2023-12-24 12:04:35
The Simpsons series that has been airing since 1989 has managed to “prophesy” several events that have occasionally happened in reality and they managed to do something similar in 2023.
For more than three decades, fans have wondered how the residents of Springfield and the infamous cartoon family go viral as they manage to be at major world events before they even happen.
And while there are plenty of conspiracies (and even some reasonable answers), this year’s predictions are terrifying and the mystery has left viewers stunned once again.
In the past, the creators of The Simpsons have predicted the election of Donald Trump as the president of America, Lady Gaga’s participation in the Super Bowl, and even the coronavirus pandemic. But what has been verified this year?
metro.co.uk has compiled the events that actually happened in 2023 and were ‘predicted’ by The Simpsons.
The tragedy of the submarine Titan
Perhaps the most devastating “prediction,” was a clip from The Simpsons that resurfaced earlier this year around the time the Titan submarine disappeared. The submarine, which was carrying five people, broke up in a “catastrophic” manner, killing the passengers traveling in the wreckage of the Titanic.
In a 2006 episode titled “Homer’s Paternity”, Homer went on an underwater “treasure tour” and reunited with his lost father, Mason.
what do you mean the simpsons predicted the titanic submarine incident pic.twitter.com/IHUpFV2es1
— kira ???? (@kirawontmiss) June 22, 2023
During their excursion, the father-son duo try to find a sunken ship. In fact, some made reports about the similarities with the father-son duo that were on the OceanGate submarine.
In fact along the way, in the creepiest simile on Homer’s control panel the “low oxygen” signal flashes before disappearing.
Fortunately, in the series Homer wakes up three days later in the hospital after being freed but passed out in the submarine.
A later development revealed that Mike Reiss, who produced the episode, has been on three different missions with the OceanGate company.
The Barbie craze
This year the Barbie craze took over the world because of the movie of the same name, but it was in 1994 when The Simpsons released an episode called ‘Lisa vs Malibu Stacy’ which had a very similar message. In it, Lisa challenges the creators of the Malibu Stacy doll to make a toy with a more feminist message – something Greta Gerwig certainly did.
While Margot Robbie’s film won audiences over, in The Simpsons, the doll had more or less the same effect on the media, both exploring the impact, negative and positive, of an iconic doll.
In the episode (which was inspired by Mattel’s 1992 Teen Talk Barbie doll) news anchor Kent Brockman is urged by his daughter to do a newscast about a new doll named Lisa Lionheart, made by Lisa’s creator and the Malibu Stacy, Stacy Lovell.
Eventually, it turns into an entire newscast, and it’s clearly “major news,” as Brockman says on air: “Although it was unusual to spend 28 minutes reporting on a doll, this reporter was impossible to stop talking about. This is really exciting news, guys. Good night”.
Ahead of the Barbie movie coming out this year, Simpsons writer Bill Oakley spoke about the episode, saying: “It seems to have a particular appeal to women, I would say. When I meet a female Simpsons fan, they often list it as their favorite.”
The arrest of Donald Trump
There’s a lot that The Simpsons has managed to predict that has come out about the former US president (including him going on the campaign trail in 2024), but in the same Lisa vs Malibu Stacy episode, his arrest was also predicted – sort of.
Brockman concluded the newscast after gilding the new doll by saying, “And the president has been arrested.”
While on The Simpsons, the unnamed president was arrested for murder, this year Trump was arrested and charged with tampering with and tampering with the 2020 Georgia state election results.
Still can’t believe how simpsons predicted Trump arrest & Barbie#TrumpMugShot pic.twitter.com/hXWbzx46Qa
— meh° (@ImMehulOkk) August 24, 2023
Elon Musk’s Twitter rebranding
One of the strangest changes this year was Twitter’s total rebranding, which Elon Musk renamed “X.”
Elon Musk sent an email to Twitter’s business partners in April that it was rebranding as X Corp after buying the platform in October last year for $44 billion. “And soon we will say goodbye to the twitter brand [sic] and, gradually, all the birds.”
But, The Simpsons already anticipated this of course, as fans noticed that in a 2012 episode titled “Ned ‘n’ Edna’s Blend Agenda,” Homer already had a pretty similar app on his phone — and it looked exactly like the new Musk logo.
Censorship in Michelangelo’s David
In a 1990 episode titled “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge,” the Springfield parents decided to censor a cartoon show before protesting Michelangelo’s David sculpture as it toured the world.
A parent, who calls the masterpiece “an abomination,” complains to Marge: “It’s filth, it graphically depicts parts of the human body – which, practical as they are – are bad.”
That’s not too dissimilar to what some parents in America had to say this year, when in Tallahassee, Florida, they complained that the sculpture was “pornographic” after an art teacher showed students an image.
The principal was forced to resign over the renaissance art class after the school board told her to either resign or be fired, and later said one parent was “absolutely upset” and “felt her child shouldn’t be seeing these works”.
“Radioactive” fish
In one of the strangest “predictions” to come true this year, Simpsons viewers saw a connection between Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida eating a fish and an episode of the cartoon.
He is seen on video eating “safe and delicious” fish from the waters off the coast of Fukushima to allay safety concerns about the release of radioactive water.
Simpsons fans have linked it to a 1990 episode in which Mr. Burns eats a three-eyed fish said to have been mutated by nuclear power plant pollution.
It may not exactly be a prediction that came true, but it’s a pretty strange coincidence…
Of course, as many have pointed out, The Simpsons has been on the air since 1989 with hundreds of episodes, so it stands to reason that many of its scenarios do indeed resemble real events.
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