If you’re a long time Simpsons fan, you might have been wondering about this joke for decades.
The Simpsons, Season 3, Episode 22, titled “The Otto Show”. The one where Bart wants to become a rock star after attending a disastrous Spinal Tap concert.
This results in him showing off his new guitar to Otto, who then gets so caught up playing the instrument that he forgets to drive the school bus, resulting in a car crash, Otto losing his job and living with the Simpsons until he gets his life back on track.
It is, as all episodes in the early days of The Simpsons, an absolutely hilarious classic, filled with many, MANY unforgettable one-liners. (Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.”) But one of the funny lines that absolutely nobody caught back in the day was this one:
Simpsons fan unearths 31-year-old obscured joke using audio editing.
Yep, thanks to Homer’s tinnitus, Marge’s dialogue is completely drowned out, but Homer either (A) lip reads her perfectly, or (B) plays along well enough that it doesn’t matter if he hears what she’s saying or not.
The episode debuted on 23 April 1992, and almost to the day of its 31st anniversary of airing, video editor Andrew Rayburn shared his findings, having used cutting-edge audio technology to reveal what Marge was really saying. Rayburn took to social media to explain how he unearthed the obscured joke:
“Since a few folks asked how, here’s before and after in Adobe Audition. You can’t see anything in the green waveform, but the spectrogram is vol by colour and pitch by height. I used that to find/erase the tones then boost what was left. What was left was Marge… and birds? Hidden in the mix of The Simpsons is almost always birds or crickets to show day and night. Voices are almost always in the centre channel in the 5.1 mix so turning that off lets us hear isolated sound effects.”
Below you can check out Rayburn’s adjusted video and audio, where you can finally hear Marge say to Homer:
“Well alright, but make sure [Bart and Lisa] don’t pick up any of the band’s attitudes toward, liquor, religion, politics… really anything.”
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