When a cargo ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on March 26th, causing a partial collapse, conspiracy theorists were quick to claim the long-running animated sitcom “The Simpsons” had somehow predicted the catastrophe years in advance. Fabricated videos, doctored images, and wildly misleading claims spread across social media like wildfire. However, a closer examination reveals there is no evidence to support the notion that the writers of the famous cartoon saw this bridge disaster coming.
The Baseless Claims Go Viral
In the hours after the Singapore-bound ship Dali lost power and plowed into the key Baltimore transportation artery, bogus photos and videos purporting to show a “Simpsons prediction” of the event began circulating online. One widely-shared AI-generated image depicted the Simpsons family watching from a distance as the ship struck the bridge. Another viral clip was an obvious fake, using AI to insert audio of a news report about the Baltimore collision over Simpsons scene completely unrelated to bridges or ships.
Despite obvious inconsistencies and inauthenticities, the hoax managed to fool many viewers scrolling through social media feeds. The false claim that writers of the irreverent cartoon had made an eerily accurate foreshadowing created a social media frenzy as it spread across Twitter (now X), TikTok, Facebook and other platforms.
Fueling the conspiracy claims further was an actual recent episode of The Simpsons that depicted the famous Forth Bridge in Scotland. Though the episode had nothing to do with the Baltimore bridge, some Twitter users attempted to draw parallels between the two bridge scenes as “proof” the show had predicted the Key Bridge disaster through clever foreshadowing.
Debunking the Hoax
However, representatives from “The Simpsons” were quick to debunk the viral conspiracy claims as completely unfounded. Al Jean, the show’s longtime executive producer, tweeted that the “ridiculous” allegations of having foreseen the Baltimore bridge collapse were “way off-model” for how the show’s writing process actually works.
Jean clarified that every episode plot is concocted by the show’s writing staff using their own creativity and life experiences – not by attempting to envision tragic future events. He noted it would be “horrible” if the writers ever tried to imagine and incorporate real-life disasters just for the sake of claiming they “predicted” it when the catastrophe later came to fruition.
Fact-checkers also rapidly debunked the hoax images and videos as being crudely fabricated using AI tools and digital editing. Dedicated conspiracy theory debunkers like Snopes.com identified inconsistencies and telltale signs that the viral “Simpsons prediction” media had been artificially created and did not actually depict genuine scenes from the iconic cartoon.
Enduring Skepticism
Despite the rapid and thorough debunkings by authoritative sources, some online skeptics and conspiracy theorists have remained unconvinced. The enduring allure of perceiving hidden truths and patterns in pop culture phenomena like “The Simpsons” has proven difficult to fully extinguish.
For the writers of the show, however, the entire controversy represented an unwelcome distraction from their core creative purpose – using smart satire and social commentary to entertain viewers, not attempt to augur real-world tragedies. As the clean-up continues in Baltimore and investigations into the bridge collapse proceed, the bizarre conspiracy claims around “The Simpsons” have already exemplified the potential for misinformation to rapidly spread in the modern digital age.
