![]() According to Know Your Meme, the meme gained additional traction as a panel of four images, rather than as a GIF, in 2014 when people used it to roast fair-weather fans who “disappear” when their team is losing, resulting in its inclusion in various lists of the funniest memes about the Super Bowl and the 2014 World Cup. Its profile was raised in 2012 when a Tumblr blog posted a version of the GIF with a blank background that allowed 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 Right Now.”Ī Reddit post from 2014 advertised a “Homer backing into things generator,” hosted on the now-defunct URL “,” 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-fire reaction GIFs are king. ![]() The website Know Your Meme has a useful rundown of how “Homer Simpson Backs Into Bushes” became the all-conquering meme it is today. It reportedly first appeared in 2010 on a site called GIF Garage under the heading “Homer appears, then disappears in bush,” though it doesn’t seem to have caught fire at that point. After a scene of biblical corruption in which Ned tells what might be his first-ever lie to get out of spending more time with his neighbor, Homer says “Oh, okay” in a monotone, then melts, unblinking, back into the bushes.Ī storyboard caption from the episode hints at the desired level of menace: “Never taking his eyes off of Flanders, he back through the hedges.” ![]() It’s a dark episode, even by Simpsons standards, and the moment Homer emerges like a liquid hologram from the bushes marks the exact moment where his behavior goes from overbearing to scary. As Mirkin puts it, “ was always hopeful of being more friendly with Homer, and always trying, and getting his wish and that actually happening turned into his worst possible nightmare.” This led to Homer’s mounting obsession with Flanders, which goes from endearing development (“Nacho, nacho man!”) to surreal nightmare over the course of the episode as Homer’s bone-deep ignorance of common decency and personal space slowly drive Ned to the brink of destruction. ![]() Mirkin wanted to subvert the common sitcom trope of the annoying neighbor who always pops over uninvited and put a twist on it. That idea of hedges as suburban stargates stayed with him until it 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-like neighbor Ned Flanders and, in the process, ruins Flanders’s life. “It was around the time of 2001 too, which was dimension-hopping, stargates, and stuff like that.” “I was incredibly obsessed with all of that,” he recalls. “You can only do it a few times before you leave a hole, and so I did tens of thousands of dollars of damage to people’s hedges I’m sure.”Īs a child, Mirkin - who worked as an electronics engineer before becoming a writer and director - devoured movies, comics, and horror magazines, as well as science-fiction shows like Star Trek, The Outer Limits, and The Twilight Zone. I would pretend that I was dimension-hopping,” Mirkin says. “Him coming through the hedges was based on my childhood behavior of walking through hedges in my neighborhood. 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. But before it appeared on The Simpsons, and long before it 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. If you spend any time online, you’ve seen it: a short GIF of Homer Simpson disappearing backward into a hedge, his eyes wide 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’s like you were never there. From the 1994 Simpsons episode “Homer Loves Flanders.” ![]()
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