for the female greyhound, I'm guessing she eventually was given away as well.
* It bugs me that Homer starts out not knowing a thing about music, but as the show progresses, Homer is seen to have musical talent in several forms: he was in a boys' chior, he could sing opera if he was flat on his back, he was in a barbershop quartet that won a grammy, he could play a rake with a leaf and make it sound like a guitar, he went to some kind of rock and roll camp and he was in a grunge band for several years after high-school. Many of these examples mess up the continuity of the show. For example, if Homer was a grunge rocker, then why didn't anyone recognize him when he was doing the thing where he gets shot in the stomach with the cannon? If he can sing along with a quartet, why does he sound so bad when he sings by himself?
** I'm gonna go with the guess that every season has a different continuity. It would make sense that Homer doesn't remember - what with the brain damage and all. And he could be insecure and feels the need to sing with others.
*** Not really. Several events are alluded to across-seasons, like Sideshow Bob's escapades, Homer being an astronaut, Maggie shooting Mr. Burns, Bart owning Stampy, Maude dying etc. etc. That said, the show mostly adheres to [[Negative Continuity]].
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* In "Flaming Moe", [[What Happened to the Mouse?|what happened to Mr. Largo?]] He found his soulmate, got replaced and then... his replacement moved away but... he didn't come back. What becomes of the music class? Unless there was a scene showing him coming back and I just missed it...
* At the end of "Old Money", Grandpa Simpson decides that the money he'd inherited from a short-term romantic partner should go towards improving the facilities at the retirement home. This is after having selflessly decided not to spend the money on himself, after Lisa convinced him that those who really deserved the money were the homeless/sick/needy, and after visiting a casino in an attempt to increase the total amount available (figuring that he could help more people that way). So why does he still spend the money on people already living in private accommodation and who are being looked after by full-time carers, when he'd previously decided there were people far more deserving of the money?
** To be fair, the treatment the people in that home receive has been consistently shown to be terrible. It's a little selfish to spend it on his own home, yes, but those old people must have pretty miserable lives, living in the cheapest retirement home their families could find, and apparently hardly ever getting visits. Grampa seems better off than the rest of them.
** You obviously didn't watch the episode. Grandpa's rest home suffered from a leaky roof, damaged furniture (the pool table didn't have any netting in the pockets, for example) and was generally falling apart. Like the previous poster noted, Grandpa and the other rest home tenants were living in squalor, something which is often [[Truth in Television]], sadly enough. Fixing the retirement home allows the residents to live in comfort and dignity, something that Grandpa [[
* In the episode where Marge starts hanging out with some old friends, and Bart has to hang out with her friend's children, they pressure him into sliding down a hill on an ice cube or something. And Bart has DOUBTS about it, finding it "too dangerous", and doesn't want to hang out with the other boys much. Seriously, Bart is supposed to be a "bad boy". Hell, past episodes have shown him doing MUCH more dangerous things. What was the deal with that?
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* While I enjoyed the episode "Homer the Great", there was one part about the ending that was a little confusing. #1 laments that "As long as we are Stone Cutters, he will control our lives." Wait a minute, what are they worried about ''Homer'' controlling their lives for? He can barely run his own.
** I think that's the point. Instead of being the power behind the scenes, they're going to spend all their time re-enacting the civil war with monkies.
* The episode where Homer decided not to go to church - Marge and the kids go to church, despite it being so cold that they end up being trapped inside the church due to the ice. Why couldn't Marge just skip ''one day'' of church? Why would she risk the lives of her and her children like that?
** [[Honor Before Reason]].
* What race are the Simpsons? It seems that "Yellow" is the equivalent to "White" for Caucasian people in the Simpson's universe, for example Jessica Lovejoy refers to part as "Poor yellow trash" and prior to her birth Homer says it doesn't matter if Maggie is a boy or a girl as long as she has "Yellow skin and four fingers and toes" or something to that effect but the show has referenced "White" people on a few occasions, such as a black comedian on TV comparing white and black drivers and I think on a few other occasions as well.
** Speaking of this, why did they add the notion that their art style is the actual anatomy of the people? Most cartoons make it seem like an art style, but they're supposed to look like we do in real life.
*** Probably by the time celebrity cameos and other people that were not the original cast started to be depicted in a more-or-less realistic manner. In fact, the Simpsons(the family) might be the only people in the show with that anomaly where your hair and your forehead are indistinguishable(yes, I know, [[Lampshade Hanging|a lampshade was hung]]).
* In the episode "The Ned-Liest Catch" (season 22 ep 22) what exactly is so bad about Krabappel having to stay in a room all day with pay? I'd use that time to catch up on my books and tv shows. Or, if I was feeling more ambitious, it sounds like the perfect time to study and change into a career that's not so soul crushing.
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* From "The Ned-Liest Catch" that kind of bugged me: How can a straight-laced, ultra-vanilla conservative Christian like Ned know who Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer is, especially to the point that he recognizes him by sight ''alone''? Just doesn't make sense.
** Ned has [[Guilty Pleasures]] like the rest of us, he was once shown likeing sitcoms, and he is a fanboy of the Beatles. Rock music is probabley another one of his hobbies he does not like admitting.
** Lots of Conservative Christians enjoy rock music.
* In "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge": If Becky hates heavy metal, what was she doing at a concert during Otto's flashback?
** It may have been a music festival whith metal and other types of music.
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** I'm not sure that it was the cost of the car that ruined Herb's company, it was the fact it was so god awful. He was effectively saying that he's ruined because said car was going to absolutely wreck his reputation on top of costing a huge amount of money to make.
** Further, when Herb reappears one senses we are meant to take at face value the fact that Homer ruined him. But in a very real way, Homer was a bystander to those events. There was no malice in Homer's actions, just ineptitude, but the true ineptitude was Herb's, since he entrusted the fate of his company to a virtual stranger and even ignored all advice to the contrary. I find I watch the later episode with more sympathy for Homer than Herb, who is being vindictive while ignoring the fact that the real blame is his.
** You're misunderstanding the episode. Herb's company didn't only have $82,000 left, but each "Homer" car would be priced at $82,000. That's an absurd amount of money to be paying for ''any'' car, even a high-class one. The price, combined with the fact that the car was so ridiculous that no one would ever buy it, meant that Herb's reputation was ruined. There are also signs that Powell Motors was in trouble long before Homer came along. In a few conversations with his executives, Herb mentions that Powell Motors is losing ground to the Japanese and "getting killed on the foreign market." Chances are that this was Herb's make-or-break effort to save his company.
* In ''Homr'', it's explained by the researchers that Homer sticking crayons into his nose must have been the cause for his stupidity. Seems reasonable at first, but he would have to be stupid enough to shove ''sixteen'' crayons into his nose in the first place. Especially at age six.
** Maybe he was experimenting something and it backfired.
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** That was actually the episode where she became a Buddhist. Before that her religious beliefs were basically whatever suited the episode best.
* Why exactly is 90% of Springfield's citizens total idiots and there is a handful of smart ones like Lisa and the members of the Springfield Mensa. This was even lamp-shaded in the Fairly Oddparents special "Channel Chasers" where Timmy in a Simpsons-verse claims that "This world makes adults stupid". Oddly enough the African American citizens are shown to be more smarter and competent with their work like Carl, Officer Lou, and Doctor Hibbert, and they don't pull similar mistakes the other citizens would pull.
** The Simpsons world is a [[Crapsack World]] that doesn't have the same [[Guilty Pleasures|secretly alluring awesomeness]] that the ''[[Warhammer
* How come Marge objects to Lisa having wine yet is okay with Bart?
** Because Lisa has a hope in hell of being successful.
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** Because she rode it very fast?
*** We're talking a distance so far that Bart would rather take the chopper instead. Is it ''really'' likely that Lisa was able to make it to the junkyard on a bike before the Bart's People segment concluded? I doubt it.
*** Or maybe the junkyard isn't that far and Lisa was just goading Bart because she knows who Bart will encounter when he gets there. Claiming to have a chopper could have been Bart goading her right back. Did we ever actually see it?
* Why is it that in-universe, there's the movie company "''[[Pixar|Mixar]]''", but Lisa says she's all their movies... Except [[Cars]]?!
* In the Halloween segment "Time & Punishment", Homer says "I'm the first ''non''-Brazilian person to travel backwards through time!" What's that a reference to? Admittedly, when I was a kid, I thought he said "brilliant."
** According to [https://web.archive.org/web/20131209101114/http://www.snpp.com/episodes/2F03.html The Simpsons Archive] it was probably a reference to Carlos Castaneda.
* In "Marge's Son Poisoning", Marge is sad that nobody wants to ride her tandem bike with her, yet she only asked Homer, Bart, and Maggie. Why was Lisa left out?
** Knowing Lisa, some silly ultra-liberal reason.
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** It's the apathy inherent in The Simpsons (and real life) educational system. They thought they found an exceptional kid and made a token effort to move him to a better school. When the switch was discovered, rather than electing to actually ''fix'' the issue, they instead just elected to scrub the whole thing because it was less effort than making it right and less embarrassing than admitting to even more people that they'd been had.
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[[Category:Headscratchers (animation)]]
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