All the Simpsons characters: the complete world of Springfield

The Simpson family

the five on the couch, their relatives, their pets and their nanny

It all starts with a couch. On 17 December 1989, five yellow silhouettes turned up on American television; the couch in the opening credits arrived four weeks later, on 14 January 1990. More than eight hundred episodes on, the essentials still play out between the kitchen, the upstairs landing and that living room at 742 Evergreen Terrace. Springfield reads as concentric circles, and here is the first one. Five long entries to begin with, one per family member, with the date of the first appearance, the original voice, the French voice and the episodes that fixed the character — cited under their original titles, as throughout this page. Eleven short entries then: the grandfather, Homer's vanished mother, the half-brother, Marge's sisters, the Bouvier in-laws, the menagerie accumulated over thirty-seven seasons — a greyhound, a cat, a pig, an elephant, a lobster and an iguana — and Shary Bobbins, the nanny who came down from the sky for the length of a 1997 episode. Homer spills well beyond this page: his complete file is elsewhere, in the guide devoted to him. And if you are looking for the house rather than its occupants, it is described room by room in the Springfield guide.

The pupils of the elementary school

Bart's class, his romances, and Milhouse's parents

Springfield Elementary is the setting for both Bart's class and Lisa's, and its playground has supplied most of the child supporting cast. The casting falls into place very quickly: Martin Prince turns up in "Bart the Genius", broadcast in the United States on 14 January 1990, Nelson Muntz in "Bart the General" on 4 February, the trio of bullies in "The Telltale Head" on 25 February. You will meet eight-year-olds and a held-back pupil old enough to drive his own car and raise his sons. One entry stands apart in the middle of the class: Milhouse's parents, Kirk and Luann, whose divorce took up a whole season. A single actor, Russi Taylor, carried Martin, Sherri, Terri and Üter until her death on 26 July 2019; Grey DeLisle took over those four roles from season 31. The last four entries leave the classroom: they are Bart's successive romances, from Laura Powers to Mary Spuckler. The building itself, its canteen and its gym are covered in the Springfield guide.

The staff of the elementary school

ten employees, plus the principal's mother, to keep Springfield Elementary running

Springfield Elementary runs on a ruined budget and a handful of adults who have given up, each in their own way. A forty-four-year-old principal who lives with his mother, a Bryn Mawr graduate teacher who expects nothing from anyone any more, a Scottish groundskeeper housed in a shack, a lunchlady who serves whatever the accounts allow. They are not villains: the show films them as employees worn down by a system it has been caricaturing since December 1989. Two of them hold the lunch scene in which Principal Skinner passes Krusty Burgers off as steamed hams in front of Superintendent Chalmers. If you are after the building rather than the people, the school has its own file on the blog. Here, we look at the ten employees who keep it running, from the principal's office to the wheel of the school bus, plus the mother camped out in that office.

The nuclear power plant and the bosses of Springfield

those who clock in at Sector 7-G and those who pay them

Sector 7-G fits into a single shot: three consoles, three men monitoring nothing, and at the far end of an endless corridor, an old man watching them on a screen. The plant supplies Homer with his working circle: a boss, a direct superior, two console colleagues and a queue of passing executives. Burns and Smithers play out power and devotion there, Lenny and Carl office friendship, and Frank Grimes played merit there once, in 1997: he did not survive it. Around them orbit passing bosses, salesmen who sell nothing and executives who change jobs every six months. The building itself, its two cooling towers and its green barrels, is described in the Springfield guide; here, we look only at the badges. Two episodes are the bedrock of this whole crew: the season 4 dental plan strike and the two-parter in which someone shoots the boss.

The neighbours and the regulars at Moe's

the other side of the hedge, the other side of the bar, and the three who nearly undid the marriage

Homer has two addresses besides his own: the house next door and a bar with red and green diamond windows. In the adjoining house on Evergreen Terrace live Ned Flanders, his wife Maude until 2000, and two boys raised on evening prayers. Along the counter of Moe's Tavern sit the owner, Barney, and two silhouettes the show has almost never given a line in thirty-five years, Sam and Larry. Around them, the neighbourhood supplies its figures: a divorcée who drives her ex-husband's car, a little old man who claims to be thirty-one, a retirement home resident who spent an episode frozen, a one-armed man who sells army surplus, a lawyer-doctor turned crazy cat lady. Three names close the section separately, and for another reason: Artie Ziff, Jacques and Lurleen Lumpkin are among the temptations of the Homer-Marge marriage, so many chances they had to ruin it. Fourteen entries follow, from the Flanders hedge to Moe's stools, ending with the three encounters that nearly undid Homer and Marge.

The shopkeepers and the faces of everyday life

those who run the till, the kitchen and the local legend

Springfield lives off its businesses, and its shopkeepers are characters in their own right: a convenience store manager with a computing degree behind the till of the Kwik-E-Mart, a seafood restaurateur who lost a lawsuit against Homer's appetite, a comic book seller who fires his sarcasm at his customers over the counter. The show built them by accumulation, often out of a single background shot. Cletus has no name in his first episode; Disco Stu is born from running out of room on a jacket; Captain McCallister comes out of a script written by Conan O'Brien; the Android's Dungeon does not open until season 2. The settings themselves are detailed in the Springfield guide; here, we look only at what stands behind the counter. Jebediah Springfield brings up the rear: he sells nothing, but he is the one who sold the town to its inhabitants.

The police, the mob, the law, the faith and health care

five professions that run Springfield, plus the mayor who referees them

Springfield stays upright thanks to five professions that do not do their job. The police first, with a chief who prefers doughnuts to investigations, a deputy more clear-headed than he is and a second who nods along. Then the mob, set up in plain sight and invited to ribbon-cuttings. Between the two, the mayor, who pockets bribes from one side and gets the other released. The law, where two attorneys turn up in most trials and where the courtroom changes temperament depending on which judge is sitting. The clergy, reduced to a minister who arrived an idealist in the 1970s and had checked out before the end of the 1980s, and to a wife who reminds everyone to think of the children. And medicine, split between a competent practitioner who laughs at the wrong moments and a quack who operates for 129.95 dollars. You will meet them roughly in that order: federal agent Rex Banner drops in among the crooks, and the mayor is the hinge between the mob and the courthouse. The buildings they occupy — police station, church, hospital — are detailed in the Springfield guide, and the town's relationship with faith is told in our article on religion in Springfield.

Krusty the Clown and his galaxy

the Channel 6 clown, his sidekicks and the Itchy & Scratchy studio

Bart does not idolise his father: he idolises a clown drawn from his father. That opening joke alone has produced a whole cluster of supporting characters. Around Krusty orbit a sidekick turned criminal, his replacement on the slide whistle, a smoking monkey, a hidden daughter, a rival puppet and two cartoon animals who have been tearing each other apart on screen since 1988. One long entry for the star, ten short entries for his circle, from the Terwilliger clan to the Itchy & Scratchy studio. We are talking about people here: Krustyland and the Krusty Burger are described in the Springfield guide. Two details have earned their own article, Sideshow Bob's nine rakes, added to fill out an episode that ran short, and Rabbi Krustofsky, the father who disowned his clown son.

The faces of television, sport and science

the celebrities the show manufactured for Springfield

Springfield has its stars, and the show invented them from scratch. A Channel 6 anchor who announces the apocalypse in the same tone as a weather bulletin, an Austrian actor who has been replaying the same muscle-bound cop since 1991, a beer mascot who talks about himself in the third person, a scientist with an IQ of 197 who tinkers with hamburger earmuffs. Several of these figures have a real target: Rush Limbaugh for the radio host, Mike Tyson for the boxer, Evel Knievel for the stuntman, Don King for the promoter, Arnold Schwarzenegger for the action star, Roberto Gómez Bolaños for the bee man. The real stars who came to voice themselves belong to the story of the seasons. Here you will meet only celebrities written by the writers, the ones who fill Springfield's airwaves and the columns of the Springfield Shopper. Fifteen entries, from the television studio to the boxing ring, from the university laboratory to the bridge where Lisa met her role model, a jazz saxophonist.

Those who have left Springfield

the departures, the deaths and the retired roles, with the dates

Thirty-seven seasons and more than eight hundred episodes leave their mark on a cast. Some residents of Springfield have disappeared through a writing choice, others because their actor left, others still because that actor died. For a long time, the show preferred quiet erasure: a character stops appearing, and nobody mentions it. From 1995 onwards it also faced up to on-screen funerals: Bleeding Gums Murphy's that year, Frank Grimes's in 1997, then, in 2000, a whole episode devoted to the neighbourhood's mourning. On the French side, no Springfield resident has ever been retired because of a death: the role is reassigned, and the detail of the handovers is in the dubbing guide. Here is what happened, episode by episode and date by date, to those who have vanished from the show, and to those who come back anyway.

Where their names come from

the streets of Portland, the Groening family and the legends

Matt Groening grew up in Portland, Oregon, and drew Springfield's civil register from two reservoirs: his city's street signs and his own family's address book. The rest comes from the writers, who slipped a classmate, a baseball coach and a friend of John Swartzwelder's into the show. This section sorts it out, because the subject attracts legends: the origin of several names, starting with Sideshow Bob's, circulates in a form that production sources contradict. Eleven headings, then, with what is documented on one side and what remains unverifiable on the other. You will find the anagram hidden behind Bart, the American president lodged in Milhouse's first name, the maiden name of Groening's mother carried by the chief of police, and the inventions of the French version.

Recognising a character at a glance

when you have the detail in mind but not the name

You are not always looking for an entry: you have the detail in mind and not the name. The neighbour who talks like a catechism, the woman who throws her cats at passers-by, the three-eyed fish. The Simpsons characters rest on simple signs — a silhouette, a colour, a verbal tic — which makes them identifiable without the show having to name them. This table therefore starts from the detail rather than the name: the left-hand column gives the distinguishing sign, the middle one the character, the last a pointer to a place or a role. The names are those of the original version; where the French dub departs from it, it is noted in the entries above. If the name rings a bell, the inventory of classic lines extends the exercise on the dialogue side.

Who voices whom

a handful of actors for a whole town

The question comes up as soon as you linger on a supporting character: who lends them their voice? The answer rarely involves a new actor. The table below sets the original voice against the French voice for the most recognisable characters, giving, where the succession is established, the first actor and then the one who took the role over. It draws on the dubbing sheet in the French Wikipedia article "Les Simpson" and on the record kept by the Simpsons Park site. An empty cell is better than an invented name: where no reliable source gives the French voice, the column carries a dash.

📇 The character directory, A to Z

123 entries, one per character — or per pair when the show treats them together. Type the first letters of a name, or filter by circle: each card opens the detailed portrait on the blog.

123 entries shown

We answer your questions