Claiming the titles of both the longest running primetime series and the longest running animated program, The Simpsons has been providing households globally with laughter, plot twists, and quotable lines for almost thirty years. Throughout this time, the whacky pop culture references and seemingly impossible scenarios have led to scenes that just years later would end up actually happening in reality. Below are nine Simpsons predictions that ended up coming true:
Siegfried and Roy attacked by their tiger
In the 1993 episode, $pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalised Gambling), the town legalises gambling and Mr Burns opens a casino. Parodying the famous Las Vegas Siegfried and Roy show, two German magicians perform a routine and are attacked by their tiger. Unfortunately, this gag was brought to life in 2003 when Roy Horn was mauled on stage by a white Bengal tiger – just like The Simpsons predicted.
Autocorrect
The 1994 episode, Lisa on Ice, one of the school bullies takes down a memo to “Beat up Martin” on his Newton – Apple’s early digital assistant product. The machine autocorrects the message to “Eat up Martha”, a common error that occurs daily for most smartphone users.
FaceTime
Lisa’s Wedding, which aired in 1995, depicts Lisa in the future after she visits a fortune-teller’s booth. In the episode, Marge and Lisa video chat using a mobile phone, a feature that wasn’t introduced to iPhones until 2010. This same episode also depicts a character using a smart-watch to communicate – a product that didn’t exist until 2014.
Faulty voting machines
In 2008’s Treehouse of Horror XIX, Homer tries to vote for Barack Obama using an electronic voting machine. The machine registers his vote as one for John McCain instead. When Obama ran for a second term IRL in 2012, footage of a voting machine in Pennsylvania showed the machine switching a vote for Obama into a vote for his opponent, Mitt Romney.
The Ebola Virus Outbreak
A screenshot of Marge reading a book from the 1997 episode Lisa’s Sax went viral back in 2014. The book was titled “Curious George and the Ebola Virus”, a disease that surfaced in America seventeen years after the episode originally aired. While it may just be a coincidence, some believe it was a carefully placed warning.
FIFA’s corruption scandal
When the 2014 episode You Don’t Have to Live Like a Referee aired, nobody expected the cartoonish depiction of FIFA officials being arrested for corruption charges to occur in reality only a year later! On top of this, the episode also correctly showed Germany’s win against Brazil in the 2014 World Cup mere months before it happened.
Donald Trump’s Presidency
Likely one of the most popular cases of The Simpsons predictions coming true, the 2000 episode Bart to the Future accurately predicted that Trump would one day become President. In the episode, Lisa states that the country has suffered “quite a budget crunch from President Trump”. Sixteen years later, Donald Trump was elected into office.
Disney’s Acquisition of Fox
If you re-watch the 1998 episode When You Dish Upon a Star and look extra close, you might see a sign at the beginning of the scene as the characters enter the Fox studio lot that depicts the company as being “A Division of Walt Disney Co.” As of March 2019, 20th Century Fox has now officially been acquired by Disney.
Blinky the Fish
In the 1990 episode Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish, Bart goes fishing in a lake that is polluted by the nearby Nuclear Power Plant and catches a fish that has mutated to have three eyes as a commentary on the effects of water pollution. Over twenty years later, five fishermen in Argentina reeled in a three-eyed fish from a reservoir that received water from a nearby nuclear power plant.
Who knows what other small gags or one-liner jokes from The Simpsons will eventually be proven true? Leave a comment below sharing your favourite Simpsons prediction!
Featured Image: BBC
