The band’s bassist Duff McKagan may have laid claim to allowing The Simpsons to use his nickname for Homer’s favorite beverage — his given name is Michael Andrew McKagan — but Mike Reiss is giving all the credit to Jay Kogen, who worked as a writer and producer on the early seasons of The Simpsons, as well as that show’s own birthplace, The Tracey Ullman Show.
(Did anyone theorize that guitarist Slash was named after the hack-and-slash genre of role-playing games?)
So there you have it, Simpsons fans.
Even though the show made its big primetime debut on Fox in 1989, a year after Guns N’ Roses’ second multi-platinum album was released, the naming of Duff Beer was nothing beyond coincidental, if it can even count as a coincidence.