This Is the ‘Simpsons’ Joke That ‘Simpsons’ Writers Say They Don’t Even Understand
A lot of classic Simpsons jokes are pretty straightforward and not difficult to comprehend. After all, a guy smacking himself in the face with a rake over and over again doesn’t leave much room for misinterpretation. But occasionally, some jokes will totally fly over the heads of audience members, not unlike every single Far Side cartoon does with Homer.
Recently, on social media the @CriminalSimpsons account asked followers to name which of the show’s jokes they “never understood.” Fans cited a number of scenes that have baffled them over the years, including Mr. Burns’ random reference to Rory Calhoun, aka the “person who’s always standing and walking.”
But the go-to example of an obtuse Simpsons joke is clearly the moment in “Crime and Punishment” from “Treehouse of Horror V” when Homer’s malfunctioning toaster sends him millions of years into the past. As he’s plummeting through a clock-filled temporal vortex, Homer remarks that he’s the first “non-Brazilian person to travel backwards through time.”
What exactly does this mean?
Well, even Bill Oakley has no idea. The legendary Simpsons writer and producer commented on the thread, admitting that he never actually got this particular joke either.
Regardless of this confession from a key Simpsons staffer, a number of fans actually suggested some potential explanations for the bewildering line. One person floated the idea that it could have been a reference to Brazil’s time zone. Another theorized that it was a reference to two Terry Gilliam movies: Time Bandits and Brazil, even though they had nothing to do with one another and Brazil featured zero Brazilians.
Somewhat more plausibly, a user argued that it could have been a nod to an old time-travel movie about a Brazilian soccer fan who builds a time machine in order to change the outcome of the 1950 World Cup final. Presumably, they’re referring to the 1988 short film Barbosa.
But, as we’ve mentioned before, there is no real explanation for this joke. The 1997 book The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family indicated that the line was a really a reference to “hallucinogen-inspired author Carlos Castaneda.” Although, on the episode’s DVD commentary, after being asked about the scene by a similarly-confused Matt Groening, producer David Cohen revealed that Homer was originally going to declare that he was the first “non-fictional person to travel backwards through time.” But the specificity of “non-Brazilian” seemed funnier to the exhausted writers at the time.
Simpsons writer Josh Weinstein later claimed that the line wasn’t a shout-out to Castaneda, merely a “total non-sequitur” and “not a reference to anything, just a funny line.”
This may or may not be of comfort to fans who spent the past three decades feeling incredibly stupid.
