Our favorite characters didn't just pop out of their creator's minds fully formed. Sometimes it was a long, nasty, brutal, and gory birthing process. And just like any messy birth, there's usually some stuff left over that's best swept into the trash and forgotten about forever. For example ...

5 Homer Simpson Was Secretly Krusty the Clown

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The Simpsons is set in a bizarre alternate universe where mankind only evolved four fingers, everybody has jaundice, and children love clowns instead of screaming every time they show their gruesome death masks. Like the other kids, Bart worships Krusty the Clown, but he barely tolerates his own oafish father. That's why Creator Matt Groening originally intended to reveal that Krusty was Homer all along, moonlighting as a beloved children's entertainer, while somehow hiding it from his family.

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That would explain the heavy drinking.

This wasn't some passing notion -- there's a reason the two characters look almost identical aside from the hair and makeup. It was supposed to be an elaborate joke about Bart and Homer's relationship. Bart thought his boring old dad was lame, when in reality he was a misanthropic were-clown that entertained children all across town.

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Whoa, we're seeing double here! Four father figures!

The idea was eventually dropped for being too complicated. It would have stretched believability a tad to show Homer successfully leading a double life as a local celebrity while maintaining a job at a nuclear power plant and also barely being competent and sober enough to tie his own shoes. Not to mention all those early storylines about the family's financial troubles would have lost a bit of punch if Homer was secretly sitting on a wealth of branded Krusty home pregnancy test and imitation gruel royalties.