The Simpsons Did It

About

"The Simpsons Did It" is catchphrase used to call out an idea widely perceived as original or new that may have been already portrayed in an episode of the long-running American animated TV sitcom The Simpsons. Online, it is typically uttered by fans of the TV show to point out odd similarities between an emerging trend, or a current event in the news, and a plot point from a previously aired episode of The Simpsons , whether by coincidence or intention.

Origin

On June 26th, 2002, Comedy Central aired an episode of American animated TV series South Park titled "Simpsons Already Did It," in which the recurring character Butters' alter ego "Professor Chaos" struggles to come up with an innovative scheme to take over the world as his assistant repeatedly reminds him that his ideas had been previously illustrated on an episode of The Simpsons.^[1] On October 28th, 2010, the scene in question was uploaded online to YouTube.

In a commentary video made by the South Park creators, they stated how the episode came to be after realising The Simpsons already beat them to a lot of ideas and jokes they had come up with for their own show^[5], illustrating the widespread and lasting influence of The Simpsons on popular culture.

Spread

As highlighted by a thread on the Democratic Underground forums on July 11th 2003^[3], the catchphrase was quoted in various discussions about lack of originality in more recent tv shows, including The Simpsons itself.
On May 11th 2004, Urban Dictionary user Mister Ignorant submitted an entry for "Simpsons Did It"^[2], giving the following definition:

A term you refer to when a situation requested by someone has been already done on The Simpsons.

Derives from South Park.

On April 14th 2009, humor website CollegeHumor released a music clip parodying "we didn't start the fire" by Billy Joel, using various comments from the site and YouTube as lyrics^[6] (Youtube upload from 2013 shown below). It Includes "Simspons did it" as well as "South Park did it too".

On TVTropes, the page for the It's Been Done trope that was created on October 23th 2011, lists the phrase "The Simpsons Did It" as an alternative title^[4].
A Meme Generator macro was also launched in 2013^[16], leading to about 60 parodies as of September 2015.

The Simpsons' Predictions

Among Conspiracy Theories enthiusiasts, a peculiar screenshot from a scene in episode 179, titled "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson" and first aired on September 21st 1997, featuring Lisa Simpson showing a booklet about a 9$ bus ride to the city, became quoted as an example of the show predicting the events of the September 11th attacks because of the strange outline of the number "9" with the Twin Towers forming "11"^[7] (shown below).

On August 11th, 2009, College Humor issued a list of jokes and situations made in the show that were eventually found to happen in real life years after the episodes aired^[18]. Similar lists were made on BuzzFeed ^[9] and other media blogs and sites such as What Culture^[10] and Mashable ^[11]. News outlets and blogs also took parts in this phenomenon, highlighting several instances of the show predicting future events such as Donald Trump presidency in the Daily Mail^[12] or the 2015 Greek crisis on Metro News^[13]. In 2012, the Tumblr "Simpsons Did It" was launched^[14], posting real life examples reminiscent from the show. An entire sub-reddit was also created in 2013^[15].

Search Interest

External References