Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS for Us
It’s easy to guess the climactic twist of Us - if you’re a fan of The Simpsons. With the follow up to his Academy Award-winning Get Out, writer-director Jordan Peele made an innovative and truly terrifying horror movie. However, Peele’s comedic roots are also showcased in Us and, whether intentional or not, the film shows influences from Matt Groening’s long-running animated sitcom.
In Us, the vacationing family of Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o) suffers a scary and violent home invasion by attackers who are their exact doppelgangers - led by Red, Adelaide’s double. As a child, Adelaide disappeared in a house of mirrors at the Santa Cruz boardwalk and came back changed from that traumatic event. As the family outwits their evil doubles, the film opens up a larger mystery as it turns out that everyone else in Santa Cruz - and, it’s implied, all over the United States - is also being attacked by their scissors-wielding duplicates. The animalistic killers in red then lock hands and form a human chain coast-to-coast across the entire country, mimicking the 1986 charity event Hands Across America.
In 2002, South Park’s episode “The Simpsons Already Did It” lamented that just about every comedic idea has already been tackled by Fox’s cartoon series, which is now in its 30th season. In fact, there are a few major aspects of Us that were indeed already done by The Simpsons and a hardcore Simpsons fan can actually spot them a mile away, starting with the film’s biggest shocker: Red is the real Adelaide Wilson and the Adelaide who was married to Gabe (Winston Duke) and protected her children Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex) is actually one of “the Tethered,” who kidnapped and switched places with the real Adelaide.
Amusingly, The Simpsons did a similar tale about Bart in an episode of 1996’s “Treehouse of Horror VII” titled “The Thing And I.” In that spooky episode, Bart was haunted by sounds in the attic while Homer and Marge suspiciously avoid the subject altogether - before Bart sees Homer mysteriously take a bucket of fish heads to the attic. It’s revealed that Bart’s conjoined identical evil twin Hugo was secretly held in the family’s attic for his entire life. But, in a climactic twist, Dr. Hibbert confused the scar from the twins’ separation and realized the evil twin brother was Bart all along!
In Us, Red, the evil twin tormenting Adelaide, was already so eerily reminiscent of “Treehouse of Horror” that a Simpsons fan can easily suspect there’s a Bart/Hugo mistaken identity swerve on the way. This ends up being exactly what happens when it turns out Red is the unfairly suffering Hugo to Adelaide’s Bart - the evil one who benefited from the deception. The Simpsons had even done prior doppelganger gags including Guy Incognito, who was Homer’s exact double in “Fear of Flying,” and Lester and Eliza, Bart and Lisa’s counterparts in “The Day The Violence Died”.
There are other aspects of Us that also tie into classic Simpsons episodes. Hands Across America was referenced in The Simpsons’ 1992 episode “Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes,” where Homer’s half-brother Herb Powell needed the Simpsons’ help to regain his wealth. Meanwhile, although this is probably unintended, Jordan Peele’s production company Monkeypaw also has a link to The Simpsons: the family possessed a magical monkey’s paw that could grant wishes in “Treehouse of Horror II.”
