# Talk:Lisa the Iconoclast

I don't think that line spoofs The Shining, as it's not done in a "terrifying" manner -- rather, it directly spoofs the original Ed McMahon introduction in The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.  I say this, and I'm not even an American, and I've never even seen The Tonight Show!  What do you guys think? Dave-ros 22:24, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

-)
Who happens to voice this character? Thanks, Aeryck89 17:15, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
I found who voices it, Harry Shearer. Aeryck89 17:30, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I find it odd that there's no mention of Donald Sutherland's role as Homer Simpson in this movie. JuJube 17:22, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the DVD commentary, but there is a scene in the Blackadder III episode where Edmund (Rowan Atkinson) is trying to prove that Samuel Johnson's (Robbie Coltrane) dictionary is incomplete, and starts inventing words that then need to be inserted.  When challenged on the first of these, he replies "It's a perfectly cromulent word!".  Given the perfectly matching dialogue, this surely has to be a reference, rather than a stunningly identical coinage.

Indeed. If anyone still doesn't believe this I'm happy to snip out the section of footage and put it on YouTube. The word cromulent is used in exactly the same context as in this Simpsons episode but nine years earlier. I doubt its a coincidence. - 58.107.50.36 (talk) 00:18, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
You need a source, and no forums do not count, nor do blogs or YouTube. -- Scorpion0422 01:23, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
How would putting the clip on YouTube not count? It's a question of fact not interpretation. I'll have a look for the DVD when I have time. - 58.107.50.36 (talk) 01:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm not going to lie, I've never heard this, but in the DVD commentary, they basically give the impression that they came up with it. So, that means that it COULD (however unlikely it may seem) be a coincidence, but it shouldn't just be said that it is a reference to Blackadder, because that would then void everything the producers have said, and there wouldn't be a source. If you can find a proper source, then it could be included and a more correct phrase would be "An episode of the television show Blackadder III used the word 'Cromulent'. This usage predates The Simpsons by ___ years." It doesn't make any assumptions or accusations. -- Scorpion0422 02:09, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I can confirm that this is false. 'Cromulent' does not appear in that scene from Ink and Incapability, nor anywhere else in Blackadder as far as I know. Drunkenmonkey111 (talk) 03:43, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I've done some google searching and as far as I can tell, this has never been confirmed at all, most of the mentions I've found are just random people saying it on forums and message groups. In the DVD commentary for this episode, they give the impression that they invented the word, but don't go into detail. -- Scorpion0422 15:48, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

The simpsons writers DID invent the word. I just watched the scene from the Blackadder episode 'Ink and Incapability' and the word 'cromulent' DOES NOT appear anywhere in it. Blackadder says 'it's a perfectly common word'. The person who raised this topic was mistaken. End of discussion Drunkenmonkey111 (talk) 02:07, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Discussion restarted. Are there any other reliable secondary sources (apart from Mark Peters) that attribute both words to The Simpsons? I don't like the way the article currently takes Bill Oakley's word that Simpsons writers coined the words just because he says it on the DVD commentary; if I said that I created disco on a DVD commentary, does that mean it must be true? Bradley0110 (talk) 09:37, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

First, it may have been better to start a new post so that people can easily find the discussion. As for the issue you have raised, then there is really no way to tell if the word "cromulent" was used before the Simpsons other than brute force read all books that predates the episode. I did a search on google books and didn't find any results that predates the episode (this was the same way I found the 1884 publication with embiggen in it). We know however that neither embiggen or cromulent were in the dictionary at the point when the episode aired, so i still think it is safe to say that the terms were coined by the writers, since they were unaware of previous use (at least for embiggen). So in any case I think your comparison to disco is unfair, because you can very easily look it up and see if disco is invented. Also, we know that all current use is attributed to the Simpsons episode (except of course for string theory which has a different meaning). We could perhaps work on the wording, but I don't think it is that bad. In any case, I have done a great deal of researching both embiggen and cromulent (book searces and news archive searches) and this is all I could find, so don't expect much else to be added. --Maitch (talk) 12:01, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
I was being facetious with "disco". :) Bradley0110 (talk) 15:27, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I  LOVE trivia sections, and generally get livid when people want them removed, but... Several of these are just thoroughly irrelevant. Nobody cares that Wiggum was singing Camptown Races, that's obvious from watching the episode..
and the fact that Lucky Charms have been alluded to several times is equally irrelevant. Can't we come up with some guidelines for these trivia sections while still keeping them around?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.70.113 (talk) 23:27, 19 August 2008 (UTC) 

The guidance exists: Wikipedia:Trivia sections.  --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 19:53, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
While still keeping them around being the key words there, Hugh.

"At the copy center, the Comic Book Guy asks Homer if he is Ridley Scott or James Cameron and then tells him not to steal his screenplay for a movie where computers threaten humans' personal liberties. James Cameron was the director of The Terminator and its sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and Ridley Scott directed Blade Runner; the plots of all these movies are the same as that of the Comic Book Guy's screenplay."
I believe that this reference, at least in part, refers to James Cameron's plagiarism of a Harlan Ellison short story for the screenplay for Terminator, which Ellison successfully sued Cameron for. The Ridley Scott reference is unknown to me however.
Tk-baldwin (talk) 18:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Although maybe this isn't so releavant, and I'm fairly sure that it was unintended, but the entire issue brought up by this episode of the Simpsons does have some similiarities to the entire Yasukuni Shrine controversy, where criminals are being worshipped.
Don't know whether this can be incorporated into the article one way or another.
Bourquie (talk) 03:39, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like your own conclusion, and wikipedia doesn't publish original research.  We'd need to cite a reliable source for verification before including that comparison in the article.  --HughCharlesParker (talk - contribs) 19:54, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

The character doesn't understand Lisa's pun.. does the line actually mean -Sutherland himself- didn't understand?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.70.113 (talk) 18:04, 4 July 2009 (UTC) 

I don't have access to the source, but apparently the line "Did...uh...you had arthritis?" in the end wasn't in the script. Possibly Sutherland simply forgot what he was supposed to say. decltype (talk) 19:02, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

"Embiggen—in the context it is used in the episode—is a verb that was coined by Dan Greaney in 1996.[2] The verb previously occurred in an 1884 edition of the British journal Notes and Queries: A Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, General Readers, Etc. by C. A. Ward"
I'm not sure about this choice of phrasing in the above; would an edit be appropriate to say that Dan Greaney coincidentally happened to replicate a phrase earlier coined by C. A. Ward? It just strikes me as odd to say, in one line, that he invented it, when it had already been used. ...But then again, Europeans "discovered" America while the "Indian" Native Americans were living there, so...— Preceding unsigned comment added by DevinArnold (talk • contribs) 

Well, there are a couple of examples of people inventing the same thing in history without being influenced by each other. In addition, I don't believe the words had the same meaning.--Maitch (talk) 21:45, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

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