The Simpsons have made some predictions, so to speak. Are those really some accidental forecasts? Are the so-called predictions not predictions at all, but only parts of simple and evident logical chain? Maybe they are just inspirations? Either way, the fact of occurrence of such “prognosis” is interesting by itself, so we’ll just present to you some of those divinations.
1. Invention of the tomacco plant – What would you get if you mix tomato and tobacco with each other? Well, you will get a plant called tomacco. In 1999 episode 5 of season 11, Homer creates a hybrid of tomato and tobacco with help of nuclear energy and decides to name it “tomacco.”
This inspired one of the fans named Rob Baur to create his own plant, and in 2003 as a result of a crossbreeding of a tomato stem and a tobacco root he successfully obtained a “tomacco.”
2. Faulty voting machines – 2008 episode 4 of season 20 features Homer trying to vote for Barack Obama in the US presidential election. But faulty machine changed his vote, and instead voted for the John McCain. Similar incident happened in Pennsylvania four years later. A voting machine was removed after it kept adding votes given for Barack Obama to ones for Obama’s Republican rival Mitt Romney.
3. 9/11 – In 1997 episode “New York City Against Homer” Lisa held up a journal with boldly imprinted 9 and what seemed like two tall buildings, also known as Twin Towers, in the background, which might have represented the number 11. We know that 9/11 represents terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. On that tragic day Islamic extremist groups, associated with al-Queda, hijacked four airliners and carried suicide attacks in the US. Two of the planes flown into the towers of the World Trade Center of the New York City, the third plane hit the Pentagon outside Washington DC and the fourth plane crashed in the field of Pennsylvania, killing 2996 people and injuring over 6000 others.
4. Ebola Outbreak – 1997 episode “Lisa’s Sax” predicted the outbreak of Ebola in 2014. A scene from the episode features Marge suggesting sick Bart to read a book titled “Curious George and the Ebola Virus”. The virus wasn’t particularly widespread in the 1990s, but years later it was the top of the news agenda. Ebola was first discovered in 1976. It killed 254 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1995 and 224 in Uganda in 2000. Although, the latest outbreak was the most severe one.
5. Wrecking Ball – A 1994 episode and 2007 The Simpsons Movie feature a scene of Homer swinging on a wrecking ball. It might have predicted Miley Cyrus’s music video “Wrecking Ball”, but it may be more appropriate to consider it as an inspiration. Either way, it turns out that Homer did it first.
6. The attack on Siegfried and Roy – Episode “$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalised Gambling)”, aired in 1993, parodies entertainers Siegfried & Roy. During the episode a white tiger attacks the magicians during their performance. In 2003, Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy was attacked during a live performance in Montecore by one of their white tigers, sustaining several injuries.
7. Batman and Robin – There is scene in 1993 episode “Last Exit To Springfield” reminiscent of “Batman & Robin”, featuring McBain breaking out from an ice statue and saying the “Ice to see you pun” with an accent similar to the one of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger played Mister Freeze in “Batman & Robin”, who constantly recites ice related puns. The strange thing is that the film was released four years later!
8. The stolen lemon tree – Can you imagine someone stealing a tree? In the episode “Lemons of Troy” of 1995 gang of boys from Shelbyville stole a lemon tree from Springfield, which had a great value for the community. In 2013 in Houston a bizarre theft of a lemon tree happened, leaving the neighborhood dumbfounded.
9. Horse meat scandal – In 1994 episode the elementary school cafeteria staff member Lunchlady Doris uses “assorted horse parts” to make food for students. Nine years later, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland found horse DNA in over one-third of beefburger samples from supermarkets and ready meals.
10. Donald Trump – 2000 episode “Bart to the Future” not only predicted that Donald Trump would run for the president, but that he will become the president as well. Though Trump’s presidency was not the point of the episode, we know that Lisa, becoming the US president, succeeded Trump. On this occasion in a 2016 interview the writer of The Simpsons Dan Greaney told The Hollywood Reporter that the thought of a Trump presidency at the time “just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom. It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane”.
