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A post claiming that the Fox sitcom The Simpsons predicted Pope Francis' recent death has been circulating online. Rumors began when X user @JasperZiggle shared a post highlighting an alleged "little-known" episode that foretold the exact circumstances surrounding the pontiff's demise.
The tweet went viral with over 260,000 views and thousands of likes. It included a video compilation of alleged footage from the show as evidence. However, this is a fake episode, and The Simpsons did not predict Pope Francis' death.
The pope passed away in the morning of April 21, 2025, at his residence in the Vatican's Casa Santa Marta. According to the Vatican News, he suffered a stroke, which resulted in a coma and cardiac arrest.
Pope Francis died around 7:35 am local time, unlike the viral video, which claimed he passed away at 11:11
In the X post, the narrator claimed that in a "little-known episode of The Simpsons," an anchor reported on the "passing of the supreme pontiff" due to "severe bronchitis." It is worth noting that in the days leading up to his death, the pontiff battled bronchitis and had been hospitalized for over a month.
The video included scenes like a coffin at the center of Saint Peter's Basilica as cardinals watch in silence and flags in the Vatican flying at half-mast. Another featured a giant screen allegedly displaying the exact time of Pope Francis' death—11:11 (not clarified further). A third showed crowds gathered at St. Peter's Square, holding candles and praying.
The video proceeded to say:
"A new era is about to begin. Now in real life, concerns about Pope Francis' health are growing. At 87 years old, he has faced multiple hospitalizations, and experts warn that his condition is fragile. Could 'The Simpsons' have predicted another shocking event?"
However, the tweet does not clarify details about the episode, like the title or its release date. Further, the scenes depicted in the video appear to be AI-generated. Some scenes featured characters without pupils and garbled text with obvious misspellings. In some cases the words were illegible.
A reverse image search on Google revealed that the video has been circulating online since early 2025. Further, it seemed to originate from the satirical TikTok account @yellow..world, which frequently shared artificially generated content.
Notably, one episode from season 31 of The Simpsons, which aired on September 29, 2019, did reference the death of a pope. It featured a news anchor saying, "In other news, the pope has died," as the chyron displayed, "POPE DEAD." A graphic showed a crime scene with an outline in the shape of the pontiff. However, it did not name the pope or elaborate on the cause of his death.
The death of Pope Francis is not the only incident falsely claimed to be predicted by The Simpsons that went viral. In March 2024, an AI-generated image, allegedly from an episode, showing the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore went viral. Another claimed that the sitcom foretold the release of the Apple Vision Pro. They were also later proven to be false.
Pope Francis' coffin will be sealed in a rite this Friday, April 25, 2025.
