Anyway, here permanent character changes on The Simpsons, as far as I could recall:
- Lisa Simpson — Became Buddhist and a vegetarian.
- Mona Simpson (Homer’s mom) — Died and stayed dead.
- Patty — Came out as a lesbian.
- Selma — Her marriages don’t seem to be forgotten when a given “Selma” episode ends.
- Mr. Burns — Hasn’t forgotten that Maggie shot him.
- Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure — Both vanished after the death of Phil Hartman and haven’t returned.
- Maude Flanders — Died and stayed dead.
- Ned Flanders — Became less of a Mr. Nice Guy after the hurricane episode, and after Maude’s death he’s dealt with grief and the effort to date again. He’s even got a new love interest who’s showed up more than once.
- Bernice Hibbert — Was revealed as an alcoholic in the Prohibition episode (more as a joke than anything else) and then subsequently goes to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
- Bleeding Gums Murphy — Died and stayed dead.
- Apu — Married Manjula and lived in wedded bliss for a period, until Manjula gave birth to octuplets, at which point he became miserable. He then had an affair, making Manjula resent him more. So now he’s just constantly distraught.
- Manjula — Changed from being happy and naive to fairly bitter about life after Apu had an affair.
- Apu’s octuplets — Were born and grew to toddlerhood — more or less around Maggie’s age, then stopped growing.
- Sideshow Bob — Slowly gained an extended family (his brother Cecil, his father, his mother, his Italian wife, and his son Gino), all of whom now help in his evil plots.
- Smithers — his being gay became less and less of a joke and more of an actual character trait.
- Snake — Gained a sort of backstory with Gloria, a recurring love interest voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
- Barney Gumbel — got sober and stayed that way for a few seasons before falling off the wagon again.
- Edna Krabappel — Dated Principal Skinner for a few seasons, only to break up and then alternate between having casual sex and making snitty remarks about each other.
- Lunchlady Doris — Went silent after the death of the woman who voiced her, Doris Grau, but remained as a background character. Then, about ten years later, she started speaking again, with Tress MacNeille providing the voice. Compared to how the show treated Phil Hartman’s characters, I feel like this might be in bad taste.
- Dr. Marvin Monroe — Died (there’s a Marvin Monroe Memorial Hospital and even a tombstone) but then later shows up again, explaining that he was just “very sick.” And then the show doesn’t really do anything with him again.
- Dr. Nick Riviera — Kind of similarly to Dr. Marvin Monroe, Dr. Nick died at the end of The Simpsons Movie, but weirdly came back to life without any explanation.
- Principal Skinner — He was revealed to actually be Armin Tamzarian, an impostor, but it hasn’t been mentioned since, save for a one-off joke a few seasons later.
- Kirk and Luann Van Houten — Divorced for a few reasons but reunited.
- Fat Tony — Died, only to be replaced by his almost dental cousin, Fit Tony, who promptly became fat and started getting called Fat Tony. So essentially it’s like he never actually died.
I had to stop reading this after I learned the Simpsons started when I was in 4th grade.
ReplyDeleteAnd Lisa's cat Snowball 2 died, to be replaced with several other cats who also died, till we wound up with a Snowball who looks exactly like Snowball 2. Another Fat/Fit Tony situation.
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