The episode aired more than 15 years before Trump announced his 2016 candidacy, but was commenting on a more current event. Trump announced the creation of a presidential exploratory committee during a Larry King Live interview on Oct. 7, 1999. A more subliminal prediction that the electoral college would choo-choo-choose a Trump-like candidate came in “E Pluribus Wiggum, the tenth episode of season 19, aired on Jan. 6, 2008 The Republicans fall for a Homer gag, and see Ralph Wiggum as the kind of elastic dark horse who be formed into a winning ticket. This kid can tell a cat’s breath from cat food, and says he wants to make this country great again.
Kamala Harris’s Outfit
Predicted March 2000
When Lisa Simpson becomes president in “Bart to the Future,” she wears a chief executive officer’s purple suit with a necklace. The design is very close to one of the picturesque suits chosen by Kamala Harris, just days after being elected first woman Vice President.
Pot Legalized in America and Canada
Predicted in 2000 and 2005
In “Bart to the Future,” President Lisa Simpsons legalizes pot at the behest of the future Bart. This has become increasingly true across the country. In “Midnight Rx,” the sixth episode of the 16th season, Homer and Grandpa, along with Ned Flanders and Apu, travel to Canada for affordable drugs. They discover pot is legal, but it wasn’t yet when the episode first aired. Marijuana was not legalized in Canada until 2018.
Tom Hanks Shoots a PSA for the USA
Predicted in 2007
Trustworthy, accredited actor Tom Hanks makes a cameo appearance in The Simpsons Movie (2007), voicing a commercial for America, saying “The U.S. government lost its credibility, so it’s borrowing some of mine.” He then shows a very unimpressive alternative landmark for the Grand Canyon. Hanks hawked America’s determination in 2022, a year after Joe Biden’s election, in a commercial about overcoming the hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic, and explaining that the economy was being rebuilt.
NSA Spying on American Citizens
Predicted in 2007
In the 2007 feature film, The Simpsons Movie, the Simpson family makes a break from their domed existence, is on the run, and ever-vigilant. Lisa’s concern with new forms of technological surveillance appears to border on sleep-deprived paranoia. “It’s not like the government is listening to everybody’s conversation,” Marge assures her, as the frame expands to show the NSA listening to the conversation, and expanding further to show eavesdroppers on everyone’s line.
Former CIA employee Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA’s surveillance access in 2013, dropping classified information on just how widespread it is in reality. You didn’t read that here.
2016 Nobel Prize
Predicted in 2010
Season 22 episode 1 “Elementary School Musical,” features a side gag where Martin, Lisa, Database, and Milhouse bet on potential Nobel Prize winners, or as Homer calls them “Nobies.” Milhouse picks one who is even a bigger longshot than Krusty the Clown: MIT Professor Bengt R. Holmström, who loses to Jagdish Bhagwati in the episode.
Milhouse’s notable choice became one of the Nobies six years later when Holmström won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2016.
USA Wins the Curling Olympic Prize
Predicted in 2010
Homer and Marge were made for curling. The sport combines the throw of bowling, which thrills Homer, and the art of sweeping, something Marge excels at. But, when they lead the American team from the Vancouver Olympics to Olympic victory, it is still a shock that they can beat Sweden.
Eight years after “Boy Meets Curl” ran as episode season 21, episode 12, America scored its first curling win, beating odds-on favorite Sweden at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Lady Gaga’s 2017 Superbowl Show
Predicted in 2012
In season 23 episode 22 “Lisa Goes Gaga,” Lady Gaga makes an emergency stop at Springfield because of one misunderstood monster, and winds up adding a stop to that leg of her tour. During the concert, Lady Gaga flies over the audience, and the show includes a solo piano performance.
When Lady Gaga tackled all her biggest hits at the Halftime Show of 2017’s Superbowl LI, she was lifted above the audience, and sang “Million Reasons,” accompanying herself solo on the piano.
FIFA Corruption Arrests
Predicted on May 26, 2015
In season 25 episode 16, “You Don’t Have to Live Like a Referee,” Homer is picked to referee the World Cup in Brazil after Lisa gives a viral speech on the sport. When a FIFA-hired gangster tries to bribe Homer, he turns him down both because he doesn’t want to lose his daughter’s respect, and really has no interest in soccer.
A year after the episode aired, FIFA officials were arrested in Zurich on federal corruption charges, including money laundering, wire fraud, and racketeering.
Selling Ferrets as Toy Poodles
Predicted on May 22, 2002
In season 13 episode 22, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Badge,” Springfield’s local mafia boss Fat Tony (Joe Mantegna) glues cotton balls onto ferrets, and pulls in a big profit selling them as toy poodles. In 2013, a retired Argentine man plunked down a small fortune for a pair of toy poodles at an outdoor market in Buenos Aires. Further veterinary inspection found the cuddly pet was a ferret which had been groomed and given steroids to look like a toy poodle.
Matrix Christmas Movie
Predicted in 2004
At the beginning of season 15 episode 14, “The Ziff Who Came to Dinner,” Homer is standing in a movie theater line under a poster of 20th Century Fox announcing “’A Matrix Christmas’ Coming Soon.” We plainly see Keanu Reeves’ Neo wearing a Santa hat.
The franchise that started with The Matrix in 1999 had released their third installment, Matrix Revolutions in 2003, so this seasonal cheer was a promise for the future. The Matrix Resurrections, as even its title vaguely hints, was released for Christmas, hitting theaters on Dec. 22, 2021.
Faulty Voting Machines
Predicted in 2008
One of the scariest gags of season 20’s “Treehouse of Horror XIX,” is the high-tech diverted vote prediction. The sequence shows Homer casting his vote for Barack Obama in the general election, and a faulty tech-savvy tallying machine repeatedly ringing it up on the John McCain column.
Four years later, during the 2012 election, a voting machine in Pennsylvania had to be removed from the location because it kept changing votes meant for Obama to his rival Mitt Romney. Though the names had been changed, the incident was so accurate that people began to take the idea of The Simpsons as a political forecaster a little more seriously, becoming a mandate for the general public.
Greece Bankruptcy
Predicted in 2012
When Homer appears as a guest on local cable news program in season 23 episode 10 “Politically Inept,” a bulletin running at the bottom of the scroll shows the news alert: “Europe puts Greece on eBay.” It is a short sight gag, and never referenced again, much like the country involved in the real event which followed it would have preferred.
Greece was zero for three on bail-out loans from the International Monetary Fund in 2015, leading to a stock tumble, and was nearly dumped on a going-out-business-sale by the Eurozone. Luckily, at the last minute, Greece had an economic collapse, failed to pay back the loan, and proved The Simpsons right.
Game of Thrones Ending
Predicted in 2017
In season 29’s opener, “The Serfsons,” The Simpsons spoiler-alerted HBO’s Game of Thrones ending by two years, putting a whoopie cushion on the Iron Throne in full collusion with guest star and known Lannister, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. In one sequence Homer revives a dragon, which lays waste to an entire village in a fiery aerial shot.
In the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones, run on May 12, 2019, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) rides her dragon like a flying flamethrower to incinerate King’s Landing. The village had already surrendered, the soldiers threw down their weapons, and thousands of innocent people went up in flames. Of course, considering how slowly the writing was reportedly going for George R.R. Martin at the time, the series may very well have borrowed the closing from The Simpsons.
Underwater Submersible Emergency
Predicted in 2006
In season 17 episode 10 “Homer’s Paternity Coot,” Homer hears the lilting voice of Michael York’s Mason Fairbanks, and finds a father figure. The long-lost paternal possibility comes with the weight of a sunken treasure chest waiting to be lifted. The pair squeeze into individual submersibles to salvage an ancient Spanish Galleon ship named “Piso Mojado.” Upon reaching the shipwreck, Homer’s gets stuck, and he runs out of oxygen. He wakes up in a hospital after a three-day coma, a far better outcome than the most recently fulfilled prediction.
In June 2023, an OceanGate submersible carrying five passengers disappeared while surveying the ruins of the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The vessel imploded, and there were no survivors. Simpsons writer and producer Mike Reiss coincidentally also rented the sub to explore the Titanic wreck.
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