The excitement over the recent Coldplay kiss-cam capture of Astronomer CEO Andy Byron just will not die. The newest wrinkle: According to posts going viral on X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and probably Friendster, The Simpsons predicted this exact event back in 2015.
According to a post from Megan Strickland on Instagram, The Simpsons Season 26, Episode 10, titled “The Man Who Came to Be Dinner” featured this image:
Credit: Megan Strickland/Instagram
Sorry, everyone, but The Simpsons did not predict the kiss-cam video. Season 26, Episode 10, is entitled “The Man Who Came to Be Dinner,” but it’s about aliens Kang and Kodos kidnapping the Simpsons to eat them. There is no kiss cam, or anything like it, and the the image that has gone viral was generated by AI.
It’s become an internet tradition to claim The Simpsons predicted something when it didn’t, and these kinds of predictions would be easy to dismiss if it weren’t for the number of times the show actually did predict future events.
The Simpsons predicting the future
There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of examples of The Simpsons actually having predicted the future. Here are only a few:
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The Trump presidency: 16 years before the first Trump presidential election, The Simpson’s called it. Season 11, Episode 17, “Bart to the Future,” is a flash-forward episode in which Lisa has become president. At one point she remarks, “We inherited quite the budget crunch from President Trump.”
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Oceangate submersible accident: While Season 17’s “Homer’s Paternity Coot” episode didn’t exactly predict the implosion of Oceangate’s Titan submersible in 2006, you have to admit the crafts look eerily similar to the real thing:
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Siegfried and Roy tiger Attack: Back in 1994, The Simpsons episode “$pringfield” features German tiger trainers “Gunter and Ernst” performing in Mr. Burns’ casino. The act ends in tragedy when a white tiger attacks the pair. This was 10 years before Roy of Siegfried and Roy was really attacked by one of his tigers.
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The U.S. winning a gold medal in curling: In 2010’s episode “Boy Meets Curl” the U.S. curling teams wins a gold in the Olympics, eight years before the actual U.S. team took home the gold in the Pyeongchang games.
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The Higgs-Boson particle: A throwaway visual gag in season 10 episode shows Homer having scribbled a complicated equation on a chalkboard. Fourteen years later, the Higgs Boson particle was discovered and Homer’s equation was remarkably close to the actual mass of the particle.
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Cypress Hill performs with the London Symphony orchestra: In 1996 episode in which Homer goes on tour with Lollapalooza, a joke is made about hip-hop group Cypress Hill performing their hit “Insane in the Membrane” with The London Symphony Orchestra. In 2024, it actually happened.
Are The Simpsons’ writers psychic?
No. But the recurring illusion of The Simpsons as a prophetic text is a fascinating case study in how and why predictions of the future can seem so real. Logically, people can’t see the future because it hasn’t happened yet, but belief in sooth-saying is nearly universal for a reason, and these Simpsons predictions-come-true illustrate why people believe in all kinds of predictions and prophecies.
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A broken clock is right twice a day: There have been 790 episodes of The Simpsons. Each is 22 minutes long and features roughly 10 jokes per minute. That’s 173,800 jokes and counting. The law of averages is enough to conclude that some of those jokes are going to happen. When you consider that The Simpsons is a parody of society, which imagines outlandish outcomes that are funny because they’re so plausible, something like the show correctly predicting the Trump presidency, a U.S. curling gold medal, or a tiger attacking its trainers is inevitable.
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People lying: People say The Simpsons predicts things like the Coldplay debacle all the time, for fun or profit, just as people have always lied to the rubes to separate them from their money.
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We want to believe: In the 1555s, French astrologer Nostradamus published The Prophecies, a book of verse that has been said to have predicted World War II, the Great Fire of London, the moon landing, the Kennedy assassination, and just about every other historical event. Nostradamus verses are intentionally obtuse, but once word got out that he was predicting things, people started applying his words to everything. Just like The Simpsons submersible episode: Homer’s sub looks a little like the Oceangate submarine, but if no one believed The Simpsons could predict the future in the first place, no one would’ve made the connection. The Higgs Boson prediction, too: I don’t know enough physics to verify the math, so I’m just taking someone else’s word for it.
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The self-fulfilling prophecy: Cypress Hill played with the London Symphony orchestra because it was a joke on The Simpsons. Life imitating art.
Bottom line: The Simpsons is the Nostradamus of animated sitcoms. It didn’t predict the Coldplay kiss-cam moment, just like it didn’t predict every major event in world history. Still, it used to be pretty funny.