Comedy, more than any other genre, has a strange way of anticipating future events. The Simpsons alone has been said to have predicted a long list of things, and its so-called predictions even have a Wikipedia page dedicated to them. We’re not trying to suggest that anyone has psychic powers, of course, and people do probably get a little too much credit for this sort of stuff, if we’re being honest. But every once in a while, someone comes out with something so on-the-nose that you can’t help but think to yourself, “Man, that’s a helluva coincidence.” For example…
4. SETH MEYERS’S WIFE GAVE BIRTH THE SAME WAY HIS CHARACTER IN NEW YEAR’S EVE FEARED HIS WIFE WOULD
Seth Meyers and Jessica Biel play a married couple expecting their first child in the 2011 Garry Marshall comedy New Year’s Eve. When Biel’s character’s water breaks in their apartment, Meyers (as Griffin Byrne) worries that it’s happened too early because they’re not at the hospital, and the couple rushes to find a cab. In 2016, Meyers found himself in the same situation when his first child arrived earlier than expected, and he and his wife had to take an Uber to the delivery room. Two years later, his New Year’s Eve character’s fears came true, and Meyers’s wife ended up giving birth to their next kid in the lobby of their apartment building.
3. THE CRITIC HAD A SCENE FEATURING A HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME MUSICAL TWO YEARS BEFORE DISNEY ACTUALLY MADE ONE
In the Season 1 episode of The Critic entitled “Every Doris Has Her Day,” Jay Sherman (voiced by Jon Lovitz) goes to a musical based on The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The scene was meant to show how ridiculous such an idea was, but apparently, somebody at Disney came up with that same idea around that time and thought it wasn’t absurd at all. Almost two years to the day after The Critic episode aired, an animated musical version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame was released. It became a major success, both critically and commercially. A stage adaptation was produced three years later, and a direct-to-video sequel followed three years after that, in 2002.
2. CHRIS ROCK DAMN-NEAR PREDICTED THE TITLE OF O.J. SIMPSON’S “CONFESSION” BOOK
In the first episode of HBO’s The Chris Rock Show, which originally aired in 1997, Rock takes us on a tour backstage at the theater where the show was filmed. At one point, he picks up a VHS tape he comes across, an instructional video starring O.J. Simpson titled I Didn’t Kill My Wife! But If I Did, Here’s How I’d Do It. Nearly a decade went by before it was announced that Simpson had written a book called If I Did It, intended to give a hypothetical breakdown of how he would have killed his late wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman, if he had murdered her. It was eventually released as If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer in 2007, against Simpson’s wishes.
1. BILL BURR COMPARED KANYE WEST TO HITLER IN 2017
A clip from Bill Burr’s 2017 stand-up special Walk Your Way Out started making the rounds years later after Kanye West had one of his many public meltdowns. In the bit, Burr talks about West’s ego and how it comes across in interviews. He suggests that if a white person had an ego like that, they would sound a lot like Adolf Hitler. West would go on to publicly praise Hitler and even write songs about him beginning in 2022.
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