Rumours on social media claim that a movie from the 1960’s called Omicron predicted the much publicized “omicron” variant of COVID-19. This rumour is often circulated with the image of a movie poster with the words “The Omicron Variant” with the tagline “The Day The Earth Turned Into A Cemetery!”
What’s True? There was a movie in the 1960s called Omicron. Omicron is the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet.
What’s False? The movie didn’t predict COVID-19. Also, images showing a vintage movie poster called ‘The Omicron Variant‘ are fake.
As the producers of The Simpsons will tell you, social media does seem to love a good “spooky prediction” type claim, and we often see such content spread rapidly across the Internet.
But as is often the case, mild coincidences (if they even amount to that) are often embellished to make them more appealing and shareworthy. And this appears to be the case with the latest claim about a movie predicting the omicron variant.
Firstly, yes, there was an Italian movie from 1963 called Omicron. Is this some strange coincidence? Hardly. The term “omicron” isn’t a new word, nor was it created to describe the latest COVID-19 variant. In fact it is an exceptionally old word, since it’s the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet and has been in use for thousands of years, often as a substitute for the number 15, and sometimes to describe something that comes in 15th place. It is also used in astronomy, as are many of the letters of the Greek alphabet.
All of the COVID-19 variants have been labelled with the Greek alphabet, so using Omicron was continuing that tradition.
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The 1963 movie Omicron also doesn’t deal with anything to do with pandemics or viruses. The IMDB entry for the movie offers the following description –
An alien takes over the body of an Earthman in order to learn about the planet so his race can take it over.
Unless you are of the predisposition that COVID-19 is some sort of extra-terrestrial tool to spy on Planet Earth, there isn’t really much similarity between the movie plot and the current pandemic we’re all facing.
Secondly, there is an image circulating social media that appears to show a vintage movie poster titled “The Omicron Variant” with the tagline “The Day The Earth Turned Into A Cemetery!” It’s fake.
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A simple reverse image search reveals that it is a poster for a movie called Phase IV, and (as you can probably determine from the poster itself) is a movie about killer ants. Again, nothing to do with pandemics or viruses. The poster has simply had its original title digitally removed and “The Omicron Variant” added in. The real and fake posters are below.
As such, we rank this claim as a mixture of truth and misinformation. Yes a movie exists, but this isn’t really any type of coincidence (let alone spook prediction) given how popular the word Omicron actually is.