The Simpsons Predictions That Actually Came True
1 Lady Gaga’s Flying Performance
- Episode: “Lisa Goes Gaga” (Season 23, Episode 22)
- Release Date: May 20, 2012
This episode, first released in 2012, depicted Lady Gaga arriving in Springfield to help Lisa with her confidence. During her concert in the episode, Lady Gaga flew over the audience, suspended in the air by cables.
Five years later, in 2017, Lady Gaga performed at the halftime show for Superbowl LI. She started her performance descending from the stadium’s roof, held aloft by suspension cables. Not only that, but Gaga’s outfit was eerily similar to the getup her animated counterpart wore in The Simpsons.
2 Nobel Prize Winner
- Episode: “Elementary School Musical” (Season 22, Episode 1)
- Release Date: September 26, 2010
In “Elementary School Musical,” Homer and Bart travel to Oslo so Krusty can receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In a quick flash, the episode shows a paper depicting a betting pool, where Millhouse guesses that MIT professor Bengt Holmström will win the Economics Prize.
Six years later, in 2016, Holmström actually won the prize. Due to his important work on contract theory, Holmström was awarded the 2016 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
3 Roy Horn’s Tiger Attack
- Episode: “$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)” (Season 5, Episode 10)
- Release Date: December 16, 1993
This early episode of The Simpsons depicts two magicians working in a casino. The magicians greatly resemble Siegfried & Roy, two entertainers best known for their work with white tigers and lions. But in The Simpsons episode, the tiger turns on the magicians and attacks them.
Ten years later, in 2003, this awful prediction came true. Roy was attacked by a white tiger during one of his live performances. Although he sustained serious injuries, he did live.
4 Smart Watches
- Episode: “Lisa’s Wedding” (Season 6, Episode 19)
- Release Date: March 19, 1995
Today, the Apple Watch is advanced enough that it’s essentially a replacement for your smartphone. But 20 years before the smart watch was first released, The Simpsons already had the idea in mind.
While flashing forward to Lisa’s future wedding in 2010, The Simpsons depicted a man wearing a watch that could be used as a phone. The Apple Watch was released in April 2015. Fortunately, the actual Apple Watch looks much more advanced than the cartoon version.
5 Disney Buys 20th Century Fox
- Episode: “When You Dish Upon A Star” (Season 10, Episode 5)
- Release Date: November 8, 1998
In this 1998 episode of The Simpsons, Homer befriends Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. While enjoying his new Hollywood life, he drives past a sign for 20th Century Fox. Underneath the company’s logo, the sign reads, “A Division of Walt Disney Co.”
Twenty years later, in 2018, The Walt Disney Company actually bought 20th Century Fox. What started as a fun joke about The Simpsons’ parent company came to shocking fruition. Who could have expected that?
6 Autocorrect
- Episode: “Lisa On Ice” (Season 6, Episode 8)
- Release Date: November 13, 1994
In some cases, it appears The Simpsons really is predicting the future. But in others, something is shown in the TV show actually that contributes to how things play out in the real world. In the 1994 episode “Lisa on Ice,” bully Dolph writes “beat up Martin” on his Apple Newton. However, the text on the device shows up as, “Eat up, Martha.”
At the time, the gag was a joke about the Newton’s poor handwriting recognition. However, when the iPhone was being created years later, the joke from The Simpsons was allegedly a main concern while designing the keyboard. The designers didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past and leave themselves open to ridicule once again.
7 Horse Meat In School Lunches
- Episode: “Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Baadasssss Song” (Season 5, Episode 19)
- Release Date: April 28, 1994
In this 1994 episode of The Simpsons, the lunch ladies at Springfield Elementary add some… unsavory meat to the kids’ meals. While cooking, one lunch lady is shown digging around in a large barrel with the label “assorted horse parts.”
While such a thing as putting horse meat into children’s lunches should be unimaginable, it shockingly came true. In 2013, Food Standards Agency identified horse DNA in several beef products from fast food restaurants, including Taco Bell.
8 Game of Thrones Finale
- Episode: “The Serfsons” (Season 29, Episode 1)
- Release Date: October 1, 2017
The HBO show Game of Thrones was a massive success. Audiences around the world fell in love with the series, and millions of viewers tuned into the final season to see how the stories of fan-favorite characters would play out. Unfortunately, the finale was a huge disappointment, largely due to Daenerys Targaryen’s decision to burn King’s Landing from atop her dragon.
But, as usual, The Simpsons saw the disappointing ending coming. In a 2017 episode inspired by Game of Thrones, an animated dragon decimates an entire village. While it was comical in The Simpsons, it didn’t have quite the same effect in Game of Thrones.
9 FIFA’s Corruption & Germany’s World Cup Win
- Episode: “You Don’t Have To Live Like a Referee” (Season 25, Episode 16)
- Release Date: March 30, 2014
In “You Don’t Have to Live Like a Referee,” Homer becomes a referee for the World Cup. However, he quickly realizes the job isn’t as simple as it seems. Many of the referees in the FIFA Organization are corrupt and often change the results of the game based on the bribes they receive. However, Homer decides to stay true to himself and accurately announces Germany as the winner of the World Cup.
A couple of months after this episode aired, in June 2014, Germany did win the World Cup. Then, in 2015, many FIFA employees were arrested on various charges, including bribery and fraud. Did The Simpsons have an inside connection to FIFA’s corruption? It certainly seems like it.
10 Faulty Voting Machines
- Episode: “Treehouse of Horror XIX” (Season 20, Episode 4)
- Release Date: November 2, 2008
Right before the 2008 US Presidential Election, The Simpsons aired an episode that depicted Homer trying to cast his vote. Unfortunately, every time Homer voted for Barack Obama, the voting machine changed his vote and counted it for Obama’s opponent at the time, John McCain.
Four years later, the prediction in The Simpsons came true. While Obama was this time running against Mitt Romney, an issue did arise with faulty voting machines. One voting machine in Pennsylvania kept changing votes for Obama and counting them for Romney. The voting machine eventually had to be removed.
11 Old Letters From the Beatles
- Episode: “Brush With Greatness” (Season 2, Episode 18)
- Release Date: April 11, 1991
This early episode of The Simpsons features Ringo Starr, the drummer of The Beatles. In the episode, Ringo responds to fan mail. He specifically states at one point that, though the letters are 20 years old, he’s still committed to responding to each and every one of his fans.
Perhaps another member of the band, Sir Paul McCartney, was inspired by the story. Decades after the episode aired, two women in London received a reply to a tape they sent the musician in 1963. Though the tape had been sent 50 years earlier, Paul thanked them for the lovely note and claimed his response was “better late than never.”
12 The Higgs Boson Equation
- Episode: “Treehouse of Horror VII” (Season 8, Episode 1)
- Release Date: October 27, 1996
In 1996, The Simpsons predicted a major event for the world of physics. In the episode “Treehouse of Horror VII,” Homer becomes an inventor. At one point, he is shown standing in front of a blackboard examining a complicated equation.
In 2013, scientists conducted an experiment worth $13 billion that proved the existence of the Higgs boson particle. Shockingly, the equation in front of Homer predicts the mass of the particle, even though many scientists weren’t sure it existed. However, Homer did have a little help. The particle was first predicted in 1964, but Homer still presented it as fact 17 years before the scientific world.
13 US Wins Gold In Curling
- Episode: “Boy Meets Curl” (Season 21, Episode 12)
- Release Date: February 14, 2010
In this 2010 episode of The Simpsons, Homer and Marge become members of the US Olympic curling team. They eventually take home the gold at the 2010 Winter Olympics, beating Sweden in the process.
In 2018, this prediction came true. During the Winter Olympics that year in Pyeongchang, the US curling team beat Sweden and took home the gold medal. Not only did the show correctly predict the win, but it also predicted the exact match-up.
14 Video Calling
- Episode: “Lisa’s Wedding” (Season 6, Episode 19)
- Release Date: March 19, 1995
Video calling is normal and expected nowadays, but it wasn’t on anyone’s radar back in 1995. In fact, Skype was first released in 2003, and FaceTime didn’t appear on the scene until years later, in 2010.
Still, “Lisa’s Wedding” depicted video calling far before its time. In the episode, Lisa delivers the news of her engagement to Marge via video chat. Of course, the scene aired eight years before video chat of any kind became available to the public.
15 COVID-19 & Murder Hornets
- Episode: “Marge In Chains” (Season 4, Episode 21)
- Release Date: May 6, 1993
In 2020, the COVID-19 virus changed the world, leading to quarantines and lockdowns in countries across the globe. While no one saw the global pandemic coming, a 1993 episode of The Simpsons bears eerie similarities to what happened in real life.
In “Marge in Chains,” a fictional virus called the Osaka Flu spreads to Springfield. While racing to find a cure, a van of killer bees is knocked over and the insects wreak havoc on the town. While the storyline of the flu spreading doesn’t align that much with what happened in real life, COVID-19 was accompanied by news of murder hornets making their way to the US. The two events together are shockingly similar to the storyline of The Simpsons episode.
16 The Shard In London
- Episode: “Lisa’s Wedding” (Season 6, Episode 19)
- Release Date: March 19, 1995
Whoever wrote and created “Lisa’s Wedding” must have been from the future. Besides the smartwatches and the video calling, the episode also predicted the existence of the Shard, a very recognizable building in London.
During Lisa’s trip to London, one image shown on the screen portrays a building that looks eerily similar to the Shard. Not only that, but the building appears in roughly the same place that the Shard was built. But here’s the kicker: Construction didn’t start on the Shard until 2009, 14 years after the episode aired.
17 Censoring Michelangelo’s David
- Episode: “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge” (Season 2, Episode 9)
- Release Date: December 20, 1990
In this early episode of The Simpsons, Marge watches a violent cartoon called The Itchy and Scratchy Show. After deciding that the cartoon is much too brutal, she campaigns to turn down the gore in the program. However, the town then jumps on her censorship idea to protest the nudity of the statue of David by Michelangelo.
While the storyline is meant to be somewhat ridiculous in the cartoon, it actually came true. In 2016, a copy of the statue of David was put on display in St. Petersburg, Russia. The residents of the city then voted on whether the statue should be covered with clothes, as it was considered offensive in its natural nude state.
18 JC Penney’s Bankruptcy
- Episode: “Please Homer, Don’t Hammer ‘Em” (Season 18, Episode 3)
- Release Date: September 24, 2006
This episode of The Simpsons shows the family walking through a mall. They eventually come to a rundown JC Penney sign, and Marge comments that the store used to be there, though it’s obvious it’s now closed.
In May 2018, nearly 12 years after the episode aired, JC Penney actually filed for bankruptcy. To be fair, the store had problems with profitability for years, but The Simpsons still predicted its demise long before it actually happened.
19 Three-Eyed Fish
- Episode: “Two Cars In Every Garage And Three Eyes On Every Fish” (Season 2, Episode 4)
- Release Date: November 1, 1990
In this episode from season two of The Simpsons, Bart catches a three-eyed fish. The fish, named Blinky, is caught in the river by a power plant.
Twenty-one years later, in 2011, a three-eyed fish was discovered in real life in a river in Argentina. Shockingly, the body of water where the fish was caught was close to a nuclear power plant.
20 Richard Branson In Space
- Episode: “The Burn and The Bees” (Season 20, Episode 8)
- Release Date: December 7, 2008
In this episode of The Simpsons, we can see Richard Branson making his first appearance on the show. We can see him floating in a space shuttle.
On July 11, 2021, seven years later, the 71-year-old billionaire actually flew into space aboard his own winged rocket ship.
21 Donald Trump’s Presidency
- Episode: “Bart to the Future” (Season 11, Episode 17)
- Release Date: March 19, 2000
In this episode of season 11 which aired all the way back in 2000, Bart gets a peek in the future, where Lisa has become president. In what could have been an offhand comment, US President Lisa mentions that her administration “inherited quite the budget crunch from President Trump.”
At the time, the comment on the episode stemmed from Donald Trump’s attempt to run for president as part of the Reform Party. But in 2016, the prediction came true when Trump was elected President of the United States.
