Did The Simpsons predict the tragic Titanic sub as well as other real-world events?

There was a shocking likeness to an episode of The Simpsons with the tragic disaster which took the lives of five men in June 2023. The missing submersible Titan suffered “catastrophic implosion,” the US Coast Guard confirmed. Did The Simpsons predict this?

There are some chilling similarities between the 2006 episode and the disappearance of the Titan. Homer and his long-lost father discover a shipwrecked boat which is a striking resemblance to that of the Titanic and is split in half just like the famous wreck.

Photo: Fox

Homer then follows a luminous fish and gets himself stuck, watching the oxygen-low lights flash before he passes out. Fans of the show are saying it's a direct prediction - like many of the previous events the show has seemingly forecasted.

Photo: Fox

So, do you believe in premonitions or do you only see coincidences between 'The Simpsons' and recent events? The animated series depicts numerous situations that, over time, became reality - or at least in part.

A president, a pandemic, a lost game... These are just a few on the list of 'The Simpsons' predictions.

The series was created in 1987 by Matt Groening. Thanks to its wit and character, it became a huge hit with the masses. 'The Simpsons' even surpassed 30 years on the air.

With more than 700 episodes in 33 seasons, 'The Simpsons' is among the series with the most episodes in the history of television. In addition, it went to the big screen in 2007 - coinciding with its 20th anniversary. 'The Simpsons Movie' grossed around 526 million dollars worldwide.

Continuing its spooky string of accurate predictions about real-world events, the show is also said to have predicted the outbreak of monkeypox in 2022.

Photo: Fox

Season 7, Episode 3, 'Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily,' dating way back to 1995, shows Bart and Milhouse both getting sick after playing with a monkey.

Photo: Fox

After 'Simpsons' fans made the connection between this 1995 episode and the 2022 outbreak of monkeypox in Europe and the US, other people were quick to point out that monkeypox is not a new phenomenon. The first case was diagnosed in humans in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1970. So while the episode may not have predicted the beginnings of the disease, one might say that it 'predicted' its occurrence in the United States.

Photo: Fox

The first of the 'premonitions' of The Simpsons dates back to 1993, when the episode 'Marge in Chains' was released. The city of Springfield is plunged into panic due to a disease of Asian origin: the Osaka Flu.

Like Covid-19, the 'Osaka flu', as it was called in the series, was extremely contagious and was transmitted through the respiratory tract.

The same episode showed a familiar figure from the current pandemic: the denialist. We could see medical professionals denying the existence of the virus, such as Doctor Julius Hibbert who suggested that it was all a false alarm and that the affected patients just needed to rest.

For some, the 'Osaka Flu' was not the only 'premonition' in 'The Simpsons.' In a moment of widespread anger, a group of people overturn a truck full of bees that escape and invade the city. In a somewhat more forced 'prediction' than the previous one, viewers have compared this scene in the series to the locust invasion that took place in several areas of Argentina and Paraguay in 2020.

Ebola was another disease referred to in the series in 1997. The episode 'Lisa's Saxophone' shows how Marge gives Bart a book entitled 'Curious George and the Ebola Virus'. It's a moment that many remembered during the outbreak of the disease that began in Guinea in December 2013 and affected several countries throughout the following year.

Another accurate prediction from 'The Simpsons' is related to the world of football. In the episode 'You Don't Have to Live Like a Referee', from season 25 in 2013, the Simpson family travels to Rio de Janeiro to watch a match between Brazil and Germany in which the Cariocas are defeated. Just one year later, in the 2014 World Cup, the two teams met in the semi-finals in the same stadium with a 7-1 result in favor of the Germans.

Also, in that same episode, 'The Simpsons' witnessed the star of the Brazilian team fall injured and leave the field on a stretcher. Do you remember what happened to Neymar in that World Cup? The reality is that he was not injured against Germany but in the previous match against Colombia, where he suffered a fractured vertebra that prevented him from playing the rest of the tournament.

But there were more premonitions that would end up coming true. In the same episode, the FIFA president was arrested on corruption charges, something very similar to what happened two years later, in 2015. Seven of the organisation's leaders were arrested on the same charges, which also led to the resignation of the president, Joseph Blatter.

The 'football' episode was completed with one more premonition. 'The Simpsons' predicted that Brazil would put a 200 reais note into circulation. And so it happened. The Brazilian Central Bank would do so in 2020 in the face of the significant demand for cash due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the episode 'Bart to the Future', first aired in 2000, Lisa becomes the first female president of the United States, replacing Donald Trump. So far, Americans have not had a female leader, but they have had Trump, who was in office from 2017 to 2020.

The first female president of the United States has not yet arrived, but many are hoping that the 'Bart to the Future' storyline will come true. Perhaps that president will be Kamala Harris, who's been wearing outfits very similar to the one Lisa wore in that very episode.

The environment has been a recurring theme throughout the history of 'The Simpsons.' In 1990 the episode 'Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes in Every Fish' featured fish in the local river that were mutated by the effects of the Springfield nuclear power plant where Homer works.

Several years later, in 2011, the website Infobae reported the news of a group of fishermen who claimed that they had found a three-eyed tarariid fish (hoplias) in a lake in Córdoba (Argentina). They looked very similar to the one we have seen in 'The Simpsons.' Curiously, the place where they found it was also very close to a nuclear power station.

In the episode 'New York City vs. Homer Simpson,' which aired in 1997, the Simpson family travels to the Big Apple. The World Trade Center is of great importance, as it is the place where their car is clamped, and Homer has to go from one twin tower to another in order to relieve himself. In the middle of all this, we can see the cover of a magazine in which the two towers can be seen forming the number 11 and whose price was 9 dollars. Years later, on 11 September 2001, that place was destroyed by a terrorist attack...

In 1998, the episode 'When You Criticise a Star' featured a sign saying that Fox was owned by the Disney group as a subsidiary. At the time that deal seemed impossible. Nevertheless, 21 years later, in 2019, Disney bought Fox in what many called "one of the biggest deals in Hollywood history."

'The Simpsons' also predicted major advances in the world of technology. An example is the episode 'Lisa on Ice' in 1994. At that time, mobile phones were still the size of a brick. However, 'The Simpsons' showed a small, touch-screen device... with spellcheck!

As if that weren't enough, if we look closely at the super-tech phone in the scene, we can see that it has a brand logo... an apple! Not only was it a long time before the rise of smartphones in general, but the first iPhone in particular would not be launched on the market until 13 years later.

Videoconferencing has become very popular due to teleworking and the confinement of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, in 'Lisa's wedding' - episode 19 of season 6 in 1995 - the little girl can be seen talking to Marge via this tool. Once again, they anticipated something that today is commonplace and widely used by everyone, but which at the time seemed so futuristic.

It's not just smartphones. 'The Simpsons' also predicted that we would be wearing smartwatches. In the future world of that 1995 episode, Lisa's fiancé talked on the phone and read messages through his watch. Quite a coincidence, isn't it?

And we couldn't finish this review of 'The Simpsons' predictions without remembering the episode 'Lisa is Gaga', which was first aired in 2012. That episode featured Lady Gaga putting on a great show in Springfield. The funny thing about all this is that in 2017 the music diva performed at the Superbowl, flying on steel cables, just as she did in the series.