And unlike other series and movies, this ability to predict It’s not just about guessing trends that you already sense that the little leg is sticking out. No, The Simpsons have anticipated events that we thought were completely impossible.
Although yes, in part it has been because they have influenced popular culture so much, that they have made them a reality. For example, in the Albuquerque Isotopes team episode, when the real Albuquerque brought a team to town and asked the fans what they wanted them to be called, we’re the ones who can guess the answer.
Either way, here’s the huge list of the main Simpsons predictions that have come true.
technology predictions
The Smart Watches, (Season 6, Episode 19: Lisa’s wedding)
The first episode of the series set in the future brought several jokes that came true. For example, like when Hugh, Lisa’s boyfriend, he asks her to marry him using his smart watch to talk to someone and that they remove plan B from the petition.
The episode it was issued in 1994 and smartwatches capable of doing that were born in 2013. And yes, it’s just as ridiculous now as it was then. Only Michael Knight looks good talking to his watch.
The Autocorrect (Season 6, Episode 8: smooth on ice)
This is another case, as in Isotopes, in which The Simpsons influenced the future and that’s why they were right. In the series, an Apple Newton (the youngest of the place will not know what it is) has a disastrous autocorrect that changes what it says.
When Apple worked on the iPhone keyboard, rumors say, the engineers knew what they needed to get right, and apparently they reminded him by quoting the erroneous sentence of the autocorrect of the series: «Eat up, Martha».
Facetime and Video Chats (Season 6, Episode 19: Lisa’s wedding)
Back at Lisa’s wedding, the main form of communication is by video chat, style of face time.
We are not going to deny that this is a prediction that science fiction has been making long before The Simpsons, but to each his own.
political predictions
Trump is President of the United States (Season 11, Episode 17: Bart to the future)
This is undoubtedly the quintessential prediction. Issued in 2000, it predicted 16 years in advance something that absolutely no one, starting with Donald Trump himself, could have guessed.
That would become president of the United States. Lisa Simpson would succeed him in the series and that part has not happened, but it is true that, at least, they have had the first female vice president in Kamala Harris.
Faulty Voting Machines (Season 20, Episode 4: The Tree House of Terror XIX)
We are not referring to the Republican hoax of voting machines in the last American elections. On the contrary. In the 2008 elections, Homer enters a booth to try to vote for Barack Obama, but the machine changes the vote to Republican John McCain..
Four years later, in a video from 2012, it was possible to see how a voting booth in Pennsylvania did the same, shifting the vote from Obama to Republican Mitt Romney.
The NSA Spying Scandal (The Simpsons Movie)
In it, when Marge talks about her plan to expose government secrets, they are taken to the NSA (National Security Agency) headquarters.
There, we can see a room full of monitors, with a bunch of people listening to phone calls in hopes of catching America’s Most Wanted.
6 years later, in 2013, Edward Snowden revealed numerous secret surveillance programs that the NSA had in place.
sports predictions
The Simpsons predicted the winners of the Super Bowl… 3 times
The superbowl It is one of the basic predictions of The Simpsons, and the truth is that they hit too much.
The 1992 episode Lisa the Greek, correctly predicted that the Washington Redskins would win the superbowl XXVI which took place a few days later. It could be coincidence, but it is that the following year they did it again correctly predicting that the Dallas Cowboys would be the victors.
Still there would be a third, when they guessed that the San Francisco 49ers would win the superbowl XXIX.
The result of the 2014 World Cup… and something else (Season 25, episode 16: You don’t have to live like a referee)
In this episode, Homer becomes a referee at the 2014 World Cup, whistles the final and, to be fair, Germany wins the tournament. Just what happened exactly a few months later. But that is not all.
That Homer ends up as a referee is because corruption in FIFA was so widespread that there was practically no one left to do it. In 2015, arrests began in the organization for bribery, fraud and money laundering.
America wins gold in curling (Season 21, Episode 12: Boy meets Curling)
In one of the biggest surprises of the 2018 Winter Olympics, the US team of curling (that sport that consists of sweeping the ice as if possessed) won the gold against the favorite, Sweden.
Is exactly what this episode of The Simpsons predicted 8 years earlier. The United States was behind on the scoreboard and came back, exactly as in the chapter.
Other predictions that the Simpsons got right
Disney buys 20th Century Fox (Season 10, Episode 5: when you criticize a star)
In a shot of the episode, the logo of Fox, producer of the Simpsons, is shown, and below it can be read: “A division of Walt Disney”.
In 2018, that became a reality when Disney bought the production company of the series, in a rush for acquisitions that has led to its current dominant position.
The Higgs boson (Season 10, episode 2: The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace)
This is, perhaps, the one that goes unnoticed the most, but it is one of the most amazing. In 1998 this episode was broadcast in which Homer, following in the footsteps of Edison, becomes an inventor.
At one point in the chapter, he writes an equation on a blackboard. If the equation is solved, according to the British physicist Simon Singh, you get the mass of a boson that is just slightly larger than the Higgs.
This would not be discovered until 14 years later, when those responsible for CERN announced it.
And there are still more, such as the attack of a white tiger on the magicians Siegfried and Roy, or Milhouse correctly predicting the Nobel Prize in Economics for Bengt Holmström.
The ability to hit the series is incredible and scary in equal parts. Something happens when you go to work as a writer for The Simpsons. Now it remains to be seen if the meteorite is fulfilled.
