How a Real-Life Murder Influenced This Change on ‘The Simpsons’

"Team Homer" from Season 7 of The Simpsons is one of the series' better episodes, one of the few in which Mr. Burns (Harry Shearer) does something altruistic, before reverting to the curmudgeonly, selfish miser we know. It's the first appearance of the Pin Pals, Homer's (Dan Castellaneta) bowling team, one of the many references from the series that has achieved pop-culture relevance, and one that is revisited now and again throughout the series' run, most recently in this season's "The Man Who Flew Too Much." It's a rather innocuous episode, more a commentary on the repression of creativity through its secondary school-uniform plot, but nothing so devious as to warrant the necessity for a change within it. But a real-life murder prompted a change to a small, throwaway gag, and it was the right thing to do.