simpsons time travel

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‘the simpsons’ accurately predicted these 9 historic events.

• Strangeness

We’re not saying the creators of The Simpsons are time travelers , but honestly, at this point, we wouldn’t be surprised if they were. After all, how else would The Simpsons have accurately predicted so many historic events that have come to pass, decades before they occur?!

1. The discovery of the Higgs boson equation

Scientists spent decades searching for the Higgs boson particle when they could have just been watching The Simpsons ! In the 1998 episode “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace,” Homer decides he is going to become an inventor. In the episode, we see Homer working on a complicated equation written on a blackboard.

The Higgs boson particle, which was first predicted in 1964 by Professor Peter Higgs, was eventually discovered in 2012. The Higgs boson equation helps explain how everything in the universe has mass.

Although the particle was discovered in 2012, Homer was eerily close to predicting the mass of the Higgs boson particle in 1998. According to Simon Singh , author of the 2013 book The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets , “the equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson. If you work it out, you get the mass of a Higgs boson that’s only a bit larger than the nano-mass of a Higgs boson actually is.”

This is pretty astonishing considering that Homer makes this prediction 14 years before the particle was actually discovered. The writers on The Simpsons might be time travelers, but many of them are also mathematicians .

2. The 2014 Ebola outbreak

We’ll let you decide for yourself whether or not The Simpsons predicted the 2014 Ebola outbreak. In a 1997 episode titled “Lisa’s Sax,” Marge suggests that an ill Bart should read a book titled “ Curious George and the Ebola Virus.”

Though the Ebola virus was first discovered in 1976, it was not particularly widespread in the 1990s when the Simpsons aired this episode. The Ebola epidemic in Western Africa in 2014 resulted in over 11,000 deaths in a period of three years.

3. A Rise in technology

There have been a few instances in which The Simpsons predicted a rise in technology – specifically Apple watches and FaceTime. In 1995, The Simpsons introduced the idea of a watch that could be used as a phone. Nearly twenty years later, in 2015, Apple introduced the first Apple Watch which has the potential to double as a cell phone.

Similarly, in the 1995 episode “Lisa’s Wedding,” the writers seem to have predicted a technology essential to us today – video chat. In this episode, Lisa tells Marge that she getting married through a video call. We now have a variety of different platforms that allows us to easily talk face to face with others, including FaceTime, Zoom, Skype, and Google Meet.

4. Censorship of Michelangelo’s David

In a 1990 episode of The Simpsons , Marge led a censorship campaign which led to the Michelangelo statue in the Springfield museum being covered up.

In 2016, a copy of Michelangelo’s David in St. Petersburg, Russia faced backlash regarding its nakedness. Voters ended up opting to clothe the statue. Though some fans claim this is more evidence of time travel, people have been wanting to censor the David statue since it was first unveiled in 1504. Efforts to cover up Michelangelo’s David have existed for centuries, so a similar case was bound to happen after this 1990 episode of The Simpsons .

5. The Beatles sending belated fan mail

In 1991, Beatles member Ringo Starr voiced himself in a Simpsons episode titled “Brush with Greatness.” In this episode, Starr is answering fan mail that had been written to the Beatles decades ago, including a letter written by Marge.

They say life imitates art because in 2013 this scene seems to have come to pass. In 2013, Beatles member Paul McCartney replied to two women who sent a tape to him in 1963.

His message to the women read “Hi Linda and Barbara, thanks very much for your lovely tape. It finally got through, better late than never. Great to hear that you found each other after all these years. Keep enjoying the music, love Paul.”

6. Disney buys 20th Century Fox

In 1998, The Simpsons predicted in the episode “When You Wish Upon A Star” that Disney would buy 20th Century Fox. Technically, that was not the focal point of the episode, but fans still managed to catch this detail. In the episode, there is a sign in front of the Fox Studios which reads, “20th Century Fox, a division of Walt Disney Co.”

Of course, in 2017 – 19 years after this episode aired- Walt Disney Studios did in fact announce plans to buy the parent company of 20th Century Fox in a historic acquisition.

Interestingly, 20th Century Fox was The Simpsons ‘ home studio. However, Rich Appel, who wrote this 1998 episode, noted that even then it was “poised for world dominance.”

7. Faulty voting machines

In a 2008 episode of The Simpsons , Homer is seen trying to vote for Barack Obama in the U.S. general election, but a faulty machine kept changing his vote to the Republican candidate, John McCain .

Four years later, this event actually came to pass. During the 2012 election, a Pennsylvania voting machine changed votes for Barack Obama to Republican candidate Mitt Romney. The footage from this voting machine shows the voter in a polling booth repeatedly attempting to cast his ballot for Obama , only to find that the machine ticket had Romney’s name.

8. Kamala Harris’ inauguration

This prediction is extremely accurate, but that has to just be a coincidence, right? Lisa Simpson assumes the presidency in an episode from 2000, titled “Bart to the Future.” In this episode, Lisa famously says, “As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.”

In this episode, Lisa is also seen wearing a purple jacket with pearls. At Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s presidential inauguration in January 2021, Vice President Harris also wore a purple jacket with pearls. Viewers were ready to refer back to this 2000 episode of The Simpsons , especially because Kamala Harris entered office immediately after Donald Trump.

9. Siegfried and Roy tiger attack

In 1993, The Simpsons parodied entertainers Siegfried & Roy in their episode titled “$pringfield.” During this episode, the magicians, named Gunter and Ernst, are attacked by a white tiger while performing.

More from us: ‘ The Simpsons’ reenactments of 12 iconic and historic photos

In 2003, a decade after The Simpsons episode aired, the real Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn were attacked by a white tiger. During a magic show at the Mirage Casino and Hotel in Los Vegas, a seven-year-old white tiger attacked Horn. The tiger bit into Horn’s neck, dragging him offstage. Luckily, Horn survived but sustained major injuries from the attack. This tiger attack prompted the Mirage to close Siegfried & Roy’s magic show.

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The Express

Why the creator of “the simpsons” is definitely a time traveler.

The Simpsons has been famous for accurately predicting historical events before they happen. Art by Nikki Iyer

Ryan Healy , Art, Graphics, & Video Editor April 1, 2020

Today, I’m going to talk about a topic that’s widely discussed. Why Matt Groening -creator of shows like The Simpsons and Futurama – is, in fact, a time traveller. 

Okay, maybe not a time traveller, per se, but you have to admit there’s something fishy going on. The Simpsons are famous for depicting events in their show that match real-world events, often before they happen. 

For example, an episode featured an Apple phone, with the faulty autocorrect we know today, back in 1994. Before we could even play the 1997 Snake on the Brick phone in real life, the Simpsons had autocorrect messing up people’s messages. Predicted in 1994, came true in 2007. 

The Siegfried and Roy tiger attack in 2003, where two performers were famous for their shows with two white bengal tigers was also predicted. In 1993, the Simpsons predicted the tigers would turn on them. In 2003, it came to fruition, with Roy being hospitalized and paralyzed by the damage done to him by one of the tigers. 

Facetime, an integral part of phone usage today because the actual phone part is statistically one of the least used features on there, was predicted in ‘95, and came true in 2010. 

Faulty voter machines. The campaign of 2008, Homer Simpson tries to vote for Obama but the machine records his vote for McCain. In the campaign between Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012, footage was discovered of voter machines that recorded votes for a certain delegate, despite the majority voting for someone else. 2008 it was predicted, 2012 it happens. 

The whole NSA spying scandal. Before it was revealed the government was watching all our activity, the Simpsons Movie had the NSA listening in on conversations. 2007 it was predicted, 2013 it was revealed.

Smart watches were predicted in 1995, and came true in 2014. They were depicted as literally cell phones on your wrist, and now that’s basically what they are, just on a very small screen.

The Ebola outbreak was ALSO predicted! Predicted by the show in 1997, and 2014 rolls around and Ebola became a pandemic of global attention. They had hospitals shutting down and people walking around in hazmat suits.

The whole thing with corruption in the FIFA industry. The show predicted it in 2014. One year later, in 2015, the real-world FIFA corruption was brought to light. 

The financial problems in Greece. 2012 it was predicted, with the news channel “Head Butt” saying that Europe put Greece on Ebay. 2015 it came crashing down. 

Disney’s takeover of Fox. Predicted in 1998, with a giant “20th Century Fox” sign listing it as “a division of Walt Disney Co.” Lo and behold, in 2017, Disney buys Fox for $52 billion. 

Super Bowls XXVI, XXVII, and XXVIII. In 1992-1994, the Simpsons accurately predicted the winner of the Super Bowl game. 

In 2000, they predicted Trump running for president. They even had the red tie and him waving as he goes down an escalator. 2000 it was predicted, 2016 he runs for President. The funny thing about that is one of the directors said the logic behind it was that it was one of the things that marked a country gone insane. Ironically, the episode also features main character Lisa as President, which isn’t the ironic part. Her administration “inherits quite the budget crunch from President Trump.” Given that elections are coming up and the state our economy is in, this actually doesn’t sound that far-fetched. 

The London Shard. A beautiful building visible from the top of the London Eye, it was built in 2009. In 1995, on Lias’s trip to London, there is a building that looks the same and is in the same location. Crazy. 

Here’s the doozy. The God Particle. The equation that outlines how the universe was created. In a 1998 episode of the show, the Simpsons featured Homer Simpson taking on a new persona as an inventor. The show had him writing on a chalkboard like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. Homer was writing what looked like a very fancy scientific equation on the board. 14 years later, in 2012, scientists confirmed that yeah, that’s actually the model of how the universe was created. 

Another prediction is somewhat debated, but HOLY CHEESE is it crazy. 9/11, the terrorist attack of 2001. An advertisement poster in the show (background of one of the episodes) showed a special discount for travel to New York (with the Twin Towers highlighted) with rooms costing $9. The kicker is that the 9 was right next to the towers. Predicted in 1997, and it happened in 2001. Of all the numbers, and all the things… They could’ve had $10 hotel rooms to stay in Ohio or something. The fact that they had that specific number, with that specific placing. 

Recently, it was found out that the show ALSO depicted Coronavirus, AND Tom Hanks’ quarantine! In 1993, the show depicted a package from Osaka, Japan, giving everyone a very contagious disease. Furthermore, they predicted the country’s lockdown. That’s the episode with the NSA prediction: there was a biodome around the show’s central location, Springfield, designed to lock the citizens in. The Simpsons escaped, and the prediction of the NSA spying.

Tom Hanks’ quarantine. 2007, they had Tom Hanks on the show claiming “this is Tom Hanks saying that if you see me, leave me be,” in the Simpsons Movie. Now, he’s really in quarantine, in real life. On a lighter note, they sent him the Wilson volleyball from Castaway to keep him company. 

One prediction to come true is probably just a coincidence. Two, mildly concerning. Three, something’s definitely up. More than 18 accurate predictions? Time travel. I haven’t even covered everything, just the ones I thought were the most interesting. There’s correctly predicting the winner of the Olympics, Lady Gaga in the halftime show, Nobel Peace Prize, weird plant hybrids although that one they caused themselves, censoring art, nuclear mutated fish, Game of Thrones, and SO. MUCH. MORE. 

AND THEN the creator of the show, Matt Groening, went on to make another show- Futurama. Just…. FUTURAMA!! A part of me thinks this is just him rubbing it in the face. Like a space show or a show from the past. But noooo, it HAD to be set in the future. 

At this point I don’t even know what’s real anymore. I am 90% convinced that Wyoming isn’t a real state, but just part of Idaho, like that one family member we have that’s part of the family but you do everything you can to avoid acknowledging that.

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Ryan Healy is both San Juan Hills' first-ever columnist for The Express, and the Art, graphics, and Video Editor. He's definitely better than last year's...

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Sonam Pasrija • Jan 2, 2024 at 3:00 AM

I know who made it but how come he time travel even tho he got every prediction right except of one I have been researching for the past few hours and I don’t know how any one can prove time travel is true but has the person who made the show ever told the society that he time travel and if he ever mentioned me I would probably be a famous model + actress and singer lol ? …

Alan Thackray • Apr 12, 2023 at 9:31 AM

Its absolutely crazy he should do the lottery lol ? ? ? ? ?

Shane Sutton • Dec 14, 2021 at 11:16 AM

Has he been confronted by anyone with this information? It’s Matt groneing god?

Barry Nathaniel Rice • Jun 13, 2020 at 3:41 PM

he also predicted the killing over George Floyd in a 1990s episode

• 17 Times <em>The Simpsons</em> Accurately Predicted the Future

17 Times The Simpsons Accurately Predicted the Future

W ith 31 seasons and counting on the air, The Simpsons is undeniably a television phenomenon. Both the longest-running American sitcom and animated program, the critically acclaimed cartoon is widely recognized as one of, if not the, best shows of all time for its humorous satire of everything from politics and pop culture to everyday family life.

More from TIME

In fact, throughout its nearly 700 episodes, creator Matt Groening and his team have been so on top of the country’s cultural pulse, they’ve even managed to predict several major historical events — along with a few less momentous happenings.

Here are 17 times The Simpsons made eerily accurate predictions about the future.

Siegfried and Roy’s Tiger Attack

Season 5, Episode 10: $pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)

Predicted: 1993

Came true: 2003

After Springfield decides to legalize gambling, Mr. Burns opens a casino where German magicians Gunter and Ernst perform a routine, seeming to spoof the long-running Las Vegas Siegfried and Roy show. Tragically, a bit in which the animated duo is attacked by their tiger came to fruition 10 years later when Roy Horn was mauled on stage by a white Bengal tiger , leaving him partially paralyzed and ending the long-running production.

Autocorrect Fails

Season 6, Episode 8: Lisa on Ice

Predicted: 1994

Came true: 2007

During a Springfield Elementary School assembly, Kearney asks fellow bully Dolph to take a memo to “Beat up Martin” on his “Newton” — Apple’s early attempt at a personal digital assistant. However, the machine translates the message into “Eat up Martha” instead, foreshadowing the common messaging errors people blame on iPhone’s autocorrect technology .

In fact, Nitin Ganatra, Apple’s former director of engineering for iOS applications, revealed in 2013 that the Simpsons ‘ gag served as a rallying cry while developing the software for the iPhone’s keyboard. “If you heard people talking and they used the words ‘Eat up Martha,’ it was basically a reference to the fact that we needed to nail the keyboard. We needed to make sure the text input works on this thing, otherwise, ‘Here comes the Eat up Marthas,'” he told Fast Company .

Season 6, Episode 19: Lisa’s Wedding

Predicted: 1995

Came true: 2010

In this futuristic installment, Lisa talks with Marge using her phone’s video chat capabilities, predating the popular FaceTime feature of today’s iPhones by 15 years.

Faulty Voter Machines

Season 20, Episode 4: Treehouse of Horror XIX

Predicted: 2008

Came true: 2012

In a bit inspired by the 2008 presidential election, Homer tries to vote for Barack Obama only to have a voting machine record his selection as John McCain several times. Coincidentally, when it came time for Obama to run for a second term in 2012, video footage emerged of a Pennsylvania machine switching a vote from Obama to one for his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney. The machine was reportedly taken out of commission .

The God Particle

Season 10, Episode 2: The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace

Predicted: 1998

The existence of the Higgs boson or “God particle” — a breakthrough that helps explain how everything in the universe has mass — wasn’t confirmed by physicists until 2012. But according to Dr. Simon Singh, the author of The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets , after Homer decided to become an inventor in “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace,” he was pictured standing in front of a blackboard with an equation that predicted the mass of the yet-to-be-discovered particle.

“If you work it out, you get the mass of a Higgs boson that’s only a bit larger than the nano-mass of a Higgs boson actually is,” he told the Independent . “It’s kind of amazing as Homer makes this prediction 14 years before it was discovered.”

Homer discovered the Higgs boson. pic.twitter.com/QAXhNIgMmF — M. (@MikeblendsweIL) May 21, 2016

NSA Spying Scandal

The Simpsons Movie

Predicted: 2007

Came true: 2013

When the Simpson family is forced to go into hiding following their escape from the EPA biodome enclosing Springfield, the NSA locates Marge and the kids by listening in on one of their conversations. However, it wasn’t until six years after The Simpsons Movie hit theaters that Edward Snowden first blew the whistle on the government mass surveillance of Americans’ phone and Internet records.

The NSA as portrayed in The Simpsons Movie (2007) pic.twitter.com/7g8piC7x7H — Asher Wolf (@Asher_Wolf) February 8, 2015

Smartwatches

Came true: 2014

When Lisa visits a fortune-teller at a renaissance fair, viewers are transported 15 years into the future to 2010 — a time when wristwatch communication technology exists. However, even the Simpsons’ future society was a little ahead of its time, as modern voice recognition-enabled smartwatches weren’t rolled out until 2014.

The Simpsons Smartwatch prediction (1995) via @mashable . lol pic.twitter.com/TmKgiXulxS — SmartWatch News (@SmartWatchID) March 14, 2014

America’s Ebola Outbreak

Season 9, Episode 3: Lisa’s Sax

Predicted: 1997

This installment saw Marge offer to read a depressed Bart a book titled Curious George and the Ebola Virus. This moment was widely circulated during the 2014 American Ebola outbreak when YouTube user Thecontroversy7 created a video laying out a theory revolving around The Simpsons ‘ predictive tendencies.

FIFA’s Corruption Scandal

Season 25, Episode 16: You Don’t Have to Live Like a Referee

Predicted: 2014

Came true: 2015

Although the world football federation representative who asks Homer for help repairing the organization’s image isn’t explicitly named as a member of FIFA, his arrest turned out to be uncannily similar to those of the real-life FIFA officials who were arrested on corruption charges about a year later. Not to mention that the episode also correctly predicted Germany’s defeat of Brazil in the 2014 World Cup.

Greece’s Debt Default

Season 23, Episode 10: Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson

Predicted: 2012

When Homer appears as a guest commentator on cable news show Head Butt , a ticker runs across the bottom of the screen that reads, “Europe puts Greece on eBay.”

Of course, this was three years before Greece became the first developed country to default to the International Monetary Fund , plunging the country deeper into economic crisis.

"Europe puts Greece on eBay"... seems The Simpsons had it right all along! #GreeceCrisis #EU pic.twitter.com/MvjYkWMQID — Aaron Richardson (@Richardson_AJ) July 13, 2015

The Nobel Prize

Season 22, Episode 1: Elementary School Musical

Predicted: 2010

Came true: 2016

Bengt Holmström may not have won the Nobel Prize in Economics until 2016, but one Simpsons character was betting on him six years prior. In a scene from the season 22 premiere in which Martin holds up a scorecard depicting his Nobel Prize betting pool with Lisa, Milhouse and Database, the MIT professor is clearly marked in one of Milhouse’s squares.

Fun fact: @TheSimpsons ' Milhouse once predicted MIT Prof. Holmström would win a #NobelPrize . Today, he was right! https://t.co/CC0LRk1avy pic.twitter.com/syhMiJBK2A — Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (@MIT) October 10, 2016

President Donald Trump

Season 11, Episode 17: Bart to the Future

Predicted: 2000

When Bart flashes forward into adulthood, viewers learn that Lisa not only becomes president, but inherits “quite a budget crunch” from her predecessor, Donald Trump . “The country is broke?” she asks her aides in one scene. “How can that be?”

At the time, the real Trump presidency was still 16 years away. However, in a 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter , writer Dan Greaney explained the joke was meant as a warning to the country. “That just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom,” he said. “It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane.

Lady Gaga’s Halftime Show

Season 23, Episode 22: Lisa Goes Gaga

Came true: 2017

Nearly five years before Lady Gaga descended from the roof of Houston’s NRG Stadium for the halftime show of Super Bowl LI, her Simpsons doppelgänger performed a song for the residents of Springfield while suspended in the air. The two Mother Monsters even wore similar silver ensembles for their shows.

Disney’s Fox Takeover

Season 10, Episode 5: When You Dish Upon A Star

After a trip to Springfield, director Ron Howard pitches a screenplay that Homer wrote to producer Brian Glazer of 20th Century Fox. At the beginning of the scene, a sign can be seen at the Fox studio lot that reveals the company is now “A Division of Walt Disney Co.”

Cut to nearly 20 years later and this sale is officially underway, with the news breaking that Disney has reached a deal to acquire $66.1 billion-worth of Fox on Dec. 14, 2017.

Disney announces it has reached a deal to acquire 21st Century Fox, as predicted by a Simpsons episode that first aired on November 8, 1998. pic.twitter.com/kzloJQHeM8 — Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) December 14, 2017

Team USA’s Olympic Curling Win

Season 21, Episode 12: Boy Meets Curl

Came true: 2018

Team USA’s men’s curling team defeated Sweden in a shocking upset at the 2018 Olympics that brought yet another Simpsons storyline to real-life fruition. Mirroring events from a 2010 episode in which Marge and Homer made it onto the U.S. mixed doubles curling team, the Americans came from behind in their Feb. 25 matchup with Sweden to capture gold at the Winter Games in PyeongChang.

Drogon’s Fiery Rampage on Game of Thrones

Season 29, Episode 1: The Serfsons

Predicted: 2017

Came true: 2019

A 2017 episode called “The Serfsons” saw Homer, Marge and the rest of the Simpsons gang find themselves in the kingdom of Springfieldia, an alternate fantasy universe that parodied many aspects of life in Westeros on Game of Thrones . There was even a fire-breathing dragon that burnt down the Serfsons’ village, much like Drogon (acting at Daenerys’ behest ) ended up doing to King’s Landing in Game of Thrones ‘ penultimate episode, “The Bells.”

The 2020 Experience

Season 4, Episode 21: M arge in Chains

Came true: 2020

If 2020 was a bingo card, The Simpsons could already have at least two squares ticked off. In the nearly 30-year-old episode “Marge in Chains,” not only does an unprecedented flu sweep through Springfield, but when the townspeople begin rioting to demand a cure for the virus, a swarm of killer bees that could be likened to the “ murder hornets ” that recently hit the U.S. unexpectedly come into the picture.

On the other hand, episode co-writer Bill Oakley told The Hollywood Reporter in March that any comparisons the storyline seems to invite to coronavirus are purely coincidental. “There are very few cases where The Simpsons predicted something,” he said. “It’s mainly just coincidence because the episodes are so old that history repeats itself. Most of these episodes are based on things that happened in the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s that we knew about.”

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50 Predictions From 'The Simpsons' That Came True

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Are the writers time travelers, or are they related to Nostradamus? The Simpsons never disappoints viewers with its eerie Simpsons predictions that ring true years later. The Simpsons family is made up of several characters, but the main characters are Homer (voiced by Dan Castellaneta ), Marge (voiced by Julie Kavner ), Lisa (voiced by Yeardley Smith ), Bart (voiced by Nancy Cartwright ), and Maggie. Each episode is filled with the Simpsons family interacting with other residents of Springfield including guest stars that appeared in some episodes on The Simpsons . Yet what intrigues viewers is how some events were predicted by The Simpsons writers at least five years before it happened.

So, what did The Simpsons predict? Could it be that The Simpsons really predicts world events or is the world just following The Simpsons script? With the 35th season of the long-running sitcom recently concluding, fans saw a return of more creative, powerful, and witty storylines that are reminiscent of the beloved classic Simpsons seasons. There's no doubt that the wild narratives from more recent seasons will be added to the growing Simpsons predictions list, there's no telling exactly which ones will come true in the coming years. The best Simpsons predictions aren't just shocking, they're also often strange, funny, and somehow make sense all at the same time .

• The Simpsons

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50 The Shard

"lisa's wedding" - season 6, episode 19 (1995).

Many characters from fan-favorite shows will travel to London for its iconic sights, and The Simpsons is no different. One of these trips comes with a strange prediction, as Lisa's future is predicted and a flash-forward portrays her meeting with a fellow university student named Hugh Parkfield during a trip to London.

A blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot shows a familiar-looking pointy building behind Tower Bridge, which is recognizable to many London locals and tourists who know it today as The Shard. The only issue? The Shard hadn't been built yet at the time the episode aired, as it would only start being constructed in 2009 , making its spot-on location and silhouette just a few of the weird predictions from this particular 1995 episode. Of course, that may be reading too much into a random building drawn by one of the artists from the show, but it's fun to see it that way anyway!

49 Ferrets as Toy Poodles

"papa’s got a brand new badge" - season 13, episode 22 (2002).

Marking one of the most peculiar yet uncanny predictions of the series, The Simpsons ’ Season 13 episode “Papa’s Got a Brand New Badge” prophesied a bizarre toy animal scam that occurred in Argentina . The episode sees Homer form his own police force with his friends in response to city-wide riots that lead to Lisa’s Malibu Stacey doll collection being stolen.

One of the crimes Homer ends up stopping is Fat Tony’s scheme which sees his crooks gluing cotton balls to ferrets and selling them as pet poodles. Remarkably, in 2013, a retired man in Argentina was discovered to be doing the exact same thing in a market in Buenos Aires, selling the weasels for $150 each. The ferrets had been given steroids and groomed in order to resemble toy poodles.

48 Bloody Billboards

"itchy and scratchy: the movie" - season 4, episode 6 (1992).

A hilarious exaggeration of cartoon violence, particularly pointed towards series like Tom & Jerry , The Simpsons ’ ‘The Itchy and Scratchy Show’ stands as one of the show’s most shocking and hilarious ongoing gags. In Season 4’s sixth episode, Bart Simpson is punished for his bad behavior and negligence, with Homer refusing to let him see the episode’s titular film. As part of the marketing for the cartoon movie, a billboard is established in Springfield that sees Scratchy being decapitated with blood spraying from the poster .

The gag was as crudely humorous as it was realistically impractical, at least that’s what many would have initially thought. As part of the promotion for Quentin Tarantino ’s revenge thriller Kill Bill , an advertisement in New Zealand saw the Bride ( Uma Thurman ) posing with her sword as blood sprayed from her blade and beyond the margins of the billboard, covering the wall and the street.

47 America Wins the Gold Medal in Curling

"boy meets curl" season 21, episode 12 (2010).

Everyone loves an underdog story, and The Simpsons were able to predict the most unlikely of tales in the Season 21 episode, “Boy Meets Curl.” Released in 2010, it centers on Homer and Marge as their search for a fun date takes them to the winter sport of curling. Teaming up with Agnes and Seymour Skinner, they are brought into the U.S. Olympics team for the sport and embark on an incredible run to win gold.

While the episode was released in conjunction with the 2010 Winter Olympics in Canada, it would be eight years later that the prediction would come to fruition when America took home gold at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang . Like in “Boy Meets Curl,” the Americans had to topple Sweden to emerge victorious.

46 Ebola Outbreak

"lisa's sax" - season 9, episode 3 (1997).

"Lisa's Sax" is an episode that tells the origin story of Lisa's love for the musical instrument. In one scene, Bart is shown sick and feeling down, so Marge attempts to cheer him up by reading a strangely titled book. The book, titled "Curious George and the Ebola Virus," is a strange narrative choice considering Ebola wouldn't be widely known until the outbreak in 2000, and then again in 2014.

The Ebola outbreak back in 2000 made headlines for claiming the lives of 254 people in the Republic of Congo, and 224 more in Uganda. It's bizarre to see the disease featured on The Simpsons , as it was still relatively unknown by the time the episode premiered . It's a shaky connection, but one loyal fans are still willing to make and point out.

45 Barbie Mania

"lisa vs malibu stacy" - season 5, episode 14 (1994).

Greta Gerwig ’s comedy hit Barbie became the biggest box office success of 2023, grossing over $1.4 billion as it took the world by storm, enveloping pop culture in pink hysteria with Margot Robbie ’s leading performance becoming instantly iconic. While the film was a critical success that earned plaudits aplenty for its social commentary, The Simpsons initially pictured a world engulfed in a doll daze in the Season 5 episode “Lisa vs Malibu Stacy.”

Touching on themes similar to Barbie , the episode focuses on Lisa as she grows concerned about the message that the Malibu Stacy dolls send to little girls about what womanhood can and should look like. When her pleas with the doll’s designer see a progressive shift in the product, mass hysteria takes over Springfield as everyone reacts to the new range of dolls on display.

44 Donald Trump Being Arrested

Despite being released in 1994, “Lisa vs Malibu Stacy” proved to be an episode that held a lot of relevance for viewers in 2023. Not only did it preface the fanfare surrounding Barbie , but it also subtly hinted at Donald Trump ’s arrest. On the 24th of August, the former President of the United States surrendered himself to authorities after being indicted on charges relating to racketeering.

Quite hilariously, “Lisa vs Malibu Stacy” sees newsreader Kent Brockman speak at great length about the popularity of the playthings before offhandedly closing the broadcast with a brief mention that the president was arrested . While vague, it could be viewed that the episode not only predicted the craze of Barbie, but even foreshadowed the social response that starkly contrasted between the political bombshell and the Barbie fanfare.

43 Kamala Harris’ Presidential Run

"bart to the future" - season 11, episode 17 (2000).

Given the satirical nature of The Simpsons , it is perhaps no surprise that as global politics and the world, in general, seem to grow stranger by the day, more and more moments from the animated series come to fruition. One of the latest examples concerns Kamala Harris ’ recent nomination as the Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party in the wake of Joe Biden ’s decision to remove himself from the campaign.

In the Season 11 episode “Bart to the Future,” visions of Bart’s future show Lisa Simpson becoming the first straight female U.S. president. While it would be premature to claim that The Simpsons has made a prediction in this regard, the purple outfit and white necklace that she wears in the episode is eerily similar to Kamala Harris’ attire. Series writer and showrunner Al Jean took to X to express his pride in being connected to the prediction and what it could mean for the upcoming election.

42 Robots as Librarians

It would make sense that "Lisa's Wedding," an episode that's essentially a flashforward into the future, would have many Simpsons predictions. It's centered on Lisa's experience with a fortune-teller, who predicts that she will fall in love and marry an upper-crust English man named Hugh Parkfield, whom she'll meet at her future university. In that future, librarians have been replaced with robots.

In 2016, some brilliant Aberystwyth University students did exactly that by building a prototype for a library robot that can walk around and assist people. The robot's name might sound familiar, as it's also called Hugh. Hugh's job is "to listen to [a person's] request, find the book, and take" them there. With recent advancements in robotics, it's safe to assume this will be a reality for many libraries around the world soon enough.

41 An All-You-Can-Eat Restaurant's False Advertising

"new kid on the block" - season 4, episode 8 (1992).

For Homer, the all-you-can-eat buffet by "The Frying Dutchman" was a dream come true. He takes full advantage of the promotion by eating for hours, finishing most of their items including the shrimp and two plastic lobsters. This causes management to call him "a remorseless eatin' machine" and eventually kick him out of the restaurant, which could go bankrupt because of his patronage. Homer is annoyed and takes them to court for false advertising.

A real-world court case would soon take place when a man from (coincidentally) Springfield, Massachusetts sues Golden Corral Corporation for $2 million for false advertising. This is after he's kicked out of one of their all-you-can-eat restaurants by one of their employees. Much like Homer, the man ends up accepting an "out-of-court settlement."

40 Doughnut-Shaped Universe

"they saved lisa’s brain" - season 10, episode 22.

“They Saved Lisa’s Brain” is a busy episode of The Simpsons , following Lisa as a letter she writes concerning how Homer humiliated the city sees her inducted into Springfield’s Mensa society which then goes on to rule Springfield when Mayor Quimby flees. As the situation escalates, Stephen Hawking arrives to see what the Mensa society has done, declaring his disapproval of their actions before going to Moe’s Tavern to share a drink with Homer.

While at the bar, Hawking compliments Homer on his theory of a doughnut-shaped universe, saying the idea is intriguing before mentioning he may steal it for himself. Interestingly, there has been a theory of a doughnut, or rather a “torus,” shaped universe since the 1980s. However, it has only risen to popularity early in the 2000s, meaning Homer may have inspired a new understanding of how the universe functions .

39 Whacking Day

"whacking day" - season 4, episode 20 (1993).

The episode "Whacking Day" is named after an annual tradition in Springfield where the residents gather to joyfully beat snakes to death to allegedly keep the snake population under control. Though it's said to have originated from founder Jebediah Springfield, this is later proven to be false. Only the first half of the plot has made it to real life, with the "Python Challenge" having a similar idea.

The Florida Python Challenge calls on individuals to help control the population of invasive Burmese pythons , and it has become a highly anticipated annual event. With cash prizes that go all the way up to $10,000, the event sees more participants every year, with no soul singer like Barry White around to give them a reason to stop.

38 A Late Letter From The Beatles

"brush with greatness" - season 2, episode 18 (1991).

In the Season 2 episode "Brush with Greatness," Marge picks up a paintbrush again for the first time in a long time after learning about the fate of her Ringo Starr portraits. One of the scenes in the episode shows Ringo Starr himself carefully replying to countless fan mail piled all around him, with many having been written several years ago.

This isn't too far from a real-life event involving Paul McCartney, who replied to two fans from Essex , London in September 2013. This was a response to a letter they sent in 1963, which ended up in a car boot sale. McCartney hilariously wrote back "better late than never" and thanked the fans for their "lovely tape."

37 Daenerys Targaryen's Villainous Turn

"the serfsons" - season 29, episode 1 (2017).

Game of Thrones will forever be remembered as a great fantasy show that went downhill and gave its fans one of the worst TV finales ever . One of its most questionable plot points was on The Simpsons before it ever made it on the HBO series. In "The Serfsons," an episode that parodies Westeros and GoT in general, a dragon burns down the Serfsons' village after Homer revived it.

This likely reminds most of how Daenerys Targaryen's Drogon burned King's Landing in GoT , even after the people had already surrendered. It was an infuriating scene for many fans and critics, and it was only about to get worse, with Daenerys' villainous turn transforming her arc in the worst way possible.

36 Stealing Cooking Grease

"lard of the dance" - season 10, episode 1 (1998).

The Season 10 premiere may not mark one of The Simpsons ' most ground-breaking predictions, but it certainly does contain one of the series’ most unusual. “Lard of the Dance” sees Homer concoct an ambitious get-rich-quick scheme when they learn from Apu that there is a market in Springfield for used cooking grease. Dragging Bart along to help him, Homer tries to steal grease from Krusty Burger and even the school dance to gather enough grease to turn a profit.

The episode was mentioned in a New York Times article from 2012 that confirmed that the series had made yet another baffling prediction. As it turns out, cooking oil grease can be recycled into biodiesel and animal feed, giving it a surprising market value. Eager to capitalize on that, thieves took inspiration from Homer Simpson to hit restaurants around New York to steal their grease in hopes of getting some quick cash.

35 Autocorrect

"lisa on ice" - season 6, episode 8 (1994).

"Lisa on Ice" sees the brightest Simpson in danger of failing thanks to new "Academic Alerts" that have identified gym class as her weak point. She immediately tries to change this, appealing to her gym teacher and reaching an agreement about joining a sports program outside of class. In the meantime, Martin is, as usual, in danger of bullying.

One scene sees school bullies read a memo to "beat up Martin," only for the message to be scrambled to read "eat up Martha." Anyone who's ever experienced the frustrations of autocorrect can immediately see the parallels here, with the Newton device clearly being a very early version of the iPhone.

34 A Submersible Disaster

"homer's paternity coot" - season 17, episode 10 (2006).

A more recent prediction from The Simpsons became clear earlier this year, when fans made the connection between the Titanic submersible disaster and the episode "Homer's Paternity Coot." In the episode, Homer finds a man he thinks is his long-lost father and agrees to venture into the depths of the ocean with him in an attempt to find an old ship. Disaster strikes and Homer gets stuck, but thankfully opens his eyes in a hospital a few days later.

Last June, a real-life submersible carrying five passengers toward the sunken Titanic unfortunately imploded. The expedition to see the wreck dominated conversations around the world, and the tragedy has raised crucial questions about safety regulations and protocols to prevent a similar event from ever happening again.

33 Planning to Block the Sun

"who shot mr. burns" - season 6, episode 25 (1995).

When oil is discovered right beneath Springfield Elementary, Mr. Burns ruins any chances of financial gain for Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers, who had started taking suggestions from students and residents about what they should do with their newfound money. Instead, Mr. Burns beats them to drilling the oil and subsequently blocks out the sun with a giant disc so every person in Springfield is forced to use energy from his power plant.

A real-life billionaire, George Soros , recently had a similar idea, but not for the same reason Mr. Burns did. At the Munich Security Conference, Soros suggested using a cloud cover as a sort of shield over the melting Arctic in an effort to reduce global warming . It's a totally different intention, and actually one worth rooting for.

32 An Eerie Reference to 9/11

"the city of new york vs. homer simpson".

While many of the predictions in The Simpsons are playful in nature, pure coincidence and vested interest from viewers in finding as many possible predictions as they can sometimes lead to premonitions that no one would make. One of the most obvious and painful examples of this comes in the 1997 episode “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson”, in which the Simpsons travel to New York City to retrieve the family car from being illegally parked at the World Trade Center.

While in the Big Apple, Lisa holds up a magazine with a cover that reads “New York $9”. The placement of the 9 directly next to the silhouette of the Twin Towers in the New York skyline is eerie as it effectively uses the two tall buildings as an “11.” While completely unintentional, the brief moment in the episode holds a mighty weight given the series’ knack for predictions.

31 Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s Election

"west wing story" - special short (2019).

In a special short that takes aim at former President Donald Trump , The Simpsons parodies a song from West Side Story . In the process, it depicts a competition of sorts between Trump and other political figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez . While this sing-off thankfully didn't actually happen in real life, there's a short scene that bears a shocking resemblance to recent political changes.

Director David Silverman shares the moment on X , recounting how he "set up this kick line for [the] ending," which shows Trump standing next to a line-up of dancers. One of pair of dancers standing there happens to be President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who weren't running mates at the time the short aired . Addressing showrunner Al Jean, Silverman continues by asking if the just happened to "predict [the] future again" by creating that scene.

23 times 'The Simpsons' accurately predicted the future

• "The Simpsons" has built a reputation for predicting the future.
• The show predicted the election of Donald Trump.
• A 1996 episode predicted Cypress Hill and the London Symphony Orchestra would perform together.

Edith Hancock, Amanda Luz Henning Santiago, Lucy Yang, Carrie Wittmer, and Tom Murray contributed to previous versions of this post.

Three-eyed fish — Season 2, Episode 4

In 2008, "The Simpsons" showed Homer trying to vote for Barack Obama in the US general election, but a faulty machine changed his vote.

Four years later, a voting machine in Pennsylvania had to be removed after it kept changing people's votes for Barack Obama to ones for his Republican rival Mitt Romney.

The censorship of Michelangelo's David — Season 2, Episode 9

An episode from 1990 titled "Itchy and Scratchy and Marge" showed Springfieldians protesting against Michelangelo's statue of David being exhibited in the local museum, calling the artwork obscene for its nudity.

The satire of censorship came true in July 2016, when Russian campaigners voted on whether to clothe a copy of the Renaissance statue that had been set up in central St Petersburg.

Letter from The Beatles — Season 2, Episode 18

In 1991, an episode of "The Simpsons" saw The Beatles' Ringo Star diligently answering fan mail that had been written decades ago.

In September 2013, two Beatles fans from Essex received a reply from Paul McCartney to a letter and recording they sent to the band 50 years ago. The recording was sent to a London theatre the band was due to play at but was found years later in a car boot sale by a historian.

In 2013, the BBC's "The One Show"  reunited the pair with their letter , plus a reply from McCartney.

The sideburns of MLB great Don Mattingly — Season 3, Episode 17

In the 1992 episode "Homer at the Bat," Mr. Burns recruits Major League Baseball players for his softball team, including the then-New York Yankees first baseman Don Mattingly. 

Mr. Burns ends up benching Mattingly for not following the policy he has for the length of a player's sideburns. This actually happened to the Yankee captain in real life.

In 1991, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner fined him $250 and Mattingly was benched for not adhering to the boss' rule on hair length.

When the episode aired a year later, everyone thought "The Simpsons" was spoofing the event, but it turned out that Mattingly had recorded his lines for the episode a month before his standoff with Steinbrenner .

Siegfried and Roy tiger attack — Season 5, Episode 10

The Simpsons parodied entertainers Siegfried & Roy in a 1993 episode called "$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)." During the episode, the magicians are viciously mauled by a trained white tiger while performing in a casino. 

In 2003, Roy Horn of Siegfried and Roy was attacked  during a live performance by Montecore, one of their white tigers. Roy lived but sustained severe injuries in the attack.

Horsemeat scandal — Season 5, Episode 19

In 1994, Lunchlady Doris used "assorted horse parts" to make lunch for students at Springfield Elementary. 

Nine years later, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland found horse DNA  in over one-third of beefburger samples from supermarkets and ready meals, and pig in 85% of them.

Autocorrect — Season 6, Episode 8

School bullies Kearny and Dolph take a memo to "beat up Martin" on a Newton device in an episode of "The Simpsons" that aired in 1994. The memo gets quickly translated to "eat up Martha" — an early foreshadowing of autocorrect frustrations.

"The Simpsons" was lampooning Apple's underwhelming Newton — the iPhone's ancient ancestor — that had just been released, and included shoddy handwriting recognition, according to Fast Company .

Nitin Ganatra, former director of engineering iOS applications at Apple, told Fast Company that this particular moment on "The Simpsons" served as inspiration to get the iPhone keyboard right.

Smartwatches — Season 6, Episode 19

"The Simpsons" introduced the idea of a watch you could use as a phone in an episode aired in 1995, nearly 20 years before the Apple Watch was released.

The invention of The Shard — Season 6, Episode 19

The "Lisa's Wedding" episode from 1995 came with a lot of unexpected predictions. During Lisa's trip to London, we see a skyscraper behind Tower Bridge that looks eerily similar to The Shard, and it's is even in the right location.

Construction on the building started in 2009 , 14 years later.

Robotic librarians — Season 6, Episode 19

In "Lisa's Wedding," we discover that librarians have been replaced with robots in the "Simpsons" universe.

More than 20 years later, robotics students from the University of Aberystwyth built a prototype for a walking library robot, while scientists in Singapore have begin testing their own robot librarians.

Cypress Hill performing with the London Symphony Orchestra — Season 7, Episode 24

In a 1996 episode titled "Homerpalooza," the Simpsons watch in amazement as legendary rap group Cypress Hill performs with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Decades later, a Cypress/LSO collab will happen in real life. The band announced a performance in July and also shouted out "The Simpsons" in its official statement.

"We are thrilled to be performing with the London Symphony Orchestra in such a prestigious venue as the Royal Albert Hall," the group said. "It's a dream come true, a collaboration only 'The Simpsons' could have predicted."

The discovery of the Higgs boson equation — Season 8, Episode 1

In a 1998 episode called "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace," Homer Simpson becomes an inventor and is shown in front of a complicated equation on a blackboard.

According to Simon Singh, the author of "The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets," the equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson particle. It was first predicted in 1964 by Professor Peter Higgs and five other physicists, but it wasn't until 2013 that scientists discovered proof of the Higgs boson in a £10.4 billion ($13 billion) experiment.

Ebola outbreak — Season 9, Episode 3

Some people maintain that "The Simpsons" predicted the 2014 outbreak of Ebola 17 years before it happened. In a scene from the episode "Lisa's Sax," Marge suggests a sick Bart read a book titled "Curious George and the Ebola Virus." The virus wasn't particularly widespread in the 1990s, but years later it was the top of the news agenda.

Ebola was first discovered in 1976, and though this latest outbreak has been the worst yet, it killed 254 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1995 and 224 in Uganda in 2000.

Disney buys 20th Century Fox — Season 10, Episode 5

In the episode "When You Dish Upon a Star" that originally aired in 1998, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer produce a script Homer pitches. The script is being produced at 20th Century Fox, and a sign in front of the studio's headquarters reveals that it is "a division of Walt Disney Co."

On December 14, 2017, Disney purchased 21st Century Fox for an estimated $52.4 billion, acquiring Fox's film studio (20th Century Fox), in addition to a bulk of its television production assets. The media conglomerate also has access to popular entertainment properties like "X-Men," "Avatar," and "The Simpsons."

The invention of the tomacco plant — Season 11, Episode 5

In 1999, Homer uses nuclear energy to create a hybrid of tomato and tobacco plants: the "tomacco."

This inspired US "Simpsons" fan Rob Baur to create his own plant . In 2003, Baur grafted together a tobacco root and a tomato stem to make "tomacco." Writers for "The Simpsons" were so impressed that they invited Baur and his family to their offices and ate the tomacco fruit themselves.

Donald Trump as president — Season 11, Episode 17

In the 2000 episode, "Bart to the Future," the show goes next level on its prediction talents when it name drops Donald Trump as having been POTUS.

The episode explores what Bart's life would be like when he got older. It features Lisa being president. While in the Oval Office, we hear her say: "As you know, we've inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump."

In 2017, Trump became the 45th President of the United States.

Pot legal in Canada — Season 16, Episode 6

In the 2005 episode titled "Midnight Rx," Ned travels to Canada with Homer, Grampa Simpson, and Apu and discovers that pot is legal in the country.

In 2018, Canada legalized recreational use of marijuana.

Faulty voting machines — Season 20, Episode 4

The U.S. beats Sweden in curling at the Olympic games — Season 21, Episode 12

In one of the biggest upsets at the 2018 Winter Olympics, the U.S. curling team won gold over the favorite, Sweden.

This historical win was predicted in a 2010 episode of "The Simpsons," called "Boy Meets Curl." In the episode, Marge and Homer Simpson compete in curling at the Vancouver Olympics and beat Sweden.

In real life the U.S. Men's Olympic Curling Team won a gold medal after defeating Sweden even though they were behind, which is exactly how it played out on "The Simpsons." The victory is the second curling medal ever for the United States (not including Marge and Homer's, of course).

Nobel Prize Winner — Season 22, Episode 1

MIT professor Bengt Holmström won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2016, six years after he was bet on to win the Nobel Prize on "The Simpsons."

Holmström's name appears on a betting scorecard when Martin, Lisa, Database, and Milhouse bet on Nobel Prize winners.

Lady Gaga's Super Bowl halftime show — Season 23, Episode 22

In 2012, Lady Gaga performed for the town of Springfield hanging in midair. Five years later, she flew off the Houston NRG Stadium roof in real life to perform her Super Bowl halftime show.

Apple's Vision Pro virtual reality headset — Season 28, Episode 2

In 2024, Apple releases its virtual reality headset, the Vision Pro. Social media quickly fills up with public displays of people using the headset. It's pointed out that the sights are similar to a 2016 "Simpsons" episode . 

Titled "Friends and Family," Mr. Burns hires the Simpsons family to be his virtual reality family, and they all use a VR headset that looks just like the Vision Pro.

The end of the episode fast-forwards a few years, showing everyone in Springfield now wearing the headset, leading them to run into lampposts and fall into manholes.

Daenerys Targaryen's big plot twist in 'Game of Thrones' — Season 29, Episode 1

On the penultimate episode of "Game of Thrones," Daenerys Targaryen shocked  fans when she and her dragon laid waste to an already surrendered King's Landing, obliterating thousands of innocent people.

In 2017, on a season 29 episode of "The Simpsons" titled "The Serfsons," which spoofed various aspects of "Game of Thrones" — including the Three-Eyed Raven and the Night King — Homer revives a dragon that proceeds to incinerate a village.

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10 times The Simpsons predicted the future

Currently in its 33rd season with more than 700 episodes under its belt, The Simpsons is a lasting part of pop culture  and American history. In fact, even South Park acknowledged that The Simpsons have pretty much been-there-done-that to just about everything with their famous Simpsons Already Did it episode, where the phrase Simpsons did it ! is constantly screamed throughout.

Siegfried and Roy are attacked by tigers (season 5, episode 10)

Disney buys 20th century fox (season 10, episode 5), richard branson goes to outer space (season 25, episode 15), trump becomes president of the u.s. (season 11, episode 17), the nsa is revealed to be spying on the public (the simpsons movie), faulty voting machines (season 20, episode 4), the rise of video chat (season 5, episode 19), a pandemic takes over the world (season 4, episode 21).

• Florida’s python problem (season 4, episode 20)

A FIFA scandal involving the World Cup (season 25, episode 16)

But The Simpsons haven’t just done it all, they’ve also had a pretty solid track record of predicting the future. Throughout the show’s three-decade run, some episodes have become surprisingly (and scarily) real years later when history seemed to directly mimic the show. While the show has had a surprising number of correct predictions (some publications cite as many as 30), these are the 10 that were the most shocking … and shockingly accurate.

In the episode $pringfield (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling) , the town of Springfield legalizes gambling to help create tax revenue. Before long, a casino is opened and Homer even ends up working as a Blackjack dealer. The episode’s main plot was pointing out an issue that was very controversial at the time – many mid-size and smaller cities were legalizing gambling to earn money – an issue that has once again become a hot topic in the era of sports betting.

However, it was a short skit in the episode that would truly earn infamy. Naturally, Springfield’s casino needed a Vegas show, so T he Flamboyant Magic of Gunter and Ernst  premiered (an obvious spoof of Siegfried and Roy’s famous show at the Mirage). Aside from being magicians, Siegfried and Roy were famous for their white lions and white tigers.

In The Simpsons , the white tiger has a flashback of being poached from the wild and suddenly attacks his trainer on stage. In 2003, this became all too real when Roy was suddenly attacked by his tiger while on stage. Roy’s neck was severely bitten, injuring his nerves and spine, and causing a stroke. He barely survived the encounter and was never able to perform again.

In the episode When You Dish Upon a Star , Homer becomes friends with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger (both voicing themselves), but he soon blows it when he starts revealing their secrets to everyone in Springfield. Towards the end of the episode, a scene takes place “one month later” on the Fox studio lot, and there’s a sign that reads “20th Century Fox…A Division of Walt Disney Co.”

Considering that most viewers are watching The Simpsons on Disney+ these days, it should come as no surprise that this did indeed become reality. In 2017 Disney bought Fox’s entertainment division (basically everything except Fox News and Fox Business) for $52.4 billion.

On top of acquiring The Simpsons and all the other shows on Fox, the deal also gave Disney control of Hulu and the rights to Fox’s last remaining Marvel franchises like X-Men and Fantastic Four, giving Disney complete control over the MCU. The Simpsons would even go on to mention the merger in an MCU-themed episode where Duffman (as Antman) holds up a sign reading “This is what happens when Disney buys Marvel and Fox.”

In the episode The War of Art , someone is forging artworks with the belief that they’re helping the world. The episode has nothing to do with space at all, but it does show one scene where Richard Branson is admiring his art collection while floating weightlessly in a spacecraft. In 2021 Branson did end up going to space in one of his Virgin Galactic spacecraft – the company claims it will start commercial operations in 2023.

While The Simpsons did correctly predict that Branson would make it to space, the show’s creators had some help from pop culture. By 2014 when the episode aired, Virgin Galactic was already famous and had been making major headlines since around 2011. So it’s possible that the show’s creators weren’t so much predicting … but were seeing the inevitable.

One of the most famous instances of The Simpsons predicting the future is in the classic 2000 episode, Bart to the Future.  In the episode, Bart is shown a glimpse of what his family is up to some 30 years into the future. While Bart has become a total bum, Lisa has just been elected president. Her predecessor? Donald Trump.

Making the prediction even more shockingly accurate is that it revealed Trump left the nation in debt, with Lisa saying on her first day in office, “We inherited quite a budget crisis from President Trump,” which, in 2021, at the end of Trump’s presidency, proved all too real since his administration oversaw the third-highest deficit increase of any president.

On Biden and Harris’ inauguration day, the episode once again made headlines. Lisa’s outfit as president was a purple blazer over a purple blouse with a pearl necklace. Fans of the show noticed that Kamala Harris’ outfit at the inauguration was … a purple blazer over a purple blouse with a pearl-like necklace, giving Bart to the Future a double-whammy in predicting America’s political future.

In 2007, The Simpsons Movie became a smash hit, tackling issues of environmentalism and groupthink, and earning over $536 million at the global box office. In the movie, the Simpson family is on the run after escaping Springfield, which has been quarantined under a giant glass dome. At one point they’re overheard talking on a train by surveillance operatives at the National Security Agency (NSA).

In 2013, the Edward Snowden scandal would prove that the NSA really was listening in on public conversations through telephone calls and was keeping tabs on what people looked at online. However, it later turned out that Snowden (the informant who leaked the information in the name of “patriotism”) also had his own hodgepodge of problematic views and beliefs, such as outwardly making racist comments, and in 2022 he pledged his allegiance to Russia, which heavily surveils its population , making many question what Snowden’s real motives were.

In the cold open for Treehouse of Horror XIX (which aired on November 2, 2008, just two days before the election), Homer tries to vote for Barack Obama, but the voting machine keeps counting his vote for McCain. When Homer tries to tell someone, the voting machine kills him.

During the next presidential election in 2012, this very thing happened (minus the murder part). A voter in Pennsylvania kept pressing ‘Barack Obama’ on a touchscreen voting machine, but the machine kept indicating a vote for Romney, despite their finger clearly touching the Obama button. Voting gags would become a regular for The Simpsons , doing them again in 2016 and 2020.

In another episode that transported the Simpsons to the future, season 5’s Lisa’s Wedding  sees Lisa visit a fortune-teller at the renaissance fair. The fortune-teller transports her to the year 2010 (then 15 years into the future) to show Lisa her true love and what her wedding will look like.

The episode is filled with futuristic tech, one being the “picture phone,” where Lisa calls Marge and chats with her on a screen that’s attached to the phone (which is hilariously still an old rotary phone). As everyone with a smartphone knows, this became reality when Apple launched FaceTime . Strangely enough, FaceTime launched in 2010, the same year the episode was set. Coincidence?

OK, there’s a lot to unpack with this one. 1993’s Marge in Chains  has become infamous for having many similarities to 2020. In the episode, a viral outbreak from Japan called the “Osaka Flu” makes its way to Springfield. Once there, the town spirals into chaos. Dr. Hibbert tells everyone that there’s no cure and anything he’d give them would be a placebo (because the flu is a viral infection, so antibiotics don’t work on it). Desperate, the townspeople beg for a placebo. Someone from the crowd then finds a crate of “killer bees” and eats one, hoping for a cure.

Let’s start with the stuff the episode got right. Yes, 2020’s coronavirus outbreak originated in Asia, and during the early summer of 2020, Asian “murder hornets” started trending because their population in Washington was growing rapidly (they first made their way to the U.S. in late 2019).

However, alt-right media heavily used the episode as a scare tactic during the pandemic, using the placebo scene to imply that vaccines don’t work and using the fact that both viruses came from Asia as a way to stoke Asian hate – despite the fact that China and Japan are nothing alike. Images even began circulating online claiming the episode called the outbreak “Corona Virus.”

Tensions were high and many gullible people were buying into whatever they saw on social media, further complicating the nation’s response to the pandemic and lending further credibility to those who believed the pandemic was fake. Fact-checkers had to publish articles stating the viral memes were fake and writers for The Simpsons spoke out about the episode being used for misinformation and bigotry.

What the episode did predict perfectly was the mass hysteria and unrest that a pandemic would bring, serving as an eerily accurate foreshadowing of life during the COVID era.

Florida’s python problem (season 4, episode 20)

In the episode Whacking Day , Springfield holds its annual tradition where the townspeople go out and beat snakes to death to help lower the town’s snake population. While originally written to tackle the debate of animal cruelty, the episode gained new relevance decades later, thanks to Florida’s python problem.

First spotted in the ’90s and declared to have a breeding population in 2000, the Burmese Python is, quite literally, taking over Florida, and it’s believed that as many as 300,000 of the large snakes now live in the state. Because of their massive size, long lifespan, and powerful constriction, they are apex predators and are causing massive habitat damage and killing native wildlife. Adding to the danger is climate change. Warmer temperatures are making more and more of the US habitable for the species.

Because of this, every day is now Whacking Day in Florida, and civilians are encouraged to “humanely” kill the pythons in order to stop their spread. To help protect America’s native species, people are encouraged by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to make the snake lose consciousness (they recommend shooting the snake). They then say, “after rendering the reptile unconscious, ensure the animal’s brain is destroyed.”  Happy Whacking Day, everyone!

In 2014’s You Don’t Have to Live Like a Referee , Homer is selected to be a ref for the World Cup after FIFA (named the “World Football Federation” in the episode) reveals that all their refs have been bribed and aren’t reliable. The FIFA exec (cough cough, I mean, the “World Football Federation” exec) then says, “I myself am about to be arrested for corruption,” before being hauled away in handcuffs.

Just one year later, FIFA would be rocked by a very real bribery scandal, and almost 40 people were indicted on charges of bribery, racketeering, and conspiracy. The investigation provided evidence that many World Cup host nations were winning their bids through bribes – including 2022’s host nation, Qatar, who spent millions of dollars to secure its win.

Seasons 1-33 of The Simpsons can be streamed on Disney+.

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The Public Broadcasting Service isn't always fully appreciated by the general public. Even in the present, it's still a convenient target for politicians who call for it to be defunded. What those politicians fail to understand is that PBS is truly a public service. For 54 years, PBS local stations across America have provided free programing that spans news, documentaries, educational shows, children's series, dramas, comedies, and more. Most of the PBS originals are series that would have been been shown on America's broadcast networks.

While the streaming era has split audiences like never before, PBS remains a bedrock for quality entertainment and informative shows. And as they often say during Pledge Week, these shows are supported through donations "by viewers like you." To celebrate everything that the Public Broadcasting Service has to offer, we've put together our picks for the 10 best PBS shows ever. Nine out of the 10 are still available to stream. 10. The French Chef (1963-1973)

In this Golden Age of Television, audiences have been treated to some truly incredible shows. From heartfelt dramas to thought-provoking sci-fi to hilarious sitcoms, TV has enchanted countless viewers and rivaled cinema in terms of artistry and acclaim.

Such great shows had to win over audiences on day one to get where they are now, and these 10 series nailed it with their pilot episodes. 10. Space Pilot 3000 - Futurama (1999-present)

It's only aired for one season, but X-Men '97 has already joined the ranks of Marvel Studios' best projects in recent years. Featuring Madelyne Pryor's reign as the Goblin Queen, Storm losing her powers, the destruction of Genosha, and the death of Gambit, this season revived and rebuilt the series to reinvigorate the X-Men and Marvel Universe as a whole.

Overall, the series blew away fans and newcomers alike, and audiences would very much like to see these seven things in season 2. Madelyne Pryor returns

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Why the simpsons seems to be so good at predicting the future.

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The Simpsons Season 35's Ending Finally Solved A 30-Year Old Homer Mystery

The simpsons season 35’s worst episode has a valuable lesson for season 36, the simpsons season 36 teases an answer to its oldest mystery (that changes the show forever).

In recent years, The Simpsons has become notorious for its ability to predict the future, but how has the show managed to predict so many future events? The Simpsons has been accused of being a result of everything from psychic abilities to time travel thanks to more than a handful of episodes that somehow managed to portray oddly specific events before they happened. The popularity of viewer speculation has led to an entire Disney+ collection dedicated to episodes that supposedly showed the future before it happened. Audiences have also spent hours backtracking through The Simpsons ’ 33 seasons to find more examples of eerie connections, but many of them cannot offer a proper explanation for how The show has managed to do this over and over again.

The rabbit hole viewers have been traveling down initially gained traction after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, and more recently, it’s been speculated that The Simpsons predicted Tom Hanks’ and Biden’s team-up . People were quick to point out season 11 episode “Bart to the Future” where Lisa says, “ We inherited quite the budget crunch from President Trump ” in an episode meant to poke fun at the idea of the celebrity becoming president. Simpsons creators even capitalized on this theory by having Bart write “ Being right sucks ” on the chalkboard the following week.

Related: The Simpsons' Best Fox Jokes

The moments where The Simpsons has supposedly shown psychic abilities are surprisingly numerous. The accuracy and specificity of the scenes have ranged from images showing 20th Century Fox being purchased by Disney in season 10 to Springfield residents forcing censorship of the Michelangelo’s David, which (in quite a stretch) has been compared to events in 2016 when Russia had the same debate over the famous statue. Viewers have continued to hypothesize about time travel over recent years – and even weeks – especially since The Simpsons predicted The Matrix Resurrections ; however, a few more logical explanations have risen to the surface. Below is an explanation for just how The Simpsons got so good at seeing into the future.

The Simpsons History Of Predicting The Future

While the popularity of this theory gained the most traction in 2016, viewers have since discovered other moments The Simpsons  has predicted that occurred decades earlier. One of the most notable examples is that the show predicted 9/11. In an episode that premiered in 1996, a New York brochure is shown. On the brochure, the number 9 is displayed after a dollar sign. The World Trade Center can be seen in the background, making it appear as if the two towers are the ones in 9/11. This also contributed to making season 9’s “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson” one of the banned episodes of The Simpsons , which was censored after the 9/11 attacks before being brought back a few years later. Season 2, episode 4, “Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish” is widely agreed upon as the first example of a Simpsons prediction. The 1990 episode shows Bart catching a fish that has three eyes thanks to water contamination from Springfield’s power plant. While the prediction may have been a Simpson ’s first, it didn’t come true until years after multiple later predictions. In 2011, an Argentinian fisherman discovered a fish with three eyes while fishing in a reservoir close to a nuclear plant. The episode has also helped fuel theories that The Simpsons ’ power plant mutates Springfield residents .

The number of alleged predictions, however, usually isn’t agreed upon and ranges from around 12 to 33, depending on who is asked. This is because certain events are a little too vague to count in many viewers’ opinions. Episodes that tend to be written off usually include season 5, episode 10, "$pringfield (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)." In the episode, circus performers Gunter and Ernst are working with a white tiger that turns on them. This is cited as a prediction for a 2003 show put on by German-American performers Siegfried and Roy in which a white tiger they were performing with attacked Roy. Everything from the German origins of their names to the color of the tiger has caused multiple viewers to call this an example of The Simpsons ' psychic abilities. However (as viewers have hopefully learned by now after Netflix’s Tiger King and its two failed sequels ), tiger attacks aren’t exactly uncommon among people working with the large predators on a regular basis. Therefore, it is hard for most people to call this a psychic prediction instead of coming to the more realistic conclusion that the show portrayed a fairly inevitable event, not a unique scenario.

This displays an interesting phenomenon. Part of the reason the show is considered to be so accurate is that since the popularity and truly interesting coincidences of some episodes have gained traction, viewers who have combed through previous episodes have tended to be very liberal with the examples they use, such as with the tiger attack and another moment during the Simpsons episode that predicted President Trump in which Lisa’s presidential outfit is very similar to Kamala Harris’ inauguration day wardrobe. This has led audiences who haven’t backtracked through the show’s decades-long run to take their word for it and assume there really are dozens of accurate examples.

Related: How The Simpsons Mocked Its Most Ridiculous Censor Notes

A Study Revealed Why The Simpsons Is So Good At Predicting Events

Multiple classes, studies, and papers have focused on The Simpsons and its prediction ability - however, in an article published by Mic, Daniel Chun, former co-executive producer of The Simpsons, denied this ability (via Mic ). The same article calls upon Matt Zaremsky. He is an assistant math professor at the University of Albany and had a few things to say about the show. During The Simpsons ’ Golden Age and the remainder of the first 12 seasons, there was an average of 8.54 jokes per minute, (via Vulture ). According to a study Zaremsky conducted after the show’s 29th season, he determined that if the show continued at the same rate, then it contained roughly 120,000 jokes, and over 1.2 thousand of those jokes were future predictions.

As mentioned above, viewers commonly believe there are only 12-33 accurate predictions. However, Zaremsky’s study determined that 1,224 predictions were made. It was done before seasons 30-33, but assuming the jokes have still come at the rate, this means The Simpsons has roughly a 1.6% rate of success. In simple terms, the study shows that less than two out of every 100 predictions have come true.

What This Actually Means About The Simpsons' Track Record For Predictions

It’s undeniable that some episodes show events with a significant amount of detail - for example, many refer to  Lady Gaga’s Simpsons cameo showing her Super Bowl performance as an example of the specifics of a real scenario being very similar. The show not only foretold her performance, but it also managed to show a remarkably similar costume and her high-flying performance and accompanying harness. It also can’t be denied that the highest estimate of 33 examples of the show’s creepy ability to see into the future would mean that there’s approximately one prediction per season. Even the estimates on the lower end of the spectrum seem significant, considering the lack of other cartoons’ ability to seemingly predict the future. However, even when disregarding the generosity with which some viewers determine which episodes predicted the future, if the show is broken down by every single prediction creators threw at the wall versus the ones that actually stuck, it’s clear that The Simpsons ’ ability to predict the future is only as accurate as audiences choose to believe it is.

Next: How The Simpsons Convinced People Jason Voorhees Carries a Chainsaw

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Proof The Simpsons Writers May Be Time Travelers

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Terminator Zero Reviews Are In, Has Netflix Successfully Rebooted the Franchise?

A sequel & spin-offs to netflix's acclaimed anime hit teased by production studio, rings of power star reveals how the series will handle tom bombadil in season 2.

Seventeen years ago, an episode of The Simpsons predicted that Donald Trump would one day become US president. Nineteen years ago, they predicted that Disney would buy out Fox . These are only two out of the many things that The Simpsons have accurately predicted over the years with alarming accuracy, which is now leading to claims of time travel amongst the writers of the massively popular cartoon. The Fox and Trump things are impressive, but the time that Homer predicted the mass of the Higgs boson particle on a chalkboard may be some of the most insane evidence yet.

In a 1998 episode called The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace, Homer Simpson becomes an inventor and is shown in front of a complicated equation on a blackboard. According to Simon Singh, the author of The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets, the equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson particle, aka, the God Particle. It was first predicted in 1964 by Professor Peter Higgs and five other physicists, but it wasn't until 2013 that scientists discovered proof of the Higgs boson in a $13 billion experiment. The Simpsons predicted the discovery a full 15 years ahead of time.

Donald Trump becoming the President of the United States was predicted 16 years ahead of time and the writers claim that it was more of a warning than anything. A possible future Trump presidency, said the episode's writer Dan Greaney, "just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom. It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane." The episode, broadcast correctly made the prediction 17 years ago on March 19th, 2000, and saw Bart's vision of his future in which he is a beer drinking adult, while his sister Lisa has become president, following Trump's time in office.

The Lisa's Wedding episode originally aired in 1995 and came with a few more unexpected predictions. During Lisa's trip to London, a skyscraper is seen behind Tower Bridge that looks pretty damn similar to The Shard and is even in the right location. Construction on the building started in 2009, 14 years later. Also in the episode was the idea of robot librarians, which became real over 20 years later in Singapore. Another prediction that The Simpsons nailed was the tiger attack on Siegfried and Roy that originally aired in 1993 and then happened in real-life 10 years later.

Autocorrect was introduced in an episode of The Simpsons back when you couldn't even play Snake on an old brick cellphone. In addition, the hit show predicted the three-eyed fish back in its second season, nearly 30 years ago. Bart and Lisa are fishing when they catch it, the curiosity and the fish have become one of the show's more famous bit characters. The fish has three eyes due to the nuclear waste of the Springfield Nuclear Plant where Homer works. More than ten years later, a three-eyed fish was discovered in a reservoir in Argentina. Strangely enough, the reservoir itself was fed by water from a nuclear power plant.

So, what's going on here? Another rumor suggests that Simpsons creator Matt Groening is the time traveler and that all of the ideas and predictions came from him. A few years ago, a 69-year old artist bought some  Simpsons  watercolor paintings at a Seattle-area thrift store and thinks they were made by Matt Groening when he was a student at the Evergreen State College, more than a decade before the  Simpsons  shorts began airing on  The Tracey Ullman Show . Bart can be seen as a giant skateboarding and then there's the Butterfinger candy bar logo that many believe is from a time traveling Matt Groening. Coincidence or time travel? You can be the judge. And in the meantime, check out a new video that goes even further in-depth into the futuristic predictions of The Simpsons below, courtesy of The Pat McAfee Show's Facebook page.

• The Simpsons (1989)

Here’s how ‘The Simpsons’ keeps predicting the future

The Simpsons is known for some surprisingly accurate predictions. In 1994 , the Fox show predicted a 2013 incident in which horse meat was found in burgers. In 1997 , The Simpsons predicted the 2014 ebola outbreak. And, perhaps most famously, in 2000 , it showed a future under President Donald Trump.

Some have called it time travel . Others may call it coincidence. But after speaking to a former Simpsons co-executive producer, a statistician and a math professor, we’ve identified a few elements that made it possible for series to produce so many great calls about the dystopian hellscape we live in today.

1. The Simpsons has a massive collection of jokes — and thus more chances to be right.

The Simpsons has been on the air since 1989, and there have been more than 600 episodes so far. That volume of content alone has made the show more likely to make a bunch of correct predictions.

“We’ve made a zillion episodes of television, and so that’s a lot of at-bats, a lot of opportunity to make predictions,” Daniel Chun, former co-executive producer of The Simpsons , said in a phone call. “I don’t think anyone is talking about the predictions that The Simpsons has gotten wrong, but the list is many times longer than the stuff that they’ve gotten right.”

Just how many predictions has the show made overall?

Matt Zaremsky, an assistant math professor at the University of Albany, estimated that the show has made about 120,000 jokes in its 29-season run, assuming the show has kept up its pace of 8.54 jokes a minute from the first 12 seasons.

Zaremsky added up about 1,224 “explicit predictions about the future” on The Simpsons . “From the future-based episodes, I estimate 500 total. And from the regular episodes, I estimate about one per episode; that’s 624.” Out of all these, “people seem to think between 10 and 20” came true. “So let’s say 20 out of the 1,224. That is roughly a 1.6% success rate.”

“Statistics says The Simpsons just had so many jokes and so many predictions that essentially they got lucky,” Zaremsky said.

2. People are pretty generous with the word “prediction.”

Countless articles and videos have laid out successful Simpsons predictions. But some of these predictions aren’t necessarily shocking or specific to The Simpsons . Arguably, The Simpsons showing a phone on the wrist in a 1995 episode wasn’t all that original.

“The example … is that The Simpson s had something that looked much like an Apple Watch,” Gary Simon, a retired professor of statistics at New York University Stern School of Business, said in a Skype call. “Well, you know, a communications device on the wrist goes back to Dick Tracy , and the features on the Apple Watch are not going to match exactly the features that The Simpsons would have had on the watch. You have to decide whether that’s an effective prediction or not,” Simon said.

3. It’s a cartoon comedy set in the present.

Because The Simpsons is a cartoon, writers can put any real-life celebrities in the episodes they want. The writers can also create different realistic predictions because it takes place in a present-day reality very close to our own.

“A cartoon show can do more predicting about the future than some staged TV drama, certainly dramas set up in the past,” Simon said. He compared it to the period drama Downton Abbey , which is set in the early 20th century. That show could never make a prediction about the future, obviously, because it’s set in the past.

In general, comedy programs are written in a way that viewers tend to find more realistic, Chun explained. Many doctors say the comedy Scrubs is a more realistic view of life in a hospital than the drama ER , he said.

When writing a scripted drama, the writers are often “trying to be principled and depicting a society that really abides by morals and where everyone’s very serious and has a lot of integrity and acts on their integrity all the time,” Chun said.

4. Simpsons writers have always been cynical. It’s paid off.

“There happens to be a comic worldview that The Simpsons writers share, and there’s a couple of guiding principles or philosophies behind that,” Chun said.

What are those guiding principles? “People are greedy, corporations are terrible and they have a tendency to ruin everything but they are also incredibly lame,” Chun said. “Corruption is rampant and society as a whole has the memory of a goldfish.”

So as long as people keep being greedy and corporations keep being corrupt, The Simpsons ’ predictions might end up coming true forever.

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Breaking news, ‘the simpsons’ turns 30: here’s every time the show predicted the future.

Happy 30th birthday to “The Simpsons,” which first aired on Dec., 17, 1989. Although, based on the TV show’s knack for prediction, creators have likely always known it would make it to the three-decade mark.

The Fox series, which began its 31st season on Sept. 29, has proved itself to be the Nostradamus of network television over the years, accurately predicting numerous political and cultural happenings. Here’s every time the show is credited with seeing into the future, in chronological order:

Fish will have three eyes 1990, Season 2, Episode 4: “Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish” Iconic Simpsons character Blinky, the three-eyed fish, proved to be more than an amusing mutant when fishermen caught a three-eyed fish in Argentina.

Michelangelo’s “David” will be censored  1 990, Season 2, Episode 9: “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge” Springfield tries to censor Michelangelo’s “David” — a plotline that became a reality in 2016 when Russians voted on covering up a copy of the famed statue.

The Beatles will belatedly reply to fan mail  1991, Season 2, Episode 18: “Brush With Greatness” Decades after sending Ringo Starr a painting, Marge gets a response — as did two Essex women, who received a reply from Paul McCartney in 2013, 50 years after sending him a mixtape .

The Washington Redskins will win Super Bowl XXVI 1992, Season 3, Episode 14: “Lisa the Greek” Lisa predicts the Washington Redskins will win the Super Bowl in this episode, which aired a few days before the game.

Apps will translate babies’ cries 1992, Season 3, Episode 24: “Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?” Danny DeVito, playing Homer’s half-brother Herb, creates a translation tool for infant gibberish — much like the “ Infant Cries Translator ” app, created in 2016.

All-you-can-eat restaurants will be sued for false advertising 1992, Season 4, Episode 8: “New Kid on the Block” Homer gets kicked out of an all-you-can-eat restaurant and sues — as one Albert Flemming of Massachusetts did to an all-you-can-eat restaurant in 2017.

Thriller films will be promoted with blood splattering 1992, Season 4, Episode 6: “Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie” A billboard for an “Itchy & Scratchy” movie spurts a bloodlike substance onto passing cars. “Kill Bill Vol. 1” was promoted using a similar effect in 2003.

There will be a snake assassination holiday 1993, Season 4, Episode 14: “Whacking Day” A snake-killing holiday invented in this episode became a real-world event in the form of Florida’s annual Python Challenge .

Roy Horn will be mauled by a tiger 1993, Season 5, Episode 10: “$pringfield (Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)” A German magic duo comes to Springfield and are mauled by their white tigers in a sequence similar to what happened to Roy Horn of real magic duo Siegfried & Roy in 2003.

An average Joe will be sent into orbit 1994, Season 5, Episode 15: “Deep Space Homer” NASA sends a random person into space — as the United Kingdom did in 2013, when they sent non-astronaut Oliver Knight into space.

European beef will be found to be contaminated with horse meat 1994, Season 5, Episode 19 “Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Baadasssss Song” Lunch lady Doris is shown using “assorted horse parts — now with more testicles,” in her cooking, predictive of Europe’s 2013 horse meat scandal . Luckily, no testicles were involved in that one.

Apple’s keyboards will glitch  1994, Season 6, Episode 8: “Lisa on Ice” Dolph the bully writes a memo saying “Beat up Martin” on the old Apple digital-assistant Newton, only for it to be translated by the glitchy technology to “Eat up Martha,” a dig which inspired Apple to improve its iPhone keyboard .

There will be video chat, smartwatches and robot librarians 1995, Season 6, Episode 19: “Lisa’s Wedding” Characters in this episode communicate via screen, have watches that can be used as phones and defer to robots when navigating libraries — sound familiar?

Sept. 11, 2001 will happen 1997, Season 9, Episode 1: “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson” A coupon for a $9 New York bus features the Twin Towers in the background, making the ad appear to read “New York $9 11,” spawning many Sept. 11-related conspiracies.

Ebola will become mainstream news in America 1997, Season 9, Episode 3: “Lisa’s Sax” Marge offers to read a book called “Curious George and the Ebola Virus,” to Bart, in this episode, which aired years before the virus became as well known to Americans.

Crooks will steal and sell grease 1998, Season 10, Episode 1: “Lard of the Dance” Homer tries to get rich quick by stealing grease and selling it for profit — as thieves were caught doing in 2013.

The Higgs boson particle’s mass equation will be found to be correct 1998, Season 10, Episode 2: “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace” Homer writes an equation on a blackboard that predicts the Higgs boson particle’s mass that, despite being first predicted in 1964, wasn’t proved until 2013.

Disney will buy a big chunk of 20th Century Fox 1998, Season 10, Episode 5: “When You Dish Upon a Star” An opening shot in this episode shows the 20th Century Fox logo and “A Division of Walt Disney Co.” underneath it. In 2018, the Walt Disney Co. did indeed buy the entertainment assets of 21st Century Fox.

Fruits and vegetables will mutate and hybridize  1999, Season 11, Episode 5: “E-I-E-I-D’oh!” Tomacco plant Homer tries his hand at farming using nuclear materials from his job and creates a tomato-tobacco mutant hybrid called a “tomacco.” Mutant veggies indeed became a reality in Japan following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdown.

Donald Trump will be the US president 2000, Season 11, Episode 17: “Bart to the Future” “We inherited quite the budget crunch from President Trump,” Lisa, who is the US president, says in this episode, at the time referencing Trump’s Reform Party candidate run — but now thought to be predictive of his 2016 election.

The Albuquerque Isotopes will become a real team 2001, Season 12, Episode 15: “Hungry, Hungry Homer” In a plotline-made-reality, Homer protests his baseball team, the Springfield Isotopes, moving to Albuquerque. When a minor league team relocated to New Mexico not long after the episode aired, they voted to change their name to the Albuquerque Isotopes.

Rodents will be sold as poodles 2002, Season 13, Episode 22: “Papa’s Got a Brand New Badge” Criminal character Fat Tony glues cotton balls to ferrets and sells them as toy poodles. In 2013, an Argentinian man paid $150 for what he thought were toy poodles but what turned out to be huge rodents on steroids .

US voting machines will be found to be faulty  2008, Season 20, Episode 4: “Treehouse of Horror XIX” Homer’s vote for Barack Obama turns into one for John McCain when a voting machine glitches in this episode, which aired four years before a Pennsylvania voting machine was found to be doing as much in real time .

The American curling team will beat the Swedes at the Olympics 2008, Season 21, Episode 12: “Boy Meets Curl” Homer and Marge take up curling and defeat a Swedish team at the Vancouver Olympics. In 2018, the US men’s curling team beat the Swedes to win the gold at the Olympics.

Bengt R. Holmstrom will win the Nobel Prize in Economics 2010, Season 22, Episode 1: “Elementary School Musical” Millhouse predicts that Bengt R. Holmström will with the Nobel Prize in Economics, which he did in 2016 .

Greece will have an economic meltdown 2012, Season 23, Episode 10: “Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson” Homer reads a news ticker that says “Europe puts Greece on eBay.” This year, Greece became the first developed nation to default on an IMF loan repayment .

Lady Gaga will play the Super Bowl halftime show 2012, Season 23, Episode 22: “Lisa Goes Gaga” Gaga plays herself in this episode, performing “Poker Face,” in Springfield with choreography very similar to her 2017 Super Bowl performance .

FIFA officials will be arrested on corruption charges 2014, Season 25, Episode 16: “You Don’t Have To Live Like a Referee” Homer is asked to be a World Cup referee, but is then arrested on corruption charges — similar to what happened to FIFA officials in 2015 .

Near final “Game of Thrones” episode will end like this Season 29, Episode 1: “The Serfsons” The Simpsons, dressed in period garb, watch as a dragon burns down their village — similar to the fiery destruction of King’s Landing in one of the final “Game of Thrones” episode.

In addition to broadcasting an animated crystal ball, “The Simpsons” has also dabbled more directly in politics, invented a word that was subsequently added to the dictionary and inspired countless tattoos .

The next episode of “The Simpsons,” titled “ Hail to the Teeth ,” will air on Jan. 5 and guest-star former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Jon Lovitz.

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‘The Simpsons’ Has Predicted a Lot. Most of It Can Be Explained.

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By Maya Salam

There is no crystal ball in “The Simpsons” writers’ room, but you’d be forgiven for wondering.

Over its nearly 30-year run, the series about the world’s most famous animated family has alluded to many real-life events long before they’ve actually happened: the Trump presidency, the discovery of the Higgs boson particle, 9/11 and, most recently, Disney’s takeover of Fox. By some accounts, the coincidences — predictions, if you will — number in the 20s , or more.

This track record has led the show’s legion of fans to think that “The Simpsons” is, at the very least, a product of television’s most intelligent writers, and, at the most, prophetic.

So is there something bigger going on?

The future can be forecast better than one might think, said Al Jean, one of the show’s original writers and its showrunner since 1998. Episodes of “The Simpsons” air a year after they’re produced, he said, so “it’s just a sort of frame of mind that we’ve got that we think one year ahead.”

“I predict people will make too much of our great predictions,” he joked.

The show is the product of brilliant minds, many Harvard educated, said William Irwin, whose book “The Simpsons and Philosophy” has for years been taught in college courses at The University of California, Berkeley and other schools. Mr. Irwin is the chairman of philosophy at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Writers rule on “The Simpsons,” not the actors, he said.

The result is a show packed with references to art, literature, pop culture, politics and science.

“When that many smart people produce a television show, it’s bound to make some startling ‘predictions,’” he said.

Another possible factor at play: “the law of truly large numbers,” a concept presented by the Harvard mathematicians Frederick Mosteller and Persi Diaconis in their 1989 paper Methods for Studying Coincidences .

“With a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is apt to happen,” the law states. “The Simpsons,” a Fox show, is the longest-running scripted TV series in history.

Or, for fans looking for answers far outside conventional logic, Dr. Bernard Beitman, author of “Connecting With Coincidence,” offers the existence of the “psychosphere,” our mental atmosphere that is essentially “group mind in action.”

“Under the right conditions, we can know things that we don’t know we know, and we can sometimes predict events or attract what we are thinking,” said Dr. Beitman, a former chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Missouri.

Here are some of the most remarkable coincidences from “The Simpsons,” and how they can, or can’t, be explained.

The weirdest predictions

Sept. 11, 2001.

Predicted: 1997 Happened: 2001

In “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson,” there was a moment that alluded to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, and not even Mr. Jean could explain it.

“There is a frame where there’s a brochure that says New York at $9 a day, and behind the nine are the twin towers. So they look like an 11, and it looks like a 9/11. That one is a completely bizarre, strange thing,” he said.

In 2010, Bill Oakley , an executive producer on the show at the time, told The New York Observer : “$9 was picked as a comically cheap fare,” he said. “And I will grant that it’s eerie, given that it’s on the only episode of any series ever that had an entire act of World Trade Center jokes .”

The show’s unintended connection to 9/11 is far from the only one on television. The pilot episode of “The Lone Gunmen,” a short-lived spinoff of “The X-Files” that aired six months before Sept. 11, includes a plot where a hijacked plane is aimed at the World Trade Center. The pilots regain control and miss the towers just moments before colliding.

Super Bowl XXVI, XXVII and XXVIII

Predicted: 1992, 1993, 1994 Happened: 1992, 1993, 1994

The show predicted the N.F.L. champions three years in a row — in an episode that was all about predictions.

And yes, all three were just lucky guesses, Mr. Jean said.

In “Lisa the Greek,” which first aired in January 1992, Homer and Lisa bond over sports — well, sports gambling. Lisa has discovered a knack for predicting football winners, which Homer happily cashes in on. Lisa tells Homer that if the Washington Redskins defeat the Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl, she would still love him. If they don’t, she won’t.

Washington wins, and all is well between them. Three days after the episode aired, Washington beat Buffalo 37-24.

The episode was reworked in 1993 and in 1994, with the new Super Bowl-bound teams, which were the Dallas Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills both years. Lisa went with Dallas. In 1993, Dallas won 52-17. In 1994, Dallas won, 30-13.

1994 was the last time “The Simpsons” altered the episode, and the last time Buffalo made a Super Bowl appearance.

The gray area

Disney acquires 21st century fox.

Predicted: 1998 Happened: 2017

The most recent “Simpsons” prediction to come true was Disney’s $52 billion deal for 21st Century Fox , announced in December. In “When You Dish Upon a Star,” there’s a sign that reads “20th Century Fox, a division of Walt Disney Co.”

Mr. Jean said this sort of prediction was in line with the writers’ forward-thinking process. The deal “was just another one,” he said. “It happens. There's always mergers. It seemed logical, you know?”

The Higgs boson particle

Predicted: 1998 Happened: 2012

At first glance, this “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace” plot point might seem like the freakiest “Simpsons” prophecy: Homer, striving to be the next great inventor, standing at a chalkboard, on which a complex equation is scrawled.

That equation is a just a hair off what would become the Higgs boson particle, or “God particle,” which was discovered in 2012 , decades after it was first presumed to exist.

“That equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson,” Simon Singh, author of the 2013 book “The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets,” told the British newspaper The Independent in 2015 . “If you work it out, you get the mass of a Higgs boson that’s only a bit larger than the nano-mass of a Higgs boson actually is. It’s kind of amazing as Homer makes this prediction 14 years before it was discovered.”

But it can be explained to some degree. “The Higgs boson was written into the script by David Cohen, who’s one of the people with a math background on this show,” Mr. Jean said. “What he put in was a plausible guess at that time. So it wasn’t like totally out of left field .”

The explainable

The trump presidency.

Predicted: 2000 Happened: 2016

Mention “Simpsons” predictions to someone, and chances are they’ll respond with: “They predicted Trump, right?” While it might seem pretty amazing, it’s actually one of the show’s most logical prognoses, Mr. Jean said.

“There’s a category I would call plausible predictions, which Trump would fall under,” he said.

“People have somewhat forgotten, but he was talking about running for president then,” he said. “So it wasn’t somebody totally out of the blue. It was a guy who was a punch-line name and had presidential aspirations.”

In a 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter , the writer Dan Greaney said that the joke was intended as a warning. “That just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom,” he said. “It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane .”

References to a possible President Trump have made other rounds in pop culture: First in the Michael J. Fox movie “Back to the Future II,” where the bad guy Biff Tannen, who is fashioned to look like Donald Trump , takes power; and again in the “Rage Against the Machine” video for the song “Sleep Now in the Fire” from 1999, which was directed by Michael Moore and filmed on Wall Street.

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Time Travelling Remote couch gag

The Time Travelling Remote couch gag is the fifth couch gag of Season 14 .

• 2 Character Appearances
• 4 Appearances

The family sits on the couch. Homer clicks on the remote control and sends the family to the Stone Age, clicks it again to send them to the Roman Empire where they watch a gladiator match, and clicks it a final time to return them to the present.

Note: This is the first couch gag to be digitally animated.

Character Appearances [ ]

• Homer Simpson
• Marge Simpson
• Bart Simpson
• Lisa Simpson
• Maggie Simpson
• Romans (couch gag)
• This was the first gag in digital ink and paint.

Appearances [ ]

• 1 Homer Simpson
• 2 Bart Simpson
• 3 Bart's prank calls

The Simpsons' eerie 'predictions' explained - and it's not time travel or fortune-telling

T he Simpsons writers are not clairvoyants, according to AI, despite a raft of "predictions" over the years. From predicting Donald Trump's election to Twitter becoming X, the loss of the Titanic submarine to the coronavirus pandemic, it seems like many episodes are spooky premonitions of the future.

The popular cartoon even seemed to foretell the "shambolic" Willy Wonka Chocolate Experience that left the internet in stitches. The event at Glasgow's Box Hub last month had parents fuming after their $35 tickets bought them and their children entry to a near-empty warehouse.

Completing the experience was a rather bored-looking Oompa Loompa, a creepy character named The Unknown and a rather ambitious AI-generated script, reports The Daily Star .

Map shows US states where most climate change deniers live with 14% of Americans denying its existence

Map shows US states with most tobacco smokers with habit causing close to 1 in 5 deaths

One eagle-eyed internet sleuth drew comparisons with a scene in The Simpsons showing an extortionate entrance fee, a rather disappointing funhouse made of mattresses dubbed "Fort Adventure," a lemonade stand, and even a character that looked like an Oompa Loompa smoking a cigarette.

Many theories about the show's otherworldly accuracy have been thrown around over the years from time travel to fortune-telling. But according to artificial intelligence software ChatGBT, the answer is much more straightforward. The statement read: "The claim that 'The Simpsons' has predicted numerous world events is often exaggerated."

"While the show has indeed depicted some scenarios that later came to pass in real life, it's often a matter of coincidence or satire rather than genuine prediction. Some events that have been cited as 'predictions' include technological advancements, political outcomes, and pop culture trends.

"As of my last update in January 2022, it's difficult to provide an exact count of how many 'predictions' the show has made, as it's subjective and depends on what one considers a prediction.

"However, it's important to note that many of these instances are either cherry-picked from a vast number of episodes or are simply coincidences." It further stated: "The Simpsons has been on the air for several decades, and with such a long history and so many episodes, it's not surprising that some storylines might accidentally align with future events.

"In reality, The Simpsons often satirizes and parodies various aspects of society, including politics, technology, and celebrity culture, rather than predict them.

"While it's fascinating when elements of the show seemingly coincide with real-world events, it's essential to approach such claims with skepticism and recognise them for what they often are: amusing coincidences or instances of cultural commentary rather than genuine clairvoyance."

The show "The Simpsons" over its 35-year history has made some other "predictions". It had an episode that foresaw the invention of smart watches and the tiger attack on Siegfried and Roy.

Marge was once shown reading a book about Ebola years ahead of the real-life outbreak, and lunch lady Doris served horsemeat to students in one episode long before the real scandal.

A video titled 'The Simpsons Conspiracy: How They Predict The Future' from YouTube channel host ChuppI suggests the secret of the show's predictions might be down to its highly educated writing team. He said: "Unlike most other shows, The Simpsons writing team consists largely of writers who are extremely educated in fields ranging from mathematics to social sciences because of this they are also really connected to those that are on the cutting edge."

If you can't see the video below, click here.

He figured out that it normally takes about 13 years for a prediction made by the show to become reality, and the most accurate foresights tend to come from writers holding degrees in maths.

For the latest local news and features on Irish America, visit our homepage here .

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The Simpsons fans spot awkward time travel error in Christmas episode

Well this is intriguing.

Either that, or there's a big time travelling twist that would take the show into a whole new dimension.

So what is this mysterious apparent error? Well, fans have noticed in the season 25 episode 'White Christmas Blues' that there are not one but two Moes. Oh dear god no .

Related: The Simpsons boss is preparing for when the show ends

In the scene in question, Mayor Quimby gathers Spingfieldians together to declare the town a tourist attraction, before Moe says in front of the crowd: "We will welcome the tourists with open arms – and then we'll gouge the hell out of them."

However, eagle-eyed fans on Reddit have spotted Moe in the crowd in the same shot – but noted that it was probably a mistake due to human error.

Yet others have their own theories, musing that it may be a time travelling Moe, one saying: "[Creator] Matt Groening is setting us up for the most epic time travel episode ever!"

Another joked that "they might be making [an] episode in the future where Moe travels back in time".

Perhaps he is The Moe -ster from Gallifrey? (Sorry).

In other Simpsons news, it was recently confirmed that Apu would no longer be voice by Hank Azaria following a documentary that presented the case that the character was racially problematic.

The Simpsons airs on FOX in the US, and on Sky One in the UK.

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Sam is a freelance reporter and sub-editor who has a particular interest in movies , TV and music. After completing a journalism Masters at City University, London, Sam joined Digital Spy as a reporter, and has also freelanced for publications such as NME and Screen International .  Sam, who also has a degree in Film, can wax lyrical about everything from Lord of the Rings to Love Is Blind , and is equally in his element crossing every 't' and dotting every 'i' as a sub-editor.

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'The Simpsons' Didn't Predict That

The popular animated tv series does not have clairvoyant powers., snopes staff, published aug. 22, 2019.

On Dec. 17, 1989, the animated show "The Simpsons" debuted on the Fox Network with a Christmas episode entitled "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire." Since then, Springfield's most famous residents, Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, have appeared in more than 600 episodes over the course of 31 seasons.

That's more than 200 hours of content. If you watched "The Simpsons" non-stop 24 hours a day, it would take you more than a week to finish the entire series. That's a lot of content, a lot of jokes, and a lot of opportunities for coincidences to appear.

Fans of "The Simpsons" have undoubtedly encountered people on social media claiming that the show's writers have an uncanny ability to predict the future. Even major media companies such as Buzzfeed , Time and Hollywood Reporter have published articles touting the prognosticating prowess of "The Simpsons."

Here's an excerpt from a Time Magazine article entitled "15 Times The Simpsons Accurately Predicted the Future."

"With 28 seasons and counting on the air, The Simpsons is undeniably a television phenomenon. Both the longest-running American sitcom and animated program, the critically acclaimed cartoon is widely recognized as one of, if not the, best shows of all time for its humorous satire of everything from politics and pop culture to everyday family life.

"In fact, throughout its more than 600 episodes, creator Matt Groening and his team have been so on top of the country's cultural pulse, they've even managed to predict several major historical events — along with a few less momentous happenings."

A viral video from "The Pat McAfee" show (which has more than 2 million views on YouTube and more than 18 million on Facebook) hits on several of these so-called predictions:

While we'll readily admit that there have been a few interesting coincidences between jokes on "The Simpsons" and real-world incidents, most of these "predictions" have rather simple and mundane explanations. In this collection, we'll go through some of the most popular and persistent rumors regarding the show's fortune telling abilities.

Spoiler alert: "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening is not a time traveler.

No, 'The Simpsons' Didn't Predict the Silicon Valley Bank Crash

Did 'the simpsons' predict trump would try to buy greenland, did 'the simpsons' predict that president trump would touch a glowing orb, did 'the simpsons' predict the beirut explosion, did 'the simpsons' tv show predict the fire at notre dame, did 'the simpsons' predict a donald trump presidency, did 'the simpsons' predict george floyd's death, did 'the simpsons' predict a mass shooting at a 'black panther' movie screening, did 'the simpsons' predict president trump's death, did 'the simpsons' predict autocorrect, did 'the simpsons' predict the censorship of michelangelo's 'david', did 'the simpsons' predict the smartwatch, did 'the simpsons' predict the use of directed energy weapons (dew), did 'the simpsons' predict twitter's rebrand to 'x', did 'the simpsons' predict meta's threads logo, did 'the simpsons' predict the missing titanic submersible, by snopes staff.