Did The Simpsons predict OceanGate Titanic submersible tragedy 17 years ago?

The tragic ending to the tale of the missing OceanGate tourist submersible to the world's most famous shipwreck, Titanic, is filled with irony and some dark humour. While on the one hand, the tour company ultimately delivered THE most Titanic experience ever  - dead at the bottom of the ocean, - on the other hand, maybe The Simpsons had predicted it nearly 17 years ago. 

Did The Simpsons do it again?

• American satirical animated series The Simpsons is known for its eerie precognition, like predicting the Covid-19 pandemic or the arrest of former US President Donald Trump. 
• So, when the story of the Titan submersible broke, fans of the show started claiming that the series actually predicted something similar. 
• In Season 17's episode 10 which aired in 2006 (Homer's Paternity Coot), Homer Simpson begins suspecting that Abe Simpson may not actually be his biological father.

• Homer finds that the wealthy treasure hunter Mason Fairbanks is his biological father and the two set off to find the lost emerald treasure of sunken ship Piso Mojado. 
• And just the OceanGate expedition, Fairbanks and Simpson dive from a ship, each in their little sub (unlike the Titan sub), down to the shipwreck. The metal arms of the sub pick up the treasure and they head back up the water. 
• However, Homer Simpson loses his way and gets stuck in a coral reef. Then the oxygen in his sub starts running out - sounds familiar? 
• Homer Simpson passes out due to the oxygen running out, but is found by search and rescue and he wakes up from a coma three days later. And spoiler alert, turns out Homer's biological father is Abe Simpson. 
• Anyways when the OceanGate Titan sub went missing - and it was still unknown that the sub had exploded - there was a race against time to find it as the oxygen was running out. 
• This is the reason why fans of The Simpsons believe that the show actually predicted a sub with a wealthy person aboard running out of oxygen while on a deep sea expedition to a shipwreck. 

• Another uncanny resemblance from the show is that the executive producer Mike Reiss also went on several tours on OceanGate sub including the one to Titanic last July. 
• Speaking to ABC News, Mike Reiss said that even when he was on the Titanic expedition there were a few technical snags they experienced. 
• Incidentally, Reiss also produced the episode Simpson Tide, in which Homer Simpson gets stuck in a damaged sub. 

[ALSO READ: Who all were onboard the Titanic tourist sub?]

So, did the writers really predict a similar incident? 

• OceanGate launched its deep-sea expeditions in 2009, years after the Homer's Paternity Coot episode. With regards to the Simpson Tide episode, Mike Reiss told the New York Post that the real inspiration behind the episode was the movie Crimson Tide.
• So, maybe it's a coincidence or maybe such disastrous incidents are so predictable, but are still carried out. 
• The Simpsons' prediction is not the only one foretelling the OceanGate tragedy. In 2022, a Twitter user an eerie enough accurate prediction of the Titan sub while quote-tweeting a New York Times story on the expedition itself. 

• He suggested a potential sequel to the movie Titanic, where a submarine full of millionaires crashed during a tour of the Titanic. Now, that's even more accurate than The Simpsons' prediction of oxygen running out. 
• Perhaps when the word "death" is mentioned at least thrice on the first page when signing up for the expedition, it can be considered a very predictable tragedy. 

[ALSO READ: Titanic wreck visits to scaling Everest, the rise and rise of high-risk adventure among the super rich]

On Thursday, the US Coast Guard declared all five occupants of the OceanGate Titan sub dead after finding debris consistent with the "catastrophic implosion" of the submersible.

The submersible was carrying OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush (whose wife is related to real victims of the 1912 RMS Titanic sinking), billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet. 

[ALSO READ: The Titanic hunting submarine was steered by an Xbox controller. Yes, for real]