Even if “Graggle” Simpson is the Internet’s favourite Simpson, that doesn’t imply he actually lived. Recently, fans of The Simpsons have begun sharing their favourite Graggle moments on Twitter and TikTok. Tens of thousands of people liked tweets that brought back the iconic supporting character from the show, and the season 33 finale of The Simpsons gained more social media traction because to nostalgia for the character.
This has just one flaw, though. The Simpsons does not, and never has, feature Graggle Simpson. Despite innumerable phoney images being made, the character Graggle (also known as “Gumbly,” “Weird Matt,” and other variations) has never appeared on The Simpsons and is a creation of the fanbase. Despite this, the persona is quickly rising in popularity online as one of the Simpsons’ supporting cast members.
In a sophisticated web scam, the (non-existent) “fan-favorite” Simpsons character Graggle has been digitally inserted into vintage Simpsons episodes and given a thorough character history. The persona goes by a variety of names; some blogs refer to him as Graggle, some as Gumbly, and still others as Weird Matt (for reasons that will become clear later). However, all of the hoax’s versions share parallels with a beloved episode of The Simpsons, “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show,” providing further evidence that South Park’s assertion that The Simpsons continually proves accurate is true (season 8 episode 14). Graggle is always destined to share Poochie’s fate, whether he is portrayed as a disliked late addition to The Simpsons ensemble, a long-forgotten character that was dismissed due to public apathy, or Matt Groening’s misguided self-insert.
The first mention of Graggle Simpson came in a 2021 4Chan post, which claimed that Matt Groening created the character as a self-insert early in the development of The Simpsons. According to this post, the rest of the production staff eventually wrote Graggle off and gave him the nickname “Weird Matt.” This entire origin narrative was undoubtedly a myth (although Groening’s actual least favourite Simpsons character did make a comeback in season 33). Another posting said that the company was digitally putting Gumbly into older episodes of The Simpsons in order to force the character on viewers. Another early iteration of the character, Gumbly, claimed that he was a new member of the family who only featured in recent episodes of The Simpsons.
As a result, Graggle, a forgotten Simpsons side character who had been dropped owing to unpopularity but was now making a comeback, was pushed as a different, opposing iteration of the character. This resulted in phoney images of episodes with Graggle; however, rather of complaining about “Grumbly” being added into old episodes, users shared these screenshots while “remembering their favourite Graggle scenes.” Despite the fact that everything that happened was a joke, The Simpsons’ ability to foresee the future is once again demonstrated by the meme surrounding Graggle/Gumbly/Weird Matt, which is strikingly similar to the fictional response to Poochie. Most of the meme’s variations draw (however unintentionally) some inspiration from how The Simpsons treated Poochie, the original Graggle/Gumbly/Weird Matt, from how viewers reacted negatively to the new character for ruining their favourite show to the idea of a character being cut due to poor reception.
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