The Simpsons Prophecies

Picture generated with AI
Location: Los Angeles, California, United States of America
Dates Active: December 17, 1989 to Present
Category: Prophecy and Precognition
Cause: Coincidence?
Status: Ongoing
Entry ID: 041424A-00092

Summery: 

A long-running adult animated cartoon seems to be able to predict the future with some uncanny coincidences.

In Depth:

Premiering on December 17, 1989, The Simpsons has been running almost non-stop on the Fox network during prime time, producing 764 episodes (as of April of 2024) and counting. It is one of the longest running animated shows on television. Over the years the satire program has garnered a number of fans for it's clever writing and jokes, but recently its also become known for those jokes to seemingly become reality.

Some of the predictions spread around on internet seem to be quite a stretch, while others are so specific that it's uncanny. While much of these predictions could be chalked up to educated guesses and pure coincidence, some fans believe that the accuracy of some of the events that the show has predicted is on a prophetic level.

Here are just some of the events that many people believe to have been predicted by The Simpsons from earliest to latest:

Episode: Itchy & Scratchy & Marge
Original Air Date: December 20, 1990
Claimed Prediction(s): Censorship of Michelangelo's 'David'
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
Marge Simpson is being interviewed on a nightly news talk show about freedom of expression, showing a picture of Michelangelo's 'David' in pants.
 July, 2016
Citizens in St. Petersburg, Russia got the city to vote on whether or not a 16-foot-tall copy of Michelangelo's 'David' should acquire clothing to cover up his twig and berries.
 Coincidence. The idea of censoring art isn't anything new. Many great works of art were censored at various times over the centuries.

Episode: Brush with Greatness
Original Air Date: April 11, 1991
Claimed Prediction(s): The Beatles are so far behind on their fan mail they're still replying to letters from the 1960s.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
A clip shows Ringo Starr (voiced by himself) catching up on his fan mail, having just gotten to letters from December 12, 1966.
 September 2013
Two women received a reply from Paul McCartney after they sent a recorded message on a reel to reel tape to a theater where the Beatles were playing back in 1963. The tape in question was lost, and eventually made its way to a "car boot sale", which is sort of a garage sale from people's trunks. A historian bought the tape, and after watching it wanted to know if the girls in the message were still around. The two girls were located and reunited with the tape by The One Show along with a message from Paul McCartney that thanked them for the video, saying it was "better late than never."		 True-ish. While a Beatles member did reply to something sent in the mail from the 1960s recently, the conditions behind the reply are much different then the implied gag. The Beatles aren't behind in their fan mail, they were just replying to mail that had been lost.

Episode: Lisa the Greek
Original Air Date: January 23, 1992
Claimed Prediction(s): Multiple Super Bowl winners.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
Lisa begins watching football with Homer, and she ends up being pretty good at picking the winner of each game they watch. During last bit of the episode, the Super Bowl comes around between the Washington Redskins and the Buffalo Bills, and the Redskins win.
 January 26, 1992
In 1992, Super Bowl XXVI was between the Washington Redskins and the Buffalo Bills, in which the Redskins won 37 to 24.		 True, but they really had a fifty-fifty shot with this one.
The episode was re-dubbed the next year (1993), changing all the dialog referencing the Washington Redskins to be the Dallas Cowboys. Since the Bills were once again in the game, they kept them as the loosers.

The very next year featured the same team lineups, so the Simpsons just replayed the re-dubbed episode again favoring the Cowboys for 1994. 		January 31, 1993 & January 30, 1994
In 1993 and 1994, Super Bowl XXVII and XXVIII both consisted of the Dallas Cowboys vs the Buffalo Bills. In both of those instances the Cowboys won 52 to 17 (1993) and 30 to 13 (1994). 		True.
The episode was re-dubbed once more in 1995 to represent the game between the 49ers and the Chargers. This time the 49ers won in the episode. January 29, 1995
In 1995 the two teams were the San Diego Chargers and the San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers would come out to win 49 to 26. 		True. However, the odds of correctly picking four consecutive Super Bowl wins is 1 in 16, which is still pretty good odds.

Episode: Marge in Chains
Original Air Date: May 6, 1993
Claimed Prediction(s): Multiple items: the Covid-19 pandemic coming from an asian country, rioting in the streets, murder hornets and Ted Cruz's vacation.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
Springfield is hit by a pandemic, which is known as the Osaka flu, and the citizens riot.
 All of 2020
The Covid-19 pandemic, which by most accounts originated from China. During the year, multiple riots in multiple cities happened.		 True.
During one of the Osaka flu riots, a load of 'killer bees' released from a truck.
 April 2020
Asian giant hornets began to appear in the United States, and were dubbed "murder hornets" due to their extremely aggressive behavior and painful sting.		 True.
Mayor Quimby goes to the Bahamas while the town of Springfield is hit with a pandemic.
 February, 2021
Texas Senator Ted Cruz goes on vacation in Cancun, Mexico in the midst of not only the Covid-19 pandemic, but also in the middle of a cold snap that left a number of citizens without power or heat.		 True. While the episode in question doesn't directly mention Senator Cruz by name, the resemblance to events definitely there.

Episode: $pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)
Original Air Date: December 16, 1993
Claimed Prediction(s): Siegfried and Roy white tiger attack.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
Mr Burns builds a casino and hires duo "Gunter and Ernst" to perform an act featuring a white tiger named Anastasia. During the act, Anastasia attacks the two performers.
 October 3, 2003
Famous magicians and entertainers Siegfried and Roy had a show featuring white lions and white tigers at Las Vegas casino The Mirage from 1990 until 2003, when one of the white tigers named Mantecore bit Roy Horn on the arm and around the neck, causing him to have a stroke. Roy survived the incident, and claimed that the cat had tried to save his life by dragging him off stage after the stroke.		 Partly true. While the details aren't exact (only one of the duo was 'attacked'), it was close enough for many.

Episode: Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song
Original Air Date: April 28, 1994
Claimed Prediction(s): Horse meat scandals.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
A quick gag shows the school lunch lady adding "assorted horse parts (now with more testicles!)" to a pot in the school's kitchen.
 January 2013
In Europe news broke that a number food companies were putting large amounts of horse meat in the 'beef' burger products (along with pork), with some test samples containing 100% horse meat. The majority of the companies involved pulled product from the shelves and altered their supply chain, with some slaughterhouses closing down after investigations. Sales of beef products dropped considerably over the next several months.

Interestingly, in the US that very same month the USDA approved the slaughtering of horses for human consumption as an export. Horse meat was (and still is) illegal to be sold United States, but that doesn't stop people for thinking Barack Obama was directly involved in the decision and was trying to somehow introduce it into the American population.		 True. Seeing as this has been a problem for literally centuries in some places, it isn't actually too surprising that they would get this one.

Episode: Lisa on Ice
Original Air Date: November 13, 1994
Claimed Prediction(s): Autocorrect/autocorrect errors.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
A bully at school writes a note in their Newton PDA that reads "Beat up Martin," but is changed to "Eat up, Martha."
 1992
The earliest autocorrect features were beginning to be pioneered as early as 1992 for the Windows 3.1 program Ways. 		False. Programs that provided autocorrect-like features existed at the time the episode, though they were not as well known for most people like the autocorrect features on our smartphones today.

Episode: Lisa's Wedding
Original Air Date: March 19, 1995
Claimed Prediction(s): The Shard and its location in London.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
During the episode there is a shot of the London skyline in the future, with a gag about Big Ben having a digital readout. In that shot there appears to be a building in the background that has a striking resemblance to the Shard, and interestingly enough it is in the correct location for the building.
 July 5, 2016
The Shard is a large pyramid shaped spire made from steel and glass. The conception of the building did not even begin until 2002, 7 years after the episode aired. Construction on the building began in March of 2009, and was completed 3 years later in 2012. 		True. There was no way anyone could have known about the Shard back in 1995.

Episode: Bart Carny
Original Air Date: January 11, 1998
Claimed Prediction(s): The existance of FarmVille.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
While visiting a carnival, Bart wants to check out a virtual reality videogame booth where the object is to perform various forms of yard work.
 August 9, 1996
First, yard work does not equal farming. Second, you'd have a better chance trying to convince me that the Simpsons predicted Lawn Mowing Similator. Third, the basic idea of doing work or farming in video games dates back to August of 1996 with the introduction of Harvest Moon (Farm Story in Japan), so it beats the Simpsons out by a little over a year. 		Completely false.

Episode: The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace
Original Air Date: September 20, 1998
Claimed Prediction(s): Homer predicts the mass of the Higgs boson particle.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
Homer tries his hand at inventing things, and is seen pondering over a complicated math equation.
 October 10, 2016
Predicted by Peter Higgs in 1964, the so-called "god-particle" was confirmed to exist in 2012 at ATLAS and CMS using the CERN Large Hadron Collider. During the experiment the scientists were able to figure out the mass of the Higgs boson particle. 		Mixed. Writers for the show actually used calculations provided by scientists who were working on actually trying to calculate the Higgs boson's mass long before the CERN experiment. It did not mean that Homer was the first, it just means that the Simpsons writers are good friends with smart people.

Episode: When You Dish Upon a Star
Original Air Date: November 8, 1998
Claimed Prediction(s): Predicts Disney buying Fox.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
At the end of the episode, a sign with the 20th Century Fox logo appears with the words "A Division of Walt Disney Co." underneath.
 July 2012
Disney announces that it is purchasing 21th Century Fox (which is the parent company of 20th Century Fox), along with all of its film and TV assets (including the Simpsons). The transaction was completed in 2019. 		True. While Disney had made some rather considerable purchases over the last few decades, but at the time Disney wasn't particularly known for it.

Episode: They Saved Lisa's Brain
Original Air Date: May 9, 1999
Claimed Prediction(s): The donut-shaped universe theory.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
Homer runs into Stephen Hawking at Moe's Tavern, with the scientist becoming intregged by Homer's idea of a donut-shaped universe, and jokes that he might have to steal the idea.
 1984
Ideas about the universe may actually being donut-shaped started popping up online, which was based on 3-torus cosmological model that was proposed in 1984 by Russian theoretical physicists Alexei Starobinsky and Yakov Zeldovich. 		False. The "donut-shaped" universe theory had been around for 15 years at that point.

Episode: Bart to the Future
Original Air Date: March 19, 2000
Claimed Prediction(s): Donald Trump's presidency.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
In a time warping episode, Lisa has become president of the United States and has inherited a massive amount of debt from former president Donald Trump.
 January 20, 2017
Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 45th President in 2017 after running against Hillary Clinton. 		False. At the time the episode was written, Donald Trump was actually running for president. In fact, Trump has run for President a total of four different times: 2000 (which he dropped out of), 2016 (which he won), 2020 (which he lost), and again in 2024.

Episode: Homer's Paternity Coot
Original Air Date: January 8, 2006
Claimed Prediction(s): The OceanGate Titan submersible disaster.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
Homer reunites with his father, and together they pilot submersibles in order to visit a sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean. After getting lost, Homer loses conciousness when he runs out of air. He is later recovered by his father and taken to a hospital.
 June 18, 2023
A submersible operating as a tourist attraction to visit the wreck of the RMS Titanic implodes at depth while carrying four people. Two of the people onboard were father and son Shahzada Dawood and Suleman Dawood. None of the bodies were recovered. 		Partly true. While at first many people thought that the passengers were still alive simply having technical difficulties or low on oxygen, news was later released that the sub had imploded, killing everyone onboard almost instantly.

Episode: Treehouse of Horror XIX
Original Air Date: November 2, 2008
Claimed Prediction(s): Electronic voting machines changing votes.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
Homer goes to vote in the presidential election using an electronic voting both. After attempting to select Barack Obama using a touch screen, the machine instead registers a vote for the Republican option John McCain. After attempting to try again several more times, the machine vacuums up Homer, beats him up, and spits him out.
 November 6, 2012
A voter took a video from their smartphone of them trying to use a voting machine during the 2012 presidential election. Attempting to select Obama resulted in the selection of Mitt Romney. 		False. Questioning the validity of voting results, especially those provided by voting machines, has been going on for years in the United States by both Republican and Democrat parties, and it's probably not going to stop any time soon.

Episode: Boy Meets Curl
Original Air Date: February 14, 2010
Claimed Prediction(s): US wins the gold medal in curling in the Winter Olympics.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
Homer and Marge become the United States' mixed curling team for the Olympics and end up winning the gold medal over Sweden.
 February 25, 2018
John Shuster and his team wins the gold medal in curling in the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang with a 10-7 victory over Sweden. 		True. Up until that point the US has never won a gold medal at curling with any team.

Episode: Elementary School Musical
Original Air Date: September 26, 2010
Claimed Prediction(s): The name of a Nobel prize winner.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
While watching the Nobel Prize announcements live at 4:00 AM, Martin holds up a Betting Pool card which has several names on it under different categories. Milhouse has Bengt R. Holmstrom listed for the Economics prize (though he doesn't win in the episode).
 October 10, 2016
Bengt Holmstrom, along with Oliver Hart, win the Nobel prize. 		Mixed. The Betting Pool card had a number of different notable names on it in the categories mentioned, it was just a good guess that one of them would one day win the prize.

Episode: You Don't Have to Live Like a Referee
Original Air Date: March 30, 2014
Claimed Prediction(s): Predicts FIFA corruption arrests.
What happened in the episode: What happened in real life: Verdict:
The head of the "World Football Federation" asks to ask Homer to become a referee in their soccer games, but is immediately arrested for corruption.
 May 27, 2015
FIFA executives and officials were charged and arrested for decades worth of bribery and corruption schemes. 		False. A lot of this corruption had been known or rumored long before this time.


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Last Update: April 14, 2024

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