Alex Carson
There is no denying the very fact that The Simpsons become firmly entrenched in our society as a cultural institution. Yellow-tinted fellas from Springfield first showed up on our TV screens. The entire generation of kids have been born and raised with Marge, Homer, and Lisa. Of course, everyone’s favorite trouble-making miscreant Bart. But, how many times have you heard the phrase ‘Eat My Shorts”, it’s essentially a universal catchphrase at this point.
Arguably, The Simpsons hit their peak long ago. Sure there have been several notable highlights throughout the decades that have added fuel to the show’s ever-enduring flames. We have the Simpsons Movie in 2007 which brought a resurgence in interest in the show. That at one point pushed boundaries and molded society. But for the most part, its glory years long since passed.
The Simpsons often gets credit for its longevity. To date, It’s aired nearly 700 episodes and has been on the air since December 17, 1989. Over its vast tenure, The Simpsons has a spooky knack at predicting future events with an eerie affinity for accuracy. Stick around to see just how many times the Simpsons have accurately foretold the future.
You’re not going to want to miss this one. Find out about how they foreshadowed things like the Election of Donald Trump and even the invention of the smartwatch. You’ll find yourself wondering if Matt Groening has a plutonium-powered Delorean in his garage. If Homer has some kind of crystal ball hidden at Moe’s or something.
Facts Verse Presents: Simpsons Predictions That Came True
Before we start this wild temporal-bending adventure do us a favor and hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. Tap the bell icon to turn on notifications.
Horse Burgers
Way back in 1994, on an episode entitled ‘Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Baadasssss Song’ Doris. She’s the lunch lady had to do some creative culinary magic when she was hit with school district budget cuts. School lunches are already pretty notorious for being pretty unimpressive, to say the least. Doris’s solution for the financial setback made a cruddy situation into something that was downright nasty.
She can be seen scooping out burger patty meat from a large vat labeled as ‘Assorted Horse Parts’
That’s one way to pinch a penny. But if you thought that disturbing imagery was just a sardonic gag from an animated sitcom then you are unfortunately mistaken. Flash forward to 2013 in Europe, where horse meat would be found all across the continent in products labeled as beef. Even Taco Bell was slinging horse tacos there for a minute.
Election Rigging
2008 was an interesting year, to say the least, not only did the world see one of the worst economic recessions in decades but it was also an election year – of course.
What makes Democracy the greatest form of government for the people is free, fair, and accurate elections. Dystopian novelists have been speculating about the potential hell-storm it would be if elections were to ever be interfered with.
But it hasn’t just been the likes of Orwell and Huxley that have been taking a look into the future calling into question the legitimacy of the voting system – so have the Simpsons.
It was in that same election year when Obama was up against McCain, that the episode ‘Treehouse of Horror XIX’ ominously predicted that electronic voting machines could be used for election meddling.
In the episode, Homer attempts to cast his vote for Obama but the machine changes his vote to one for John McCain.
In 2012, Pennsylvania voting machines were found to be swapping out Obama votes for Mitt Romney.
How did they know? You might chalk it all up to coincidence, but wait until you see what they predicted next.
The Ebola Virus
Oh, Curious George! Who didn’t read those books when they were kids? That monkey was always getting himself into some kind of trouble. But as far as I recall, I never remembered him contracting the Ebola virus.
In 1997 the episode ‘Lisa’s Sax’ depicted Marge as pulling a yellow book of the shelf to read to Bart entitled Curious George and the Ebola Virus. At that time Ebola had not found its way to the U.S. And arguably, the book was referencing the film Outbreak that had recently been in theaters. 17 years later in 2014, the Ebola Virus outbreak would make shockwaves across the world and would even have an impact on the United States.
Stolen Lemon Trees?
1995 was smack dab in the middle of The Simpsons finest years. In the episode ‘Lemon of Troy’, Springfield’s prized lemon tree is stolen and the blame is placed on the nearby rival town of Shelbyville. Bart organizes a crew to go search for the stolen ligneous plant. It was a pretty hilarious episode with heavy overtones of Grecian mythology.
In 2013, a similar story unfolded in Houston, Texas when a real-life lemon tree was thought to have been stolen. It was later determined to be a hoax but later on, in 2017, a woman in Madison, Wisconsin filed a police report over her 150 lb lemon tree that went missing in the early morning hours and was never seen again.
Seriously though, who steals a lemon tree?
Three-Eyed Fish
Mr. Burns is one corrupt dude. There’s no mistaking that. All he cares about is his money. He couldn’t care less about the environment. In 1990, an episode shows his power plant’s waste being dumped into Springfield’s water supply. When the plant shuts down, Bart decides to go fishing.
To his surprise, he catches a three-eyed fish that was the obvious result of the plant’s chemical and radioactive contamination.
In 2011, an Argentinian fisherman caught his very own three-eyed fish whose mutation was attributed to a power plant nearby that was also dumping its waste into a river.
Smart Watches
Nothing comes close to how Star Trek predicted future technologies with such poignant accuracy. To their credit, The Simpsons certainly did a pretty decent job at the task as well.
In the episode “Lisa’s Wedding” in 1995, little Lisa is all grown up in the distant ‘future’. She’s about to get married to a man by the name of Hugh Parkfield.
Hugh can be seen using his watch as a communication device in a similar way as smartwatches are used today. Later on, in that same episode, Lisa talks to Marge through a video call a la facetime. Maybe these technological advancements could be seen as a natural evolution of converging tech and wishful imagination but you got to admit that they sure called it.
Keep watching to see what else this futuristic episode accurately predicted.
Disney Buys 20th Century Fox
This one is particularly uncanny.
In 1998, in the episode “When You Dish Upon A Star”, there was a quick cameo that quickly popped up on the screen that showed a Billboard for 20th Century Fox. In case you weren’t aware, that’s the studio that produces The Simpsons.
Then, quick image, the Billboard is captioned with the phrase “A division of Walt Disney Co.”
In 2019, some twenty years later, Disney actually acquired 20th Century Fox thus making themselves the largest media purveyors in the world.
Autocorrect Fails
We’ve probably all sent out texts with muddled messages sabotaged by autocorrect. It’s ducking annoying right?
We might think that this is a 21st-century problem but it turns out, the Simpsons yet again predicted this frustrating issue back in 1994.
Dolph, the bully, has a new toy. The Apple Newton was a pretty archaic attempt at building a tablet with the limited technology of the day. It did have handwriting recognition but it was notoriously bad at doing its job.
So when Dolph writes “Beat up Martin” as a reminder of things he has to do later, the Newton autocorrects it to “Eat Up Martha”.
Whoops!
Apple engineers would actually look back at this episode as a cautionary tale of what to avoid when they developed the iPhone years later.
The Rolling Stones – Still Going Strong
We already touched on that ‘Lisa’s Wedding” flash-forward-to-the-future episode when we talked about the smartwatch, but another interesting tidbit of that episode is a poster that can be seen in Lisa’s dorm room. There’s a poster on the wall that advertises that the Rolling Stones will still be touring in 2010 in what is called their “Steel Wheelchair Tour”
Back in 95, the Idea of the Stones still touring in 2010 probably seemed far-fetched, but despite advancing age and medical problems, the band is still going strong even in 2020. They had a tour lined up for the summer but it was postponed due to the pandemic. Even still, no one expected for Keith Richards and the boys to be still jamming out some 60 years after their band’s inception.
Siegfried and Roy Tiger Attack
The world was horrified when the Las Vegas performers endured a brutal attack by one of their trained tigers live on stage. Roy almost died in that bloody incident.
A decade earlier, in 1993, the Simpsons very closely depicted the same event unfolding all the way down to the tiny little details being the same. The tiger was white, the stage was red and the attack was vicious.
The Simpsons depiction was meant to be comedic, but the reality of the situation was far from it.
President Trump
In 2000, in the episode “Bart to the Future”, Lisa becomes President of the United States. As soon as she is sworn in, she immediately goes to work trying to hash out the problems she had to take care of leftover from the previous administration.
First up on the agenda was to fix the enormous budget problems that were the result of the previous incumbent President Donald J. Trump.
Matt Groening, the show’s creator expressed that he never actually expected Trump to become president. Rather, they chose Trump’s name in an attempt to invoke the most absurd and humorous name that they could to be the officeholder. Turns out, reality is sometimes stranger than fiction.
London Shard
Okay, before we go, there’s one more we gotta share with you from that “Lisa’s Wedding” episode. There’s a shot of London and we see that Big Ben has been converted into a giant digital clock. That part might not have happened but in the background, there is something pretty incredible that you probably missed.
On the bottom left-hand side of the screen, we see a sharp structure that was not a part of the London skyline in 1995.
Today however, in the very location as it was depicted in the show, stands the architecturally spectacular marvel that is called the London Shard.
The only way to explain this anomaly is time travel. How else could they have accurately predicted such a thing?
Well, that about wraps things up. Let us know what you think was the most amazing prediction that the Simpsons got right in the comments section. Was it the election of Donald trump or the London Shard or maybe you think we missed an important prediction – either way drop us a line and don’t forget to hit like and subscribe to our channel before you head out. Tap that bell icon to turn on notifications so you can keep up to date with all of our fascinating fact-filled videos.
