When Waylon Smithers made his Simpsons debut, he did so as an African-American character – accidentally. Per the Simpons Wiki, “Smithers was mistakenly animated with the wrong color and was made African American by Gyorgi Peluci, the color stylist. [Director] David Silverman has claimed that Smithers was always intended to be ‘Mr. Burns’ white sycophant,’ and the staff thought it 'would be a bad idea to have a black sub-servient character’ and so switched him to his intended color for his next episode.”