Whatever a Spider-Pig Does

Touchstones were used to determine whether a piece of gold was the real deal or not. You’d scrape a piece of the gold onto the touchstone, and if the color didn’t match up exactly, you knew you had a fake.

The Simpsons has had a ton of cultural touchstones over the years. What I mean is that nearly everyone uses the brands of humor found in the show, and if you share a laugh at the same reference, you have something in common with that person. If humans are made of gold, I guess that means that you’re both either real, or you’re both fake.

Don’t have a cow, man! I’m getting to a few examples.

There’s Homer’s famous “D’oh!”, an exclamation now recognized by the Oxford English Dictionary and by many people around the world. The iconic phrase, “eat my shorts!” still resonates, but it does hearken back to an older, more quaint time. And, of course, there’s Homer’s boss, Mr Burns, letting you know he believes something to be excellent.

These are the golden standard for iconic lines, and they’ve been repeated thousands of times over the decades. There’s one line that has a notably different origin story, though.

If you’ve never seen The Simpsons Movie, that’s understandable. While the TV show was mandatory viewing for my late middle and early high school years, the movie came out years later, and was more of an optional add-on for most of the people I knew. I saw it anyway.

That one line I am hinting takes place toward the end of this video clip:

Spider-pig, Spider-pig. Does whatever a spider-pig does.

Unlike many iconic catchphrases, this utterly silly idea was thrown out there by the writers. They knew they wanted Homer to hold the pig up so he could have him walk across the ceiling, but the little song was just a throwaway line—like a placeholder until something better came along.

Nothing better has since come along.

This happens in movies sometimes. One example that really sticks out in my mind is from Raiders of the Lost Ark. There’s a scene where Indy (Harrison Ford) is confronted by a man with a sword. The man swings the sword around, clearly showing Indy how skilled and dangerous he is.

Ford famously deadpans this one—he just pulls a gun out and drops the dude on the spot.

Though the underlying message the writers were trying to say might be never to bring a sword to a gunfight, the reality is that there was no message. In other words, Harrison Ford wasn’t feeling great that day, so he just ad-libbed the gun scene.

It stuck.

Harrison Ford has the privilege (responsibility?) of owning two of these iconic movie moments. Just a year earlier, The Empire Strikes Back featured a scene between Leia and Han Solo, where Carrie Fisher tells Harrison Ford that she loves him. Ford’s response became movie gold instantly when he said, I know.

What is it about these improvised moments that have kept them in our minds all these years? Writers spend months working on scripts, but every now and then, a quickly executed surprise can be just the thing.

Have you ever had any of these little surprises, where you end up saying something funnier or more profound than you had any business saying? What are some of your favorite cultural touchstones that happened by accident?