10 Simpsons Predictions That Came True
Published in Film & Animation at March 28th, 2017 at 6:06 AM
The Simpsons has been around a long while now, since 1987 in fact, and has had plenty of time to make lots of joke and comical guesses at the future. Sometimes, those jokes and wild guesses turn out to come true in real life. Do the show's creators have mystical powers of foresight they're not telling us about? Or is it simply a case of statistics and eerie coincidence? Regardless of how they did they did it, here are 10 of the times The Simpsons predicted the future.
Tomacco
In the fifth episode of season 11, “E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)” also known as “E-I-E-I-D’oh”, originally airing in 1999, the story started with Homer and Marge going to see a Zorro movie which inspired Homer to start challenging people to duels, which one person accepts. In fear, the entire family go to live on a farm and start growing food and crops unsuccessfully.
After about a month, Homer gets his hands on some plutonium from Lenny and accidentally mixes the tomatoes with cigarettes, naming them “Tomacco”. Now years later in 2013, in real life, there were many reports of fruit and vegetables turning up close to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant which had been exposed to nuclear radiation.
This was known as the Fukushima radiation disaster. It wasn’t just fruit and vegetables that were effected as this caused a huge nuclear earthquake and about 15,000 deaths. Back to the Simpsons however, these fruit and vegetables included the likes of tomatoes, similar to the tomatoes in the Simpsons episode back in 1999.
The Lemon Tree
In the 24th episode of season six, “Lemon of Troy”, originally airing in 1995, the children in Springfield go to war against the children of Shelbyville. This is due to the Shelbyville children stealing Springfield’s lemon tree from them. Later in the episode, the parents of Springfield’s children take an RV to Shelbyville to help the children steal back the lemon tree.
In 2013 again, on a Thursday morning, a real life lemon tree was stolen in Oak Forest Neighborhood in Houston. In the Simpsons, it was understandable for the plot of the story why Shelbyville stole a lemon tree, but in real life, many wondered why? Why not steal money or jewelry? What is the significance of a lemon tree? Unless they were trying to recreate the main significance of the episode? But then the same question applies, why?
Smartwatches
In the 19th episode of season six, “Lisa’s Wedding”, which also aired for the first time in 1995, the Simpsons go to a carnival fair and Lisa finds herself talking to a mysterious fortune teller, the majority of the episode then takes place in the future, focusing on Lisa and her husband to be.
There is one scene during this episode when her partner, suddenly starts talking to his watch, and he isn’t crazy either. His watch was actually understanding what was being said, similar to the likes of Siri on mobile devices.
Once again in 2013, back to real life, a new “smartwatch” was created by Samsung. This new watch had all of it’s features shown off on Today, a talk show presented by Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb. Some of these features included notifications for calls, messages, the time (obviously), it also included a pedometer! Funnily Hoda accidentally revealed her number to the whole of America. Smartphones have grown since 2013 however and become more popular with everyday life.
Widespread Video Calls
Funnily enough, in the exact same episode of the Simpsons, “Lisa’s Wedding”, there is more than just the smartwatch as mentioned previously. Along with all the other advances in technology, one of the more prominent ones which stands out is the capability of video communication between two people. The scene is when Lisa is calling Marge and it is both clear that they’re talking via video on what looks like a computer, but this also can be applied to phones as well in the real world.
Fast forwarding to 2003, a very basic version of Skype was released, nowadays Skype has improved a lot but either way it was the first popular way of video communication between two or more people. Moving onto 2010, the iPhone had developed FaceTime. This was a new way of video phoning people and very similar to what was shown in the Simpsons episode. Even stranger, the episode at the time in 1995 was set 15 years into the future, and what year does that make it? 2010! The exact same year that FaceTime was released. Talk about spooky!
The Land of Chocolate
In season 3, episode 11 of the Simpsons, “Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk”, broadcast for the first time in 1991, Burns sold the power plant to Germans who then proceeded to fire Homer. The original episode was supposed to have Japanese men instead of German men however the writer’s believed this to be too cliche. One of the most memorable scenes from this episode is a dream sequence that Homer has where he is in a land made entirely out of chocolate. This scene was so memorable that this scene was recreated in the Simpsons Game in 2007 as the tutorial level.
Now in 2013, there was an official chocolate theme park which opened in Shanghai, Japan. I’ll get onto the actual theme park in a moment, but first of all it’s worth a mention that this is in Japan and the writer’s original premise for the episode was supposed to have Japanese men. Now back to the theme park, the park covered over 30,000 square metres entirely made of chocolate! There are eight different themed venues covering exhibition, performance, chocolate tasting, interactive DIY and more!
The park includes a 450 square metre castle made of chocolate upon entry with chocolate handbags, jewellery, etc. The most impressive thing to me is the fact that they also have chocolate-made equipment to weigh you and then give you chocolate coins based upon your weight! I don’t think we should let Homer anywhere near this place!
Tiger Attack
In season five, episode ten, “$pringfield (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)” also known as “$pringfield”, was shown in 1993. The episode was based around a newly built casino in Springfield due to gambling becoming legal. Homer becomes a blackjack dealer at this casino, Marge develops a gambling problem and Bart ends up making his own casino.
In one of the subplots for the episode, Gunter and Ernst, the Siegfried and Roy-esque casino magicians appear on the show for the first time. In the episode, the duo were both attacked by their white tiger, Anastasia. Skipping forwards by ten years, in 2003, on October 4th that year, Roy Horn was genuinely attacked in real life by one of the duo’s white tigers.
The tiger was only just introduced before it bit into Roy’s arm and tackled him to the ground. It then dragged Roy backstage by his neck leaving the audience in shock when they realised it wasn’t part of the show. Roy was in critical condition and required treatment for huge amounts of blood loss and needed an operation. When asked about the similarity between this event and that of the Simpsons episode, the writers claimed it was “bound to happen”.
Star Wars vs The Chipmunks
In season twenty-one, for the season premiere in 2009, Comic Book Guy had created his own Superhero, “Everyman” who took powers from other heroes. The film adaptation then casted Homer as the lead who took on a personal trainer to help him get into shape. Once the trainer had left him however, Homer started eating a lot again and this led to the film’s failure.
In one of the scenes, a shot of the Hollywood production entrance is shown which Homer is working for. On either side of the entrance, there are two posters. One is a poster for a new Star Wars film entitled, “Star Wars: Episode VII, The Apology” and the other is for a new Alvin and the Chipmunks film entitled, “Alvin and the Chipmunks 3: Gettin’ Rabies!”, however the actual titles of these film posters aren’t exactly important. It’s what the posters are of that needs to be taken into consideration, Star Wars and Alvin and the Chipmunks, both coming out at the same time.
Now if we look at December 2015, there were two films both released on the weekend of the 18th. That’s right, you guessed it, Star Wars and Alvin and the Chipmunks. Star Wars: Episode VII, The Force Awakens was released along with Alvin and the Chipmunks 4: The Road Chip. So there’s another prediction that the Simpsons got right. But now we start to get even more shocking.
9/11
In season four, episode 12, broadcast in 1993, the episode “Marge vs. the Monorail”, was about the town of Springfield collectively deciding amongst them to purchase a monorail for the city. In one scene of this episode, there is a poster or picture of some sort in the background of the scene on the wall. It isn’t awfully clear, however it looks very much like one of the two towers of the world trade centre with smoke around it.
In season nine, for the season premiere in 1997, in the episode, “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson”, the Simpsons make their way to New York, specifically to the World Trade Centre so that Homer can pick up their car after Barney drunkenly left it there. In this episode, at one point, Lisa shows the family a magazine with the front cover showing a New York tram for nine dollars. The number nine is next to a silhouette in the background of the magazine of the two towers, which because of being silhouettes look like the number eleven. So the magazine looks like it is saying 9/11.
As most people already know, on September 11th 2001, also referred to as 9/11, the two towers at the World Trade Centre were subject to a terrorist attack killing thousands of people in the process. As horrible as this attack was, did the Simpsons predict this attack? As both the episodes in 1993 and 1997 show, it is quite possible that they were hinting towards it with the evidence given. It seems just a tad unlikely that they got the date correct and the location, doesn’t it?
Horse Meat Scandal
In season five, episode 19, the episode “Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Badasssss Song” was broadcast in 1994. This was the first milestone of the series at 100 episodes. Superintendent Chalmers fires Principal Skinner in this episode and because Bart feels very much responsible, tries to help Skinner get his job back. In one of the scenes, the lunch lady is seen putting horse meat into the children’s school lunches.
In 2013, although horse meat wasn’t being put into school dinners by a lunch lady, there is some relevance to this scene in the Simpsons as there was horse meat found in food in the United Kingdom. This meat was being supplied to different supermarkets by the companies, Bird’s Eye, Taco Bell, and also by catering supplier, Bakes. The horse DNA was found firstly in Burgers being sold across the UK and then further discovered in other meaty products.
Places discovered to have been selling products with the horse DNA were places like Aldi, Tesco, Co-op and others. Further testing found horse DNA in products being sent to schools, military, care homes, etc.
President Trump
Now this may just be the biggest prediction of them all. Recently, in 2016, Donald Trump became president of the United States. Way back in the year 2000, during the 11th season of the show, for episode 17, “Bart to the Future”, another episode set in the future, the episode focuses on the lives of the different Simpsons and how their lives have panned out over the years. One of these sub-plots is that Lisa has become president of the USA. At one point she mentions that Donald Trump was president before her. Now as shocking as that may be, it gets even more bizarre.
In real life, when Donald Trump announced he was running for president, there was a moment when he walked down an escalator in a blue suit and red tie. This exact same moment was shown on the Simpsons. That’s getting creepy as it is, but the weirdest thing to go by, is the election map on the day of the presidential vote.
The election map colours each state in either blue or red depending on the overall vote of that state as to who they collectively voted for. And guess what, the Simpsons successfully predicted the exact colour combination of this map before the election took place. How? No one knows. But there we have it, that’s the top ten Simpsons predictions!
