Homer Simpson

Homer Jay Simpson is the main protagonist of The Simpsons show.

Homer is the spouse of Marge Simpson and father of Bart Simpson, Lisa Simpson, and Maggie Simpson. Homer is overweight (said be outonard 240 lbs), lazy, and often ignorant to the world around him. Although Homer has many flaws, he has shown to have great caring, love, and even bravery to those he cares about.

Homer works as a low-level safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant in Sector 7G, although he is often incompetent and negligent towards his duty. He spends a great deal of his time at Moe's Tavern with his lifelong friends Barney, Carl, Lenny, and the bartender Moe. At his home, he can often be found sitting on the couch mindlessly watching TV while snacking on food and drinking Duff. Homer is also the only son of Abe and Mona. When Homer gets provoked, he strangles Bart for pressuring him. Even though he hates Patty and Selma, he played as Selma’s husband in order for her to adopt Ling. As a result of this, Homer is the legal adoptive father of Ling Bouvier.

Homer may just be a normal man, but he has had many great achievements and experiences in his life. He has won a Grammy, an Academy Award, a Pulitzer Prize, been to space, and has saved Springfield many times.

Appearance
Homer's appearance is that of an overweight balding man. Despite his overweight status, and hate for exercise, he has on occasion shown surprising physical prowess and agility for a man of his body type, such as when training for Whacking Day and he hits several pop-up Snakes with kicks and even back-flipping. His baldness is contributed by several factors, such as upon finding out whenever Marge was pregnant, he would tear out a substantial amount of his hair. Another contribution is working at the nuclear plant for so many years that the exposure to radioactivity has caused most of his hair to fall out. Another frequent topic on Homer's obesity is his large posterior which is often joked about by Bart. His eyes are blue and he is 6 feet tall (183 cm). While his weight is debatable, the most common weight given is 239 pounds (though many jokes about his weight would suggest he is much heavier). He wears a white polo shirt, blue jeans, white underpants, and gray loafers.

Personality
Homer is a pure moron who can go back and forth from being downright horrible to an extremely caring and loving man. Homer's personality is one of frequent immaturity, frequent stupidity, dim witness, selfishness, laziness, and explosive anger; one might say it is that of the "Average Joe". He also suffers from a short attention span which complements his intense but short-lived passion for hobbies, enterprises and various causes. Despite his family flaws, he is a loving father and husband, even if he can be ignorant or oblivious to families feelings and ideas. When he thinks he has let anyone he loves down, it really does affect him, and in the end, will do anything for them. Another contribute to his "Working Joe" persona was that he has also shown to be sensitive about his masculinity; being initially upset over Marge becoming a police officer as he thought it made her "the man of the house", as well as refusing to call a contractor when Marge wanted her kitchen remodeled as to not emasculate his pride.

Homer is prone to emotional outbursts; he gets very envious of his neighbors, the Flanders family, and is easily enraged at his son, Bart, and strangles the boy in an exaggerated manner. His trademark phrase to strangling Bart, "Why you little...!" and on one occasion, "Why you little bastard!". He also spanks Bart sometimes and, in one case, Lisa. One time, he was too busy to spank them, so he told them to go to their rooms and spank themselves. He does not show compunction about this, and is not attempting to hide his actions from people outside the family, even showing disregard for his son's well being in other ways, such as leaving Bart alone at a port, or allowing Bart to go court for skateboarding naked on his dare when all he would have to do is attend a one hour parenting class signifying not only his disregard for Bart but his extreme laziness.

Homer also possesses an extreme dislike for his sisters-in-law, Patty and Selma Bouvier. This is because they often talk down on him for the kind of man he is, selfish and dimwitted. He also openly calls them ugly. He uses labels such as "The Gruesome Twosome", "Fatty and Smellma" and "Two Sobbing Trolls". He also gave his children the impression that Patty and Selma are horrible and nasty witches, which is the reason why the kids don't like spending time with their aunts. The sisters in turn, hate Homer as much he hates them. Patty and Homer have a very vile, antagonistic relationship but his relationship with Selma has rarely softened up over the years.

While Homer has repeatedly upset people and caused all sorts of mayhem in Springfield, these events are usually caused by either his explosive temper or lack of foresight. Except for expressing annoyance at Ned Flanders, Homer's actions are usually unintentional. Most of his explosive anger is targeted on Bart, because of something stupid or bad he had said or done. Despite their disadvantages, these common outbursts saved Homer from dying of a pentup rage-induced heart attack. Although he usually has an explosive temper, there are a few instances, usually in very serious situations, where Homer's anger was so subdued yet so immense that he outwardly appeared calm and spoke in an even-handed tone despite very clearly being outraged. Notable examples of this include when he learned that Bart had gone on a road trip via a fake license and are stuck in Tennessee doing odd jobs: He outwardly acted as if he was calm, and had to obscure his face to vent his anger enough to fog up his visor before adopting his calm exterior and vowed to send him money to get home before darkly stating that he'll murder him as soon as he gets home before Lisa talks him out of it. Another instance of this was when learning that Mr. Burns didn't address him in his thank you card, where after lowering the letter in an angry manner, he calmly requests that Bart and Lisa step outside for a second, with Bart and Lisa doing so without question and immediately due to being very scared at Homer's evidently furious appearance (although he then promptly manages to scream what is heavily implied to be the f-bomb after they've left in a loud enough volume that all of Springfield stopped what they were doing in shock). He also reacted like this to his father after the latter revealed that not only was Homer's own conception an accident, but implied that he would have been happier if he had never been born: After learning this, Homer gasped and braked to a stop immediately, before twice sternly telling Abraham Simpson to step out of the car in a calm yet clearly infuriated tone while scowling and not even looking at him, and then promptly driving away fast. He also initially acted like this when forced to adopt a swear jar and having to put coins in the swear jar to curb his swearing habits. When getting himself injured twice by accidentally breaking his thumb by whacking his thumb as well as impaling his foot with a nail deep enough as to require a tetnis shot, he initially robotically stated his first injury and then talking in a pseudo-kindly manner the second time while twitching with rage, before stating that, while he won't swear, he will kick the doghouse down, the last part he states by screaming it out in clear rage.

While Homer's stupid antics often upset his family, he has also performed acts that reveal him to be a surprisingly loving father and husband, such as selling his cherished ride on the Duff Blimp and using the money to enter Lisa in a beauty pageant so she could feel better about herself, giving up his chance at wealth to allow Maggie to keep a cherished teddy bear; spearheading an attempt to dig Bart out after he had fallen down a well, even though he hates doing physical labor and arranging a surprise second wedding with Marge to make up for their lousy first ceremony, even going so far as to hire one of The Doobie Brothers as part of the wedding band and getting a divorce from Marge, essentially making their second wedding a "real" one.

Despite his hatred of manual labor, Homer does a surprising amount of DIY work around his home. He built a jungle gym, a costume of Florida for Lisa, a birdhouse and spice rack for Marge (however, these are shabby at best and two of them actually fell apart). He also remodeled his kitchen when Marge felt insecure about hers after meeting the neighbor's deluxe one, however, this was more because he felt emasculated when Marge tried to phone a contractor.

Homer's stupidity and ignorance make him clueless to sensitive matters as well as when he is being insulted or his life is in danger. An example is when he came close to drinking a beaker of sulfuric acid but was spared after his colleague, Frank Grimes knocked the acid out of his hand. Instead of being shocked, Homer only responded with jovial delight and laughter. He was also completely oblivious to Grimes' hostility towards him, only being aware that the two of them were enemies after the latter made it painstakingly clear. Homer was an atheist and anti-gay. He adheres to no religion and only goes to church because Marge constantly forces him to. In "Homer the Heretic", he quits church altogether but later chooses to go as he was saved from an inferno, which is in his eyes a miracle. In the climax of the same episode, he is seen falling asleep during Reverend Lovejoy's sermon. He also paid no respect to Jesus' resting place after being granted a trip to Bethlehem by Ned Flanders; however, he did come to believe himself a messiah after suffering a hallucination from days in the desert while searching for Ned (who actually just got a glass of tepid water).

Homer tends to derive amusement from the misfortune of others. He is a chronic thief and borderline kleptomaniac which ranges from petty to grand theft, stealing everything from TV trays to power tools and air conditioners, even an entire room of the Flanders House from Ned Flanders. He has also stolen golf balls from the local driving range, office supplies (including computers) from work, and beer mugs from Moe's Tavern.

Homer has a vacuous mind, but he is still able to retain a great amount of knowledge about very specific subjects. He often shows short bursts of astonishing insight, memory, creativity, and fluency with many languages! Homer is also extremely confident; no matter how little skill or knowledge he has about anything he tries to do, he has no doubt that he will be successful. However, his brief periods of intelligence are overshadowed by much longer and more consistent periods of ignorance, forgetfulness, and stupidity. Homer has a low IQ due to many factors. Some of which include: his alcohol problem, exposure to radioactive waste, repetitive cranial trauma, and the crayon lodged in the frontal lobe of his brain. He also implied that he would have been at least a bit smarter and more athletic, if not by a substantial amount, if his father had tried to give him encouragement rather than beat him down. Another large factor of Homer's unintelligent is his inheritance of the "Simpson Gene" which causes all male members of the Simpson family to become more and more unintelligent as they grow older. It is also implied Homer repeated second grade, most probably due to the Simpson Gene kicking in.

But what is probably the biggest cause of his simple-mindedness was an incident that happened when he was six years old and goofing around by shoving a 16 pack of crayons up his nose. When he had shoved all of them up his nasal passage he sneezed the crayons out. Not all of them, however. Unbeknownst to him, one of the crayons got lodged in the right lobe of his brain. Homer would not learn this fact until adulthood when he was forced to take a job as a human guinea pig to support his family where the crayon was found in a 3D x-ray of his brain (shortly after Dr. Hibbert admits that every time he ever viewed an x-ray of his brain he would always unknowingly block the crayon with his thumb which is why it was never found before). The doctors tell Homer that they could possibly try to remove the crayon via surgery and it would either greatly increase his intelligence or kill him. After a slight consideration, Homer chooses to take the risk. The operation ended up being a great success and with the increased blood flow in his brain, Homer's intelligence skyrocketed.

His intelligence was said to jump up fifty points when he had the crayon removed, bringing him to an IQ of 105, slightly above that of an average person (though he showed far above average intelligence), but he went back to his old self when he had it reinserted, presumably lowering his IQ back down to its original 55. This IQ score is, however, likely a joke or oversight on the producers' part, as someone with an IQ of 55 would be unable to look after themselves and would be classified as severely mentally handicapped. Also from the level of intelligence, he showed it's much more likely that his IQ was boosted to 135-155. Despite his handicap, Homer does have a degree of long-term, calculated planning of what might happen, such as when, shortly before taking his "forget-me-shot" from Moe Szyslak, requested for their anniversary party to have a Moon Jump, due to realizing exactly what will happen afterwards.

While Homer's lack of intelligence and short attention span normally just results in him looking like a fool, it also sometimes causes him to unintentionally bring harm to the people around him. One example is when he dumps a piece of industrial garbage in the garbage can at Krusty Burger, followed by a lit match which he used to light a victory cigar. The combination of the two caused a fire on the supply lines for the fast food chains of spring field and caused chain reaction destroying all the restaurants in the process.

Also, it also makes him less aware of how what he says might affect people emotionally, like for a note quiz where he asked Ned Flanders about his sexual life, forgetting that his wife had passed away six months prior. His ignorance at one point even cost his family their home since he didn't understand how a home equity lone worked, putting them massively in debt and making it so they could no longer afford their mortgage. Though luckily, the house was purchased by Ned, who allowed them to rent the living space.

Homer has at times debated against his brain. Occasionally, a specific body part such as his face, stomach or liver is also shown debating with his brain. In one notable scene, Homer's mind actually leaves his body out of boredom, causing him to collapse. Homer is also inclined to retreat into fantasy, such as daydreaming of Germany as "the land of chocolate".

Homer's attitudes toward women, romance, and sex are occasionally shown. While Homer's marriage with Marge is occasionally strained, it seems generally happy. Despite this, Homer is often tempted with other women, and usually shows no qualms with gawking at (and drooling over) attractive women. Homer almost had an affair with Mindy Simmons, but ended up not wanting to. He has made the occasional remark denoting his attraction to other women (including his neighbor's wife), even in front of Marge on an occasion, but always shows his devotion to Marge in the end.

In earlier seasons (such as Season 1), Homer's personality was different. Homer was an angry, grumpy, ignorant man who got embarrassed by his family (instead of the other way around) but generally loved them. He also was prone to angry outbursts, such as yelling at Bart and Lisa, strangling Bart (which has continued in later seasons), and giving Krusty the Clown the middle finger in court after Homer had assumed it was him who robbed the Kwik-E-Mart.

Homer has since developed into a less intelligent nicer person in later seasons. Homer's "angry personality" still sometimes surfaces up, usually whenever getting pressured by Bart.

Abilities
Homer is a talented fighter, fighting with great prowess in his duel with Peter Griffin.

In addition to being able to accomplish what no man of his health and standing could, Homer has been able to accomplish things that defy all logic and reason whatsoever, such as causing cornflakes and milk to burst into flames and cause a nuclear meltdown in a testing van, despite no fissionable materials being present in it at the time.

Even though Homer is consistently depicted as being unpopular his entire life, he has been able to incite a mob on multiple occasions. He has incredible sway over crowds and is able to motivate people for just causes, such as shutting down the nuclear plant, and also to calm down an angry mob- something very difficult to do- such as when he prevented the destruction of Springfield's burlesque house. Like Bart, he is almost always made leader in whatever bizarre situation he comes across, although, unlike Bart, that leadership isn't always appreciated, such as when Homer becomes the leader of the Stonecutters, which shortly afterwards causes all of the members to quit.

Trivia

 * There is a character named Homer Simpson in The Day of the Locust, a 1939 novel by Nathanael West, which may have been another inspiration for Homer's name.
 * His Social Security number is 568-47-0008.
 * Homer is the only character to speak in every episode of The Simpsons.
 * Originally, Bart was the character the show focused on, but by season three, they focused more on Homer.
 * It is indicated that he is farsighted given that he wears reading glasses.
 * In "Today I Am a Clown", it reveals that Homer is an animal whisperer.
 * Homer has an email address on AOL called Chunkylover53, and this email belongs in fact to Simpsons writer Matt Selman, and can be emailed to receive Homer-style replies from Matt Selman himself (However, Matt Selman may not respond to emails that were sent to him, mainly because he's doing work for the show). As it was hacked, Matt Selman made a new AOL email for Homer called Homer_Simpson@AOL.com. If you receive an email from this email address, it is simply a reply for an email, if you sent one.
 * His blood type is either B positive or AB, as displayed on his sperm donor profile, Thad Supersperm.[104]
 * In "Homer's Triple Bypass", it is implied that Homer's bloodstream has a continuous regulation of radioactivity, as Dr. Hibbert was explaining to Marge Simpson that they injected Homer with a radioactive dye to see his circulatory system from an X-ray until he learns that the nurse hadn't even injected the dye yet (resulting in Hibbert saying "good lord" in a shocked manner).
 * In the same episode, it was also revealed that his fat can jiggle upwards to at least an hour, as when Dr. Hibbert did a fat analysis test to see how long it would go, it became apparent that it was going for long enough to force Hibbert to cancel an upcoming 1:00 medical appointment he was supposed to attend.
 * His personality is very similar to that of Peter Griffin from Family Guy, which premiered ten years after The Simpsons began. In "Treehouse of Horror XIII", Peter Griffin appeared as one of Homer's clones. But Homer may be smarter than Peter, since in Family Guy, it is revealed that Peter is actually below mentally retarded, which of that, being below, is worse than actual mental retardation.
 * He has met Peter Griffin in The Simpsons Guy, where he and Peter fought, where it seemed that Peter won in that same episode, but in the end, either of them did and they called it to just to be equal and agreed that they would be happy to coexist, as long as it was miles away from each other.
 * Homer owns the Denver Broncos, despite wanting to own the Dallas Cowboys.
 * It is believed that Homer is diabetic as mentioned in "That '90s Show". However, if this was true, Homer would most likely be dead because he has never been seen taking insulin and the amount of food that Homer eats would just ensure that would already be dead by the point the episode was shown.
 * In "Fear of Flying", it is shown his favorite song (at the time) was "It's Raining Men".
 * Homer has temporarily died twice outside of Treehouse of Horror episodes. As shown in "Homer's Triple Bypass", when he died of a heart attack, but was revived when Mr. Burns mentioned a ham. And again in "Million Dollar Maybe", when he was trying to calm himself down after stressing about being rich and not being able to tell Marge, but was revived when he realized he was dead and made a desperate attempt to return to his body. He dies the most times (now 20) in the Treehouse of Horror segments, but they are non-canon.
 * According to "The Blunder Years", his constant eating was a direct result of his trauma from finding Waylon Smithers, Sr.'s corpse.
 * Homer was originally supposed to have an illegitimate, long-lost daughter in the episode that would have become Insane Clown Poppy, but the writers decided to change it to having Krusty have the long-lost illegitimate daughter instead in order to not make the plot too far-fetched for it to be canon.
 * He looks like his father when he is dehydrated.
 * On one episode of Jeopardy!, there was a category called "Readings From Homer" in which Homer's voice provided the clues..
 * Homer weighs between 239-300 lbs.
 * In all Simpsons video games where you can play as multiple characters, Homer is always the first unlocked character.
 * In "Trilogy of Error", Homer had his thumb cut off. However, it was sutured by one of Fat Tony's helpers as Lisa's Science Fair Project.
 * Homer's side burn and ear used to say M + G for Matt Groening. They decided to keep the "M", but Groening wanted Homer's ear to look like a real ear.
 * Homer only has an IQ of 55. It was revealed in "HOMЯ" that the reason Homer's IQ is so low is because he had a crayon lodged in his brain since he was six. Upon removal of the crayon, his IQ jumped from 55 to 105.
 * In "Frink Gets Testy", everyone thought Homers IQ is 265 but that was due to a test mix-up between his IQ test and Bart's because of Homer's terrible handwriting, his real IQ is 1.
 * Homer shares his middle initial J with Philip J. Fry from Futurama, Matt Groening's second successful show, but unlike Homer, whose initial actually means Jay, Fry's was never defined.
 * He is one of the three Simpson family members to break a leg in the series and have the injury last through the majority of the episode, the others being Marge and Bart.
 * Throughout the series, Homer has shown to be highly patriotic. He has also displayed a small form of Nationalism by insulting other countries, making fun of their culture and its people, as well as putting his country ahead of all others.
 * In "Rednecks and Broomsticks", Homer has shown to have a strong sense of taste by being able to taste moonshine inside the town's water reservoir. His taste buds could, to some extent, be compared to that of a wine taster.
 * Earlier, in Season 20, his old taste buds got burned off exposing new ones in "Father Knows Worst" when he ate a fire kabob.
 * Homer starts out as a anti-hero in The Simpsons Movie when he makes Springfield the most polluted city in the history of the planet. However, he later has an epiphany when he realizes that other people are just as important as him and saves everyone from being blown up by Russ Cargill.
 * Also in The Simpsons Movie, Homer is hinted to be an atheist when he complains while going into church saying "Everyone's busy talking to their Phony Baloney God!". However, in other episodes, he shows belief in God.
 * In "Marge vs. the Monorail", the news shows a picture of Homer with what appears to be a mouthful of unlit cigarettes. This joke was recreated several years later as a meme for the game Team Fortress 2 with the Spy class doing the same thing, only the cigarettes are lit.
 * There was a temporary belief among fans that Homer has a disorder called Intermittent Explosive Disorder where the sufferer overreacts when angered resulting in violent outbursts and property damage.
 * According to "Super Franchise Me", Homer calls Ned's quotes "Flanderism's".
 * He is the only member of the Simpson family who has had a speaking role in every episode.
 * Despite his low intelligence, there have been a few times where he is able to show higher intelligence. These include accurately predicting the outcome of the comet in "Bart's Comet", accurately assuming the cause of the smoke inside a fireproof safe then guessing its eventual explosion in "Homerazzi", and being capable of describing the difference between envy and jealousy which caused Lisa to look in a dictionary and confirm his description in "Covercraft". He also, when hearing of the term "think tank", imagines think tank as the word was intended rather than a literal and inaccurate definition in E. Pluribus Wiggum, with him also telling his shocked family "Hey, I can't get one right?" afterwards to highlight it.
 * Homer is unintentionally responsible for Maude Flanders' death.
 * He is the only main Simpson family member who doesn't have anything colored red in his everyday clothes, unlike Marge (her pearls), Bart (his t-shirt), Lisa (her dress and sandals) and Maggie (her pacifier).


 * Details from Homer's license indicate that he holds a class C license and has no hair.
 * It is also true that he has a tattoo on his back which says "Marge madness", as seen in "Waiting for Duffman".
 * Homer was IGN's number one 90s cartoon character.
 * It has been shown multiple times that Homer has Arachnophobia, which is a fear of arachnids (mainly spiders). This is considered true in "Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily", where he panics when a spider appears next to his keys. It also happened in "Treehouse of Horror XXII", where he panics when he realizes that the spider Halloween decoration was a real black widow spider, and panics again when a second spider appears later, and in "Mobile Homer" where he becomes unsettled by the sight of a spider when he was asked by Marge to kill the spiders in the garage and gets into a frenzy when more spiders attack him. This has happened in more episodes than the mentioned three.
 * Homer is right-handed, unlike most other characters, such as Bart and Ned.
 * According to his drivers license, Homer's birthday is May 12, 1956. This means that Homer is 34 years old (63 without floating timeline).
 * He has a subscription for Mad Magazine, and considers it to be "our nation's largest mental illness-themed humor magazine".
 * He is of Scandinavian descent on his mother’s side and Native American descent on his father’s side (although the exact tribe is unknown). Since he, Abe, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie all appear Caucasian, this is a more distant gene, whereas his mother Mona Simpson’s maiden name was Olsen (a Scandinavian name) which suggests that his Scandinavian ancestry is more recent. Since his half-brother Herb Powell only shares the Native American gene, it is unknown what ancestry Herb’s mother had.
 * Homer has had multiple tattoos in the show but these are mostly shown as gags. In "Cape Feare", Bart somehow managed to tattoo the words "Wide Load" above his buttocks, in "'Round Springfield", he revealed to Lisa that he has a tattoo on his arm, but is dismayed when he realized that the tattoo was of "Starland Vocal Band". In "The Ten-Per-Cent Solution", he starts panicking when his pants start tearing because he fears people will see his tattoo of "Donald Duck smoking a doob". Finally in "Waiting for Duffman, he is shown to have a tattoo on his back which says "Marge madness".