‘Simpsons’ fans, producer shoot down Titan submersible prediction

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Some fans of the The Simpsons are speculating that the long-running animated hit may have predicted the deep-sea Titan disaster in 2006.

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A Season 17 episode, titled Homer’s Paternity Coot, finds Homer Simpson and his long-lost father Mason Fairbanks getting lost underwater after they take to the seas in a pair of submersibles in search of a lost treasure.

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“Did The Simpsons predict the missing Titanic sub scenario in this 2006 episode?” the Twitter account History Vids asked in a viral tweet that has been viewed over three million times.

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“The Simpsons really predicted the titanic submarine situation .. and that they would completely run out of oxygen (watch till the end) this is actually scary,” Twitter user @Quarandale added.

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“We live in a simulation,” another fan wrote.

But elsewhere on social media, fans of the show were divided as to how clearly the episode predicted the Titan tragedy, which killed five adventurers when the vessel imploded shortly after its descent to view the remains of the Titanic on Sunday.

“It isn’t the Titanic in that episode, I think another generic shipwreck is seen. Also, my vague recollection is that it wasn’t a very good episode,” one fan wrote on Reddit, with a second questioning, “The Simpsons predicted this because they had a scene on a submarine?”

Mike Reiss, an executive producer of The Simpsons, visited the wreckage of the doomed Titanic on OceanGate’s Titan vessel last summer.

He shot down any talk that an earlier episode from 1998, which found Homer joining a naval reserve, foretold the loss of the Titan sub.

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“We did that episode because the movie Crimson Tide had just come out,” Reiss told the New York Post, referencing the 1995 film that starred Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman. “We didn’t predict the future, we just did it off that movie and 20 years later, something like that happened.”

Reiss knew travelling aboard the experimental Titan was a risk.

“It’s always in the back of your head that this is dangerous, and any small problem will turn into a major catastrophe,” Reiss told ABC News on Wednesday, adding that last year’s trip was his fourth with the company and that each journey suffered communications issues.

“That seems to be just something baked into the system,” he explained. “I don’t blame OceanGate, but I blame deep water for that.”

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But Reiss acknowledged the nearly five hour journey was unsettling, with a waiver form mentioning “death” several times on the first page.

“Death is always lurking, it’s always in the back of your mind,” Reiss told the Post of the experience. “Before you even get on the boat, there’s a long, long waiver that mentions death three times on page one.”

Josh Gates, host of Discovery Channel’s Expedition Unknown, was considering featuring the Titan on his show. But he told NBC News correspondent Tom Costello that he scrapped those plans over safety concerns.

“We had issues with thruster control,” he said. “We had issues with the computers aboard, we had issues with comms. I just felt as though the sub needed more time, and it needed more more testing, frankly.”

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Fans have been dissecting The Simpsons’ eerie predictions for years.

Last fall, Al Jean, a producer on the series, tweeted how a 2015 episode forecast Donald Trump’s announcement that he will run for president in 2024 by sharing an image of Homer Simpson and a campaign sign that read Trump 2024.

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In a 2000 episode, titled Bart to the Future, the show teased Trump’s first presidency.

In the flash-forward episode, Bart takes a trip to the White House to visit his sister, Lisa, who has grown up to become “the first straight female” president of the United States.

Lisa is meeting with her inner circle in the Oval Office when Bart visits, and can be heard complaining about the state her predecessor, “President Trump,” left the country’s economy in.

Elsewhere, in March 2020, fans pointed to a May 6, 1993, episode titled Marge in Chains — which featured a fictitious disease dubbed the “Osaka Flu” that everyone contracts after an ill factory worker in Japan coughs on boxes that are shipped to Springfield — as proof that the series saw the coronavirus pandemic coming.

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Later in that same episode, when the townspeople of Springfield demand a cure, they accidentally topple a crate marked “Killer Bees” — which some fans took as proof the series also foresaw “murder hornets.”

Bill Oakley, a co-writer on the show, downplayed the notion that the series acts as a modern-day Nostradamus telling The Hollywood Reporter, “It’s mainly just coincidence because the episodes are so old that history repeats itself. Most of these episodes are based on things that happened in the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s that we knew about.”

But over the years, The Simpsons has seemed to have had a crystal ball when it comes to foretelling current events. In addition to name-checking Trump in a 2000 episode, the program is credited with predicting smart watches (1995’s Lisa’s Wedding), Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl performance (2012’s Lisa Goes Gaga), a Beatle responding to overdue fan mail (1991’s Brush with Greatness), the Siegfried and Roy tiger attack (1993’s $pringfield) and the U.S. winning gold in curling at the 2018 Olympics (2010’s Boy Meets Curl).

mdaniell@postmedia.com

Twitter: @markhdaniell

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