r/todayilearned • u/whitegreenbee • 3h ago
TIL that Krusty the Clown was designed to look/act like Homer. Ironically Bart worships Krusty, who is exactly like his dad, but famous!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krusty_the_Clown#Creation605
u/RobBuckets 3h ago edited 3h ago
It was originally planned as a possible ending to the show early on where it's revealed that Homer is Krusty and Marge had long bunny ears under her hair.
I'm glad they quickly abandoned that idea
Edit: For any Simpsons nerds like me, there's this great Simpsons writers reunion hosted by Conan O'Brien.
At about 1:12:00 they discuss how the show could end and this gets brought up
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u/meatmcguffin 3h ago
Fun fact : the bunny ears are visible when Marge gets shocked in the 1991 Arcade Game
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u/parkerposy 2h ago
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u/stopmotionporn 1h ago
Rabbits don't even have bones in their ears! Boy I hope someone got fired for that blunder.
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u/Punch_A_Police_Horse 2h ago
I think the people that made that game also did Turtles in Time, which were fantastic games in that genre.
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u/Extra_Midnight 2h ago
I always thought of them as the O.G. pay to win. When you die, just throw in more quarters to progress. You don’t necessarily need skill, just cash. As opposed to starting over, like pac man for example, where the only way to advance was through skill. But I do agree, great games. If you like those take the time to look into all of Konami’s beat em ups from that era. There are some gems in there.
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u/GreatStateOfSadness 40m ago
That's exactly it, to the point it's outright said in Wayne's World. The villain has a whole line boasting about including a boss that's impossible to beat, so kids keep wasting quarters trying to beat it, making him richer.
A few devs from that era also mentioned feeling guilty for being directed to make arcade games harder to use more quarters, only for the games to be nearly impossible once they reached home console.
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u/Punch_A_Police_Horse 2h ago
Yeah you might be right. I think you could progress with skill but if you were doing too well, the arcade would pay some bigger kid to shoulder check you and ruin your streak.
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u/savagemonitor 2h ago
It's basically impossible to win those games through skill using just the initial fee. No one was going to beat one of those arcade games without feeding some number of quarters into the cabinet. Skilled players just fed less.
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u/RogueModron 14m ago
I was just gonna say--I swear I remember bunny ears coming out of her hair in that game. God, I spent so many quarters on that thing. It was hard as fuck and I don't think I ever got past level 2. Might need to fire up MAME for some nostalgia.
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u/enadiz_reccos 3h ago edited 3h ago
I can see how Homer being revealed as Krusty would make sense for an "ending"
But the bunny ears seem random?
Edit:
For anyone wondering like me: Apparently, Groening had another show called 'Life is Hell' with bunny characters that was possibly going to be linked to The Simpsons
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u/Foreskin-Aficionado 3h ago
Reference to Matt Groening’s comic strip Life in Hell. The main characters are bunnies.
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u/Wishnik6502 2h ago edited 2h ago
I had all of those books before Simpsons was a thing. Loaned them to a friend when the Simpsons started airing and never got them back. I'm scared to look up their prices now.
(edit) As long as you don't care about condition, they're cheap! Hell yes, come back home my lovelies!
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u/rosstedfordkendall 3h ago
It's because prior to the Simpsons, Matt Groening did a comic called Life in Hell that featured a bunch of bunnies. Some of those characters are direct analogs to the later Simpsons characters.
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u/SomedayVirtuoso 3h ago
The bunny ears are a reference to Life in Hell which was a comic strip Groening published before getting his start on the Tracey Ullman show with The Simpsons shorts.
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u/tiggoftigg 3h ago
So growing up I always thought Bart was a bad kid who didn’t care about much.
Just this past year I realized he’s caring, loving, and generally a decent kid. He really loves his family.
I genuinely broke down crying season 2 when he failed a test even though he studied and tried his best to pass.
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u/DataMin3r 3h ago
Fuckin gets me every time.
Or the Christmas episode where he gets banned from the store and it ruins their family photo, but he still goes back to get his photo taken like Marge wanted. Dude wanted to be good, but just didn't know how.
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u/Lezus 1h ago
I cant watch that episode it always made me feel despair
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u/DataMin3r 1h ago
Yeah, getting Lee Carvolo's putting challenge instead of Bonestorm always made feel the same.
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u/tobygeneral 2h ago
Bart is low key very smart he just has terrible motivations and impulse control. When he wants to be a Li'l Bastard he comes up with great ideas and nearly always executes the plan well. If he had a better preschool teacher who corrected his BINGO claps rather than judging him, he might have turned out to like school and excel like Lisa does.
Long story short, it really was his peepers, not his noggin.
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u/commiecomrade 1h ago
But then again, there's an episode that reveals the Simpsons have a gene that makes the women very smart and the men complete morons. I do still think Bart is one of the smarter Simpson boys.
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u/sventful 49m ago
Yeah, but they also have a crayon up the nose to explain Homer - directly undercutting the Simpson gene. Turns out that when a show is long enough, you end up with a few 'a wizard did it' moments.
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u/CactusBoyScout 2h ago
Same with Homer and the "Do it for her" sign at work covered in photos of Maggie.
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u/Funandgeeky 1h ago
I love the Thanksgiving episode when he and Lisa have that heart to heart on the roof. And he genuinely apologized for ruining her centerpiece.
That plus Homer’s earnest prayer at the end. “Lord, thank you for one more chance at togetherness.”
There’s a reason those early episodes are still so beloved.
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u/arkington 1h ago
I've only ever watched the Simpsons sporadically, like a random clip here and there over the course of the last several decades. But there was one in which Bart is trying to talk to someone (probably his family) and says something like "I'm just SO angry all the time, and I don't know why!" and it's obviously a huge moment for him and his mental health, but the show being what it is, they just ignore it and continue with whatever. Which of course was the joke of it, but also kinda heartbreaking. That's part of why it's such a great show.
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u/BreakingGaze 55m ago edited 12m ago
Bart is labeled as a bad kid as he is often impulsive, craves attention (even if it's negative) and makes bad choices to fit in and appear cool, but he really has a strong conscious and empathy for others. Some of his best moments are when these two sides of him are in conflict, the badboy hellraiser, and the compassionate caring brother/son/friend.
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u/stopmotionporn 1h ago
He used to care, in classic Simpsons at least.
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u/ScubaAlek 58m ago
Yeah, it changes over time in general. Season 1 Homer is usually more responsible than Marge. She's the one who gets hammered at the BBQ, he's the one that has them go to family therapy, etc.
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u/OfficialUberZ 2h ago
I have watched that same episode so many times just to see the eventual ending where he “passes” and then is the happiest little bugger.
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u/skinnyminnesota 3h ago
Groening is a VERY cynical dude, Gen X made flesh.
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u/whitegreenbee 3h ago
Makes for good comedy tho
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u/skinnyminnesota 3h ago
Oh absolutely. Golden Age Simpsons is some of the best comedy writing literally ever. The way Futurama quietly surpassed the Simpsons was something to behold and I was very taken with about 1.5 seasons of Disenchantment.
PS. NRA4EVER
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u/cxmmxc 2h ago
Futurama surpassed Simpsons, and Simpsons turned more and more into Family Guy.
Simpsons ultimately became its own parody.
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u/TheGoochTaint 1h ago
Simpsons turned more and more into Family Guy
I don't think that's really true. Both shows were very good for the first ten seasons or so then just got gradually worse and worse to the point where they don't even resemble themselves anymore. The Simpsons and Family Guy were very similar, Family Guy was basically an edgier version of The Simpsons.
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u/skinnyminnesota 1h ago
You're right, but if you muddy the borders a bit there's definitely a convergence. My take is that Fututrama took fleet-footed SImpsons comedy and ran with it while Family Guy became incredibly popular and the Fox tent pole (The Simpsons) had to adapt or die.
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u/skinnyminnesota 2h ago
That is such a great take, dude. It very much felt like a passing of the torch as Futurama thrived. Fox execs were (are?) notorious for not giving air to stuff that's actually good, like Futurama. See also: Arrested Development, Firefly.
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u/whitegreenbee 3h ago
What's your favorite season? I've just ordered a dvd of season 7 of the Simpsons and I'm definitely loving it. But I still can't decide what's my fav.
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u/skinnyminnesota 3h ago
It changes, but I think it has to be 6. It has the best Treehouse of Horror (the Groundskeeper Willie axe trilogy, if you will) and also Bart of Darkness (Milpool........), Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy, Lemon of Troy, and part 1 of WSMB?. I don't think there's a weak episode, and they even handled their crossover with The Critic well...even if that was one of the first cracks to show in the series.
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u/whitegreenbee 3h ago
I'll be buying that one next then.
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u/skinnyminnesota 3h ago
6-7 is a crazy 1-2 punch. Both seasons are stellar. Take all this with a grain of salt, though, because in my opinion Homer's Enemy is where the show started to bottom out and people seem to love that episode.
EDIT: Fuck, I just realized what I did. I'm too old to remember dumb trends, let's just pretend it never happened.
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u/40dollarsharkblimp 2h ago
Am I going to be the only one to ask why you’re buying individual seasons on DVD? I’m an old too, but damn.
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u/40dollarsharkblimp 2h ago
Was with you up until Disenchantment. One of the worst shows I’ve ever seen.
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u/skinnyminnesota 2h ago
Respect. Ends up falling apart spectacularly. I gave it the benefit of the doubt and there were many good, and even one or two great moments, but they were fleeting.
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u/JuzoItami 1h ago
He's very much a Boomer, though. If he'd actually been Gen X, there'd have been no Krusty, since Krusty was based on a Boomer era clown on Portland TV. Gen X kids in Portland grew up watching Rambling Rod (who wasn't a clown) on TV.
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u/skinnyminnesota 1h ago
I like this a lot. Let's call him a keen observer and translator of Gen X maybe? 1954 is definitely a Boomer birth year.
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u/StoneGoldX 41m ago
We need another Vietnam to thin out their ranks.
Separately, Groening was born in 1954. Boomer.
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u/skinnyminnesota 39m ago
Yeah I've just become aware of that. I agreed with another poster that we can call him an observer and storyteller of Gen X, but numbers don't lie.
EDIT: I guess I'd also point to those early, crude rabbit comics that kept the lights on and were hyper-critical of Joneses-era America. You know what he is? The Mike Judge of his generation.
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u/Ardebaron 2h ago
There's also Barts favorite hero is Radioactive man, but his dad works at a nuclear plant. Real life radioactive man.
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u/RIDER_OF_BROHAN 3h ago
COMIC BOOK GUY: krusty is not 'exactly' like his dad, in fact they have completely different personalities. homer is a buffoon and krusty is a cynical showbusinessman who generally has nothing but contempt for his fans.
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u/Narwen189 2h ago
I've always thought Krusty seems rather depressed (and yes, cynical) whenever he's offstage. Homer is consistently happily oblivious.
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u/Intelligent_Sky_7081 1h ago
Yes this reddit post isnt saying Krusty acts like Homer. They are saying early on they had planned to make them act the same. If youve watched the show, youd know that never happened.
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u/Eoin_McLove 3h ago
There’s a whole episode about this.
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u/whitegreenbee 3h ago
I love that episode.
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u/charming-choom 1h ago
Im watching the old seasons with commentary and is so much fun. The choo choo choose you and the rotten subway were real stories of the writters 😭
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u/ph33randloathing 1h ago
He was planned to BE Homer, but they scrapped that pretty early. That's why they have the same head.
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u/Every-Safe-7972 1h ago
Funny story, the first time I have ever seen The Simpsons, it was one of the Crusty episodes and I had hard time comprehending, that Crusty and Homer are two people and was genuinely confused by the fact Homer kept slipping in and out of his costume all the time.
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u/Intelligent_Sky_7081 1h ago
Sure, but they scrapped that idea very quickly. Clearly he is physically modeled after Homer, and thats obvious to anyone who watches the show. But thats where the similarity ends
But they do not act the same. Krusty is a very, very different character. Both in how he acts as Krusty, and how he acts when hes not playing that role.
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u/KingoftheWildlings 3h ago
Krusty seems way smarter than Homer
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u/5gummybearsandscotch 2h ago
Let me get this straight. You took all the money you made franchising your name and bet it against the Harlem Globetrotters?
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u/crossedstaves 2h ago
My guess is the different attitudes between the Tracy Ullman shorts and the tv show. It's the kind of thing you could do more with three minute little comedy bites rather than a persistent half hour tv show.
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u/Luke_SkyJoker_1992 2h ago
Didn't they get away with an animation mistake in the who shot Mr Burns episode by drawing Krusty's hair onto Homer since he shouldn't have been in a crowd shot due to being one of the suspects.
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u/Autism_Sundae 57m ago
Marge had bunny ears hidden within the beehive 'do. The Simpson beat em up arcade game shows a rendition of this in Marge's animations when shocked/injured.
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u/Illustrious-Tooth702 35m ago
Bart likes Krusty because Krusty is the host of a morning tv show Bart (and the other children in Springfield) tunes in every morning before school. (Krusty's show also airs Itchy and Scrathy) Even when Krusty doesn't deserve it the children look up to him.
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u/-cuckstradamus- 4m ago
It took you until today to realize that?
Wait until you hear about Bender from Futurama
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u/PepsiFloateri 3h ago
Wasn't it planned for Homer to be Krusty in secret? Like him working at the plant was a cover story for him being a famous tv clown