Fox television has a unique way of counting the hit TV show, The Simpsons. Their counting is inconsistent and in reality there are fewer episodes than they report. The reason for this is a lost episode titled “Dead Bart” from season one. As a cover up, Fox numbers the episodes wrong, sometimes adding an extra number where there should not be one.  

Details about the missing episode are extremely difficult to find as no one on the cast or crew is willing to talk about it. During season one Matt Groening, Simpsons’ writer, began to exhibit a strange attitude uncharacteristic of his normal persona. He became withdrawn, nervous and short-tempered. At an interview a fan in the audience shouted out a question inquiring about the lost episode, numbered 7G06, and Matt Groening walked off the stage, ending the interview several hours early.

One obsessed fan follows Matt Groening outside one night at a fan convention. He continues to pester Matt about the lost episode. The fan claims that at the first mention of the lost episode, the color drained from Matt’s face and his body began to tremble. On the verge of tears, Matt wrote a website on a scratch piece of paper and sent the fan away; demanding he never talk of the last episode again.

The obsessed fan promptly went home and typed the address into his computer. The address led him to a black screen with a simple, yellow download button. After the download completed the fan’s computer began to ‘go crazy with the worst virus ever seen.’ Before the computer totally crashed the fan was able to copy the download to a blank CD. Running the CD on his now empty, rebooted computer, he was not surprised to find the lost episode of the Simpsons.

The episode began the typical way with the family seated on the couch but the animation was very crude and the recording very distorted. Act one is set in an airplane with Bart fooling around. Bart accidentally breaks one of the airplanes windows and is sucked out. The next shot is of Bart’s lifeless, dead body. This shot is depicted as realistic and morbidly as any cartoon can get.

Act two is entirely set at the family’s kitchen table. Marge, Homer and Lisa cry during the whole scene while ill-shaped faces blur and shift in behind the kitchen windows.

The next act is set at Bart’s grave. The family continues to cry and little dialog, which cannot be deciphered takes place. The interesting part of this scene is all the graves in the cemetery are labeled with names of past, present and future (at the time) Simpson characters. Each grave is also labeled with a date.

At this time all dates that were seen on the graves of those characters that have died have been 100 percent accurate, including Michael Jackson and George Harrison. The episode ends with another gruesome look at Bart’s dead body.