‘Throw Enough Darts’: ‘Simpsons’ Showrunner Explains Show’s Bizarre Predictability

‘We’ve seen it on the Simpsons’ has become a meme for the iconic show’s ability to predict the future. The Donald Trump presidency, 9/11 terrorist attack, global pandemic and many other mysterious hints have baffled viewers over the 30 years that the animated comedy has been on the air.

‘The Simpsons’ showrunner Al Jean, who has been writing for the show since its beginning in 1989, said in an interview that the secret of its ability to predict lies in the sheer number of released episodes, adding that sometimes the key to success is just simple luck.

“One of our writers, the guy whose episode predicted Donald Trump as president, said it best: ‘If you write 700 episodes, and you don’t predict anything, then you’re pretty bad.’ If you throw enough darts, you’re going to get some bullseyes,” Jean told NME.

Nevertheless, the unintentional foreshadowing of the attack on September 11 astonishes him to this day.

“The 9/11 one is so bizarre,” Jean said. “In the World Trade Center episode, [‘The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson’], there was a brochure reading $9 a day with an 11 styled up like the towers. That was in ’96, which was crazy, like this insane coincidence.”

The scariest Simpsons prediction ever

Predicting 9/11 in 1996 pic.twitter.com/4HKu6Tuws4

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Jean also noted that predictions do not happen only by accident, as it sometimes requires intelligence to make “educated guesses.”

“Stanley Kubrick made the movie ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ in 1968, and there’s Zoom and iPads in it — but that’s because he had futurologists helping him construct what the world might look like in 30 years time,” he noted.

CNET
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The Simpsons' 'Eat Up Martha' was the first autocorrect fail pic.twitter.com/77GZbNEOaU

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