The Simpsons fans expose the ‘darker’ side of show and it’s pretty bleak
For a comedy as supreme as The Simpsons, having amazing jokes is really part of the territory.
Stick on pretty much any old episode of the show from its golden age and realise just how many brilliant jokes it's firing out in rapid succession.
The show also has one hell of a knack for making spookily accurate predictions, and their writers have put this down to the sheer volume of things they've done.
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Simpsons screenwriter Al Jean said: "If you write 700 episodes, and you don't predict anything, then you're pretty bad.
"If you throw enough darts, you're going to get some bullseyes."
While the show has a plethora lines that are seared into the brains of millions of fans worldwide (seriously, if I say 'dental plan' I know your mind is already going 'Lisa needs braces'), The Simpsons also treated fans to plenty of helpings of dark humour as well.
Wherever Simpsons fans gather they start to trade lines from the show, and they've picked out loads of darker moments in the series.
Bart's new glasses
One of the most popular dark exchanges among Simpsons fans comes from the episode 'Bart's Girlfriend', where Marge's special little guy is looking pretty listless and tries to get some help from Homer, but their conversation doesn't really go the way she was hoping.
"Have you noticed any change with Bart?"
"New glasses?"
"No, he looks like something might be disturbing him."
"Probably misses his old glasses."
"We could get more involved in Bart's activities, but then I'd be afraid of smothering him."
"Then we'd get the chair."
"That's not what I meant..."
"It was Marge, admit it."
"Your uncle Arthur used to have a saying..."
Meanwhile, when the eldest Simpson child sought some advice from his mother in 'The Boy Who Knew Too Much' she came up with a seriously dark piece of family knowledge.
When Bart asks Marge what he should do if he knows a bad person is going to jail for something they didn't do, she says: "Your uncle Arthur used to have a saying, shoot them all and let God sort them out. Unfortunately one day he put his theory into practice, it took 75 federal marshals to bring him down. Now let's never speak of him again."
Erasers on Pencils
"Sure, they've made mistakes in the past, but that's why pencils have erasers," is Lenny's theory on the Germans when they're taking over the nuclear power plant.
Maybe don't think too hard about what he meant by those 'mistakes in the past'.
Other German references Simpsons fans have picked up on include someone saying 'no one who speaks German could be an evil man' when Sideshow Bob tells a jury his 'Die Bart Die' tattoo is actually German for 'the Bart the'.
"If only we had listened to that boy..."
"...instead of walling him up in the abandoned coke oven."
Mr Burns' recollections of his childhood include the time a young boy who demanded a fair slice for the working man was caught with six atoms in his pocket, and faced a brutal punishment.
Then again, this is the little kid who crashed into the legs of an unfortunate Irishman who cried 'who'll provide for me little ones' and still managed to laugh about it uncontrollably years later.
Real crash test dummies
Visiting the booth of the already suspiciously named Fourth Reich Motors, which started operations in 1946, little Lisa Simpson watched a crash test demonstration.
Only, when she watched it one of the dummies tried to crawl away from the wreckage.
"Hey wait, that's not a dummy..."
"THIS EXHIBIT IS CLOSED!"
"From this point on, no talking"
Frankly, poor old Hans Moleman can't catch a break as he's had Mr Burns drill into his brains, been set on fire by the power of the sun concentrated through his glasses and crashed a lorry which was transporting a house that then caught fire as it veered off the road.
On the brighter side for Moleman, he made the hilariously funny shot film Man Getting Hit By Football, but was sadly defeated by Pukahontas in the Springfield Film Festival.
His film did go on to get a remake which won an Oscar, but Moleman's starring role was taken away from him as he was recast in favour of George C. Scott.
However, perhaps his worst fate was appearing to be taken away and executed by electric chair
"But he ate my last meal!"
"Well, if that's the worst thing that happens to you today, consider yourself lucky."
"Are you really allowed to execute people in a local jail?"
"From this point on, no talking."
Just to drive home the joke, in the next scene as Marge and Homer are talking the lights dim briefly.
Moe's existence
This is the guy who reads stories to kids in hospital and cries, but Moe feeling suicidal is a running gag that the show has revisited a few times.
One particular scene has become the stuff of memes, though thankfully in that case Moe decides 'not today'.
For a funny show about a cartoon family it can get a bit dark at times, there's even one episode where Moe is about to jump off a bridge only to accidentally catch Maggie as she's falling, which gets him hailed as a hero.
At least Moe knows how to respond if some gangster is dissing your fly girl.
"Frank Grimes, or 'Grimey' as he liked to be called..."
'Homer's Enemy' is one of the most iconic episodes of The Simpsons, albeit one of the more controversial ones.
It throws an average man who's worked hard all his life into the path of Homer Simpson, and it turns out they don't get on.
When his plans to make fun of Homer backfire, Frank Grimes decides to act like his enemy and acts like a dope at the Nuclear Power Plant until he grabs some high voltage cables, declaring: "I don't need safety gloves, because I'm Homer Simp-"
Then he gets electrocuted to death, and to add insult to injury everyone at his funeral laughs as a sleeping Homer mumbles for Marge to 'change the channel'.
Skinner's Vietnam Flashbacks
Whether it's having PTSD flashbacks to his friend Johnny who got shot or telling schoolchildren that 'fire can be our servant, whether it's toasting s'mores or raining down on Charlie', the show has made it clear that Principal Skinner is a Vietnam veteran.
The Simpsons also played with this one a bit as well, as they looked like they were gearing up to do another one of these jokes only to flip things up.
Skinner once lamented that as a prisoner of war he was 'forced to subsist on a thin stew made of fish, vegetables, prawns, coconut milk and four kinds of rice', only to add that over in the US they 'just can't get the spices right'.
Sometimes he puts his military training to good use as well, such as when he fights off the lawyers coming to shut down the school fair.
Batchelor Arms
Depending on when characters visit the crumbling apartments of Bachelor Arms will either tell you that the swimming pool is 'now corpse free' or have a countdown to the days without a suicide.
One particularly dark joke with this sign shows us the place and the sign declaring it's been three days, then we hear a gunshot and it flips back to zero.
Homer actually stays here with Milhouse's dad Kirk, but can't sleep because of all the divorced men wailing.
It's a pretty crummy place.
Of course this is just a smattering of the dark jokes The Simpsons have produced over the years and every fan is going to have their own favourites.
Topics: The Simpsons, TV, TV and Film
Joe Harker