'Simpsons' Didn't Predict Queen's Death - PolitiFact

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Your Email Address Sign Up Viral image stated on September 15, 2022 in a Facebook post: “The Simpsons” predicted Queen Elizabeth II’s 2022 death.

• Facebook Fact-checks
• Viral image

By Ciara O'Rourke September 19, 2022

If Your Time is short

• This isn’t an authentic image from the show. 

  See the sources for this fact-check

Here’s a list of things "The Simpsons" didn’t predict, despite social media posts claiming the long-running Matt Groening cartoon series’ prescience: COVID-19, Tom Hanks catching COVID-19, Canada’s trucker convoy protest, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

It’s time to add another prediction to the list: Queen Elizabeth II’s death.   

A Sept. 15 Facebook post features two animated images of the queen, who died Sept. 8. The first shows her clasping her hands together while Homer Simpson looks on in a courtroom. The second shows her lying in a partially opened casket displaying the words "Elizabeth II 1926-2022." Interspersed with the cartoon images is what appears to be footage of the queen’s eldest son, King Charles III, walking in her funeral procession.

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook.)

The first image, of the queen and Homer, is authentic. A reverse image search brings up multiple stills from the 2003 episode in which Homer crashes a rental car into the queen’s carriage. It also surfaces news stories about the queen’s appearance on the show.

According to a Wiki page dedicated to "The Simpsons," Elizabeth has appeared in six episodes, none of which mention her death. We found no evidence elsewhere that she died on the show. 

This cartoon illustration of the queen in a casket appears to be an alteration of another Simpsonslike cartoon image of former President Donald Trump in a casket. As we noted in a prior fact-check, that image never appeared in "The Simpsons" either. 

As we did with the faux-Trump image, we rate the claim that the Simpsons predicted Elizabeth’s death Pants on Fire!

 

Read About Our Process

The Principles of the Truth-O-Meter

Facebook post, Feb. 15, 2022

PolitiFact, No, ‘The Simpsons’ did not feature Trump in a coffin, Oct. 2, 2020

Facebook post, Oct. 2, 2020

Wikisimpsons, Queen Elizabeth II, visited Sept. 19, 2022

Rolling Stone, Queen Elizabeth II, Longest-Reigning Monarch, Dead at 96, Sept. 8, 2022

YouTube, The Simpsons Homer nearly kill the Queen of England, visited Sept. 19, 2022

The Star, From Paddington Bear to 'The Simpsons': Queen Elizabeth in pop culture, Sept. 9, 2022

IMDB, The Regina Monologues, Nov. 23, 2003

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