Grampa Simpson - Role in The Simpsons

Role in The Simpsons

Grampa Simpson is the father to Homer Simpson, father-in-law to Marge Simpson and grandfather to siblings Bart, Lisa and Maggie. Grampa has also fathered two illegitimate children; a daughter named Abbie by a British woman named Edwina while in the United Kingdom during World War II, and Herbert Powell by a carnival prostitute. Grampa has an older brother named Cyrus, who lives in Tahiti and has multiple native wives. He also has a younger brother named Chet, who owns an unsuccessful shrimp company. Grampa was briefly married to Amber, the same woman Homer married on a drinking binge in Las Vegas. Grampa has also been briefly married to Marge's sister, Selma Bouvier, though Homer was against it, and was once romantically linked to Marge's mother, Jacqueline Bouvier. Abe Simpson Is currently married to Rita LaFleur.

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 Grampa is quite senile. It is unknown where Grampa was born. He claims that he came to America as a boy from the "old country", but he cannot remember which country it was. Grampa was raised in New York City with his parents, Orville J. Simpson and Yuma Hickman.

Grampa is a veteran of World War II, where he served as Master Sergeant of the Flying Hellfish unit. At the very end of war in Europe, Grampa's unit "liberated" a stash of priceless art from surrendering German forces. The Flying Hellfish formed a tontine, and buried the art in a trunk at sea. Decades later, Montgomery Burns, the second surviving member of the unit, tried to murder Grampa in order to get the art, prompting Grampa to violate the tontine. When Grampa and Bart retrieved the art from Mr. Burns, the State Department arrived to give the art to their rightful owner.

Homer's mother, Mona Simpson, was married with Grampa for several years. She became entranced with the hippie lifestyle after seeing Joe Namath's hair on television. She became a fugitive from justice after she abetted in the sabotage of a biological weapons research lab owned by Mr. Burns to deliberately poison everyone in Springfield. To explain this to his then-six-year-old son, Grampa said that Mona died while Homer was at the movies. Grampa has a poor relationship with his son, who placed Grampa in a nursing home as soon as he could, despite Grampa selling his house in order to provide Homer with a mortgage, although its strongly and recurringly suggested that, while caring, Grampa was very controlling and even emotionally abusive towards Homer when he was growing up and he still had not forgiven him for that.

The Simpson family will often do their best to avoid unnecessary contact with Grampa, but Homer has shown feelings of love for his father from time to time.