These opened the door for an endless stream of ever-more-vulgar and puerile animated comedy, most of which bore huge, greasy fingerprints from its predecessors – as an example, you could never have had the dysfunctional central family unit of Rick and Morty without Family Guy and American Dad, both of which were drawing so heavily from The Simpsons they might as well have been traced.
Both generally have the f-bomb bleeped, but still, there’s almost no subject that’s off-limits for them (the one notable exception is when Comedy Central censored South Park’s depiction of the Prophet Mohammed, blurring-out be upon him). Perhaps the most obvious examples are The Simpsons’ most popular bastard children, South Park and Family Guy, which – despite the creators’ many, many differences – both thrive on content that’s edgy for the sake of edgy.
Ever since The Simpsons kicked off the golden age of adult animated comedy, we’ve been seeing more and more pushes against the boundaries of what’s acceptable on-screen.
