The Worst Things Bart Ever Did To Lisa On The Simpsons

The Simpsons have been America's first family for over 30 years. The longest-running scripted show in television history is an international phenomenon whose characters have become household names across world. The secret to the popularity of "The Simpsons" is the interplay between the now-legendary characters, and arguably no two characters have such a powerful back and forth as Bart and Lisa Simpson.

The elder two Simpson children are both ride or die friends and bitter rivals. There are plenty of moments when they sabotage, insult, and hurt each other. Yet in the end they always have each other's back, no matter what, and this loyalty is why we love the Simpson kids even when they're being horrible to each other.

Of course Bart is the hellion whose mischief hurts everybody at one point or another — a modern-day Dennis the Menace who takes great pleasure in pranking, scaring, tricking, and in some cases hurting other characters, including his sister. While this wouldn't work if Bart doesn't redeem himself before the final credits, he does some really bad things to the sensitive, caring, ambitious, hated, and ostracized Lisa over and again. Here's the worst stuff he did to his sister Lisa.

Over 30 years ago, in Episode 7 of Season 2, Bart ruined Thanksgiving. Lisa had worked hard to create a quite impressive centerpiece. Just after everybody is gathered, Bart enters with the great turkey, taking pride in presenting it as if he cooked it. Always hungry to be the center of attention himself, Bart insists that his turkey should usurp Lisa's centerpiece's spot and in the ensuing scuffle with Lisa, Bart sends this beautiful creation Lisa's spent a ton of time building into the fire.

Sure, this wasn't necessarily on purpose, but it was also wasn't exactly an accident. That is, Bart didn't want Lisa to get the credit for yet another well-made craft and thanks to this petty jealousy, he was set on kicking her out of the literal center — and doesn't care if it resulted in the destruction of something she took a lot of pride in. Bart runs away from home after Marge tells him he ruined Thanksgiving and becomes briefly homeless. He finally comes back home only after reconciling with Lisa who's no longer crying because of the centerpiece ... but instead because she misses him.

Yes, arguably what happens in the Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror stays in the Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror. But the incident in the Simpsons' "Harry Potter" spoof skit in "Treehouse of Horror XXI" does such a good job of summing up their antagonistic relationship that it had to be included. Bart and Lisa attend a school of witchcraft (where their classmate is, in fact, Harry Potter) and Lisa is constantly showing Bart up with her magical skills. Bart gets approached by Lord Montymort with the request that Bart help him trip up the great witch Lisa and Bart is immediately onboard.

During a school talent show, Lisa steps up to do some magic involving a dragon. Bart has switched her wand with a wand and the dragon is actually Montymort in disguise. Bart had just meant to embarrass Lisa in front of the whole school out of jealousy; when he realizes that he's actually put her and the rest of the school in mortal danger, he acknowledges that he might not have been acting like a good older brother.

Bart finally vanquishes Montymort and he and Lisa vow to stop their stupid fighting. But we know how long that'll last.

Ned Flanders has a beach house; who knew? "The Simpsons" do in the 7th season's "Summer of 4 Ft. 2" where they spend assumedly a whole summer at the beach (accompanied by Milhouse, whose parents are no doubt too happy to get rid of him). After Lisa ends the school year without a single signature on her yearbook, she decides to reinvent herself at the beach by wearing new clothes, hiding her intelligence, and embracing apathy. She soon makes friends with a cool crew. Bart gets jealous when they spurn him, though, and decides to ruin Lisa's sudden popularity.

Bart is normally the popular one and Lisa is normally the nerdy one. In the interest of restoring the natural order of things, Bart reveals to her new friends how big of a nerd she really is with her yearbook photos and Lisa runs off crying. When she finds the cool kids messing around with Homer's car, she assumes they're making fun of her like kids do back home. But it turns out they appreciate here for who she is, especially how she's able to teach them a few things.

So even if Bart was trying to ruin Lisa's new friendships out of petty jealousy, it results in the revelation that some kids might like her for who she is. Maybe Bart did a good thing? Nahhh.

Jumping forward to season 29, "Flander's Ladder" is the final episode of the season. It opens with Bart tricking Lisa into playing a supposed genius maze. But the maze is actually a scary maze, and when Lisa gets frightened by the scary face, she falls back into Bart's dirty clothes. Bart snaps pictures of her tangled in his underwear and posts them to social media, which quickly gets shared.

Not only does Bart want to trick Lisa into getting frightened, he then wants to embarrass her over how she looked after he tricked her into playing a game by taking pictures of her and posting them on social media where kids' reputations get made and destroyed these days.

Lisa does get back at him by telling him scary stories while he's in a coma so he sees ghosts in a parody of "The Sixth Sense." Bart's new ability turns out to be an enlightening thing, though, while the cyberbullying no doubt will continue adding to Lisa's status as a social outcast.

In the season 8 episode "My Sister, My Sitter," the preternaturally responsible Lisa works to become a successful babysitter. She does such a good job that Homer and Marge leave Lisa in charge of her older brother and her younger sister, which Bart resents. In turn, Bart pulls a bunch of pranks on Lisa until finally she charges him — leading him to fall down the stairs, dislocating his shoulder. Knowing the injury will ruin Lisa's reputation, Bart locks himself in his room and hits his head against the wall until he knocks himself out.

Lisa has to scramble to get him medical care but she can't let anybody of consequence see since it's ruin her reputation as a babysitter. Of course everybody finds out and she gains a reputation as "World's worst babysitter." So Lisa tries to build a good career for a young responsible person and Bart ruins it out of spite.

Lisa has accomplished quite a bit for a kid still in single digits, and a big theme running through "The Simpsons" is how much Bart resents her overachieving ways. In Season 4 Episode 16, "Duffless," Lisa has invented a super tomato that she hopes will end world hunger. When she leaves Bart alone with the tomato, he sees Skinner bending over and can't resist the possibilities. He throws Lisa's tomato at the principal's rear-end target, getting laughs and ruining Lisa's possibly-world-changing science project.

Lisa tries to get back at Bart by changing her experiment to a test studying the question "Is my brother smarter than a hamster?" Yet while she approaches it with a scientific (if not vindictive) mind, Bart discovers the project and figures out his own plan. At the fair he puts the hamster in a small toy plane as an answer to the age-old question "Can hamsters fly planes?" This sideshow gimmick sham of a science project wins first prize despite having no scientific merit, much to Lisa's chagrin. So in a way, Bart hurts Lisa twice in this episode.

Lady Gaga visits Springfield in Season 23's "Lisa Goes Gaga" after she discovers it has the lowest self-esteem of any place on the planet. And her special sense draws her to Lisa's extremely low self esteem. Why is Lisa so sad? She gets voted Least Popular Student at Springfield Elementary's Student Choice Awards. Yet after the vote, an anonymous commenter called Truth Teller fills the school message board with positive comments about Lisa and the next day she's popular.

Bart, however, discovers a pad in Lisa's backpack with the comments and reads them, coming to the revelation loudly and vocally in front of the school that Lisa herself had written the Truth Teller comments to build her own popularity. She returns to the bottom of the popularity bucket; in fact, she goes even lower due to her lying. Bart is constantly thwarting Lisa's attempts at popularity, for seemingly no reason other than the fact that Bart doesn't think she deserves social acceptance. Luckily, Lady Gaga is there to rescue Lisa from her depression and leaves town with Lisa as a singing and dancing superstar.

In a flashback episode, the Season 9 Episode 3 classic "Lisa's Sax," the family gathers together to tell the story of how Lisa first got her one great artist outlet: her saxophone. The episode starts with Bart and Homer watching TV, getting angry at how Lisa's saxophone playing upstairs is disrupting their viewing experience. Lisa is practicing an instrument — and yet in the Simpson household, that's grounds for complaint from two of the laziest boys in Springfield

Bart tries to grab Lisa's sax from her to get Lisa to stop playing so he and Homer can get back to their enjoyment of doing nothing. A tug of war ensues, resulting in Lisa's sax getting thrown out the window where it's promptly run over by a car, then a truck driven by Hans Moleman, then it gets stomped on by Nelson, then a man on a tricycle finishes it off. Much like Bart destroying Lisa's Thanksgiving centerpiece, he didn't mean to break something dear to her — but he also maybe wanted to destroy it, at least subconsciously. 

After their Halloween specials, perhaps the most famous "Simpsons" episodes are their Christmas ones (which makes sense since the series began with a Christmas special). While Bart has negatively impacted a few Christmas episodes — "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace" comes to mind — in Season 25's "White Christmas Blues" he hurts Lisa directly.

In this episode, Lisa decides to get everybody less expensive but more thoughtful gifts for Christmas. None of them appreciate these, but Bart really dislikes the book she gets him. She's brought to tears by the family's rejection of her gifts — but when she sees Bart burning the book, she gets angry.

In general, it's rude to reject somebody's gift, and when that somebody obviously put thought into the gift it's downright hurtful. On the other hand, Bart points out that Lisa knows he doesn't like books and the gift was maybe more about making her feel good than getting something he liked. This brings some real ambiguity to the situation, though one could still argue that there's a better way to make this point than by burning the gift somebody bought you.

In the end, Lisa gets Bart something he likes more and he in turn gives Lisa money he earned bell-hopping for his family's B&B (the A story) to donate to a cause she likes. At best, this is a good lesson taught rudely.

In season 11's "Bart to the Future," Bart sees a future where Lisa is the President and he's her slacker, wannabe musician hanger-on brother. Bart gets angry when he sees her as thinking she's so much more important than him (which she is since she's, you know, the POTUS). So he gets back at her by interrupting her live address to the nation.

Bart hijacks her speech to play a sample from his band. It is a bad song. It also reveals the tax hike Lisa was planning to unveil in a more tactful way to the country, as a way of appeasing their international debtors. This leads Lisa to presidential unpopularity — and it brings the debtor nations to America to insist America pays up.

While Bart uses his skills honed over a lifetime of being a mooch to get the nations to back off, he still tanked Lisa's and, in the process, America's reputation.

Episode 16 of Season 10, entitled "Make Room for Lisa," predicts the increasing power that communications companies will have over the world. OmniTouch buys the Smithsonian, including the original Bill of Rights. After Homer damages the Bill of Rights, OmniTouch turns the Simpsons' house into a cellphone tower and Homer sacrifices Lisa's room for the machinery running the tower. Lisa is then forced to move into Bart's room, which Bart greets with "I'm going to make your life a living hell."

He proceeds to do this, acting so annoying and distracting to the studious, focused Lisa that she ends up with stomach problems due to the stress. Being annoying is one thing; being so annoying on purpose is a horrible thing to do to somebody you love. So in a nutshell, Lisa has to move into Bart's room through no fault of her own and Bart responds by doing everything he can to mess with her — eventually impacting her physical and mental health to the point where she has to get therapy. Classic little scamp.

For most TV series, making it to 8 seasons would be a big achievement; for "The Simpsons," Season 8 feels like forever ago. In the final episode of Season 8, "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson," Bart is sent to military school as a punishment. Lisa decides to enroll there too, because of the discipline and elevated academics compared to her public school. Lisa is an unwelcome departure for the all-boy military academy, though. Even more, Bart's talent for mayhem and destruction leads him to being amazing at such things as the use of weaponry while Lisa is decidedly not.

While they both start off getting hazed, Bart is quickly accepted into the fold while the rest of the cadets continue harassing Lisa. While Bart looks on with some regret, he also sides with the ostracizers and never tries to bring Lisa into the fold. This leads the girl who already felt lonely and disliked at home to feel despondent. The fact that Bart doesn't stick up for his sister is a big betrayal.

Of course in the end he helps her train to pass the final physical challenge of the semester, eventually cheering her on in front of the others who are hoping she'll fail. Yes, he redeems himself by the end. But if only Bart would stick by his little sister like a good big brother is supposed to, he wouldn't have to constantly be making things up to her.