Did a scene from an episode of "The Simpsons" predict Hurricane Milton by showing that name on-screen during a Kent Brockman news broadcast segment? No, that's not true: A clip from the episode was altered to add the words "Hurricane Milton," a storm that made landfall in October 2024. The actual episode featured a storm named Hurricane Barbara.
The claim appeared in a reel (archived here) on Facebook on October 8, 2024. The reel included imagery of what was presented as a real episode of "The Simpsons," including a moment that featured "Hurricane Milton" on the screen of a newscast shown on the show. The caption of the reel read:
Theory (Hurricane Milton and The Simpsons) 🤯😱😰...#hurricanemilton #hurricane #florida #hurricaneflorida #thesimpsons #theory #conspiracytheory #thesimpson #simpsons #simpsonspredictions #prediction #hurricanehelene
This is what the reel looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Sun Oct 13 16:00:06 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories used Google Images to search for another clip of "The Simpsons" used in the reel. The results led us to the eighth episode of season eight titled "Hurricane Neddy," which originally aired on December 29, 1996. The title of the episode is a reference (archived here) to one of the show's characters, Ned Flanders; however, the name of the storm featured in the episode is Hurricane Barbara (archived here).
Lead Stories located a version of the clip during which Hurricane Milton was supposedly referenced. The screen says "Hurricane Barbara." Additionally, we viewed the entire "Hurricane Neddy" episode on Disney+ and found that there was no mention of Hurricane Milton, only "Hurricane Barbara." This indicates that the clip used in the reel making the claim was edited to feature the words "Hurricane Milton." Screenshots of the actual episode from YouTube and Disney+ are included below:
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Sun Oct 13 16:29:59 2024 UTC)
(Source: Disney+ screenshot taken on Sun Oct 13 16:56:56 2024 UTC)
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to "The Simpsons" can be found here.
