Al Jean says episodes air about a year after they are written, so the writers think a year ahead, and files the Trump line under “plausible predictions”.
“I predict people will make too much of our great predictions.” source
Former showrunner Bill Oakley on the “Osaka Flu” joke in the season 4 episode “Marge in Chains”: some shared images were manipulated, and the hits are coincidence because history repeats.
“I don't like it being used for nefarious purposes” source
Secondary: HuffPost attributes the interview to The Hollywood Reporter.
Rated False. Traces each image in a viral collage: Putin added from a 2016 clip, a Ukrainian flag pasted over a US flag in a season 17 frame, a projectile from a 2016 game.
“the images from “The Simpsons” that supposedly allude to the war were doctored.” source
PRESSChris Mueller, USA TODAY (via Yahoo News) · 2024-07-16
Rated False. The casket image never appeared on the show and has circulated since at least 2017; the lectern image is from the 2015 short “Trumptastic Voyage”.
“doctored fakes created after the fact for the purpose of misleading people.” source
Quote is showrunner Matt Selman as cited by USA TODAY. Syndicated copy; news.yahoo.com redirects to www.yahoo.com.
PRESSDezimey Kum, USA TODAY (via Yahoo News) · 2022-08-15
Rated False. Homer's rash is chickenpox from “Milhouse of Sand and Fog” (2005); the monkey is from “Girly Edition” (1998). Quotes Bill Oakley on satire of real events.
Syndicated copy on Yahoo dated 29 Aug 2022; original USA TODAY date 15 Aug 2022.
CLASSIFIEDDeclassifiedFILE NO. 036SHEET 3 OF 3
Analysis
Our own reading of the file, written from the sources on the other sheets. Opinion is marked as such.
There are two different things under one label. The first is the real joke: “Bart to the Future” aired in March 2000 with a line about President Trump. That is on the record, and so is the writer’s explanation: the gag was pitched as part of a vision of America going insane, the bottom Lisa inherits.
The second is the screenshot. A frame is lifted from one episode, something is pasted in (a flag, a date, a casket) and it travels without the episode attached. Fact-checkers who went back to the originals found Ukrainian flags that were never there, scenes from two unrelated episodes glued together, and an image the show never made. The current showrunner called the casket images doctored fakes.
What remains is ordinary coincidence at scale. Statisticians Diaconis and Mosteller list the law of truly large numbers and the habit of forgetting failed predictions among the main sources of coincidence. A show with hundreds of episodes and thousands of jokes will hit something. Our label is Explained.
What it shows
That the 2000 “President Trump” line is genuine and that its writer explained it as a warning, not a forecast.
That several viral “predictions” (Ukraine, Trump casket, monkeypox) were doctored or built from unrelated episodes, according to fact-checkers.
That the show's writers attribute real hits to volume, educated guesses and history repeating.
What it doesn't prove
That every claimed prediction is fake; some lines are real and some coincidences are striking.
That anyone at the show planned events; no source shows foreknowledge.
Who made the fakes: the fact-checks show what was altered, not by whom.
The other side
The strongest point for the believers is that the headline case is real. A network cartoon put “President Trump” into the script in March 2000, long before his presidency, and the writer does not deny it. He only denies that it was foresight. If one line can be that close, believers ask, why dismiss the rest out of hand?
Peer-reviewed paper. Four principles explain most coincidences: hidden cause, psychology (memory and perception), multiple endpoints, and the law of truly large numbers.
“Forgetting many failed predictions makes success seem more surprising.” source
Peer-reviewed journal article; copy hosted on a UC Berkeley course page.
TO VERIFY Candidates, not yet checked
Reuters fact check “The Simpsons episodes are not evidence of predictive programing” (16 Aug 2021) and the 2020 Reuters interview with Bill Oakley: reuters.com could not be fetched.
Snopes fact-checks on Simpsons predictions (snopes.com returned HTTP 402).
Dan Greaney's original 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter (paywall redirect).
BBC Newsbeat interview with Al Jean (“If you make enough predictions then 10% will turn out to be right”): bbc.com could not be fetched.
Air date of “Marge in Chains” (season 4, said to be 6 May 1993): not confirmed on a page opened.
Found, but not linked to a source we trust. Not on the sheets until they are.
