Anand Mahindra found a new Omicron: 4 movies that predicted the future

Billionaire businessman Anand Mahindra enlightened the world to an interesting aspect about the new Covid-19 variant Omicron.

Omicron existed decades before it was found today... as two movies. There are two movies by the name of Omicron which released in 1963 and 2013. And guess what the movies were about? Of course, it has to be about the Earth ending or humanity being under threat.

And after my last tweet, a school buddy sent me this nugget of trivia—someone already beat me to writing a script titled Omicron ? https://t.co/6PMcLrHC57 pic.twitter.com/m0Pnktxt98

— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) November 30, 2021

It seems like movies have been predicting the entire post-2020 scenario on earth for a while now. But we still don’t know whether humanity wins or loses. Is there any movie that might spare the torture by giving us the spoilers? 

Omicron 1963 is an Italian sci-fi film about an alien taking over the body of an earthling to learn more about the planet and eventually threaten the human race. While the Covid-19 pandemic is not about an alien invasion, it sure is a threat to humanity due to a virus invasion.

On the other hand, in the Omicron 2013 film, an alien comes to earth along with a botanical virus which eventually threatens the world. Well, there’s the virus in the film.

To be fair, 'Omicron' is a greek alphabet. It is likely to be a common title or name used for several purposes. 

It is not just the Omicron films which are ominously similar to the current-day nightmarish events. Here are our top 5 pick of movies and series which predicted the future, including a pandemic like Covid-19:

1. CONTAGION

When Covid-19 brought the world to a literal halt in 2020, the film Contagion from 2011 went viral (pun intended). It's still mind-boggling how accurately Contagion imagines the entire 2020 scenario including the collapse of social order, conspiracy theories, use of homeopathic medicines, oh, and it gets the origin of the virus also right and the eventual introduction of the vaccine.

If only humanity had stopped to watch the Matt Damon and Kate Winslet starrer at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, perhaps we could have avoided the ugly parts.

2. VIRUS

Virus is a 2019 Malayalam movie based on the 2018 Nipah virus outbreak in Kerala. While this movie is based on a true event, it still eerily forebodes the upcoming Covid-19 pandemic too. One that stands out is the debate on whether the virus outbreak was a conspiracy by a country or an organisation.

Till today, the world is trying to find out the origins of the Covid-19 virus. There are many who believe that the pandemic was the result of a lab leak, and whether the leak was deliberate or not.  

3. BLADE RUNNER

Films have predicted several elements into the future other than the coronavirus pandemic. Here’s one which is not so ominous. The 1982 film Blade Runner depicts a city into the future – the year is 2019 (what a year it was now that we have seen the post-2020 period). And it gets some things right on spot.

The Blade Runner’s version of 2019 city shows digital advertising, which has become true since the film was released. Moreover, in the futuristic film, the climate has become almost unlivable and everyone’s trying to leave the planet for a better one. Sounds familiar? Well, as of 2019 or 2021, we have not yet found a safe planet, but we are desperately trying to. 

4. A TRIP TO THE MOON 

A Trip to the Moon is a 1902 French short film directed by Georges Méliès, and is based on a few novels from earlier. In the black-and-white film, we see a rocket which is shot off from a canon and lands on the moon. The film follows a group of astronomers exploring the surface of the moon.

67 years after the movie was made, the world managed to send the first ever crewed mission to the moon.

5. THE SIMPSONS 1993 EPISODE

Not just movies, but also some TV series have managed to predict the future. Over the years, The Simpsons seems to have predicted several momentous and ominous events in the future. An episode which aired in 1993, shows how the outbreak of 'Osaka Flu' undoes the social order in Springfield, similar to the Covid-19 outbreak and its aftermath.

Here the virus comes from an Asian country too– albeit not China, this time its Japan. Osaka Flu with similar symptoms as Covid-19 (like a common flu) spreads through Springfield and the Simpsons’s household, except for Marge.

The chaos and social disorder that follows the outbreak is once again similar to the pandemic and its aftermath. It also includes the mayor of the town not taking the virus seriously. How many politicians can we list here?

Perhaps, the world should write up a 'Simpsons guidebook' on the possible ominous events that could occur in the future and try to prevent them.

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Perhaps the future is not so unpredictable after all, not with human imagination. Today, there are several movies like the Matrix series, Intersteller, and the Martian that predict a future that may not be too far. Is it time we start taking the warnings in these films a bit seriously to avoid future catastrophes?