Did 'The Simpsons' predict Coldplay jumbotron scandal?

According to viral social media posts, The Simpsons predicted a kiss cam moment at a Coldplay concert in July 2025. After a video went viral allegedly showing the Astronomer CEO caught cheating with the company's chief people officer, users on social media quickly claimed this was another event the sitcom had predicted long before it happened.

As per DW, the rumour spread across various social media platforms like TikTok, X, Instagram and Facebook, in various languages. Some posts garnered millions of views, and some even contained specific details, such as the season, episode and air date, where the supposed screenshot was allegedly taken from. DW Fact Check had a look into the alleged prediction.

Claim: "Did The Simpsons really predict the Coldplay Concert incident in a 2003 episode? (The alleged affair or sighting of Astronomer CEO Andy Byron & Kristin Cabot)," says this post on X that includes a still of the kiss cam footage alongside an image that appears to show the similar scene from the The Simpsons cartoon.

DW Fact Check: False

Most versions of the rumour claim the prediction occurred in Season 26, Episode 10, The Man Who Came to Be Dinner. The episode aired on January 4, 2015, and features a plot in which the Simpson family is abducted by aliens while visiting an amusement park. The episode is available on streaming platforms and YouTube here. However, there is no such scene in this episode.

Another episode, Season 17, Episode 22, Marge and Homer Turn a Couple Play, does include a kiss cam scene, but it takes place at a baseball match, and the characters kissing are Marge and Homer.

The alleged prediction screenshot circulating online is, therefore, most likely generated by artificial intelligence or digitally manipulated. DW Fact Check uploaded the image to several AI-detection platforms, including AIorNot, which labeled it as "likely AI-generated." Hive Moderation even gave an estimate of 99.9 per cent "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content."

But this isn't the first time The Simpsons has allegedly predicted future events. You may have seen some of these viral claims before:

Trump as US president

One of the most famous alleged predictions from The Simpsons was that Donald Trump would become the president of the United States.

In Season 11, Episode 17, Lisa Simpson did actually reference Donald Trump's presidency in an episode that originally aired on March 19, 2000. In the episode, set in the future, Lisa is the current US president and implies that real estate mogul Trump had been her predecessor and caused a budget crisis. In 2015, the media cited the episode as a foreshadowing of Trump's future presidential run.

However, the image often used to illustrate this "presidential prediction" is actually from a short episode called Trumptastic Voyage, from Season 25, which aired in July 2015, after Trump had already announced his candidacy. The image shows Trump and Homer on an escalator in front of a crowd. The cartoon scene is based on a real-life event from June of the same year.

2024 Baltimore bridge

Another viral post claimed that The Simpsons predicted the March 2024 collapse of the Baltimore bridge, showing Homer and Lisa watching the event unfold. At first glance, the image looks real, but the devil is in the details. There are small hints that this image is actually AI-generated.

If you take a closer look at the image, you'll see that Lisa's hair has 10 spikes, whereas the real character of the cartoon series only has eight. Homer's hair is also incorrect - the zigzags are noticeably narrower than in the show.

COVID-19 pandemic

Many people have also claimed online that the show predicted the COVID-19 pandemic. They refer to Season 4, Episode 21, titled Marge in Chains. In the episode many Springfield residents order juicers from Osaka, Japan. One of the factory workers is sick and coughs into the boxes, spreading what becomes known as the "Osaka Flu."

The only similarity between the "Osaka Flu" and COVID-19 is that both originated in East Asia. The fictional flu did not lead to a global lockdown, a pandemic or millions of deaths. By contrast, COVID-19 was far more serious, resulting in over 7 million deaths worldwide, as recorded by the World Health Organisation.