They’ve done it again! (Picture: 20thCentFox/Everett/REX/Shutterstock)
After years of getting it right, The Simpsons have done it again, with a series of chilling predictions that seemingly came true this year.
For more than three decades, fans have been questioning how the residents of Springfield and the infamous animated family manage to find themselves in major world events before they even happen.
And while there are plenty of conspiracies (and even some reasonable answers) the predictions this year are seriously spooky, and the mystery has dumbfounded viewers once again.
In the past, The Simpsons creators have forecast Donald Trump being elected as the President of America, Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl, and even the Coronavirus pandemic.
But what came true this year?
The Titanic submersible tragedy
In perhaps the most devastating ‘prediction’, a Simpsons clip resurfaced earlier this year, around the time when the missing Titan sub, which had five people on board, was announced to have imploded in a ‘catastrophic’ way, killing the passengers who had been travelling to the wreckage of the sunken Titanic ship.
In a 2006 episode, titled Homer’s Paternity Coot, Homer went on a underwater ‘treasure tour’ and reunited with his long-lost dad, Mason.
During their excursion, the father-son duo seek to find a sunken ship (like the father-son duo who were on board the OceanGate submersible), but along the way – in the creepiest part of it all – Homer’s control panel flashes with an ‘oxygen low’ sign before getting lost.
Thankfully, he wakes up three days later in hospital after getting free but losing consciousness in the sub after the sign flashes ‘oxygen gone’.
The Simpsons fans reckon the show predicted the Titanic submarine going missing (Picture: FOX)
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A later development revealed showrunner Mike Reiss, who produced the episode, has been on three different expeditions with the Titanic sub company OceanGate.
Barbie mania
This year Barbie mania took over the world, but it was back in 1994 when The Simpsons released an episode, titled Lisa vs Malibu Stacy, that held a very similar message.
In it, Lisa challenges the creators of the Malibu Stacy doll to make a toy with a more feminist message – which Greta Gerwig certainly did.
While the Margot Robbie film took the world by storm, in The Simpsons, the doll had pretty much the same effect on the media, and both explored the effect, negative and positive, of an iconic doll.
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The episode (which was inspired by Mattel’s 1992 doll Teen Talk Barbie) sees newsreader Kent Brockman urged by his daughter to do a newscast about a new doll called Lisa Lionheart, made by Lisa and the Malibu Stacy creator Stacy Lovell.
It eventually turns into a whole segment and is clearly ‘important news’, as Brockman says on air: ‘Though it was unusual to spend 28 minutes reporting on a doll, this reporter found it impossible to stop talking. It’s just really fascinating news folks. Good night.’
Ahead of the Barbie movie released this year, The Simpsons writer Bill Oakley spoke about the episode, saying: ‘It particularly seems to resonate with women, I would say. When I meet a female Simpsons fan, that is often the one they cite as their favourite.’
Donald Trump’s arrest
There’s plenty The Simpsons have managed to get right about the former US President (including him running for a 2024 election campaign), but in the same Lisa vs Malibu Stacy episode, his arrest was also predicted – kind of.
Yet another thing The Simpsons (kind of) predicted (Picture: James Devaney/GC Images)
Brockman finished his news segment (after gushing over the new doll) with: ‘Oh and the president was arrested.’
While in The Simpsons, the unnamed president was arrested for murder, this year Trump was arrested and charged in an election subversion case.
Elon Musk’s Twitter rebrand
In one of this year’s strangest transformations, Twitter had a total rebrand and became ‘X’.
Looks like The Simpsons knew it was going to be ‘X’ before we did (Picture: Fox)
Elon Musk sent an email to Twitter’s business partners in April that it had been renamed X Corp, after buying the platform in October last year for $44billion.
He said: ‘And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter [sic] brand and, gradually, all the birds.’
But, The Simpsons had already seen it coming of course, as fans noticed that in a 2012 episode called Ned ‘n’ Edna’s Blend Agenda, Homer already had a pretty similar app on his phone – and it looked just like Musk’s new logo.
Censoring Michelangelo’s David
In a 1990 episode, titled Itchy & Scratchy & Marge, the parents of Springfield decided to censor a cartoon show before protesting against Michelangelo’s sculpture David, as it tours the world.
One parent, calling the masterpiece ‘an abomination’, complains to Marge: ‘It’s filth, it graphically portrays parts of the human body – which practical as they may be – are evil.’
And that’s not too unlike what some parents in America had to say this year, when parents in Tallahassee, Florida, complained that the sculpture was ‘pornographic’ after an art teacher showed students a picture.
The principal was forced to resign over the Renaissance art lesson, after the school’s governing board told her to either step down or be fired, and later told HuffPost that one parent was ‘point-blank upset’ and ‘felt her child should not be viewing those pieces’.
‘Radioactive’ fish
In one of the more bizarre ‘predictions’ that came true this year, The Simpsons viewers saw a link between Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida eating a fish and an episode of the cartoon.
An uncanny coincidence… (Picture: Disney+/Getty)
The politician was videoed eating ‘safe and delicious’ fish from waters off the Fukushima coast to dispel safety concerns over the release of radioactive water.
The Simpsons fans linked it back to a 1990 episode in which Mr Burns eats a three-eyed fish, which is said to be mutated by pollution from his nuclear power plant.
While it may not exactly be a prediction which came true, it’s a pretty uncanny coincidence…
The Simpsons is available to watch on Channel 4.
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They’ve done it again!