At the beginning of the 1992 Simpsons episode “Homer at the Bat,” Homer starts choking on some donuts while on the job at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. “Hey, Homer’s choking again,” says fellow employee Carl, as his co-workers, Lenny and Charlie, look on without showing much concern for Homer’s well-being. Just before Homer manages to get the obstruction out on his own, a large poster demonstrating how to perform the Heimlich maneuver can briefly be spotted on a nearby bulletin board:
It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it gag, but believe it or not, that poster is actually responsible for saving two people’s lives. The first instance occurred just a few months after the episode originally aired. In May 1992, 8-year-old Alex Bencze was home alone with his 10-year-old brother, Chris, when he started choking on an orange. Chris remembered the Heimlich maneuver poster he’d seen on The Simpsons back in February and quickly used the technique on Alex, effectively removing the obstruction.
A ‘Simpsons’ Background Gag Once Helped Two Kids Save Lives
It would be another 15 years until “Homer at the Bat” came to the rescue once again, and just as in the earlier incident, a 10-year-old boy ended up being the hero. This time around, the short gag came to the aid of a boy named Alex Hardy from England. In December 2007, Alex collapsed at school while eating a ham sandwich. Members of the staff tried patting him on the back to resolve the issue, to no avail.
That’s when Alex’s best friend, Aiden Bateman, stepped in and performed the Heimlich maneuver on Alex the same way he recalled it being done in the Simpsons episode. “It just came into my head, and I did it,” Aiden told the Sunday Express the next day. “I put my arms around Alex’s back and pushed his stomach in. He was going purple, and the veins had started coming up on his head. I was shaking all day afterward.”
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