After Phil Hartman was murdered, the various characters he played, such as lawyer Lionel Hutz and actor Troy McClure, were retired, rather than re-cast. However, they continued to appear silently in crowd scenes. Season ten, episode three, "Bart the Mother" (September 27, 1998) was his final voice performance.
In season three, episode fourteen, "Lisa the Greek," Lisa, angry at Homer for tricking her into helping him gamble on football, makes a bet that if she loves him, the winner of the Super Bowl will be the Washington Redskins, and if she doesn't, the Buffalo Bills would come out on top (Washington won). Actually, when the show premiered just before the Super Bowl, those two teams were squaring off in Super Bowl XXVI, and Washington came out on top 37-24. Over the next three years, FOX made it a tradition to air the episode just before the Super Bowl, and change the dialogue, so that the teams would include whatever teams were playing that year. According to the DVD commentary, Lisa accurately picked the winning team every single year.
A television critic titled his article "Worst Episode Ever!" after watching a late 1990s episode, and criticized the show's writing. In the later seasons, there are many episodes in which the Comic Book Guy criticizes a character by saying "Worst episode ever!" and "Worst (action) ever!" in reference to the television critic's article.
This is the longest running primetime comedy series, as well as the longest-running primetime animated series, in U.S. television history.
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