How do they do it? The Simpsons have become famous for predicting a variety of world events, such as Trump’s U.S. presidency, FIFA’s bribery scandal, and Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox.
Either the showrunners have access to a crystal ball, or all of their writers who went to Harvard studied under Professor X. Nevertheless, there seem to be many more instances of this animated series correctly guessing future events. Let’s break them down, shall we?
The God Particle
First hypothesized in 1964, the Higgs boson particle is part of the Higgs field, which gives mass to other elementary particles, making it responsible for the existence of atomic elements and, thus, the entire universe.
The existence of this “God particle” was proven in 2012, but physicist Simon Singh confirmed that, in the season 10 episode The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace, Homer writes down an equation that actually predicts the mass of the Higgs boson. Who would’ve thought The Simpsons would confirm the origin of the universe first, beating scientists by 14 years?
The Ebola Outbreak
The 1997 episode Lisa’s Sax features Marge offering to read the young Bart a children’s book titled, “Curious George and the Ebola Virus.” Though Ebola has been known to exist as far back as the 70s, countries outside of Africa, including the U.S., didn’t face a huge outbreak of the virus until the one that occurred in 2013.
Legal marijuana in Canada
In the 2005 episode Midnight Rx, Homer, Flanders, and Apu travel to Canada to smuggle prescription drugs into Springfield. While they’re in the Great White North, Flanders meets his Canadian doppelgänger, who offers him a “reeferino,” saying it’s legal in the country. However, it wasn’t until 2018 that Canada legalized marijuana for recreational use.
The winners of the Nobel Prize
Milhouse proved himself to be quite the gambler in Elementary School Musical, an episode that begins with him and his friends betting on who would win the Nobel Prize. Though this episode aired in 2010, two people on Milhouse’s list, Bengt R. Holmström and W.E Moerner, would receive the Nobel Prize in their respective categories years later.
Trump 2024
It’s already common knowledge that the show predicted Trump’s presidency way back in the year 2000. But it is also worth noting that in 2015, The Simpsons predicted that Trump would run again in the 2024 election.
In the short video Trumptastic Voyage, Homer takes a surreal journey into Trump’s hair, where viewers can see a floating campaign sign that reads, “Trump 2024.”
The OceanGate submersible tragedy
When OceanGate’s Titan submersible vanished while visiting the Titanic shipwreck in mid-2023, many people found eerie similarities between the breaking news story and the 2006 episode Homer’s Paternity Coot.
In it, Homer pilots a sub to retrieve an undersea treasure, only to get stuck in some coral and nearly die from a lack of oxygen. Though Homer survives this undersea peril, the five crew members of the Titan weren’t so fortunate, as the latter’s vessel imploded in a tragedy that made headlines worldwide.
An everyman becomes an astronaut
The classic episode Deep Space Homer shows NASA sending Homer, an ordinary man, into space to boost their Nielsen ratings. This premise may have been based on the now-defunct Teacher in Space Program, but the U.K. pulled a more similar stunt with a contest back in 2013, which ended with “average Joe” Oliver Knight getting the chance to get launched into the stars. Let’s hope that’s all this episode predicted because I, for one, don’t welcome any insect overlords.
The three-eyed fish
The three-eyed fish Blinky has been a minor but recurring character in The Simpsons. Having been created by the nuclear waste left by Springfield’s nuclear power plant, this mutant fish has gone on to become the mascot of the town’s curling team and has even made cameos in Futurama.
However, Blinky made the jump to reality when a similar three-eyed fish was discovered in Argentina, swimming in a reservoir contaminated by a nearby nuclear plant.
America beats Sweden in Olympic curling
In the 2010 episode, Boy Meets Curl, Homer and Marge compete with the U.S. curling team against Sweden at the Vancouver Olympics. Though they nearly admit defeat, the Simpsons win the match.
This episode parallels the match between the U.S. and Sweden at the 2018 Winter Olympics, which showed the former winning the gold medal in a surprising comeback.
The destruction of King’s Landing
The season 29 episode The Serfsons reimagines Springfield as the medieval fantasy kingdom “Springfieldia,” where magic and dragons exist in the vein of Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings.
This story very much foreshadows the twist ending to the former’s penultimate episode, The Bells, in which Daenerys Targaryen burns down King’s Landing on the back of one of her dragons. The episode ends with Homer reviving a dragon, which burns Springfieldia to the ground in a sea of fire. Seriously, who wrote this episode? Bran Stark?
