Your support helps us to tell the story
Our mission is to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting that holds power to account and exposes the truth.
Whether $5 or $50, every contribution counts.
Support us to deliver journalism without an agenda.
Louise Thomas
Editor
For years, The Simpsons has bizarrely predicted future events well before they happen.
From Donald Trump’s presidency down to the 2020 murder hornet invasion, the popular long-running cartoon’s ability to eerily foreshadow seemingly unforeseeable occurrences has often left viewers astounded.
But executive producer and showrunner Matt Selman insists the key to coming up with storylines that will likely come to fruition isn’t as magical as some might think.
“Well, the sourpuss answer I always give that no one likes is that if you study history and math, it would be literally impossible for us not to predict things,” he told People in a new interview.
“If you say enough things, some of them are going to overlap with reality, and then that’s the math element,” Selman explained.
“If you make a show that is based on studying the past foolishness of humanity, you are surely going to anticipate the future foolishness of humanity as it sinks further into foolishness fair,” he added. “So we don’t really think about it.”
He noted that writers “hate” when fans “put obviously fake images online and say we predicted things that we didn’t.”
“It was nicer when the predictions were just predicting real horrible events, not people pretending we predicted horrible events,” said Selman, adding that it’s “very depressing and dispiriting that people want the magic to be true so bad that they just start” putting out images of fake scenarios the show has never featured.
Currently in its 36th season, The Simpsons first debuted in 1989. Created by Matt Groening, the animated Fox sitcom follows the eponymous family and their everyday life in a typical American town.
Earlier this year, Channel 4 pulled a 1996 rerun of the show that featured a scene reminiscent of the recent assassination attempt of Trump.
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days
New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days
New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled
That episode, titled “Lisa the Iconoclast,” which was scheduled to air on July 14, featured a law enforcement officer on a nearby rooftop taking aim at Lisa Simpson as she stands at a podium at a rally — eerily similar in appearance to the Trump’s campaign rally one day earlier.
According to an episode summary, “Lisa finds out that Springfield’s founder was a murderous pirate who tried to assassinate George Washington, and decides her fellow citizens should know the truth.”
Instead, the episode was replaced with one from season 30, titled “Baby You Can’t Drive My Car,” which follows Marge and Homer Simpson as they work together at a tech company that produces self-driving cars.
