13 things the Simpsons predicted

Have no fear: The Simpsons has had stories for years.

Matt Groening’s seminal cartoon has covered many topics over the course of its run, spanning nearly 700 episodes.

While the series has an avid fan base around the world, it has also been kept oddly relevant in recent years thanks to an eerie headline pattern that suggests only one thing. The simpsons can predict the future.

From the clever mention of a Donald Trump presidency in a 20-year-old episode to a revolutionary scientific theorem 14 years before its discovery, the series was often months, years, or even decades ahead of global news events.

While its creators have sometimes denied the veracity of the show’s status as a modern nostradamus, The simpsonsThe ability to predict seemingly unpredictable events is often amazing.

Here is a selection of 13 times The simpsons “predicted” the future …

The simpsons In fact, Donald Trump’s presidency predicted in the season 11 episode “Bart to the Future”, which aired in 2000. Moving forward, the episode alludes to a Trump presidency that seemed far-fetched at the time (although Trump’s unsuccessful run as a third-party candidate likely provided inspiration for the gag).

In the 23rd season episode “Lisa Goes Gaga,” which was slandered by a large part of the Simpsons fan base in 2012, Lady Gaga (as voiced by herself) flew into a stadium while she was suspended by cables – a stunt that the pop star would later stage in real life during her 2017 Super Bowl halftime show in an eerily similar outfit.

Milhouse bet that Finnish economist Bengt R Holmstrom would win the Nobel Prize in Economics – which he actually did six years later (in a joint win with Oliver Hart).

The Biden Harris Presidency

The series animator and director David Silverman recently joked on Twitter that the series “predicted the future” in a 2019 clip that seemed to predict Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ joint spots on the Democratic Ticket. Towards the end of the segment – an anti-Trump song that parodies “America” West Side Story – Biden and Harris are pictured side by side, although their joint candidacy and eventual election would not take place until the following year.

In the 1998 episode “The Wizard of the Evergreen Terrace” Homer was inspired by Thomas Edison to pursue a career as an inventor. At some point he writes an equation on a blackboard that predicts the mass of the Higgs boson particle fairly accurately. “This equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson,” said specialist Simon Singh The independent one. “If you find out, you’ll get the mass of a Higgs boson, which is only a little bit larger than the nanomass of a Higgs boson. It’s amazing how Homer makes this prediction 14 years before it was discovered.”

Even series writer Bill Oakley admitted it The simpsons had “predicted 2020” when a clip from season four of the episode “Marge in Chains” went viral last year. In the clip in question, Springfield residents battle each other for access to a placebo that fans believed had predicted Donald Trump’s scientifically false Covid-19 treatment claims. In addition, the clip sees the unruly mob overturning a container of killer bees, which viewers interpreted as a threatening prediction of the invasion of the murder hornets last year.

The classic 1994 episode “Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Baadasssss Song” featured a scene in which midday lady Doris (the late Doris Grau) pours “various horse parts” into Springfield Elementary’s school meals. The scene would take on a harrowing new meaning in 2013 when the UK was rocked by a scandal over horse DNA in beef products.

An early series of The simpsons sees Marge receiving a reply to fan mail she sent to Ringo Starr decades ago. The premise became a reality in 2013 for two Essex women who were sent a letter from Beatle Sir Paul McCartney 50 years after trying to contact him.

Although the first commercial smartwatch was not due to be released until 2014, the idea was actually presented in the 1995 episode of The simpsons with the title “Lisa’s Wedding”. Subsequently, the multifunctional wristwatch is used by Lisa’s future groom Hugh (Mandy Patinkin).

Disney’s $ 71.3 billion acquisition of Fox by Disney surprised most of the world in 2019 – but not particularly attentively Simpsons Fans. The series had “predicted” the merger of Fox and Disney back in 1998 in a joke that showed the 20th Century Fox studios known as the “Division of Walt Disney Co”.

In a season 21 episode titled “Boy Meets Curl,” Homer and Marge joined a mixed double curling team, eventually traveling to the Winter Olympics and in a real late season Simpsons Turn of events, beat Sweden to take home Olympic gold for the US. The surprise win actually came eight years later in Pyongyang when the US men’s team took home the nation’s first Olympic gold in the sport.

Opening speech by Tom Hanks

When Tom Hanks addressed the nation during Joe Biden’s inauguration as President, Simpsons Fans pointed out a scene together in The Simpsons Movie 14 years ago that seemed to anticipate the moment. “The US government has lost its credibility and is borrowing a part of me,” says Hanks in his cameo, which Twitter users found strangely similar to the actor who, after inauguration, created a TV unit specifically for the Biden- Administration hosted.

The deadly pro-Trump riots on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 were a moment that shocked the world and shook the very foundations of American democracy. But some Simpsons Fans suggested that the show actually “predicted” the riots in the 1996 episode “The Day the Violence Died,” suggesting a scene in which the steps of Capitol Hill are stormed by an angry crowd of cartoon characters .