It’s been almost 40 years since he first graced the small screen, and Homer Simpson remains one of the most popular animated characters in media history. This dunderheaded dad has delighted millions of audiences with his many baffling and buffoonish antics on The Simpsons.
He surely isn’t the best husband, father, or worker, but when it comes to making people laugh, they can always count on Homer, and these10 moments on The Simpsons prove it.
10. Homer gets a gun (The Cartridge Family)
The way that Homer’s brain operates has been the source of much hilarity and bewilderment over the years. This enigma is best exemplified when he decides to carry around a gun, and Apu thinks he plans to rob the Kwik-E-Mart with it.
Homer wonders what life would be like if he actually did the deed, imagining himself as a wealthy senator with Marge as a go-go dancer. Homer’s boneheaded logic convinces him to rob the store, but by the time he decides to go through with it, he finds he is already driving away in his car.
9. Homer builds a ‘Le Grille’ (Mom and Pop Art)
This scene puts the “Homer” in “home repair.” When Homer buys a barbeque pit for the backyard, he naturally has trouble putting it together, and the instructions written in French don’t make things any easier.
Homer’s angry breakdown in this scene is hysterical, as he starts beating his pile of grill parts until he charges at it with an umbrella. Many adults have suffered trying to put an appliance together, and Homer captures that pain and gets lightning in a bottle.
8. Homer the Terminator (Homer Loves Flanders)
Of course, when Homer finally likes Flanders, the latter can’t take his neighborino’s newfound clinginess. Homer emerging from the bushes alone cemented this episode in internet lore.
But when the Flanders family tries to escape him, Homer chases after them in a hilarious sequence straight out of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Even after Ned throws him off his moving car, Homer assumes that his best friend didn’t see him, showing how delightfully oblivious he can be.
7. ‘I choose to waive that right’ (The Springfield Connection)
When Marge becomes a police officer, Homer doesn’t take her seriously and refuses to accept a parking ticket from her. His first reaction to being handcuffed by his wife is funny enough.
But when Marge says he has the right to remain silent, Homer politely rejects that right and starts screaming just to be defiant, showing the kind of silly, but refined tantrum this man-child can throw.
6. Homer rides a cherry picker (Lost Our Lisa)
Homer has suffered several head wounds throughout the series, and this scene shows this trend at its most hilarious and inventive. When Homer gets stuck on a runaway cherry picker, he withstands getting hit by traffic lights, the roof of a tunnel, and even a pier.
Though Lisa seems to save him by lowering a drawbridge, Homer gets his head caught on the bridge and has to endure getting the top of his skull run over by drivers. Not even praying to Superman could’ve saved him from this one.
5. A world without donuts (Treehouse of Horror V)
When Homer accidentally builds a time machine, he repeatedly sends himself back to prehistoric times and alters the present. At one point, he finds himself in a reality in which his family is rich, and Patty and Selma are dead.
Though everything seems to be coming up Homer, he panics when his family doesn’t know what donuts are. He quickly goes back in time before seeing donuts fall from the sky in a casual rainstorm in this reality. Once again, Homer’s love for food becomes his downfall.
4. The Land of Chocolate (Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk)
In one of the show’s most iconic sequences, Homer fantasizes that he is in the “Land of Chocolate” while talking to his new German employers. Homer is seen prancing around in this delicious daydream, feeding on chocolate rain, chocolate lampposts, and even chocolate dogs.
On top of that, he marvels at a shop that sells chocolate at half-price as if that’s the best thing that could happen, even in his wildest dream.
3. Homer fails the nuclear test (Homer Goes to College)
When the Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigates the Springfield Power Plant, Homer is put into a simulator to test his knowledge during a power surge. Even though the module isn’t real, Homer somehow causes a nuclear meltdown that turns him into a radioactive brute obsessed with destroying humanity.
But when he learns it’s lunchtime, he quickly snaps out of it and leaves without a care, showing how easily Homer can mess things up and still walk away unscathed.
2. Homer robs a candy convention (Homer Badman)
This scene proves that there really is nothing Homer wouldn’t do for food. When Homer finds a rare Venus de Milo gummi candy on display at a candy convention, he can’t help but rob the place of its most prized delicacy.
But when security chases him, Homer throws a makeshift bomb made out of a fresh soda can and pops rocks, leaping out of the place in an explosion straight out of a cheesy Sylvester Stallone action movie.
1. Homer chases Bart (Bart’s Friend Falls in Love)
In a spectacular spoof on Raiders of the Lost Ark, Homer chases Bart through the house when the boy snatches his jar full of pennies. Tumbling down the stairs like the giant boulder chasing Indy, Homer’s oafish pursuit of Bart is turned into a thrilling and hysterical adventure that likely costs more than what’s in the jar.
But the best part has to be the pantsless Homer running outside and shouting at Bart like an angry gorilla.
