Top 10 Simpsons Jokes That Came True

In the Super Bowl LI halftime show, Lady Gaga impressed pretty much everyone by descending from the top of Houston’s NRG Stadium on wires mid-performance. While it may have been the first time Gaga pulled this off for real, her animated-self had performed a similar high wire act five years earlier on “The Simpsons.” In fact, the wires weren’t the only similarity between the two performances. While she wasn’t wearing a fire-shooting bra at the Super Bowl, she did perform part of the act with drones in the background, quite similar to the birds that flew off her in her “Simpsons” appearance.

A restaurant tricked out like an airplane complete with turbulence may not be the ideal spot to hold your wedding anniversary dinner. At least, that’s what Homer and Marge find out in a 1998 episode… Bart and Lisa sure like it, though. And it seems like other diners across the globe also enjoy similar experiences on a regular basis. Since the early 2000s, airplane-themed restaurants and restaurants created inside former active aircraft have been popping up all over the world. Some offer fancy dining, others more affordable fare, and there’s even a McDonald’s built inside a Douglas DC-3 in Taupo, New Zealand.

In a classic 1991 episode, Ned Flanders opens a store called The Leftorium that sells all things left-handed. There are left-handed can openers, ledgers, and even a car with a left-handed gearshift. The idea doesn’t catch on at first and Flanders almost goes bankrupt. Fortunately, Homer decides that he doesn’t want to see his neighbor fail after all and lets all the southpaws in Springfield know where they can buy what they’re looking for. Turns out it is a good business idea - both on-screen and off. Because in real life, the people behind the previously defunct 1978’s Lefty’s San Francisco decided to re-open their Left Hand Store with a new, contemporary twist in 2008 and also launched an online store.

In this 1998 episode, Marge can’t get Bart and Lisa to do any yard work. That is until Bart discovers a virtual reality simulator of the labor at a travelling carnival that she can’t seem to pull him away from. Eleven years later, millions of people, many of whom probably couldn’t be bothered to tend to actual plants and green spaces, fell in love with “FarmVille,” a video game that lets them do just that from behind their screens. Now, with the increasing popularity of commercially available virtual reality, could a VR yard work simulator be far off?

It’s one of those classic “Simpsons” moments that was clearly meant to take an issue to its absurd conclusion, in this case the mistreatment of snakes. In the 1993 episode, the town of Springfield is excited about Whacking Day, when they drive snakes to the center of town and repeatedly hit them on the head to kill them. Only Lisa and Bart seem to have a problem with this festival of senseless violence and put a stop to it with the help of Barry White. Twenty years later, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission announced the Python Challenge, which sadly, was a real contest awarding $1,500 to the person who killed the most pythons in the Everglades. Truth is stranger than fiction.

In 2008, Television New Zealand really wanted to get the word out about their broadcast of Quentin Tarantino’s very violent film, “Kill Bill”. So they erected a billboard that rained fake blood down on cars and presumably anyone below. While this marketing tactic may have been a real world first, “The Simpsons” had done something similar back in a 1992 episode. Everyone in Springfield is so excited about the upcoming release of “The Itchy & Scratchy Movie” that even a newlywed couple doesn’t seem to mind that the billboard promoting the film drops red goo all over them.

When Springfield Elementary faces one of its many budget crunches, Principal Skinner decides to cut some corners at the expense of his students’ health. Lunchlady Doris helps out by grinding discarded gym mats into the cafeteria’s food, though even she’s skeptical of the nutritional value of the mats… Meanwhile IRL, it wasn’t a budget crunch that made Subway and other restaurant chains use azodicarbonamide to make their bread. Rather, the food additive, which is a chemical found in yoga mats, was used to give bread elasticity. Subway was forced to admit what they had been doing in 2014 and confirmed they were stopping this process 19 years after this Simpsons episode aired.

In 2012, with the price of cooking grease on the rise, licensed carting companies in New York City reported break-ins and witnessing thieves stealing grease they were supposed to pick up from outside of restaurants. Fourteen years earlier, Homer and Bart had the same idea in the episode, “Lard of the Dance.” Their slippery criminal empire eventually ends after a run-in with Groundskeeper Willie during a foiled grease heist at Springfield Elementary. While most of the real world bandits got away with their crimes, there’s still no Acne Grease and Shovel Company – as far as we know, anyway.

“Simpsons” fans will never forget Blinky, the infamous three-eyed fish that Bart catches in front of an investigative reporter in this classic 1990 episode. The culprit for this aquatic abnormality is clear: the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Mr. Burns even tries to spin Blinky’s third eye into a political advantage, but ends up being unable to swallow his own words - or the fish. Unfortunately, it only took 21 years before a similarly mutated fish was caught in reality. This happened in Argentina in the waters near - you guessed it - a nuclear power plant. Then, in 2015, another three-eyed fish was reportedly caught in Brooklyn – though some deemed it a hoax.

“The Simpsons” spent a decent amount of time spoofing Donald Trump’s rise to the Presidency while it was underway for real. But 15 years before Trump launched his campaign for the presidential election, they predicted the business mogul would one day occupy the Oval Office. In a 2000 episode, Bart sees a vision of the future where he’s unemployed while Lisa is President of the United States. In a budget meeting, she refers to a deficit left by her predecessor, President Trump. “The Simpsons” actually responded to this prediction five days after Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States in 2016, with Bart summing up his feelings and writing “Being right sucks” on the chalkboard.