Season: 2
Episode: 14
In ‘Principal Charming’, Selma is looking through a photo album and sees a photo of herself and her sister Patty in Moscow, near Lenin’s casket.
Season: 2
Episode: 8
‘Bart the Daredevil’ begins with Bart and the boys watching a wrestler named Rasputin on TV. Rasputin, alas, loses the fight – due to a foul trick by his opponent, who has struck him down with a wrench. In reality, several wrestlers have performed under the name ‘Rasputin’, the most famous being Johnny Howard and Black Angus Campbell.
Season: 4
Episode: 22
In an interview about the making of the episode ‘Krusty Gets Kancelled’, Matt Groening says that ‘Worker and Parasite’ is, in his opinion, one of the best animated inserts in the entire series.
According to the storyline, the ‘Itchy and Scratchy Show’ is taken from Krusty the Clown’s show by a competitor. Instead, Krusty shows “Eastern Europe's favorite cat and mouse team”, ‘Worker and Parasite’. It is a “sovietized” (judging by the hammer and sickle in the first frame) parody of the cartoon ‘Tom and Jerry’, characterized by complete nonsense, poor drawing and poor colors.
Not surprisingly, even Krusty is perplexed as to what that was all about and, after ‘Worker and Parasite’ comes out, his show gets shut down.
Season: 7
Episode: 13
Mikhail Gorbachev appears in the episode ‘Two Bad Neighbors’, in which George W. Bush becomes the Simpsons’ neighbor. The relationship doesn’t work out right away – Bush ruins the Simpsons’ front lawn and spanks Bart, which Homer can’t stand. What makes matters worse is the fact that George W. Bush uses the same okilly dokilly speech pattern that Ned Flanders does.
Gorbachev appears just at the moment Bush is fighting with Homer – the Soviet president decided to visit the Bushes and give them a coffee machine. When Bush stops fighting to greet Mikhail, Homer notes caustically: “Brought some of your Commie friends to help you fight dirty, eh?”
When Bush’s wife convinces him to apologize to Homer, George refuses, pointing at Gorbachev – “You can’t show weakness to the Russians!” Meanwhile, Gorbachev says to his chauffeur (in very poor Russian, actually): “Now we know who’s the boss here.”
Season: 8
Episode: 10
The only appearance of Boris Yeltsin on ‘The Simpsons’ is in ‘The Springfield Files’ and the first Russian president appears as… the highest score on the breathalyzer scale. After drinking 10 beers at Moe’s bar, Homer is about to go home, but a worried Moe makes him puff on the breathalyzer. Homer gets the “top score”: his degree of intoxication is ‘Boris Yeltsin’. “I guess I’ll walk home,” says Homer.
Season: 9
Episode: 1
In the episode ‘The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson’, Homer, going from Springfield to New York City, cusses the city in advance, to which Lisa replies: “Dad, you can’t judge a place you’ve never been to.” – “Yeah, that’s what people do in Russia,” Bart adds.
Season: 9
Episode: 19
The episode ‘Simpson Tide’ is perhaps the most “Russian” of the entire series. It parodies two famous Soviet-themed American movies, ‘The Hunt for Red October’ (1990) and ‘Crimson Tide’ (1995).
Homer accidentally drives an American nuclear submarine into Russian territorial waters (a parody of the plot of ‘The Hunt for Red October’, where Sean Connery’s character steals a Soviet boat and heads for the U.S.). After that, Homer is accused of espionage – the news is accompanied by a picture of Homer in a papakha with a bottle of vodka dancing on the Red Square. “Could Homer Simpson be a communist?” the announcer asks.
But Homer’s “feat” has even further-reaching consequences. At a UN meeting, the Russian representative says: “The Soviet Union would be pleased to offer amnesty to your wayward vessel.” And, in response to a U.S. rep’s question: “The Soviet Union? I thought you guys broke up!” He replies: “Yes! That’s what we wanted you to think!”
Further footage has already been widely disseminated to memes – a Russian turns over a sign that says “Russia” with “USSR” on the back, while, at the same time, carnival platforms on the Red Square in Moscow release tanks, the Berlin Wall is up again and Lenin wakes up in the Mausoleum, roaring the words: “Must crush capitalism!”
Season: 9
Episode: 24
In the episode ‘Lost Our Lisa’, the creators decided to parody Brighton Beach, the Russian district of New York. In the episode, it is the “Russian area of Springfield”, where Lisa ends up after going to the museum, but getting on the wrong bus. The area is called ‘Little Moscow’ (similar to Chinatown or ‘Little Italy’ in Manhattan).
Of course, all the “Russian” flavor here is deliberately parodic – for example, a bear selling sweets on the street or a man in an embroidered Russian shirt playing chess with a Soviet grandfather. When Lisa tries to ask how to get to the museum, the Russians answer her with a terrible cry – although it is clear from the subtitles that they really do explain how to get to the museum, however they sound extremely loud and threatening. And they talk to each other the same way.
Season: 10
Episode: 2
In the episode ‘The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace’, Homer is very worried that he has achieved nothing in life. Trying to console him, Lisa reminds her father that he had been to space and even finds a videotape of the flight. But Homer just waves it off – “All we did was grow some space tomatoes and sabotage ‘Mir’.” And, indeed, the tape shows the American Shuttle hitting the space station several times and the Soviet cosmonauts furiously shouting something from the portholes.
Season: 10
Episode: 20
In an episode of ‘The Old Man and the ‘C’ Student’, a Russian representative (wearing a fur hat, of course) appears at an Olympic Committee meeting. During the discussion as to which city should host the next Olympics, he says: “I recommend Moscow, where the American dollar buys seven rubles…” and then he gets pager messages: “12 rubles… 60 rubles… 1,000 rubles! I must go!” And the Russian runs away. However, he still reappears in this episode – he admits to Bart that he has already had time to get drunk and, at the end, he re-ignites the legendary ‘Springfield Tire Fire’.
Season: 12
Episode: 7
The theme of the ‘Mir’ space station is again used in the episode ‘The Great Money Caper’, where a beluga, the famous Russian fish, falls on the Simpson family car. It fell from the ‘Mir’ station, where two Russian cosmonauts were rowing – “You lost our dinner! – You left the door open!” followed by “Russian swearing”. Unfortunately, the actual sounds of swearing only vaguely resemble Russian!
Season: 13
Episode: 3
When Mo Szyslak opens a fancy bar, Russian girls soon show up. “And you really think I’m attractive, huh?” He’s surprised. “Da” ('Yes'), the girls answer with undisguised regret.
Of course, the plot of a poor Russian woman looking for a sugar daddy in the United States is being parodied and she agrees to everything. But, the Russian girls here are not so simple – one of them later confesses that “after Chernobyl, my penis is falling off”!
Season: 14
Episode: 5
In the episode ‘Helter Shelter’, the Simpsons find themselves at a Springfield Isotopes ice hockey game. Lisa gets closer to the rink and advises a player: “Hey Kozlov! Aim for the five-hole! He’s got an opening the size of the Red Square!” Kozlov does, indeed, aim between the goalkeeper’s legs and scores. In gratitude, he gives Lisa his hockey stick – with hammer and sickle and “Kozlov” written on it in Russian. At home, Homer nails the stick over his daughter’s bed and, at night, termites crawl out of it, destroying the entire house.
Interestingly enough, there were two Russian hockey players named Kozlov in the NHL – Viktor Nikolaevich (b. 1975) and Vyacheslav Anatolievich (b. 1972), but the second is much better known – he is one of only seven Russian hockey players to have played over 1000 games in the NHL. So, the Simpsons writers were probably referring to Vyacheslav Kozlov.
Season: 19
Episode: 3
In the ‘Midnight Towboy’ episode, it turns out that Lennie Leonard’s ancestors are from Russia or, at least, the Russian Empire. Because, Lennie tells Carl: “Stalin put my grandmother in a forced labor camp for 20 years.”
Lennie, like Homer, works at the Springfield Nuclear Plant and is a nuclear physicist by training. Of course, the authors insinuate that the intellectual Lenny is actually a descendant of Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union.
Season: 21
Episode: 12
‘Boy Meets Curl’ is about Homer and Marge becoming curling athletes. One of the storylines of the episode is Lisa’s infatuation with collecting badges with Olympic mascots. The hobby goes too far and becomes similar to drug addiction. For a rare badge, Lisa sells her signature pearl necklace and, realizing the state of affairs is dire, turns to her brother for help. “Without the necklace, I’m just a big Maggie!” she cries.
In order to get the necklace back from the badge guy, Bart invents ‘Fatov’, a mascot badge for the future Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia. Bart makes this badge himself by cutting out Homer’s chin from his driver’s license and adding “eyes” to it. Bart assures the salesman that this is the first and only badge with Fatov. “His name is Fatov. He represents the Russian spirit of sloth and alcoholism,” Bart says. Oddly enough, the badge guy falls for Bart’s trick and returns Liza’s beads to him. And then Fatov becomes a character in the insane fantasies of the badge seller, alluding to the American movie ‘Doctor Zhivago’ (1965) – as the musical theme from the movie is played during this scene.
Season: 30
Episode: 9
Fatov will appear again in ‘The Simpsons’ – it turns out that Lisa has kept this strange badge as a personal treasure. Fatov can also be seen among other valuable items in Lisa’s treasure box in episode 9 of season 30.
Season: 22
Episode: 17
This time, Homer’s taunting of Bart leads to the invasion of the United States by the Russian Navy. At the beginning of the episode, the Simpsons go to a football game. During the game, Homer starts tickling Bart. At this moment, they get spotted by the stadium camera and the whole stadium sees Bart wet his pants because of the tickling. To top it off, the evening news announces that after the roof of the stadium was opened (for Bart to dry his pants in the sun), Russian satellites filmed the stain on the shorts from space. On the basis of this picture, which «testifies to the cowardice of the Americans», Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (the series was released in 2011) announces the invasion of the United States and the Russian fleet is already in New York Harbor...
Season: 23
Episode: 3
In another special ‘Treehouse of Horror’ episode, Homer, after being bitten by a black widow spider, falls into the “locked-in syndrome” – he is completely paralyzed, but he retains his sight, hearing and ability to think. Lisa decides to read her father a book titled ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Predictably, Homer very quickly wants the reading to stop, but how to say it? The only thing he manages to do is fart. Thus, with Dostoevsky’s help, the paralyzed Homer finds a way to communicate with his family.
Season: 23
Episode: 8
There is no particular “Russian” plot in ‘The Ten-Per-Cent Solution’ – but, at one point, we see that a video titled ‘Bart pranks Putin’ is posted on a video publishing service. In the video, Bart is skateboarding around the Red Square, much to the displeasure of President Putin, who shoots him with a grenade launcher from one of the bell towers of St. Basil’s Cathedral. Bart barely has time to shout: “Ay, caramba!”
Season: 24
Episode: 14
In the episode ‘Gorgeous Grampa’, there’s only one reference to Russia, but what a reference! Mr. Burns sings a song about how nice it is to be loathed and, in it, he compares himself to a lot of legendary villains. Burns mentions Stalin, though in very strange company: “Chucky, Stalin, Megatron, Eric Cartman, Donkey Kong.”
Season: 25
Episode: 3
Montgomery Burns is generally a Stalin fan. In the third episode of season 25, you can even see a portrait of the Soviet dictator, drawn by Burns masterfully (while his other sketches, including that of the love of his youth, are primitive scribbles). Burns says: “That man could really put pressure on you!”
Season: 24
Episode: 20
In ‘The Fabulous Faker Boy’, a Russian girl named Zhenya teaches Bart how to play the piano (as always with Bart, he's a careless student, and Zhenya puts pressure on him). As a barter for these lessons, Marge agrees to teach Slava, Zhenya’s father, how to drive.
Slava is the quintessential stereotype of Russians. He wears a gold chain around his neck, speaks with a wild accent, drinks Russian vodka, bribes policemen with jeans and also criticizes Putin. When he suddenly starts driving backwards, Slava says: “I want to go backwards, like Russian economy under Putin.” Marge asks Slava to make fewer jokes about Putin. By the way, Slava will learn to drive and reappear on ‘The Simpsons’ as a protester. In episode 14 of season 26, he will participate in a cab driver’s strike.
Bart, meanwhile, is fascinated by Zhenya and already imagines himself together with her in Russia in all the most “Russian” places: again, the Red Square, the Bolshoi Theater and the Mausoleum with Lenin (what!?).
Season: 28
Episode: 9
While arguing with Smithers in an episode ‘The Last Traction Hero’, Burns threatens to send him to “our nuclear plant at Chernobyl” if Smithers does not get Homer to sign the waiver Burns wants. Smithers is very surprised to learn that the Chernobyl plant belongs to Burns, and Burns asks him that the secret “does not leave this office”.
Season: 28
Episode: 16
The Russian president appears during the intro bare-chested and flying past ‘The Simpsons’ logo on a winged horse (a reference to Putin’s 2009 photo shoot in Tuva).
This is not the only time Putin has appeared in this image on ‘The Simpsons’ – there is another similar cameo in episode 5 of season 27.
Season: 30
Episode: 6
It would seem that ‘From Russia Without Love’ should be all about Russians. At first glance, it is. Bart decides to help Moe Szyslak in his amorous affairs and order him a Russian wife by mail. To do this, he goes to the dark web, where Russians sell weapons and finds what he thinks he’s looking for. The girl who arrives is named Anastasia Alekova. She quickly brings order and comfort to Moe’s bar. Soon, there is talk of a wedding, which is held by an Orthodox priest.
However, everything falls apart when it turns out that Anastasia is not Russian at all, but a con from Ohio and the priest a crook from Brooklyn and they moonlight in marriages in which the contract is that all property passes to the wife after the death of the husband. So, the episode ends up not being Russophobic, but, instead, warns the viewer that many Russians only seem to be so.
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