By 1994, when "Bart Gets Famous" first aired, The Simpsons had reached near-universal popularity. You couldn't walk into a high school in the US without seeing at least a couple of Simpsons t-shirts. Many of them bore the image of Bart Simpson uttering one of his mischievous catchphrases, like "Eat my shorts," "Underachiever and proud," or "I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, you can't prove anything." Art imitates life in "Bart Gets Famous," as one of Bart's quips, "I didn't do it," becomes a pop culture sensation.
Bart's in-world fame allows the show to make fun of itself and the arbitrary, fleeting, and ultimately hollow nature of the zeitgeist. It all begins when Bart sneaks away from a boring class trip to a box factory (leaving behind his red hat, making Homer think his boy has been transformed into a box) and heads to the Channel 6 studio, where Krusty hires him as his personal assistant. One day, he gets to say a line in a sketch, but he accidentally destroys the set and claims he "didn't do it." Thus he's launched into the unsatisfying world of fame, which includes a spot on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, where the former Simpsons writer-turned-host voices himself.
