‘The Simpsons’ showrunner reveals how show predicts future events — 34 and counting

For 36 seasons, “The Simpsons” has been right on the money — for the most part.

Fans of the beloved sitcom have seen how the show’s writers have been able to serve up hundreds of thousands of jokes while eerily predicting the future.

But viewers may be surprised to hear how the magic is really made.

“Well, the sourpuss answer I always give that no one likes is that if you study history and math, it would be literally impossible for us not to predict things,” showrunner and executive producer Matt Selman told People in an interview published Sunday. “If you say enough things, some of them are going to overlap with reality, and then that’s the math element. And then, the history element is if you make a show that is based on studying the past foolishness of humanity, you are surely going to anticipate the future foolishness of humanity as it sinks further into foolishness fair. So we don’t really think about it.”

Selman — who has worked on the series since 1997, starting as a writer — added that the number of predictions the long-running series has made (which currently stands at 34) is “completely unregulated.”

The 53-year-old explained that the only thing writers “hate” is when viewers “put obviously fake images online and say, we predicted things that we didn’t.”

“It was nicer when the predictions were just predicting real horrible events, not people pretending we predicted horrible events,” he continued, adding that it is “very depressing and dispiriting that people want the magic to be true so bad that they just start” making up scenarios that never appeared on “The Simpsons.”

The animated program, created by Matt Groening, debuted on FOX on Dec. 17, 1989. Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer have continued to be the primary voice cast throughout the years.

Season 36 premiered on Sept. 29 with an episode dubbed a “series finale,” which sparked confusion amongst fans. Selman said the episode’s “bold premise” had “really worked beautifully.”

“What we lost in maybe eyeballs for the premiere on linear TV, I think we will probably get some good streaming numbers, and people would be like, ‘Whoa, I heard this is crazy. I got to check it out,'” he shared with the outlet.

It was “not a finale, just a playful experiment with silliness.”

Despite the series writers still having many tricks up their sleeves, Selman thinks that to “tease” what’s to come would have a negative effect.

“My worry is if we let anyone know this idea before it aired, the internet would get confused and it would say ‘The Simpsons: is actually ending,'” he reiterated. “And then, somehow that would manifest. We would’ve predicted our famous predictions — we would’ve predicted our own demise.”

Throughout the years, the Fox series foreshadowed Donald Trump’s presidency, Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl performance, the Ebola outbreak, Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox and more.

In the 2000 episode “Bart to the Future,” a look into the future showed Lisa Simpson as President of the United States, telling her staff, “As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.” She is then told by Secretary of State Milhouse Van Houten that America is now broke.

In 2016, Trump was elected president, and three years into his term, America was not broke, but the stock market was suffering. In fact, it experienced some of its biggest single-day losses during the coronavirus pandemic.

Then, in the 2012 episode “Lisa Goes Gaga,” Lady Gaga flies over the audience whilst hanging from cables.

In real life, Gaga made her halftime show entrance at the 2017 Super Bowl by descending from the stadium’s roof. At the time, her performance was the most-watched in Super Bowl history.

The 1998 episode “When You Dish Upon a Star” saw Homer becoming the personal assistant to Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. At the end of the episode, fans spotted that 20th Century Fox was now “a division of Walt Disney Co.,” according to the massive sign in front of the studio.

Fast-forward to 2017, Disney reached terms to purchase 21st Century Fox — which includes 20th Century Fox Film and Television studios — for $52 billion. Two years later the acquisition was completed.