Fortune teller vision
IT’S the hit cartoon which spookily predicted Donald Trump’s presidency, an Ebola outbreak and Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl performance, as well as scientists discovering the Higgs boson particle.
Now a top casino firm is looking to pay a fan of The Simpsons £5,000 to watch the every episode and see if they can work out what else is going to happen in the future, as we reported yesterday.
But it’s not the only show whose makers appear to have a crystal ball, as JAMES MOORE reveals…
STAR TREK: An episode of the sci-fi series starring William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk sees the crew of the USS Enterprise travel back in time to 1969 during a manned lunar mission. Uncannily, the show went out two years before Apollo 11 really did land the first man on the Moon.
QUANTUM LEAP: Time travel was the central theme of the US show and a 1990 scene saw character Al watching the 1996 Super Bowl, with the Pittsburgh Steelers down by three points. During the actual match the team really did go three points down to eventual winners the Dallas Cowboys.
FRIENDS: It’s the one from 2003 where Ross shows Chandler a new website designed just for college students where you can “post messages for people” and “let everyone know what you’re up to.” Facebook started the following year as a social media site for Harvard college students.
FAMILY GUY: A 2009 episode of the cartoon saw character Stewie reveal that Keeping Up With The Kardashians star Bruce Jenner is actually “a woman.” Six years later, Jenner came out as trans woman Caitlyn.
SUPERNATURAL: 11 years before the coronavirus pandemic struck, the American fantasy drama saw character Dean sent to the future where the “Croatoan virus” had caused havoc and everyone hoarding toilet paper.
THE THICK OF IT: The BBC political comedy, famous for character Malcolm Tucker’s sweary rants, saw fictional policies made on the hoof becoming reality such as pet Asbos, while a national spare room database was echoed by the “bedroom tax”.
BLACK MIRROR: An episode of Charlie Brooker’s series in 2011 featured a fictional PM forced to have sex with a pig on TV. In 2015 Lord Ashcroft claimed real premier David Cameron once put his privates in a dead pig’s mouth for
a college initiation ceremony. The Tory leader denied it.
THE X-FILES: When the pilot of its spin-off conspiracy show The Lone Gunmen aired in March 2001 it featured a plot involving the flying of a hijacked plane into New York’s World Trade Center – six months before 9/11.
SCRUBS: In a 2007 episode of US hospital comedy, the janitor says he thinks US authorities
should look for Al-qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Creepily that’s just where he was found in 2011.
SPOOKS: In early 2005, an episode of the BBC spy drama was filmed featuring an imagined terrorist bombing on the London Underground. On July 7, terror bombings hit the network killing 52 people. When the series aired later that year it had to carry a disclaimer.