The shocking death of The Simpsons’ much loved star

The man behind some of The Simpsons' most hilarious characters has a tragic story that would cut your laughter short.

Of course, most of the beloved cartoon's characters are voiced by six core actors: Nancy Cartwright, Dan Castellaneta, Yearley Smith, Julie Kavner, Hank Azaria, and Harry Shearer.

But some of the show's most hilarious recurring characters were all voiced by the incomparable SNL star Phil Hartman.

After an impressive eight years on the NBC sketch comedy show, Phil made his debut on The Simpsons as the incompetent and inherently dodgy lawyer Lionel Hutz. From there, Phil became a key member of the Simpsons cast.

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Phil is also the voice behind actor Troy McClure - who you might remember from such episodes as Homer Alone and Bart The Mother - and monorail con artist Lyle Lanley.

Phil was a favourite of series creator Matt Groening's, who said Hartman could give 'the maximum amount of humour' to any line he was given.

Unfortunately, behind the laughs, Phil had a rather dark personal life that lead to a devastatingly tragic death in 1998.

Phil was married three times, first to Gretchen Lewis from 1970 to 1972, then to Lisa Strain from 1982 to 1985, and finally to Brynn Omdahi in 1987, with whom he had two children.

Brynn was an aspiring actress, but struggled to reach the heights that her husband Phil had.

When she met the talented comedy star, she was in recovery from a cocaine addiction, which unfortunately started to creep up again when their relationship started to fizzle out.

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Reports suggested that the gap between Phil and Brynn's success levels was another major cause of their fallouts.

"Phil was getting a lot of attention and [Brynn] wasn't getting any attention… I suppose some of that's natural," Brynn's brother Greg Omdahl told ABC.

"She just wanted to be more part of the spotlight than she was, you know?"

Things came to a head on 27 May, 1998, when Brynn came home from dinner and drinks with a friend and launched into a heated argument with Phil.

The Simpsons star, who had been known as a recluse outside of the spotlight, retreated to his bedroom to avoid the argument and went to sleep.

In the early hours of the morning, Brynn took one of the two guns they kept in their home and shot her husband multiple times.

After the shooting, Brynn rushed to her friend Ron Douglas's home to confess what she had done, but he didn't believe her.

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She then called a second friend to confess what she had done. Eventually, Douglas called 911 and police rushed to the scene.

Once they had arrived, officers heard another gunshot inside the house, and found Brynn lying dead in the bed beside her husband's corpse, with a gunshot in her head.

As a result of Phil's shocking death, a lot of his characters, like Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure were scrapped from The Simpsons, rather than replacement actors being hired.

That's why, from season 10 onwards, you'll only ever see these characters make rare cameos in the background.