Ridiculously Smart Simpsons Jokes You Haven't Been Getting for the Last 20 Years

To work on The Simpsons, you've got to be pretty darn intelligent. Many of the writers graduated from top tier colleges with degrees in mathematics and science and it shows. A lot of the gags on the show are beyond what children can understand, but some are so smart they can be baffling to adults as well. You might be familiar with The Simpsons' most adult gags or its best gags that targeted religion, but these smart Simpsons jokes went over your head decades ago and probably stayed there.

The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror V" is widely considered to be the best of the Halloween specials, and one of the best episodes of the show ever. It starts off with a bevy of jokes and references immediately. When Marge comes out to warn the viewers about the show, she's making a direct reference to the 1931 version of Frankenstein, where actor Edward Van Sloan did the same thing before the start of the movie.

It's immediately followed up by The Simpsons taking over the broadcast, complete with voiceover and oscilloscope in the style of the classic TV show The Outer Limits.

"Sneed's Feed & Seed" was formerly called "Chuck's." Notice that all three words (Sneed, feed, and seed) end with the same sound. Now, replace "Sneed's" with "Chuck's" and follow the pattern, so that "Feed" and "Seed" end with the same sound as "Chuck." Yeah. That's pretty dirty for a sight gag.

While trying to expand her horizons, Marge Simpson is cast as Blanche DuBois in a musical version of Tennessee Williams's classic play, A Streetcar Named Desire. The musical ends with a perky number about how one can always depend on the kindness of strangers. The dark ending of the actual play features Blanche carted off to a mental hospital, thus the musical hilariously misses the point of the play entirely.

As Springfield's resident mad scientist, one would expect some odd items at Professor Frink's yard sale. None are quite as odd, however, as Frink's $12 impossible fork. See, Frink is selling an item which can only exist on a two dimensional plane, sometimes called a devil's tuning fork. M.C. Escher used these figures as the foundation for many of his mind-warping woodcuts.  

In the Season 10 episode "30 Minutes Over Tokyo," the Simpson family heads to Japan after getting some very cheap plane tickets. Homer doesn't want to go, but Marge tries to change his mind by pointing out that he loves Japanese things, including the Akira Kurosawa film, Rashomon. Homer replies that he does not remember it that way. Rashomon's entire plot revolves around an event remembered differently by different people.

Inside the Simpsons' shower is a waterproof radio, labeled as a "No Soap, Radio!" "No soap, radio" is the name for a kind of surreal practical joke, in which the punch line has no relation to the content of the joke and is seemingly a non-sequitur.

While Marge is rehearsing for a play, Maggie is left at the "Ayn Rand School For Tots," where a poster can be spotted that reads "A is A." This is a reference to Ayn Rand, and her philosophy of Objectivism. In simple terms, Objectivists reject subjectivity and imagination, which makes the poster hilariously inappropriate for a preschool. 

When the PTA disbands, the Simpson children are always home and running wild. At one point, Marge tells Homer she's worried about Lisa, and Homer mentions that the "perpetual motion device" she built is a joke. A perpetual motion device is a theoretical concept that has never been built, and is logistically impossible due to the laws of thermodynamics, which Homer tells Lisa she must obey in their home.

In the classic Season 7 episode "Bart on the Road," Bart and his friends manage to rent a car and drive to Knoxville, Tennessee, thanks to a fake ID. On the way there, they drive through Branson, Missouri, where bully Nelson Muntz forces them to stop for an Andy Williams concert. The marquee provides a rave review for Andy Williams courtesy of Look magazine, the joke being that Look had been out of business for 25 years at the time the episode aired in 1996.

Mr. Burns's age is a great source of humor for The Simpsons, and it allows the writers to make some truly esoteric and archaic references. One of the funniest is Mr. Burns's chosen phone greeting of "ahoy hoy." This is actually the original phone greeting suggested by telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell in the 1800s.