The Simpsons opening sequence
The shot cuts to Homer working at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant wearing a safety mask while handling a glowing green rod of uranium with a pair of silver tongs.
The family members then enter the living room from different directions, creating a segue into the couch gag and finally the creator and developers' credits, shown on the television screen.
Lisa's bike ride is cut, and instead, upon Marge and Maggie honking their horns, there is a "whip-pan" across the town, featuring a significant number of secondary characters, towards the Simpsons' house.
The camera then weaves through several buildings and structures, featuring a "billboard gag" towards Springfield Elementary and zooms through the familiar window where Bart writes lines as punishment on the chalkboard.
In the 500th episode, the opening sequence was a montage of all previous couch gags, pulling back into a photomosaic of the number "500", ending with Homer strangling Bart, both wearing tuxedos, saying his famous quote "Why you little!".
Creator Matt Groening developed a lengthy opening sequence for the first season of The Simpsons, in order to cut down on the animation necessary for each episode, but devised the two gags as compensation for the repeated material each week.
The Simpsons composer Alf Clausen said that the session musicians who perform her solos do not try to play at the second grade level and instead "think of Lisa as a really good player".
In 2006, the British television channel Sky One began advertising The Simpsons using a live-action recreation of the series' opening sequence directed by Chris Palmer.
[33] A special opening sequence, featuring the cast lip dubbing to Kesha's single "Tik Tok", was animated for the season 21 episode "To Surveil with Love", which aired on May 2, 2010 to promote "Fox Rocks" week.
The season 29 episode "Singin' in the Lane", which aired on November 19, 2017, features underwater themed opening sequence, with all of the characters including the Simpson family depicted as sea creatures.
The scene zooms toward a hole in the sunken ship to an underwater classroom where Bart is writing lines ("We don not live in our own pee") on the chalkboard as punishment.
Homer is shown at an underwater lab, handling a green glowing fish, while Lenny changes the number of "days until global warming" on the sign from 3 to 2.
"'Tis the 30th Season"'s couch gag is a spoof to Star Wars, where Bart cuts off Wampa Homer's hand while they and the rest of the family say "Merry Christmas!".
As "The Simpsons" logo appears out of the clouds, Professor Frink flies past in one of his inventions carrying a banner marked "MOVIE" and proclaims "Moo-vie!
Frink bumps one of the matte bars out of view, and the other one recedes as the camera cuts through the counter in the "O" and zooms in on the town, with several major landmarks popping up.
The camera then zooms through a window of the school where Bart is doing the chalkboard gag which is "I will not illegally download this movie", a reference to piracy before quick-fading to the popular 90s band Green Day who are hosting a concert at Lake Springfield, playing their rendition of "The Simpsons Theme".
An homage to the AMC drama Breaking Bad is used as an opening sequence for the season 24 episode "What Animated Women Want", which aired on April 14, 2013 and is set to the tune of "Crystal Blue Persuasion" by Tommy James and the Shondells.
[35] The song is also used during a montage in the Breaking Bad episode "Gliding Over All", in reference to the blue-colored methamphetamine produced by the show's central character Walter White.
The sequence opens with a parody of the Breaking Bad title card, with The Simpsons displayed across the screen with the symbols for Thorium (Th) and Silicon (Si) appearing at the beginning of each word.
Homer, dressed in the dark hat and sunglasses Walter dons for his "Heisenberg" persona, sneaks a taste of the batter while Marge is baking and is later woken from a nap by the smell.
Back at the Simpson house, Marge runs her earnings through a currency-counting machine, bundles the money, and adds it to a large pile on the dining table.
The camera zooms out to reveal a live-action scene (taken from the episode "Hazard Pay") of Walter White and his partner Jesse Pinkman sitting on a couch drinking beer and watching the sequence on a TV.
[39] After the Simpsons arrive at home, the camera cuts to a shot of them on the couch, then zooms out to show this as a picture hanging on the wall of a fictional overseas Asian animation and merchandise sweatshop.
Amid Amidi of Cartoon Brew calls the opening revolutionary and explains that "in 35 short and sweet seconds, he liberates the animation of The Simpsons from years of graphic banality.
"[45] He continued: "The visual look of the show, which has been so carefully controlled by its producers, becomes a giddy and unrestrained playground for graphic play, and the balance of creative authority is shifted from the writers’ room to the animators in one fell swoop."
When comparing the segment to Banksy's, Amidi concluded that it is "in fact, far more subversive because he focuses almost exclusively on making a pictorial statement, relegating the show's dominant literary elements to the back seat.
"[48] Kricfalusi later animated the opening sequence for the season 27 episode "Treehouse of Horror XXVI" where the Simpson children are trick-or-treating before being set upon by soul-hungry spirits with a monstrous Frank Grimes among them that skins Bart for his soul before Maggie saves him and Lisa.
The couch gag for the season 24 episode "The Fabulous Faker Boy", which aired on May 12, 2013, was stop-motion animated by Seth Green's Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, which also works on the television series Robot Chicken.
The opening sequence for the season 26 episode "My Fare Lady", which aired on February 15, 2015, was done in a pixel art style, created by Australian animators Paul Robertson and Ivan Dixon.
The couch gag for the season 27 episode "Teenage Mutant Milk-Caused Hurdles", which aired on January 10, 2016, features guest animator Steve Cutts' "LA-Z Rider" with over 14 million views on YouTube.
