Fans Thought The Simpsons Had Predicted The Titanic Submersible. A Producer On The Show Explained What Happened
Updated with video.
For decades, fans of The Simpsons have tied events in the real world back to moments from episodes that make the artists and writing staff seem surprisingly prescient. The long-running animated series apparently predicted Disney would one day own the Springfield family, and even the idea of billionaires going into space (among other examples). Things took a darker turn when some fans started proclaiming online that the show predicted the recent OceanGate submersible tragedy, to which producer Mike Reiss shared an explanation for what actually happened.
There are actually two episodes of The Simpsons that fans are connecting to the tragedy. One is the tenth episode of Season 17, "Homer's Paternity Coot," in which Homer enters a submersible with a painted-on wetsuit, ultimately gets stuck underwater and then has his submarine's oxygen run out. Once the news got out, multiple fans on Twitter attempted to insert that moment into the list of predictions the show has put out there, with the below as an example:
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The other episode that's come up is a bit older: Season 9's "Simpson Tide." The installment featured Homer joining the Navy after being fired from the nuclear power plant, and having to serve onboard a submarine. The episode is obviously being connected to the tragedy due to its faulty form of transport, even though it's a military submersible in this case.
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That episode's loose ties to the Titan's fate is also interesting for a surprising separate reason. Producer Mike Reiss, who worked on the episode, had actually made his own Titanic-viewing trip within OceanGate's Titan before its tragedy:
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Mike Reiss rode the submersible decades after "Simpson Tide," albeit worriedly, so it would be strange if the episode was truly a prediction about something dangerous or tragic happening decades later. The real reason that particular episode was crafted certainly had nothing to do with the writers having a secret notebook notifying them of future world events.
The Simpsons producer spoke to the New York Post about "Simpson Tide," and said that it was directly inspired by the popular Denzel Washington movie Crimson Tide. Mike Reiss summed up the situation as he saw it, explaining why it definitely doesn't count as one of those "Simpsons predicted it" moments.
We did that episode because the movie ‘Crimson Tide’ had just come out. We didn’t predict the future, we just did it off that movie, and 20 years later, something like that happened.
Paying homage to movies is something The Simpsons has readily been responsible for far more than predicting the future, so fans shouldn't be all that surprised to find out the truth. As fun as it is to talk about, we shouldn't seriously subscribe to the idea the Fox series' staff is capable of guiding future events, at least beyond "earning a new season renewal from Fox."
It does happen enough, though, that educated minds around the world have put some serious thinking on the matter. One college professor explained that because The Simpsons is a show that takes a generally broad look at life, with hundreds of episodes having been produced, there will almost necessarily be moments in which the show's reality will blend with our own. This latest OceanGate incident will hopefully be one of the last times something tragic happens with an unsafe submersible, even though we probably won't go very long without another handful of "Simpsons predictions" capturing fans' attention.
Stream these and other The Simpsons episodes with a Disney+ subscription. Now would be a great time to do so with the WGA writers strike underway, making the fall schedule hard to predict even for the stalwart Fox hit.