What is it with The Simpsons and predicting the future?
Whether it’s Donald Trump’s presidency, the Baltimore bridge collapse or fire at Notre Dame cathedral, the cartoon family from Springfield, USA, has become famous for their adventures to foretell major events years before they happen. But as BBC Bitesize Other Side of the Story has explained before - those claims of uncanny predictions are not exactly true.
What are people saying about The Simpsons and hantavirus?
It’s happened again with the hantavirus that hit the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius. Three people died after travelling on the ship and 11 of its approximately 150 passengers have tested positive for the virus which is carried by rodents.
This is a sad story - but that hasn’t stopped some people on socials linking it to an episode of The Simpsons from 2012. In A Totally Fun Thing Bart Will Never Do Again, main characters Bart, Homer, Marge, Lisa and Maggie go on a luxury cruise. After a few days, the passengers go into quarantine after something called the Pandora virus is reported to have infected the whole world, meaning all on board must remain at sea.
While it may be an interesting theory, a bit of fact-checking and critical thinking shows that the only thing it has in common with real-life events is a cruise ship.
Did The Simpsons predict hantavirus?
For a start, the virus situation in The Simpsons isn’t real. It was a hoax cooked up by Bart. He was enjoying the trip so much, he wanted to make it last forever, so broadcast a clip around the ship from a sci-fi film featuring a government warning about a virus taking hold of the Earth. Nobody in the episode becomes ill at all.
TikTok posts claiming the episode featured a cruise ship with ‘hantavirus’ sprayed across it are also fake. There is no such shot in the show and the virus is not mentioned by name.
The Simpsons' executive producer, Matt Helman, also confirmed in an email to the news agency Reuters - a trusted source - that the connection between the two was fake news and some images from the episode appearing on socials had been altered to look that way.
Why do people spread these stories?
When people say The Simpsons can predict the future, it’s an example of a conspiracy theory. These theories aren’t always true and they’re described as a belief that secret, influential groups are controlling world events behind the scenes.
While there’s an argument that linking the hantavirus with The Simpsons isn’t the same as saying the moon landings were faked, it’s worth considering that these theories are often spread so that people can claim to have knowledge of something that others don’t. In 2025’s Teen Summit survey carried out by BBC Bitesize and BBC Radio 5, just over half of the teenagers surveyed said they had seen conspiracy theories online - but 18% weren’t sure if they had or not.
But as we’ve shown, even a small amount of fact-checking - such as a reverse image search on one of the posts claiming that The Simpsons cruise ship had hantavirus graffiti - shows that there’s no truth behind this particular theory.
Conspiracy theories are one of the best examples why we shouldn’t believe everything we see online. Look for reliable sources whenever you can - or even try to catch the episode on streaming if you can.
This article was published in May 2026
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