THE Simpsons may be one of the most popular animated TV shows in history, but it’s also proved eerily accurate at predicting major life events – apparently foreseeing everything from Trump’s presidency to 9/11.
As coronavirus continues to wreak havoc around the world, fans are claiming the show even predicted Hollywood legend Tom Hanks being diagnosed and isolated.
More recently, the show appeared to predict Kamala Harris’ appointment as Vice-President and Richard Branson’s trip into space.
What has The Simpsons predicted?
Richard Branson’s flight into space
The Virgin Group magnate and five crewmates made history in July traveling in the VSS Unity over New Mexico.
The feat was apparently all too similar to a 2014 episode of The Simpsons called “The War of Art.”
An art forger named Klaus Ziegler (voiced by the late Max Von Sydow) informs Lisa his “forgeries give pleasure to people all over the world.”
One of the admirers of the forger’s faux art is Branson who shows up in a cameo, floating in a spaceship gazing at a painting.
Kamala Harris’ Vice-Presidency
Fans noticed that Kamala Harris‘ ensemble at President Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony was almost identical to Lisa Simpson’s attire in a 2000 episode.
In the episode, Lisa wears a purple suit and a pearl necklace as she became President of the United States.
The new vice president donned a purple outfit and matched it with black heels and a pearl necklace at the inauguration ceremony held at the Capitol in January.
UK’s tiered lockdown
In The Simpsons Movie, Springfield is quarantined under a huge glass dome, at Government orders, to protect it from pollution.
Fans of the hit TV show couldn’t resist likening the UK’s Covid lockdown to the dome-shaped prison.
Donald Trump’s rise to power
The Simpsons correctly – and shockingly – predicted Donald Trump would be America’s president in an episode aired way back in 2000.
In the show Lisa refers to “inheriting quite a budget crunch from President Trump”.
The show even featured a scene where Trump was seen waving from the stairs – almost exactly mirroring a photo of him taken in 2015 in real life.
And asked by Radio 1 Newsbeat how they got it spot on, writer Al Jean said: “With the Trump one in 2000 we were looking for a funny celebrity who would be president.”
Tom Hanks gets coronavirus
Tom Hanks, 63, was hospitalised with coronavirus alongside his wife Rita Wilson in Australia.
They tested positive to the deadly bug after starting to feel tired and suffering from “body aches”.
Simpsons fans were quick to point out how the actor had a cameo in the series previously, where he was seen advertising a “new Grand Canyon” and claiming the US government had lost its credibility.
He added: “This is Tom Hanks saying if you see me in person, please, please leave me be.”
While the link appears very loose, many social media users claimed the line from the actor was a chilling prediction of his illness all the same.
Dramatic Game Of Thrones near-final
It was one of the most shocking episodes in the entire Game Of Thrones run, but fans claimed that the opening episode of The Simpsons’ season 29 predicted the dragon’s fiery destruction.
The Simpsons, dressed in period garb, watch as a dragon burns down their village — similar to the fiery destruction of King’s Landing in one of the final episodes of the HBO series.
The presence of The Shard
Fourteen years before the construction of The Shard began, a skyscraper can be seen briefly in London’s skyline along with Big Ben and London Bridge.
It looked similar in shape to The Shard and is around about the right location which has freaked some fans out.
The episode this can be seen in aired in 1995 while The Shard was built in 2009.
Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl halftime show
Lady Gaga stunned the world when she performed an incredible Super Bowl halftime show in 2017 – even jumping through the roof in a harness.
But Gaga actually played herself in an episode of The Simpsons in 2012, and she was seen performing Poker Face in Springfield with choreography very similar to her 2017 performance.
Roy Horn being mauled by tiger
Back in 1993, a German magic duo came to Springfield and were mauled by their white tigers.
But fans later drew chilling comparisons between that sequence and what happened to Roy Horn of real magic duo Siegfried & Roy in 2003.
A seven year old white tiger named Mantecore attacked Roy during a show and he was left with life-changing injuries, including a severed spine and crush injuries.
The death of Harambe the Gorilla
Following the tragedy at Cincinnati Zoo in 2016, which saw 17-year-old gorilla Harambe shot and killed by a zoo worker when a three-year-old boy climbed into the animal’s enclosure, a number of beady-eyed fans of The Simpsons noticed the 2006 episode, Bart Has Two Mommies, bears some striking similarities.
In the clip, an elderly chimpanzee takes Bart under her wing after pulling him through the cage at the zoo.
Unlike the heartbreaking incident at Cincinnati Zoo, Bart is rescued by Rod Flanders and the chimp is unharmed.
Ebola virus
After watching a 1997 episode of The Simpsons, theorists believed that the US animated sitcom predicted the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
The instalment, titled Lisa’s Sax, showed Marge reading sick Bart a book called Curious George And The Ebola Virus.
After a viewer noticed the coincidence, they questioned whether it could be purely down to chance.
Despite this, one sceptic noted: “You realise the Ebola virus has been around for a long time, it just hasn’t been as serious as it is now.”
Horse meat scandal
Bizarrely, in 1997 The Simpsons included a short clip of dinner ladies at Springfield Elementary bulking up the school dinners with horsemeat.
The story bears uncanny resemblance to reports that emerged in 2013 of horsemeat being served up to UK schoolchildren.
A headline reading “Horse ‘in school dinners’”, which discussed a government investigation into school dinners, appeared on the front page of The Celeb Report in February 2013.
Devastating 9/11
One of the most controversial moments in The Simpsons occurred when Lisa held up the front page of a newspaper.
Theorists believe that the paper, which features the number nine in bold lettering beside the Twin Towers, resembling the number 11, was a forewarning for the attacks on New York in 2001.
Beatles will belatedly reply to fan mail
Decades after sending Ringo Starr a painting in an episode in 1991, Marge gets a response.
The same happened to two Essex women, who received a reply from Paul McCartney in 2013, 50 years after sending him a mixtape.
Nobel Prize winner
MIT professor Bengt Holmstrom won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2016, six years after The Simpsons appeared to hint that he was in the running to get the top gong.
His name appeared on a betting scorecard when characters bet on Nobel Prize winners in the episode.
US voting machines will be found to be faulty
Homer’s vote for Barack Obama in an episode in 2008 turned into one for John McCain when a voting machine glitched in this episode.
But it actually aired four years before a Pennsylvania voting machine was found to be doing as much in real time.
The American curling team’s win at the Olympics
Homer and Marge took up curling in an episode in 2008, and defeated a Swedish team at the Vancouver Olympics.
Shockingly, in 2018, the US men’s curling team beat the Swedes to win the gold at the Olympics. Coincidence or not?
Prince’s death
In April 2016, the body of legendary singer Prince was found in his Paisley Park estate in Minnesota.
After the icon’s death, theorists claimed that the singer may have been murdered because he voiced his opinion on chemtrails.
Prince openly spoke about the conspiracy, which suggested that the US government sprayed chemicals on their population as a form of human population control.
Chillingly, a storyline from The Simpsons in 2008 showed an agent getting Homer to kill off Prince because “unfortunately there are certain stars that don’t do what we want”.
Greece’s financial collapse
A Reddit user claimed that The Simpsons predicted Greece would be in financial crisis before it happened for real.
In a scene from a 2013 episode, titled Politically Inept, featuring Homer Simpson, a news headline flashed up on screen that read: “Europe puts Greece on eBay.”
The satirical joke implies that Europe would have to raise enough to fund the bail out.
Syrian uprising
In 2014, an Egyptian TV channel aired a 2001 clip from The Simpsons, claiming that the writers knew what was going to happen in Syria.
During the controversial segment, Bart Simpson and his pals can be seen dropping bombs in an unnamed Arab country.
Conspiracy theorists believe that the flag featured on the side of the illustrated van looks extremely similar to the Syrian flag that protesters began waving in 2011.
Fifa corruption
A year before a number of Fifa officials were arrested in 2015 amid corruption allegations, an episode of The Simpsons made a prediction.
In an instalment called You Don’t Have to Live Like a Referee, an official from the world football governing body, which wasn’t named as Fifa was taken away in handcuffs.
During the episode, the spookily accurate moment was displayed on the front page of a newspaper, which had the headline Scandale De Football.
Disney buys Fox
The show appears to have predicted Walt Disney’s purchase of 21st Century Fox.
The episode aired on November 8, 1998, showing a 20th Century Fox sign, with the note “A Division of Walt Disney Co” underneath.
The bizarre coincidence was pointed out by Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) on Twitter with the caption: “Disney announces it has reached a deal to acquire 21st Century Fox, as predicted by a Simpsons episode that first aired on November 8, 1998.”
Then, almost two decades later, Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox agreed to sell its entertainment businesses to Walt Disney in a groundbreaking $66.1billion (£49billion) deal.
This included the 20th Century Fox movie studio, a 39 per cent stake in broadcaster Sky, and Fox’s 30 per cent stake in Hulu, the digital streaming service.
Censorship of Michelangelo’s David
In a 1990 episode, characters protested Michelangelo’s statue of David as it was exhibited in the museum.
They wanted to cover up the nudity.
In July 2016, Russian campaigners voted whether they should cover a dupe of the Renaissance statue that was situated in central St Petersburg.
Three-eyed fish
In as 1990 episode, Bart catches a three-eyed fish which he finds in the river by the power plant.
Over a decade later, a three-eyed fish was discovered in Argentina.
While the water it was found in was not next to a power plant, the reservoir water came from a nuclear power plant.
Smartwatches invention
In 1995 The Simpsons showed someone using a phone as a watch.
Nearly 20 years later, Apple released the Apple Watch.
The show seemed to be spot on with predicting how technology would progress.
Canada legalises weed
In 2018, The Simpsons’ crystal ball struck again after Canada legalised marijuana on October 17 — a move which the hit show predicted thirteen years ago.
In an episode dating back to 2005, Ned Flanders is offered a “reeferino” – gibberish for a cannabis joint – by his Canadian alter-ego.
In the programme titled Midnight Rx the curly-haired lookalike approaches Ned while he and Homer are in Manitoba, Canada.
They were on a harebrained scheme along with Apu and Grandpa to smuggle cheap medicine from north of the border.
After exchanging trademark “oodlies”, the alternative “Ned” pulls out the cigarette and says, “It’s legal here” — to which Flanders replies: “They warned me Satan would be attractive — let’s go”.
