There’s a rather popular Simpsons “character” making the rounds on the internet again, and it has people questioning whether or not this entity actually exists. This character is being referred to as Graggle Simpson (or Gumbly) and is apparently the sixth human member of the iconic cartoon family.
Graggle Simpson is an internet hoax, but a very convincing one to say the least. There have been a handful of high-quality photoshops of screenshots from older Simpsons episodes where Gumbly has been added into the mix. They seemed to conveniently appear when the show had a different look in the 80s and 90s compared to the current day.
They always appear naked, akin to other older pop-culture figures like Crazy Frog (without the exposed genitalia). Apparently, the creator of the Simpsons, Matt Groening, created this character because he wanted to “insert himself into the series”. It’s “how he saw himself” according to Gumbly believers. These preposterous claims are not actually true, however.
This isn’t the first instance where the hoax has been circulating the internet. It originally started around 2015 when an anonymous user went onto 2chan to insert this character into the iconic couch photo.
Gumbly/Graggle Simpson’s appearance is what many would categorize as provoking the Mandela Effect. Many Americans grew up watching The Simpsons and have most likely grown out from watching newer episodes with the rise of the internet. This, however, can quickly and probably was debunked while many others were being gaslit into thinking this character existed.
In more recent times, Morbius memes were flooding the internet seemingly out of nowhere. There was no way you could safely browse Twitter or Instagram without someone proudly declaring themselves as a “Morbhead” and saying other humorous things like “it’s Morbin’ time” among other references to the recently released movie, Morbius.
This meme, in particular, was harder to disprove because the movie only became available to be consumed outside of theaters recently. Every edgy person who likes to get involved in meme culture was convincing the general public that Jared Leto’s character actually did say the viral “it’s Morbin’ time” line. To save you nearly two hours, he does not actually say the line.
If there’s any takeaway from this, you must do your due diligence and make sure not to take everything you see on the internet, especially hot out of social media, at face value. Question everything, because many fabricated things like this, albeit quite humorous, can easily be misconstrued.
