19 times 'The Simpsons' accurately predicted the future
19 years ago, an episode of "The Simpsons" predicted that Donald Trump would one day become US president.
And this wasn't the only time the writers have managed to predict the future.
The most recent prediction to come to light is from an episode from season 4 in 1993, where parcels are shipped to Springfield from Osaka in Japan. Homer's is filled with germs from an assembly line worker coughing into it.
The "Osaka flu" that infects the entire town has some similarities to the current spread of coronavirus affecting China and 23 other countries so far in 2020.
"The Simpsons" has been running for almost 30 years, so it's inevitable that some themes that crop up in the show might occur in real life. But some of the plotlines are eerily close to events that have happened throughout the world.
We've listed some of the strangest predictions the cartoon's writers have made since the show's launch in 1989, from Homer discovering the Higgs boson to animators drawing The Shard in London almost 20 years before it was built.
Edith Hancock, Amanda Luz Henning Santiago, and Carrie Wittmer contributed to previous versions of this post.
Here are 19 times "The Simpsons" predicted the future, in order of their appearance on the show:
