How does Simpsons predict the future so clearly?

Saniya

The Simpsons often predicts the future through a mix of clever satire, cultural insight, and the writers' ability to extrapolate from current trends and issues. With its long history, the show has had countless opportunities to reflect on potential outcomes, sometimes making seemingly accurate forecasts based on real-world patterns.

Arcadia

How are the Simpsons able to predict the future or the phenomenon on what would be happening in the near future?

The same thing had been dumbstruck when I was reading an article about Simpson stating 9/11 in their cartoon.
![](https://)https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-056227913b3f6644b7b65e562a6bf2d7-lq

Many people say its just a coincidence… but tell me what you think when you see the below pictures and videos?

Europe trying to get rid of Greece
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The financial crisis in Greece rumbled on in 2015, hogging headlines for weeks, but the long-running US show saw things going awry there years before: just witness this small, subtle gag in 2013 episode ‘Politically Inept, With Homer Simpson’. As Springfield’s most loveable buffoon is being interviewed on TV, a news ticker flashes on the screen below with the headline: “Europe puts Greece on eBay.”

The Rolling Stones to keep on rocking into old age

In the 1995 episode ‘Lisa’s Wedding’, set in the future, her fiancee has a poster in her room claiming that The Rolling Stones will still be on tour in 2010 on “The Steel Wheelchair Tour.” The same episode, by the way, sees characters communicate via snazzy electronic watches. Wherever might Apple have got their idea from…
![](https://)https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-f52740a4914f5ac1048536318e1ecf7e-pjlq

Three-eyed fish

In a 1990 episode, Bart catches a mutated, three-eyed fish in the local river – a nod to the pollutant effects of the town’s nuclear power plant. Over 20 years later, in 2011, a real-life fish – and practically a dead-ringer for its cartoon counterpart – was discovered in an Argentinian reservoir located near a nuclear facility.

Grease theft

One 1998 episode centred around Homer and Bart’s racket reselling cooking oil – a crime that seems daft on the surface, but was reported as becoming a real life crime caper some 10 years later.

Tigers fighting back
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In 1993, they lampooned magicians Siegfried and Roy in a set-piece that saw them mauled by their co-star tiger, only for it to happen for real in 2003. Definitely the most tragic of the Simpsons’ gags-turned-prophecies.

Rigged voting machines

Their 2008 gag about rigged voting machines which counted votes for the Republican party even when citizens chose Obama seemed spookily dead-on when several people complained about the exact same problem in the 2012 election.

Giant mutated tomatoes

Remember the giant addictive vegetables spawned on the family’s adopted farm in 1999 episode ‘E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)’ when Homer poisons his crops with tobacco? Yep, that too, has since happened in real life, with giant deformed tomatoes popping up around a nuclear plant in Japan.

Robotic librarians

Another highlight from ‘Lisa’s Wedding’, here, as Lisa’s college librarian turns out to be an android (and one who violently bursts into flames, too). There haven’t been any blown circuit board disasters in Chicago yet but, in 2011, it was announced that the city’s new Joe and Rika Mansueto Library would have robotic librarians who’d helpfully retrieve books for you.

The 2013 horse meat scandal
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In 1994, Springfield Elementary school was hiding a shady secret: the secret ingredient in its cafeteria dinners was horse meat. Sound familiar? Of course it does: nearly 20 years later, it turned out loads of us were scoffing equine-based burgers without even realising it.

Hamburger earmuffs
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Madcap scientist Professor Fink stumbled upon a new wacky invention in 1998, when he pioneered the world’s first pair of hamburger earmuffs. Sounds daft, doesn’t it? No-one would ever want some, would they?

Bloody Autocorrect and the iPhone

Not only were The Simpsons lot au fair with the perils of Autocorrect long before it started infuriating smartphone users the world over, but a bunch of employees at Apple revealed that the one-off joke about keyboard functions helped motivate them to create the iPhone. The Simpsons writers called the device a ‘Newton’.

President Trump

The Simpsons writers predicted Donald Trump would become president back in 2000. The episode, ‘Bart To The Future’, envisions the futures of Bart and Lisa Simpson. The latter, with an uncanny resemblance to Hillary Clinton, has become the first straight female president of the United States. “As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump,” she says to her advisors. They then inform her that her predecessor has bankrupt the country.

Disney’s takeover of 21st Century Fox
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During the episode When You Dish Upon A Star, shown in November 1998, a sign outside of a building is shown that reads ’20th Century Fox, a Division of Walt Disney Co.’ This prediction came true only yesterday when it was revealed that Disney announced a $52.4 billion deal to buy most of 21st Century Fox’s assets, including X-Men and the Home Alone series.

There could be more… but it would only make sense once it actually happens in our World.

DEEU_S

"The Simpsons" is often cited for its uncanny ability to "predict" future events, which can be attributed to several factors:

Longevity and Volume of Content: The show has been on air since 1989, producing over 700 episodes. With such a vast amount of content, it's statistically probable that some storylines or jokes will align with real-world events.
Satirical Commentary: The writers often satirize contemporary issues, trends, and cultural phenomena. By exaggerating current events, they sometimes create scenarios that later resemble real-life occurrences.
Cultural Awareness: The show's writers are keen observers of society, politics, technology, and pop culture. They often incorporate these themes into their episodes, which can lead to predictions that are plausible based on existing trends.
Coincidence: Some of the so-called predictions are coincidental. Given the wide range of topics the show covers, it's not surprising that some elements may align with future developments.
Creative License: The show's comedic and absurdist nature allows for a wide range of speculative scenarios. Some of these scenarios might seem prescient when viewed in hindsight.

Notable examples often cited include the presidency of Donald Trump, the introduction of smart devices, and various technological advancements. While these instances can seem remarkable, they are largely products of the show's satirical approach and the sheer volume of its content.

Jacob_Selvestar

They don’t. There are very few things claimed as predictions that happen “so clearly”.
The ones that seem so are not when explored more deeply.
The one that started it all, Donald as President in 2000 was based on him publicly throwing his hat into the 1988 & 1999 Presidential race.

The Siegfried and Roy tiger attack seems pretty straight forward, complete with the tiger attacking the dark haired Ernst like Manticore ‘attacked’ Roy, however, if you actually look at the details of Roy’s encounter, it was not an attack, certainly not like The Simpsons portrayed.
As witnesses stated, Roy put himself between the audience & the tiger after it was distracted by an audience member & approached the edge of the stage.
Manticore bit Roy’s wrist and after tapping Manticore’s head with the microphone shouting “Release”, it did and Roy tripped over Manticore’s leg and the tiger clamped onto Roy’s neck and simply walked offstage dragging Roy with him.

Fox becoming a Disney property. Seems pretty accurate, except for the fact Disney finalized their purchase of ABC in September 1996.
Fox had established themselves as a viable network by ‘98, but were still the new kid on the block so to speak, The Simpsons just made a joke about them owning Fox as well airing in 1998.

There are more, but those I think are three of the best known ones that are easily debunked as coincidence, explainable & contrived.

Now there may be people out there that will say the details don’t matter. They don’t state exact details and wouldn’t since that would give away their knowledge, but, think about it, I could say a President will die in office.
Well sure, eventually in 5, 10, 20 years, a President of some country in the world will indeed die in office. Even if it’s a Prime Minister and not a ‘President’, using the Simpsons predictive logic, because I wasn’t exactly right, I still predicted the future, but No.
No I didn’t. I simply made a generic statement that eventually through the natural passing of time.

Kernel

I’ve seen a few videos of these things and, in all honesty… I’d say that they are either complete coincident, subliminal messaging, or simply context taken incorrectly.

Coincidental - Yeah, okay. This is obviously going to be the first avenue a lot of people go to. Dismiss this subject matter as pointless speculation. People reading into things too much to make it mean something more than it actually does, etc. This means that it’s all simply moments in time that the Simpsons did something, and it somehow resonated with real life events.
Subliminal Messaging - This is a bit of a grim area to go to. The idea of subjecting Matt Groening, and the multitude of people involved in the Simpsons, to putting in the idea of causing these types of events to occur… And it’s not a bad conspiracy theory to come up with. What with the investigative proof of suggestive influence by the media in all its glory, it’s not really beyond reason to think that people saw the content of the Simpsons and figured it was a good idea.
Combine that with how the Simpsons has been growing closer and closer to the modern day with regards to characters, locales, and other bits and bobs… However, regardless of how possible it is, I sincerely doubt it was intentional that the Simpsons could have caused something like this.
Out-Of-Context - This is what I like to believe is the most frequent cause. The videos that I’ve seen show people taking cuttings of clips of episodes showing scenes where similar things are going on in the minds or world of the characters. And as much as I would like to say that people are being creative… They’re really not.
Whenever you see any cuttings (and I refuse to call them clips because they are entirely taken out of context) you’ll see that any relevant conversation points or subject matter is removed, and only the “point” footage is displayed. This removes any relation the subject matter could have to the suggestion that the Simpsons “predicted” the events occurring.
So yes, I do believe it’s entirely taken out of context and has been desperately sewn together by a few uninformed people to suggest the idea that the Simpsons are predicting the future. I’ve seen other moments of people misapplying information to circumstances for either their own personal gain or because they didn’t do enough research; such as the Gun Laws being suggested taken from Americans. One person tried to use proof that Gun Law introduction caused violent outbreaks and massive amounts of death… And quoted THE HOLOCAUST as one of them, stating that Gun Laws being introduced in Germany resulted in millions of Jews dying in Poland… When that’s not right. Gun Laws were introduced in Germany, yes. But those were to protect the population of German-born Jews, or Jewish-made Germans, from being gunned down in the streets. And if that’s not convincing enough… Let’s simply say that gun laws don’t matter in a war zone and Poland wasn’t part of Germany so it wouldn’t have been victim to the same laws.

Either way, I’m getting carried away.
I’m simply saying that, without proper structure and justification that can be proved, the idea that the Simpsons are predicting the future is utter speculation based upon misinformed people…

And what could be worse than that? The idea that perhaps the people throwing this together INTENDED you all to panic and come to believe that the Simpsons were predicting the future… If they DID, then you are all fools for falling into their trap.

Stan_Hayward

Mostly they do more generic predictions. It’s easy to predict Trump being president as he’s supposed to have once mentioned a desire to one day run. Notice however, not only wasn’t Chasity Bono president before him, Chasity is now Chaz.

Go back and look at their correct predictions. ask yourself, how many were specific, and how many was just in general. Then look at what never happens. Our first future episode, there’s no AI robots, no hover cars, no robotic prostates. They have videophones, which never took off for real. What we do have is Facetime, Zoom, etc. So, that’s the general idea. Video communication. Yes, Moe’s Tavern had VR games. We’re just getting VR up and running now. But we’re nowhere near that level of mainstreaming it. And believe me, since 1995 at least, VR gaming as a normal thing has been predicted. (Disney’s Carosle Of Progress was predicting that back in 1995).

Yes, President Lisa needed to deal with the US oweing everybody else money. That’s easy to predict. We’ve been increasing our debt for decades. Trump tanked our economy? DUH!. he’s a great businessman in his mind. In reality, not so much. He seems to hit a few good notes, and won’t let us forget them. So, not too hard to guess he’d screw things up as president. yet notice nothing about bowing a pandemic response. Or even a pandemic at all. Simpsons missed that one.

Thomas_Fellows

The Simpsons, the iconic animated TV show, has remarkably made several eerily accurate predictions about the future throughout its nearly 700 episodes. Here are some instances where the show seemed to foresee real-world events:

Siegfried and Roy’s Tiger Attack:

In Season 5, Episode 10 (“$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)”), the show featured German magicians Gunter and Ernst performing a routine similar to the long-running Las Vegas Siegfried and Roy show.
Tragically, a decade later, Roy Horn was mauled on stage by a white Bengal tiger during a performance, leaving him partially paralyzed and ending the production.
Autocorrect Fails:

In Season 6, Episode 8 (“Lisa on Ice”), Kearney asks fellow bully Dolph to take a memo to “Beat up Martin” on his “Newton” (Apple’s early personal digital assistant).
However, the machine autocorrects the message to “Eat up Martha,” foreshadowing the common messaging errors attributed to iPhone’s autocorrect technology.
Interestingly, this gag served as a rallying cry while developing the software for the iPhone’s keyboard.
FaceTime:

In Season 6, Episode 19 (“Lisa’s Wedding”), Lisa talks with Marge using video chat capabilities on her phone.
This predates the popular FaceTime feature on today’s iPhones by a whopping 15 years.
Faulty Voter Machines:

In Season 20, Episode 4 (“Treehouse of Horror XIX”), inspired by the 2008 presidential election, Homer tries to vote for Barack Obama.
However, the voting machine repeatedly records his selection as John McCain.
Coincidentally, in 2012, video footage emerged of a Pennsylvania machine switching a vote from Obama to Mitt Romney.
These uncanny predictions have solidified The Simpsons as a cultural phenomenon, blending humor, satire, and a touch of clairvoyance.