The Simpsons has done it again, predicting Tom Hanks's team up with President Biden's election committee to send a message of recovery out to the nation. Hanks' message, set to air throughout the one-year anniversary of Biden's inauguration, will focus on the strides made to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic recovery after 2020's lockdowns, and further hope for America's well-being. Hanks, as a survivor of COVID-19 and a participant in last year's inauguration, will narrate the video. Hanks, who most recently appeared in a cameo on the Yellowstone prequel, 1883, is known for being a trusted and well-loved celebrity by most Americans.
Since it first began airing in 1989, The Simpsons has made a joke out of American life, lampooning everything from goofy neighbors to the federal government, and eerily, the show has often made jokes that eventually became reality. Famously, The Simpsons predicted Donald Trump being president 16 years before he was elected. The Simpsons has also predicted Nobel Prize winners (2016's winner for Economics, Bengt R. Holstrom in an episode from 2010), Disney's purchase of 20th Century Fox (20 years before it happened), and Lady Gaga's entrance to her Super Bowl halftime show in 2017 in an episode aired in 2012. And while some of these things may have been easily predictable, or even influenced by the earlier Simpsons' ideas, some predictions are harder to discount.
Now, Twitter user @kalebprime pointed out that The Simpsons also predicted the Tom Hanks-U.S. government team-up. They reminded everyone of the fact that the 2007 film, The Simpsons Movie, predicted this exact moment - albeit in a much funnier, much less politically correct way. In the movie, Tom Hanks appears as a cartoon version of himself, saying, "Hello, I'm Tom Hanks. The U.S. government has lost its credibility so it's borrowing some of mine." While certain episodes of The Simpsons have been censored or banned in the past for social and political commentary, there's no denying President Biden's approval ratings could use a boost from America's Dad Tom Hanks right about now. Messaging and judgments aside, The Simpsons' track record for predicting recent huge events has reached Nostradamus-like levels of eerie.
For instance, a 1993 episode of The Simpsons shows a pandemic beginning when a worker in a Japanese factory sneezes on a shipment. The disease is given the problematic moniker "Osaka Flu" and spreads quickly throughout Springfield. In their rush to flee the virus, residents accidentally trample a crate of killer bees, which promptly wreak havoc. Mayor Quimby is then revealed to have fled the city for the Caribbean. Plenty of Simpsons fans see clear connections between these storylines and the outbreak of COVID-19, murder hornets, and Ted Cruz fleeing Texas for Cancun during his state's 2021 blizzard and power crisis. Still, the show's writers insist that they only comment on the past, which often repeats itself.
Whether The Simpsons is truly prophetic, or it has simply aired long enough to see its fiction become a reality, the fact remains that the show has an uncanny power to lay bare humanity's ability to make itself the joke. For 33 years, The Simpsons has made viewers think and laugh, and think about why they're laughing. And if there's one thing to remember, it's that even though The Simpsons predicted billionaires going to space, it also promised us a Lisa Simpson presidency.
The Simpsons will return from a mid-season hiatus on February 27th, 2022 on Fox.