Lost Media Mysteries: Bort's Adventure

As mentioned in the

Mat Groning wanted to create shorts based on his comic, Life of Binky: Bort’s Adventure. The shorts would share the same name called Bort's Adventure starring Bort who was originally a secondary character in Life of Binky.

The concept art for Bort's Adventure. Some claim that one of the missing episodes is based on this.

Despite the immense success of the main series, the shorts themselves are lost. As of now only 5 of the 25 shorts have been found.

The reason they are lost is because they only aired once and only once as Mel Brooks, as we all know, along with the rest of the Tracy Ullman crew hated it and made a deal with Growing that each episode could only show up once and that the episode limit is 25. To make matters even worse, the Tracey Ullman show and the shorts themselves were too unsuccessful and quick for people to have recorded it.

Despite this, there has been rumors that all the shorts used to be archived on a GeoCities site in the mid to late 90's until it was shut down for copyright reasons but this is yet to be proven. Just for interests’ sake, here are the other 4:

It has been long rumored that Mel Brooks destroyed all the copies by burning it. While he did get rid of it, he did not burn them. According to a slate interview, he simply made them part of his own private collection but when it became a series, he trashed it into FOX's storage.

As for how the remaining ones were found, the 15th and 1st one was recorded on television as it happened by complete accident. Shorts 7 to 9 were all found by one user who also recorded them but claimed to have recorded it during a rare rerun on Comedy Central.

As for when they were found. The 1st one was uploaded to a GeoCities fan site back in around 1998. The site was called Simpsonsworld, not to be confused with FOX's Simpsons world. The 15th one was found a few years later in 2000, by a forum user who was discussing the show's history. He then uploaded it to his personal site, the Simpsons site along with sharing the previous ones. In 2005, at the advent of YouTube, being some of its earliest uploads, a user uploaded short 7 to 8. It is alleged that they aired on comedy central the year prior, in 2004 and stopped because they were being sued.

People did not give up searching for it. The search began in the early 90's when Alt.Sampsons.net would make numerous bashing threads against Mel Brooks who admitted his hatred for shorts back in 1989. He apologized but made no efforts to restore the shorts. People thought that Mel Gibson and Groning had it but they confirmed that they never had a single copy in their hands as part of the contract.

It wasn't until 2008 when a bunch of superfans sneaked into the hardware and managed to collect 2 tapes before being caught. They somehow managed to take the tapes with them. Unfortunately, the tapes were damaged and the only thing that would come out of it is this glitchy mess:

It is alledged that the founders of the tape were actually malicously hiding this but this is yet to be proven. Some have said it may be fake due to its similarities with the NES game. However it is a well known fact that alot of the later things were just the shorts being repurposed.

However, a year later, even more images and footage had been leaked and as well as some users claiming how some of them may have looked.

Bart accidently burns the couch according to the original poster.

Homer seemed to at some point, meant to be killed off temporarily according to the text which according to the original uploader of the image, what he remembers happening in the short.

According to the uploader, this was part of a short where Bart becomes a news broadcaster and has to defend a politician.

The uploader claims to have forgotten the exact context of this rather gruesome scene but does remember getting it from a Geocities site and that the shorts as whole were more gruesome and dark compared to the show.

These were all found on the same site in 2009. However, the most mysterious of these short is the infamous face short that would be reported by many in the early 2010's. One user even claimed that it was so scary that he refused to watch any of the shorts and not even the TV show for a while. Little did he know that it was only allowed to show once.

Artistic rendition of one of the infamous shorts. according to the person, Bort and Liza make horrific faces while Marge tries to stop them.

The mystery behind this short is interesting as discussion of it goes as far back as the Geocities days, where a bunch of sites started getting memories about it after a very similar short showed up, though not as scary.

It happened to be a deleted scene from an earlier episode of the show as like with a lot of the shorts, it was going to be repurposed. It ended up online because one of the writers posted it on their website around 1995 with FOX's permission. He showed it because he was proud of it and was also upset it had to be scrapped. He would be contacted by one of the webmasters of the Simpsons GeoCities sites but the writer confirmed that he has no idea about it as he wasn't on the team at that time. A lot were disappointed, especially on alt.simpsons.net, however it wasn't as scary and neutralized. Some theorize it’s because FOX didn't want to scare the kids if they did use it.

Back to the 2010's, more information would be revealed as this mysterious screenshot was posted on one of the writer's social media.

It turns out to be Oliver Sampsons and alot actually remembered him.

Back to the 2010's, more information would be revealed as this mysterious screenshot was posted on one of the writer's social media. It was an image of a character that was exclusive to the shorts, Oliver Sampsons, a cousin of Bort, Liza, and Muggie. The writer also revealed that he only was in 1 short, short 5. Many remembered him and before this screenshot emerged, there were others who described a character that looked like this but couldn't get it quite right.

The name of the short was "And Oliver Makes Four" The synposis goes:

"Aunt Selma's long-lost son Oliver comes to live with the Simpsons, who quickly grow irriated with his fashion-concious preppiness and annoying catchphrases. But he when tries to run away, they realize just how much they love him."

This has been taken from Rubbercat

Not even Rubbercat knows but it’s the only thing that has been found in relation to the short. What we know so far is that it was much more gruesome and darker, with characters getting killed and slaughtered, sex and as well as characters that are exclusive to the shorts itself.

Some have reported that the aforementioned Oliver actually had a brother named Jake but this is once again unconfirmed, but we do have evidence as early reviews of the shorts from the 80's mention a character named Jake, we just don't know who he truly is.Some have said that he was sometimes called Bad Bart and unlike Oliver who was shown for only one episode, jake was said to have been in atleast 5. This is his alleged design:

Its origins are unknown.

From user accounts and the few reviews that are out there from the time give hints of what other shorts and situations would have been. Homere gets drunk an drives over his family, Liza goes on steroids and Bort follows suite, Homere gets addicted to gambling, The Simpsons meet the aforementioned Jake, Muggie gets driven over by a car, Homere accidently eats rotten food, Morge does shopping, Bort and Liza go to an amusement park and finally the family have supper with each other.

There are many more but these are the most talked about and remembered. There seems to be a lot revolving around characters getting hit and being hit by a car to the point one review almost called it the get hit by a car and the get hit show. By the end of 2011, a few months after the Oliver thing, a new image was found and it looks quite disturbing.

Very disturbing.

It was revealed that this was in fact the original planned designs as revealed by its animator, Klasky Csupo. Even Groning and Mel Gibson hated it and ordered that it should be redesigned. A month later, this was shared on a forum:

Even more disturbing.

This is not the only thing as another month later another image would be found.

Probably some concept art.

It turns out that this was probably concept art but it says drawn from memory so it’s possible that the animator or the drawer was trying to just draw for fun and not the actual shorts. It may have looked like a lot was going on with the search and that it was getting closer and closer but unfortunately, it would die down a bit with a very few finding here and there with most information being unnoticed. However there were a few interesting developments. First is this concept art found in early 2012:

Followed by these:

A year later, in 2013 a new screenshot was found of a much older homere smoking a cigar. why it says "do" is unknown, maybe a subtitle for laughs.

Finally, a new Bort pic would be found later that year.

Other than these, throughout 2012 to 2015, it was dormant with very little taking interest thinking it was over until one of the directors posted this early production image.

It was not just an outline of their house but a screenshot of the actual software that they used, according to the poster, this was taken back during the planning stages of the shorts back in late 1984 to early 1985 when it was still going to have real life Gibbons.

For a few months, many fans would finally put in the effort by contacting the creators and while many did not care, a lot of the original writers and voice actors would reveal that no one other than Mel Brooks had it as the contract wasn’t just that Groning and Gibson wasn't allowed to have it but nobody except for Brooks.

There has been much more that has been found but these are the main ones and as of now the rest of the shorts are still not found but hopefully will be found. The people who tried those 2 tapes did say they would at some point try to fix them and a lot have reported to have VHS recordings as well but yet to upload and of course images have constantly been posted of them and shared.