The Simpsons revolves around the daily life of the Simpsons family: 10-year-old troublemaker Bart Simpson (Nancy Cartwright), level-headed homemaker Marge (Julie Kavner), less-than-intelligent powerplant worker Homer (Dan Castellaneta), 8-year-old brainiac Lisa (Yeardley Smith) and baby Maggie (also voiced by Cartwright).
The Simpsons is not only known as one of the most culturally significant shows of all time, but also for its remarkable ability to seemingly predict the future.
This became more notable after The Simpsons joked that Donald Trump would become President of the United States over 15 years before it actually happened. Many fans have wondered how The Simpsons have predicted so many real-life events, but the answer might not be as mystifying as they’d expect.
“Well, the sourpuss answer I always give that no one likes is that if you study history and math, it would be literally impossible for us not to predict things,” showrunner Matt Selman told PEOPLE. “If you say enough things, some of them are going to overlap with reality, and then that’s the math element.”
He continued, “And then, the history element is if you make a show that is based on studying the past foolishness of humanity, you are surely going to anticipate the future foolishness of humanity as it sinks further into foolishness.”
Here are 16 The Simpsons predictions that seemingly came true.
The Donald Trump presidency (Season 11, Episode 17: “Bart to the Future”) (2000)
“As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump,” are the infamous words Lisa spoke when she was revealed to be the President of the United States.
The episode aired in 2000, showing Bart a glimpse into his own future, in which Lisa was elected president after then-businessman Trump held the post.
The unlikely prediction was made 16 years prior to Trump’s presidency and has become arguably the most well-known prediction from The Simpsons.
Richard Branson goes to space (Season 25, Episode 15: “The War of Art”) (2014)
In 2021, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson flew into space aboard his Virgin Galactic ship, the VSS Unity, uploading a video of himself having a blast while floating mid-air inside the ship.
The Simpsons had aired an animated Branson floating in space aboard a spaceship, relaxing mid-air, seven years earlier.
A dragon burning down a village in Game of Thrones (Season 29, Episode 1: “The Serfsons”) (2017)
As The Simpsons opened their 29th season, they parodied Game of Thrones, which included the death of a dragon that Homer later revived to restore magic to their world.
Upon reanimating the dragon, magic returns, but the animal begins burning the city in a shot eerily similar to Daenerys’ dragon burning King’s Landing.
The fact that the dragon was meant to restore good to the world, but turned evil, is not unlike how Daenerys herself was meant to become a noble Queen, but ended up burning innocent civilians, becoming “The Mad Queen.”
Cypress Hill performing with London Symphony Orchestra (Season 7, Episode 24: “Homerpalooza”) (1996)
This one may have been directly inspired by The Simpsons, but it still came true. For Homer’s music festival, Homerpalooza, hip-hop group Cypress Hill accidentally ordered the London Symphony Orchestra to perform the 1993 hit, “Insane in the Brain.”
Twenty-eight years later, Cypress Hill made this a reality. Group member B-Real told the BBC, “It’s been something that we’ve talked about for many years since The Simpsons episode first aired.”
Disney buying 21st Century Fox (Season 10, Episode 5: “When You Dish Upon a Star”) (1999)
In this episode, Homer forms a friendship with Kim Basinger, Alec Baldwin and Ron Howard, which quickly dissolves before the episode’s end. After the split, Howard is shown a month later pitching Homer’s movie idea to Fox.
The Fox sign on the studio says that they are now owned by Disney. In real life, the company purchased Fox in 2019, 20 years after the episode aired.
Kamala Harris’ purple pantsuit (Season 11, Episode 17: “Bart to the Future”) (2000)
Based on Lisa succeeding Trump as President of the United States, it’s safe to assume she either ran against him and defeated him or was at least in the same political conversations.
When Kamala Harris was announced as the 2024 Democratic nominee — while serving as Vice President of the United States — one of her most famous outfits was a purple blazer with a pearl necklace and pearl earrings, just like Lisa was wearing in that iconic 2000 episode.
Autocorrect (Season 6, Episode 8: “Lisa on Ice”) (1994)
In an early episode of The Simpsons, the bully Dolph types in “Beat up Martin” as a note in his Apple Newton device, but the device autocorrects it to “Eat up Martha.”
While this may seem innocuous, according to former Apple employees, they would quote “eat up, Martha” to reiterate the importance of including autocorrect on the Apple keyboard, per CNET.
Siegfried and Roy’s tiger attack (Season 5, Episode 10: “$pringfield”) (1993)
When Mr. Burns (Harry Shearer) tries to build a Las Vegas-like casino in Springfield, he also creates a show featuring Siegfried and Roy imitators called “Gunther and Ernst.”
They are eventually attacked by their white tiger, Anastasia, and 10 years later, life imitated art when Roy Horn was actually attacked by his tiger.
The United States’ Curling gold medal win against Sweden (Season 21, Episode 12: “Boy Meets Curl”) (2010)
In perhaps one of The Simpsons’ most obscure predictions, they aired an episode in which the United States curling team beats Sweden in the Winter Olympics.
Not only did the United States win its first gold medal ever in curling eight years after the episode aired, but they faced off against and defeated Sweden to do so.
Three-eyed fish (Season 2, Episode 4: “Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish”) (1990)
One of the most famous early shots of The Simpsons was the three-eyed fish Blinky, a mutated animal impacted by the nuclear waste from the power plant where Homer works.
Blinky became a symbolic picture for real-world commentary regarding the dangers of mutation and nuclear waste, and in 2011, a real-life three-eyed wolf fish was caught near an Argentinian nuclear plant, per ZME Science.
The Edward Snowden spy scandal (The Simpsons Movie) (2007)
The Simpsons finally made it into theaters in 2007. The longform story included a plot in which Marge was set to share government secrets with the National Security Agency (NSA), and instead found a surprise.
The NSA staff were listening in on other people’s phone calls, hoping to catch criminals. In 2013, Edward Snowden shared that the NSA actually had similar surveillance protocols, per The Guardian.
COVID-19-like virus spreading globally (Season 4, Episode 21: “Marge in Chains”) (1993)
Nearly 30 years before the COVID-19 pandemic halted the world as we know it, The Simpsons featured an episode in which a sick factory worker in Japan coughed into boxes shipped to Springfield.
The virus somehow survived in the boxes as the town’s residents became sick and the illness began to spread rapidly.
The Rolling Stones touring well into their old age (Season 6, Episode 19: “Lisa’s Wedding”) (1995)
When a psychic tells Lisa her future, she sees herself in a college dorm room with her future husband and a Rolling Stones poster on the wall, which reads “Rolling Stones Steel Wheelchair Tour 2010.”
The old-age Rolling Stones tour came true as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have continued to do shows into their 80s.
The Beatles responding to fan mail decades later (Season 2, Episode 18: “Brush With Greatness”) (1991)
After Marge reveals that she sent Ringo Starr a painting in high school, the rock star responds decades later, fulfilling a promise to respond to all fan mail.
In 2013, Paul McCartney took a page out of The Simpsons’ playbook when he responded to two women from Essex, England, 50 years after they sent him a mixtape, per Rolling Stone.
Bengt R. Holmstrom wins economic award (Season 22, Episode 1: “Elementary School Musical”) (2010)
In The Simpsons’ 22nd season premiere, Lisa and her friends were predicting Nobel Prize winners when a blink and you’ll miss it shot of Milhouse’s card included yet another future prediction.
While Milhouse’s prediction of Bengt R. Holmstrom winning didn’t come true in the episode, it did come true in real life six years later.
FIFA’s corruption scandal and World Cup results (Season 25, Episode 16: “You Don’t Have to Live Like a Referee”) (2014)
In The Simpsons’ World Cup episode, Homer is asked to referee a match after FIFA fires officials who had been bribed to call matches unfairly. The person who asks Homer to referee is the executive vice president of the World Football Federation, who is arrested for corruption charges while speaking with Homer.
In 2015, FIFA faced a massive corruption scandal as police raided the headquarters to investigate accusations of fraud, money laundering and bribery. Eighteen individuals and two corporations were eventually indicted in the case.
Not only did The Simpsons predict the corruption scandal, but Germany won the World Cup in the episode and went on to win the real World Cup that same year, making yet another prediction come true.
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