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• 17 Times <em>The Simpsons</em> Accurately Predicted the Future

17 Times The Simpsons Accurately Predicted the Future

W ith 31 seasons and counting on the air, The Simpsons is undeniably a television phenomenon. Both the longest-running American sitcom and animated program, the critically acclaimed cartoon is widely recognized as one of, if not the, best shows of all time for its humorous satire of everything from politics and pop culture to everyday family life.

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In fact, throughout its nearly 700 episodes, creator Matt Groening and his team have been so on top of the country’s cultural pulse, they’ve even managed to predict several major historical events — along with a few less momentous happenings.

Here are 17 times The Simpsons made eerily accurate predictions about the future.

Siegfried and Roy’s Tiger Attack

Season 5, Episode 10: $pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)

Predicted: 1993

Came true: 2003

After Springfield decides to legalize gambling, Mr. Burns opens a casino where German magicians Gunter and Ernst perform a routine, seeming to spoof the long-running Las Vegas Siegfried and Roy show. Tragically, a bit in which the animated duo is attacked by their tiger came to fruition 10 years later when Roy Horn was mauled on stage by a white Bengal tiger , leaving him partially paralyzed and ending the long-running production.

Autocorrect Fails

Season 6, Episode 8: Lisa on Ice

Predicted: 1994

Came true: 2007

During a Springfield Elementary School assembly, Kearney asks fellow bully Dolph to take a memo to “Beat up Martin” on his “Newton” — Apple’s early attempt at a personal digital assistant. However, the machine translates the message into “Eat up Martha” instead, foreshadowing the common messaging errors people blame on iPhone’s autocorrect technology .

In fact, Nitin Ganatra, Apple’s former director of engineering for iOS applications, revealed in 2013 that the Simpsons ‘ gag served as a rallying cry while developing the software for the iPhone’s keyboard. “If you heard people talking and they used the words ‘Eat up Martha,’ it was basically a reference to the fact that we needed to nail the keyboard. We needed to make sure the text input works on this thing, otherwise, ‘Here comes the Eat up Marthas,'” he told Fast Company .

Season 6, Episode 19: Lisa’s Wedding

Predicted: 1995

Came true: 2010

In this futuristic installment, Lisa talks with Marge using her phone’s video chat capabilities, predating the popular FaceTime feature of today’s iPhones by 15 years.

Faulty Voter Machines

Season 20, Episode 4: Treehouse of Horror XIX

Predicted: 2008

Came true: 2012

In a bit inspired by the 2008 presidential election, Homer tries to vote for Barack Obama only to have a voting machine record his selection as John McCain several times. Coincidentally, when it came time for Obama to run for a second term in 2012, video footage emerged of a Pennsylvania machine switching a vote from Obama to one for his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney. The machine was reportedly taken out of commission .

The God Particle

Season 10, Episode 2: The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace

Predicted: 1998

The existence of the Higgs boson or “God particle” — a breakthrough that helps explain how everything in the universe has mass — wasn’t confirmed by physicists until 2012. But according to Dr. Simon Singh, the author of The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets , after Homer decided to become an inventor in “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace,” he was pictured standing in front of a blackboard with an equation that predicted the mass of the yet-to-be-discovered particle.

“If you work it out, you get the mass of a Higgs boson that’s only a bit larger than the nano-mass of a Higgs boson actually is,” he told the Independent . “It’s kind of amazing as Homer makes this prediction 14 years before it was discovered.”

Homer discovered the Higgs boson. pic.twitter.com/QAXhNIgMmF — M. (@MikeblendsweIL) May 21, 2016

NSA Spying Scandal

The Simpsons Movie

Predicted: 2007

Came true: 2013

When the Simpson family is forced to go into hiding following their escape from the EPA biodome enclosing Springfield, the NSA locates Marge and the kids by listening in on one of their conversations. However, it wasn’t until six years after The Simpsons Movie hit theaters that Edward Snowden first blew the whistle on the government mass surveillance of Americans’ phone and Internet records.

The NSA as portrayed in The Simpsons Movie (2007) pic.twitter.com/7g8piC7x7H — Asher Wolf (@Asher_Wolf) February 8, 2015

Smartwatches

Came true: 2014

When Lisa visits a fortune-teller at a renaissance fair, viewers are transported 15 years into the future to 2010 — a time when wristwatch communication technology exists. However, even the Simpsons’ future society was a little ahead of its time, as modern voice recognition-enabled smartwatches weren’t rolled out until 2014.

The Simpsons Smartwatch prediction (1995) via @mashable . lol pic.twitter.com/TmKgiXulxS — SmartWatch News (@SmartWatchID) March 14, 2014

America’s Ebola Outbreak

Season 9, Episode 3: Lisa’s Sax

Predicted: 1997

This installment saw Marge offer to read a depressed Bart a book titled Curious George and the Ebola Virus. This moment was widely circulated during the 2014 American Ebola outbreak when YouTube user Thecontroversy7 created a video laying out a theory revolving around The Simpsons ‘ predictive tendencies.

FIFA’s Corruption Scandal

Season 25, Episode 16: You Don’t Have to Live Like a Referee

Predicted: 2014

Came true: 2015

Although the world football federation representative who asks Homer for help repairing the organization’s image isn’t explicitly named as a member of FIFA, his arrest turned out to be uncannily similar to those of the real-life FIFA officials who were arrested on corruption charges about a year later. Not to mention that the episode also correctly predicted Germany’s defeat of Brazil in the 2014 World Cup.

Greece’s Debt Default

Season 23, Episode 10: Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson

Predicted: 2012

When Homer appears as a guest commentator on cable news show Head Butt , a ticker runs across the bottom of the screen that reads, “Europe puts Greece on eBay.”

Of course, this was three years before Greece became the first developed country to default to the International Monetary Fund , plunging the country deeper into economic crisis.

"Europe puts Greece on eBay"... seems The Simpsons had it right all along! #GreeceCrisis #EU pic.twitter.com/MvjYkWMQID — Aaron Richardson (@Richardson_AJ) July 13, 2015

The Nobel Prize

Season 22, Episode 1: Elementary School Musical

Predicted: 2010

Came true: 2016

Bengt Holmström may not have won the Nobel Prize in Economics until 2016, but one Simpsons character was betting on him six years prior. In a scene from the season 22 premiere in which Martin holds up a scorecard depicting his Nobel Prize betting pool with Lisa, Milhouse and Database, the MIT professor is clearly marked in one of Milhouse’s squares.

Fun fact: @TheSimpsons ' Milhouse once predicted MIT Prof. Holmström would win a #NobelPrize . Today, he was right! https://t.co/CC0LRk1avy pic.twitter.com/syhMiJBK2A — Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (@MIT) October 10, 2016

President Donald Trump

Season 11, Episode 17: Bart to the Future

Predicted: 2000

When Bart flashes forward into adulthood, viewers learn that Lisa not only becomes president, but inherits “quite a budget crunch” from her predecessor, Donald Trump . “The country is broke?” she asks her aides in one scene. “How can that be?”

At the time, the real Trump presidency was still 16 years away. However, in a 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter , writer Dan Greaney explained the joke was meant as a warning to the country. “That just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom,” he said. “It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane.

Lady Gaga’s Halftime Show

Season 23, Episode 22: Lisa Goes Gaga

Came true: 2017

Nearly five years before Lady Gaga descended from the roof of Houston’s NRG Stadium for the halftime show of Super Bowl LI, her Simpsons doppelgänger performed a song for the residents of Springfield while suspended in the air. The two Mother Monsters even wore similar silver ensembles for their shows.

Disney’s Fox Takeover

Season 10, Episode 5: When You Dish Upon A Star

After a trip to Springfield, director Ron Howard pitches a screenplay that Homer wrote to producer Brian Glazer of 20th Century Fox. At the beginning of the scene, a sign can be seen at the Fox studio lot that reveals the company is now “A Division of Walt Disney Co.”

Cut to nearly 20 years later and this sale is officially underway, with the news breaking that Disney has reached a deal to acquire $66.1 billion-worth of Fox on Dec. 14, 2017.

Disney announces it has reached a deal to acquire 21st Century Fox, as predicted by a Simpsons episode that first aired on November 8, 1998. pic.twitter.com/kzloJQHeM8 — Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) December 14, 2017

Team USA’s Olympic Curling Win

Season 21, Episode 12: Boy Meets Curl

Came true: 2018

Team USA’s men’s curling team defeated Sweden in a shocking upset at the 2018 Olympics that brought yet another Simpsons storyline to real-life fruition. Mirroring events from a 2010 episode in which Marge and Homer made it onto the U.S. mixed doubles curling team, the Americans came from behind in their Feb. 25 matchup with Sweden to capture gold at the Winter Games in PyeongChang.

Drogon’s Fiery Rampage on Game of Thrones

Season 29, Episode 1: The Serfsons

Predicted: 2017

Came true: 2019

A 2017 episode called “The Serfsons” saw Homer, Marge and the rest of the Simpsons gang find themselves in the kingdom of Springfieldia, an alternate fantasy universe that parodied many aspects of life in Westeros on Game of Thrones . There was even a fire-breathing dragon that burnt down the Serfsons’ village, much like Drogon (acting at Daenerys’ behest ) ended up doing to King’s Landing in Game of Thrones ‘ penultimate episode, “The Bells.”

The 2020 Experience

Season 4, Episode 21: M arge in Chains

Came true: 2020

If 2020 was a bingo card, The Simpsons could already have at least two squares ticked off. In the nearly 30-year-old episode “Marge in Chains,” not only does an unprecedented flu sweep through Springfield, but when the townspeople begin rioting to demand a cure for the virus, a swarm of killer bees that could be likened to the “ murder hornets ” that recently hit the U.S. unexpectedly come into the picture.

On the other hand, episode co-writer Bill Oakley told The Hollywood Reporter in March that any comparisons the storyline seems to invite to coronavirus are purely coincidental. “There are very few cases where The Simpsons predicted something,” he said. “It’s mainly just coincidence because the episodes are so old that history repeats itself. Most of these episodes are based on things that happened in the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s that we knew about.”

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‘The Simpsons’ Accurately Predicted These 9 Historic Events

We’re not saying the creators of The Simpsons are time travelers , but honestly, at this point, we wouldn’t be surprised if they were. After all, how else would The Simpsons have accurately predicted so many historic events that have come to pass, decades before they occur?!

1. The discovery of the Higgs boson equation

Scientists spent decades searching for the Higgs boson particle when they could have just been watching The Simpsons ! In the 1998 episode “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace,” Homer decides he is going to become an inventor. In the episode, we see Homer working on a complicated equation written on a blackboard.

The Higgs boson particle, which was first predicted in 1964 by Professor Peter Higgs, was eventually discovered in 2012. The Higgs boson equation helps explain how everything in the universe has mass.

Although the particle was discovered in 2012, Homer was eerily close to predicting the mass of the Higgs boson particle in 1998. According to Simon Singh , author of the 2013 book The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets , “the equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson. If you work it out, you get the mass of a Higgs boson that’s only a bit larger than the nano-mass of a Higgs boson actually is.”

This is pretty astonishing considering that Homer makes this prediction 14 years before the particle was actually discovered. The writers on The Simpsons might be time travelers, but many of them are also mathematicians .

2. The 2014 Ebola outbreak

We’ll let you decide for yourself whether or not The Simpsons predicted the 2014 Ebola outbreak. In a 1997 episode titled “Lisa’s Sax,” Marge suggests that an ill Bart should read a book titled “ Curious George and the Ebola Virus.”

Though the Ebola virus was first discovered in 1976, it was not particularly widespread in the 1990s when the Simpsons aired this episode. The Ebola epidemic in Western Africa in 2014 resulted in over 11,000 deaths in a period of three years.

3. A Rise in technology

There have been a few instances in which The Simpsons predicted a rise in technology – specifically Apple watches and FaceTime. In 1995, The Simpsons introduced the idea of a watch that could be used as a phone. Nearly twenty years later, in 2015, Apple introduced the first Apple Watch which has the potential to double as a cell phone.

Similarly, in the 1995 episode “Lisa’s Wedding,” the writers seem to have predicted a technology essential to us today – video chat. In this episode, Lisa tells Marge that she getting married through a video call. We now have a variety of different platforms that allows us to easily talk face to face with others, including FaceTime, Zoom, Skype, and Google Meet.

4. Censorship of Michelangelo’s David

In a 1990 episode of The Simpsons , Marge led a censorship campaign which led to the Michelangelo statue in the Springfield museum being covered up.

In 2016, a copy of Michelangelo’s David in St. Petersburg, Russia faced backlash regarding its nakedness. Voters ended up opting to clothe the statue. Though some fans claim this is more evidence of time travel, people have been wanting to censor the David statue since it was first unveiled in 1504. Efforts to cover up Michelangelo’s David have existed for centuries, so a similar case was bound to happen after this 1990 episode of The Simpsons .

5. The Beatles sending belated fan mail

In 1991, Beatles member Ringo Starr voiced himself in a Simpsons episode titled “Brush with Greatness.” In this episode, Starr is answering fan mail that had been written to the Beatles decades ago, including a letter written by Marge.

They say life imitates art because in 2013 this scene seems to have come to pass. In 2013, Beatles member Paul McCartney replied to two women who sent a tape to him in 1963.

His message to the women read “Hi Linda and Barbara, thanks very much for your lovely tape. It finally got through, better late than never. Great to hear that you found each other after all these years. Keep enjoying the music, love Paul.”

6. Disney buys 20th Century Fox

In 1998, The Simpsons predicted in the episode “When You Wish Upon A Star” that Disney would buy 20th Century Fox. Technically, that was not the focal point of the episode, but fans still managed to catch this detail. In the episode, there is a sign in front of the Fox Studios which reads, “20th Century Fox, a division of Walt Disney Co.”

Of course, in 2017 – 19 years after this episode aired- Walt Disney Studios did in fact announce plans to buy the parent company of 20th Century Fox in a historic acquisition.

Interestingly, 20th Century Fox was The Simpsons ‘ home studio. However, Rich Appel, who wrote this 1998 episode, noted that even then it was “poised for world dominance.”

7. Faulty voting machines

In a 2008 episode of The Simpsons , Homer is seen trying to vote for Barack Obama in the U.S. general election, but a faulty machine kept changing his vote to the Republican candidate, John McCain .

Four years later, this event actually came to pass. During the 2012 election, a Pennsylvania voting machine changed votes for Barack Obama to Republican candidate Mitt Romney. The footage from this voting machine shows the voter in a polling booth repeatedly attempting to cast his ballot for Obama , only to find that the machine ticket had Romney’s name.

8. Kamala Harris’ inauguration

This prediction is extremely accurate, but that has to just be a coincidence, right? Lisa Simpson assumes the presidency in an episode from 2000, titled “Bart to the Future.” In this episode, Lisa famously says, “As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.”

In this episode, Lisa is also seen wearing a purple jacket with pearls. At Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s presidential inauguration in January 2021, Vice President Harris also wore a purple jacket with pearls. Viewers were ready to refer back to this 2000 episode of The Simpsons , especially because Kamala Harris entered office immediately after Donald Trump.

9. Siegfried and Roy tiger attack

In 1993, The Simpsons parodied entertainers Siegfried & Roy in their episode titled “$pringfield.” During this episode, the magicians, named Gunter and Ernst, are attacked by a white tiger while performing.

More from us: ‘ The Simpsons’ reenactments of 12 iconic and historic photos

In 2003, a decade after The Simpsons episode aired, the real Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn were attacked by a white tiger. During a magic show at the Mirage Casino and Hotel in Los Vegas, a seven-year-old white tiger attacked Horn. The tiger bit into Horn’s neck, dragging him offstage. Luckily, Horn survived but sustained major injuries from the attack. This tiger attack prompted the Mirage to close Siegfried & Roy’s magic show.

23 times 'The Simpsons' accurately predicted the future

• "The Simpsons" has built a reputation for predicting the future.
• The show predicted the election of Donald Trump.
• A 1996 episode predicted Cypress Hill and the London Symphony Orchestra would perform together.

Edith Hancock, Amanda Luz Henning Santiago, Lucy Yang, Carrie Wittmer, and Tom Murray contributed to previous versions of this post.

Three-eyed fish — Season 2, Episode 4

In 2008, "The Simpsons" showed Homer trying to vote for Barack Obama in the US general election, but a faulty machine changed his vote.

Four years later, a voting machine in Pennsylvania had to be removed after it kept changing people's votes for Barack Obama to ones for his Republican rival Mitt Romney.

The censorship of Michelangelo's David — Season 2, Episode 9

An episode from 1990 titled "Itchy and Scratchy and Marge" showed Springfieldians protesting against Michelangelo's statue of David being exhibited in the local museum, calling the artwork obscene for its nudity.

The satire of censorship came true in July 2016, when Russian campaigners voted on whether to clothe a copy of the Renaissance statue that had been set up in central St Petersburg.

Letter from The Beatles — Season 2, Episode 18

In 1991, an episode of "The Simpsons" saw The Beatles' Ringo Star diligently answering fan mail that had been written decades ago.

In September 2013, two Beatles fans from Essex received a reply from Paul McCartney to a letter and recording they sent to the band 50 years ago. The recording was sent to a London theatre the band was due to play at but was found years later in a car boot sale by a historian.

In 2013, the BBC's "The One Show"  reunited the pair with their letter , plus a reply from McCartney.

The sideburns of MLB great Don Mattingly — Season 3, Episode 17

In the 1992 episode "Homer at the Bat," Mr. Burns recruits Major League Baseball players for his softball team, including the then-New York Yankees first baseman Don Mattingly. 

Mr. Burns ends up benching Mattingly for not following the policy he has for the length of a player's sideburns. This actually happened to the Yankee captain in real life.

In 1991, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner fined him $250 and Mattingly was benched for not adhering to the boss' rule on hair length.

When the episode aired a year later, everyone thought "The Simpsons" was spoofing the event, but it turned out that Mattingly had recorded his lines for the episode a month before his standoff with Steinbrenner .

Siegfried and Roy tiger attack — Season 5, Episode 10

The Simpsons parodied entertainers Siegfried & Roy in a 1993 episode called "$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)." During the episode, the magicians are viciously mauled by a trained white tiger while performing in a casino. 

In 2003, Roy Horn of Siegfried and Roy was attacked  during a live performance by Montecore, one of their white tigers. Roy lived but sustained severe injuries in the attack.

Horsemeat scandal — Season 5, Episode 19

In 1994, Lunchlady Doris used "assorted horse parts" to make lunch for students at Springfield Elementary. 

Nine years later, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland found horse DNA  in over one-third of beefburger samples from supermarkets and ready meals, and pig in 85% of them.

Autocorrect — Season 6, Episode 8

School bullies Kearny and Dolph take a memo to "beat up Martin" on a Newton device in an episode of "The Simpsons" that aired in 1994. The memo gets quickly translated to "eat up Martha" — an early foreshadowing of autocorrect frustrations.

"The Simpsons" was lampooning Apple's underwhelming Newton — the iPhone's ancient ancestor — that had just been released, and included shoddy handwriting recognition, according to Fast Company .

Nitin Ganatra, former director of engineering iOS applications at Apple, told Fast Company that this particular moment on "The Simpsons" served as inspiration to get the iPhone keyboard right.

Smartwatches — Season 6, Episode 19

"The Simpsons" introduced the idea of a watch you could use as a phone in an episode aired in 1995, nearly 20 years before the Apple Watch was released.

The invention of The Shard — Season 6, Episode 19

The "Lisa's Wedding" episode from 1995 came with a lot of unexpected predictions. During Lisa's trip to London, we see a skyscraper behind Tower Bridge that looks eerily similar to The Shard, and it's is even in the right location.

Construction on the building started in 2009 , 14 years later.

Robotic librarians — Season 6, Episode 19

In "Lisa's Wedding," we discover that librarians have been replaced with robots in the "Simpsons" universe.

More than 20 years later, robotics students from the University of Aberystwyth built a prototype for a walking library robot, while scientists in Singapore have begin testing their own robot librarians.

Cypress Hill performing with the London Symphony Orchestra — Season 7, Episode 24

In a 1996 episode titled "Homerpalooza," the Simpsons watch in amazement as legendary rap group Cypress Hill performs with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Decades later, a Cypress/LSO collab will happen in real life. The band announced a performance in July and also shouted out "The Simpsons" in its official statement.

"We are thrilled to be performing with the London Symphony Orchestra in such a prestigious venue as the Royal Albert Hall," the group said. "It's a dream come true, a collaboration only 'The Simpsons' could have predicted."

The discovery of the Higgs boson equation — Season 8, Episode 1

In a 1998 episode called "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace," Homer Simpson becomes an inventor and is shown in front of a complicated equation on a blackboard.

According to Simon Singh, the author of "The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets," the equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson particle. It was first predicted in 1964 by Professor Peter Higgs and five other physicists, but it wasn't until 2013 that scientists discovered proof of the Higgs boson in a £10.4 billion ($13 billion) experiment.

Ebola outbreak — Season 9, Episode 3

Some people maintain that "The Simpsons" predicted the 2014 outbreak of Ebola 17 years before it happened. In a scene from the episode "Lisa's Sax," Marge suggests a sick Bart read a book titled "Curious George and the Ebola Virus." The virus wasn't particularly widespread in the 1990s, but years later it was the top of the news agenda.

Ebola was first discovered in 1976, and though this latest outbreak has been the worst yet, it killed 254 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1995 and 224 in Uganda in 2000.

Disney buys 20th Century Fox — Season 10, Episode 5

In the episode "When You Dish Upon a Star" that originally aired in 1998, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer produce a script Homer pitches. The script is being produced at 20th Century Fox, and a sign in front of the studio's headquarters reveals that it is "a division of Walt Disney Co."

On December 14, 2017, Disney purchased 21st Century Fox for an estimated $52.4 billion, acquiring Fox's film studio (20th Century Fox), in addition to a bulk of its television production assets. The media conglomerate also has access to popular entertainment properties like "X-Men," "Avatar," and "The Simpsons."

The invention of the tomacco plant — Season 11, Episode 5

In 1999, Homer uses nuclear energy to create a hybrid of tomato and tobacco plants: the "tomacco."

This inspired US "Simpsons" fan Rob Baur to create his own plant . In 2003, Baur grafted together a tobacco root and a tomato stem to make "tomacco." Writers for "The Simpsons" were so impressed that they invited Baur and his family to their offices and ate the tomacco fruit themselves.

Donald Trump as president — Season 11, Episode 17

In the 2000 episode, "Bart to the Future," the show goes next level on its prediction talents when it name drops Donald Trump as having been POTUS.

The episode explores what Bart's life would be like when he got older. It features Lisa being president. While in the Oval Office, we hear her say: "As you know, we've inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump."

In 2017, Trump became the 45th President of the United States.

Pot legal in Canada — Season 16, Episode 6

In the 2005 episode titled "Midnight Rx," Ned travels to Canada with Homer, Grampa Simpson, and Apu and discovers that pot is legal in the country.

In 2018, Canada legalized recreational use of marijuana.

Faulty voting machines — Season 20, Episode 4

The U.S. beats Sweden in curling at the Olympic games — Season 21, Episode 12

In one of the biggest upsets at the 2018 Winter Olympics, the U.S. curling team won gold over the favorite, Sweden.

This historical win was predicted in a 2010 episode of "The Simpsons," called "Boy Meets Curl." In the episode, Marge and Homer Simpson compete in curling at the Vancouver Olympics and beat Sweden.

In real life the U.S. Men's Olympic Curling Team won a gold medal after defeating Sweden even though they were behind, which is exactly how it played out on "The Simpsons." The victory is the second curling medal ever for the United States (not including Marge and Homer's, of course).

Nobel Prize Winner — Season 22, Episode 1

MIT professor Bengt Holmström won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2016, six years after he was bet on to win the Nobel Prize on "The Simpsons."

Holmström's name appears on a betting scorecard when Martin, Lisa, Database, and Milhouse bet on Nobel Prize winners.

Lady Gaga's Super Bowl halftime show — Season 23, Episode 22

In 2012, Lady Gaga performed for the town of Springfield hanging in midair. Five years later, she flew off the Houston NRG Stadium roof in real life to perform her Super Bowl halftime show.

Apple's Vision Pro virtual reality headset — Season 28, Episode 2

In 2024, Apple releases its virtual reality headset, the Vision Pro. Social media quickly fills up with public displays of people using the headset. It's pointed out that the sights are similar to a 2016 "Simpsons" episode . 

Titled "Friends and Family," Mr. Burns hires the Simpsons family to be his virtual reality family, and they all use a VR headset that looks just like the Vision Pro.

The end of the episode fast-forwards a few years, showing everyone in Springfield now wearing the headset, leading them to run into lampposts and fall into manholes.

Daenerys Targaryen's big plot twist in 'Game of Thrones' — Season 29, Episode 1

On the penultimate episode of "Game of Thrones," Daenerys Targaryen shocked  fans when she and her dragon laid waste to an already surrendered King's Landing, obliterating thousands of innocent people.

In 2017, on a season 29 episode of "The Simpsons" titled "The Serfsons," which spoofed various aspects of "Game of Thrones" — including the Three-Eyed Raven and the Night King — Homer revives a dragon that proceeds to incinerate a village.

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Why The Creator Of “The Simpsons” Is Definitely A Time Traveler

The Simpsons has been famous for accurately predicting historical events before they happen. Art by Nikki Iyer

Ryan Healy , Art, Graphics, & Video Editor April 1, 2020

Today, I’m going to talk about a topic that’s widely discussed. Why Matt Groening -creator of shows like The Simpsons and Futurama – is, in fact, a time traveller. 

Okay, maybe not a time traveller, per se, but you have to admit there’s something fishy going on. The Simpsons are famous for depicting events in their show that match real-world events, often before they happen. 

For example, an episode featured an Apple phone, with the faulty autocorrect we know today, back in 1994. Before we could even play the 1997 Snake on the Brick phone in real life, the Simpsons had autocorrect messing up people’s messages. Predicted in 1994, came true in 2007. 

The Siegfried and Roy tiger attack in 2003, where two performers were famous for their shows with two white bengal tigers was also predicted. In 1993, the Simpsons predicted the tigers would turn on them. In 2003, it came to fruition, with Roy being hospitalized and paralyzed by the damage done to him by one of the tigers. 

Facetime, an integral part of phone usage today because the actual phone part is statistically one of the least used features on there, was predicted in ‘95, and came true in 2010. 

Faulty voter machines. The campaign of 2008, Homer Simpson tries to vote for Obama but the machine records his vote for McCain. In the campaign between Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012, footage was discovered of voter machines that recorded votes for a certain delegate, despite the majority voting for someone else. 2008 it was predicted, 2012 it happens. 

The whole NSA spying scandal. Before it was revealed the government was watching all our activity, the Simpsons Movie had the NSA listening in on conversations. 2007 it was predicted, 2013 it was revealed.

Smart watches were predicted in 1995, and came true in 2014. They were depicted as literally cell phones on your wrist, and now that’s basically what they are, just on a very small screen.

The Simpsons are famous for depicting events in their show that match real-world events, often before they happen. 

The Ebola outbreak was ALSO predicted! Predicted by the show in 1997, and 2014 rolls around and Ebola became a pandemic of global attention. They had hospitals shutting down and people walking around in hazmat suits.

The whole thing with corruption in the FIFA industry. The show predicted it in 2014. One year later, in 2015, the real-world FIFA corruption was brought to light. 

The financial problems in Greece. 2012 it was predicted, with the news channel “Head Butt” saying that Europe put Greece on Ebay. 2015 it came crashing down. 

Disney’s takeover of Fox. Predicted in 1998, with a giant “20th Century Fox” sign listing it as “a division of Walt Disney Co.” Lo and behold, in 2017, Disney buys Fox for $52 billion. 

Super Bowls XXVI, XXVII, and XXVIII. In 1992-1994, the Simpsons accurately predicted the winner of the Super Bowl game. 

In 2000, they predicted Trump running for president. They even had the red tie and him waving as he goes down an escalator. 2000 it was predicted, 2016 he runs for President. The funny thing about that is one of the directors said the logic behind it was that it was one of the things that marked a country gone insane. Ironically, the episode also features main character Lisa as President, which isn’t the ironic part. Her administration “inherits quite the budget crunch from President Trump.” Given that elections are coming up and the state our economy is in, this actually doesn’t sound that far-fetched. 

The London Shard. A beautiful building visible from the top of the London Eye, it was built in 2009. In 1995, on Lias’s trip to London, there is a building that looks the same and is in the same location. Crazy. 

Here’s the doozy. The God Particle. The equation that outlines how the universe was created. In a 1998 episode of the show, the Simpsons featured Homer Simpson taking on a new persona as an inventor. The show had him writing on a chalkboard like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. Homer was writing what looked like a very fancy scientific equation on the board. 14 years later, in 2012, scientists confirmed that yeah, that’s actually the model of how the universe was created. 

Another prediction is somewhat debated, but HOLY CHEESE is it crazy. 9/11, the terrorist attack of 2001. An advertisement poster in the show (background of one of the episodes) showed a special discount for travel to New York (with the Twin Towers highlighted) with rooms costing $9. The kicker is that the 9 was right next to the towers. Predicted in 1997, and it happened in 2001. Of all the numbers, and all the things… They could’ve had $10 hotel rooms to stay in Ohio or something. The fact that they had that specific number, with that specific placing. 

Recently, it was found out that the show ALSO depicted Coronavirus, AND Tom Hanks’ quarantine! In 1993, the show depicted a package from Osaka, Japan, giving everyone a very contagious disease. Furthermore, they predicted the country’s lockdown. That’s the episode with the NSA prediction: there was a biodome around the show’s central location, Springfield, designed to lock the citizens in. The Simpsons escaped, and the prediction of the NSA spying.

Tom Hanks’ quarantine. 2007, they had Tom Hanks on the show claiming “this is Tom Hanks saying that if you see me, leave me be,” in the Simpsons Movie. Now, he’s really in quarantine, in real life. On a lighter note, they sent him the Wilson volleyball from Castaway to keep him company. 

One prediction to come true is probably just a coincidence. Two, mildly concerning. Three, something’s definitely up. More than 18 accurate predictions? Time travel. I haven’t even covered everything, just the ones I thought were the most interesting. There’s correctly predicting the winner of the Olympics, Lady Gaga in the halftime show, Nobel Peace Prize, weird plant hybrids although that one they caused themselves, censoring art, nuclear mutated fish, Game of Thrones, and SO. MUCH. MORE. 

AND THEN the creator of the show, Matt Groening, went on to make another show- Futurama. Just…. FUTURAMA!! A part of me thinks this is just him rubbing it in the face. Like a space show or a show from the past. But noooo, it HAD to be set in the future. 

At this point I don’t even know what’s real anymore. I am 90% convinced that Wyoming isn’t a real state, but just part of Idaho, like that one family member we have that’s part of the family but you do everything you can to avoid acknowledging that.

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Sonam Pasrija • Jan 2, 2024 at 3:00 AM

I know who made it but how come he time travel even tho he got every prediction right except of one I have been researching for the past few hours and I don’t know how any one can prove time travel is true but has the person who made the show ever told the society that he time travel and if he ever mentioned me I would probably be a famous model + actress and singer lol ? …

Alan Thackray • Apr 12, 2023 at 9:31 AM

Its absolutely crazy he should do the lottery lol ? ? ? ? ?

Shane Sutton • Dec 14, 2021 at 11:16 AM

Has he been confronted by anyone with this information? It’s Matt groneing god?

Barry Nathaniel Rice • Jun 13, 2020 at 3:41 PM

he also predicted the killing over George Floyd in a 1990s episode

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‘The Simpsons’ Has Predicted a Lot. Most of It Can Be Explained.

By Maya Salam

There is no crystal ball in “The Simpsons” writers’ room, but you’d be forgiven for wondering.

Over its nearly 30-year run, the series about the world’s most famous animated family has alluded to many real-life events long before they’ve actually happened: the Trump presidency, the discovery of the Higgs boson particle, 9/11 and, most recently, Disney’s takeover of Fox. By some accounts, the coincidences — predictions, if you will — number in the 20s , or more.

This track record has led the show’s legion of fans to think that “The Simpsons” is, at the very least, a product of television’s most intelligent writers, and, at the most, prophetic.

So is there something bigger going on?

The future can be forecast better than one might think, said Al Jean, one of the show’s original writers and its showrunner since 1998. Episodes of “The Simpsons” air a year after they’re produced, he said, so “it’s just a sort of frame of mind that we’ve got that we think one year ahead.”

“I predict people will make too much of our great predictions,” he joked.

The show is the product of brilliant minds, many Harvard educated, said William Irwin, whose book “The Simpsons and Philosophy” has for years been taught in college courses at The University of California, Berkeley and other schools. Mr. Irwin is the chairman of philosophy at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Writers rule on “The Simpsons,” not the actors, he said.

The result is a show packed with references to art, literature, pop culture, politics and science.

“When that many smart people produce a television show, it’s bound to make some startling ‘predictions,’” he said.

Another possible factor at play: “the law of truly large numbers,” a concept presented by the Harvard mathematicians Frederick Mosteller and Persi Diaconis in their 1989 paper Methods for Studying Coincidences .

“With a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is apt to happen,” the law states. “The Simpsons,” a Fox show, is the longest-running scripted TV series in history.

Or, for fans looking for answers far outside conventional logic, Dr. Bernard Beitman, author of “Connecting With Coincidence,” offers the existence of the “psychosphere,” our mental atmosphere that is essentially “group mind in action.”

“Under the right conditions, we can know things that we don’t know we know, and we can sometimes predict events or attract what we are thinking,” said Dr. Beitman, a former chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Missouri.

Here are some of the most remarkable coincidences from “The Simpsons,” and how they can, or can’t, be explained.

The weirdest predictions

Sept. 11, 2001.

Predicted: 1997 Happened: 2001

In “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson,” there was a moment that alluded to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, and not even Mr. Jean could explain it.

“There is a frame where there’s a brochure that says New York at $9 a day, and behind the nine are the twin towers. So they look like an 11, and it looks like a 9/11. That one is a completely bizarre, strange thing,” he said.

In 2010, Bill Oakley , an executive producer on the show at the time, told The New York Observer : “$9 was picked as a comically cheap fare,” he said. “And I will grant that it’s eerie, given that it’s on the only episode of any series ever that had an entire act of World Trade Center jokes .”

The show’s unintended connection to 9/11 is far from the only one on television. The pilot episode of “The Lone Gunmen,” a short-lived spinoff of “The X-Files” that aired six months before Sept. 11, includes a plot where a hijacked plane is aimed at the World Trade Center. The pilots regain control and miss the towers just moments before colliding.

Super Bowl XXVI, XXVII and XXVIII

Predicted: 1992, 1993, 1994 Happened: 1992, 1993, 1994

The show predicted the N.F.L. champions three years in a row — in an episode that was all about predictions.

And yes, all three were just lucky guesses, Mr. Jean said.

In “Lisa the Greek,” which first aired in January 1992, Homer and Lisa bond over sports — well, sports gambling. Lisa has discovered a knack for predicting football winners, which Homer happily cashes in on. Lisa tells Homer that if the Washington Redskins defeat the Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl, she would still love him. If they don’t, she won’t.

Washington wins, and all is well between them. Three days after the episode aired, Washington beat Buffalo 37-24.

The episode was reworked in 1993 and in 1994, with the new Super Bowl-bound teams, which were the Dallas Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills both years. Lisa went with Dallas. In 1993, Dallas won 52-17. In 1994, Dallas won, 30-13.

1994 was the last time “The Simpsons” altered the episode, and the last time Buffalo made a Super Bowl appearance.

The gray area

Disney acquires 21st century fox.

Predicted: 1998 Happened: 2017

The most recent “Simpsons” prediction to come true was Disney’s $52 billion deal for 21st Century Fox , announced in December. In “When You Dish Upon a Star,” there’s a sign that reads “20th Century Fox, a division of Walt Disney Co.”

Mr. Jean said this sort of prediction was in line with the writers’ forward-thinking process. The deal “was just another one,” he said. “It happens. There's always mergers. It seemed logical, you know?”

The Higgs boson particle

Predicted: 1998 Happened: 2012

At first glance, this “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace” plot point might seem like the freakiest “Simpsons” prophecy: Homer, striving to be the next great inventor, standing at a chalkboard, on which a complex equation is scrawled.

That equation is a just a hair off what would become the Higgs boson particle, or “God particle,” which was discovered in 2012 , decades after it was first presumed to exist.

“That equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson,” Simon Singh, author of the 2013 book “The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets,” told the British newspaper The Independent in 2015 . “If you work it out, you get the mass of a Higgs boson that’s only a bit larger than the nano-mass of a Higgs boson actually is. It’s kind of amazing as Homer makes this prediction 14 years before it was discovered.”

But it can be explained to some degree. “The Higgs boson was written into the script by David Cohen, who’s one of the people with a math background on this show,” Mr. Jean said. “What he put in was a plausible guess at that time. So it wasn’t like totally out of left field .”

The explainable

The trump presidency.

Predicted: 2000 Happened: 2016

Mention “Simpsons” predictions to someone, and chances are they’ll respond with: “They predicted Trump, right?” While it might seem pretty amazing, it’s actually one of the show’s most logical prognoses, Mr. Jean said.

“There’s a category I would call plausible predictions, which Trump would fall under,” he said.

“People have somewhat forgotten, but he was talking about running for president then,” he said. “So it wasn’t somebody totally out of the blue. It was a guy who was a punch-line name and had presidential aspirations.”

In a 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter , the writer Dan Greaney said that the joke was intended as a warning. “That just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom,” he said. “It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane .”

References to a possible President Trump have made other rounds in pop culture: First in the Michael J. Fox movie “Back to the Future II,” where the bad guy Biff Tannen, who is fashioned to look like Donald Trump , takes power; and again in the “Rage Against the Machine” video for the song “Sleep Now in the Fire” from 1999, which was directed by Michael Moore and filmed on Wall Street.

Screen Rant

The simpsons future timeline explained (properly).

The Simpsons has taken viewers to the future a couple of times, but that timeline can be very confusing. Here's what happens in the Simpsons' future.

The Simpsons has a couple of episodes set in the future, and the timeline of these can be confusing. Logic is not something that can be expected from a cartoon, let alone one that has been active for 30 years, and it’s specially tricky with non-canon stories, though they can still be placed in a timeline, somehow. Episodes like the Treehouse of Horror specials are not part of The Simpsons canon, but those set in the future could or could not be part of it.

Created by Matt Groening in the 1980s, The Simpsons debuted in The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987 as a series of shorts, and it was upgraded to a half-hour prime time show after three seasons. The series officially premiered in 1989 and has since become the longest-running American scripted primetime TV series. The Simpsons follows the daily adventures of the title family and other colorful citizens from the fictional town of Springfield , and in 30 years, none of them has aged a day – except for those times the series has taken a look into their futures.

Related: The Simpsons Is 30 Years Old: How The Show Has Changed

The series has jumped to the future a few times, but only a couple of episodes have been entirely or for the most part set in times where Bart, Lisa, and Maggie are not children anymore. The future of the Simpsons has been explored under different circumstances – so, can they be placed in a timeline? And can they be considered canon?

The Simpsons Future Timeline Explained

YouTube user TheRealJims picked the episodes set in the future and placed them chronologically (not by airdate, but by when the events in each one happen within the lives of the characters). The Simpsons future timeline can be divided in two: what happens to Homer and Marge, and what happens to the kids. First off, Homer and Marge, as seen in season 27’s episode “Barthood”, are still married by the time Bart turns 12, though as the episode (and the years) progress, they separate temporarily. After dating Krusty and Homer attacking him, Marge takes the latter back – just showing that some dynamics don’t change, no matter how many years pass.

Jumping to season 6’s episode “Lisa’s Wedding”, Homer and Marge are still married, and in season 23’s “Holidays of Future Passed”, they are grandparents (Bart has two sons, Lisa has a daughter, and Maggie is pregnant). Then there’s season 11’s “Bart to the Future”, in which they visit Lisa at the White House, as she’s now the President of the United States. Homer and Marge’s future goes on without any complications, except their brief separation during Bart and Lisa’s high school years, but in the end everything turned out ok. The tricky part of The Simpsons ’ future is actually in Bart, Lisa, and Maggie’s lives.

“Barthood” shows the close relationship between Bart and Grandpa Simpson, as well as his rivalry with Lisa from a very young age. When Lisa turns 13, she and Marge go to camp, and Bart and Homer stay at home, where Bart throws a party. After an argument with Homer, Bart visits grandpa’s grave. A year later, Bart is a very popular figure in the world of BMX, and Lisa saves him when he crashes during a stunt, making him feel like he will always be the second Simpson. In “Future-Drama”, fans got a glimpse at Bart and Lisa in high school, both seniors as Lisa skipped two grades... and she’s now dating Milhouse . Lisa gets a scholarship to study in Yale and breaks up with Milhouse, and Bart’s relationship with Jenda also comes to an end. Bart ends up accidentally stealing Lisa’s scholarship after saving Mr. Burns’ life , but gives it to her to save her from marrying Milhouse. Never say that Bart doesn’t care about her.

Related: The Simpsons Episode NOT On Disney+

Back to “Barthood”, Lisa is still going to Yale but attends Milhouse’s graduation party, and Bart is working as a caricaturist near the beach. While in Yale, Lisa meets Hugh Parkfield (as seen in “Lisa’s Wedding”), and is about to marry him until she learns he’s ashamed of her family. Meanwhile, Bart works in the demolition industry as he prepares to go to law school, and at this point, Maggie is a high-schooler. Years later, once again in “Barthood”, Bart opens a bike shop named “Simpson and Grandson”, to honor his grandfather, and Lisa is finished with med school (which allowed her to create an artificial pituitary gland for her boyfriend Nelson , as he was earlier shown to be way older after selling his).

In “Holidays of Future Passed”, Lisa and Milhouse are married and have a daughter, Zia, while Bart marries (and divorces) Jenda and have two sons – and Maggie, who became a big rockstar, is pregnant with her first child. “Bart to the Future” sees Bart living with Ralph and having a band with him that is not as successful as they would like, and Lisa is now the President (with Milhouse as her Chief of Staff). When Bart turns 50, he becomes Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, suggesting he did go on with his plan of attending law school. The Simpsons future episodes can’t be placed in a timeline one after the other, instead getting intertwined and complementing each other – but there’s still one big question.

Are The Simpsons Future Episodes Canon?

What’s canon in The Simpsons universe and what’s not can be tricky, as only the Treehouse of Horror specials are officially non-canon, but there are many events from the supposed canon that don’t quite play as such. Episodes like “Lisa’s Wedding” and “Bart to the Future” are questionable as their futures are being told by a fortune teller and a casino owner, respectively, so there’s a big margin of error there. “Holidays of Future Passed”, on the other hand, is a proper flash forward rather than a prediction, yet it’s not considered canon by some. The appearance of Jenda in this episode also makes “Future-Drama” count.

On the other hand, season 25's episode “Days of Future Future” definitely isn’t part of canon given all the sci-fi elements in it that don’t match the continuity of the rest at all, such as Homer being cloned multiple times and Milhouse being turned into a zombie. In the end, whether The Simpsons future episodes are canon or not is up to every viewer, as they do have a lot of inconsistencies but also moments and elements that match – and that’s where the fun is, after all.

Next: The Best Simpsons Episodes In Season 1

'The Simpsons' Didn't Predict That

The popular animated tv series does not have clairvoyant powers., snopes staff, published aug. 22, 2019.

On Dec. 17, 1989, the animated show "The Simpsons" debuted on the Fox Network with a Christmas episode entitled "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire." Since then, Springfield's most famous residents, Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, have appeared in more than 600 episodes over the course of 31 seasons.

That's more than 200 hours of content. If you watched "The Simpsons" non-stop 24 hours a day, it would take you more than a week to finish the entire series. That's a lot of content, a lot of jokes, and a lot of opportunities for coincidences to appear.

Fans of "The Simpsons" have undoubtedly encountered people on social media claiming that the show's writers have an uncanny ability to predict the future. Even major media companies such as Buzzfeed , Time and Hollywood Reporter have published articles touting the prognosticating prowess of "The Simpsons."

Here's an excerpt from a Time Magazine article entitled "15 Times The Simpsons Accurately Predicted the Future."

"With 28 seasons and counting on the air, The Simpsons is undeniably a television phenomenon. Both the longest-running American sitcom and animated program, the critically acclaimed cartoon is widely recognized as one of, if not the, best shows of all time for its humorous satire of everything from politics and pop culture to everyday family life.

"In fact, throughout its more than 600 episodes, creator Matt Groening and his team have been so on top of the country's cultural pulse, they've even managed to predict several major historical events — along with a few less momentous happenings."

A viral video from "The Pat McAfee" show (which has more than 2 million views on YouTube and more than 18 million on Facebook) hits on several of these so-called predictions:

While we'll readily admit that there have been a few interesting coincidences between jokes on "The Simpsons" and real-world incidents, most of these "predictions" have rather simple and mundane explanations. In this collection, we'll go through some of the most popular and persistent rumors regarding the show's fortune telling abilities.

Spoiler alert: "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening is not a time traveler.

No, 'The Simpsons' Didn't Predict the Silicon Valley Bank Crash

Did 'the simpsons' predict trump would try to buy greenland, did 'the simpsons' predict that president trump would touch a glowing orb, did 'the simpsons' predict the beirut explosion, did 'the simpsons' tv show predict the fire at notre dame, did 'the simpsons' predict a donald trump presidency, did 'the simpsons' predict george floyd's death, did 'the simpsons' predict a mass shooting at a 'black panther' movie screening, did 'the simpsons' predict president trump's death, did 'the simpsons' predict autocorrect, did 'the simpsons' predict the censorship of michelangelo's 'david', did 'the simpsons' predict the smartwatch, did 'the simpsons' predict the use of directed energy weapons (dew), did 'the simpsons' predict twitter's rebrand to 'x', did 'the simpsons' predict meta's threads logo, did 'the simpsons' predict the missing titanic submersible, by snopes staff.

Proof The Simpsons Writers May Be Time Travelers

After predicting the Disney and Fox deal nearly 20 years ago, many believe that The Simpsons writers just might be time travelers.

Seventeen years ago, an episode of The Simpsons predicted that Donald Trump would one day become US president. Nineteen years ago, they predicted that Disney would buy out Fox . These are only two out of the many things that The Simpsons have accurately predicted over the years with alarming accuracy, which is now leading to claims of time travel amongst the writers of the massively popular cartoon. The Fox and Trump things are impressive, but the time that Homer predicted the mass of the Higgs boson particle on a chalkboard may be some of the most insane evidence yet.

In a 1998 episode called The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace, Homer Simpson becomes an inventor and is shown in front of a complicated equation on a blackboard. According to Simon Singh, the author of The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets, the equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson particle, aka, the God Particle. It was first predicted in 1964 by Professor Peter Higgs and five other physicists, but it wasn't until 2013 that scientists discovered proof of the Higgs boson in a $13 billion experiment. The Simpsons predicted the discovery a full 15 years ahead of time.

Donald Trump becoming the President of the United States was predicted 16 years ahead of time and the writers claim that it was more of a warning than anything. A possible future Trump presidency, said the episode's writer Dan Greaney, "just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom. It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane." The episode, broadcast correctly made the prediction 17 years ago on March 19th, 2000, and saw Bart's vision of his future in which he is a beer drinking adult, while his sister Lisa has become president, following Trump's time in office.

The Lisa's Wedding episode originally aired in 1995 and came with a few more unexpected predictions. During Lisa's trip to London, a skyscraper is seen behind Tower Bridge that looks pretty damn similar to The Shard and is even in the right location. Construction on the building started in 2009, 14 years later. Also in the episode was the idea of robot librarians, which became real over 20 years later in Singapore. Another prediction that The Simpsons nailed was the tiger attack on Siegfried and Roy that originally aired in 1993 and then happened in real-life 10 years later.

Autocorrect was introduced in an episode of The Simpsons back when you couldn't even play Snake on an old brick cellphone. In addition, the hit show predicted the three-eyed fish back in its second season, nearly 30 years ago. Bart and Lisa are fishing when they catch it, the curiosity and the fish have become one of the show's more famous bit characters. The fish has three eyes due to the nuclear waste of the Springfield Nuclear Plant where Homer works. More than ten years later, a three-eyed fish was discovered in a reservoir in Argentina. Strangely enough, the reservoir itself was fed by water from a nuclear power plant.

So, what's going on here? Another rumor suggests that Simpsons creator Matt Groening is the time traveler and that all of the ideas and predictions came from him. A few years ago, a 69-year old artist bought some  Simpsons  watercolor paintings at a Seattle-area thrift store and thinks they were made by Matt Groening when he was a student at the Evergreen State College, more than a decade before the  Simpsons  shorts began airing on  The Tracey Ullman Show . Bart can be seen as a giant skateboarding and then there's the Butterfinger candy bar logo that many believe is from a time traveling Matt Groening. Coincidence or time travel? You can be the judge. And in the meantime, check out a new video that goes even further in-depth into the futuristic predictions of The Simpsons below, courtesy of The Pat McAfee Show's Facebook page.

We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article.

The Simpsons fans spot awkward time travel error in Christmas episode

Well this is intriguing.

Either that, or there's a big time travelling twist that would take the show into a whole new dimension.

So what is this mysterious apparent error? Well, fans have noticed in the season 25 episode 'White Christmas Blues' that there are not one but two Moes. Oh dear god no .

Related: The Simpsons boss is preparing for when the show ends

In the scene in question, Mayor Quimby gathers Spingfieldians together to declare the town a tourist attraction, before Moe says in front of the crowd: "We will welcome the tourists with open arms – and then we'll gouge the hell out of them."

However, eagle-eyed fans on Reddit have spotted Moe in the crowd in the same shot – but noted that it was probably a mistake due to human error.

Yet others have their own theories, musing that it may be a time travelling Moe, one saying: "[Creator] Matt Groening is setting us up for the most epic time travel episode ever!"

Another joked that "they might be making [an] episode in the future where Moe travels back in time".

Perhaps he is The Moe -ster from Gallifrey? (Sorry).

In other Simpsons news, it was recently confirmed that Apu would no longer be voice by Hank Azaria following a documentary that presented the case that the character was racially problematic.

The Simpsons airs on FOX in the US, and on Sky One in the UK.

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Sam is a freelance reporter and sub-editor who has a particular interest in movies , TV and music. After completing a journalism Masters at City University, London, Sam joined Digital Spy as a reporter, and has also freelanced for publications such as NME and Screen International .  Sam, who also has a degree in Film, can wax lyrical about everything from Lord of the Rings to Love Is Blind , and is equally in his element crossing every 't' and dotting every 'i' as a sub-editor.

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Exploring a Unique Twist in “The Simpsons”: The Time the Show Veered from Matt Groening’s Vision

I n the world of animated sitcoms, it’s not uncommon to see characters remain the same age, defying the passage of time. “The Simpsons” has not only followed this rule but also took it to heart, keeping its iconic characters perennially youthful. Bart Simpson, for instance, has been 10 years old since the series premiere in 1989 and has remained so as of the latest episodes in 2024. Similarly, the rest of the Simpson family is frozen in their respective age brackets.

Reflecting on the series’ timeline shows that its backstory has evolved with the times. Homer and Marge went from having met in 1973 to sharing a sweet, grunge-era romance in the mid-’90s, echoing the time-shifting continuity that “The Simpsons” embraces. The show’s creator, Matt Groening, has always preferred the timeless aspect, which has helped preserve the family dynamics for decades.

However, an episode titled “Future-Drama” broke the mold when showrunner Matt Selman decided to do something unconventional, following a desire to go against Groening’s general aversion to aging his characters, especially avoiding depicting Bart and Lisa as teens. Selman admits that the idea came from Groening’s own comments about the show’s success hinging on characters not getting older. Selman’s playful defiance led to the creation of an episode where the audience gets to see Bart and Lisa navigate adolescence.

“The inspiration of this was, I believe, an interview with Matt, or one of Matt’s frequent quotes is, ‘The reason “The Simpsons” is good is because the characters can never get older and you’ll never have to see Bart and Lisa as teenagers.’ So I said, ‘What if we saw Bart and Lisa as teenagers?’ And that was the inspiration, breaking one of Matt’s rules which is always fun.”

Despite any potential pushback from fans about aging the characters even for just one episode, it remains just one narrative possibility in the myriad of futures “The Simpsons” may explore.

FAQ Section

Why do The Simpsons characters never age?

Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, has expressed a preference for the characters to remain ageless to keep the family dynamic constant and to maintain the timeless nature of the show.

What is “Future-Drama” in The Simpsons?

“Future-Drama” is an episode that presents Bart and Lisa as adolescents, a concept that departs from the usual portrayal of the characters in the show. It was inspired by a rule set forth by Matt Groening against aging the characters.

Has “The Simpsons” ever changed its backstory?

Yes, the show has time-shifted its backstory, with Homer and Marge’s meeting moving from 1973 to the mid-1990s as the series has progressed.

How did fans react to seeing Bart and Lisa as teenagers?

While there might have been some mixed reactions from fans, the depiction of Bart and Lisa as teenagers in “Future-Drama” is presented as just one of many possible futures, which may have mitigated any potential controversy.

In the tapestry of Springfield’s rich and complex history, an episode like “Future-Drama” stands out as a significant moment where “The Simpsons” took a creative leap, deviating from a foundational rule established by its creator. It highlights the show’s capacity to both honor its legacy and to occasionally bend its own rules for the sake of storytelling innovation. Regardless of the reaction to this unique narrative choice, it serves as a testament to The Simpsons’ enduring appeal and its willingness to explore new dimensions, if only hypothetically, within its animated world.

The Simpsons vacation episodes, ranked

As it’s done with every other cornerstone of family sitcoms, The Simpsons has taken the vacation episode to new heights (and lows). In its 29 seasons—and counting—the animated series has journeyed to France, Australia, China, Iceland, and the town of Bronson, where even the children are stone-cold badasses. Over time, though, these travelogues expanded past the occasional family adventure to include business trips, diplomatic missions, ill-advised romantic gestures, and helping some secondary character find themselves.

The standard for these travel episodes was set all the way back in season six, and ever since then, The Simpsons has only occasionally recreated that balance of cartoon shenanigans and regional humor. Now as summer looms, The A.V. Club is ranking these episodes of a vacational nature, counting down from the Worst. Detours. Ever. to the best trips. (The only rule is that their destination has to be a real place, i.e. no Itchy & Scratchy Land, no Little Pwagmattasquarmsettport, and Hollywood only barely counts.)

29. “Lisa Gets The Blues” (season 29, episode 17): New Orleans

You’d think that an episode about Lisa’s crisis of musical faith being cured by a family trip to New Orleans and an inspirational appearance of the jazzman nephew of Lisa’s late mentor Bleeding Gums Murphy would carry some emotional weight. But while this season-29 episode’s truly impressive visual depiction of the streets of the Big Easy goes a long way toward erasing any lingering resentment over Oh, Streetcar! ’s musical slanders, “Lisa Gets The Blues” largely neglects everything else in favor of a long, long montage of Homer the food monster chomping his way through literally every signature dish in town. To be fair, the animators’ rendering of a dozen or so varieties of po’ boy are pretty satisfying, as far as empty comedy calories go. [Dennis Perkins]

28. “To Courier With Love” (season 27, episode 20): France

The Simpsons has been to France a few times now, from Bart’s legendary misadventures in the exchange student program to that time when Carl wound up having sex with French first lady Carla Bruni. But in this season-27 episode, writer Bill Odenkirk strikes an admirable balance between the expected “rude French” and “ugly Americans” stereotypes and unassumingly sweet character comedy. Homer smuggles a snake into Paris (because he’s Homer), leading to the return of Bart’s French nemeses Cesar and Ugolin, whose criminal schemes and Simpson-pursuing skills remain wanting. (“It’s not that hard,” muses one, guiltily, after Homer gives them the slip.) As ever in a travelogue episode, the family tours the local hot spots, although there’s a delicately clever care taken in the animation and jokes here that bumps the episode up a notch, as when Homer, attempting to make things up to the affectingly neglected Marge, takes her on a silly, speckled tour of Paris’ “pointillism district.” [Dennis Perkins]

27. “You Don’t Have To Live Like A Referee” (season 25, episode 16): Brazil

The show’s second trip to Brazil is a twofer on top of a twofer: It’s a “Homer gets a new job” episode as well as a “The Simpsons are going to…,” and the running-of-the-bulls setup in the couch gag means twice the international travel. It’s almost too economical, not only reusing its South American setting and the show’s Xuxa stand-in, Xoxchitla, but pinning Homer’s stint as a World Cup official to the prior soccer-themed installment “Marge Gamer.” Lisa’s improvised speech about Homer’s unsung heroism keeps him unflappable in the face of gamblers attempting to fix the tournament, but despite that emotional through-line, the episode is mostly memorable for presaging a real-world FIFA corruption scandal . Homer refuses a variety of illegal payments in an interchangeable picture-postcard locations, but one Simpson winds up enriched by the experience: Marge really gets to put her Portuguese lessons to work. [Erik Adams]

26. “The Greatest Story Ever D’ohed” (season 21, episode 16): Israel

Another Homer and Ned on-the-road episode sees Flanders shamed into bringing the Simpsons along to the Holy Land as a test of his Christian forbearance. To be fair, Job never had to live next to Homer, as Ned is confronted with the spectacle of Homer doing nude Slip ’N Slide runs during Bible study. The mismatched pilgrims in this season-21 entry tour the requisite Jerusalem sights, rendered throughout with a beige sameness that doesn’t do the Jerusalem tourist board any favors. (Neither does guest Sacha Baron Cohen, humorously rambling as the world’s rudest tour guide.) Homer is Homer, decked out in all-USA jerkass-wear and brandishing his Carolina Panthers credit card while ordering cold cuts on his falafel and napping in Jesus’ preferred spot in the Church Of The Holy Sepulchre, while the episode takes a few solid jabs at Israel. (“Your American tax dollars at work,” reads a sign at the airport.) But the inevitable Homer-Ned rapprochement comes whooshing past like the sandstorm that traps Homer in the desert, leaving him with a sun-baked case of Jerusalem syndrome, his messianic fervor at least uniting Jerusalem’s three major religions in the universal love of delicious, delicious chicken. Mmmm, chicken. [Dennis Perkins]

25. “The Town” (season 28, episode three): Boston

Calling on a writers’ room infamously stuffed with Harvard nerds, the Simpsons’ season-28 trip to Boston scores a lot of comic points for how lived-in and specific the Beantown-bashing is. Of course, since much of the plot sees Homer dragging the family on a “hate-cation” after the suspiciously Patriots-esque Boston football team cheats its way to a win over the hapless Springfield Atoms, there’s plenty of ammunition for the episode’s running attacks on that franchise’s, let’s call it “moral relativism” when it comes to winning. (“You gotta cover the mascot. That’s a no-brainer,” brays one Boston football barfly, voiced by Boston-based Bill Burr, one of many Massachusetts celebrities on hand for local color.) But what really makes this particular Simpsons destination episode work so well is its lovely metaphor of “the third ball,” calling as it does on the uniquely New England sport of candlepin bowling. Homer, overcoming his prejudices alongside everyone but Bart, briefly sees the possibilities of a Boston do-over, his measly two bowling balls supplemented by a forgiving, region-specific third. [Dennis Perkins]

24. “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore” (season 17, episode 17): India

What is it with foreign travel that makes Homer imagine himself as a god? Here, unwisely selected by Mister Burns to head up the nuclear plant’s new, union-free digs in India, Homer loses himself, Apocalypse Now style, once the Indian employees flock to his book-purloined management style. (Apparently outsourced workers really like coffee breaks and doughnuts, too.) Considering the current controversy surrounding The Simpsons ’ depiction of Apu , this scattered season-17 trip to India at least brings in an actual native speaker, Indian journalist Meher Tatna, to voice “various Indian women,” according to IMDB. (Hank Azaria does pop up briefly as Apu’s identical-sounding cousin Kavi.) And, like the show’s wobbly characterization of Apu, the episode alternates between pointing and laughing at those wacky Indian ways (Homer offends a literal sacred cow and dresses like Temple Of Doom ’s Mola Ram in god mode), and making everyone in the country a whole lot smarter than the visiting Springfielders. [Dennis Perkins]

23. “Fland Canyon” (season 27, episode 19): The Grand Canyon

This extended flashback episode, about a predictably disastrous Grand Canyon trip taken by the combined Simpson and Flanders clans, gets lost more in cruel, cheap gags and some misguided characterizations than do Homer and Ned once their donkey-riding guide plummets to his death. (And is never mentioned again.) The definition of a tossed-off outing (both the episode and the trip), “Fland Canyon” also short-changes its national-treasure setting with some indifferent animation and design (how hard is it to draw a scorpion fight, really?), and a surprisingly snippy Flanders family, considering that the story happens minus two entire years of bad neighborino behavior. And, once Ned and Homer find themselves on a leaky raft full of life-saving junk food, all it recalls is the simple comic poetry of Ned’s long ago “Godspeed, little doodle.” [Dennis Perkins]

22. “Havana Wild Weekend” (season 28, episode seven)/ “Throw Grampa From The Dane” (season 29, episode 20) (tie): Cuba/Denmark

Traveling to countries with universal healthcare in two separate episodes in consecutive seasons is as much a reflection of the dismal state of U.S. healthcare as it is the tapped creative well in The Simpsons ’ writers’ room. But in seasons 28 and 29, respectively, Homer takes Grampa to Cuba and Denmark for medical treatment. Naturally, the rest of the Simpsons tag along so they, too, can marvel at the classic American cars that fill the streets of Havana, as well as hyper-efficient Danish design. Socialism gets a bit of a drubbing in both cases (“In Denmark, we have socialized tattooing. And with that, we are out of money.”), as does the Simpsons’ country of origin (“Foreigners are no longer welcome”). The Cuba outing actually stays the course, and resolves Grampa’s health issues, which stemmed from his loss of productivity. But after making the necessary Hamlet reference, “Throw Grampa From The Dane” wanders into the all-too-familiar territory of Marge and Homer’s ever-tenuous marriage, as she briefly chooses to remain in Copenhagen. When Westworld ’s Sidse Babett Knudsen shows up as one of the many beautiful characters who unaccountably fall for Homer, it’s really time to pack it in. [Danette Chavez]

21. “In The Name Of The Grandfather” (season 20, episode 14): Ireland

The episode that executive producer Al Jean referred to as an ode to Ireland, “In The Name Of The Grandfather” rides the line between send-up and loving homage better than most of the show’s global jaunts. Writer Matt Marshall envisions Ireland (a.k.a. “East Boston” and “Freckle Bog”) as both the “land of poetry and the land of bad poetry,” where U2 moves your belongings in mysterious ways and there’s boiled cabbage on tap. Even if you haven’t enjoyed multiple pints of Guinness (which is apparently just “bog water and chocolate syrup”), you’ll promptly forget what brings the Simpsons to Dublin in the first place. But once there, The Simpsons explores the modernization of the Irish capital—whose smoking ban inspired the episode—with some help from Colm Meaney and Glen Hansard. This “affectionate love letter to Ireland” became a part of the show’s 20th-anniversary celebrations, and managed not to rub any of the Emerald Isle’s inhabitants the wrong way. [Danette Chavez]

20. “The Regina Monologues” (season 15, episode four): England

The last Simpsons episode bearing a writing credit for the great John Swartzwelder, “The Regina Monologues” unsurprisingly captures some of the magic of the show’s heyday. Loaded with gags and quotable dialogue—“I’m acting the way America acts best: unilaterally!”—the episode also boasts an impressive array of guests, including Ian McKellen, J.K. Rowling, and Tony Blair, the first (and only) sitting head of state to appear on the show. The Simpsons has a long history of satirizing the British, but “The Regina Monologues” unsurprisingly turns Homer into the ugly American—“We’re big-shot tourists from everyone’s favorite country, the USA. We saved your ass in Vietnam and shared our prostitutes with Hugh Grant!”—who causes an international incident. [Kyle Ryan]

19. “Goo Goo Gai Pan” (season 16, episode 12): China

More so than her MacGyver fandom, Selma Bouvier’s loneliness was her defining characteristic, used to justify wedding after wedding after wedding . Her desire for a child was introduced in “ Selma’s Choice ,” but the writers hit snooze on Selma’s biological clock until season 16. Even then, it’s just an excuse to get the Simpsons to China, where Homer poses as a renowned acrobat and Selma’s husband so she can adopt a baby. Lucy Liu guest stars as a Chinese bureaucrat who finds common ground with Selma, who also works for a “cruel and faceless empire: the DMV.” But first, they take in the sights, including the Great Wall Of China and Mao Zedong’s tomb, where Homer comments on the chairman’s “angelic” face and genocidal tendencies. There are some solid digs at oppressive regimes, including a plaque in Tiananmen Square that claims “nothing happened” there in 1989. By the time the episode aired in 2005, The Simpsons had been on many other (and funnier) trips, but “Goo Goo Gai Pan” did carry on the tradition of being banned in the country that served as its setting. [Danette Chavez]

18. “The Bart Wants What It Wants” (season 13, episode 11): Canada

Canada hosts the Simpsons late in this season-13 episode, when Bart convinces the family to take him to Toronto for a last-ditch effort to reunite with ex-girlfriend Greta Wolfcastle (Reese Witherspoon), daughter of McBain himself, who’s in Canada for a movie. This being the show’s first trip up north, it had 11 seasons’ worth of jokes about what Homer calls “America Junior” to unload: Rush song in soundtrack, check. Jokes about curling, check. Comically exaggerated Canadian accents, check. Jokes about universal healthcare, check. Random takedown of Canadians’ inferior basketball skills, check. “It’s so clean and bland,” Marge says as the family arrives in Toronto. “I’m home!” Elsewhere, on the set for a film called Canadian Graffiti , a teen spray-paints “OBEY THE RULES” on a building. If Canada took it hard, it only had to wait until season 14, when the entire show stopped to sincerely praise—and sing—the country’s national anthem, “O Canada.” [Kyle Ryan]

17. “The Saga Of Carl” (season 24, episode 21): Iceland

Does Carl, of Lenny and Carl fame, need an origin story? Not necessarily, but there’s only so much unchartered territory left to a show in its 24th season, as The Simpsons was when “The Saga Of Carl” debuted. That means Carl’s past, his friendship with the guys down at Moe’s, and his heretofore unknown ancestral homeland, Iceland. The trip is a silly justification of his throwaway joke of a surname—the Nordic patronym Carlson—but the way the show transports itself to Iceland is anything but half-assed. Sigur Rós came aboard to give an otherworldly sound to their “craphole island that looks like the moon and smells like rotten eggs” (Homer’s words), and while the country came in for a ribbing thanks to its taste for fermented shark, “The Saga Of Carl” revels in all its natural (black sand beaches, geothermal phenomena) and supernatural (trolls, fairies) splendor. Aurora borealis? At this time of year, in this part of the world, localized entirely outside of Homer, Moe, and Lenny’s rental car? Can you see it? Yes, but Moe’s too distracted to notice. [Erik Adams]

16. “The Italian Bob” (season 17, episode eight): Italy

This season-17 episode hits a trifecta of moth-eaten Simpsons premises: Not only does Homer fall ass-backwards into a trip abroad (to Italy) and a new-ish job (driver/courier for Mr. Burns), but Sideshow Bob returns (along with Kelsey Grammer, who voices the character). Although Yeardley Smith does admirable work in calling out the names of cheeses, Bob is actually in the driver’s seat throughout. The Europhile takes to life in the Italian countryside like a gondolier’s oar to water, going so far as to chastise the native speakers for “getting lazy on the second vowel” of their “buongiorno”s. “The Italian Job” is ultimately as light on humor as it is Mafia references, but one thing writer John Frink and director Mark Kirkland get right is the pairing of character and place. Sideshow Bob and Tuscany are a natural fit, even if Krusty and Pagliacci are not. [Danette Chavez]

15. “Blame It On Lisa” (season 13, episode 15): Brazil

The rare “The Simpsons are going to…” episode that ends with “get us sued,” season-13 episode “Blame It On Lisa” upset its host country of Brazil so much that executive producer James L. Brooks actually had to make a halfhearted apology to the city of Rio de Janeiro, lest its tourist board sue Fox for defamation. Hey, the episode wasn’t that bad: Sure, it portrayed all Brazilians as mustache-sporting, conga-dancing mishmashes of Latin American stereotypes, living in a dangerous, third-world slum crawling with rats and anacondas—but its Xuxa parody was pretty funny. The Simpsons ’ creative team was publicly taken aback by Rio’s response to its homage to the “lovely city and people of Rio de Janeiro,” which revolves around the kidnapping of a poverty-stricken orphan, and it offered amends not only by suggesting the president of Brazil come fight Homer on Celebrity Boxing , but also calling Brazil “the most disgusting place we’ve ever gone” in a later episode. Still, perhaps their greatest insult was boldly returning to Brazil some 12 seasons later for the tepid “You Don’t Have To Live Like A Referee,” an episode not even worth a minor international incident. [Sean O’Neal]

14. “Moe’N’a Lisa” (season 18, episode six): Vermont

Lisa and Moe, writing poetry together? Iiiiit happened . Typical of a year that also found Lisa paired off with Fat Tony and Cletus’ respective kids, season 18’s “Moe’N’a Lisa” still offers some bright spots amid its rather algorithmic premise—all of them located in Vermont. When Lisa discovers the surly bartender’s beautifully wounded soul and helps him channel it into a literary sensation, Moe and the family head to the Wordloaf conference in rustic New England, home of hayrides, duckpin bowling, and maple-syrup jokes. There’s not much barb to the regional humor (“Did you know that candles are made by losers?” is as pointed as it gets), but at least “Moe’N’a Lisa” abounds with classy literati guest voices, including Tom Wolfe, Gore Vidal, and a petty grudge match between Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen that’s worth the trip alone. [Sean O’Neal]

13. “Beyond Blunderdome” (season 11, episode one): Hollywood

It would be 11 seasons before The Simpsons lampooned its own home turf, a company town with so little interest in its own history that Mel Gibson has been entrusted with a remake of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington , and a tour-bus guide gets Marge worked up about the Brown Derby restaurant—then points out a vacant lot. The bulk of “Beyond Blunderdome” is about Hollywood as an idea, a dream factory where the Lethal Weapon star whisks the Simpsons away by private jet after Homer is the only member of a test-screening audience to speak his mind about Mr. Smith . Gibson himself is more vacated eyesore than “Hot Star Maps” attraction these days, but his action-movie résumé made him an ideal entry point for Homer’s conception of Tinseltown, a place where he and Mad Max can stick a shootout at the end of a Frank Capra classic, then hijack the Road Warrior car to lead a high-speed chase past such Hollywood Boulevard landmarks like Mann’s Chinese Theater and its lesser-known neighbor, the Chinese Man’s Theater. Bit of a shaggy Simpsons episode, but it’s probably a movie Homer would fill out a positive comment card for. [Erik Adams]

12. “Kill The Alligator And Run” (season 11, episode 19): Florida

In the DVD commentary for The Simpsons ’ 11th season, showrunner Mike Scully acknowledges that “Kill The Alligator And Run” is a frequent pick for Worst. Episode. Ever. among Simpsons fans, who deride it for its sloppy, frenetic storytelling and totally illogical premise. Of course, that was 18 years and plenty of new contenders ago, and while the Simpsons’ Florida adventure hasn’t become any more linear—it stumbles drunkenly from Homer seeking a cure for insomnia-fueled insanity, to his becoming the “King Of Spring Break,” to the whole family living as fugitive hillbillies after accidentally murdering the state’s reptile mascot—there’s at least some classic John Swartzwelder absurdism buried beneath the gimmicky Kid Rock cameos. (See: the Logan’s Run lifeclock on an MTV VJ; Homer hallucinating Charlie Rose and Robert Evans threatening to kill him.) If nothing else, this is also the episode that gave birth to that oft-quoted, rarely cited epithet for Florida: “America’s Wang.” [Sean O’Neal]

11. “Simpson Safari” (season 12, episode 17): Tanzania

The best gags come long before The Simpsons embarks on this “Safari”: the flimsy but vocal justifications for purchasing cupcakes and wine in bulk, the artist’s conception of an African safari on the box of animal crackers (did you ever see a happier pair of zebras in a convertible?). But the shudder that runs through a Tanzanian tribesman when Homer exclaims that “the Simpsons are going to Africa” portends a whole slew of jokes ranging from nonsensical (“hippos don’t come from eggs”) to uncomfortable (cracks about frequent regime changes and “bloodless coups”). Starting with a bag-boy strike and ending with a possible war criminal working as a flight attendant, this wandering storyline just leads to uninspired country. [Danette Chavez]

10. “Viva Ned Flanders” (season 10, episode 10): Las Vegas

Although its plot hangs on the flimsiest of premises—Flanders is 60 years old, apparently, and regretful of his hyper-cautious life—“Viva Ned Flanders” gets a lot of mileage from Flanders seeking Homer’s help to live in “the Impulse Zone.” Homer takes him to Vegas for a lost weekend, which naturally segues to the duo drunkenly marrying a pair of waitresses. Vegas’ naked hedonism and superficiality prove low-hanging fruit for The Simpsons ’ satire, and the jokes come quickly. One minute-long stretch when the duo arrives in Vegas lands some funny sight gags (the sign for the Cirque Du Buffet at the Golddiggers Casino promises “Loosest craps in town!”), a random shot at Melissa Rivers, and some amusing Flanders overstimulation. Although the episode has a bounty of Vegas zingers—“Someone dishonoring their marriage vows? Not in Las Vegas!” and “Las Vegas doesn’t care for out-of-towners”—the most inspired bit pays homage to Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas . Homer and Flanders pass a pair of Ralph Steadman-esque figures on the highway. “That sure was a fun trip to Las Vegas,” says one. “Eh, too many kids,” says the other. [Kyle Ryan]

9. “Any Given Sundance” (season 19, episode 18): Park City

Sometimes, a destination imprints itself on the characters of The Simpsons , rather than the other way around. It only takes a few days in the home of the Sundance Film Festival (“Where Parker Posey meets parka-ed posers”) for Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers to go from swag-grubbing novice producers to jaded industry types stonewalling Park City darling John C. Reilly. It’s tough to riff on a location whose most famous renowned denizens zoom in and out of town every January, so “Any Given Sundance” makes the mountain retreat a physical stand-in for the independent film culture that had sold the last scraps of its soul by 2008, just as Lisa nearly does when she turns her family’s most humiliating and intimate moments into the documentary Capturing The Simpsons . The Simpsons could never make it in a place like Park City: partially because they’re quickly detested, then forgotten, by the festival crowd, but also because Marge can’t stop stumbling into provocative movies with ironic titles. “Oh! Candyland ! A great family game is now a great family movie,” she exclaims before walking in on a scene of two people shooting up. [Erik Adams]

8. “Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo” (season 10, episode 23): Japan

Multiple faraway locales are featured in “Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo,” including the Chuck Garabedian Mega-Savings Seminar those fat cats in Washington don’t want you to hear about. But the real destination is Japan—specifically, Tokyo—and all its advanced technology and mockery of American mediocrity. The episode never aired in Japan, thanks in part to the scene in which Homer throws the emperor, Akihito, into a pile of unwashed sumo thongs. There are several other questionable choices, including the episode’s title, which refers to a World War II-era movie about American air strikes on Japan. But Donick Cary and Dan Greaney’s script inadvertently yields solid commentary on the culture clash, presenting the Simpson family as a mix of “ugly Americans” and well-meaning but condescending tourists. And, Godzilla-related turbulence jokes aside, the episode strives for some authenticity with George Takei voicing a sardonic but composed game-show host. But the most inspired bit is a seemingly throwaway conversation on the plane: “You liked Rashomon .” “That’s not how I remember it.” [Danette Chavez]

7. “Homer And Apu” (season five, episode 13): India

Like “ The Crepes Of Wrath ,” “Homer And Apu” doesn’t send the entire Simpsons clan to India, just Homer and Apu—and even then just for one scene. Having gotten Apu fired via ludicrous TV-news undercover sting, Homer travels with Apu to India to visit Kwik-E-Mart’s corporate headquarters to help get his friend’s job back. Given the current   debate around Apu, it’s a little cringe-inducing that the company’s president appears to be a Hindu pandit sitting cross-legged on a mountaintop. (In season four’s “Marge In Chains,” Apu notes that Kwik-E-Mart’s parent company is the very American-sounding Nordyne Defense Dynamics, but The Simpsons only sporadically cares about continuity.) Naturally, Homer blows it, and neither he nor the viewers see anything else of India besides that scene. He’d get his fill of the country in season 17. [Kyle Ryan]

6. “Missionary Impossible” (season 11, episode 15): Micronesia

Ultimately, season 11’s “Missionary Impossible” cares less about the culture of Micronesia than it does the distinguished television of Great Britain (“If they’re not having a go with a bird, they’re having a row with a wanker!”), and the plotline of Homer fleeing to the Pacific Islands to escape a horde of pissed-off PBS celebrities counts as one of the show’s flimsiest travel premises. But the episode distinguishes itself thanks to some well-timed gags about toad-licking and Jebus-worshiping, plus its nicely developed subplot about Bart taking over as “the man of the house,” and there’s something admirably, knowingly lazy (as opposed to the indifferent laziness of later years) about just letting the episode fall apart as spectacularly as the natives’ Homer-ravaged civilization. [Sean O’Neal]

5. “The Crepes Of Wrath” (season one, episode 11): France

The entire Simpsons family doesn’t visit France in this season-one episode—just Bart, sent on an exchange program as punishment for a cherry-bomb-in-the-toilet prank that ran afoul of Agnes Skinner (making her first appearance). The whole family would see the sights in France in later seasons, but in this episode—credited to the Murderers’ Row of George Meyer, Sam Simon, John Swartzwelder, and Jon Vitti—traps Bart in slave-like conditions at a shady winery run by a couple of small-time crooks. The only scenery he enjoys is a quick montage of famous paintings by French artists on his way to the vineyard that would soon become his prison. [Kyle Ryan]

4. “Mr. Lisa Goes To Washington” (season three, episode two): Washington, D.C.

This classic season-three episode—one of the first to take the Simpsons out of Springfield—finds the family visiting the nation’s capital after Lisa ascends to the finals of a patriotic-essay contest. As in Frank Capra’s classic Mr. Smith Goes To Washington , Lisa’s idealism is quickly crushed when she witnesses a congressman discussing bribes with a timber lobbyist at the fictitious Winifred Beecher Howe Memorial (“I will iron your sheets when you iron out the inequities in your labor laws”). Disillusioned, she pens a savagely cynical new essay, “Cesspool On The Potomac,” which fails to win the contest but quickly spreads through D.C. and costs the dirty congressman his job. Taken at face value, the idealistic denouement feels out of place on The Simpsons , but considering legendary writer George Meyer penned the episode, it’s undoubtedly sarcastic. (Since when did the show ever have something nice to say about George H.W. Bush?) But the D.C. setting affords a lot of good bits while the family goes sightseeing, like Thomas Jefferson getting defensive with Lisa at his memorial. [Kyle Ryan]

3. “The City Of New York Vs. Homer Simpson” (season nine, episode one): New York City

Unfortunately blemished by some now-uncomfortable World Trade Center gags, season-nine opener “The City Of New York Vs. Homer Simpson” has since seen time somewhat heal those wounds (and return it to syndication), allowing it to stand as the show’s trash-strewn valentine to Manhattan. Though he didn’t helm the episode, director David Silverman took hundreds of photos of the city so that animators could create a detailed replica, giving a touch of gritty, urban realism to a story about Homer and the family tracking down their car after a disgruntled Barney leaves it parked illegally between the Twin Towers. While everyone else enjoys a perfect day in New York—seeing Little Italy and Chinatown, taking in a Broadway musical, riding in a carriage through Central Park, visiting the offices of Mad Magazine —it’s Homer’s frustrating dealings with cops and khlav-kalash vendors and his desperate need to pee that really captures the soul of the city. [Sean O’Neal]

2. “Bart On The Road” (season seven, episode 20): Knoxville/Branson

As filled with endlessly quotable lines as Knoxville’s Sunsphere is with 16,000 boxes of unsold wigs, the season-seven classic “Bart On The Road” takes a freewheeling journey into the heart of America to see all the wonders and spring break-squandering disappointments it contains. Bart’s road trip—facilitated by a fake driver’s license, bullish soy futures, and an airtight “grammar rodeo” alibi—takes him, Milhouse, Nelson, and Martin through the “vast cornfields of Canada” to the remnants of the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee with a brief stopover in Branson, Missouri to catch the great Andy Williams (and finally, a detour into Hong Kong). Chances are if you’ve thought about those cities/crooners in the past 22 years, it’s been through the filter of this episode. [Sean O’Neal]

1. “Bart Vs. Australia” (season six, episode 16): Australia

“That’s not a knife,” “Bart Vs. Australia” says to every other Simpsons journey beyond the Springfield city limits. “This is a knife,” it finishes, now brandishing a spoon. The show had played these globetrotting games of knifey-spoony before, and it would play them again and again and again, but never with the lunatic zeal of “Bart Vs. Australia,” an episode that permanently warped a generation’s perception of the Coriolis effect and the titular island nation/continent. The episode’s tabloid inspiration will fade from memory, but the show will continue to chase the high of a $900 collect call, chaswassers, and “Mr. Simpson, shush: Disparaging the boot is a bootable offense!” In failing to restore U.S.-Australian relations (to the chagrin of a slimy diplomat played by Phil Hartman), “Bart Vs. Australia” tweaked “ugly American” conventions and permanently established the show’s foreign policy. As those fields of bullfrogs attest, once The Simpsons visits your country, things will never be the same. [Erik Adams]

Travel episodes

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Episodes of the show in which either at least one member of the family travels to another country or the focus on the episode is on a trip to a different city.

All items (100)

• Category:Episodes about Road Trips
• Category:Episodes where Homer and Bart sabotage everything
• Category:Episodes where the family moves

• Homer Simpson vs. Sydney Opera House