Cletus Delroy Spuckler, commonly called Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel is a recurring character in the Fox animated series The Simpsons, voiced by Hank Azaria. Cletus is Springfield’s resident hillbilly stereotype. He is usually portrayed wearing a white sleeveless shirt and blue jeans. Cletus was introduced during the fifth season of the show, in “Bart Gets an Elephant”, as one of the “slack-jawed yokels” gawking at Bart’s elephant Stampy. Cletus’s voice is slightly deeper in this initial appearance than in later episodes. He, like the Sea Captain before him, was the go-to character for a quick laugh on the show, and is a staff favorite.

He made several generic appearances on the show before being given his first name in “Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily”. Cletus’s low intelligence is usually portrayed as the result of inbreeding, and jokes are occasionally made which refer to his partner Brandine being related to him. It has been suggested that Brandine is Cletus’s mother, sister and even daughter, whom he fathered with an alien. The two are shown to have a large number of children with stereotypical “hillbilly” names, and add to their family casually. In the Season 19 episode “Apocalypse Cow”, one of his many daughters, Mary, received a cow from Bart, which Bart wanted Mary to care for. Cletus mistook this for a proposal, and almost married the two. He is said to have 70 children, at least 45 of whom have been named in episodes.