The Full-Circle Journey of 'Homer Simpson Backs Into the Bushes'

From the 1994 Simpsons episode "Homer Loves Flanders." Photo: Flim-flam

If you spend any time online, you've seen information technology: a short GIF of Homer Simpson disappearing astern into a hedge, his eyes broad open — a visual "don't mind me." Taken from a 1994 episode of The Simpsons , it's generally used as a reaction to express embarrassment or the desire to disappear from an awkward social interaction, a longing for an exit so seamless that it'southward like you were never there. Merely earlier it appeared on The Simpsons, and long earlier information technology took on its final form as a meme, the concept of inter-hedge travel was just an idea in the head of a sci-fi-obsessed kid running around the suburbs of northeast Philadelphia named David Mirkin.

Mirkin, who was the Simpsons' showrunner when the episode aired and still works on the show today, spoke with Vulture about the meme's origin.

"Him coming through the hedges was based on my childhood behavior of walking through hedges in my neighborhood. I would pretend that I was dimension-hopping," Mirkin says. "You can only practice it a few times before you exit a hole, and so I did tens of thousands of dollars of damage to people's hedges I'm sure."

As a kid, Mirkin — who worked equally an electronics engineer before becoming a writer and manager — devoured movies, comics, and horror magazines, as well as scientific discipline-fiction shows similar Star Trek, The Outer Limits, and The Twilight Zone. "I was incredibly obsessed with all of that," he recalls. "It was around the time of 2001 [A Space Odyssey] likewise, which was dimension-hopping, stargates, and stuff similar that."

That thought of hedges as suburban stargates stayed with him until information technology made its way onto The Simpsons in season five, episode 16, "Homer Loves Flanders," a morally nuanced episode written by David Richardson in which Homer has a sudden desire to befriend his irritatingly Christ-similar neighbour Ned Flanders and, in the process, ruins Flemish region's life.

From the "Homer Loves Flanders" script.

Mirkin wanted to subvert the common sitcom trope of the abrasive neighbor who e'er pops over uninvited and put a twist on it. This led to Homer's mounting obsession with Flemish region, which goes from endearing development ("Nacho, nacho homo!") to surreal nightmare over the grade of the episode as Homer'due south bone-deep ignorance of common decency and personal infinite slowly drive Ned to the brink of destruction. Equally Mirkin puts it, "[Flanders] was always hopeful of existence more than friendly with Homer, and always trying, and getting his wish and that actually happening turned into his worst possible nightmare."

It'due south a night episode, even by Simpsons standards, and the moment Homer emerges similar a liquid hologram from the bushes marks the exact moment where his behavior goes from overbearing to scary. After a scene of biblical corruption in which Ned tells what might be his first-e'er lie to go out of spending more time with his neighbour, Homer says "Oh, okay" in a monotone, so melts, unblinking, dorsum into the bushes.

From the "Homer Loves Flanders" script.

Mirkin says he pushed animation manager Wes Archer and his team to brand the motion as smooth and slow as possible for maximum unsettling issue, and he attributes the meme'due south popularity largely to the striking, uncanny quality that their meticulous work achieved. "I'm really proud of information technology because I had to take the animators do that motion — both coming out and going back in — almost five times to become it wearisome enough and detailed enough so that it felt right to me, because I wanted it to exist a kind of a magical, creepy thing," he recalls.

Indeed, the move is distinctly unlike Homer — smooth and disturbingly effortless rather than clumsy – resulting in something forth the lines of Homer Simpson, Transdimensional Hedge-Monster.

A storyboard caption from the episode hints at the desired level of menace: "Never taking his eyes off of Flanders, he back through the hedges."

The website Know Your Meme has a useful rundown of how "Homer Simpson Backs Into Bushes" became the all-acquisition meme it is today. Information technology reportedly showtime appeared in 2010 on a site called GIF Garage under the heading "Homer appears, so disappears in bush," though it doesn't seem to have caught fire at that point. Its profile was raised in 2012 when a Tumblr blog posted a version of the GIF with a bare groundwork that immune users to replace the hedge with other images, spawning remixes like Homer backing into a wall of pizza, which resulted in a post on Uproxx titled "Homer Backs Into Things Is The GIF Theme We Need Correct At present."

A Reddit postal service from 2022 advertised a "Homer backing into things generator," hosted on the at present-defunct URL "HomerBacksIntoThings.com," encouraging Redditors to make new versions of the meme, resulting in further media coverage. Once it hit the mainstream, the meme mushroomed on Twitter, where quick-burn down reaction GIFs are king. According to Know Your Meme, the meme gained additional traction every bit a panel of 4 images, rather than as a GIF, in 2022 when people used it to roast off-white-weather fans who "disappear" when their team is losing, resulting in its inclusion in diverse lists of the funniest memes about the Super Bowl and the 2022 World Loving cup.

There are many other highly popular Simpsons memes (Grandpa Simpson's "Nothing To Run across Here," Lisa giving a presentation, and that evergreen plea for online mercy: "Finish! He's already dead!"), but "Homer Backs Into the Bushes" remains the most ubiquitous. It's even inspired a browser game called Hide Homer.

It'south the nature of memes to be shorn of their original context and used as emotional autograph, oftentimes with no regard for their original meaning. As Mirkin points out, the Homer meme is no exception. "What's really interesting is the meme really has null to practise with the way it was used in the prove, because it'south non a retreat or an embarrassment, as information technology's used — information technology was actually but an ominous, threatening wait and a very weird backing upward while never breaking eye contact with Flanders," he says. "So it's great the way it'due south been changed, merely it'southward not the original intention." He notes that while people accept reinterpreted Homer's expression as one of shame, "it'due south a creepy stalker energy instead of an embarrassed, retreating free energy."

Mirkin adds that some other common misconception about the sequence is that people frequently think it's a Terminator 2 reference, which, he concedes, is an easy mistake to make considering the near shot-for-shot Terminator homage that immediately follows, in which Homer robotically chases down Ned's sputtering Geo as the Flanders family desperately tries to escape his affections.

At this point the meme has get so well-known that it's even been referenced on The Simpsons itself, making it that rare unit of entertainment matter that makes the orbital journey from TV to cultural absorption and back once again to its original medium.

It was Cesar Mazariegos, a new Simpsons hire and one of the youngest writers in the room, who pitched the idea of Homer texting his ain meme in the season 30 episode, "The Daughter on the Bus." Mazariegos, who previously created the comedy Loftier & Mighty , says that it may in fact have been his first joke that made it onto The Simpsons.

"I was make new. It was literally my first week," he says, explaining that he pitched the thought at a screening of the episode'due south animatic (essentially a crude cut). The episode had been written before he joined the writing staff, and when producer Al Jean and the writers decided that a scene in which Homer texts Lisa "needed a popular" at the end, he tossed out the idea and information technology got a laugh.

The internet loved the reference-within-a-reference, and even Time magazine covered the rare instance of the Simpsons universe folding in on itself. Mazariegos was stunned by the reaction.

"I'm showing it to my wife like, 'Yo check this out, I pitched this similar my first week there!'" he remembers, calling the positive response "a pretty fun, cool way to get welcomed into the Simpsons fold." Like almost of the meme's users, Mazariegos grew up watching The Simpsons, taping it on a VCR to watch over and over. "So when I saw it as a meme, of course it went into my phone," he recalls. He agrees that the meme'due south popularity is down to the quality of the animation every bit well as the meme'southward versatility. "Information technology's the perfect button to, you know — you're having a conversation and information technology'south a TMI moment or similar an 'I don't need to be here' moment. It fits into whatever people are trying to say in that moment."

As far as Mazariegos knows, this is the first fourth dimension The Simpsons has referenced a Simpsons meme on the show, at least so explicitly. As for meme civilisation, he drew an analogy with early New York Metropolis rap.

"These GIFs are kind of similar sampling — piddling snippets, removed from their original context and repurposed into a whole new creative affair," he says. "You lot can hate on it or you can embrace it, and I think information technology's absurd that the show gave a fiddling wink and embraced information technology."

After xxx years and going on 700 episodes, The Simpsons has put so many jokes and ideas into the ether that it seems inevitable that some would mutate and chimera back upwardly in unexpected ways, including as memes.

"Information technology'southward a slap-up compliment," says Mirkin of the cultural feedback loop The Simpsons has created. "It'due south one of the greatest gifts you can accept as a writer, because yous go, 'Oh yeah, that made an affect — that hit people in the imagination' … We're always thrilled with that, and information technology actually is the goal to get every bit much of your stuff out in that location into the culture as you perhaps can, considering it's guaranteed that you will live forever when that happens and never die."

Though it's been decades since Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" for ideas and cultural artifacts that propagate themselves by "leaping from brain to brain," exactly how memes work is a bit of a mystery.

Nosotros all know what a meme is, only equally for how and why some become part of the vernacular while near blink out of existence almost immediately, that's nonetheless anyone'south gauge. Memes remain more abracadabra than science.

Mirkin, whose other work has included Romy and Michele'southward High Schoolhouse Reunion and the surreal sitcom Get a Life, says he'south always looking "for images and moments that you haven't seen before," and that impulse toward novelty may be the most anyone tin can exercise to create something enduring. After that, the civilisation takes over. Make it weird and unlike enough — like Homer teleporting through a hedge — and maybe it'll stick.

"And so if you're likewise lucky that it has some sort of art to it, some sort of look that is hitting in add-on to being something you haven't seen before, yous have some sort of a chance that it'll hit people but right," he says.

But, he adds, there's still a lot of luck involved.

"The timing has to be right, and information technology's impossible to ever guess what the public volition be super excited well-nigh and what, no thing how excited yous are, they're going to completely ignore or hate. That'southward part of the fun of information technology."

"Information technology really is a roulette bicycle, and you're simply happy when something works. "

The Full-Circle Journey of 'Homer Backs Into the Bushes'