The Simpsons: 12 Blatant Predictions That Were Totally Right
The Simpsons have an uncanny tendency to predict the future. This is proven by 12 scenes from different episodes, which we present to you here.
There are things in the world that don’t exist – or shouldn’t exist, at least according to our own concept of the world. The Simpsons is one of the longest-running series of all time, and with its consistently satirical treatment of major world events, it almost always stays cutting edge—or even abovecurrent? Some Simpsons episodes deal with things that haven’t happened yet, and some of them did happen in amazing ways.
So, to ask the question directly: Can The Simpsons predict the future? Make up your own mind by scrolling through our article.
Trump was president – and that was back in 2000, in a Simpsons episode set in the future. In the episode “Bart’s Future Look,” Lisa Simpsons takes over the presidency in 2030, succeeding Donald Trump himself.
Did The Simpsons Know How Game Of Thrones Ends? Beware, spoilers (if you still haven’t seen Game of Thrones): that Daenerys Targaryen and her dragon are razing the whole of King’s Landing to the fiery ground, we all actually only knew in 2019, when the last episode of the popular HBO series was released. However, this screenshot from The Simpsons is from 2017, more precisely: Season 29, Episode 1. The episode makes reference to Game of Thrones and also shows in a scene how Homer resurrects a dragon, which then burns down a city.
As early as 1993, the two famous magicians were attacked by their tiger, which was actually tame, in the Simpsons episode “Possessed by the Devil”. The homage to Siegfried and Roy becomes bloody serious ten years later – when Roy Horn is seriously injured by his tiger on stage. Both magicians have since died, but this had nothing to do with tigers.
In the episode “Lisa’s Wedding” from 1995, Lisa visits London – the only strange thing is that there is a building there that didn’t even exist: next to Tower Bridge in the background there is a skyscraper that didn’t exist at the time had. In the meantime, however, there is actually such a pointed skyscraper at exactly this point, namely The Shard. Coincidence? Forecast? Or did the Simpsons creators meet with London city planners for 5 o’clock tea?
A classic Simpsons episode is the episode in which the people of Springfield protested that Michelangelo’s David should be on display in their town. In 2016, a copy of the well-known statue was to be exhibited in St. Petersburg, Russia. There were also numerous protests against the exhibition because of its obscenity.
The farming simulator has built up quite a large fan base in this country – and in the early Facebook years there was hardly any getting past “Farmville”. The Simpsons creators predicted the fun of virtual gardening and planting back in 1997’s Yard Work Simulator.
In 1994 the Simpsons episode “Lisa auf dem Eise” was released, in which, among other things, an ancestor of today’s iPhone was targeted: Here the school bullies Kearny and Dolph write the memo “Beat up Martha”, which Autocorrect changes to “Eat up Martha” is corrected. Fun fact: A former Apple executive later admitted that this episode inspired Apple to tweak the autocorrect feature a bit more.
The year is 1995, when The Simpsons already established the smartwatch in one episode – about 20 years before similar devices actually came onto the market.
Some still claim The Simpsons predicted the Ebola virus outbreak: In the 1997 episode “The Saxophone Story,” Marge Bart suggests reading the book “Curious George and the Ebola Virus.” At that time, the Ebola virus was known, but by no means to this extent.
Century Fox was already bought by Disney in 1998 – at least with the Simpsons. In reality, that won’t happen until 2019.
Did The Simpsons even predict the coronavirus outbreak? Not directly maybe – but in the 1993 episode “Marge Gets Arrested” the fictional disease “Osaka Flu” makes the rounds, a cold from Osaka. Calling the episode a prediction might be a bit of a stretch, though.
More about the Simpsons? We’ve put together the funniest episodes of the comedy series for you.
How do The Simpsons predict the future?
Just how do they do it? Such predictions are nothing that science fiction series like Star Trek have not already done – and that in turn has little to do with looking into the crystal ball: If a screenwriter imagines the future, it is sometimes inevitable that he too harbors a few fantasies that actually come true later. Quite apart from the fact that media can also inspire.
Or as one of the writers of several Simpsons episodes put it: “I would say in general if people think The Simpsons predicted something it’s just because we’re satirizing real events and as history repeats itself it just seems like we’re predicting things.”
But does that also explain the tower in London? Well, who knows. Maybe the creators of The Simpsons are time travelers after all.
More Simpsons predictions in the video from KINO.de:
