Fans of “The Simpsons” suspect the show foretold the future yet again — but the animated classic’s submersible episode was actually inspired by the movie “Crimson Tide,” The Post has learned.
Speculation that the TV series somehow predicted the missing Titan submersible in its 1998 “Simpson Tide” episode was debunked Thursday by veteran show writer-producer Mike Reiss — who himself descended 13,000 feet in the vessel to see the wreckage of the Titanic last July.
“That’s my show,” Reiss, 63, told The Post. “Even I forgot about that.”
The Emmy-winning Reiss said he led a small team of writers to create the March 1998 episode featuring Homer — recently fired as a nuclear safety inspector after putting a donut in a reactor — in the US Navy Reserve.
Homer enlists in the Naval Academy and soon finds himself aboard a nuclear-powered submarine he foolishly navigates into Russian waters, earning him a quick dishonorable discharge.
Years later, in 2006, “The Simpsons” kept the deep-sea exploration gag going with “Homer’s Paternity Coot,” depicting Homer meeting his long-lost biological father – a treasure hunter named Mason Fairbanks, and the pair get into two deep-sea submersibles.
“The Simpsons ahead of the curve — as usual — 25 yrs ago,” one Thursday tweet read.
But “The Simpsons” didn’t have the missing OceanGate submersible on its radars in 1998, Reiss said.
“We did that episode because the movie ‘Crimson Tide’ had just come out,” he said of the 1995 film starring Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman. “We didn’t predict the future, we just did it off that movie and 20 years later, something like that happened.”
In 2006’s “Homer’s Paternity Coot,” the tenth episode of the show’s 17th season, Homer and Fairbanks stumble upon the wreckage of a massive sunken ship packed with treasure, some of which they retrieve using robotic arms.
But the lucrative discovery turns potentially tragic when Homer gets lost and trapped in a coral reef. He tries to free himself as an “oxygen slightly higher” light comically shines, but passes out while calling for his father, only to wake up from a coma days later.
The unlikely ties between “The Simpsons” and the submersible search gripping the world goes even further, according to Reiss’ wife, Denise.
“It’s uncanny because ‘The Simpsons’ character even falls asleep on the sub, just as Mike did on the way down,” Denise Reiss told The Post.
The odyssey inside the “very simple” 22-foot submersible powered by “desktop fans” was so peaceful that Mike managed to take a nap, the veteran television writer told The Post.
“People talk about the excitement, the thrills, and ‘Were you scared?'” Reiss continued. “And it’s like, ‘I feel asleep.'”
Reiss, who signed a waiver warning multiple times of possible death, knew the risks and even took extra paper with him to write his last jokes in case something went terribly awry, the couple told The Post earlier this week.
“He knew this was very dangerous,” Denise said. “Even in the most dire situations, he has a joke.”
Reiss, who is currently impacted by the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, paid more than $100,000 to take the trip. He and Denise flew from New York to St. John’s, Newfoundland, before getting aboard the MV Polar Prince en route to the wreckage site 400 miles away.
“Death is always lurking, it’s always in the back of your mind,” Mike Reiss said of the experience. “Before you even get on the boat, there’s a long, long waiver that mentions death three times on page one.”
