The future is often thought of as an unknowable, inscrutable web of possibility and promise. To try and know the future is foolish, and to claim to know it is a sign of madness. Yet, repeatedly through the years, people have tried to see what the future holds for us, in everything from politics to sports to tech.

Most of these endeavours fail. The keyword here is “most.” Every now and then, a correct prediction is made, usually as a joke that turns into a serious affair. It’s almost enough to make you think the universe must be aware and have a wicked sense of humor. Several incidents on the following list will definitely make you consider the possibility!

10 Book Predictions That Really Came True

10The Simpsons—3 Eyed Mutant Fish

It’s no surprise that having been around for over 30 years, The Simpsons has made its fair share of predictions, and most are flat-out wrong. The weirdest by far, however, has to be the prediction they were never trying to make in the first place: 3 eyed mutant fish.

Long-time fans of The Simpsons will surely remember Blinky, the 3 eyed nuclear fish that lives in the pond outside Mr. Burns’s nuclear factory. The glowing runoff from the plant mutated the little goldfish into a bug-eyed monster!

In 2011, Blinky came to life in Argentina as a pair of fishermen caught a 3 eyed wolf fish in a reservoir fed by a nearby nuclear plant. Mr. Burns, however, was nowhere to be found. Blink thrice if you need a rescue, Blinky!^[1]

9Person of Interest—Snowden

In 2012, the writers of rel=”noopener” target=”_blank” hit on a great idea: what if we wrote about a boyishly handsome young CIA agent who discovers that the U.S. government is spying on American citizens illegally and tries to tell the world? In the show, he had to dodge assassins and agents as he met secretly with reporters to spread the word of the government’s dirty dealings.

In real life, it was much the same, as Edward Snowden ran from the government, roaming country to country after exposing the U.S. Government for the illegal mass surveillance of its citizens and citizens of other countries.

Truth is usually stranger than fiction, but sometimes the two collide and sync in the worst possible areas.^[2]

8Quantum Leap—Super Bowl XXX

Quantum Leap, as a show, was all about predicting the future. In it, a man named Sam has his mind thrown through time and into the bodies of others, each time with a task to complete—to improve the life of the person into whom he has leaped. This made for some quality television and oodles of predictions about the future, almost all of them wrong.

Almost all. There was, of course, the Super Bowl XXX prediction.

The episode “All Americans,” which premiered in 1990, opens with Sam watching Super Bowl 30, a game that wouldn’t be played until 1996. He mentions, casually, that the Steelers are playing and are trailing by 3 points. Simple set dressing, until 1996, when the Steelers not only played in the Super Bowl but were trailing by 3 points halfway through.^[3]

7Legends of Chamberlain Heights—Kobe Bryant’s Death

Although not a well-known show, the cartoon Legends of Chamberlain Heights was a well-enjoyed show for the short time that it ran. A Comedy Central product, it had its share of dark and tasteless jokes. One such dark joke featured Kobe Bryant in a helicopter, which then crashed to the ground, killing him (but not before he tried to crawl out from underneath it).

The episode, which aired in 2016, predicted almost perfectly the startling and brutal death of the basketball legend in 2020 in, as portrayed, a helicopter crash, which also took the life of his daughter GiGi.

Out of respect for the dead, Comedy Central has removed the episode, but the scene in question is being circulated around the internet.^[4]

6The Simpsons—President Trump

No discussion of predictions could be complete without noting one of the most infamous predictions ever made by a television show: the rise of President Trump.

One of the jokes in the episode ‘Bart To The Future,’ at the time a humorous impossibility, was that Lisa Simpson had taken over the presidency from Donald Trump. This was, according to the writers, originally a placeholder name, but the idea that billionaire businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump would not only run but win was so funny to the writers that they decided to keep it in. The joke drew a chuckle from audiences and was then promptly forgotten for 16 years.

Then, as we all know, the 2016 election happened, and Donald Trump not only ran but won, which has had the effect of making The Simpsons episode increasingly more hilarious with time. What was once considered an outlandish gag line had become a reality, and I, for one, could not be laughing harder, though I suspect Hillary Clinton skips this episode when she binges the show!^[5]

10 People Who Claimed To Have Traveled To The Future

5Scrubs—Osama Bin Laden Location

Scrubs, a comedy-drama about the day-to-day happenings at a fictional hospital called Sacred Heart Hospital, was known for a character without a name—known simply as the Janitor. Prone to wild stories and insane theories, the Janitor was a semi-creepy comic relief character and minor antagonist who would make insane claims—his wife’s hand sewed his pants despite only having pinkies and thumbs or that his parents were also his siblings.

So, it was no surprise to anyone that the Janitor would say something as strange and seemingly nonsensical as suggesting that Osama bin Laden could be found in Pakistan instead of Afghanistan.

Imagine the surprise when he was actually found hiding in Pakistan! Thanks for the tip, Janitor!^[6]

4Friends—Facebook

A year before Facebook would be unveiled to the world, the fondly remembered tv show Friends made a prediction about a site like MySpace and Friendster that would focus on college alumni. The episode focused on themes of connecting with old friends, childish pranks and comments made over social media, and setting up satirical pages for friends.

The episode culminates with a Memorial Page for one of the group, which draws only two former classmates to their staged funeral. While it’s a disappointing turnout, the fictitious site proves to be useful in reconnecting people and allowing them to rekindle (or permanently break) old relationships from across vast distances and gulfs of time.

The site would turn out to be extremely similar, in fact almost identical to what would become Facebook—the most successful social media site to exist to date, which would grow and amass such a large user base that it is still used by over 2 billion people more than a decade later. It is written as nothing more than a joke, but it is still an incredible prediction of what was to come only a year later.^[7]

3Parks and Recreation—Cubs Win

A more positive future prediction comes to us from Parks and Recreation, a show about the day-to-day workings of a small government-run public spaces department in Indiana. The show came to us with what many of us felt to be a ridiculous but sweet prediction: the Cubs winning the World Series for the first time in over a century. Many of us, especially the sports fans, are aware of the various jokes about the Cubs curse, which states that the Cubs will never win the World Series. For a time, it seemed the Cubs truly were cursed, as they didn’t have a championship title win for 108 years.

Until finally, in 2016, the Cubs beat their curse after it was predicted in 2015 by a Parks and Recreation episode.

The episode, airing in 2015, depicted the Cubs breaking their curse, a victory that actually came about in 2016 but which Chicago was still feeling well into 2017. The show’s co-creator is credited with having made the prediction and has even been featured on Grantland and NBC Sports to talk about it since the win. He said all he did was track the Cubs minor league system.^[8]

2Spooks—London Subway Bombings

This BBC drama—the title is a colloquialism for spies—followed a team of British secret agents devoted to stopping terrorists before they could strike. If only life was like this, where the good guys always prevail, and terrorist attacks can be stopped before they happened.

In June of 2005, the show filmed an episode about terrorists trying (and failing) to bomb train stations in London. Exactly a month later, actual terrorists attempted the same thing; only they succeeded in killing 52 people and injuring more than 500. Even more chillingly, the fictional terrorists in Spooks tried to detonate a bomb at Kings Cross Station, the same spot the real terrorists chose for one of their deadly attacks. The creators were so disturbed that they briefly considered pulling the episode completely but eventually opted to include a disclaimer at the beginning, assuring viewers that what they were about to see wasn’t based on actual events.^[9]

And it seems, other “predictions” have also been seen on episodes of Spooks. Maybe the writers have access to a time machine after all.

1Star Trek—iPad

Arguably one of the most well known and important sci fi shows of all time, Star Trek gave us a view of the future that gave us all hope for a better life among the stars in a few hundred years. Although many of the show’s moments are ingrained heavily in American pop culture, few know that Star Trek predicted the invention of the touchscreen computer tablet about 23 years before Apple made the now famous iPad.

The touchscreen device, known in the show as a PADD (Personal Access Display Device), was a small, flat and touch-based device with rounded corners and no keyboard, connected to the Star Trek equivalent to the internet and used by nearly every officer, including medical staff and the captain.

Of course, the PADD was also the product of a small prop budget, and what better way to save money than to make a flat, rectangular slab with no knobs or blinking lights. The iPad itself is not a direct replica, but it’s still pretty amazing to see that we’ve already come far enough to have a small, rectangular slab of plastic, metal and glass that works on touch and can tell us anything we want to know with just a series of swipes.^[10]

10 Predictions From ‘The Simpsons’ That Weren’t Predictions At All

Polling is an important tool to measure the public’s feeling on any given topic. The idea of a poll is supposed to be both scientific and unbiased. 

Obviously there are some flaws in how they are executed from time to time, and results can easily be manipulated by those seeking to be unscrupulous. Likewise, polls can sometimes be gamed by the participants to produce a result that is not ideal just because it’s funny; just look at the tale of Boaty McBoatface to see that in action. 

Regardless of how it happens, sometimes poll results come back and they offer up something no one could have expected.

10. Jesus and Ric Flair Nearly Won a Time Person of the Century Poll

In the early days of online polling, few organizations realized what a can of worms they were opening by letting people online offer their own answers to questions. It’s one thing to have a poll with a yes or no toggle, or maybe a few choices they can click. It’s another to let people write in their answers.

As the year 2000 approached, Time magazine had the lofty idea to run a poll to decide who the Person of the Century might be. Millions of people voted. But Time was not aware of how certain groups might band together and vote multiple times to skew the outcome of such a poll. But skew, they did.

Fans of former wrestling superstar Ric Flair put in the effort to make their man the hero of the previous hundred years. Over 310,000 were logged for Flair putting him in second place behind another person who technically shouldn’t have qualified: Jesus.

Coming in third place with over 100,000 votes was Adolf Hitler, proving the poll had become deeply unserious. The editors of Time removed Jesus for having not been born in the century, and Hitler for being Hitler. 

Their reasons for axing Flair was that he was actually a character played by Richard Fliehr, Flair’s real name, making him unqualified as well. 

9. Astronomers Polled The Public to Choose the Name of the Color of the Universe

Sometimes you need to get creative to get people interested in science. Astronomers at Johns Hopkins University took this to heart when they revised their findings on the color of the universe.

Originally they had calculated that the universe, when everything was evened out, was aquamarine, but that was a mistake. So they went back to the drawing board, did some more colorful math, and came up with a new color. Beige. The universe is, more or less, beige. But in the interests of keeping this fun they solicited suggestions from the public about what to name the specific beige that the universe is. The answer they decided on was cosmic latte.

8. Kurt Russell Was Polled as Having Zero Unlikeability 

Are you a fan of Kurt Russell? Statistically speaking it seems like there’s a good chance you are, because polling suggests everyone likes Kurt Russell, or at least they used to at one time.

Though it’s hard to say what Russell’s best movie is, or his most popular one, he’s had plenty of memorable ones. This includes movies like The Thing, Escape From New York, Big Trouble in Little China, as well as his turn as Captain Jack O’Neill in 1994’s Stargate. The movie spawned a series of successful TV shows and even though Russell wasn’t in them, he’s still forever connected to one of sci-fi’s biggest franchises as a result. And he also got double his salary to be in it thanks to poll results.

Back in 1994, Russell was the only actor in Hollywood to poll with zero unlikeability. According to Russell, the role was not necessarily a likable one, so they needed an actor who everyone already loved to make it work. And it secured him a good payday to do it. 

7. Mountain Dew Polled Users for a New Name That Resulted in Chaos

In 2012, Mountain Dew came up with the somewhat cleverly named “Dub the Dew” contest where participants could choose a name for the newest Mountain Dew flavor. Popular vote in the poll would be the winner. 

In a twist everyone today would see coming, the top spots in the poll went to “Hitler Did Nothing Wrong,” “Diabeetus” and something vaguely offensive about grandmothers. Someone even hacked the site to include a thank you to the Israeli Mossad for orchestrating 9/11 as well as some links that rickrolled users. 

Naturally none of those names could be chosen so the whole site was scrapped and the company forgot the idea altogether. 

6. Only 15% of Americans Polled Thought We’d Reach The Moon By 1999

A poll is one of the most interesting ways to gain insight into human thought because it’s considered scientific and yet is totally unbound by any logic at the best of times. You literally just ask people what they think no matter how ill-informed they may be on a topic. You can find a fun example of this in Gallup’s polling about scientific advances from the year 1949.

Back then, the pollsters asked participants about what they thought the future held. Prognostication is, of course, one of the least accurate sciences out there but if you’re just looking for gut feelings from the rabble, then it doesn’t matter.

According to the 1949 poll, only 15% of Americans believed a person would have set foot on the moon by 1999. However, in the same poll those people proved far less cynical about medicine. Results showed 88% of responders assumed we’d have cancer cured by 1999. 

If you thought maybe the concept of a moon-landing maybe just sounded too far-fetched for the public of 1949, it’s worth noting that 63% of them were on board with the idea of nuclear-powered cars and airplanes as being a reality by 1999.

5. A Poll To Choose the Best Rock Supergroup Ever Picked a Band That Already Exists

Fan-casting movies is a pretty popular pastime these days, where people pick who they think would make the best cast for the latest superhero movie or anime adaptation. But it hasn’t always been something that only applies to TV and film. There’s a history of fan-casting musical groups as well. Just imagine right now who you think you could put together to create the absolute best musical supergroup of all time.

A British poll asked music fans to do just that back in 2005. It tasked them with picking the best lead singer, the best guitar player, the best bassist and the best drummer. Any musician could be picked to fill those positions, so you’re talking about Freddie Mercury, Slash, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon… anyone.

Inexplicably, the poll resulted in Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin being chosen as best singer, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin as best guitar player, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin as bass player and John Bonham of, you guessed it, Led Zeppelin as best drummer. So the dream team musical supergroup was Led Zeppelin, exactly as they had always been.

4. Polling Showed Justin Bieber Was More Hated Than Convicted Murderers

You may not know this if you’re a younger music fan but, once upon a time, people absolutely hated Justin Bieber. Just despised the kid. And the virulent hatred went well beyond the typical dislike you might feel for a musician you’re not particularly fond of. 

In 2013, Bieber scored high marks for unlikeability in a poll that focused only on musicians. He ranked at 54% unfavorable and only 20% likable. Only Chris Brown scored as being less likable, and this was at the height of Chris Brown’s numerous legal issues.

Just one year later, a larger poll that extended beyond the realm of music saw Bieber rank as the 5th most hated man in America. If that seems harsh, it is. But it gets worse. This poll ranked him more hated than Phil Spector who was serving a life sentence for murder at the time. He also ranked above Aaron Hernandez who’d just been arrested for three murders the year before.

So who outranked Bieber? OJ Simpson managed a little more hate, as did Bernie Madoff. Michael Jackson’s doctor Conrad Murray made the top of the list and the number one spot went to racist LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling.

3. A Japanese Poll Chose Ramen as the Country’s Greatest Invention

How much do you know about Japanese innovation? The country has a reputation as a tech hub and the source of many modern electronics. 

Historically, we have a lot to thank Japan for. The Sony Walkman, VHS video, karaoke, emojis, aircraft carriers, LED lights, the list is extensive. But what would be the best invention? The greatest thing the country ever did for themselves and the world at large?

This is a question that will come up in the media of probably every country. There are plenty of lists of the “Greatest American Inventions” or the “Greatest Canadian Inventions” so it’s no surprise Japan would have one, but what may be surprising is one the Japanese people themselves chose as number one.

In the year 2000, the Fuji Research Institute polled 2,000 adults in Tokyo to determine Japan’s greatest invention. Ramen noodles took the top spot. Karaoke ranked second.

2. 17% of AirPod Users Wear Them During Sex

So, do you wear AirPods? Since the wireless headphones first debuted they’ve become a go-to accessory for millions of people. You’ll see countless folks out and about with a pair in their ears letting them be blissfully unaware of the noise of the world around them, or at least pretend to be in the hopes that people won’t annoy them. 

A survey of just over 1,000 people conducted by a ticket selling platform was looking into the intersection of music and sex because sure, why not? Based on their results, they determined that a full 17% of respondents who own AirPods don’t bother to take them out during sex.

They did not make it clear what, if anything, the people wearing AirPods are listening to. It was also unclear if their partners were doing it as well. 

1. 4% of Americans Said They’d Been Decapitated

There is clear evidence not every poll is reliable. Pollsters know this as well as anyone. The numbers suggest between 4% and 7% of answers to an online poll are going to be bogus. There can be many reasons for this as well. Someone is intentionally skewing results, someone misunderstood a question or the answers, or someone was just rushing to get it done and didn’t pay attention chief among them. For that reason, that caveat of a plus or minus number often accompanies the results of any poll to account for results. 

You can find an example of this in the fact 4% of Americans polled said they had been decapitated at some point in their lives. As far as medical science knows, few people survive having their heads removed long enough to answer polls, so this result was worthy of some skepticism.

The fact that this happens has been great fodder for pop journalism over the years. Reports that 7% of Americans think chocolate milk comes from brown cows is probably a clear example of this. It makes a funny headline and people will joke about how stupid 7% of the country is, but in context the numbers fit. It’s unclear how the question was worded, as well. 

If respondents were asked simply “where does chocolate milk come from?” or maybe something more leading could have resulted in people thinking the question was so absurd they answer “brown cows” as a joke. If it was an option, they were able to select, some people may not have even read the question fully. It’s hard to say how it all played out but rest assured that 4% of the country has not been decapitated and most people are probably aware of chocolate milk’s origin.