Following the news of the shooting during former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday, July 13 a series of social media posts went viral regarding The Simpsons’ prediction of the event – but did the animated sitcom really predict Trump’s assassination attempt? With 768 episodes across 35 seasons, The Simpsons has covered and parodied countless themes and public figures. As a result, comparisons between the series and real-world news are often common.
The Simpsons predicted the future a few times indeed, from new pieces of technology to public health crises and everything in between. Sports results, movies that would one day be made, and even the Disney and FOX merger are things that were tackled in some way or form during The Simpsons episodes before happening in the real world. Therefore, it is not surprising that any major breaking news is often followed by Simpsons comparisons.
The Simpsons Never Had An Episode About Trump’s Assassination Attempt
The image of “Simpsons Trump” in a coffin is not from the show.
Although Donald Trump has appeared and been mentioned in The Simpsons multiple times before and after his term, the show never predicted an assassination attempt on the former president. The idea that The Simpsons predicted the shooting during Trump’s rally came from a series of viral posts on X (former Twitter) that attributed two images to the show. One shows Trump in Simpsons style giving a campaign speech, whereas the other shows Trump in a similar style inside a coffin. However, the two viral images are not correlated, and the coffin one is not from The Simpsons.
The Simpsons did feature Trump giving a campaign speech during Trumptastic Voyage, which is where the image on the left in the above post comes from. The image of Trump drawn in The Simpsons style inside a coffin has been floating around on the internet for years. While its origins aren’t clear, it does not come from The Simpsons. The coffin image has been used to back up other incorrect The Simpsons prediction theories, including one that wrongfully claimed the show had predicted “Trump would die in 2020” due to COVID-19.
Donald Trump Has Only Appeared In 3 Simpsons Episodes
The former president has also appeared in 8 specials.
Trump has been mentioned in The Simpsons several times, but the show’s version of the former president has only been featured in three episodes. Those are “Hardly Kirk-ing,” “The Cad and the Hat,” and “Looking for Mr. Goodbart,” the last of which included a portion of Donald Trump’s First 100 Days in Office special as its opening. That said, Trump has appeared in multiple The Simpsons specials, from Trumptastic Voyage to West Wing Story. The Simpsons also predicted Trump’s presidency in season 11, episode 17, “Bart to the Future.”
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is a long-running animated TV series created by Matt Groening that satirically follows a working-class family in the misfit city of Springfield. Homer, a bit of a schmoe who works at a nuclear power plant, is the provider for his family, while his wife, Marge, tries to keep sanity and reason in the house to the best of her ability. Bart is a born troublemaker, and Lisa is his super-intelligent sister who finds herself surrounded by people who can’t understand her. Finally, Maggie is the mysterious baby who acts as a deus ex machina when the series calls for it. The show puts the family in several wild situations while constantly tackling socio-political and pop-culture topics set within their world, providing an often sharp critique of the subjects covered in each episode. This series first premiered in 1989 and has been a staple of Fox’s programming schedule ever since.
- Cast
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Tress MacNeille
, Julie Kavner
, Harry Shearer
, Pamela Hayden
, Nancy Cartwright
, Hank Azaria
, Dan Castellaneta
, Yeardley Smith - Release Date
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December 17, 1989
- Seasons
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35
- Network
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FOX
- Franchise(s)
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The Simpsons
