ARE THE SIMPSON’S PREDICTING THE FUTURE?
ARE THE SIMPSON'S PREDICTING THE FUTURE?
So a few weeks back I was watching The FOX series, The Simpsons, episode, “Habeas Tortoise”(Season 34 Episode 1) and had to laugh as they ‘broke down the 4th wall’ (which they often do), mentioning how they needed to find a new conspiracy theory to investigate. Homer says, “I’ve heard that there’s a cartoon show that can predict the future. Maybe we can watch it and find out what’s going to happen!” Of course referencing their own show, that has done just that. The scene ends with a newspaper headline that reads, “Disney Returns FOX”.
A couple episodes later in, “Lisa the Boy Scout” (Season 34 Episode 3), two hackers take over the episode, threatening to play clips from the Simpsons that no one was supposed to see, unless they receive 20 million in bitcoin from Disney. They proceeded with an example, where a grown up Bart Simpson goes back in time to the very first episode of The Simpsons in 1987 called, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”. Bart starts to reveal the events of the future so they can amaze the world with uncannily accuracy predictions. One of them being that Donald Trump will become President. Which was predicted by the Simpsons in 2000, with Season 11 Episode 17. Including showing Trump dissenting down the escalator…which happened in real life (we’ve all seen that in news clips) as he announced his candidacy. Now in all fairness, Donald Trump has been talking about running for President since the 80’s. He was even on Oprah in 1988 teasing a possible run.
The Simpsons is the longest running TV show ever. Actually starting as simple shorts on the FOX sketch comedy series called, the Tracey Ullman Show in 1987. That’s 35 years. As I write this, that’s 735 episodes. So with some great writing, playing upon timely topics, poking fun at pop culture while being at the center of pop culture themselves, The Simpsons are bound to break a few futuristic crystal balls they’ve drawn up. Some of the more notable predictions:
In 1993, The Simpsons went to the Siegfried and Roy type show (season 5 episode 10), where the magicians are attacked by their white tiger during a performance. 10 years later, the real thing happened when Roy was attacked by their white tiger.
In the 2012 episode called, “Lisa Goes Gaga” (season 23 episode 22), Lady Gaga performs her music, flying over her audience. During the 2017 Super Bowl half time show, Lady Gaga did just that. Or, did lady Gaga get the idea from the Simpsons episode?
In 1998, there’s a scene from “When You Wish Upon a Star (season 10 episode 5), where the 20th Century Fox sign outside the Fox studios reads, “A Division of the Walt Disney Company”. 11 Years later? You guessed it. Disney merged with the now 21st Century Fox. Please. We knew Disney was going to eventually take over the world….and apparently the multiverse as well.
There’s the 1995 episode called, “Lisa’s Wedding” (season 6 episode 19). Lisa visits a fortune teller, who tells her that in 2010, she will marry. In the future, Lisa calls up Marge with the news over a FaceTime/Skype type of phone. In reality, Apple creates FaceTime in 2010. Again. We’ve been seeing camera phones, since the beginning of sci-fi movies and TV shows. Heck, we’ve seen wrist watch communicators with a camera and screen in Dick Tracy comic strips as early as the 1930’s.
And then we have the Simpsons episodes from 1993 that seemingly predicted Murder Hornets and the pandemic is the same episode (season 4 episode 21) . And recently someone noted on Twitter, the prediction of the Ukraine Crisis on then Simpsons episode called, “The Falcon and the D’Ohman” (season 23 episode 1).
Obviously they are just coincidences. But with more people aware of the Simpsons freaky phenomena, let me start my own conspiracy theory. Maybe, just maybe, people will start watching future Simpsons episodes, and say, “Hey, let’s make that come true!"
OH WAIT! I have an idea! Let's watch old episodes of the Conan O'Brien Show on NBC and TBS, find the ones where he's doing that bit, "In the Year 2000", and see if he has predicted the future! After all. Conan O'Brien used to be a writer for The Simpsons!