Interesting note re. the ongoing debate on whether the Simpsons live in a particular place or if their locale is an impossible to pin down running gag: The first time they ran the “Behind the Laughter” episode, it ended with a note on “this Northern Kentucky family”, which some took to be a definitive sign. Well, did anyone else notice that when they re-ran it last night, that sentence now was “this Southern Missouri family”? Pretty damn funny, methinks. Can they possibly have multiple versions of this floating around, perhaps regionally (I WAS in OR, now in so. CA) like the Clue movie ending or TV guide covers or whatever, or perhaps they will just mess with it each time it is re-run? Any reports of other versions?
hehe… i noticed this as well. I was actually thinking at the beginning of the episode “wouldn’t it be funny if they re-dubbed the line to place springfield in another state”.
FWIW, i live in CA, but have satellite, and was watching the east-coast feed, and they used the “southern missouri” line as well.
Odd. In Toronto, Canada, they went with the original “Northern Kentucky family”.
For what its worth there IS a Springfield in southern Missouri. I have relatives there. Is there a Springfield in northern Kentucky??? That would be freaking funny if each time they ran that they changed it to a region where there IS a Springfield in real life.
There’s been so much on the location of the simpsons, and my favorite allusion is the one in “Lisa The Iconoclast.”
When they’re opening Jebediah Springfields Coffin, for about a second in the background there’s the name of some mayor of some town. He’s buried in a certain springfield (I forget which one). Just the fact that they would take the time to put that in is amazing to me. Love it.
Holy shit there’s a Springfield AND Shelbyville in Northern Kentucky.
The origins of the Simpsons may remain shrouded in mystery, but IMHO the puzzle of where they live has already been solved.
In the series premiere for this season, loyal viewers may recall that Homer leads a secession movement after Springfield’s area code is split from 636 to 636 and 939, and his side of town is shoehorned into the new area code.
Well, 636 just so happens to be a recently assigned area code for suburban St. Louis.
Further proof comes later in the episode, when a brief shot is shown of the world to the east of Springfield (I can’t remember what the circumstances were). Several landmarks are visible stretching into the horizon. The first and most prominent? The St. Louis Arch.
Now, if only this could be reconciled with the episode where they said they were banned from every state in the union except North Dakota and Arizona (and ‘Arizona smelled funny’)… 
No, no, see, you don’t get it. They’ve lived (or live currently) in almost every single springfield there is. It’s not supposed to be a Specific springfield. It’s a gag. Laugh.
True, but irrelevant. Springfield, MO is a couple of hundred miles southwest of St. Louis, and its area code is 417.
Springfield, IL is much closer to St. Louis, but it’s northeast of the St. Louis area, so the orientation would be wrong. And its area code is 217.
Next.