The Simpsons have done it again, with a series of scary predictions that appear to have come true this year, after years of getting it right.
For more than three decades, viewers have wondered how Springfield citizens and the notorious cartoon family manage to find themselves in important world events before they occur.
And, while there are lots of conspiracies (and even some rational explanations), this year’s predictions are genuinely eerie, and the enigma has once again perplexed spectators.
The Simpsons producers have previously predicted Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States, Lady Gaga’s appearance at the Super Bowl, and even a Coronavirus pandemic.
But what happened this year?
The Titanic submersible tragedy
A Simpsons clip resurfaced earlier this year, around the time when the missing Titan sub, which had five people on board, was announced to have imploded in a ‘catastrophic’ way, killing the passengers who had been travelling to the sunken Titanic ship’s wreckage.
Homer embarked for an underwater ‘treasure cruise’ and reunited with his long-lost father, Mason, in a 2006 episode titled Homer’s Paternity Coot.
During their journey, the father-son duo seeks to locate a sunken ship (similar to the father-son combo on board the OceanGate submersible), but along the route, Homer’s control panel flashes with a ‘oxygen low’ indicator before becoming disoriented.
Thankfully, he wakes up three days later in hospital after getting free but losing consciousness in the sub when the indicator flashes ‘oxygen gone’.
Later developments showed that showrunner Mike Reiss, who created the programme, had been on three previous trips with Titanic sub business OceanGate.
Barbie mania
The episode (which was inspired by Mattel’s 1992 doll Teen Talk Barbie) sees newsreader Kent Brockman urged by his daughter to do a newscast about a new doll called Lisa Lionheart, made by Lisa and the Malibu Stacy creator Stacy Lovell.
It eventually turns into a whole segment and is clearly ‘important news’, as Brockman says on air: ‘Though it was unusual to spend 28 minutes reporting on a doll, this reporter found it impossible to stop talking. It’s just really fascinating news folks. Good night.’
Ahead of the Barbie movie released this year, The Simpsons writer Bill Oakley spoke about the episode, saying: ‘It particularly seems to resonate with women, I would say. When I meet a female Simpsons fan, that is often the one they cite as their favourite.’
Donald Trump’s arrest
The Simpsons had foreseen the former US President’s incarceration in the same Lisa versus Malibu Stacy episode – kind of.
After gushing over the new doll, Brockman concluded his news section with, ‘Oh, and the president got detained.’
While the nameless president was jailed for murder on The Simpsons, Trump was arrested and charged with election tampering this year.
Elon Musk’s Twitter rebrand
Twitter rebranded as ‘X’ in one of the oddest changes of the year.
Elon Musk informed Twitter’s business partners in April that the company had been renamed X Corp after purchasing the platform for $44 billion in October of last year.
‘And soon we will bid farewell to the tweet [sic] brand and, gradually, all the birds,’ he remarked.
Of course, The Simpsons had seen it coming, as viewers discovered that in a 2012 episode titled Ned ‘n’ Edna’s Blend Agenda, Homer already had a very similar software on his phone – and it looked just like Musk’s new logo.
Censoring Michelangelo’s David
In a 1990 episode titled Itchy & Scratchy & Marge, Springfield’s parents decided to censor a cartoon programme before criticising Michelangelo’s sculpture David, which was touring the world at the time.
One parent, calling the masterpiece ‘an abomination’, complains to Marge: ‘It’s filth, it graphically portrays parts of the human body – which practical as they may be – are evil.’
That’s not dissimilar to what some parents in the United States had to say earlier this year, when parents in Tallahassee, Florida, protested that the sculpture was ‘pornographic’ when an art instructor showed children a photograph.
The principal was forced to resign over the Renaissance art lesson, after the school’s governing board told her to either step down or be fired, and later told HuffPost that one parent was ‘point-blank upset’ and ‘felt her child should not be viewing those pieces’.
‘Radioactive’ fish
In one of the more bizarre ‘predictions’ that came true this year, The Simpsons viewers saw a link between Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida eating a fish and an episode of the cartoon.
To address safety worries over the release of radioactive water, the lawmaker was videoed eating’safe and tasty’ fish from seas off the shore of Fukushima.
Fans of The Simpsons traced it back to a 1990 episode in which Mr Burns consumes a three-eyed fish that has mutated due to pollution from his nuclear power station.
While it’s not precisely a forecast that came true, it’s an odd coincidence…
The Simpsons is available to watch on Channel 4.