Biting The Hand Humor / The Simpsons

Haw-Haw!

According to many of the commentaries on the DVDs (Sunday, Cruddy Sunday in particular), the directors and writers quite appreciate the leeway Fox gives them, noting they wouldn't be able to get away with these jokes on any other network.

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• The Simpsons reached a disturbing one in the episode "MoneyBART", its Couch Gag (storyboarded by subversive street artist Banksy) depicting the production of Simpsons episodes and merchandise taking place in a toxic sweat shop within a building shaped like the 20th Century Fox Vanity Plate. This BBC report claims the sequence "led to delays, disputes over broadcast standards and a threatened walk out by the animation department."
• In "The Springfield Files" Homer and Bart make plans to videotape an apparent alien visitor (and take a swipe at Fox's Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction? broadcast), commenting that if they fail to find an actual alien, they can just produce a fake recording and sell it to the Fox network.

  Bart: (Chuckling) They'll buy anything!
  Homer: Now son, they do a lot of quality programming too.
  (Pause, followed by both of them laughing.)

• At the beginning of "Cape Feare", Bart & Lisa watch a talk show with Rainier Wolfcastle as McBain. He makes a comment about his band leader looking like a homosexual, causing the audience to boo. In response, he calls them homosexuals too. Bart calls the show horrible and Lisa states the Fox network has sunk to a new low.
• "Sweet Seymour Skinner's Badass Song": The 100th episode's Couch Gag had the Fox logo bug appearing in the corner of the screen only for Homer to rip it off and the whole family stomps on it.
  • That appeared on one of Fox's image campaigns. No joke.
• "HOMЯ" had Homer calling an automated stock price hotline, which worked by having the person calling saying the name of the company and the computer replying with the stock's respective value. When Homer asks "What is this crap?", the service replies "Fox Broadcasting: down 8 [points]", followed by him smiling.
• "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo" had Homer investing in "something called News Corp.", followed by Lisa telling him that was Fox and Homer screaming "AHH! UNDO! UNDO!"
• One of the earliest and more subtle ones may be in the Season 4 episode "Mr. Plow". When a TV commercial starring the family airs late at night on an obscure cable channel, Homer exclaims, "It may be on a lousy channel, but the Simpsons are on TV."
• In "Bart Gets an Elephant", Lisa asks one "Mr. Blackheart" if he is an ivory dealer, with the reply "Well, little girl, I've had lots of jobs in my day: whale-hunter, seal-clubber, president of the Fox network. And yes, like most people, I've dealt a little ivory."
• In the episode "Yokel Chords", Bart tells his psychiatist "And then I had this dream that my whole family is just cartoon characters, and that our success led to some crazy propaganda network called Fox News!"
• In "Simpsorama," the crossover with Futurama, when Planet Express tosses Madison Cube Garden into space, it knocks into an "FXXX" satellite, parodying the Fox spinoff channels FX and FXX.
• During one of the scenes in The Simpsons Movie, a Commercial Popup crawler advertising the new Fox show Are You Smarter than a Celebrity? starts moving across the bottom of the screen, ending with "That's right, we even advertise shows during movies now."
• "Krusty Gets Kancelled" has Krusty bemoaning his good-for-nothing half-brother Luke Perry:

  Lisa: He's a big TV star.
  Krusty: Yeah... on Fox. [makes a face]

• At the end of "Missionary: Impossible", during a pledge drive hosted by FOX, someone calls in pledging $10,000, and Rupert Murdoch says "You've saved my network!" Bart, on the other end of the line, says "Wouldn't be the first time."
• In the flash-forward episode "Lisa's Wedding", set in 2010, we find out that all the programs on FOX have become porn. This happened so gradually that Marge hadn't noticed until that point in time.
• "Marge Simpson in: Screaming Yellow Honkers": The family promotes NBC for its quality programming, ending with "How do we know if there's something good on now? Just change the channel!", followed by Homer reading out a forced statement over the episode's credits that NBC sucks and Fox rules, under gunpoint, ending with him saying, "CBS: great", and being shot.
• "Sunday, Cruddy Sunday" has Homer and company tangling with Rupert Murdoch, who refers to himself as "the billionaire tyrant". (Murdoch was actually playing himself.)
  • Another example is when a promo for Joe Millionaire goes across the top of the screen. Homer eats a part of it, but disgustedly spits out the Fox logo.
• In "Marge in Chains", Todd Flanders has been infected with the "Osaka Flu" going around town. The Flanders asks themselves why God has "forsaken" them only for Ned to have a flashback to the one time he watched Married... with Children (complete with sinister lightning).

  Ned: The network slogan is true! "Watch FOX and be damned for all eternity!"

• In "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy", the family criticizes Lisa's recent activism:

  Homer: And we can't watch Fox because they own those chemical weapon plants in Syria.

• In "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular", you may remember Troy McClure from such Fox network specials as Alien Nose Job and Five Fabulous Weeks of "The Chevy Chase Show".
• In the "Treehouse Of Horror IX" segment "Hell Toupée", Ed McMahon would like to remind you that the FOX special World's Deadliest Executions is brought to you by the producers of When Skirts Fall Off and Secrets of National Security Revealed.
• In "Super Franchise Me", Marge works for Mother Hubbard's Sandwich Cupboard and says, "It's like they don't care if you make money as long as they make money. What kind of corporation does that?". This is briefly followed by the FOX logo and trumpet fare.
• In "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase", Troy McClure says that FOX approached the writers of The Simpsons to create "35 new shows" to fill a "few holes" in the schedule. Cue a poster of the FOX schedule: A slot each for The Simpsons, The X-Files, and Melrose Place, All other slots are question marks.^note Actually, that week alone, Beverly Hills, 90210, Married... with Children and King of the Hill’s ratings all outperformed The Simpsons’.
• In "Simple Simpson", the family watches Promiscuous Idiots Island on FOX, the home of promiscuous idiots.
• And then there's a scene in "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming" where Rupert Murdoch himself (speaking with a bad Australian accent, saying that he owns 60% of the Krusty-showing network Bob was disparaging) was in jail with Bob. They actually had to ask for and got permission from Murdoch himself for that one. His response was apparently "I would be honored to be in jail in The Simpsons."
  • Later in that same episode, after overhearing some lines of a raunchy TV comedy followed by the 20th Century Fox fanfare, Bob laments, "TV's bottomless chum-bucket has claimed Vanessa Redgrave!"
• In "Scuse Me While I Miss the Sky", Lisa, seeking to have Springfield's lights turned off so she can see an upcoming meteor shower, complains that the only thing she can see in her telescope is the FOX satellite. The screen then cuts to a broken, falling apart satellite that's only being held up by regular party balloons.
• And in "Homer Simpson, This is Your Wife", FOX is described as the home of the world's worst sitcoms, before Lisa points out that the show Mother Flippers (i.e. Trading Spouses) is a rip-off of an existing show. She is bribed with a FOX sweatshirt, but when she points out it's actually an ABC sweatshirt, they throw her in the American Idol holding pen.
• "Behind the Laughter": We know it's off-canon, but the only reason that The Simpsons got picked up as a show was because Marge's hairdresser was also president of the Fox network. While said hairdresser (obviously Rupert Murdoch) is never seen, his hand and voice are both portrayed while he's signing a television contract, with the motor skills and printing quality of a small child (and Homer has to guide him).
• In the couch gag for "Elementary School Musical", the 22nd-season premiere, a Fox executive appears giving the Simpsons a cupcake with a candle on it to celebrate the beginning of the season. After Maggie blows out the candle, the executive takes the cupcake and eats it himself.
• Subverted in "She Used to Be My Girl"; when a media circus hits town, the Fox News van is very large and rolls into view while "We Are the Champions" plays, presumably in celebration of George W. Bush's re-election.
• In-universe example in "'Round Springfield". Krusty bad-mouths Percodan while being taped, then mentions "a word from our sponsor," who also happens to be ...Percodan, the very company he just criticized. Cue Oh, Crap! moment for him.
• In "Sideshow Bob Roberts", Larry King is moderating in a mayoral debate. Before the debate, he addresses the audience.

  King: I'm your moderator, Larry King. Now, a word to our audience: even though we're being broadcast on... Fox, there's no need for obnoxious hooting and hollering.
  (Cue obnoxious hooting and hollering.)

• Inverted with the "Treehouse of Horror XXI" special by way of whacking one of its biggest fans at the end of the Twilight parody sketch.
• "The Fool Monty":
  • After the Couch Gag, the episode opens with a FOX News helicopter, whose slogan reads "Not racist, but #1 with racists" for a double whammy of mocking FOX News and its viewers. Once the passenger steps off the helicopter, it immediately begins to spin out of control, with the pilot screaming "We're unbalanced! It's not fair!", as a parody of FOX News' slogan ("Fair and balanced").
  • The plot of the episode is started by The Conspiracy of news organizations (which FOX News is a part of) who make things up to boost their ratings, with the plan being to make up a disease to do so. However, it would be immoral to lie about the existence of such a disease. Their decision? "Let's release a real deadly disease, then blame it on something!"
• In another episode, Homer has a very absurd idea and decides to sell it to Fox for a new TV show. The Fox network automated machine says (paraphrasing) "Your absurd ideas are all we have".
• "You Kent Always Say What You Want": When Homer tries to explain to Lisa at the end of the episode what Fox is up to, both his and Lisa's dialogue is overdubbed by a man promoting Fox. When Homer gets up to tell the viewers the truth, he's immediately cut off by the 20th Century Fox Television logo. He then appears again after that on a plain white background, trying to tell the viewers the truth, albeit more quietly, and he's immediately shushed by the Gracie Films logo.
• In the episode "Cue Detective", Principal Skinner shows the students of Springfield Elementary a movie. When they see the 20th Century Fox logo, they start booing.
• In the "Treehouse of Horror XXV" segment "The Others", right before nine sets of alternate Simpsons show up, Lisa says, "I just had a worrisome thought. If there could be two incarnations of the Simpsons, why couldn't some evil marketing entity produce millions of others?"
• In "Whistler's Father", when a vulture is about to bite Grampa during a visit to the zoo to teach Maggie some whistling methods, he tells it, "Go ahead, but my blood's turned to bile from watching Fox News."
• As talks about Disney's buyout of 21st Century Fox began, James L. Brooks shared a drawing on Twitter of Homer choking Mickey Mouse as Bart tells him, "Welcome to the family, man!"
• In an inversion of this trope, when it was announced that Disney+ would have exclusive streaming rights to the first 30 seasons of the show, the Simpsons wasted no time in welcoming their new corporate overlords. How'd they do it? With balloons having the Fox logo crossed out of them and tossing a portrait of Rupert Murdoch in the trash! Despite that, it can be seen as a straight example against Disney as well, since Homer's excitement seems deliberately phoned in and the family is reluctant to embrace their Disney identity until Homer pushes them (and the Mickey ears can't even fit over Marge's hair). A month before the launch of Disney+, a special trailer was created featuring the Simpsons wearing costumes for each Disney acquisition.^note Bart is Mickey Mouse (Disney), Marge is Bo Peep (Pixar), Homer is Iron Man (Marvel), Maggie is Yoda (Star Wars), and Lisa as an ice mountain (National Geographic, although Disney only owns the network and not the magazine it was based on).
  • In the Summer of 2019, special Simpsons merch was sold exclusively at D23. The most notable is a fan showing Bart Simpson wearing Mickey ears blowing a raspberry while giving the viewer a disapproved look. Matt Groening also drew a special illustration of the Simpsons family◊, with Bart Simpson preparing to shoot Tinker Bell with his slingshot.
• They even did one at the Simpsons Take the Bowl live shows at the Hollywood Bowl in 2014. Yeardley Smith begins introducing what seems to be an In Memoriam montage, to honor "those who have left us during our 25 years—I'm talking about the FOX presidents who've lost their jobs during that time," followed by a video scroll of almost a dozen names of actual FOX presidents, some of whom only lasted a year on the job, set to Sarah McLachlan's "I Will Remember You". According to the final listing in the scroll, Ralph Wiggum will become the president of FOX in 2021.
• This article published a week before the premiere of "Life On The Fast Lane" has Lisa believe that the only purpose of ALF, which was in its final season, was to push merchandise. Marge then comments that her comment feels too close to home, lampshading how heavily The Simpsons was merchandised back in the early days of the show.
• "Marge the Lumberjill" has a scene performed at the Springfield Elementary pageant at the start reenacting a typical reveal from The Masked Singer, basically serving as a Take That! at the show (with the judges pretending to recognize the unmasked celebrity.)
• Fraudcast News ends with Mr Burns acknowledging that "It's impossible for one man to control all the media. Unless, of course, you're Rupert Murdoch." He and Smithers then agree that Murdoch is "one beautiful man" and spend just a bit too long smiling serenely at the camera.
• Near the end of "Habeas Tortoise", they manage to insult both of their owners at once with a newspaper headline reading "Disney Sells Back Fox: 'We Feel Clean Again'".
• In the "Treehouse Of Horror XVI" segment "Survival Of The Fattest", it turns out that Mr. Burns' hunting spree is being aired live on Fox Sports, complete with sports commentators and guest analyst Terry Bradshaw.

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