I’m not referring to signage where no dialogue is spoken (ala Sneed’s Feed N Seed) but scenes with no dialogue and no text that contain just a visual gag.
My favorites:
• Bart has tied a bunch of megaphones together and says “Testing!!” which reverberates through Springfield, breaking every pane of glass in town. Cut to a scene of Professor Frink conducting some sort of experiment on an octopus. As the glass breaks, the octopus slowly looks up at Frink, then leaps onto his face. The scene lasts about one second, but I love the look on the face of the octopus.
• Homer gets a job at a sleazy car dealership (the episode where he becomes an ambulance driver). As he’s trying to get the customers to buy, Homer and the salesman that hired him are looking through the two-way mirror and the customers say “I can’t believe he passed gas in front of us! And then he turned up the radio! Why would he think turning up the radio would mask the smell?” Then they leave, and Homer suddenly sits up straight, then turns on the radio. The other salesman’s eyes grow wide in alarm, then narrow and he glares at Homer.
In the ep where the Germans bought the power plant, Homer is being interviewed. Of course, he slips into the glorious land of chocolate. The look on his face as he clasps his hands together and smiles.
When he teaches Bart how to shave. He puts aftershave lotion on his numerous cuts and tries to tough it out. The last look when when clenches his face and growls.
Anytime Bart turns his head and only the upper part moves.
Whenever someone screams and their toungue undulates.
In the episode with the springfield cat burglar, Homer is in the kitchen with the rest of the family and decided to come up with a way of catching the burglar. Lisa’s sax was stolen, so Homer gets her to play the jug while he thinks. The image of Homer pondering with the upper half of his body and doing a jig with his legs while Lisa plays the jug craks me up every time.
I am fond of the following scene in the episode where Marge plays Blanche in “Streetcar Named Desire: The Musical”. Maggie is at the Ayn Rand daycare center and Homer goes to pick her up. Maggie and the other babies have just liberated their pacifiers and are all over the place sucking the pacifiers, their sucking echos. Homer comes in an sees all the babies and very cautiously walks through the babies and retrieves Maggie. It’s all reminiscent of a scene from The Birds. When they leave the building a plump man walks by with two poodles on leashed. An homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s cameo in the same movie.
Ah yes. And when he quickly tiptoes over to the rabbits in his chocolate dream.
Another one: When the towtruck guy from Shelbyville triumphantly eats a lemon from the lemon tree and tries to act like it’s delicious and not at all bitter.
Homer: Your cheap meat made me sick!
Apu: I am so sorry. Please accept five pound of frozen shrimp.
Homer: sniffs This shrimp isn’t frozen! And it smells funny!
Apu: OK, ten pounds.
The one where Homer and Ned go to Las Vegas, and their “Vegas Wives” say how they’re going to go away with the Siegried and Roy parodies. The look the tiger gives.
In the Medicinal Marijuana episode, when Burn’s (presumably) dead body slides out of Smithers’ embrace like a bar of soap.
Two from me—and I’ve been waiting YEARS to use 'em.
*On the “Thelma and Louise”-style episode (“Marge on the Lam” I believe) with Marge and the single-mother neighbor Ruth. At one point, in a restaraunt, Ruth gives this perfect shudder of revulsion after Barney says something vile in a restaraunt. I don’t even remember the line, just the shudder.
*“Summer of 4’2"”
The smile that slowly spreads across Homer’s face after Bart draws the “dud” card while playing Mystery Date. It was just so genuinely…human.
Homer doing Moe a solid and stealing/ditching his car. As the car is going down a hill towards a lake, Homer jumps out of the car, rolls a few feet before hitting a smooth, slanted rock which jettisons him directly back into the car.
Saw one of my favourite episodes the other night - Skinner being exposed as Armin (sp?) Tanzarian. Just before a scene inside the Kwik-E-Mart, there’s a couple of seconds of a shot of the parking lot in which you see nothing except an empty shopping trolley rolling out of the lot onto the road.
Which reminds me of the episode where The Who guest stars (the two different area codes episode). Homer is walking through his section of Springfield, and smashes a window with his fist and pulls out sausage links and starts eating them. Lisa tells him he’s bleeding, and he walks next door, smashes the window with his fist, and steals a bandage to wrap around his hand.
ANY time someone runs off-screen, a car door slams, and a car zooms away. I think it’s the squealing tires.
My favorite is the scene in “Krusty Gets Kanceled” when we see the expression on Krusty’s face immediately after viewing the “Worker and Parasite” Soviet propaganda cartoon.
The episode where Ned is jealous and/or angry at Homer, and has a nightmare where he is sniping people from a clock tower like that guy who killed a bunch of people at a texas university. Kind of showed all the bottled-up rage Ned is capable of.
the Homer Horde™ is standing in Gil’s cornfield, the camera pans past a crowd of Homers, we see Peter Griffin standing in the crowd, and the camera ends up on the original Tracy Ullman Show style Homer
Jay Sherman from The Critic comes to stay with the Simpsons, and Homer is jealous of the attention he’s getting. They’re all sitting on the couch in the living room, and after Sherman tells a joke involving movie stars, Homer jumps in with “Well Scooby Doo can do-do, but Jimmy Carter is smarter.”
There’s a dead silence, except for a slight gust of wind, and a tumbleweed rolling across the floor.
Where the motorcycle daredevil leaps across the tank full of alligators, sharks, pirahnas etc, only to fall in taking his applause. he battles his way to the edge, torn to shreds and starts to haul himself out, when a LION leaps out of the water and attacks him!
Marge and Ruth are sitting in a diner. Ruth has asserted that there are no good men available. Marge disputes this. Barney walks in and asks the waitress, “Can I throw up in your bathroom? I’ll buy something.”