The Simpsons Predicted The Disney-Fox Merger In The 90s

Simpsons did it—again.

The Simpsons has been around for 29 seasons and 627 episodes, commenting on pop culture all the while. As a result, the writers for the series have made some bold predictions in some tossed-off jokes, many of which have later come true. So it's become a meme of sorts to compare current events to Simpsons episodes, with observers often finding that The Simpsons did it first.

Today, the fortune tellers of Springfield have proven their Nostradamus-esque mettle once again, correctly predicting in 1998 that 20th (now 21st) Century Fox would eventually become "a division of Walt Disney Co"—which is, more or less, exactly what has happened today.

So, that's cool. A writeup by Deadline points out some further coincidences, noting that the episode in which the joke appears, season 10's "When You Dish Upon A Star", also features a scene of Ron Howard inside the studio, pitching movie ideas in front of a Star Wars poster. 

You'll note that Howard is the director of the upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story, set for release on May 25, 2018 by Lucasfilm... a division of The Walt Disney Company. That part of the prediction is so bizarrely on-point that we're quite frankly beginning to question the existence of linear time.

In other news, The Simpsons is now technically a Walt Disney cartoon. This world is truly so dang weird.