The Simpsons is often at its best when it’s plumbing the depths of the absurd – Sideshow Bob getting thwonked in the face by rakes, Planet of the Apes: The Musical, the entire Monorail episode – and that’s also something the enduring popularity of the ‘Steamed Hams’ scene proves. In the short clip, Principal Skinner’s attempt to make steamed clams for Superintendent Chalmers ends in the pair chowing down on Krusty Burgers falsely dubbed ‘steamed hams’ while Skinner’s kitchen cheerily burns down, and the moment has entered the internet’s imagination like no other Simpsons scene. Such is the appetite for steamed hams that the original draft of the script was recently shared by its writers, and one recent edit even used it to parody Trump and Piers Morgan’s televised interview.
It’s against this extremely internet-y backdrop that a set of 13 animators recently split the scene up, with each of them animating 13-second stretches one by one. The result is an unmissably surreal and supremely artistic reimagining of the 170-second scene: veering between hugely divergent styles and perspectives, the clip has racked up close to a million views since it dropped on YouTube three days ago (April 14) and the views are only going to climb. Check it out above – and remember to pick up your jaw from the floor when it’s over.