The season five episode Cape Feare is widely recognised as one of the best in The Simpsons’ history, but surprising new information has come to light about one of its most iconic scenes.
Featuring the return of villainous Sideshow Bob (voiced by Frasier star Kelsey Grammer), the episode sees Bart’s loquacious nemesis set out on a mission of revenge against the youngster and his family.
A riff on the 1962 thriller Cape Fear and its 1991 remake (directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert DeNiro) its story sees The Simpsons enter witness protection, fleeing Krusty the Clown’s former sidekick by house-boat.
Cape Feare is home to some of the show’s best-ever gags (Die Bart Die, ‘Bart you want a brownie before you go to bed?’) but perhaps the most visually iconic is Bob’s encounter with a garden rake… a lot of garden rakes.
Secretly following the family to their house-boat getaway, Bob takes a battering when he accidentally steps on a rake, smashing himself in the face. Then, moments later, another one. And then, another one after that. And then…
Over 20 years later, it has become one of the funniest Simpsons gags of all time. Not bad for a joke that was originally only created to fill time.
As explained by Cracked.com, this now-iconic Simpsons scene only came to be because the scene was too short.
Writer and producer Al Jean said: ‘I was editing it with Mark (McJimsey), and I said, “How can it still be 20 seconds short?” So I said, “Add a couple more rakes hitting him.” That was a little longer, but it wasn’t long enough.’
In the season five DVD commentary, Al went on to say how producer Sam Simon believed that: ‘When something’s funny, and then you do it so much that it’s not funny, if you keep doing it, it might get really funny. So we just said, “let’s go for broke and put in as many as we possibly can.”
Al and Sam were right, and the moment has gone down in Simpsons history as one of its funniest – being revisited in a number of subsequent Sideshow Bob episodes.
Since then, Bob – full name Bob Terwilliger – has been a recurring presence on the show, usually set on revenge against Bart.
As of its most recent series, Bob has appeared in more than 40 episodes of the show and starred as the main character in 13.
Bob’s many schemes include his marrying Bart’s aunt Selma, running for mayor of Springfield (as the Republican candidate, of course) and threatening to blow up the town with a nuclear bomb.
In a running gag that paid reference to actor Kelsey Grammer’s most famous role (sorry Bob), his Frasier family also appeared in the show – with screen brother David Hyde Pierce (Niles) appearing as Bob’s own brother, Cecil.
In the Halloween episode Treehouse of Horror XXVI, Bob finally succeeded in killing Bart – but found life to be so meaningless without him that he was forced to resurrect his nemesis, just so he could kill him over and over again.
Last month, fans said goodbye to another famous Simpsons guest star – actor Donald Sutherland, who died in June aged 88.
The Hunger Games actor only appeared on the animated sitcom once, but his guest-starring role was one of the series’ most memorable.
He played Springfield historian Hollis Hurlburt in the season 7 episode Lisa the Iconoclast (1997), and went head-to-head against Lisa in trying to keep the dark history of town founder Jebediah Springfield buried.
As fans paid tribute to the actor, some hailed his appearance on the show as one of its ‘great all-time guest performances.’
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