JCPenney Files For Bankruptcy
JCPenney is a department store chain that was founded in 1902. In an episode titled Please Homer, Don’t Hammer ‘Em, the family stumbles upon a dilapidated JCPenney store.
The joke was that the company was shutting down and on its last legs. Last year, JCPenney actually filed for bankruptcy, citing financial difficulties due to the pandemic.
USA Wins Gold In Curling
In Boy Meets Curl, an episode from 2010, Homer and Marge become fans of curling. They get better and better at it until they end up winning a gold medal over Sweden and Russia.
Eight years later, this came true in real life. Team USA beat Sweden in the 2018 Winter Olympics and won the gold medal, something that had never happened before.
Greta Thunberg And Climate Change
In the Simpsons movie, released in 2007, climate change is a big plot point. Lisa desperately tries to advocate for change, but her pleas fall on deaf ears.
In 2019, Greta Thunberg, a young student from Sweden, stood before the UN to take action against climate change in the same way eight-year-old Lisa did in the movie. Her passion and knowledge were eerily similar.
First Woman In The White House
Bart to the Future is an episode from 2000 where it’s shown that Lisa becomes the first female president of the United States in the future. At the time she takes office, she is seen wearing a purple suit with pearls.
Earlier this year, Kamala Harris was sworn in as the first woman vice president in the country, and she wore the exact same outfit Lisa wore in the episode. The Simpsons’ episode was almost identical to what happened in real life.
The Mass Of A Particle Is Discovered By Homer
In The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace, Homer decides to become an inventor. At one point, he can be seen working out an equation that seems extremely complicated.
Fourteen years after the episode was released, Simon Singh, a theoretical and particle physicist, realized that the equation that Homer works out is almost identical to the one used to calculate the mass of an elementary particle called the Higgs boson.
Global Pandemic
Marge in Chains is a 1993 episode that shows a factory worker sneezing into a package that is then shipped to Springfield. Subsequently, the entire town is threatened by what is known as the ‘Osaka Flu’.
This seems to have foreshadowed the current events of the global pandemic. Not only that, but in the same episode, a man is seen releasing a swarm of ‘Killer Bees,’ which has also been a current concern around the world.
Cannabis Is Legal In Canada
In the 2005 episode titled Midnight Rx, Homer and Ned Flanders take a trip to Canada after Springfield makes prescription drugs too expensive for people to afford. There, they find out that cannabis consumption is legal in Canada.
This doesn’t sound too crazy until you realize that in 2005, it wasn’t legal yet. The recreational use of cannabis was legalized in Canada just two years ago, while it is still illegal in most US states.
Prince William’s Receding Hairline
In And Maggie Makes Three, we can see the story of how Marge and Homer had their three children. With every pregnancy, Homer is seen losing more and more hair, and by the time their third child, Maggie, comes around, Homer is completely bald.
Internet users cleverly pointed out how this resembled Prince William’s receding hairline and how after each of his children was born, he lost more and more hair. He and Kate Middleton also have three children, just like Marge and Homer.
Lady Gaga Performs A High Wire Act
Lady Gaga is known for her extravagant performances, but she had never performed a high wire act until after The Simpsons showed her doing it.
In season 23’s Lisa Goes Gaga, the famous singer performs in the air wearing a platinum outfit to inspire Lisa and give her confidence. A few years later, Lady Gaga had an almost identical performance during the Super Bowl halftime show.
Bengt Holmström Wins The Nobel Prize
The premiere episode of season 22 showed Milhouse and Lisa participating in a Nobel Prize betting pool. They each had to guess who would win the Nobel Prize that year, and Milhouse can be seen selecting Bengt Hlmström as the winner.
In 2016, Hlmström actually won the Nobel Prize in Economics "for work on contract theory and how to evaluate whether things should be government-run or privately owned."
Disney Buys Fox
The 1998 episode When You Dish Upon a Star follows Homer as he becomes the personal assistant to Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. He gets involved with other Hollywood stars as well.
At one point, there’s a 20th Century Fox sign that reads ‘A Division of Walt Disney Co.’ Twenty years later, Disney actually bought Fox for $52.4 billion.
Tomacco
In E'i E'i (Annoyed Grunt), the Simpsons leave everything to move to a farm. Homer accidentally creates a plant that is a mixture of tobacco and tomato and names it ‘tomacco’. People become addicted to tomacco, and the Simpsons almost become rich off of it.
Inspired by this episode, a man in Oregon attempted to grow a tobacco-tomato hybrid. The plant, however, did not have the addictive properties that the one in the episode had.
Daenerys Targaryen Burns King’s Landing To The Ground
Game of Thrones was arguably the biggest TV show of the last decade. Millions of people tuned in to watch the last season of the show in 2019. Most fans were shocked to see Daenerys Targaryen go mad and set King’s Landing on fire with her fire-breathing dragon.
The exact same thing happened two years prior in an episode called The Serfsons. In it, the Simpsons are shown in an alternate fantasy universe which is ultimately destroyed by a dragon.
Meat Inside Gym Mats
There’s a Simpsons episode in which Lunch Lady Doris throws gym mats into a meat grinder to prepare the school lunch for the day. This is a joke referring to how disgusting school lunches tend to be, almost as if they were feeding kids fabric instead of actual meat.
Well, in 2011, it was discovered that McDonald’s was using an ingredient in its food that is also used to keep gym mats spongey. The ingredient, azodicarbonamide, is banned in some parts of Europe.
A Poll Machine Is Hacked
In Treehouse of Horror XIX, which came out in 2008, Homer can be seen attempting to vote for Barack Obama in the presidential elections. Whenever he tries to vote for Obama, however, the poll machine switches his vote to John McCain.
In 2012, when Obama ran for reelection, a voting machine in Pennsylvania was rigged to switch every vote for Obama to a vote for his opponent, Mitt Romney, just as it had happened in The Simpsons four years prior.
Grease Thieves
In Lard of the Dance, Homer and Bart become grease thieves. They steal grease from Springfield Elementary and resell it for profit. It all comes to an end when Groundskeeper Willie catches them in the act.
In 2011, a restaurant in St. Louis, St. Louis Wing Co., reported that $2,000 worth of grease had been stolen. According to the restaurant owner, this is an actual issue that restaurants are facing.
Video Chatting
The season six episode titled Lisa’s Wedding, which came out in 1995, takes place in the future when Bart and Lisa are all grown up. In it, we can see Lisa and Marge video chatting through Lisa’s phone.
This type of technology was not developed until several years later. Skype was created in 2003 and was only available for computers. Then, in 2010, Apple finally created FaceTime to allow people to video chat on their smartphones.
Donald Trump Becomes President
This is probably the craziest prediction ever made by The Simpsons because of how random it was. Back in 2000, nobody would have ever thought that Trump would run for president… except for the creators of the show.
In Bart to the Future, when Lisa becomes president, she mentions that her predecessor was Donald Trump. Sixteen years later, it became true.
Scotchtoberfest
In Bart’s Girlfriend, a season six episode, Principal Skinner devises a plan to catch Bart red-handed as he pulls one of his famous pranks. He hosts the ‘Scotchtoberfest’ and has Groundskeeper Willie teach students all about Scottish culture.
Skinner hopes to bait Bart into pranking Willie and punish him for it. Scotchtoberfest was never a real celebration until Des Moines, Iowa, decided to actually host it years after the episode came out.
The Hangover
Viva Ned Flanders is a 1999 episode where Homer and Flanders take a trip to Las Vegas without their wives. After a night of heavy drinking, they woke up in a trashed hotel room and realized that they got married to two strangers.
Sounds familiar? Many years later, The Hangover was released. This movie has a lot of similarities to this episode, and it also takes place in Las Vegas.
Flaming Moe’s
In one episode, Homer tells Moe that he came up with a recipe for an amazing drink using cough syrup, liquor and then lighting the mixture on fire. Moe then steals the recipe and calls it the ‘Flaming Moe.’
Years later, people started attempting to recreate the drink, and one bar in New York actually sold it. They mixed Pernod, Jagermeister, Bacardi 151, a bottle of cough syrup, and then set it on fire. The drink definitely gets you drunk but is very dangerous to consume.
Sugar Truck
Lisa’s Rival is an episode about Lisa and a new student named Allison, who makes her feel threatened. The subplot of the episode follows Homer as he witnesses a car crash involving a sugar truck. Homer steals a large pile of sugar from the wreckage and attempts to sell it.
As wacky as this plot sounds, this ended up happening in real life. In 2009, two children in India stole a sugar truck and attempted to resell the sugar. They were caught by police before they could actually sell it.
The Good Morning Burger
In Bart’s Friend Falls in Love, an episode released in 1992, Homer sees a commercial on TV for the ‘Good Morning Burger:’ The TV announcer describes it as Homer gasps in disbelief: the burger is 18 ounces of ground beef fried in butter, topped off with bacon, ham, and a fried egg.
Back then, breakfast burgers were not a thing, especially burgers with so many greasy ingredients. Years later, however, the Good Morning Burger was actually made in real life. Nowadays, it is very common to find this type of burger in many fast food restaurants.
Bloody Billboard
There’s an episode where Bart is desperate to go see the new Itchy and Scratchy movie but because he got in trouble at school, Homer decides to put his foot down and not let him go see it. At one point, you can see the billboard for the film.
The billboard features fake blood coming out of Scratchy’s neck. When Kill Bill came out a few years later, a similar billboard was made to promote the film in New Zealand.
The Land Of Chocolate
In one episode, Springfield’s nuclear plant is bought by German businessmen. One of them tells Homer that he comes from ‘the Land of Chocolate,’ referring to Germany. Homer takes this literally and imagines himself in a magical land made entirely of chocolate.
Years after the episode came out, China made this idea into something real. A theme park made of chocolate opened its doors in Shanghai. It featured 80 tons of Belgian chocolate sculptures.
Elected To Lead, Not To Read
In the Simpsons movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the president of the United States. The whole joke is that he is not smart enough to do his job, and at one point, he says: ‘I was elected to lead, not to read.’
In the 2012 GOP race, Herman Cain used the slogan ‘We need a leader, not a reader’ for his campaign. Needless to say, he did not get very far in the race.
Star Wars And Alvin And The Chipmunks
There’s a fictional studio in The Simpsons known as Ginormous Pictures. It does not play a big role in the show, but it does appear from time to time. In one episode, you can see that the studio is releasing two movies: Star Wars: The Apology, and Alvin and the Chipmunks 3 at the same time.
In 2015, these two movie franchises shared an opening weekend, with Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Road Chip premiering on the same day.
The Leftorium
In Ned Flanders Fails, we see Flanders’ Leftorium store for the first time. It is a shop that exclusively sells objects designed for left-handed people. Homer wishes that Flanders’ business fails and, when it does, he feels guilty about it and helps him save it.
In 2009, a shop called Lefty’s opened its doors in San Francisco. Much like the Leftorium, the store sells left-handed scissors, pens, notebooks, and more.
Ice To See You
The recurring character of McBain is a parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who starred in countless action films during the 1990s. In Last Exit to Springfield, McBain busts out of an ice sculpture and says ‘Ice to see you’ to his enemies.
This cringey joke kind of came true when Arnold Schwarzenegger played Mr. Freeze in 1997’s Batman and Robin. He makes ice-related puns throughout the whole movie.