| The Simpsons character | |
| Grampa Abraham Simpson | |
| Gender | Male |
|---|---|
| Job | World War II veteran |
| Relatives | Children: Homer, Herb Powell and Abby Grandchildren: Bart, Lisa and Maggie Wife: Mona (deceased) Ex-Wives: Amber (deceased), Selma Bouvier Sibling: Cyrus (See also Simpson family) |
| Voice actor | Dan Castellaneta |
| First appearance | |
| Ullman shorts | "Grampa and the Kids" |
| The Simpsons | "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" |
Sgt. Abraham J. Simpson (voiced by Dan Castellaneta), commonly called Abe Simpson or Grampa, is a fictional character featured in the animated cartoon television series The Simpsons. He is the patriarch of the Simpson family, the father of Homer Simpson, and the grandfather of Bart, Lisa, and Maggie Simpson. In the 1000th issue of Entertainment Weekly, Abe Simpson was selected as the Grandpa for "The Perfect TV Family."[1]
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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 that Abe is quite senile. As such, all information provided is taken with a grain of salt. Additionally, he suffers from narcolepsy.
Abraham J. Simpson, known as "Grampa" Simpson, was born in the "Old Country"; he apparently does not remember which country exactly, however, a flashback to his childhood in Much Apu About Nothing recalls a story by his father, who appears to have an accent of the British Isles. In the episode "Million Dollar Abie", he claims to be 83 years old, although he is sometimes described as older. He boasts of having been a watchman at Pearl Harbor, and claims that President Grover Cleveland spanked him on two nonconsecutive occasions. He also claimed to have been voted the best looking man in Albany, New York, before his good looks failed him, making him a possible resident of New York state in his youth. He also has claimed to have "taken a shot" at President Theodore Roosevelt.
Abe claims to be a veteran of World War I, having joined the army at a very young age by lying about it, although little is known about his supposed, if implausible, experiences in the conflict. Moreover, Abe's recollections of his later experiences in World War II are also sometimes implausible, even though he certainly did fight in it. 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. At the very end of war in Europe, Abe's unit "liberated" a stash of priceless art from surrendering German forces. Abe's unit, the Flying Hellfish, formed a tontine, and buried the art in a trunk at sea. Decades later, Montgomery Burns, then second surviving member of the unit, 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, a snooty young German aristocrat. In other episodes he claims to have served on PT-109 with John F. Kennedy and as a naval aviator. He also claims to have spent a period behind German lines during the war, performing in drag for Nazi officers. Abe claims to have attempted to kill Adolf Hitler on two occasions, one when he threw a javelin at him in the 1936 Summer Olympics, which actually hit an assassin, and once when he attempted to shoot him with a sniper rifle, missing only by inches (the bullet making his hat spin) because of a young Mr. Burns hitting him with a tennis ball.
Abe fathered an illegitimate daughter in the United Kingdom the day before he joined the D-Day operations in Normandy. This daughter is seen in the same episode lending further credence to the idea that 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 and tanks into Nazi minefields and off of cliffs.
Abe was not a particularly caring father to Homer, as evidenced at one point in Homer's early childhood when Abe stops his wife Mona Simpson as she talks to him about how cute Homer is so he can listen to the Super Bowl. He also once 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 in which 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 about three weeks later. In "Barting Over," Homer claims that he sent his father to a cheap retirement home to retaliate for being mistreated by him. In "Homer Simpson in: 'Kidney Trouble'" Homer ignores the fact that Abe needs to use the restroom causing Abe's kidneys to explode and later flees twice just before he is to donate one of his kidneys to replace his father's. There are also several bits of proof that Abe used to strangle Homer in a way similar to the way Homer strangles Bart, crying "Why you little!" and grasping him by the neck. In fact this may have inspired Homer's way of strangling Bart, as can be seen by comparing the two methods. Despite their tumultuous relationship, Abe and Homer have had emotional bonding moments characteristic of a father-son relationship. Abe used to read bedtime stories to child Homer (though he skipped large portions of them unbeknownst to Homer). In Homer's flashbacks in "Homer's Paternity Coot," it is shown that Abe enjoyed playing with child Homer, showed much appreciation for a picture teenage Homer drew of him even though it was messy, and gave grown Homer money for marriage (though the money was quickly stolen by a bird, leading Abe to say sadly, "I gave you all I had, and it still wasn't enough.") The memory convinces Homer to show greater love and spend more time with his father, and they share an loving hug later. Despite many arguments over the years, Abe genuinely loves Homer and would give everything he has to help him.
He took a job as the Sprawl-Mart greeter in the Season 15 episode The Fat and the Furriest, but then lost it in On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister.
Also, in "That 90's Show," Abraham Simpson owned a laser tag warehouse.
Abraham Simpson is 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 Abbie by a British woman 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 drinking binge in Vegas. 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 appeared in the Simpsons Christmas Stories episode. Cyrus lives in Tahiti with multiple native wives.
He was married for several years to Mona, who became entranced with the hippie lifestyle after seeing Joe Namath's hair 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 tells a six-year-old Homer that Mona died while Homer was at the movies.
Grampa Simpson is an old, grizzled, periodically incontinent and quite senile man, who lives in the Springfield Retirement Castle; which is 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 that 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, though they scuffled in Bart the General.
He spends a good deal of his time writing complaint letters. He once wrote to the President, complaining that there were too many states, and requesting that they get rid of three of them, simultaneously insisting that 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 Missourah." This may be an obscure reference to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, where Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state. Abe's stance therefore pegs him as an abolitionist.
He often shares long-winded recollections about his past, many of which are often far-fetched rants. Among Grampa's stories are the time he chased Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1922, the time John D. Rockefeller dropped silver dollars on him while floating in a Zeppelin, various times spent harassing Springfield's Irish immigrant community, and listening to Thomas Edison recite the alphabet over the radio (as it was the only program available in the early days of broadcasting).
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, which were 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 then decided it was alright because "we did have two shows with Andy Griffith".
In most episodes, he is readily recognizable as a member of the Simpson family. However, he is often used to portray a generic old man in the town of Springfield. This is especially evident in Lemon of Troy.
Grampa first appeared in The Simpsons short "Grampa and the Kids". He tells his grandchildren stories of "the good old days". When they stop paying attention to him, he feigns his own death to recapture their attention.[2] After naming the main characters the Simpsons after his own family members (except for Bart, an anagram of "brat", which he substituted for his own name),[3] Matt Groening refused to name Grampa after his grandfather, Abraham Groening. He left it to the writers to choose a name and they chose "Abraham", not knowing that is was also the name of Groening's grandfather.[4] Groening wanted a character who invented stories to tell to children, so created Grampa.[5]
| The Simpsons characters | |
|---|---|
| The Simpson family and relatives | |
| Homer Simpson · Marge Simpson · Bart Simpson · Lisa Simpson · Maggie Simpson · Abraham Simpson · Patty and Selma Bouvier · Mona Simpson · Santa's Little Helper · Snowball | |
| Around Springfield | |
| Comic Book Guy · Ned Flanders · Professor Frink · Barney Gumble · Dr. Hibbert · Lionel Hutz · Rev. Lovejoy · Hans Moleman · Apu Nahasapeemapetilon · Mayor Quimby · Dr. Nick Riviera · Cletus Spuckler · Moe Szyslak · Chief Wiggum | |
| Springfield Elementary School faculty and students | |
| Seymour Skinner · Edna Krabappel · Otto Mann · Groundskeeper Willie · Nelson Muntz · Martin Prince · Milhouse Van Houten · Ralph Wiggum | |
| Media personalities | |
| Celebrities · Itchy and Scratchy · Kent Brockman · Krusty the Clown · Troy McClure · Radioactive Man · Rainier Wolfcastle | |
| Springfield Nuclear Power Plant | Families |
| Montgomery Burns · Carl Carlson · Lenny Leonard · Waylon Smithers | Simpson family · Flanders family · Van Houten family |
| Villains | Miscellaneous |
| Kang and Kodos · Sideshow Bob · Springfield Mafia (Fat Tony) | Recurring characters · Fictional characters · One-time characters · Animals · Guest stars |