The Simpsons Didn't Predict Silicon Valley Bank's Collapse, Clip Is Edited
This video is altered. The original scene showed “First Bank of Springfield” written on the entrance board.
Fact-check: An altered video is going viral which claims that The Simpsons had predicted the fall of the Silicon Valley Bank.
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
A clip from the American animated series The Simpsons showing a character Bart Simpson causing a ruckus inside a bank by claiming it to be bankrupt is going viral on social.
In the viral video, the board on the entrance of the bank reads "Silicon Valley Bank", which was closed by the US regulators on 10 March.
What's the claim?: The claim states that this famous series had "predicted" the fall of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in the 90s.
An archive can be seen here.
(Archives of similar claims can be seen here and here.)
What's the truth?: This is an altered video. This episode of The Simpsons shows Bart Simpson manipulating his teacher Edna Krabappel into protesting against their school's principal while he plays pranks in public.
The Quint has previously debunked similar claims about the show 'predicting' real life incidents. Read here.
How did find out the truth?: We performed a keyword search on Google and came across a YouTube video uploaded on 31 January 2016 which showed the same scene from the series as seen in the viral video.
The video's title read, "What Do You Mean The Bank Is Out Of Money? (The Simpsons)."
The video started by showing the bank's entrance but the board on the top read "BS First Bank of Springfield" instead of "Silicon Valley Bank".
The description of the video stated that this scene was from the sixth season's 21st episode, tited 'The PTA Disbands'.
We compared the two scenes for similarities.
The original scene said 'First Bank of Springfield'.
Next, we looked for the same episode on Hotstar, a streaming service, where we found the same scene at the 11:59 timestamp.
The name of the bank read "BS First Bank of Springfield"
The original episode can be streamed on Hotstar.
Old episode of The Simpsons: We found out that this episode had originally aired on 16 April 1995.
We performed a keyword search and came across the script of this episode on the website named Simpsons Archive.
The script said that a sign mentions “BS First Bank Of Springfield.”
The script of episode 21 of sixth season.
What's happening in the scene?: Bart Simpson can be seen creating a ruckus and manipulating people throughout the episode.
In this scene, he visits a bank and shouts about how the bank is allegedly out of money leading to chaos.
Later, the bank's management fails to handle the agitated crowd.
What happened with SVB?: US regulators took control of its deposits putting nearly 175 billion dollars in customer deposits under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp’s control.
The share prices of SVB’s shares fell as the customers went on a bank run.
The bank's investments in government bonds and other assets fell dramatically in value after the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates to tame inflation.
Conclusion: An altered video is going viral which claims that The Simpsons had "predicted" the fall of the Silicon Valley Bank.
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