Lisa, the Simpson!

Well I'm not sure such a topic is really worth creating, being that The Simpsons is a fictional show and all, but I've always had a few things that I've been able to notice that don't quite make sense... as in, it leaves you thinking "That's not very realistic", or things that you just find hard to believe could really happen. Or it could just be simple animator goofs, as in one frame there's a picture on the wall of Grampa Simpson, and in the next frame it's gone or replaced with a houseplant.

One thing for me that I always found a bit hard to believe was the episode "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", obviously a good episode especially for me, since it's based on the rise and fall of The Beatles, but certain things just didn't add up. First of all, a question that I believe Lisa asked, was what happened to all the money that Homer, Barney, Apu and Skinner made? And why aren't they ever noticed anymore? If they were such a phenomenon, you'd think that they would have had more of an impact than just rising to popularity and losing it all in one summer. People would recognize them on the streets, and there personal lives would be covered extensively by paparazzi.

Any thoughts/ideas or more mistakes to speculate about are welcome :gigi:

It's an inexhaustible topic :p
An example that instantly comes to mind: in the "Lisa's Wedding" episode, Maude Flanders appears, alive and kicking. But that's impossible because she died in one of the following episodes.
Although some of the goofs can be easily explained as jokes (see the attachment) :)

Another example: in the episode #4F24 ("Lisa The Simpson" - ;)), Lisa worries about her intelligence and discovers that every member of the Simpsons family gets dumb eventually (later she discovers that only boys are predisposed to that, i.e. Bart and Homer). But that contradicts completely with another episode, #BABF22 ("HOMR"), where we see that Homer is very smart, only the crayon in his brain makes him so dumb.

And another animation goof in the attachment. :) It's from the #AABF03 "Lisa Gets An A". Look at Lisa's smile...

Another one: Flanders house fall down in season eight, all their things except gravestones were destroyed. But then it revealed, that Ned's huge collections of figurines and The Beatles stuff were safe. Well, maybe he began collect figurines later, but Beatles things he collect for many years and unless he stored all it in another more safe place, it should be destroyed by that hurricane too.

Also, it was mentioned couple of times that Homer is infertile due to his work on the power plant, but when Maggie got chicken pox last seasons Marge worried that Homer will have it too because it can make him "sterile down there", like she said. Why she worried :D

Take a look at Marge's shoulder. I've never seen things like this before - looks like a wrong line to me, that was removed afterwards (but not completely). :)

Cant get more in a lapse in animation than these two framegrabs.  :P

Unnecessary Surgery Land :P

ALM
LOL, the second one looks even scary to me.
But impressive examples indeed. "I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder!" ;)

ALM
Wow, that's incredible :eek: Someone really screwed up big time on those... and also Serge, the one with Marge's arm looks just weird, like someone didn't erase well enough or something ;)

(this one is not by me, but from my Russian forum.) Remember Bart's birth. It wasn't planned, so Homer and Marge had to marry right after school when they discovered that Marge is pregnant. But right now Homer is 39 and Bart is 10, so when Bart was born, Homer was 29 (and Marge was 27)... a bit too old for finishing school! :p
In the "I Married Marge" episode, the one about Bart's birth, they both don't look like 27/29 either.

And another nice example I noticed by occasion today (see attachment, it's from AABF12 "Make Room For Lisa").
Milhouse's left foot overlaps the door :)

Dagdamor
Ah yes, ages and birth dates... a few debatable topics here, including most notably Lisa's birthday. According to the episode "My Sister, My Sitter" Bart states that he is 2 years and 38 days older than Lisa. This would put her birthday at May 9th... but in some episodes it's stated as September 28th! And others still in October... I guess we'll never know when Lisa was really born. ;)

Wow... how could you notice that? O_o i had to look at the picture couple times and even then, without reading your description, i couldn't get it.
Do you play lot's of "Where's Waldo"s?

ALM, those are scary! I dont remember where the second pic comes from? Which episode is that`?

That moment is from Kiss Kiss Bang Bangalore. But how in the world did you find that one, Gary? It looks like that for only 1 frame. :eek: Same goes for you, Dag :p

We must have some diehard Where's Waldo finders here on the board. :p

By accident actually. I was just messing with making frames and when I quickly saw Lisa's hand disappear I thought WTF and sent a framegrab to Nick. And never forgotten about it since.

Even simpler here - one member has posted this screenshot in the "Guess the episode" topic on my forum. I couldn't guess the episode, but the animation goof has caught my eye. Glad you liked it though. :p

Someone really should've gotten fired for this one.

ALM
Hmm... I don't see anything wrong on this scene.
Maybe the face of the guy nearby Lisa, but we've seen even uglier faces in the early seasons. :)

Dagdamor
Can't be certain either, but look at the collar, I think the person next to Lisa is actually behind her. It appears Bart lost his head here. :P

Kasper's right. They chopped off Bart's head...

Oh crap!!! You're right, it's the person sitting behind Bart! :eek:
This is extremely disturbing, I never saw anything like that. Number one in the whole thread so far.
Even worse than handless Lisa... ugh...
/me won't forget this moment from now on

Oh I know, I didnt see it right away... but now... ewww!

I noticed that before but I didnt think it was Bart, I thought they miss-connected the head from the guy behind onto the body. But should have realised he then would have very small hands :P

Very strange, and scary.  :eek:

ALM
I didn't notice it either, but after reading the replies and looking at it again, I burst out laughing... thanks for posting. Very disturbing but hilarious.

Spotted 2 animation goofs in the same scene while watching 'Homer Loves Flanders' (1F14) [S05E16] last night, the goof i spotted is quite noticable when playing, more noticable than on these static screenshots. I spotted the 2nd goof while composing the screenshots.

Both involve the arms. Her arm seems to literally pop off when moving. The other arm's movement of the necklace (and the position of the necklace itself) also seems very off.

Heres a montage of 4 shots.

http://www.ejnmedia.co.uk/simpsons/lisaarms.jpg

The scene happens relitively close to the beginning after Homer hears Ned win the "Pigskin Classic" tickets on the radio at the power plant, and cuts back to the simpsons home. Lisa is saying about the rivalry between Shelbyville and Springfield. The scene is just before the Marge hallucinations after driking the spiked water.

Oh and the 1st shot top left is cute ;)

Poor Lisa. It looks like her arm is dislocated.

And yeah, she looks cute in the first pic. ;)

Looks really weird :p
Sometimes come across these goofs, I usually tend to spot colour or background differences though,...maybe the animators are just in a big rush :p

Empethree
looks weird, but maybe it was half-intentional. on the first and the last moments, her right arm looks very much the same. maybe it was the same drawing cell, they just tried to re-use it for the same scene, but shifted a bit....anyway, just a thought. nice example.

OK came across this, seems like something stange was happening at animation HQ this drawing session..... this is from "Some Enchanted Evening... lisa has too many lashes and the picture just seems strange.

I agree, she's looking quite weird here :) she eve nhas less hair spikes and her head is smaller than usual... oh well, i guess we can forgive this to the animators back then :)

Empethree
Not only she has weird amount of eyelashes/spikes, but also look where her tongue is growing from :D
A typical Season 1 screenshot... but heck, she still looks adorable! It's hopeless... :p

Another moment I've noticed today, from the famous "Barting Over" episode.
For some reason the animators have painted half of Homer's shirt blue ;)

While staring at the pic I've posted in another thread (http://www.lisa-simpson.net/topic/146.msg11847#msg11847) I noticed something. Apparently Homer and Marge already had a picture of Lisa being 8 and Maggie who hasn't even been born in that scene. :p

Suusje
LOL, very interesting... I hadn't noticed that, you're very observant :P Also, Homer has hair in that scene... in the episode "And Maggie Makes Three" wasn't he shown tearing out the rest of his hair after he found out that Marge was pregnant with Lisa?

Homer's hair is something that you could discuss endlessly... there are many flashbacks where he does have hair, others where he doesn't... there's too many "goofs" in that area to count :P

Suusje
Hey, they're cheaters! They've made 24-32-40 ages parts at the same time, with a lot of dolls, make-up and so on! Or some indian chief or gypsy foretold them about their kids and drew their portrait!
Nah, it's impossible. Probably Simpsons house wasn't as "tidy" and "good" that years as it's nowadays, and to hide his poverty and shame Homer asked Desmond to replace background in early footage with newer version? :D
Anyway, little Lisa is so cute here it's hard to look on anything else :)

Dagdamor
I wonder, how people can discover such mistakes - he moves not so fast, but still, you need all power of your eyes and attention to catch that.

Oh my god, this is brilliant! :D What a delicious slip-up. Gotta love hard-to-spot continuity errors. This grab has made my day. You win a fridge, Suusje :3

now I have got my new glasses mebbe i can start to spot the goofs too, that last one was a good one, although sometimes I wonder if this type of "goof" are put in deliberately to see if people do notice.

Still they are all fascinating, it is interesting to find these.

Oh, Great find @ Suusje! That takes an eye of a linx to spot indeed. Especially because as you said, one can't help but look solely at cute baby Lisa. :)

@Dag: That's a very difficult one to notice too, i had to rewatch that scene three or four times to freeze frame it correctly (but i'm still slow from the drinkies :p )! Great find!

It took like 10 minutes before I noticed that slip-up with the picture by the stairs. :p
/me looks at little Lisa and says: Awwwww, she's so cute...

brakusaetsya
lol :D

Here I think Lisa has too biggerhead for my liking:

Thats not really a goof, that kind of ear thing is still done these days, it was just used more in the early days.

Maggiecute
Maybe that's because we don't see Lisa fully on the scene. But yeah, her head looks enormously big comparing to her neck/arms. The result of overstudying maybe? ;)

I don't have a screenshot, but I remember that in the episode "And Maggie Makes 3", Ruth Powers attends Marge's baby shower, which, as we remember, didn't move next door until several years later...weird.

Well that's more of a continuity goof than an animation goof, and the show is chock full of them. Still, it's a clever find, i never noticed or thought about it :D

This is a very questionable example, I'm not sure myself whether this is an animation goof or not.

Link to the image (http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/861/lisamaggietsmdv6.jpg) (a scene from TSM)

Check carefully the reflection of the pack on the left, standing between the TV and paper cups.
It seems to be transparent...

P.S. The scene itself is very nice (aside from drunk Bart) ;)

I'm not sure about the mirror and the reflections. But the shadows! They're awful! Look at this. As if Lisa's and Maggie's heads are bald from the sides and have it's spikes only on the "edges" of heads. Like mohawks. Not so good playing with shadows the animators demonstrate us here. ;)

Dagdamor
You're right... brrrr... LOL, it almost seems that pack is invisible. And I agree with Ygg about the shadows. o.O They look wierd...

Heh, yeah, i must admit the movie looked WAY better in motion. as a still, the shadows are quite bad. THe reflection is also kind of wrong, like Dag said, but i don't thnk that's actually a "spoof", just animator's lazyness. :)

Yggdrasill
LOL, I just tried to imagine *that*... :D
But you're right, Lisa's and Maggie's haircuts cannot cast such simple and smooth shadows. If their heads are covered with triangles, we should have seen number of small shadows instead. Maybe they tried, and that looked too unusual (remember your own picture, The Mask (http://www.lisa-simpson.net/attachment/2096/16.0)), so animators have decided to go with the simpler version? In the Movie, I never noticed that their hair looked wrong.

I second that! :P
I loved the animation of the Simpsons movie overall, but when you look closer, I guess there are lots of little things that they rushed or did rather simply...

Guess if they paid attention to every detail they'd never get the movie done   :eek:
Ah well,..these flaws are interesting to point out though :)

In one of the very first episodes(I think it's Homer's Odyssey) his hat changes from blue in one scene to red in the next.Yeeps!

That would be Marge gets a Job.


Right anyone else want to be a hero?

I've noticed several times that Marge's necklace suddenly or for one scene becomes white. For example in the pic that Gary posted (http://www.lisa-simpson.net/topic/324.msg8409#msg8409) or in Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.  :marge:

Maléfix
The same often happens with Lisa's necklace, when it becomes red. Either Marge and Lisa exchange is from time to time, or take wrong necklace at morning by mistake, or, what's more likely, the animators can't remember the proper colors for each character. :D

Your screenshot is interesting though... Marge's necklace is neither red not white on it, it's more like light-rosy.

7G01 is Some Enchanted Evening. 7G08 is Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire BTW. :P

oh, then this was wrong in the Simpsonspedia (german).
Anyway, I don't know where I read this since in the eps list it's correct...
meh.

uh and Dag, I didn't quite notice that, my display's bightness was so-to-say set minimum.

I think you got confused by the episode numbering and their respective airdate. "Some Enchanted Evening" was the first episode that was produced, but it was aired as the last one of season 1 in the US. "Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire" was the first episode that got aired in the US, but in Germany, it was aired around the end of the season, shortly before Christmas (in Germany, they started airing the show in fall 1990, whereas in the US, they started at Christmas 1989).

Indeed, the reason Some Enchanted Evening was pushed back to the end of Season 1 was because all 13 episodes were being animated at the same time, and when Some Enchanted Evening came back, they were horrified by how crappy it looked, James L. Brooks actually said that it was shit, and the show had to be delayed back to Christmas when Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire aired and Some Enchanted Evening had to be re-animated.

Many people consider the true first episode to be Bart the Genius and Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire to be a special. But I'm not one of them. :P

Animator goofs, eh?  Here's one of my favorites...

Lisa appears to be quite astonished to discover she's missing a toe in this framegrab from "The Last Temptation of Krust".

Hah, nice one Lascelle! This one much more supposed to be in the "cutest moments" thread. Adorable Lisa and her shoe. :P

Maybe she has something from cats in her nature after all? :) Cats, if I'm not mistaken, also have lesser number of toes on their hind paws. And as Shadow Nait said, the moment is very cute overall. LOL, I just rewatched the scene - Lisa even fiddled her toes to demonstrate that she doesn't wear socks. Still three toes. :D Which degree of absent-mindedness you should have to make an animation sequence having such a goof.

Here's something that's always bothered me. Has anyone else noticed that in a few older episodes the animators draw Barts head looking like this? His eyes move to the side of his head but his overbite stays in the same place. I don't know if it should be considered a goof but it sure does look weird animated...

Indeed. During a few of the commentaries they talk about that piece of animation. I think it was a holdover from the Tracy Ullman days that Groening liked.

It was done a lot in the early years indeed, it was phased out at least by Season 3, looks like that one slipped through for Season 5. :P

I'd have to watch the commentary for 3 Men and a Comic Book again but I think it was Wes Archer's thing.

Possibly. Can't check myself since my DVDs got stolen. :/

Been at least a year since I last listened to any.

Ontopic: I thought it was odd but distinctive. Just one more detail in the overwhelmingly awesome first few years.

No, but I can. :P

MIKE REISS: Oh there's a twister.
JEFF MARTIN: Right.
REISS: Wes Archer especially liked to have the Simpsons' heads kind of twist in the middle. It certainly was very prominent in the shorts.
MATT GROENING: Right.
REISS: And was really being phased out, this may have been one of the last appearances, because by the time this thing aired, I remember people saying "What the hell happened to Bart's head!"
MARTIN: If you stop on that frame, it really looks weird.
GROENING: We made a rule that they couldn't do the twister more than once an act, then once a show. Then we finally got rid of it.

o_O'

You must have amazing amounts of memory. :p

Yep, that's the one.

Memory? Hell no. I stop and played my DVD. :P

How'd you know where to look? ;)

Gazmanafc: D'oh!

(Whewt! Just realized I'm an 'active member' now!)

I knew where to look as I memorised it because I connect it to the Daniel Stern reference towards the Wonder Years.

Dont call me Gaz.

Fair enough, didn't intend it negatively. Your quick referencing skills, either. I am envious. :lisa:

I am what most people call, a nerd. :P

*looks around*

Is...that a bad thing considering the present company? Just cause I lift 80 lb. glass refrigerator doors for a living doesn't mean I can't enjoy some MtG or break out my old 1st Ed. AD&D manuals. :p