Entertainment
‘Good Moleman to you’: Beloved The Simpsons character Hans Moleman turns 100
Happy birthday to Moleman! (Picture: Fox)
Dust off your potatoes and start kissing the peanuts, people, for beloved The Simpsons character Hans Moleman has celebrated his 100th birthday this week.
From being THE Man Getting Hit By Football to the giant machete knife that sent him toppling, the delightful Centenarian has been a staple of the show since his introduction in season two.
In his first appearance as Hans Moleman – he was first called Ralph Melish – in episode Principal Charming, he was branded ‘Kindly Old Gent’ according to a screengrab of a script where we saw him struggling with the eye chart at the DMV before Patty and Selma Bouvier revoked his license (don’t worry, we see him driving many more times during the series).
It’s said an internal Simpsons memo from the time, dear Moleman was referred to as the ‘potato-looking man’ before receiving his German-esque moniker, while in another episode Homer becomes enamoured with the fella and starts planting kisses on his head because ‘it’s like kissing a peanut’.
According to a screengrab of his ID that featured in one of the episodes, ol’ Moleman was born on August 2, 1921.
Fans paid tribute to the unsinkable character, with his feeble voice and unsteady feet, with one musing on Twitter: ‘Hans Moleman turns 100 today.
What a time to be alive (Picture: Fox)
‘He sure has a lot in those years, mainly a lot of deaths and injuries.’
Another added the inevitable (should Moleman be a Commonwealth citizen…): ‘HANS MOLEMAN WILL BE RECEIVING A LETTER FROM THE QUEEN ON THIS DAY.’
Also, because we’re in the mood to celebrate birthdays, it’s also Brian McGee’s day of days.
Who is Brian McGee, you ask? Why, Brian McGee is the name on Homer’s fake ID in season four episode Duffless, as the lead character recalled buying his first beer. The birthdate marked on it is August 2, 1948, making Brian McGee 73 (Homer is 65).
Homer emotionally sang at the time: ‘When I was seventeen, I drank some very good beer, I drank some very good beer I purchased with a fake ID. My name was Brian McGee, I stayed up listenin’ to Queen. When I was seventeen.’
Now we’re celebrating these birthdays as they appear in the Simpsons canon, but as it’s become clear lately the canon is a little more fluid than we once thought – with producer Matt Selman recently insisting the backstories of main characters can ebb and flow as the storyline requires.
Recently fans hit out at Homer growing up in the 90s, despite his ID stating he was born in the 50s. While a recent interview from Selman shared an upcoming storyline that will feature Marge reminiscing about running a school play around the Y2K bug, which was around the turn of the millennium.
He wrote on Twitter in March: ‘Continuity Alert: Sunday’s @TheSimpsons playfully re-interprets the show’s timeline to allow Homer to be a teenager in the early ‘90s.
‘The Simpsons is a 32-year-old series where the characters do not age, so the “canon” must be elastic / contradictory / silly.
‘This does not mean other beloved classic @TheSimpsons flashback shows didn’t happen. None of this happened. It’s all made up. Every episode is its own Groundhog Day that only has [to] make sense for that story (if that).’
He added: ‘There is no @TheSimpsons “canon” or “non-canon.” There are only stories. If all these crazy things really happened to one family the characters would be in a mental hospital.’
The Simpsons is available to stream on Disney Plus.
MORE : The Simpsons messes with beloved timeline again as show suggests Marge attended high school in 2000
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