By Brian Myers
| Updated
Some fans of the 2026 Lord of the Flies Netflix series have begun exploring older incarnations of the 1954 William Golding novel. Transitioning the late novelist’s words onto the screen has been met with mixed success over the last three-quarters of a century, with a British film adaptation from 1963 being critically lauded and a 1990 American version resulting in mediocre reviews and box office receipts. But between the big and small screen versions of Golding’s work, one adaptation reigns supreme: a 22-minute episode from Season 9 of The Simpsons, entitled “Das Bus.”
The 1998 installment follows a main storyline where students from Springfield Elementary are headed on a field trip to New York City, where the Model U.N. Club will get to visit the actual U.N. Building in Manhattan. When Bart, Nelson, Milhouse, and Ralph “It Tastes Like Burning” Wiggum compete to see which of their fruit will roll to the front of the bus the fastest, a grapefruit gets stuck under the brake pedal. When bus driver Otto presses on it, the juice squirts into his eyes and temporarily blinds him. This causes the bus to careen off a bridge and into a river where he and the students are carried away by the current. While Otto is swept one direction (ultimately getting brought aboard a Chinese fishing vessel and forced into hard labor), Bart and the gang drift out to sea and wind up stranded on a deserted island.
Brief, But Thorough (Zeppelin Rules!!!)
Though a brief but thorough parody of the novel, “Das Bus” manages to pack in plenty of sight gags, well-timed humor, and memorable one-liners. Amazingly enough, the sequence of events also follows a good amount of the novel’s story arc. The bespectacled Milhouse stands in for the book’s Piggy, while Bart and Nelson are almost immediately at odds with one another in the style of Ralph and Jack. “Das Bus” also utilizes the book’s conch shell and “beast.” Like the source material, the students of Springfield Elementary are split into two camps. One (Bart, Lisa, and Milhouse) represents logic and order, while the remainder (led by Nelson) are animated embodiments of social devolution, and the chaos that erupts when the social contract is removed from the equation.
For anyone who has read the novel, you’ll recall how the boys on the island are eventually and unexpectedly rescued by a British naval officer, who had seen the flames from the forest fires that were set by Jack. This story resolution by an unexpected character is a literary device known as deus ex machina, from the Latin phrase “God from the machine.” Though originally associated with ancient Greek tragedies, it has found a use in countless works of literature and film in the centuries since it was first introduced by Aeschylus nearly 3,000 years ago.
Consider The Source, Respect The Absurdity
The writers at the helm of this episode of The Simpsons made use of deus ex machina, albeit in their own hilarious way. After the kids seem to resolve their conflict, a narrator (voiced by special guest star James Earl Jones) leaves viewers with the following words: “So the children learned how to function as a society, and eventually they were rescued by, oh, let’s say … Moe.” There are no attributing actions to that effect, no dialogue leading to that direction prior to, just the episode fading out with a hilarious angle.
“Das Bus” gave fans more than just a parody of Lord of the Flies. Animated reimaginings of both Raiders of the Lost Ark and Swiss Family Robinson are easy to catch, while an action sequence on the bus that mirrors the 1994 action-comedy True Lies might take a sharper eye. The title of the episode is an homage to the 1981 West German war film Das Boot, and the coconut-shaped radio and Teri/Sherry’s pony tails are visual nods to Rescue From Gilligan’s Island and The Flintstones, respectively.
A Common Simpsons Practice
The Simpsons using film and television favorites as a source for parody was already a go-to move in the show’s playbook well before the record-breaking show’s ninth season. The animated series had already spoofed everything from A Clockwork Orange to The Twilight Zone to Citizen Kane before taking on Golding’s classic novel. Now in its 37th season, the show has stacked up more references and parodies than you might imagine. As of April 2026, Bart, Homer, and the gang have used this sort of plot device more than 2,700 times for just film alone. That’s an average of 6.1 times per episode (per SpringfieldGoogleplex).
“Das Bus” remains not only the greatest take on Golding’s novel but also has etched itself deep into the fandom of a favorite animated series. The parodies from its writers keep them coming episode after episode, but this 9th-season installment sure is a hard one to top.
The Simpsons can be streamed on Disney+.
