Social media users shared a picture of one of the protesters who stormed the US capital on January 6 – a man with a painted face wearing fur and horns – along with a cartoon version of the man dressed in a similar outfit . .
The users say that the cartoon is a character of The Simpsons, suggesting that the TV series predicted the events in some way. Capitol. This statement is false, probably a joke. The image is doctored.
Examples can be seen here and here.
One image contains the text “Definitely not scene if the Simpsons predicted it …” here and another “The Simpsons did it again….” here.
The cartoon is apparently a doctored image of the Simpsons character “Groundskeeper Willie”, visible here, edited to look like the Trump supporter. The original Simpsons picture can be seen here and here .
Media, including AZ Central and Mashable, identified the hornman at the Capitol protests as Jake Angeli (here, here). According to AZ Central, he has been a “contestant at right-wing political rallies in Arizona over the past year.”
The producers of the Simpsons show told Reuters in an email: ‘We did not create the image. It was created by the internet. ”
The program aired an episode called ‘Treehouse of Horror XXXI’ on November 1, 2020, which deals with the 2020 presidential election, www.imdb.com/title/tt13056368/. In the opening segment, the main character Homer forgets to vote in the election, and the next scene shows the city in chaos on January 20, 2021. The segment can be seen here.
Reuters Fact Check has previously denied the allegation that a 1993 episode of the show predicted the COVID-19 outbreak here.
VERDICT
Untrue. The Simpsons show did not create the character in the image of a protester at the Capitol.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.