The 10 most obscure movie references in ‘The Simpsons’
Over the course of 36 seasons and nearly 800 episodes, The Simpsons has become a cultural touchstone like no other. In many groups of friends, the classic era of the show is so beloved that we can often carry on entire conversations simply using Simpsons references. I’m sure it’s incredibly annoying for all our families.
One of my favourite aspects of the show has always been how it parodies movies in such clever and hilarious ways. Given the abundance to choose from, it is easy to compile a list of the ten best movie references in the show’s history and it’s full of stone-cold classic moments.
Even after that list has been exhausted, though, the show is still full to the brim with other brilliant nods to film history. Therefore, picking out another, more bscure, ten moments of movie reference brilliance will be no challenge at all. Many people likely won’t even know these gags were references to films, and that’s part of the show’s magic.
From silent-era surrealist masterworks to comedies from the ’60s and even a harrowing drug drama from the 2000s, these are the ten most obscure movie references in Simpsons history.
10 most obscure movie references in ‘The Simpsons’:
Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
Sometimes the movie references in The Simpsons are so subtle that they don’t even give visual cues to the film in question. This is one of our favourites, from the 23rd episode of the show’s 10th season.
In ’30 Minutes over Tokyo’, the Simpson clan decide to book discounted airline flights for a vacation, with one catch – they don’t know their destination. When they’re on the plane, and Homer realises they’re going to Japan, though, he pouts. Marge says, “Come on, Homer, Japan will be fun. You liked Rashomon,” to which he grumbles, “That’s not how I remember it.”
Anyone who hasn’t seen Akira Kurosawa’s classic 1950 film will find this joke flying over their heads. But if you know the story of the film, which sees four characters give wildly different accounts of what happened when a samurai was murdered, you’ll smile knowingly to yourself. It’s all about subjectivity, and each witness remembers the incident differently, which makes Homer’s fuzzy memory of the film a truly clever gag. It’s also simply funny to imagine Homer Simpson watching Rashomon.
North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
The episode ‘Fear of Flying’ is a hilarious exploration of why Marge is terrified of getting on an aeroplane. She goes to a therapist to try to get to the root of the problem despite Homer’s insistence that she’ll pinpoint him as the cause of everything.
While the doctor does underline Homer as an issue, she also believes that Marge is afraid of flying because of childhood trauma related to finding out her father was a flight attendant. “My father…was a stewardess…!” she problematically cries. Not cool. As Dr Zweig says, these days, male flight attendants are common.
However, Marge then remembers a bunch of much more damaging memories related to flying, including the time she and her mother were chased through a cornfield by a machine gun-firing biplane. The image of little Marge running from the gunfire is funny and surreal enough, but it’s extra hilarious if you know the image references Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest.
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (Stanley Kramer, 1963)
In season five, episode 11, Homer forms a vigilante group to catch an elusive cat burglar who has been stealing from the residents of Springfield. When Molloy – voiced by Sam Neill – is finally caught, he tells Homer and the police that he’s hidden his stolen riches under a giant “T” somewhere in the city. This turns into a madcap dash with the town’s residents all trying desperately to find his buried treasure.
At one point, we see a man in a car sinking into the river while Bart stands on the shore, waving to him as he goes under the waves. He complains, “What’s the matter with you, kid? You told me the stream was shallow!” Then, he presumably drowns, leaving Bart as a murderer. Obviously, the moment is never referenced again, and it’s just a hilariously dark aside in a farcical episode.
Only, that’s not all it is. The moment is actually referencing 1963’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, a comedy about a group of strangers getting into the zany pursuit of a suitcase stuffed with stolen cash. In one memorable scene, a child tricks actor Phil Silvers into driving his car into a river, just like Bart did.
My Dinner with Andre (Louis Malle, 1981)
In one of The Simpsons’ most artfully absurd references, school nerd Martin Prince is shown playing a video game at the Noise Land Video arcade. Instead of Bonestorm or Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge, though, he’s playing My Dinner with Andre. As two men dine in a restaurant and have a highfalutin conversation, Martin has to choose a response. His options are “Trenchant Insight”, “Bon Mot”, and “Tell Me More.”
The joke is funny purely on a surface level. The idea of such a video game existing is amusing, as is the notion that a young Frasier-Crane-in-the-making like Martin would play it. But the fact that the Simpsons writers could push through a video game gag based on André Gregory’s existential, experimental 1981 comedy is the icing on the cake.
The Untouchables (Brian De Palma, 1987)
Watching Mr Burns be Springfield’s most physically weak man is always funny. Whether he’s being knocked to the floor by a $1,000 bill or almost drowning when Smithers lightly places a sponge on his head in the bath, ol’ Monty Burns is often as weak as a newborn.
Our favourite example, though, is when he tries to beat – and I quote – “a hotdog admissions officer playing by his own rules” to death with a baseball bat. He fails miserably, obviously, and his exhausted request for Smithers to “dismember the corpse and send his widow a corsage” is incredible.
Once again, this moment will have you doubled over with laughter in and of itself. But if you know it’s a reference to the moment in The Untouchables where Robert De Niro’s tuxedo-wearing Al Capone beats a guy to death at a ritzy event, it becomes transcendent.
Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1929)
Un Chien Andalou is a French silent film from 1929. Directed by Luis Buñuel and co-written by Salvador Dalí, it’s a landmark in the history of surrealist movies. Therefore, it’s exactly the sort of thing we could imagine Lisa Simpson watching, while Bart and Homer look on in abject bemusement.
In the 2007 episode ‘Yokel Chords,’ though, Lisa actually takes Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel’s many, many children on a cultural tour of Springfield, and they wind up in a cinema watching Un Chien Andalou. It’s got to be one of the most obscure references in the show’s history, as we can’t imagine too many Simpsons fans in the mid-2000s were au fait with the silent cinema of France in the ’20s.
JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991)
“We’re through the looking glass here, people.” The image of Millhouse Van Houten saying these words, first spoken by Kevin Costner in Oliver Stone’s JFK, will always make and audience laugh. In fact, the quote is still regularly used in daily life across most cities and most usually delivered via Milhouse’s cadence.
The reference comes from the season six episode ‘Grandpa vs Sexual Inadequacy’, in which Grandpa Simpson’s homemade revitalising tonic makes all the adults of Springfield hornier than a bunch of teenagers. As they disappear from their children’s lives up to their bedrooms, the kids try to figure out what’s happening. The answer? A fiendish conspiracy, not unlike the one Costner became entangled in while trying to solve the assassination of JFK.
As Millhouse says, “The Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people, under the supervision of the reverse vampires, are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner.” He cracked it.
Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley, 1992)
Many fans might not realise that one of The Simpsons‘ longest-running side characters was inspired by an obscure movie reference.
In the season nine episode ‘Realty Bites’—the title itself a movie reference—Marge begins working as an estate agent. One of her colleagues is a nervous older man named Gil Gunderson, who couldn’t sell ice to an Eskimo. His look and voice are almost entirely lifted from Jack Lemmon’s portrayal of Shelly Levene in an ultra-sweary 1992 salesman drama directed by James Foley.
Voice actor Dan Castellaneta, who also voices Homer, has confirmed that Gil is a loving tribute to Lemmon. He once told the Archive of American Television, “It was sort of a Glengarry Glen Ross where Marge was working for real estate. And there was a guy named Gil, a very desperate, sweaty guy, so I just based him on the Shelly ‘The Machine’ character that Jack Lemmon played.”
Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)
When Homer goes to Krusty Burger in the season 14 episode ‘I’m Spelling as Fast as I Can’ to get one of their newfangled Ribwiches, he “tastes the ribs of God.” As he eats the meat, which is advertised as coming from an unknown animal and has been grotesquely pressed into the shape of ribs, he experiences pure ecstasy.
The scene launches into a parody of Darren Aronofsky’s harrowing drug drama Requiem for a Dream, specifically the montage of Brighton Beach addicts getting their fix. Homer’s version comes complete with his pupil dilating and a series of super quick cuts of him eating more and more burgers. It’s a reference which shows that even the darkest material can be turned into a parody when the Simpsons crew get their hands on it.
Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005)
In the season 18 episode ‘The Haw-Hawed Couple,’ Bart finally becomes best friends with Nelson Muntz, Springfield Elementary’s most iconic bully. In truth, it’s a strange episode because Bart has been depicted as Nelson’s friend plenty of times in the show, yet at other times, he is bullied by him. Perhaps it’s best one doesn’t try to pick apart the continuity of a cartoon show that has been running for decades.
The episode features an amazing reference to Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal’s incredible cowboy drama Brokeback Mountain. That movie told the story of the secret love affair between two men in the American West between 1963 and 1983, and it ended with a devastating scene of Ledger wistfully smelling Gyllenhaal’s jacket after he died.
The Simpsons episode ends with Bart smelling Nelson’s vest and cradling it in his arms after their friendship ends. But then Nelson cycles past the window, sees Bart, and exclaims, “Haw haw! I touched your heart.” Brilliant.
