For some people (we like to call them “A.V. Club readers”), watching The Simpsons is practically a workout, requiring their brain and their lungs to operate at full capacity so they can properly take in each joke, determine whether it was funny or not, and then either laugh or loudly declare that the show is no longer as good as it used to be. Unless you’re one of these active viewers, you might have missed a very quick Easter egg that was added to a repeat episode that aired on Fox this weekend.
The episode is called “The Town,” and it originally aired back in October. In the episode, there’s a scene where the Boston Americans rally to win a football game against the Springfield Atoms at the last second. For last night’s rerun, the Simpsons crew snuck in and replaced the team names with “Atlanta” and “New England,” turning the fictional game into the real-life Super Bowl that took place a week before.
You can see the two different shots below.
Entertainment Weekly spoke with Simpsons executive producer Matt Selman about the gag, and he explained that this was a “one-time only” thing that nobody will ever see again. Apparently, the DVD/Blu-ray version of the episode will only have the original, so if you have the rerun saved on your DVR for some reason, it could be worth something to a particularly hardcore Simpsons or New England Patriots fan.