In the episode “Lard of the Dance”, which aired August 23rd 1998, Homer and Bart enter the grease selling business and look to steal it from Springfield Elementary School. Real life parodied this episode where in 2011, the St.Louis Dispatch would report $2000 worth of used grease being stolen from Bobby Tesslers St.Louis Wings Co. in Rock Hill, Missouri
2- The Simpsons predicts a horrible tragedy
The episode “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson”, from September 21st 1997, which is where Homer must go to The World Trade Center after not paying his parking tickets. The prediction as depicted below is interesting because the price of the magazine coincides with the buildings placement.
3- The Simpsons helps a huge technological advancement
In the 1994 episode “Lisa On Ice”, Kerney asks Dolph to make a note on his Apple digital assistant. The kicker here was that Apple had not fully adopted the touch screen aspect to their devices. At the time especially, a physical keyboard was the only practical option for mobile devices. Scott Forstall, an Apple engineer at the time was looking for a way to break away from the keyboard and had turned to The Simpsons as inspiration.
4- The Simpsons predicts the mauling of Siegfried and Roy
In the 1993 classic episode “$pringfield”, The Simpsons depict the 2003 tiger mauling of Siegfried and Roy with their parody characters, Gunter and Ernst.
5- Someone stole the lemon tree
In the 1995 episode “Lemons of Troy”, an episode where kids from Shelbyville stole the prized lemon tree from Springfield depicts the 2013 incident in Houston where someone stole a lemon tree.
6- The Simpsons predicts the Farmville craze.
From the 1998 episode “Bart Carny”, one of the displays depicts a game called Yard Work Simulator. Eerily similar to the Facebook game “Farmville” that has plagued our existence
7- The Simpsons may just have designed the iPod
From the 1996 episode “Bart After Dark”, the intercom at the gate looks eerily similar to the 2001 Apple iPod. Perhaps not as innovative as Apple thinks.
8- Mutated vegetables
From the 1999 episode “E-I-E-I (Annoyed Grunt)”, the classic tomacco episode where radiation on the farm caused the tomatoes to glow. This actually happened in 2011, where Japan announced that they had vegetables that were being mutated by radiation.
9- Start me up
From the 1995 episode “Lisa’s Wedding”, they expertly predict that The Rolling Stones will still be touring far into the future. The one hangup is that in 2010, the Stones are not confined to wheelchairs.
10- 3D everything
In the 2005 episode “Future-Drama”, Marge takes a picture, does something and it instantly turns into a cake. 3D printing is very real today.
Finally gets a response
From the early episode from 1991s “Brush with Greatness”, The Simpsons joke at the amount of fan letters Ringo Starr gets. This is actually true, as this fan would know waiting 50 years to get her response.