Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 02/06/2026; Author: Amar Karađuz
What are the claims?
“The Simpsons” predicted hantavirus on a cruise ship in a 2012 episode.
What are the facts?
The plot of the 2012 episode revolves around a prank by Bart Simpson and has very little in common with the outbreak of hantavirus infections on the cruise ship “MV Hondius” in May 2026.
Cases of hantavirus infection among passengers on the cruise ship “MV Hondius” attracted significant media attention worldwide in April and May 2026. The ship departed Argentina on April 1 for a journey across the Atlantic Ocean and docked in the port of Tenerife on May 10. During the voyage, three passengers died, while several others were confirmed to have hantavirus infection. On May 18, the ship was moved to Rotterdam, where it was to be disinfected.
At the same time as reports about the spread of this virus, disinformation and conspiracy theories related to the case began circulating on social media. Raskrinkavanje analyzed some of them in several articles (1, 2, 3).
In early May, social media users and some news outlets shared claims that the popular animated series “The Simpsons” had also predicted this outbreak. Some of these posts contain short clips from the series that allegedly prove the claim. Thus, on May 8, 2026, a clip from “The Simpsons”, originally posted on Instagram, was shared on one Facebook profile with the claim that the series “predicted hantavirus in 2012”.
The earliest such post we found, containing a clip from the series and claiming that “The Simpsons” predicted the appearance of hantavirus on a ship, was shared on May 7. On May 14, the claim was also shared in several Facebook posts with an image allegedly showing a frame from the episode that “predicted” hantavirus on the cruise ship “MV Hondius”. The image shows Bart Simpson pointing at a ship named “Corona Cruises”.
Besides social media, the claim was also published in an article by the Tanjug news agency on May 12, 2026.
“The Simpsons” Predicted Virus on Cruise Ship 14 Years Ago
The agency cited the British tabloid The Mirror, claiming that “The Simpsons” had predicted back in 2012 that a “virus-stricken cruise ship” would set sail.
LONDON – The animated series “The Simpsons” described an outbreak of a virus on a ship fourteen years ago, similar to the current epidemic of deadly hantavirus on the Dutch cruise ship “MV Hondius”.
According to The Mirror, The Simpsons predicted back in 2012 that a cruise ship affected by a virus would set sail, in an episode in which Marge and Homer are on a cruise with their children when an alarm suddenly sounds on board and a video message from General William Sullivan is broadcast on a giant screen.
The article explained that the alleged appearance of a virus on the ship in the 2012 episode was not real, but part of a scheme by Bart Simpson, who wanted to prolong the family vacation on the ship. Articles with these or similar claims were published by Euronews, B92, Dnevni avaz, Nezavisne, RT, and others.
Social media posts and some news outlets also published articles that did not directly claim that “The Simpsons” had predicted the appearance of hantavirus on a cruise ship, but created that impression through suggestive wording relying on the popular myth of the series’ “predictive power”.
The animated series “The Simpsons”, known for its satirical humor but also for its incredible ability to predict the future, is once again at the center of global attention. (Informer, May 14, 2026)
What are the Facts?
As in many similar examples before, “The Simpsons” did not actually “predict” a real event that happened years after the episode aired. One of the most striking examples of the popular but false belief that the series “predicts” future events was recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic. In early 2020, numerous news outlets published articles falsely claiming that “The Simpsons” had predicted the pandemic in a 1993 episode.
Such claims very often imply that the events “predicted” by “The Simpsons” are actually staged.
The episode from which clips were taken for posts about the alleged “prediction” of hantavirus on a cruise ship is titled “A Totally Fun Thing Bart Will Never Do Again” and aired in 2012. This episode does not depict an outbreak of a deadly virus on a cruise ship at all, as claimed on social media and by news outlets.
According to the episode synopsis on Simpsons Wiki, the Simpson family goes on vacation on a cruise ship. In order to extend the trip and avoid returning home, Bart Simpson invents a story about a pandemic raging on land, trying to convince passengers and crew that the safest option is to remain on the cruise ship forever.
(…) Bart plays a clip from the film “Pandora Strain” on the cruise ship’s screens, in which a general informs people that a deadly pandemic has broken out on land and that all ships must remain at sea. Since there is no way to communicate with land, because Bart disabled the ship’s controls by pouring hot fudge over them, the cruise ship is forced to remain at sea.
In other words, the episode is about a prank on a cruise ship and a fictional epidemic on land, not a situation in which a deadly virus spreads on board.
In an analysis of viral English-language posts claiming that “The Simpsons” predicted hantavirus, BBC Bitesize also pointed out that the virus situation in the episode is not real, that it is Bart’s prank, and that nobody in the episode actually becomes ill.
As for posts featuring the image in which Bart points at a ship named “Corona Cruises”, these were analyzed by Reuters and the Croatian fact-checking platform Faktograf. Matt Selman, executive producer of “The Simpsons”, told Reuters that the image was edited and had never appeared in any episode of the series. In addition, in the 2012 episode, Bart points to a ship labeled “Royalty Valhalla”.
According to the facts, we assess the earliest post claiming that “The Simpsons” predicted the appearance of hantavirus on the ship “MV Hondius” as fake news. We give the same rating to the earliest post claiming that the plot of the 2012 episode includes an outbreak of infection on a ship similar to the case of the cruise ship “MV Hondius”, as well as to the earliest post sharing the image of Bart Simpson pointing at a ship named “Corona Cruises” without noting that it is not a real frame from “The Simpsons”.
Other posts are assessed as spreading fake news.
