Editing The Simpsons (section)

===Continuity and the floating timeline===
Despite the depiction of yearly milestones such as holidays or birthdays passing, the characters never age. The series uses a [[floating timeline]] in which episodes generally take place in the year the episode is produced. Flashbacks and flashforwards do occasionally depict the characters at other points in their lives, with the timeline of these depictions also generally floating relative to the year the episode is produced. For example, the 1991 episodes "[[The Way We Was]]" and "[[I Married Marge]]" depict Homer and Marge as high schoolers in the 1970s who had Bart (who is always 10 years old) in the early '80s, while the 2008 episode "[[That '90s Show (The Simpsons)|That '90s Show]]" depicts Homer and Marge as a childless couple in the '90s, and the 2021 episode "[[Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars]]" portrays Homer as an adolescent in the same period. The 1995 episode "[[Lisa's Wedding]]" takes place during Lisa's college years in the then-future year of 2010, the same year the show began airing its [[The Simpsons season 22|22nd season]], in which Lisa was still 8. In 2015, the show reached the point where, had the characters been allowed to age in real time, Bart would have been older than Homer was in the first episode. Regarding the contradictory flashbacks, Selman stated that "they all kind of happened in their imaginary world".<ref>{{cite web|last=Bailey|first=Kat|date=July 28, 2021|title=The Simpsons: Matt Selman On Continuity And His Support For a Simpsons Hit & Run Remake|url=https://www.ign.com/articles/matt-selman-simpsons-hit-and-run-remake?fbclid=IwAR2dNT3h2bwJAkw8gY72mmgn3f1ndf20KP7iWER4cETTmlkoSbMX7TORVns/|access-date=July 28, 2021|work=[[IGN]]}}</ref>

The show follows a loose and inconsistent continuity. For example, [[Krusty the Clown]] may be able to read in one episode, but not in [[Krusty Gets Busted|another]]. However, it is consistently portrayed that he is [[Jewish]], that his father was a [[rabbi]], and that his career began in the 1960s. The latter point introduces another snag in the floating timeline: historical periods that are a core part of a character's backstory remain so even when their age makes it unlikely or impossible, such as [[Grampa Simpson]] and [[Principal Skinner]]'s respective service in [[World War II]] and [[Vietnam War|Vietnam]].

The only episodes not part of the series' main canon are the ''[[Treehouse of Horror]]'' episodes, which often feature the deaths of main characters. Characters who die in "regular" episodes, such as [[Maude Flanders]], [[Mona Simpson (The Simpsons)|Mona Simpson]], [[Edna Krabappel]], etc, however, stay dead.  An exception to this is [[Hans Moleman]], who is often killed in his appearances - {{As of|2019|lc=y}} he has been killed 26 times only to reappear later.<ref>[https://www.vulture.com/2019/03/hans-moleman-simpsons-character-al-jean.html The Enigma of The Simpsons' Hans Moleman]</ref>  Most episodes end with the [[status quo]] being restored, though occasionally major changes will stick, such as Lisa's conversions to [[vegetarianism]] and [[Buddhism]], the divorce of [[Milhouse van Houten]]'s parents, and the marriage and subsequent parenthood of [[Apu Nahasapeemapetilon|Apu]] and [[Manjula Nahasapeemapetilon|Manjula]].