Culture

Someone Invented A ‘Simpsons’ Character Just To Troll ‘Mandela Effect’ Believers

"The fact that people don’t remember Graggle Simpson's existence is baffling."

by Charles Rushforth  1 June 2022

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Another day, another berserk internet theory arises which threatens to displace cherished memories of a cultural icon.

People who make cartoons have it tough. Because of the nature of the medium, beloved characters that professional writers and animators spend decades creating can be convincingly modified by anyone with a basic understanding of Photoshop.

The cost of unofficial user content? Let’s just say I can’t remember Sonic The Hedgehog without additionally recalling some very cursed DeviantArt material that I accidentally stumbled onto when I was fourteen.

Recently, a popular internet conspiracy theory has embraced and championed a cartoon character that may have never existed in the first place, to the chagrin of its cartoon fanbase.

I present to you, Graggle Simpson, brought to you by internet trolls and ‘the Mandela effect’.

In case you’re unaware, ‘‘the Mandela effect‘ was named after a widespread phenomenon where people misremembered South African civil rights activist Nelson Mandela having died in the 1980s.

Rather than accepting that they were simply wrong, believers of the ‘Mandela effect’ say we’ve slipped into a parallel reality in which he didn’t die until 2013.

Many examples of these supposed temporal junctions appear in cartoons, like the show Looney Tunes — which many fervently remember as Looney Toons — or the children’s show Curious George titular monkey never actually having a tail.

The latest character in this conspiracy theory is none other than Graggle Simpson, the infamous round-headed character from The Simpsons.

What? You don’t remember Graggle Simpson?! Please take another look!

Here he is again in beloved Simpson’s video game, The Simpsons: Hit And Run.

If you can’t recall Graggle appearing across the breadth of The Simpsons’ 33 seasons, you’re not alone. Many have accused Graggle of simply being a deep fake, conjured up for the sake of trolling Mandela effect believers into accepting this strange naked humanoid into their flock.

As Graggle revisionists fight to have their timeline recognised, many admins of Simpsons meme pages have become annoyed at the efforts of the community to prove this existence, banning any reference to the little scene-stealer.

In response, an official Graggle subreddit has been created dedicated to sharing the character’s best quips and appearances, providing a forum for people to share their experience of crippling cognitive dissonance over the character’s absence from our world.

Graggle truthers will not be appeased until the writers of The Simpsons re-adopt the character back into this timeline’s canon, which could be underway if this promotional picture for Season 34 is real. (It is definitely not.)