Ray Jay Johnson And Other People I Know Only From ‘The Simpsons’

There was a lot I learned from The Simpsons, right from the start. Did I learn that people get “MOTHER” tattoos from the first episode? Maybe! How about the Atilla the Hun reference Bart makes in the credits at the end? Did I know who Atilla the Hun was yet? Did I “get” the reference at some point from elsewhere? I don’t know! Eat my shorts!

But there are people that I know are real entirely because of The Simpsons. One person towers over them all, even though he is only 5-foot-3 in real life: Ray Jay Johnson. He’s mentioned in the classic episode “Krusty Gets Kancelled.” When Krusty does, indeed, get kancelled, he says he’s never done a bad show—except for the week Raymond J. Johnson Jr. guest-hosted.

This was everything I could’ve hoped for in a piece about this reference from The Simpsons which I always found obscure.

And I couldn’t agree more with the author’s assessment of learning about the world of pop culture through The Simpsons. Many of the models by which I view the world were sculpted in part through references from that show.