The Simpsons: 10 Moments More Important Than You Realised
5. Homer's Secret Genius
The writing team on The Simpsons is full of maths nerds. There's even been a book written about all the different mathematical references in the show.
One such example is in the Season 10 episode The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace, in which Homer becomes obsessed with inventing something to rival Thomas Edison.
In one scene, we see him writing equations on a chalkboard. This may seem like a random collection of numbers to the untrained eye, but, to the mathematical genius, this is very close to one of science's greatest recent breakthroughs.
Homer has actually written an equation to solve the mass of the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle important in the world of particle physics. In 2012, the boson was finally discovered after years of searching. And yet, Homer wrote his equation in 1998.
This suggests that the Simpson patriarch is actually a genius, something that is proven two seasons later when it's discovered that Homer's genius-level IQ is being inhibited by a crayon lodged in his brain.
Was this a clever bit of foretelling? Or was it just writer David S. Cohen messing around? You decide.