The internet hath wrought many things, but few of them are as interesting as the discovery that storylines of the fictional animated show The Simpsons have a tendency to become reality. The show is said to have “predicted” events as varied as the 9/11 terrorist attack and the advent of the Smart Watch, plus dozens of other current events that were future ones when the show initially aired.

Fans of the The Simpsons are fueling the phenomenon, crowd-sourcing the sleuthing necessary to pore over a show jam-packed with throwaway details and minutiae in over 700 episodes spanning a 30-year run that’s still going strong. It’s a massive game of Where’s’ Waldo that has resulted in a list of predictions that keeps getting longer.

The number of accurate predictions made by The Simpsons credibly numbers around 30 but can go as high as 50 or more depending on your tolerance for ambiguity and your ability to read meaning into shit that may or may not be there.

The Simpsons’ “predictions” aren’t actually predictions, of course, meaning that there has been no overt intent by the show, its writers, or creator to foretell the future (that we know of). The stories they create just sometimes coincidentally become reality.

The Simpsons‘ writers downplay the show’s predictive ability. Matt Groening, its creator, said the writers gravitate towards the most absurd possibilities in a given situation, presumably to demonstrate how foolish and misguided humans can be. Then, at some point in the future, we simply live up to those expectations.

Additionally, the high number of cultural references per episode combined with the high number of episodes overall guarantees that some of the show’s “predictions” will end up being true just because of the law of averages. This is similar to that idea that if you give a chimpanzee a typewriter and an infinite timeframe to work with, his random key strokes will result in the complete works of Shakespeare (this is called the infinite monkey theorem by the way).

This list of some of the more interesting “predictions” of The Simpsons is so accurate at times that the idea of them all being mere “coincidences” strains credulity (especially No. 2: Trump). They have got to be hiding a Tardis or a Delorean in that show’s writer’s room. We predict you’ll get goosebumps.

In the episode “Lisa’s Wedding” (Season 6, Episode 19), which aired in 1995, a glimpse into the future shows Lisa’s fiancé using his watch to communicate. The detail seemed a bit far-fetched at the time, two decades prior to release of the Apple Watch, but is this a bona fide prediction? Probably not, since plenty of TV shows prior to The Simpsons used the “watch phone” as a trope (I’m thinking of Get Smart and the animated series Inspector Gadget, specifically).

The episode “Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Baadasssss Song” (Season 5, Episode 19) features a joke about the school cafeteria serving “Grade F” meat, which includes horse meat. In 2013, a real-life scandal erupted when European supermarkets were caught selling horse meat labeled as beef. Once again, The Simpsons appeared to be ahead of the game.

Did The Simpsons really predict 9/11? This again is highly doubtful, but there is something admittedly creepy about the the scene that sparked this idea. It’s in the 1997 episode “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson” (Season 9, Episode 1), which aired four years before planes were flown into the World Trade Center. In this New York-based episode a flyer procured by Lisa advertises $9 bus rides to New York, but the twin towers’ placement on the flyer adjacent to the nine in the price definitely does resemble the date many of us will never forget.

In the episode “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace” (Season 10, Episode 2), Homer becomes an inventor and scribbles a complicated equation on a chalkboard. Years later, physicists discovered that Homer’s equation was strangely close to predicting the mass of the Higgs Boson particle, which wasn’t confirmed until 2012. This must have been an attempt by the writers to be as scientifically accurate as possible. Whoever that writer was, they should consider a career change. Particle physicists are said to be in short supply.

In the episode “When You Dish Upon a Star” (Season 10, Episode 5), a sign outside the 20th Century Fox studio declares that the company is “A Division of Walt Disney Co.” At the time, the notion seemed absurd, but in 2017, Disney finalized its $52 billion acquisition of 20th Century Fox, beating a bid Comcast had made for the company. It remains one of the biggest media mergers in history, and reduced the number of major Hollywood movie studios from six down to five. It also made another prescient Simpsons “prediction” a reality.

In “$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)” (Season 5, Episode 10), parodies of Siegfried and Roy called Gunter and Ernst get attacked by their white tiger, Anastasia. Slightly less than 10 years later, the Roy part of Siegfried & Roy, Roy Horn, was also attacked by, you guessed it, a white tiger owned by the duo. A cynic would say it was only a matter of time before one of these wild jungle cats had a bad day, but the specificity of the color of the tiger in question lends some gravitas to this “prediction”.

In the episode “Lisa Goes Gaga” (Season 23, Episode 22), which aired in 2012, Lady Gaga performs for the citizens of Springfield while suspended by cables wearing the kind of metal cone bra favored by Madonna. Five years later, during the Super Bowl LI halftime show in 2017, the real-life Lady Gaga performed a similar stunt, sans fireworks-espewing bra. The flight over the audience attached to wires part was similar enough to warrant inclusion in this list. It makes one wonder, however, was this just a case of life reflecting art reflecting life? Or, in other words, could it be that Lady Gaga is simply a Simpsons fan?

In the episode “Marge in Chains” (Season 4, Episode 21), a flu-like virus called the “Osaka Flu” spreads through Springfield after arriving from Japan. While The Simpsons didn’t predict COVID-19 specifically, the episode bears a striking resemblance to the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, with characters hoarding supplies, people getting sick en masse, and an inadequate government response to the crisis. The eerie parallels between this episode and the global pandemic that began in 2020 are hard to ignore.

Perhaps one of the most famous Simpsons predictions came in the episode “Bart to the Future” (Season 11, Episode 17), which aired in 2000. In this future-set episode, Lisa becomes President of the United States after Donald Trump’s presidency leaves the country in shambles.

Note that Trump isn’t shown in the episode, only mentioned by Lisa as being the President whose mess she has inherited. You can hear it in the above clip which should start at the 2:20 mark. Interestingly, Snopes has alleged this prediction is a hoax or myth, basing that conclusion on the poor editorial choice of some blog posts to accompany a discussion about this Simpsons episode with an imge of Trump from a later appearance on the show. Sorry Snopes, you failed to do your homework here. This prediction is legit as you can see in the above clip.

Months before the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, another prediction emerged from the Simpsons‘ “Bart to the Future” epiosode (No. 2, above). Supposedly, the show predicted Kamala Harris’ election as President in 2024. In the episode, Lisa is referred to as the “first straight female president,” which some people have claimed is a reference to Kamala Harris. That would be thin evidence indeed if that’s all there was. But then one sees the comparison between Lisa’s outfit in the episode — a purple power suit with pearl necklace — and what Harris wore to be sworn in as Vice President, and the prediction starts to hold water.

However, we now know that Harris lost the Presidential election to Donald Trump. In the original version of this story, written prior to the election, I had promised that if Trump won, this no. 1 “prediction” would need to be removed from the list. That’s because everyone has been reading these predictions wrong.

The Simpsons’ Trump prediction above wasn’t predicting his first term in office as 45th president, but his second (non-sequential) one as the 47th. Lisa’s presidency in that episode, taking place 30 years in the future from its 2000 air date, makes her the U.S.’s 48th president.

We won’t know if the #1 prediction is accurate or not until November 2029. And by then it may be another “straight female” woman running for President instead of Kamala Harris. For now we’ll leave this prediction in the top spot. Hopeful thinking about the future.