Simpsons writer offers answer to massive Homer and Krusty the Clown fan theory

Bill Oakley dug up notes from more than 25 years ago that showed the writers’ intentions for that particular scene

A writer for The Simpsons has offered a potential answer for a scene in the “Who Shot Mr Burns?” episode that has become the subject of huge fan speculation.

Bill Oakley, who has also worked on shows including Futurama and Disenchantment, was responding to a viral post that suggests it was in fact Homer Simpson, disguised as Krusty the Clown, standing in the crowd looking at Mr Burns’s body.

In the two-part episode, Homer had been on his way to murder Mr Burns, but was beaten to the punch by his infant daughter, Maggie, who is ultimately revealed to have shot Mr Burns when he tried to steal her lollipop.

A reddit post circulated on Twitter compares the clown character to how Homer looked when dressing as Krusty in college.

“How the f*** did I never spot this?!” one fan tweeted, in a tweet shared more than 7,000 times.

The theory suggests that Homer had disguised himself as Krusty in a similar way to Sideshow Bob, who did the same when he robbed the Kwik-E-Mart.

However, Oakley tweeted that he believes the scene in the “Who Shot Mr Burns?” episode does not actually show Homer in disguise, pointing out that when he was in the costume, his hair remained the same. In the Mr Burns scene, the clown has Krusty’s usual hairstyle.

“I can certainly imagine a scenario where Homer was mistakenly drawn in the background by one of the overseas studios and we called a re-take to have it fixed and they just kind of re-jiggered the existing art to make Homer into Krusty,” he wrote.

He then found his original notes and commented: “OK I found this on my computer. Haven’t looked at this file in 25 years. (Please note I do NOT think all these appeared in the final show.) But you will see that we specifically ask that Homer should NOT appear in the Final Scene, and we do not ask that he be disguised as Krusty.”

Oakley then suggested that Jeff Lynch, former animator and director for The Simpsons, should be allowed the final say on the matter.

See our ranking of the top 10 Simpsons episodes here.