Mom, Dad, Bart's Dead!

About

Mom, Dad, Bart's Dead! refers to a 1994 scene in The Simpsons where Lisa frantically enters Homer and Marge's room with Bart seemingly dead in a wagon behind her, screaming that he's dead. Marge and Homer gasp, then Bart bursts up from the wagon and says "that's right, dead serious about going to Itchy & Scratchy land." A multi-paneled version of the scene started to become popularized around 2015 as a part of the Simpsons Shitposting meme.

Origin

On October 2nd, 1994, season six episode four of The Simpsons, titled "Itchy & Scratchy Land,"^[2] aired on television. In the episode, the Simpson family visits Itchy & Scratchy Land, a theme park based on the kids' favorite cartoon. While there the animatronics turn and try to kill them. Early in the episode, Bart and Lisa try and convince their parents to go to the theme park through a ruse that involves Lisa running into the room with Bart faking-dead in a wagon. She yells "mom, dad, Bart's dead" to get their attention and they wake up gasping. Bart then gets up and says "that's right, dead serious about going to Itchy & Scratchy land" (shown below).

One of the earliest uses of the scene in a meme was posted on September 29th, 2015 to Tumblr^[1] when user wroxall posted a deep fried two-panel meme showing Lisa Simpson barging into her parents' room with Bart looking dead in the wagon, saying he's dead. In the second panel, Bart pops up and says "that's right, dead serious about you clicking that like," gaining over 54,600 notes in six years (shown below).

Spread

The format spread over the following years as people photoshopped it in various ways to change the context. For example, on August 12th, 2017, Tumblr^[3] user depsidase posted a version of the meme replacing Bart's head with Ned Flanders' and Lisa saying "Bart's Ned," with everyone's faces changing to Ned's, gaining over 4,400 notes in four years (shown below).

The format became significantly more popular around 2020. On July 3rd, 2020, Instagram^[4] page simpsons_meme_factory posted a version of the meme also using the You Got The Dud meme, gaining over 3,700 likes in a year (shown below, left). On December 26th, Instagram^[5] page thesimpsonslab posted a version of the meme, gaining over 3,800 likes in 11 months (shown below, right).

On August 6th, 2021 Facebook^[6] page Proyecto-M, la M es de Magazine posted an anti-meme version of the format where the family cries over a grave after Bart is announced dead (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References