13. Up until the 17th episode of the second season, Fox and the production staff kept secret which characters the voice actors played, going so far as to end recording sessions while refusing to release photos of the recording artists. But on “Old Money,” the network revealed which roles each actor played because the producers decided the cast should be given credit.
14. Until 1998, the six principal actors were paid only $30,000 per episode. After a pay dispute in which the network threatened to replace the cast with new actors, their fees were increased to $125,000 per episode until Groening stepped in to help the cast. Their salaries were increased to somewhere between $250,000 and $360,000 after a month-long strike in April 2004, in which performers stopped attending cast readings in hopes of receiving a larger share of the show’s increased revenue.
15. In 2011, the show was threatened with cancellation by Fox unless production costs were cut, and the cast was forced to accept a 30 percent pay cut from their then-$400,000-per-episode pay in 2008 contract negotiations, bringing their current pay to just over $300,000 per episode.
