This isn't a "lost" episode of the Simpsons, but it's one that had been hidden from view, for very good reason.
It also was written entirely by Matt Groening.
During production of the first season, Matt was struggling with dark thoughts. He had been having regrets about keeping the publishing rights to Life In Hell (which would soon go away a couple years later due to the massive, MASSIVE success The Simpsons had), and was worried that his show was going to flop on its own- and at that point he had not been sure if all the creativity he had poured into his life ended up being worth it. He created what he called, simply, "vents" at this time- short, crudely animated and voiced scenes that allowed him to voice out all his frustrations, his fury with everything.
One of these- the darkest one, and the one that circled around in animation circles for years until the footage was released- was the Bart Vent.
The Bart Vent was structured like a far shorter version of an episode of The Simpsons. The premise was simple- the Simpsons were off on a plane flight to some unknown place.
Now usually, a premise like this in any other show would make some jokes about air travel or how the family acts up in the sky- for example, the Rocko's Modern Life episode "Jet Scream" was a whole 11 minutes of ruthlessly lambasting the air travel industry, and Cow and Chicken's "Chickens Don't Fly" had a whole episode set on a GROUNDED plane and the humor that results in that. However, this was a much darker take, for reasons that will soon become obvious.
The episode was uploaded in high quality to Archive.org some time in 2016- this is a retelling of that.
The art of the episode was quite good, if a little sketchy. However, the animation was very jerky and abrupt, since Matt didn't have any kind of animation training at that time.
The episode began with the family (minus Maggie, who was nowhere to be found in this short) watching TV, with an advertisement for some kind of travel service being delivered by a leering, wall-eyed salesman. Homer got up off the couch and said, "Alright, family, we've been sitting around on our asses for long enough. The Simpsons are going on a vacation!"
A long, awkward silence permeates the room. Lisa is twitching and Marge is sniffling, presumably from sadness, before Bart speaks up.
"Hey, man, I'm not going wherever these losers are going! Especially you!" he snapped. Matt's voice sounded especially angry when he delivered Bart's lines in this short.
Homer simply furrowed his brow and clenched his fist, uncomfortably calm for such disrespect from Bart.
"You will come, Bart Simpson," Homer responded, eyelid twitching, "because the last 10 babysitters we hired for you had to go get psychiatric help!"
"Aw, bite me, they had issues," Bart said coldly.
There was a wipe transition to them at the airport, sitting at their gate. I'm not going to bother transcribing the dialogue for the next 2 or so minutes, because it was just Homer and Bart arguing with a legitimately vile tone. They slowly started getting more personally insulting and less relevant to any complaints when suddenly a dinging sound rung out and the family rushed onto the plane.
It cut to a scene on the plane, clearly high in the air. Bart was in the aisle seat next to Marge in the window, and Homer was in the other aisle with Lisa in the window on his side. The two glared daggers at each other, a cartoony droning sound playing behind them to symbolize their anger, when Bart sighed, turning to Marge.
"I'm gonna go use the bathroom," he said.
"Just be quick," Marge said, her voice trembling. This was the first time Marge spoke (and last), and she sounded like Matt was about to break down recording the lines.
Bart ran out of his seat, Homer cursing him for his speed behind him, and used the bathroom. As he came out, he noticed the final few rows of the plane were empty, and he grinned devilishly before producing a slingshot from his pocket. He took aim at the window closest to the back and shot a rock through his slingshot at it, causing a direct hit and for the glass to shatter. Then, abruptly, he screamed as he was sucked out the window.
Matt had always kept the idea in his head that the world of The Simpsons' animation represented life, and death was more realistic.
With that in mind, he had spent hours at a time over around a week drawing the most detailed rendition of Bart's corpse when he hit the ground that he possibly could. Shading, perspective, coloring, it was all there- it practically looked like a photograph.
After this, it hard cut to black. It was early in the morning, and the Simpsons were at a funeral. Marge and Lisa were crying, but it clearly sounded like Matt himself crying, and it was only one recording. Homer just looked stern, but his lip quivered as Reverend Lovejoy read some last rites and lowered the casket into the ground. There was another shot of Bart's realistic dead body from the top before the lid slammed shut. Homer mouthed words, but none were heard.
The view panned around some tombstones in the cemetecry. What was unusual is all of the tombstones had names of different members of Simpsons staff and Matt Groening's family on them. Eventually, it settled on one dusty-looking, cracked tombstone in the back.
The engraving on the tombstone read the following:
R.I.P.
MATT GROENING
1954-SOMEDAY SOON, I HOPE
LIFE IS HELL.
The video then abruptly cut off, the last frame burning right through the drawing as if on an old projector.
Matt Groening is fine now but he really doesn't like people talking about Bart Vent in his presence (for good reason), and neither does anyone else on the Simpsons team. The only reason the video was available online in the first place is that someone asked Matt during a convention appearance, and he gave them a link to a download of the video- transfered from VHS and all, pleading with them to upload it to some archive somewhere so that nobody would ever ask about it again.
However, a TV station in Utica in 1995 inadvertently played Bart Vent to its viewers, finding the tape alongside Matt's things and believing it to be ancillary material to fill up an unclaimed commercial break for a Simpsons-hungry audience.
Not very many people saw the airing, as it was late at night when it happened. However, that version of the tape seemingly didn't cut out the final words that Homer spoke before the ending.
Homer said, "If only we were all so lucky."
——————————
Author's Notes:
Whoof. This one was written at a pretty dark time and I think it kind of shows.
I won't concern you all with the details, I'm fine right now, but the past couple days were absolutely mind-numbingly miserable and bad- a lot of existentialism about if my work matters. Also something something AI.
A lot of this bled into how sad the backstory was. It's kind of reflecting things I've felt in real life.
I'm not asking for sympathy here, but I hope if you're all going through something similar you come out of it better on the other side.
——————————