The show was also conceived with Bart as the main character, with the world being from Bart’s perspective. As a kid Bart’s age of course your dad is dumb. Homer is the irl name of Matt Groenig’s dad.

As the show progressed the writers ended up latching onto Homer more and he gradually became the core of the show. Also the characters “Flanderized” (literally!) more and more as time went on and he became more ridiculous. The Frank Grimes episode is pretty genius for capturing all this in a funny way.