The Simpsons ‘predicted the future again’ in old episode foreshadowing Russia’s ice cream vaccination scheme

'How do they keep doing this?' asked one bemused fan

Fans of The Simpsons have shared a new instance in which the long-running cartoon seemingly “predicted” a news headline decades in advance.

The Simpsons is notorious for its foreshadowing of global news events, sometimes decades before they happen.

In the past, the show has “predicted” occurrences such as the election of Donald Trump as US president, and the discovery of the Higgs boson.

Now, a viewer has noticed a scene in the season 12 episode “The Computer Wore Menace Shoes”, which seemed to foreshadow the recent news story about an innovative scheme by a Russian vaccination centre to inoculate people from Covid-19 by enticing them with free ice cream.

In the episode, Homer Simpson becomes famous writing his own scandalising internet blog, only to accidentally uncover a conspiracy in which a mind control serum is being administered through flu jabs.

In one scene towards the episode's end, Homer is given a bowl of ice cream filled with syringes, from which he then proceeds to eat, inadvertently drugging himself.

One Twitter user juxtaposed a still image from the episode with the headline about the Russian ice cream scheme.

“Simpsons predicted the future again,” they wrote.

“How do they keep doing this?” wrote another Twitter user. “Is this a coincidence or do the writers have time machines wtf is going on?”

“One of the worst episodes ever made an accurate prediction,” one commenter said.

Earlier this year, one of The Simpsons' showrunners joked that the series had predicted Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's election as US president and vice president respectively, in an episode which aired in 2019.

The Simpsons can be streamed in the UK on Disney+.