The Simpsons has never taken continuity too seriously, but there are a handful of dead Simpsons characters that the show killed off for good. Over its many years onscreen, The Simpsons has inevitably racked up a few deaths, but the number of recurring characters killed off by the series remains relatively low. Characters like Dr. Nick and Dr. Marvin Monroe have been killed off only to rejoin the show, with future episodes ignoring their death. However, with the extensive ensemble of characters, there have been some recurring characters whose deaths were more final.
The Simpsons doesn’t necessarily shy away from death, as there have been several one-off characters who died on the show, such as The Simpsons‘ tragic figure of Frank Grimes — and, of course, the Treehouse of Horror episodes have featured high body counts outside of the canon of the series. However, when it comes to killing off characters who have appeared several times in the show, The Simpsons has kept it to the smaller supporting characters, meaning that fans may have forgotten who has been killed off over the course of 35 seasons.
Homer’s late long-lost mother Mona, voiced by Glenn Close, provided the show with some of its most moving moments in her handful of appearances. Each time the activist resurfaced, Homer would struggle to accept her into his life and had a hard time trusting she wouldn’t leave again soon, and each time circumstances would soon drive them apart. It’s a surprisingly poignant plot and one that could only last a few revisits, so it’s probably for the best that the series killed off Mona.
She returns to see Homer again in season 19 only for Homer to reject her for also leaving. When he attempts to apologize, he finds that she passed away in her sleep. After treating her environmental activism with more sincerity than the show is usually known for, The Simpsons gave Mona an unusually dignified death as Homer unwittingly used her ashes to thwart Burns’ attempts to dump toxic nuclear waste in the Amazon.
Maybe the most moving death in the history of the series, Bleeding Gums Murphy was a musical mentor and friend to the precocious Lisa. The character was featured in The Simpsons‘ revised opening credits, but his first speaking appearance came way back in the first season. Murphy tutored Lisa in the saxophone and appeared repeatedly throughout the early seasons of the series, popping up as a guest judge for a talent show and a session musician on the charity single “Sending Our Love Down the Well.”
Murphy’s last appearance came when he was killed off in season 6’s “Round Springfield.” After finding Bleeding Gums in the hospital, Lisa is devastated to learn that he died. The episode sees Lisa struggle with losing her idol and trying to cement his legacy. It’s a real tearjerker, where the series handles death with grace and comedic skill.
Despite how long the series has run, The Simpsons has so far only lost one major cast member and addressed the actor’s death in-series. When Troy McClure’s voice actor Phil Hartman died tragically young the series opted not to address his passing, most likely due to the sensitive nature of its circumstances. However, when actor Marcia Wallace died in 2013, The Simpsons opted to retire her character Edna Krabappel.
A chalkboard gag reading “We’ll really miss you Mrs. K,” a black armband for her widower Ned Flanders, and a brief acknowledgment by Nelson and Ned that they miss the character is how the show tastefully handled the loss of an actor who more than earned the Emmy she was awarded for her portrayal as one of the best female characters on The Simpsons.
It’s rare for an offscreen drama to affect the writing of The Simpsons, but even this long-running behemoth can be rewritten due to labor disputes. Maude Flanders’ voice actor Maggie Roswell was on the show since the first season and voiced fan-favorite recurring characters such as Luann Van Houten, Miss Hoover, and, of course, Ned Flanders’ beloved, equally pious wife.
That is until 2000’s “Alone Again, Natura-Diddily,” which saw Maude killed off via t-shirt cannon in a plot many fans found odd and tasteless. Behind the scenes, Maude Flanders was killed in The Simpsons because Roswell demanded a pay raise and the studio refused to remunerate the actor, but ironically, Roswell was rehired only two years later, in 2002. She has remained a pivotal part of the series ever since, despite Maude being a rare Simpsons supporting character who died and stayed dead.
Viewers will probably remember the sour Mrs. Alice Glick as the old lady who underpays Bart for yard work in the classic “Three Men and a Comic Book”. However, the old woman can also be seen selling an original copy of the Declaration of Independence for five cents at the Swap and Meet and, conversely, charging ninety dollars for a candy dish at the Evergreen terrace yard sale.
A woman of contrasts, Glick was killed off in season 23’s “Replaceable You” by a rogue robot seal. This death in The Simpsons is a bizarre one, as Alice Glick has continued to make appearances in the background of some scenes since her death, but hasn’t had a speaking role and has been seen in Heaven, so the old woman is most certainly deceased even if animators are still reusing her likeness. Perhaps it’s just her ghost popping back to Springfield for a visit.
A recurring figure throughout the early seasons of The Simpsons, Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky was the perpetually disappointed father of Krusty the Clown. He was almost a far bigger part of the show until the writers wisely abandoned the twist that Homer is Krusty. Voiced by comedy veteran Jackie Mason, who won an Emmy for his appearance as the character in ‘Like Father, Like Clown’, the Rabbi was a stern but loving figure who initially despaired of his estranged son’s decision to pursue comedy but eventually came around to accepting Krusty.
He was killed off in season 26’s first episode “Clown in the Dumps,” an episode which was heavily promoted around the promise that an important character would be killed off by the season premiere. The fact that it was a character who appeared a handful of times made the reveal feel a little underwhelming, however, though this doesn’t change the fact that his death heavily impacted Krusty’s wider character arc.
Probably the most prolific character on this list, the Joe Mantegna-voiced gangster Fat Tony appeared on the show over fifty times before his untimely demise. He died of a heart attack in Homer’s arms during the season 22 episode “Donnie Fatso,” but before the show could mourn the loss the character was soon replaced by his cousin Fit Tony, also voiced by Mantegna.
In a very Dr. Nick-style fake-out death, the suspiciously similar character took over Fat Tony’s duties, a job which caused him endless stress, causing him to gain weight and become an exact duplicate of Fat Tony. While it technically counts as a character death, it is surprising that The Simpsons has been on the air for so long and has so many characters, yet they are still so hesitant to kill off a minor one.
First appearing in the relatively solid episode “Viva Ned Flanders,” Amber was the thinly-sketched gold digger whom Homer married while drunk in Vegas. She resurfaced later in the series to demand alimony from Homer in a regrettable season 13 installment, only to vanish for five seasons and eventually reappear as the deceased victim of a drug overdose in a season eighteen episode that opens with her funeral.
Amber Simpson might have been the show’s least dignified death. It also doesn’t paint Homer in a very good light, as he has never really taken responsibility for marrying her in the first place, and he shows no sign of remorse or guilt upon learning about her death. Though Homer is meant to be a loveable doofus who gets up to a lot of shenanigans, this was a particularly ugly situation to have him in with an even worse conclusion.
Though some of the deaths on the show have been cheap and gimmicky, The Simpsons managed to kill off a character who has been on the show since season 1, marking the most recent Simpsons character death. Larry was a barfly always seen drinking alongside the others in Moe’s Tavern. While he was present in nearly every scene that took place there, the character rarely actually talked or had any storylines.
However, Larry was given the spotlight in the episode “Cremains of the Day” where he appropriately dies while drinking at the bar. The Simpsons episode where Larry dies doesn’t give much detail about the character after that and focuses more on how his death impacts the others. However, it is revealed at his funeral that Larry considered Homer and the others to be his best friends, much to their surprise.