“To me, this is sadly more the norm than it is a prediction. We just figured things were going to go bad,” showrunner Al Jean said in a recent interview.
The Simpsons has been praised for its ability to seemingly predict the future in the past, but in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Al Jean admitted that a resurfaced clip of the animated series from back in 1998 that’s lining up with current world events has left him feeling “very sad.”
“In terms of predictions, there are two kinds we have: The trivial, like Don Mattingly getting in trouble for his hair in ‘Homer at the Bat,’ and then there are predictions like this,” the 61-year-old animator explained, speaking specifically about the “Simpson Tide” episode, in which Homer unintentionally fires the captain of a nuclear submarine out of the vessel and into Russian waters.
Later in the show, we see Russia revealing that the Soviet Union “never truly dissolved” as tanks and troops take over the streets and the Berlin Wall finds itself being rebuilt. “I hate to say it, but I was born in 1961, so 30 years of my life were lived with the spectre of the Soviet Union. So, to me, this is sadly more the norm than it is a prediction. We just figured things were going to go bad,” Jean went on.
“Historical aggression never really goes away, and you have to be super vigilant,” the Michigan-born father of two told THR. “In 1998, when this clip aired, it was maybe the zenith of U.S.-Russia relations. But ever since [Russian President Vladimir] Putin got in, almost everybody has made it clear that he’s a bad guy and bad things are going to happen.”
CNN reports that, as of Friday morning, an increasing number of countries have been responded to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, implementing sanctions against the Putin-led country as it moves in on the capital of Kyiv.
“There is the kind of prediction, where we reference something that has happened, happening again — we hope it wouldn’t, but sadly, it does,” Jean shared, mentioning that viewers probably won’t see a specific Russia-Ukraine reference, but the series will “likely address how the world is changing.”
