Abraham Simpson
- "Abraham" redirects here. For other uses of "Abraham", see Abraham (disambiguation).
- "Ahh!"
- ―Grampa's catchphrase
Abraham Jay Simpson II
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Character Information
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Abraham "Abe" Jay[4] Simpson II, usually referred to as Grampa Simpson or simply Grampa, is the patriarch of the Simpson family, the father of Homer Simpson, Herbert Powell, and Abbey and the paternal grandfather of Bart, Lisa, and Maggie Simpson. Abe is a World War II veteran later sent to the Springfield Retirement Castle by Homer. He is known for his long, rambling, and often inaccurate stories and general incompetence.
Biography
Almost all of Grampa's biographical information is supplied by himself. Many of his stories seem to be wildly inaccurate, often physically or historically impossible, and occasionally inconsistent even with each other, suggesting Abe is senile. (Though his reaction to Bart's reaction to one of his stories implies he is aware he is being inconsistent.) As such, all information provided is taken with a grain of salt. He is a member of the Stonecutters, masons, communists, as well as being president of the gay and lesbian party for some reason. Additionally, he suffers from sporadic narcoleptic attacks.
History
Childhood
Abraham Jedediah Simpson, perennially known as "Grampa" Simpson, was born in the "Old Country"; he apparently does not remember which country exactly. Most likely it was Canada, as that is where his great-great-grandparents immigrated in 1860 to avoid being arrested for helping a slave (his great-great-grandfather, to be precise) escape. Otherwise, the country could have been Ireland or Scotland. Abe claims, when he was a young boy, he immigrated to America with his parents, and moved into the Statue of Liberty. For a few years they lived here, but they were forced to move out when they filled the head with too much garbage.[5] He also says he served in the first World War and had to lie about his age, being around five at the time.[6] He worked as a shoeshine boy at Springfield Union Station, and claims a not-yet-famous Clark Gable was one of his customers, whom he gave his copy of Gone With the Wind.[7]
Life in the army
In the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Abe was participating in the javelin event. His throw nearly hit Hitler, watching in the stands. Luckily, (for Hitler) it missed and hit the man about to assassinate him. At a later date, Grampa claimed he and Hitler laughed about it.[8]
Abe's recollections of his World War II experiences are sometimes implausible. Abe was not initially keen to fight in Europe. After the United States declared war, he supposedly tried to avoid service by dressing in drag and playing for a women's baseball team in 1942, which kept him from serving for a year before he was eventually discovered.[9] Later on, he and his unit served in The Battle of the Bulge, where he nearly succeeded in assassinating Hitler (though Montgomery Burns thwarted it at the last moment). Almost a year later, they invade an abandoned castle owned by the Nazis and flushed the Nazis out, though Montgomery tries to remove some paintings. Although he opposed the decision, and was morally against the idea, he ended up deciding to let Burns do it, though only so he might have a nest-egg after retirement. After "liberating" a stash of priceless art from the Nazis, Abe's unit (the Flying Hellfish) formed a tontine, and buried the art in a trunk at sea. Decades later, Charles Montgomery Burns tried to murder Abe in order to get the art, prompting Abe to violate the tontine. When Abe and Bart retrieve the art from Burns after a spectacular confrontation, the State Department arrives to give the art to their "rightful" owner, Baron von Wörtzenburger, a snooty young German aristocrat (this part implies this did actually happen).
Abe fathered an illegitimate daughter in the United Kingdom the day before he joined the D-Day operations in Normandy. Years later, Abe and his family met his daughter, lending further credence to the idea he served in Europe. Moreover, he once showed Bart and Lisa an album with photos of Germans killed by his platoon. He was also awarded the Iron Cross for accidentally directing U.S. jeeps into Nazi minefields. Another piece of information to support this idea is the fact he visited O'Flanagan's Pub in Ireland a long time ago in his WWII sergeant's uniform.[10] Abe once dressed as a woman dancer in disguise and made sexual motions toward Adolf Hitler, but when he leaned in, one of the fruits in his bra fell on the stage and Adolf Hitler gagged.
Abe also claims to have served in the Navy during World War II. He served as a pilot on an aircraft carrier with his brother, Cyrus, and Montgomery Burns.[11] He also served on a destroyer called the USS World War One during World War II. The USS World War One was sunk by a heat seeking torpedo they fired the other day. After the ship sunk, Abe and his fellow sailors rode on the back of sharks to avoid being eaten by them and had them swim in formation to spell a rescue message. It is also implied they tamed and befriended the sharks in question as a result.[7]
Abraham also says he served on PT boat 109, where he heard John F. Kennedy speaking in German ("Ich bin ein Berliner"). Abe proclaimed Kennedy was a Nazi and he and the fellow sailors tackled Kennedy.[12]
He boasts of having been a watchman at Pearl Harbor (falling asleep on duty), and claims President Grover Cleveland spanked him on two nonconsecutive occasions.[13] Also, in 1947, he met future Itchy creator and bum Chester J. Lampwick, and he offered him a plate of corn muffins under the condition Lampwick paint his chicken coop. However, he never did, resulting in Abe carrying a grudge against him for many years. Lampwick later revealed this was because the corn muffins were "lousy."[14]
Life in the air force
In the 1950s, Abe joined the air force. Here, he met his future wife, Mona, a cocktail waitress at the main diner near the base, where she was known as Sunny. Abe fell in love with Mona, but wasn't brave enough to attract her attention, so he stopped his regular maintenance job and took a supersonic flight that nearly killed him, but won Mona over.[15]
Fatherhood
Afterwards, he went to the carnival, and encountered a prostitute, thus resulting in the procreation of his illegitimate son, Herb Powell. He married Mona and, after having a bit of his tonic with her, they made love and accidentally procreated Homer Simpson. Mona, shortly after Homer's birth, made Abe swear not to tell Homer he has a half brother. He continued to use the Simpson farm until the bank foreclosed the farm due to the cows producing sour milk, theorizing something must have spooked them good. (Unknown to Abe, the reason why the cows were spooked was Homer traumatized them by running around and yelling at them.) When Homer aspired to become President of the United States (more specifically President Kennedy), Abe beat Homer down for thinking Homer even had a chance of becoming President.[16] After moving from the farm, they settled in an apartment, and watched the third Super Bowl, which indirectly made him responsible for his wife becoming a hippie. He was dragged to Woodstock, and after scolding Homer for emulating the hippie lifestyle, attempted to send him off to the Vietnam War. After Mona was forced to run away from home after destroying Mr. Burns's Germ Warfare Lab, he lied to Homer by claiming Mona died when he was at the movies.[17]
He started work at Spiro's and wrote songs. Rita LaFleur heard his songs, liked them, she started singing his songs, and they married. When Rita was going to go on a tour of Europe, Abe stayed in the U.S. to raise Homer.[18]
Rise to fame
The whole family went on a visit to Wet 'N' Wacky World. When the rest of the family were watching Slimu, Grampa stayed on a shark bench and recalled how he once rode a shark. Then a newspaper columnist named Marshall Goldman turned up, and was interested in his stories. Soon the whole of Springfield was reading them. Despite being offered a chance for Mitch Albom to write about him, Grampa sticks with Marshall, constantly with him writing what he says. Homer comes to visit his father, but Abe rejects him. While Homer is submitting a column to the shopper about Mr. Burns (who Homer uses as an adoptive father to get back at Abe), he sneaks into Marshall's office, and finds out Marshall is planning to kill Abe at precisely 3pm on the Tinseltown Starliner, and even has the article and award application ready. Meanwhile at Springfield Union Station, Abe is aboard the train with Marshall, and despite Homer's many attempts to warn him, Abe has no idea because of hearing problems. When he is sleeping, Marshall is just about to suffocate him when Homer jumps aboard and stops him, not expecting Marshall to pull out a knife, and retrieve a gun form the pillow. They both wrestle for control of the gun when Abe gets up and hits Marshall on the head with a bottle, but this has no effect. When putting his hands up to surrender, he grabs the trains emergency brake lever, which sends Marshall flying back and causes him to be crushed by luggage. Both Homer and Grampa embrace, and the family is back together. In the end Abe decides to let Homer tell the story of how he saved Homer's life (his first ramble) and Homer ends up talking about Godzilla and The Rolling Stones.[7] Abe also showed he is good at sporting activities even though he is old, winning the Senior Olympics.[8]
Life today
Due to his apparent senility, Abe is often ignored by Homer and other family members, and is alternatively content with this, resentful of this, or completely unaware of his being ignored. Abe is very friendly with Jasper and the Jewish Old Man. Like Hans Moleman, Abe often appears in recurring gags. He is also very unlucky and forgetful at times sometimes forgetting where he lives or where his son lives. Abe also had a number of affairs, most notably with Beatrice Simmons, who died and left Abe an inheritance of $106,000. He also had an affair with Jackie Bouvier [Marge's mother], who broke up with him after she was wooed by Mr. Burns.[19] He was also briefly married to Marge's sister Selma.[20] Abe also acted as a good father to Homer at times and also acted as a good grandfather to Bart and Lisa. However, he does not like cheekiness from Homer, Bart, or Lisa. He also demands to be treated right and he reckons he is just as important as the others.
An actor played Abraham Simpson in the film Bart's Not Dead.[21]
Occupations
For forty years, Abe worked as a security guard at a cranberry silo.[22] Within his elderly years, he was a Wal-Mart greeter, a cartoon writer, and a traveling salesman of an aphrodisiac.
Relationships
Homer
Abe was not a particularly caring father to Homer, as evidenced at one point when he tells his son, "Homer, you're dumb as a mule and twice as ugly. If a strange man offers you a ride, I say take it!" Homer does not normally appear to resent these casual abuses, though in one episode Abe calls Homer an accident, years of pent up anger on Homer's part leads to a temporary estrangement. Homer also takes every opportunity to ignore or reject his father, whom he placed in a dilapidated retirement home. Abe held a variety of postwar jobs, including a farmer in Homer's early childhood until the bank foreclosed. Abe was also a watchman at a cranberry silo for forty years. He spent most of this time living in a house he won on a crooked 1950s game show until he sold it to help Homer buy a house for his family. Abe moved in with the family, but was sent to a retirement home some three weeks later. Abe was also angered about Homer's role in ensuring the Trappuccino incident, yelling "I'm part of the mob!" when Homer inquired on his safety.
Other family
Abraham Simpson is the estranged husband to Mona Simpson, father to Homer Simpson, father-in-law to Marge Simpson and grandfather to siblings Bart, Lisa and Maggie. He also fathered two illegitimate children; a daughter named Abbey by a British lady named Edwina while in England during World War II and Herbert Powell with a carnival hooker. He was briefly married to Amber, the same woman Homer married on a Vegas binge. Also in The Simpsons Uncensored Family Album, the family tree shows his parents' names to be Orville Simpson and Yuma Hickman. Abe's brother, Cyrus lives in Tahiti with multiple wives.
Mona
He was married for several years to Mona, who became entranced with the hippie lifestyle after watching Joe Namath on TV. She became a fugitive from justice after she abetted in the sabotage of a biological weapons research lab owned by Montgomery Burns. Abe had no interest in this, instead focusing on the TV. Abe tells a six-year-old Homer Mona died while Homer was at the movies. Abe would point out her supposed grave (which actually belonged to Walt Whitman) every time the family drove past it. However, after Homer went to the Springfield Hall of Records to prove he was still alive (after faking his death in order to avoid having work on Saturday), he learnt from the record that his mother was still alive.
Personality
Grampa Simpson is an old, grizzled, periodically incontinent and quite senile man, who lives in the Springfield Retirement Castle; a sad, lonely place filled with demented, crippled and depressed old people (a sign near the entrance says "Thank you for not discussing the outside world"). Abe also informs Lisa residents are not allowed to read newspapers because "they angry up the blood". His closest friend appears to be Jasper, a fellow Retirement Castle resident.
He spends a good deal of his time writing letters of complaint on his old-fashioned typewriter. He once wrote to the President, complaining there were too many states, and requesting they get rid of three of them (simultaneously insisting he was "not a crackpot"). He also wrote to "the sickos at Modern Bride Magazine" about his disgust at not seeing "one wrinkled face" or "a single toothless grin" in the publication. He also owns a 49-star American flag, because of his undefined hatred of the state of Missouri: "I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missoura."
He also is soundly rooted in his antiquated ways: "The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it." Like many of his fellow Retirement Castle residents, Abe is a devoted follower of Matlock. He even supports tearing down the Simpsons' house in order to complete construction of the proposed "Matlock Expressway". He seems to believe Matlock is a real person, suggesting they call him in to solve real-life crimes: "I say we call Matlock. He'll find the culprit. It's probably that evil Gavin MacLeod or George "Goober" Lindsey." During a Matlock public appearance, Abe and Jasper swipe Matlock's pills, needed to prevent him from having a spastic heart failure. Once, reflecting on his lifetime, he lamented it as terribly boring and full of unruly teenagers, but decided it was alright because "we did have two shows with Andy Griffith." He joins the mob when it was revealed Homer contaminated Lake Springfield and barely refrained from killing Marge, Lisa and Bart with a shotgun.
Grampa also had a habit of telling stories about his past though a lot of the time these stories didn't really happen. Presumably his senility caused him to think he really did have these experiences; alternatively he could have simply been lying about them. However at least one of his stories was true; the one about the Flying Hellfish.
Non-canon
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The contents of this article or section are considered to be non-canon and therefore may not have actually happened or existed. |
Treehouse of Horror
In "Treehouse of Horror IV", in the section Bart Simpson's Dracula, the Simpsons have to kill the head vampire. The Simpsons are eating dinner and Lisa finds out her whole family are vampires, including Grampa, who pretends to be the head vampire when in reality Marge is. Lisa mistakenly killed Burns but she should've killed Marge. The Simpsons say Happy Halloween while going through a Charlie Brown Christmas Special ending parody.
The Simpsons Game
He first appears in the level Mob Rules as one of the people Marge can bring into her mob to protest the sale of the Grand Theft Scratchy video game to minors. His younger self appears in Medal of Homer to give Bart and Homer orders as for what to do in each of its three missions.
The Simpsons: Tapped Out
Grampa
- This section is transcluded from The Simpsons: Tapped Out characters/Simpsons. To edit it, please edit the transcluded page.
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10,000
5
Costumes
Standalone
Behind the Laughter
Creation
Groening famously named the five main Simpson characters after members of his own family: his parents, Homer and Marge (or Marjorie in full), and his younger sisters, Lisa and Margaret (Maggie). Claiming it was a bit too obvious to name a character after himself, he chose the name "Bart," an anagram of brat.[23][24] When it came time to give Grampa Simpson a first name, Groening says he refused to name him after his own grandfather, Abram Groening, leaving it to other writers to choose a name. By coincidence, the writers went with Abraham, shortened to Abe, because in the Season 2 episode "Old Money" they wanted his name to be similar to his new girlfriend Bea unaware Groening's grandfather was named Abram Groening.[25]
Foreign dubs
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Appearances
References
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Wikisimpsons has a collection of images related to Abraham Simpson. |
- ↑ "Million-Dollar Abie"
- ↑ "Havana Wild Weekend"
- ↑ "Grampy Can Ya Hear Me"
- ↑ "Wedding for Disaster"
- ↑ "Much Apu About Nothing"
- ↑ "Special Edna"
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "Thursdays with Abie"
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Moe'N'a Lisa"
- ↑ "Marge and Homer Turn a Couple Play"
- ↑ "In the Name of the Grandfather"
- ↑ "Simpsons Christmas Stories"
- ↑ "Simpson Tide"
- ↑ "Two Bad Neighbors"
- ↑ "The Day the Violence Died"
- ↑ "Let's Go Fly a Coot"
- ↑ "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy"
- ↑ "Mother Simpson"
- ↑ "Gone Abie Gone"
- ↑ "Lady Bouvier's Lover"
- ↑ "Rome-Old and Juli-Eh"
- ↑ "Bart's Not Dead"
- ↑ "The Front"
- ↑ BBC. (2000). The Simpsons: America's First Family (6 minute edit for the season 1 DVD) (DVD). UK: 20th Century Fox.
- ↑ Duncan, Andrew (September 18–24, 1999). Matt Groening. Radio Times. Retrieved on September 19, 2007.
- ↑ Groening, Matt. (2002). The Simpsons season 2 DVD commentary for the episode "Old Money" [DVD]. 20th Century Fox.
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