If you’re from Portland, then you’ll be well aware of the links between the city and Matt Groening. In short, it’s no secret that the famous animator originated from a town just outside of the city. To be precise, he comes from Springfield, Oregon. Unsurprisingly, this is what he named The Simpson’s town after. Another fun fact is that also grew up on a street named Evergreen Terrace. Yet again, this is replicated in his show.

As seen above, the childhood home of Matt Groening looks very picturesque and a long way from the chaotic scenes often associated with certain areas of modern-day Portland!

Anyway, it seems that his ties with Portland go deeper than the street name, and he explicitly mentioned this in a throwback interview, stating “I very early on named a lot of characters after streets in Portland. I thought it would be amusing for people in Portland to be driving past the alphabetically laid-out streets. There’s Flanders, Kearney, Lovejoy, mostly in Northwest Portland. My goal was to name every character after streets in Portland, but we were in a hurry so I dropped that idea.”

If you visit areas of Portland, then you will notice there are actually quite a few Simpsons characters named after various street names. Overall, this is pretty cool and perhaps shows how living in Portland helped creatively shape Groening as he grew up. This is understandable, considering it’s quite a bizarre place at times. Then, when you think of the likes of Courtney Love and Steve Jobs – it makes sense that Portland’s zany culture has rubbed off on a lot of successful people!