Is 'Graggle Simpson' Real And How Did He Go From 'Gumbly' To 'Graggle?'

Graggle Simpson is the newest instance of The Mandela Effect, being a supposedly forgotten character from The Simpsons. However, despite the viral Facebook post that's been circulating the web this weekend, Graggle was originally called Gumbly and dates back much further than his new nickname alludes.

On May 22nd, a Facebook user named Yeliab Ressap made a post that captioned a photo of The Simpsons family, however, a strange addition was present on the righthand side, being who Yeliab Ressap claimed to be "GRAGGLE SIMPSON." Over the course of nine days, the post received over 500 reactions and roughly 1,700 shares.

A screenshot of the post made its way to Instagram and Twitter in the days that followed. For instance, a tweet posted by Twitter user @poloo098 on May 27th received roughly 78,900 likes in four days, being the most significant repost in the growing trend.

In the days that followed, leading into this week, many memes were shared regarding Graggle Simpson and his alleged inclusion in the classic cartoon. Similar to the discussion surrounding the Berenstein Bears and the Robber Emoji, this latest evidence of the Mandela Effect garnered attention across platforms.

Despite recent, mainstream awareness of Graggle Simpson, the botched character has a precursor name of Gumbly, having been invented in 2015 by an anonymous 2chan user trying to start a hoax. On October 4th, 2015, the first available version of Gumbly was added into a photo of the Simpson family in the /livejupiter/ imageboard (shown below). At the time, the character was known as Nan-j min, one of the mascots of the 2channel imageboard "Nan-j," a nickname for /livejupiter/, which dates back to 2011.

Gumbly discourse picked up again on January 29th, 2021, when Twitter user @SimianJimmy posted a doctored image of The Simpsons cast with "Gumbly" included. This image went on to be the one used in Graggle memes starting this year, as well as all the photoshopped screencaps that surfaced online.

Of course, Twitter users aware of Gumbly as a precursor alerted the masses to the evolving hoax. Perhaps, the renaming of this hideous character will happen every new year, inspiring an influx of memes to clown an unknowing, new audience.