Nostradamus predicted the end of the world. So did many medieval popes, 19th-century psychics, and one evangelist radio show host who insisted the world would end on May 21, 2011, only to revise his timeline when the fateful day came and went without incident. There’s an ever-expanding Wikipedia entry for “dates predicted for apocalyptic events,” but we’ll save you the reading trouble and summarize: the art of prediction has long been a human obsession. Our brains are so well-equipped for pattern recognition that we can pull anything from the junk drawer of history a few decades later and call it fate.
Whether you believe that history repeats itself, or perhaps only rhymes, there have been some undeniably eerie coincidences between expectation and reality when it comes to prediction-making. In recent memory, the American sitcom The Simpsons has captivated audiences with its alleged portrayal of world events sometimes decades before they ever materialize. Below, we explore a few of the show’s most striking predictions, their real-world outcomes, and speculate as to what The Simpsons may have predicted for 2025.
Donald Trump’s presidency. In a 2000 episode called “Bart to the Future” (season 11, episode 17), a multiple-decade flash-forward reveals that Lisa is the president of the United States. During a scene in the Oval Office in which Lisa addresses the nation, she says, “As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump,” implying that she had inherited the White House from the then-business mogul. According to The Simpsons writer Dan Greaney, the line was intended to be “a warning to America,” as if the concept of a Trump presidency was so absurd at the time that writing it into the episode could serve as a cautionary message against political madness. However, today’s viewers know that the phrase “President Trump” is no longer fictional, as Donald Trump has recently entered his second term in the White House. It’s impossible to deny the uncanniness of this prediction’s accuracy, and for this reason, we’ll give it a 9/10 for its predictive power. Although the prediction is only mentioned in passing, its accuracy stands out when it is compared to other predictions. Additionally, the mention of an economy in crisis due to Trump’s leadership is especially eerie given the current economic overhaul taking place in the U.S. today. However, this moment is not the only one cited for its prediction of Trump’s campaign and presidency; you have no doubt seen the now iconic side-by-side of Trump—real and cartoon—descending an elevator as supporters cheer in the background. Many, upon seeing the image, believe that it is another one of The Simpsons’ iconic predictions, but this is untrue—it portrays an event that had already occurred. For this reason, we have no choice but to score this “prediction” a 0/10.
Kamala Harris’s pantsuit. Also from “Bart to the Future,” this theory posits that Lisa’s presidential outfit perfectly predicts former Vice President Kamala Harris’s inaugural outfit, a bright purple pantsuit adorned with a white beaded necklace and white beaded earrings. Lisa’s presidential hairstyle also somewhat resembles that of Kamala Harris, giving believers more to grasp onto. While the resemblance between Lisa and Kamala Harris is undoubtedly striking, it’s important to note that the episode makes no mention of Harris herself, and the outfit choice is where the similarities end. However, the scene does depict a woman holding power in the White House, which did happen, so we’ll give this prediction a 6.5/10 on the predictive scale.
The January 6 insurrection. 25 years before supporters of Donald Trump would storm the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, The Simpsons had allegedly predicted it. “The Day the Violence Died” (season 7, episode 18) centers on Bart helping a homeless man, Chester J. Lampwick, sue Itchy & Scratchy Studios for stealing his cartoon character. The episode is largely unremarkable in terms of prediction-making until a brief but apparently telling scene. Lampwick ends up suing the studio, rendering it bankrupt. In Itchy and Scratchy’s absence, new cartoons make their TV debut, including a parody of Schoolhouse Rock! wherein an anthropomorphized amendment to the Constitution sits on the steps of the Capitol, singing his hopes of being ratified. The amendment would legalize police brutality against “flag-burners who have got too much freedom” and “liberal freaks.” When the amendment is told it has been ratified, it declares, “Doors open, boys,” giving way to a rampage of gun-toting, bomb-throwing amendments up the Capitol steps. At the time, it was a clear satire of conservative politics in response to 90s debates and Supreme Court decisions around flag burning and free speech. But, following the real-world insurrection, the imagery of an armed mob organizing behind a political ideal and storming the Capitol held special significance for a people in a political crisis. That said, we’ll give this one a 4/10 for its predictive power. To us, it seems less of a prediction than a response to growing hostility toward political dissent, arguably similar to the hostility that fueled 2021 Capitol rioters who believed, in Trump’s words, that they were to “fight like hell” to prevent the erosion of American values. In this sense, this episode didn’t so much predict January 6th but brought to light long-building political tensions that would inevitably manifest in the years following.
Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl performance. In “Lisa Goes Gaga” (season 23, episode 22), which aired in 2012, the pop star visits Springfield and puts on a dazzling performance, flying above the crowd while attached to wires. Flash forward five years, and Gaga opened her 2017 Houston Super Bowl LI set in nearly the exact same fashion. To start, she descended from the stadium roof in a shimmering silver bodysuit quite similar to the one in the episode. Both performances also featured Gaga sitting down at the piano for an emotional moment mid-set, and a quick change into a glitzy two-piece costume. While this alleged prediction is one of the more striking in Simpsons history, we believe this is more of a case of the writers knowing their subject well instead of telling the future. In other words, it’s not absurd to say an aerially-daring, spectacle-heavy show is on-brand for Gaga. Still, the similarities between fiction and reality aren’t as easily negligible as some others in the show’s history. In conclusion: impressive but not exactly outside of the realm of possibility. 7/10.
The COVID-19 pandemic. According to an explosion of social media posts in the early days of COVID–19 lockdowns, “Marge in Chains” (season 4, episode 21) foresaw the global pandemic nearly 30 years in advance with its “Osaka flu” that infects the residents of Springfield after a worker at a factory in Japan coughs into a shipment of juicers. However, the vast majority of people who spread this theory did so as a joke rather than out of genuine belief; any images you might remember of Simpsons characters wearing masks or watching news broadcasts with “CORONAVIRUS” across the screen were nothing more than the creation of people stuck inside with too much time on their hands. More troublingly, the “Osaka flu” plotline was seized as fodder for online racist rhetoric, feeding into the wave of anti-Asian sentiment that surged alongside the actual pandemic. Given our very long history of viral outbreaks, it’s hardly surprising that The Simpsons would feature a pandemic at some point (in fact, the show is also credited with predicting the Ebola, mpox, and HIV/AIDS outbreaks, along with others). For this reason, we’ll also be giving this so-called “prediction” a 0/10.
The future? If we’re to take The Simpsons at its word, we should be flying around in solar-powered cars and colonizing Mars while those left on Earth are overtaken by AI robots as soon as this year. In “The Marge-ian Chronicles” (season 27, episode 16), Lisa volunteers for a mission to colonize Mars, eventually convincing the rest of her family to follow suit. Like many of the events we’ve discussed so far, it isn’t so much of an earnest prediction as it is a product of its environment. In 2016, when the episode aired, excitement around privatized space travel was at its peak as figures and companies like Elon Musk and his SpaceX were ramping up plans for Mars missions. We have made much progress since then, with NASA’s Perseverance rover collecting samples ever since its 2021 landing to determine the planet’s habitability, and SpaceX envisioning sending crewed missions as early as the 2030s. That being said, there is obviously an incredible volume of deep technological and ethical issues surrounding space travel and colonization still today. If you’re holding your breath for a mass migration to Mars anytime soon, you might want to let it out. In addition to technological premonitions, The Simpsons has also tried its hand at predicting zombie apocalypses, World War III, and even the end of the world. Although it seems to many that The Simpsons has had unusual predictive power, it’s important to remember that, above anything, the show is simply holding up a mirror to society—whether consciously or not, viewers project their knowledge and understanding of the world onto the media they consume. Although they can be fun and exciting, The Simpsons’ so-called “predictions” should be taken with a grain of salt.