In one instance where the line between fiction and reality wasn't clear-cut, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in 2016. However, The Simpsons had a hunch about this all the way back in 2000.
In an episode entitled "Bart to the Future", Bart Simpson gets a glimpse of what the rest of his life will be like. In that glimpse, he sees that his sister, Lisa, is elected as the "first (straight) female president." And the incumbent she is replacing is none other than Donald Trump himself.
The only thing more wholesome than Parks and Rec is the Chicago Cubs baseball franchise. And in the last season of the show, the two have a serendipitous meeting.
For those unfamiliar, the last season of the show takes place a few years in the future as a way to show viewers a bit of how their favorite characters are doing long term. Two of those characters happen to be in Chicago and report that everyone in the city is in a good mood "because of the Cubs winning the Series." That episode aired in 2015, and just one year later, the Cubs did indeed win the World Series.
The Lone Gunman was a short-lived spinoff of The X-Files that aired in early 2001. While the show as a whole didn't get much attention, the plot of its pilot episode became eerily relevant after the events of September 11th.
In the episode, the main characters try to prevent a terrorist from flying a plane into the World Trade Center. What's even creepier is that it's revealed to be a government plot--which echoed many of the conspiracy theories surrounding September 11th.
Pretty much the only person at this point who say that OJ Simpson "didn't do it" is OJ Simpson himself. He even wrote a book about it that has probably the worst title he could have chosen--If I Did It. Unfortunately, we're going to have to add a plagiarism charge to his crimes, because Chris Rock came out with that book almost a decade earlier.
In an episode of his 1999 HBO show, The Chris Rock Show, comedian Chris Rock has a bit about a meeting that Rock had with Simpson. And in that meeting, OJ was promoting his new book--hilariously titled, I Didn't Kill My Wife...But If I Did, Here's How I Did It.
Of all the correct predictions you could make, no one really wants Google Glass. These computerized glasses from Google were poised to be the next big thing in tech in the 2010s, but they ultimately fizzled away into obscurity.
But Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had hopped on the futuristic glasses craze years before Google did! This 1997 series introduced us to a device with a similar look and function to the Google Glass.
By the later seasons of Friends, the real world was on the cusp of a technological revolution. And judging from this 2003 episode, it seems like Ross might have...predicted Facebook?
In the episode, Ross shows Chandler a website designed exclusively for college kids (as Facebook originally was), where you can let people know how you're doing. Just one year later, Mark Zuckerberg would release a website that that did just that.
The American intelligence community poured countless dollars and man hours into finding Osama Bin Laden after the September 11th attacks. But it turns out, the answer was hiding in plain sight on the hospital sitcom, Scrubs.
In a 2006 episode, the hospital janitor jokingly mentions that they should be looking for Bin Laden in Pakistan. It took the United States a few years to get the hint, but Bin Laden was indeed found and killed in Pakistan in 2011.
Okay, so the 90s sci-fi drama Quantum Leap didn't predict the winner of Super Bowl XXX, but they did mention at one point that the Steelers were three points behind. It's not as dazzling a prediction, but it is still specific to the point of being almost impossible.
That was in 1990, but if you fast-forward six years later to the real Super Bowl XXX, you'll find that at in one point of the game, the Steelers were indeed three points behind the Cowboys, 20-17.
Laugh-In was a sketch comedy show that aired in the late 60s and early 70s and featured a segment called "News of the Future" where they would read satiric news headlines "from the future." Most were meant to be silly, but one actually came true!
In one episode, they predict the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989--which is exactly how it happened. The weird thing is that this prediction wasn't even the punchline for the joke; it was just the set-up. The full joke goes like this: "There was dancing in the streets today as East Germany finally tore down the Berlin Wall. Unfortunately, it was immediately replaced by a moat of alligators."
The Jetsons was an animated series about your average family living in the year 2062. While many of the Jetsons futuristic and humorous predictions haven't come true yet, there's one important thing they got right: flat screen TVs.
When the sci-fi sitcom originally aired in the 60s, TVs were big and bulky. And yet, The Jetsons presented us with images of TVs that were sleek and thin. It would take another 40 years or so for the technology to catch up, but they eventually became a reality!
Spooks (known as MI-5 in regions outside the UK) was a action-packed drama about Britain's military intelligence. Unfortunately, in 2005 one of their storylines jumped off the screen and into the real world.
On July 7th, 2005, Islamic terrorists orchestrated multiple bombings across London's public transportation systems that left over 50 dead and 700 injured. Only months before, the British TV show Spooks had filmed an episode about just that, specifically mentioning Kings Cross station, which was later targeted in the real-world attack.
"How many of us can honestly say that at one time or another he hasn't felt sexually attracted to mice? I know I have." In 1969 when that line was uttered in a Monty Python sketch, it probably seemed ridiculous. These days, not so much.
While it's not a spot-on prediction, the comedy troupe Monty Python kinda predicted furries in their sketch "The Mouse Problem." It centered around groups of grown men dress up as mice and gather to squeak and eat cheese. It's no Nostradamus-level prediction, but it's definitely within the ball park when it comes to furries.
This insanely named mini-series aired in Great Britain in the 60s, but yet it was able to predict TV trends from decades later. The show, which was set in the future, focused on how the ruling class used TV to maniuplate the lower classes.
Interestingly enough, one of those TV shows featured real people stranded on a desert island without any modern comforts--which is literally the premise of the long-running reality show, Survivor.
In the 70s, Lee Majors, the titular Six Million Dollar man could do just about anything thanks to all his bionic upgrades--which at the time were nothing more than science fiction.
However, decades later, we see that bionic limbs are closer to being a reality than ever. Prosthetic limbs in general have advanced by leaps and bounds in previous years, and a company is even in the midsts of clinical trials for their bionic eye.
Arrested Development was an iconic comedy full of despicable people that you couldn't help but love--one or more of which almost always had some sort of hairbrained scheme. But in season 4, there was a scheme so hairbrained that it obviously became an American political reality.
In one episode, we see George Bluth, patriarch of the show's main family, land a government contract to build a wall at the US-Mexican border--but he has no actual intention of completing the task. Only a few years later, our president decided to give this one a whirl himself.
In 2007, our former vice president, Dick Cheney, was fresh off a scandal when he accidentally shot a hunting buddy on a trip. So of course Family Guy, ever the connoisseur of pop culture references and good taste, decided to joke about it.
In the episode "Meet the Quagmires", the Grim Reaper mentions that Antonin Scalia is dead after a hunting trip with Dick Cheney. While Scalia died years after the Cheney incident, he did indeed die on a quail hunting trip while in Texas--just like the Cheney events unfolded.
Political drama Scandal was designed to be realistic. While the events of the show were supposedly fictional, they were meant to feel like they could actually happen. And in fact, one plot line actually did!
In a season two episode, star Kerry Washington helps a man employed by the NSA who has information that the American government is spying on citizens. Only one year later, NSA contractor Edward Snowden risked professional and personal ruin to prove that the US government is indeed spying on its citizens.
In 2015, users of the website AshleyMadison.com had their personal information leaked in one of the biggest online privacy scandals ever. Considering that the website helped faciliate affairs between married people, needless to say, people were not thrilled to see their names popping up on that list.
Only a few weeks after the scandal, techno-thriller Mr. Robot aired their season finale, which closely followed the real-life Ashley Madison drama. While some people thought the show was simply being opportunistic by throwing in something "ripped from the headlines", writing and production for the episode had actually wrapped before the scandal broke.
Long before the world was tripping over itself to proclaim how stunning and brave Caitlyn Jenner is for transitioning, Family Guy knew something was up.
The show has actually addressed this twice. In one episode, you've got a cutaway where Bruce Jenner is performing an old-timey cabaret dance at a USO show. And in another, Stewie Griffin comes out and says that Bruce Jenner is not a man but is in fact an "elegant, beautiful Dutch woman."
Black Mirror is a modern anthology series that's similar to The Twilight Zone--but with a strong focus on technology. Considering that the show has such a strong sci-fi theme, it's no surprise that they've made predictions about new gadgets and innovations in the future. And at least in one case, their prediction has all but come true.
In a season three episode, the show looks at what would happen to the world if bees died off entirely. To get around this, tech companies have managed to create robotic drones that are no bigger than the size of an insect to pollinate flowers. While we haven't reached that small size yet in the real world, it's clear that technology is trending that way. Currently we've got robots the size of hummingbirds, and it won't be much longer until they are the size of a bee.
When it comes to predicting the future, The Simpsons is probably the best TV show out there. In a 1997 episode, we see local cafeteria lady, Doris, is mixing horse parts into the lunches as Springfield Elementary. That could never happen, right?
Unfortunately, in 2013, Europe had a bit of a real-life horse scandal. An investigation found that some varieties of frozen burgers being sold in grocery stores were up to 29% horse meat. Needless to say, consumers were not amused.
They just managed to get this one in under the wire, but the original Star Trek successfully predicted the moon landing. While the actual even itself took place in 1969, Star Trek was talking about it in a 1967 episode.
In the episode "Tomorrow is Yesterday", the crew manages to pick up a radio transmission from NASA in 1969. In the transmission, they announce that astronauts are preparing to launch into space for mankind's first mission to the moon.
If you could stand the creepy puppets, the 1965 sci-fi show Thunderbirds was a fun, ridiculous watch. Based around a group of heroes who always manage to save the world, the shows futuristic setting wasn't always accurate, but there's one device you'll see on screen that should look familiar to all of us.
The Thunderbirds are frequently using telephones equipped with TV screens to communicate. While our laptops and smartphones might be a little more compact than their devices, the premise of communicating via live video was spot on.
Most of the world has forgotten about the short-lived 80s sitcom Second Chance...unless you're Matthew Perry or Muammar Gaddafi.
This was Perry's first major role on screen, which makes it noteworthy, but they really strange thing is that they (almost accurately) predicted the death day of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Second Chance showed the colonel at the pearly gates on his death day--July 29, 2011. They were off by a little, but got close--Gaddaffi was actually killed on October 20, 2011.
