Every Time 'The Simpsons' Actually Predicted The Future
Any show with 30 years on network TV becomes an accurate time capsule of the past. But what kind of show makes precise predictions about the future? Only The Simpsons, and it gets pretty freaky at times! Yes, the Corona Virus is one of their predictions!
More than 600 episodes are bound to turn out a few coincidences, but over and over again? That's stranger than fiction! It's time to take a look at some of the eeriest plot lines since the cartoon's first launch in 1989. Only true blue fans will know them all!
Read on to see the wackiest, wildest Simpsons future forecasts ever made...
America Beats Sweden in Olympic Curling — Season 21, Episode 12
Most people out there have never heard of curling, and that's not a crime. It turns out that this a real sport, though — and a competitive one, at the Olympic level! The Simpsons highlighted a fictional final contest between America and Sweden, something that had never really occurred. But like the show often does, it predicted everything!
In a historic upset beating Sweden at the 2018 Winter Olympics, the American curling team won gold! And oddly, the Swedes started out ahead and then lost it all in both scenarios. Pretty freaky and specific stuff!
Nobel Prize Win — Season 22, Episode 1
MIT professor Bengt Holmström won big in 2016, taking home the Nobel Prize in economics. While that's interesting enough, it turns out that this event was somehow predicted six years before — again, on The Simpsons!
On the show, the professor's name appeared on a betting scorecard. Smart little Lisa argued with Martin, Milhouse, and Database about Nobel Prize winners predictions, and it looks like Martin lost!
Fun fact: Simpsons staff writers over the years often had math degrees and PhD's from Yale and Harvard in the area. Can't get enough of that academic gossip, yea!
Super Bowl Winners — Season 3, Episode 14
A massive gambling industry exists based on sports fans trying their darnedest to predict Superbowl winners every year. As it turns out, all they needed to do was tune into The Simpsons!
A few days before Super Bowl XXVI, Lisa correctly predicted the Washington Redskins team would win it all. And this wasn't a stroke of luck! Subsequent games where the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers won were also true predictions. A solid Simpsons record, for sure!
Lady Gaga At The Super Bowl Show — Season 23, Episode 22
In 2012, Lady Gaga was featured character. Fans of both music and show were delighted! She performed a hanging Super Bowl halftime show for the town, dazzling the yellow people with her mid-air moves.
Five years later, she really was selected for the big football show. At the Houston NRG Stadium, she swooped down from the roof in real life! Is Gaga a Simpsons fan, or do great minds think alike? Viewers everywhere demand answers!
Radioactive Results — Season 2, Episode 4
Perhaps the most famous fish in media, Blinky never fails to please with his signature three-eyed look. So cute, yet so obviously mutated! As the tale goes, it all started with a bit of fresh nuclear waste in the river. Is there any real world corollary out there?
Blinky premiered back in 1990, and could have served as a warning to the world. But no! Ten years later, a real three-eyed fish was found in a body of water in Argentina. And sure enough, the water source was from nuclear power plant! Never forget, The Simpsons did it first.
Disney Takes Over 20th Century Fox — Season 10, Episode 5
It might be a bit of inside baseball, but the show somehow predicted a major merger well before the public knew a thing. In 1998, Homer visits Hollywood to take a look at a script with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. Only the most eagle-eyed viewers noticed an interesting sign in the background. The 20th Century Fox headquarters claimed to be "a division of Walt Disney Co." — and almost 20 years later, it did happen!
In 2017, Disney bought the company for around $52.4 billion. That's no small business prediction, but The Simpsons is no ordinary show!
Beatles Letter Leftovers — Season 2, Episode 18
No one would be surprised to see Ringo Starr featured on The Simpsons. In 1991, he was part of a plotline answering bags and bags of mail from decades ago, lost fan letters that deserved an answer. Would this actually happen in real life, too?
Why, yes! In 2013, two fans in Essex received a very, very belated response from fellow Beatle Paul McCartney. After a lost recording was discovered hidden at a resale event, a historian sent the message to the BBC. Live on TV, a reply was finally given by Paul himself! Better late than never, they say.
Tiger Mauls Siegfried and Roy — Season 5, Episode 10
A staple on the Vegas circuit, Siegfried and Roy dazzled the world for decades. Audiences probably thought they had their craft down to a science. But in fact, they did not! Wild animals are not as predictable as people might hope, sadly.
In a 1993 episode, The Simpsons showed the pair getting attacked by a white tiger in a casino show. Exactly 20 years later, Roy was severely mauled live on stage by his tiger, Mantecore! On the way to the hospital, he insisted: "Mantecore is a great cat. Make sure no harm comes to Mantecore." Crazy stuff, Roy!
Donald Trump Becomes President — Season 11, Episode 17
Periodically, the show flashes forward to different imagined destinies of the Simpson kids. One very particular time, it got more realistic than anyone could have known. Always the overachiever, Lisa became president. But who was she replacing?
Sixteen years before it happened in real life, President Donald Trump was featured on the show! With no way of knowing this would happen in any alternative universe, the Simpsons Trump prediction might be the biggest winner on the list. Stranger than fiction, they say!
Autocorrect Tech — Season 6, Episode 8
Bullies are always up to something at Springfield Elementary School, and one episode included a low-tech plot to"beat up Martin" yet again. The kids kept trying to plan this on a fictional electronic device, but they were thwarted by a built-in feature — over and over and over again. Every time they typed the message, the machine changed it to "eat up Martha" instead!
Well, it seems that The Simpsons was a bit ahead of its time with this helpful — some say annoying — feature. Spoofing an old, buggy product on the market at the time, Apple actually cites this episode for its improved modern keyboard features!
Corona Virus — Season 4, Episode 21
Particularly topical at the moment, fans online are claiming that The Simpsons predicted the deadly corona virus outbreak way back in the 1990's. Is there any truth to these swirling rumors?
In the episode itself, a Japanese factory worker hides his 'Osaka flu' from the boss and sneezes on juicers en route to America. Predictably, the virus begins to spread throughout Springfield when orders arrive. Good news, everyone: So far, the corona virus cannot spread from touching objects shipped overseas. And it's from China, not Japan!
Are there more accurate predictions from the show, perhaps?
Smartwatch Invention — Season 6, Episode 19
Yet again, The Simpsons was ahead of the curve with this one. A very intelligent timepiece featured on the show has been noticed all over again recently. Could this have been the foreshadowing of the smartwatch, way back in 1995?
20 years before the Apple Watch took the world by storm, Lisa and her beau used this tech all episode long. The design wasn't as sleek, but the concept was there!
U.S. Presidential Transition Chaos — Season 32, Episode 688
With all the controversy after the 2020 election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, surely The Simpsons had some predictions about the outcome. The show that tells it all decided to address the future in its yearly Halloween special, "Treehouse of Horror XXXI". Homer witnesses some wild scenes, for sure!
With protests in the streets and clashes outside of congress making international news, there was certainly a lot of spooky energy in real-life DC. The nation's capital seemed like fiction on electoral vote counting day! Inauguration 2021, coming right up.
Faulty Election Machines — Season 20, Episode 4
The Simpsons have witnessed every presidential administration since Reagan — no small feat for a cartoon on network TV! With decades of scandals and surprises, there's always something new to spoof in politics. But one episode during the 2008 race made a future prediction in spooky detail, long before it was a punchline.
When Homer wanted to vote for Barack Obama, something kept getting in the way. A touchscreen voting machine repeatedly changed his vote to Mitt Romney! Oddly enough, the next real election cycle in America saw a similar challenge when voting machines in Pennsylvania malfunctioned in exactly this way. What a bug!
Plot Twist In 'Game of Thrones' — Season 29, Episode 1
Warning: "Game of Thrones" spoiler alert ahead!
In season eight, episode five, Daenerys Targaryen shocked viewers when she destroyed the surrendered King's Landing. Thousands were obliterated! What does The Simpsons have to do with this GOT plot mess, though?
As it turns out, a spoof from 2017 showed Homer reviving a dragon. The fiery reptile does incinerate a village, just like the GOT incident! Could it be that the HBO writers drew some inspiration, here? The mystery continues, even if GOT does not.
Soccer Corruption Scandal — Season 25, Episode 16
Way back in 2014, a soccer episode premiered. The fictional international organization on the show consulted Homer for help with their image, and repeatedly tried to bribe him throughout his unlikely referee gig at the World Cup. Homer refused — but the world would see a similar scandal in real life just a year later!
Fourteen FIFA officials were actually arrested on corruption charges in 2015 after the FBI and the IRS both investigated. If viewers had missed this Simpsons episode, they got a refresher all over social media! It was hard to deny that life imitated art on this one.
Greek Debt Crisis — Season 23, Episode 10
In 2012, Homer Simpson had an exciting media moment. Invited on as a guest on fiction cable news, he had his chance in the spotlight to comment on public affairs. No one really remembers what he said, of course. It was all about the spooky screen ticker at the bottom!
The screen reads, “Europe puts Greece on eBay.” And a year later, real problems began in the Mediterranean! Greece actually defaulted in the International Monetary Fund, becoming the first developed country to make this giant mistake. As always, The Simpsons knew it first!
Grease for Cash Scam — Season 10, Episode 1
Homer sure does love a good get-rich-quick scheme. One memorable episode involved a slimy, sneaky plan. Quietly stealing grease with a long tube poked into local restaurants, he really found a zero-cost, high-profit model!
In real life, this would eventually occur in New York City. People throughout the town really did start siphoning off grease to sell as a side business, and it's not clear if they were big Simpsons fans. In a chicken or egg question, it's hard to say who inspired who!
"Average Joe" The Astronaut — Season 5, Episode 15
Sure enough, The Simpsons went to space. After exploring the earth near and far, it was only a matter of time. Average suburban dad Homer was chosen to blast off for NASA, and viewers certainly enjoyed seeing him chase floating snacks around the craft. What else would he want to do up there, honestly?
In 2013, the UK held a contest to make an ordinary citizen into an astronaut. After serious tests and interviews, they selected a 25-year-old local dude to take the trip with real space professionals by his side. Just like Homer!
NSA Spying Revelations — The Simpsons Movie
In 2007, The Simpsons finally became a movie. Fans had clamored for this to happen for years! Predictably, when it came out, so did a key forecast. When Marge mentioned her plan to expose government secrets, the cartoon camera panned out to show the headquarters of the American NSA — the National Security Agency!
Inside, a room full of eavesdropping staff is shown in front of monitors tracking it all in real-time. Soon enough, this would leap off the screen into reality: In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed to the nation that numerous surveillance programs were secretly operating!
Ferrets Sold As Poodles Scheme — Season 13, Episode 22
That Fat Tony, always scheming. A total authority on crime, the mafia boss had a bright idea back in season 13 that he knew was going to be a big moneymaker. Why not repackage live ferrets as poodles?
Gluing cotton balls to these extra-long creatures doesn't sound like it would be a convincing sleight of hand outside of the animated world. Indeed, better measures were taken by criminals in Argentina! News reports came out that one man accidentally bought a groomed ferret with a poodle label. The nerve of some people — Ay, caramba!
Higgs Boson Equation — Season 8, Episode 1
In 1998, Homer Simpson finally became a respected inventor. He was seen in front of some pretty complicated math during the process, but viewers could not have known just how real that blackboard equation really was.
Experts now say that these numbers are associated with the mass of the Higgs boson particle. A theory had been around since the '60s, but scientists were only able to prove it in 2013. And for some reason, Homer had a tip-off! Must have been those Ph.D. writers sneaking things in, yet again.
Major Horse Meat Bust — Season 5, Episode 19
Yes, the repulsive horse meat episode. Everyone remembers the lunch lady and this plotline, but who could think that real life would bring such a scandal?
Unfortunately, it occurred in Ireland! The Food Safety Authority found a very hidden, ground secret when it tested local beef. Incredibly, there was horse DNA in more than 1/3 of the samples! There was also a lot of pork mixed in, clocking in at an 85% rate. Stallion stew? No thank you!
Michelangelo Censored — Season 2, Episode 9
Michelangelo's David is one of the most famous pieces in the art world. But the wider world is not a cultural monolith, and some cultures remain more conservative today. The Simpsons humorously showed townspeople protesting against the statue's exposed genitals, which turned out to be very true years later!
In Russia, a 2016 campaign raged about covering other Renaissance statues with clothing. No joke, people! It seems that all these stone details were disturbing locals, but it wasn't successful. Ultimately, the statues still exist in their naked glory. Standing tall, standing proud! And standing nude, too.
Ebola In America — Season 9, Episode 3
Some people claim that The Simpsons actually predicted something quite serious: Ebola! Crazy stuff. Could that really be possible?
Marge read a not-so-comforting bedtime book to her son 17 years before an outbreak hit America. Yes, a tiny outbreak did happen! While it had always been concentrated in Africa, The Simpsons seemed to think it might spread more in the future. Widely regarded as the scariest of all tropical pandemics, this one inspires nightmares more than sweet dreams. Mom, what were you thinking?
Imagining The Tomacco Plant — Season 11, Episode 5
In 1999, the nation imagined the taste of a new, disgusting crop. When Homer used nuclear energy to grow a hybrid of tobacco and tomato, he knew he had a winner — the tomacco!
A real-life fan actually did try to create this in 2003. create his own plant. Grafting together a tomato stem and a tobacco root, a tomacco was created! Writers on the show were highly impressed, and they invited the farmer to their offices to sample the stinky frankenfruit. Totally repulsive!