The Simpsons: Pop-Culture Prophets?
The Simpsons might as well be renamed as The Nostradamuses judging by how often it appears to have predicted the future with eerie precision. Yes, since the Fox animation first hit our screens in the late 1980s, it’s foreshadowed everything from smartphone technology to Olympic triumphs. And for many, its most staggering prophecy-come-true relates to the U.S. presidential elections of 2016.
The Trump prediction
Yes, in the 2000 episode “Bart to the Future,” Bart envisioned a scenario that would have been unthinkable at the time but proved to be eerily accurate: Donald Trump becoming the President of the United States.
The troublemaker sees into a future where sister Lisa takes over from the entrepreneur in the White House and is forced to fix all the issues he caused. The idea of Trump climbing his way to the top of the political ladder was undoubtedly considered a joke at the turn of the century.
“Being right sucks”
In fact, Trump had already tried to enter the political fray as a third-party candidate by this point and got absolutely nowhere. And yet, as we all know, 16 years later, Trump surprised everyone by pipping Hillary Clinton to become the 45th POTUS.
A week after the shock result, The Simpsons team decided that the chalkboard joke that appears in each credits sequence should read, “Being right sucks.” It’s fair to say, then, that the gag wasn’t exactly wishful thinking.
Radioactive food
And it seems as though Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida may have got a few ideas from watching The Simpsons, too. In 2023 the politician and three members of his cabinet decided to put their money where their mouths were and consume some homegrown sashimi live on air.
This was a bid to quell fears that the foodstuff was no longer safe to eat after radioactive wastewater had been released from the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Three Eyes on Every Fish
The Simpsons fans may well have been reminded of a similar turn of events in an episode first screened way back in 1990: “Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish.”
Here, a three-eyed fish is discovered by Bart close to the town’s nuclear plant. Its owner, Mr. Burns, insists that there’s no threat to public safety. But he’s then served up Bart’s mutant find to eat live on television by Marge.