Like the meme factory we all know as SpongeBob SquarePants (which had 80 entries when I counted in this post 7 months ago), Matt Groening's The Simpsons has had an immeasurable impact on cartoons and popular culture in general. Not only was I curious to find its "meme count" compared to SpongeBob, but how 5 other memetic adult animated series stacked up to it and each other.
Each show's hub entry has a set of sub-entries, but I didn't count or include entries by those (though I did end up including most of them anyway). Instead, for each show, I searched through the entries to find ones that are about scenes or quotes from it, derivatives of it, or directly about it. Like my other studies, I only included submissions and confirmed entries, not deadpooled ones.
Format:
[Rank]. [Show Name]: [# of confirmed entries + non-confirmed submissions]
Confirmed: [# of confirmed entries] ([% of total to 1 decimal place])
Submissions: [# of non-confirmed submissions] ([% of total])
Entries per episode: [total]/[current # of episodes] ≈ [answer to 3 decimal places]
(Ranks by total first, then confirmed)
Ranked list:
1. The Simpsons: 52
Confirmed: ……………………………. 11 (21.2%)
Submissions: ………………………… 41 (78.8%)
Entries per episode: 52/627 ≈ 0.083
2. South Park: 17
Confirmed: …………………………….. 9 (52.9%)
Submissions: ………………………….. 8 (47.1%)
Entries per episode: 17/287 ≈ 0.059
3. Family Guy: 17
Confirmed: …………………………….. 5 (29.4%)
Submissions: ………………………… 12 (70.6%)
Entries per episode: 17/298 ≈ 0.057
4. Futurama: 15
Confirmed: ……………………………… 8 (53.3%)
Submissions: ………………………….. 7 (46.7%)
Entries per episode: 15/140 ≈ 0.107
5. Rick and Morty: 13
Confirmed: …………………………… 2 (15.4%)
Submissions: ………………………. 11 (84.6%)
Entries per episode: 13/31 ≈ 0.419
6. King of the Hill: 9
Confirmed: …………………………… 1 (11.1%)
Submissions: ……………………….. 8 (88.9%)
Entries per episode: 9/259 ≈ 0.035
Since this would be pretty dry without a graph:
Full list of entries for each show and number of entries from each season.
Observations:
1. The Simpsons far surpasses each of these shows. None of them have a third the number of submissions it has. However, it has only about two-thirds of the 80 SpongeBob entries (as of my study 7 months ago).
2. The descending order of confirmed entry numbers is the same except Family Guy and Futurama (#3 & 4) which are switched.
3. The entries per episode counts can be thought of as the "meme density" of a show based on its current or final duration time. The highest and second highest of these are Rick and Morty and Futurama, #5 & 4. Other than those, the entries per episode follow the same descending order as entry counts themselves.
4. The bulk of Simpsons entries that come from specific episodes are from seasons 4-9, close to what many consider the show's "golden age". Family Guy's bulk is concentrated in seasons 4 and 5, the first two after its hiatus. South Park's seasonal representation is spotty throughout, but skewed to the beginning. Futurama is nearly evenly spread over its seasons, except two empty ones: 5 (the 4 movies) and 7 (the last).
5. South Park and Futurama are the only ones with more confirmed entries than non-confirmed submissions, both only by 1.