A popular classic TV show debuting all the way from 1989, The Simpsons have had this recurring anomaly of predicting the future, so it’s claimed. The Simpsons has become one of the most iconic animated sitcoms to come; it’s known for its sense of satire humor and dramaticized view of a family. This show also has also earned its reputation for “predicting the future”. In this I mean, people have picked up on jokes, events, or storylines that have seemingly then re-occured again in real-life. Some may argue that it’s coincidental or just good writing but the phenomenon has sparked up continuous discussion about how an animated TV series could hold so much accuracy.
One of the most famous and well-known examples of this happening is from the year 2000. In the episode Bart to the Future, LIsa Simpson becomes president of the United States and mentions having a financial crisis from “President Trump”. At this time, Donald Trump’s political career seemed more like a joke than a real-life scenario. In 2016, this joke took on a whole new meaning when he actually won the presidency. This would mean that The Simpsons had predicted Trump winning and becoming our president. After this coincidence, fans started paying closer attention to the sitcom. This ended up bringing even more attention to the show and viewers started catching on to even more instances.
Another time this happened was in 1993 when the episode Marge in Chains aired. In this episode a fictional flu spread across Springfield. This caused Springfield citizens to go crazed and freak out about this spreading illness. Whilst there were some significant differences, people claimed that The Simpsons once again predicted the future. In 2019 we had a pandemic of our own, Covid-19. People compared the two pandemics together and it became very wide-spread across various social media platforms.
Although there are many more similar events happening, viewers do have to remember that there are over 790 episodes out that’s streaming; this could potentially just point to the similarities as small coincidences. Whether or not you feel like these coincidences are predictions is up to you. Some may argue that these incidents are just too alike to be chanced. Others would argue that since The Simpsons is a popular and versatile show, the amount of episodes being out means there are instances that are bound to be parallel in the real world.