The Simpsons technically debuted before its series premiere, first arriving on television in 1987 as a series of animated shorts. Since then, the scope of the cast has expanded to contain thousands of characters -- although a handful from those earliest days of the show have endured into the modern era.

Milhouse Van Houten is one of The Simpsons' oldest characters, appearing even before the proper series premiere. In fact, Milhouse may have even been technically created before the titular family.

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It's important to remember that The Simpsons' current form is one that took multiple decades to develop. The cast has ballooned since the earliest days of the series. Starting life as a series of shorts for The Tracey Ullman Show, The Simpsons has only grown from those very early conceptions of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie. Series creator Matt Groening has spoken repeatedly over the years about how the conception of the characters stemmed from a desperate last second-change in his pitch to producer James L. Brooks. Initially brought in to pitch an animated adaptation of his comic strip Life is Hell for the Fox series, Groening decided he wanted to retain the ownership of those characters and instead pitched a chaotic family-based sitcom on his own.

As the family developed over the three seasons of The Tracey Ullman Show, they became one of the series' major draws. This resulted in a higher spotlight for the Simpsons, including in an ad campaign for the Butterfinger candy bar. One of these ads, aired in 1988, served as the quiet introduction of Milhouse, with the ad featuring the bespectacled kid being disappointed that his lunch doesn't have something that fulfills the "Butterfinger" food group. Milhouse reappeared as one of the members of Bart's class when The Simpsons formally became its own series, and steadily transformed from one of Bart's dorky friends to one of the show's most enduring side characters. But despite his first appearance nominally being in a Simpsons/Butterfinger commercial, it turns out the character actually existed in some form before that.

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Bart Milhouse The Simpsons Butterfinger Storyboard

As explained in a Facebook post by David Silverman -- another important creative who played a part in the development of The Simpsons -- Milhouse had actually been designed before Groening worked on the Butterfinger commercial. In fact, Milhouse had actually been designed for an entirely different show. During the period when The Simpsons was developing, Groening worked on a potential animated show for the NBC network that didn't end up going to series. According to Silverman, Groening showed him and Wes Archer (a frequent director on the early seasons of The Simpsons) some designs after the show was shot down by NBC. Silverman and Archer enjoyed the design for Milhouse, and he was added to the Butterfinger ad.

The exact timing is unknown, but considering the fast-paced origins of The Simpsons characters compared to Groening's work on the unnamed NBC show before it was shuttered, it's entirely possible that Milhouse -- or at least the character who eventually evolved into Milhouse -- technically existed before the rest of the Simpsons.

It's a fascinating thing to consider, especially with how important Milhouse became over the years. He's arguably the most focused-upon child in the show outside of the Simpsons family -- with his friendship to Bart, romantic feelings for Lisa and issues stemming from his parents' messy divorce becoming frequent story beats over the years. But the show has always centered on the Simpsons and their experiences with the world, so it's fascinating to think that there was a chance Milhouse may have made it to TV without the rest of the Simpsons to bounce off of -- and may have even been at one point in time the focus of a show instead of Bart.