The Simpsons: “Last Exit to Springfield” And “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” Were Almost Very Different

Two rather mind-blowing revelations.

This week had a few ironic occurrences for The Simpsons episode “Last Exit to Springfield”. For starters, the episode premiered on FOX 25 years ago.The second? OJ Simpson was nearly a guest star. Yes, the same OJ Simpson that caused FOX to bump the March 2018 return ofThe Simpsons by a week.

Yes, evidently the producers of the longest-running animated comedy in network primetime had asked OJ to guest star (though Al Jean wanted to note that this was before the Nicole Brown murders that he got off scot-free for. That said, OJ passed on the guest spot and instead the late Dr. Joyce Brothers was tapped instead to guest star as herself in the episode that revolved around Homer becoming the president of the union that represents the workers of the Nuclear Power Plant.

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In related news, Josh Weinstein, the producer of the upcoming animated series Disenchantment, is up to his ol’ script uploading shenanigans. This time around, Josh uploaded a “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” page from the script. Read it a little closer and you’ll notice that the episode could’ve had a VERY different ending.

For those that don’t know, “Who Shot Mr. Burns” was a two-part episode of The Simpsons that aired in the early nineties. After the first episode aired revealing that someone shot Mr. Burns, FOX did up a whole survey on who committed the crime of which was revealed on the second episode, in this case, it was Maggie Simpson.