Did The Simpsons predict the coronavirus outbreak? Fact Check

ByCraig Haley

Claims are spreading that TV show The Simpsons correctly predicted the coronavirus outbreak back in a 1993 episode.

FALSE

Claims about The Simpson’s seemingly incredible prowess to predict future events often circulate widely across the Internet. There is a smidgen of truth to the claims, in that The Simpsons did once mention a “President Trump” in a 2000 episode, and they did “predict” a Lady Gaga Superbowl performance five years before she really did grace the field at halftime.

However, both of the above claims were embellished to make them appear more remarkable than they actually were. Other prophecy related claims are flat out false, such as the assertion that The Simpsons predicted the Notre Dame fire or that Trump would try and purchase Greenland.


Sponsored Content. Continued below...




This next one falls more into the flat out false category. No, The Simpsons did not predict the coronavirus outbreak. We could locate no The Simpsons episode that specifically references the coronavirus.

Most claims circulate with the below images.

However, while the images may appear to tell a remarkable prophecy, they don’t. Firstly, the above left image featuring the news anchor has been digitally altered, and was not from the same episode as the other three pictures. The word “coronavirus” has been added to this image, which originally read “apocalypse meow“.

As for the other images, this is from a season 4 episode “Marge in Chains“. In this episode, many of the shows resident characters are infected by the Osaka Flu, which originated from Japan. That’s a far cry from the coronavirus, which of course originated from China. Those pertinent differences barely registers this as a mundane coincidence.

Since we could not find any episode that does actually reference a coronavirus outbreak, we rank this claim false.

Keep up-to-date with all our latest articles. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Continued below...


Thanks for reading! But before you go… as part of our latest series of articles on how to earn a little extra cash using the Internet (without getting scammed) we have been looking into how you can earn gift vouchers (like Amazon vouchers) using reward-per-action websites such as SwagBucks. If you are interested we even have our own sign-up code to get you started. Want to learn more? We discuss it here. (Or you can just sign-up here and use code Nonsense70SB when registering.)

Become a Facebook Supporter. For 0.99p (~$1.30) a month you can become a Facebook fan, meaning you get an optional Supporter Badge when you comment on our Facebook posts, as well as discounts on our merchandise. You can subscribe here (cancel anytime.)