Many characters from The Simpsons are pushing daisies at Springfield Cemetery (alongside the in-world versions of Walt Whitman, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper). And in the April 21 episode of the Fox animated series, viewers mourned another loss with the death of Larry Dalrymple, a background character who’d been on the scene since the show’s 1989 series premiere.
“I’m sorry if some fans are upset, but we really wanted to use Larry’s death as a way to show that even the most peripheral people in our lives have dignity and worth and that we really shouldn’t take anyone for granted,” co-executive producer Tim Long said in a statement to Variety. “Simpsons characters have always had unusually rich emotional lives, and this episode is really about their anxiety over ‘what comes next’ (and I don’t mean Krapopolis).”
Now that Springfield’s population is down one, check out the photo gallery below to see other memorable deaths from The Simpsons’ 35 seasons so far.
Do we even need to issue a spoiler warning here?