The Simpsons has become notorious for predicting the future. It’s less a case of The Simpsons’ writers’ room being populated by uncanny Nostradamus-level seers, and more a case of history repeating itself, and real life catching up with satire. The Osaka flu from the season 4 episode “Marge in Chains” has been credited with predicting the COVID pandemic, but that storyline was based on the 1968 flu pandemic, which had begun in British Hong Kong. COVID was just the next in a long line of pandemics that The Simpsons’ writers were already drawing on.
But there are some cases where the coincidence is pretty chilling. They could’ve named anyone in the throwaway line that mentions Lisa’s predecessor in the office of President of the United States, but they chose Donald Trump — more than a decade before he would actually sit in the White House. They could’ve had Lunchlady Doris filling the cafeteria with the meat of any random animal, but they chose horse, and that was nearly two decades before Tesco got caught passing off horse meat as beef. These are the wildest Simpsons predictions that came true.
President Trump
Lisa Simpsons complains about President Trump on The Simpsons
The wildest Simpsons prediction that came true is that Donald Trump would become the President of the United States. In the season 11 episode “Bart to the Future,” a flash-forward shows that Lisa will eventually become the U.S. president. At one point, she mentions to her staff that they’ve “inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.”
This throwaway line suggests that a Trump presidency would wreak havoc on the economy. That prediction also came true, but that’s just been the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the ramifications of a Trump presidency. The episode was produced during Trump’s unsuccessful third-party presidential run in 2000, so the joke was as timely as it was prescient.
Siegfried & Roy’s Tiger Attack
Gunter and Ernst in The Simpsons
In the season 5 episode “$pringfield,” Mr. Burns opens a casino and becomes a Howard Hughes-esque recluse. This episode features the first appearance of casino magicians Gunter and Ernst, a parody of real-life double act Seigfried and Roy, who are attacked by their accompanying white tiger, Anastasia. A decade later, Roy Horn was actually attacked by one of the white tigers in his show.
This one is less a prediction and more just common sense. If you turn a tiger into a circus act and share the stage with it night after night, something awful is bound to happen.
Lady Gaga’s Flying Super Bowl Performance
Lady Gaga talks to Lisa in The Simpsons
“Lisa Goes Gaga” is one of The Simpsons’ most notorious episodes. It became the poster child for The Simpsons’ downfall. The early seasons had ribbed their celebrity guest stars and gotten them to poke fun at themselves, but the Lady Gaga episode is just an exercise in celebrity worship, as Gaga comes to Springfield to singlehandedly cure Lisa’s depression.
But, while the episode is as infamous as the one that revealed Principal Skinner to be an impostor, it’s also renowned for its uncanny future prediction. During the episode, Gaga flies over the crowd during a performance and plays the piano. Years later, at her legendary Super Bowl halftime show, Gaga actually soared over the crowd and played the piano.
Disney Buys 20th Century Fox
The 20th Century Fox sign in The Simpsons
The Simpsons predicted that Disney would acquire 20th Century Fox way back in 1998. At the end of a showbiz-spoofing episode, The Simpsons showed a 20th Century Fox logo (the logo of its own production company) with a banner that said, “A Division of Walt Disney Co.”
In 2019, Disney merged with 21st Century Fox and acquired the rights to franchises like Alien, Predator, Home Alone, and even The Simpsons itself, at which point this future prediction went viral. But at the rate Disney is acquiring other studios and monopolizing the industry, this wasn’t much of a prediction; it was just following a pattern.
The Rolling Stones Still Touring Past 2010
Lisa and Hugh lying in bed in The Simpsons
In the season 6 episode “Lisa’s Wedding,” Lisa sees into the future as she falls in love at college and marries what seems to be her dream boy. The episode is full of predictions for the future. Most of them are absurd, like robotic librarians with built-in tear ducts, but one of them actually seems quaint in comparison to what really happened.
In Lisa’s dorm room, there’s a poster on the wall for the Rolling Stones’ “Steel Wheelchair Tour 2010.” At the time the episode came out, the Stones had been performing for more than 30 years, and the guys were all in their late 50s, so the idea that they would still be touring rockstars another 15 years later was supposed to be silly. But the Rolling Stones were still touring the world as recently as 2024 (but that was called the “Hackney Diamonds Tour,” not the Steel Wheelchair Tour).
Horse Meat Scandal
Lunchlady Doris serving horse meat in The Simpsons
In 2013, the British supermarket chain Tesco found itself in hot water when an exposé by The Guardian revealed its beef products contained a significant portion of horse meat. It was a shock to consumers, who had no idea they’d been barbecuing horse, but The Simpsons predicted this all the way back in 1994.
We once saw Lunchlady Doris restocking the lunch meat in the school cafeteria from a barrel labeled “Assorted Horse Parts.” Lunchlady Doris’ horrifying culinary tactics were initially conceived as a satire of underfunded public schools having to stretch their pennies, but greedy corporations have used it as a how-to guide to bleed their customers dry.
The NSA Spying On Citizens
Government employees spying on citizens in The Simpsons
In The Simpsons Movie, after the family flees Springfield and goes on the run, the government manages to find them by tapping into citizens’ cell phones and listening to their conversations. We see a big, Dr. Strangelove-style war room where a bunch of government employees are listening to endless recordings of people’s private conversations.
The movie came out in 2007, a full six years before Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA for spying on U.S. citizens. It’s disconcerting that a lot of The Simpsons’ scariest predictions about the government are the ones that have come true.
The God Particle
Homer discovers Higgs boson in The Simpsons
14 years before it was discovered by scientists, Homer Simpson accidentally wrote out a near-perfect formula for the Higgs boson, sometimes called the “God particle.” It’s pure coincidence, since the writers just threw together a series of fundamental constants (pi, the speed of light, etc.) and it happened to kinda, sorta make sense.
Still, it’s a pretty incredible coincidence. It’s another example of Homer being a secret genius.
Smartwatches
Hugh using a smartwatch in The Simpsons
This is another one from “Lisa’s Wedding.” We see Lisa’s fiancé using what we now recognize to be a smartwatch, making video calls and using apps on a screen on his wristwatch.
Smartwatches were a pretty common trope of science fiction even before The Simpsons used it. The invention of the real-life smartwatch was probably inspired by an old sci-fi movie that featured one.
Ebola Outbreak
Marge holds a Curious George book in The Simpsons
In the season 9 episode “Lisa’s Sax,” while Bart is sick and miserable, Marge tries to cheer him up by reading him a book with a weird title. The book, Curious George and the Ebola Virus, seems to depict the beloved eponymous monkey coming down with the titular virus.
This was a strange reference for The Simpsons to make, because ebola wasn’t widely known at the time this episode was released. It wouldn’t become common knowledge until the 2000 outbreak, and then became even more infamous with the 2014 outbreak, which drastically recontextualized this old sight gag.