Predictive Programming is the theory that major changes or events taking place in our world have been previously depicted through fiction and popular culture and media. These could be due to pure co-incidences or deliberate seeds sown in popular media to make the population more accepting when an event of extreme change happens without mass panic and confusion. This was first described and proposed by researcher Alan Watt who defines Predictive programming as “Predictive programming is a subtle form of psychological conditioning provided by the media to acquaint the public with planned societal changes to be implemented by our leaders.” There are a number of independent researchers, blogs, YouTube and Bitchute channels who have explained this phenomenon, highlighting how some major world events have uncanny resemblance in media content much before these would even be thought to be possible. Researchers and bloggers often debate that this is either pure co-incidence due to the high number of media content that is produced in this digital age, or these are subliminal messages ingrained in media creations to gradually condition the general public to be accepting of the change.

In this article, we shall explore this theory by highlighting some of the most talked-about examples of this phenomenon. We shall explore so-called ‘predictive programming’ examples of events that have already taken place and also theorize about a possible future event that has been heavily depicted in popular culture, likely to occur in the near/distant future.

The Simpsons

In terms of media, the one show that has garnered the most attention for ‘predicting the future’ is the long running cartoon-comedy The Simpsons. All the uncanny similarities from clips of The Simpsons to real-world occurrences is a topic of research in itself. One of the most notable examples is a Simpsons Episode forecasting Donald Trump's presidency at a time when such a thought was laughable and considered ridiculous by the general public. In an episode aired in 2000, called ‘Bart to the Future’ it is shown that in the year 2030, Lisa Simpson becomes the first female president of the U.S.A and is handling an economic crisis inherited from the previous president, President Donald Trump. In a now much-analyzed scene, Lisa Simpsons’ economic adviser is seeing telling her ‘The country became broke during President Trump’s tenure’. Sounds eerily close to the present, given Kamala Harris is set to become the very first female Vice-President after President Trump and the USA is indeed facing serious economic challenges after the Covid crisis. Some of the many other stunning co-incidences seemingly aired in Simpsons episodes are:

Disney Buying 21st Century Fox:

Building the Shard in London:

Almost 14 years before the construction of the shard began in London, an episode aired showing a very similar looking skyscraper located roughly where the Shard presently is in the London skyline.

Calculation of Higgs Boson:

According to British Science writer Simon Singh in his Book, ‘Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets’ in one of the episodes almost 14 years before scientists could calculate the mass of the Higgs Boson (so called God Particle), it is shown that Homer unleashes his hidden mathematical abilities and tries to do the same calculation. According to Singh “If you work it out, you get the mass of a Higgs boson that’s only a bit larger than the nano-mass of [what] a Higgs boson actually is. It’s kind of amazing as Homer makes this prediction 14 years before it was discovered.”
9/11?

While not as striking as some of the other examples, this still from the Simpsons years before September 2001, is often cited by researchers that the makers of the sitcom were trying to forewarn or drop clues to its audience.

9/11: Other often Cited Examples

While the above-mentioned instance from The Simpsons might seem to be a case of ‘over-analyzing’ there are quite a few other popular culture clips and stills that people consider to have similarities or hints aimed at the September 9/11 attacks. A small portion of these (mainly from comic books and TV shows) are shown below:

Marvel 1976 Comic:

Sesame Street:

Challenge of the Super Friends (Cartoon 1978):

Donald Duck Comic:

Marvel Comics 1987 (Showing Pentagon Strike):

The Squeeze Movie Cover 1987:

Matrix (Movie Still, Showing September 11, 2001 Date):

Album cover of the rap group Coup meant to be released in June 2001:

Command and Conquer 2 (Video Game Cover released in 2000)

Kobe Bryant's Death

Considering more recent events, Kobe Bryant's death in January earlier this year came as a shock and was out of the blue given the nature of his demise in a helicopter crash. Fans and the general public alike mourned his death across the world and took days to digest the fact that one of the greatest athletes of our generation was more. However, this cartoon clip from 2017 shows a disturbingly similar scene, where Kobe Bryant is depicted to die in a helicopter crash.

Besides, there is this now viral tweet from 2012 also foretelling of a similar fate for Kobe.

A World Wide Pandemic or Virus?

Most health experts and doctors would argue that a global pandemic was only a matter of time if anything was given the highly interconnected world we live in today and our rapidly evolving lifestyles going against the natural order of things. So maybe depictions of a global pandemic/virus in films and books should be taken with a pinch of salt if anything. There are numerous small and big-budget movies and TV shows that have a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by a global pandemic (virus) at the core of their theme (12 Monkeys, World War Z, V for Vendetta, etc). Regardless the following examples do bear some very uncanny similarities with what's going on in the world today.

Eye of Darkness by Dean Koontz (published 1981):

A thriller novel The Eyes of Darkness, written by Dean Koontz in 1981, mentioned a virus named Wuhan-400. In the novel, the virus was created as a weapon in a laboratory.

Contagion 2011 Film:

The plot for the 2011 film could easily read as a summary of what's happening in the world in 2020. Most strikingly in the film about a global pandemic causing food shortages and social isolation, the cause attributed to the virus was also from a bat-induced virus entering the food supply chain.

Outbreak 1995 Film:

Another Hollywood film about a highly contagious virus that ‘spreads like the flu’ (quote in the movie). The intro credits to the film had the following quote:
“The single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on the planet is the virus.”

My Secret Terrius (2018 Korean Show):

Simpsons Again:

The Simpsons not to be left out also had an episode in 1993 titled "Marge in Chains" which shows a mysterious virus from Asia invading the town of Springfield. The virus starts in Japan, where a sick factory employee in Japan sneezes into numerous packages containing juicers, that multiple people in Springfield buy - and on opening the packages, contract the disease. The symptoms of the virus, turn out to be eerily similar to COVID-19 - all symptoms of a common flu. Furthermore when the residents of the town try to find a cure, they mistakenly release a box of a ‘dangerious hornets’. Bizarrely a few months after the COVID-19 crisis hit the USA there were a number of reports across media organizations about ‘large wasps and hornet attacks’ (so called ‘murder hornets’) sweeping across the country.

Sylvia Browne (Book 2008):

A section of the book ‘End of Days’ published by the infamous psychic Sylvia Browne in 2008 seemingly predicts the current pandemic crisis to the exact year.

Verdict and Whats next?

So is predictive programming a real phenomenon or is it simply a consequence of over-zealous internet users who try to find clips of media and excerpts from books to match their already held beliefs. The reality might be more complex than a simple black and white answer. While it is indeed viable that given the sheer volume of information and media content available today it won’t be hard to find at least one particular still or frame that might be contrived to point to an event that has already happened. There is indeed a degree of hindsight or confirmation bias to this. However, there is no denying the odds of some of these ‘co-incidences’. For example, how likely is that the Simpsons not only featured an episode about a viral flu-like disease originating from Asia but also showed dangerous wasps flying around immediately after in the same episode. American and world media featured prominent headlines about how the ‘murder hornet’ crisis had immediately followed the coronavirus pandemic. There might be some substance to the theory of predictive programming if one considers how deeply tied in Hollywood and general media production companies are to intelligence and deep state operatives. The nexus of C.I.A and Hollywood is an open secret in this day and age. So many there are indeed some instances of subliminal messages shared through popular media to condition the general public to certain types of possible worst-case scenarios or catastrophes.

So what can we expect next according to the proponents of this theory? As far as the immediate future is concerned netizens have been alarmed at the recent trailer of a film called SongBird (produced by Michael Bay) which shows a dystopian world reeling from the ‘COVID-23’ crisis (in 2023). The world according to this film trailer has only gotten worse since 2020 and is now under large-scale military law and containment zones. Regardless of whether his film is meant to forecast anything to the public, it can be said that it is made in extremely poor taste given how deeply affected people still are by this ongoing crisis. Pandemic aside researchers also point to ‘UFO’ and ‘Alien Invasion’ as another potential theme that the public has been heavily exposed to over the past few decades. Indeed the number of films depicting a global alien invasion and the world coming together to fight these forces off is numerous (Independence Day, Battle of Los Angeles, War of the Worlds etc.). Maybe the powers that be have always expected or had secret knowledge of such a scenario to take place and have been preparing the public psyche for such an eventuality. Or maybe according to a controversial theory, an alien invasion could be ‘faked’ by human operatives as a way of bringing the world together beyond local and regional conflicts. This shall be explored in a future article about ‘Project Bluebeam’. For now, let us know what you feel about the examples highlighted in this article. Are they simply co-incidences and hindsight bias. Or is something more subliminal afoot?