The Simpsons’ Timeline

Originally written in mid-2018

I grew up watching The Simpsons. Born in 1991, it was only natural. Every weekday, right after school, I came back to my house for lunch, and the first things on the Italian TV were The Simpsons, Dragon Ball, Slump & Arale, Detective Conan (Closed Case), Pokémon. In the new millennium, there were also Futurama, Family Guy, American Dad, One Piece, Yu-Gi-Oh, Naruto, Digimon. I'm an expert of The Simpson: I've collected the first 17 (and the 20th) seasons on DVD, saw almost every single episode of the first 26 seasons multiple times and read a few comics. I recently started to develop a theory on why the characters from some American cartoon TV series never grow up and get older, but now I think it should be the ending of the Simpsons for the second (or third) movie after the 30th season. I'm gonna explain my second theory about this, and then I'll show the first one.

There are some episodes from The Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park that connect those series, Futurama and American Dad all together, and other episodes that show how those series are "staged".

South Park:

"Simpsons Already Did It" S6E7: Butters watches all Simpsons episodes on TV;

"Cartoon Wars" S10E3-E4: Cartman meets Bart Simpson and stops the episodes of Family Guy.

Family Guy:

"Family Guy Viewer Mail #1" S3E21: Brian and Stewie introduce 3 stories to the viewers of the show;

"Family Guy Viewer Mail #2" S10E22;

"Inside Family Guy" S15E4: James Woods shows us the weekly life on the set of Family Guy;

"The Simpsons Guy" S13E1: a double episode (with the joke from Peter "usually, we do 20 minutes of this") in which the Griffin go to Springfield and meet the Simpsons;

For the time "The Cleveland Show" was created (a spin-off of Family Guy), its character was not on Family Guy;

"Night of the Hurricane": 3 cross-over episodes of The Cleveland Show, Family Guy and American Dad.

The Simpsons:

"The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular" S7E10: Troy McClure replies to the viewers of The Simpsons and shows a little of the backstage;

"The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase" S8E24: Troy shows us 3 possible spin-offs of the show;

"Behind the Laughter" S11E22: they show us the backstage of the Simpsons, their success and their dramas;

"The Simpsorama" S26E6: the characters from Futurama (which was mentioned in other episodes, like "Fraudcast News" S15E22, as a TV show) find and meet the Simpsons (Bender also appeared in "Future-Drama" S16E15, and Fry in a Couch Gag);

"The Italian Bob" S17E8: Peter Griffin and Stan Smith (from American Dad) are in a criminal book.

There are two particular Couch Gags: in the first one, Homer goes from one set to another and fights the South Park protagonists; in the second one, Rick & Morty kill the Simpsons and recreate them.

There is also a subtle connection! I don't know how many noticed, but when the characters of the shows watch the TV, the majority of the times it's the News: The Simpsons have Channel 6, Family Guy has Channel 5, Futurama has √2 (or Channel 2), South Park has Channel 4 and 9 and American Dad has Channel 3!

The reality is that these shows are made by actors and they're all staged and part of the same world.

Even Rick & Morty make many meta jokes in which they state they're on a TV show.

But Rick & Morty are a parody of Doc Brown and Marty McFly from Back to the Future, and in Rick's garage there's a box marked "Time Travel Stuff" which, according to the creators of the show, Rick is never going to use. But what if he or another crazy scientist did? What if that stuff could stop, loop or reset time locally, like, in selected cities of the United States of America?

The big reveal in the last episode or movie of The Simpsons should be made by Doctor Frink and should be the discovery of Time Bubbles that let time go by for some people until a certain point (like the 8 kids of Apu and Manjula, Snake's son and Mary Spuckler, who is about 11 years old in "Apocalypse Cow" S19E17, 15 years old in "Moonshine River" S24E1 'cause she escaped Springfield and 13 years old in "Love is a many-splintered thing" S24E12 'cause she's back in Springfield) and make forget the passage of the years (like Lisa celebrating her 8th birthday at least twice in "Stark Raving Dad" S3E1 and "The Dad Who Knew Too Little" S14E8; Homer and Marge telling the children's past from the '80s in "I Married Marge" S3E12, "Lisa's First World" S4E10, "Homer's Barbershop" S5E1 and then thinking they grew up in the '90s in "That '90s Show" S19E11; Homer thinking that years of accidents happened in a week)! These Time Bubbles are over Springfield, South Park, Quahog, Langley Falls and Stoolbend and Dr. Frink can disable the one on Springfield and let the characters finally grow up, get older and live the stories of the episodes about the future. At the question "What about the other cities?", the reply can be "It is up to them! They will be able to disable the Bubbles when they'll be ready".

I read, somewhere, that the original finale of The Simpsons was Marge and Homer going to the theater to see the first episode of the show. In my ending, the Bubble over Springfield is disabled and we briefly see clips from the episodes of the future in the correct order and the whole family going to the theater to watch a marathon of the first season.

Update on May 18th, 2020

Rick & Morty "The Vat of Acid Episode" S4E8: Rick mentions Futurama as a TV show.

Update on June 12th, 2020

I found this awesome article in which other real fans like me analyze the show starting from a different point of view than mine and reach my same exact conclusion: https://www.academia.edu/17423061/How_Time_Works_in_The_Simpsons .

Update on November 8th, 2024

I’m watching Gravity Falls for the 1st time, and I was surprised by a character proposing the use of a TIME BUBBLE to freeze time locally on the town of Gravity Falls, Oregon! 2 years and a half BEFORE I wrote my theory! Way to go, Alex!

Update on August 18th, 2025

I thought of a Crazy, MULTIVERSAL, Theory about the Simpsons’ inconsistent timeline. I’ll probably do a video about it on my YouTube channel, but the gist is that ALL events are canonical, but they take place in different timelines of a Simpsons’ Multiverse!

Update on August 27th, 2025

So, to wrap up this ongoing… discussion?… page?…

To make heads or tail of the shifting and inconsistent timeline of The Simpsons (caused by the facts that the show is still ongoing after 35 years - they just ordered new seasons to round it to 40!! - and that the characters never age - despite the various episodes set in the past or in the future), here are the 3 possible Crazy Theories I came up with:

1 - The show is fake, staged by actors whose growth hormones were blocked and made in a TV studio set;

2 - Springfield is inside an either magic-made or scientific-made Time Bubble (made in the ‘90s), allowing only the younger characters to grow up ‘til a certain point. If the characters leave the city, they can grow up. The episodes in the future are after the Bubble is discovered and destroyed;

3 - All the different pasts, presents and futures showed to us in the long history of the show are ALL canonical and real, but set in different timelines of a subtle Multiverse (this would also allow for the non-canonical Halloween stories to be, somewhat, semi-canonical).

All of this is just speculation and overthinking of something you’ve been screaming this whole time:

“Dude! Relax! There is no need to theorize about this! The truth is: this is an animated show with fictional characters, made by animators, voice actors and various screenwriters who, sometimes, don’t watch previous episodes and make continuity mistakes!”.

Though, it’s still fun to theorize and rationalize some things.