We all know that movies and television dramas (well, most of them) influence our society in a great way and vice-versa, but what about animated TV series or cartoons? Cartoons play an important role in the early development stages of the younger generation. I am sure you have a favorite TV cartoon show that you might have watched for years before you grew older.
Over the years, these cartoons sometimes intentionally or unintentionally have given us insights about what’s going to happen in the future. All of these predictions sometimes lead to more questions. Did they really predict all this or it’s all just a coincidence? Well, we can’t say that, but we can list some of the astonishing predictions made by cartoon series.
Table of Contents
15. Trump’s Presidency
This is a direct Simpsons quote from March 2000 in a future where Lisa was president
Once again, The Simpsons is always right pic.twitter.com/992UUp8bI6
— Mike w/o MFL10’s (@MikeMarFF) December 8, 2016
Sixteen years ago, no one could have though that Donald Trump would become the president of the United States, well except for himself. But in an episode of the Simpsons, a quote from Lisa, one of the main characters of the show, indicates that they had predicted this would happen sooner or later.
In this episode, Bart went ahead in the future, and discovers that Lisa, her sister not only becomes the U.S president, but also inherited a financial crisis or according to her own words “quite a budget crunch”. In a recent interview, writer Dan Greaney said that the joke was actually meant to warn the country.
14. 9/11 Attacks
You can say that it’s a coincidence, but more than one popular cartoon series have predicted the events of 9/11 before it actually happened. Nearly four months before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Towers, an episode of the popular cartoon show ‘Johnny Bravo’, showed a poster hanging in a cinema theater wall, where a huge tower was set on fire.
The next one was even more accurate, the 1994 episode of Iron Man (cartoon version) not only predicted the attacks on twin towers but also successfully anticipated the attack on Pentagon.
13. FIFA Corruption Scandal
A Still from The Simpsons
In 2015 a total of fourteen FIFA officials were indicted in a major bribery and corruption case that lead to arrest of seven top ranked FIFA officials and it also caused a stir at the top most layer of the federation. It turns out that the Simpsons had anticipated something like this a year ago.
Although in that episode, the federation member who asked Homer for his help didn’t actually address himself as representative of FIFA, it became clearer to audiences after the large scale investigations was launched on FIFA officials.
12. Ebola Epidemic
In another episode of the Simpsons, Marge Simpson offered to read a book to Bart, titled Curious George and the Ebola Virus. This gained lots of attraction in 2014, when Ebola was declared an epidemic in Africa and tensions were increasing in the United States. Around the same time a youtuber (user Thecontroversy7) created a video discussing the effective predective tendencies of the Simpsions.
11. NASA Spying Scandal
In 2007 Simpsons movie, the time when the family was forced to hide after their escape from the EPA’s biodome instated over the city of Springfield. As the movie continued, they showed how the NSA was able to track them by tapping their conversations. While it wasn’t until 2013, when Edward Snowden acted as a whistle blower and exposed government’s mass surveillance program against their own people, the Simpsons were again proven right.
10. Smart Watches
The Simpsons Smartwatch prediction (1995) via @mashable. lol pic.twitter.com/TmKgiXulxS
— SmartWatch News (@SmartWatchID) March 14, 2014
Once again, when Lisa Simpson pay a visit to fortune teller in episode 19 of the season 6, she was able to take the viewers 15 year forward in time where advanced wrist watches with in-built communication exist. Still, they were 4 years ahead of time as synchronized smart voice recognition watches weren’t available in the market until 2014.
9. Auto-correct Fails
Perhaps the first case of auto-correct was actually performed during an episode of the Simpsons. In the episode Lisa On Ice, Kearney asked bully Dolph to take memo that reads “Beat up Martin” on his “Newton” (making fun of Apple’s Newton). However the gadget typed in “Eat up Martha.”
This little gag haunted the Apple company and its engineers for years who spends hours trying to rectify their keyboard problem. Apple’s auto-correct problems have surfaced time and time again, more recently Apple officially fixed an annoying “I” and “A” auto-correct issue that has been bugging many Apple customers.
8. Videotelephony (Chatting)
In the episode “Lisa’s Wedding” (The Simpsons) she and Marge video chat on rotary phones on which TV screens were fitted, somewhat identical to the modern day videochatting gardgets.
7. Faulty Voting Machine
In the episode Treehouse of Horror XIX (The Simpsons), Homer Simpson tries to vote for Barack Obama during the presidential election. But every time he tries to do that, the machine automatically records his vote for the Republican opponent John McCain instead. A near identical incident occurred in 2012, when a voting machine in Pennsylvania turned several of Obama’s votes to Mitt Romney’s.
6. Greece Debt 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
Greece ran into some serious trouble in 2010, when various international and local economic malfunctions landed the entire country along with other smaller Eurozone nations in a huge financial crisis, which by the way took almost a half decade to rectify.
Things turned out worse in 2015, when the debt amount grew so huge that Greece became the very first develop nation to default to the IMF, something that no one had expected.
But it turns out that someone did anticipate that 2 years before the events of 2015. During a Simpsons episode, Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson, where Homer appeared as a guest commentator on news show ‘Head Butt’, a ticker ran across the screen showing “Europe puts Greece on eBay.”
5. Disney Fox Takeover
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
In early 2017, Walt Disney announced that they are willing to acquire several major assets of another TV giant, the 21st Century Fox in an audacious business deal. If this deal does take place, it will surely change the current setup of the entire entertainment industry, effective worldwide.
But we are not here for that. During an episode of the Simpsons in 1998, character Ron Howard, who is a director, wrote a letter to producer of 20th Century Fox, Brian Glazer. At the very beginning of the next scene a sign outside the Fox studio can be clearly seen which reads “A Division of Walt Disney Co” below the company’s trademark sign. I mean seriously, how did they do it?
4. The Nobel Prize Prediction
Jagdish Bhagwati, one of the reputed Indian economist won the Prize on that episode
Bengt Holmström is a famous Finnish economist who won the Nobel Price in 2016 alongside Oliver Hart. After the news of him getting the prestigious prize surfaced, hundreds of Simpsons fans didn’t take much time to show that the legendary TV series had already backed him to get nominated for the prize back in 2010.
On that episode, the character Milhouse Van Houten predicted that Mr. Holmström will win that year’s Nobel prize for economics in a betting pool against other Simpsons characters; Martin Prince, Database and Lisa Simpson. Bengt Holmström is currently a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
3. Robot House Maids
A still from popular show Richie Rich Comic
In my opinion, Robo maids are something that we all need and especially if its like Irona, remember Ritche RIch. She can talk, do daily chores and hell she can fight criminals. We are definitely waiting to have something like this, aren’t we. But maybe we don’t have to wait longer.
In 2015, Sophia, one of the most advanced humanoid robot was activated for the first time. Sophia is known for her superior social skills and dubbed by many researchers as the world’s best chat-bot with a face.
2. Flying Cars And Modern Technology
Flying cars are not far from being a commerial technology, at least for the rich. Well, whatever the case is right now, the Jetsons nailed it in the 1970s and 1980s with flying cars with a transparent bubble on the top. On another note, if you make a quick assessment then you will find out that now we are more in common with the Jetsons than the people in 1960s.
For instance, take Rosy, the robot with which our AI is still not in par with but we have reached to a certain point where we can communicate with our robots and command them to do certain things.
1. The Maths of Higgs Boson
Read: 10 Popular Inventors Killed By Their Inventions
The Higgs boson or Higgs particle is an important constituent of the particle physics, whose existence can solve the age old mystery of the unified forces. In episode 2 of the 10th installment of the Simpsons, Homer was shown standing alongside a blackboard on which the mass of an undiscovered elementary particle was written with an equation leading to it. An identical particle was discovered by the CERN scientists after almost 14 years after that Simpsons episode.
