Quoted from brainmegaphone:I know but I think having the head which sometimes talks during the game was a nod to Rudy (except it doesn't have eyes that move because of the obvious complexity/costs involved and also I believe that feature may have been patented by Williams and the patent was likely still in play in ~2003).
I know this is an old post to dig up, but it's an interesting bit of TSPP trivia and a feature I'd really like to see restored.
Back in the Usenet days, TSPP designer Keith Johnson used to post frequently in rec.games.pinball. He said Homer's head was originally designed to follow the ball around the table - whenever a target or switch was hit, Homer would look in that direction (I have no idea how they handled multiball).
It was indeed William's patent on Rudy - where Rudy's eyes track the ball around the table, that caused Stern to nix the idea for Homer. So Homer was nerfed from cool, almost but not quite unique feature into a sorta confusing element that may as well be static. That patent is more than 20 years old now, and I have no idea if whoever held it at the time renewed it or not, but it's fairly likely the patent has expired. Would be really cool if Stern released one last ROM update with Homer's head working as originally designed.