Professor Frink on The Simpsons is a mad professor who habitually comes up with amusing inventions of questionable utility. So it makes perfect sense that the makers of a searchable database of Simpsons screencaps paired with snippets of dialogue called their search engine Frinkiac. Paul Kehrer, Sean Schulte, and Allie Young’s database contains almost 3 million screengrabs, which are tagged with lines pulled from closed captioning, and there’s an easy option to combine text and image into custom-made memes.
Fox via Frinkiac.com
The search engine is not perfect. When I searched “tastes like burning,” I had to scroll down a few rows to find the relevant image of Ralph Wiggum doubled over in pain after having eaten some purple berries. But when I searched “choo-choo-choose you” (apparently my favorite Simpsons character is Ralph Wiggum), the image of Lisa giving poor Ralph a pity Valentine showed up right away. Other Slate staffers had luck searching additional beloved Simpsons gags like “Mr. Plow,” “Land of Chocolate,” and “last lingering thread of heterosexuality.” The results often show similar images multiple times, but that won’t bother perfectionists searching for the perfect expression on Homer’s face.
Fox via Frinkiac.com
It’s possible, if not probable, that Fox will come after Frinkiac for copyright infringement, so if you’ve always dreamed of an easy way to meme-ify all your favorite Simpsons lines, act fast.
