The beloved animated series The Simpsons has been running for more than three decades now. And, 31 years later, one hidden joke from The Simpsons has finally been uncovered.
One fan, audio editor Ewzzy Rayburn, used Twitter to share the newly-discovered joke. Many fans of the series will recall the joke, or lack thereof, as it involved Marge’s dialogue being toned down. Fans have been theorizing what she could have said for years.
In fact, as additionally shared in the clip below, producer Al Jean discussed the moment on the DVD commentary for the episode, The Otto Show, from Season 3. Jean claimed that her dialogue, which “was actually pretty funny,” had to be cut for the joke to work. Though the dialogue was never officially revealed.
“It took us a long time to write it, and then we mixed it down so nobody could hear it.”
But now Rayburn has used his “audio editing skills” to make the dialogue audible for the first time. It turns out that the dialogue for the long-buried Simpsons joke is this:
I used my audio editing skills to recover a buried @TheSimpsons joke. #Simpsons pic.twitter.com/H0gD1qO7vF
— Ewzzy Rayburn (@ewzzy) April 19, 2023
“Well alright, but make sure they don’t pick up any of the band’s attitudes toward liquor… religion… politics… really anything.”
Rayburn further explained his methods in a follow-up tweet for extracting the audio. He explained that Adobe Audition allowed him to get the sound. He used the spectrogram of the audio within the program “to find/erase the tones then boost what was left.” This left him with the dialogue shared above.
It’s truly incredible what technology can allow fans to do these days. Especially with both video and audio equipment being more intelligent than ever before. And quite literally, in the case of programs that use artificial intelligence.
Stay tuned to ScreenGeek for any additional news on The Simpsons as we may have it. Who knows? There could be another long-forgotten joke just waiting to be dug back up.