The obituary for Margaret Groening, mother of The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, has gone viral, revealing a number of key inspirations for the show.
Music publicist Eric Alper shared a newspaper clipping of Groening’s obituary last week – she died on April 22, 2013.
The obituary reveals that Matt Groening’s mother was born Margaret Wiggum, which nods to the name of the chief of police in the show.
This explains a lot for The Simpsons. pic.twitter.com/fEdIJHxlzU
— Eric Alper
(@ThatEricAlper) April 2, 2021
She married her classmate from Linfield College, who was called Homer Groening. The obituary says she married him because “he made her laugh the most”.
Elsewhere, the obituary said Margaret’s older daughter was called Patty – who became one of Marge’s sisters in The Simpsons – and two of Margaret’s children were called Lisa and Maggie.
Elsewhere, The Simpsons has seen a word created in the show officially recognised in the dictionary.
Dictionary.com has acknowledged the use of the word “embiggens”, which was first used in a 1996 episode that saw Lisa distraught after discovering Springfield’s town founder, Jebediah Springfield, was actually a murderous pirate.
Determined to educate residents on the real history of Springfield, Lisa instead ends up upsetting people in town who refuse to acknowledge their praised founder hated townsfolk and was far from perfect.
During her mission, it’s revealed the town’s motto is “a noble spirit embiggens the smallest man”, a word teacher Edna Krabappel says she “had never heard of before” until she moved into town.
It comes after “embiggened” was previously included in the Merriam-Webster dictionary and the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018.
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