The Simpsons: A Show that Predicted the Future?

“The Simpsons,” a show that has drawn loads of attention from viewers, thanks to its uncanny knack for depicting incidents in its episodes that somehow end up happening in the current global scenario, making it a hot topic of discussion and a viral trend on social media. It’s almost like they have a crystal ball in Springfield… or maybe just really creative writers. Either way, we can’t help but wonder what they’ll “predict” next. Ye bhi theek hai, right?

What is The Simpsons?

Matt Groening created “The Simpsons,” an American comic show about the Simpson family, which satirically depicts American life. The first episode of The Simpsons was aired on 17 December 1989 with the ending theme “The Simpsons Theme”. The show as stated by its creator was to offer the audience an alternative from the main stream trash and has been entertaining the world for over 30 years.

What is the hype about?

The Simpsons is one of the most trending topics on social media and the main content for some of the creators. But, what is it about them that made them so viral after so many years? Well, the answer to this would probably be some of its episodes that are famous for predicting the future events. Several episodes of the show depicted events that lacked context at the time but have since occurred in the real world, sparking discussions. The opinions vary as some take it as just a way of entertainment while the other see the matter as a concern as the accuracy might give you chills sometimes.

Simpsons events that actually came true.

The Trump administration (Season 11, Episode 17 of “Bart to the Future”)

Start with the prediction that has received the most attention. Lisa is now the president of the United States in The Simpsons’ second glimpse into the future. She casually remarks during a cabinet meeting that “We inherited quite the budget crunch from President Trump.” At first, it alluded to Trump’s effort at running as a Reform Party candidate. But after Trump won the presidential election in 2016, the sentiment gained significantly more weight. Even in the week following the election, the running joke on the chalkboard read, “Being right sucks.” The line garnered further attention when Trump declared he will run for president once more in 2024, which is also the year that The Donald will be 75 years old.

Being right about Super Bowl predictions (Season 3, Episode 14: “Lisa the Greek”)

A few days prior to Super Bowl XXVI, where Lisa accurately picked the Washington Redskins to win, the football-focused program first aired. The staff opted to announce the identities of the contending clubs the next year, and they once again called the Dallas Cowboys as the winners. Over the following few years, the redubbings continued to have some success, culminating in another precise prediction of the San Francisco 49ers’ victory over the San Diego Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX.

(Season 10, Episode 5: “When You Dish Upon a Star”) Disney acquires 20th Century Fox.

An establishing image at the conclusion of the star-studded “When You Dish Upon a Star” features the 20th Century Fox emblem with the words “A Division of Walt Disney Co.” beneath it. The show surely did not anticipate Fox’s sale to The Walt Disney Co. in July 2018, even though it has always been quick to make fun of its parent corporation. This brings Homer Simpson and Mickey Mouse into the same home.

 (Season 6, Episode 19: “Lisa’s Wedding”) Smartwatches

The program’s first journey into the future, “Lisa’s Wedding,” included several technology gags that ultimately came true. For instance, Hugh, Lisa’s boyfriend, calls an audible by talking into his watch after his bungled marriage proposal. Smartwatches with voice recognition made their debut in 2013, preserving connections all over the world.

(Season 6, Episode 8: “Lisa on Ice”) Autocorrect

This is one of the few instances where The Simpsons not only predicted something, but also actively influenced it. Bully Dolph writes the note “Beat up Martin” on his Apple Newton as a fast joke. The next translation is “Eat up, Martha,” which is obviously an insult to the PDA’s subpar handwriting detection. According to sources, when Apple was developing the iPhone keyboard years later, staff members realized it was the component they needed to get right. In order to emphasize the significance of the feature, they would even quote “Eat up, Martha” to

FIFA corruption scandal and World Cup results (Season 25, Episode 16:
“You don’t have to live like a referee”)

The Simpsons’ entry into the World Cup was related to Homer’s inclusion in the executive world, mainly because the FIFA organization was free of major corruption. Despite the temptation, he decided to play the big game fairly, which led to Germany winning the World Cup. The series has benefited from a double punch (or kick) of precognition. First, Germany won the title the same year. But in 2015, police raided FIFA headquarters with allegations of corruption, fraud, and money laundering, which was not a happy event.

 USA Wins Ironball Gold Medal (Season 21, Episode 12:”The Boy Meets Curl”)

During one of the program’s many international trips, the US ice hockey team for the 2010 Winter Olympics included Homer and Marge. Despite all the odds, they overcame Sweden and won. gold medal. It took eight years for this stone to serve its purpose as the recent 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang also had similar matches and results.

An “Average Joe” Goes To Space (Season 5, Episode 15:”Deep Space Homer”)

In a famous Simpsons story, NASA chooses to send an ordinary person into space to increase the ratings for space shuttle launches. In 2013, the UK held a competition to turn an ordinary person into an astronaut, which included numerous interviews and rigorous testing at Cape Canaveral. The winner was Oliver Knight, 25, who beat more than 250 contestants to go on a space trip along with 23 other winners. It can be said that NASA has learned from its sources and chose not to store chips or ants on the space shuttle. Since then, many more “ordinary” people and celebrities, from William Shatner to Michael Strahan, have also made their mark.

Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl Performance (Season 23, Episode 22:”Lisa becomes Gaga”)

Considered one of the show’s worst episodes to date, “Lisa Goes Gaga” features the pop star of the same name visiting Springfield and helping Lisa deal with her self-esteem issues. When Gaga performed at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2017, many people noticed that her glittering stunt outfit looked uncanny with one of her many outfits in the episode.

Concealing Michelangelo’s “David” (Season 2, Episode 9:
“Itching, scratching and margins”)

In the first episode, Marge tried to make the super violent cartoon featuring Itchy and Scratchy more docile. Then she realized the level of censorship could double when the city tried to protest Michelangelo’s nude David, which stopped in Springfield on a coast-to-coast tour. But David’s condition also became a hot topic in 2016, when Russians voted on whether to cover the replica of the famous statue with clothing. Thankfully, that doesn’t make them question the material of their favorite cartoon duo, Worker and Parasite.

Voting Machine Malfunction (Season 20, Episode 4:”Horror hut XIX”)

In the open air of the 19th season of “Treehouse of Horror” (referring to the 2008 presidential election), Homer walks into a polling booth to try to vote for Barack Obama, but the computers are already out. count him for John McCain. It took a full election cycle for this to happen, as a viral video from 2012 showed a Pennsylvania voting booth doing the same thing to Obama and Mitt Romney.

Mutant Tomato (Season 11, Episode 5:”E-I-E-I-D’oh!”)

Homer’s endeavors in agriculture led him to produce the “tomato”, a hybrid/tobacco tomato, using some nuclear material from his day job at his factory (although although this work tends to vary from episode to episode). In 2013, the satire became reality when fruits and vegetables near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant turned into hybrid horrors.

Higgs boson (season 10, episode 2:”Evergreen Terrace Wizard”)

Inspired by the work of Thomas Edison, Homer became an aspiring inventor in the show’s 10th season. A cute joke involves Homer scribbling on a whiteboard with a math equation underneath. More than a decade later, scientists discovered the Higgs-Boson (also known as the “divine particle”) and were surprised to find that its mass matched Homer’s calculations.

Ebola epidemic (Season 9, Episode 3:)”Lisa’s saxophone”)

In an episode mostly set in 1990, Marge tries to cheer up a desperate Bart by reading Curious George and the Ebola Virus. Although the disease existed before the outbreak, Ebola had the largest outbreaks on record in 2014 and 2015, affecting more than just a curious little monkey.

Fragments (Season 6, Episode 19:”Lisa’s Wedding”)

This is a prediction that is “too weird to be a coincidence”. The episode features a photo of Big Ben with the joke that he now has a digital face. But if you look to the left, you’ll see a pointed arrow that doesn’t seem to match the real London skyline. The construction of the Shard was completed in 2012 and the skyscraper is not only similar in shape to the mysterious building, but also located in the same location as Big Ben. Bengt R. Holmstrom Wins Nobel Prize in Economics (Part 22, Volume 1:
“Elementary Music”)
The Simpsons are famous for creating “fixed-frame jokes,” visual references that would go almost unnoticed without a handy pause button. During the premiere of Season 22, Lisa and her group of friends wrote a prediction sheet for the Nobel announcement. Even if Milhouse lost his prediction that Bengt R. Holmstrom would win in economics, it’s still going to happen to him in 2016 when Holmstrom finally wins that honor.

 Selling ferrets as toy poodles (Part 13, Episode 22:”Dad has a brand new badge”)

One of the many projects of Fat Tony, Springfield’s organized crime agency, is to stick cotton balls on ferrets to treat them as toy poodles. In another case where criminals put their plan on TV, an Argentinian was shocked when he bought what he thought was a toy poodle, only to discover it was a ferret. combed.

Three-Eyed Fish (Part 2, Episode 4:”Two cars in every garage and three eyes on each fish”)

Blinky, the famous three-eyed fish in the episode, has been used by major news publications and involved in comments about nuclear waste and mutations. But those messages became prophetic in 2011, when fishermen caught a three-eyed wolffish in a feeding tank near a nuclear power plant in Argentina.

Putting Horse Meat in Food (Season 5, Episode 19:”Seymour Skinner’s Sweet Baadasssss Song”)

A quick image from season five shows Lunchlady Doris adding horse parts to a typical Springfield Elementary School lunch. She didn’t know how much of a pioneer she would become since 2013, health authorities discovered that some beef products contained horse meat.

Pursuing an all-you-can-eat restaurant (Season 4, Episode 8:”The new kid on the block”)

Homer’s hunger is so insatiable, humorously, that in one episode he is kicked out of a seafood restaurant after making an “all you can eat” deal, only to take him to court for false advertising. This legal theory was tested in court in 2012 and 2017. Ironically, the latter even happened in Springfield, Massachusetts. Baby translator (Part 3, Episode 24:
“Brother, can you give me two cents?” “)
The Simpsons appeared on the app in the early 1990s. Herb, Homer’s rare half-brother, voiced by Danny DeVito, has risen from poverty to prosperity, creating an invention that has made a difference. can translate meaningless infant speech into full sentences. Years later, the “Cry Translator” app was released, which also analyzes babies’ cries to meet their needs.

Bloody Billboard (Part 4, Episode 6:“Itching and scratching:Movie”)

In keeping with the show’s bloody nature of the show, a billboard for the first Itchy and Scratchy movie showed Scratchy being decapitated and unsuspectingly pouring a blood-like liquid into open cars. what doubt. TVNZ used the same effect to advertise Kill Bill Vol. 1, 2008, littered the pavement with the remains of Beatrix Kiddo’s last murder.

Spanking Day (Season 4, Episode 14:”Explosion Day”)

The group of the same name that kills as many snakes as possible has entered the real world. The Python Challenge is an annual event in which people travel to the Florida Everglades to reduce the number of invasive Burmese pythons, whose overpopulation

Donut Universe (Season 10, Episode 22:”They saved Lisa’s brain”)

When famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking first appeared on The Simpsons, the writers couldn’t resist putting the smartest man and the irrational man in the same room. During a beer debate at Moe’s Tavern, Hawking said: “Your theory about the donut-shaped universe is fascinating. Maybe I have to steal it. Although there’s been a real theory that the universe exists. shaped like a donut or “torus”, but since the 1980s it has gained popularity in the new millennium.
The NSA Spying Scandal (The Simpsons)
In 2007, The Simpsons made the leap to the big screen with its predictive bias still intact. As Marge discussed plans to reveal government secrets, we were taken to National Security Agency headquarters. Inside, there’s a room full of screens, with an entire team listening to phone calls in the hopes of catching America’s most wanted men. It’s almost as if the real NSA is listening to the movie, as in 2013 Edward Snowden revealed to the public many of the secret surveillance programs the agency operates. 

Are the Simpsons future predictors?

Well, despite of all the matching events and episodes the controversy remains if the Simpsons is actually a show that predicts the future or these are simply the coincidences. The debate is a hot topic. The show is still on air and the episodes are aired with millions and billions of people enjoying it just as a satirical and comic show with no relevance to any current events. The show as of 21 May 2023 has 750 episodes and has currently aired its 34^th season and has achieved a milestone with it.

So, what are your views if the Simpsons are actually predicting the future or the events are just coincidences which can be ignored understanding just the theme of the show and the humour it provides.