Did The Simpsons predict Bengals beating the LA Rams in Superbowl 2022? Fact Check

An image is spreading on social media that appears to show animated TV comedy The Simpsons predicting that the Cincinnati Bengals will beat the Los Angeles Rams 34-31 in the Super Bowl.

MOSTLY FALSE

An example of the circulating image can be seen below.

The Simpsons has had a long and largely embellished history of “predicting” future events. The Bengals and the Rams will be playing each other in the 56th outing of the Super Bowl in February 2022.

The image features several Bengals cheerleaders, an image of Homer with “Go Bengals” emblazoned on his chest and finally a news anchor on the TV with the subtitles “BENGALS win SUPER BOWL!! Cin 34 LA 31”.

However, as with many Simpsons related claims, this alleged prediction has actually been embellished.

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While the three images are real and do come from The Simpsons, there are many flaws to this prediction.

Firstly the images come from different episodes. The cheerleader image and news anchor image are from Season 14 episode Lisa the Greek. The image of Homer with Go Bengals on his stomach is from Season 16 episode Homer and Ned’s Hail Mary Pass.

Secondly neither of these episodes predicted the Bengals beating the Rams in the Superbowl. In fact neither of the episodes show the Bengals winning at all. In the Lisa the Greek episode, the Bengals lose to the Miami Dolphins (and it wasn’t a Super Bowl game). The “subtitles” claiming the Bengals beat the Rams 34-31 in the circulating meme were just digitally added to the image of the news anchor.

In the Homer and Ned’s Hail Mary Pass, the winning team of the Super Bowl is never disclosed.

The only real connection here is that the Cincinnati Bengals really were mentioned in both of these Simpsons episodes, though that may be down to a genuine connection between the show and the sports team. The Bengals were last in the Super Bowl in 1989, which was the year The Simpsons debuted on American television.

However, The Simpsons has never predicted The Bengals winning the Super Bowl. It has not predicted a Super Bowl winner for 2022. And the show has never featured a match between The Bengals and the LA Rams. As such we rank this latest Simpsons prediction as mostly false.

Other false or embellished Simpsons prediction claims include the claim that the show predicted Trump’s famous trip down the escalator, Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl performance, the riots after the death of George Floyd and the Notre Dame fire.