The recurring tendency for this to happen has caused people to joke that The Onion can predict the future:
- "Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades"
. The Gillette Fusion would be released 2 years later in 2006. - "Lady Gaga Kidnaps Commissioner Gordon". In Batman Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes! released in 2011, Batgirl infiltrates a school that brainwashes teenage girls into assassins run by Expys of Madonna, Rihanna, Katy Perry... and Lady Gaga.
- When the creators of Beware the Batman updated the design of a minor villain called Magpie, guess who they made her look like?
- Lady Gaga will play Harley Quinn in Joker: Folie à Deux
- The April 8, 1998 issue had the headline: "Cubs Eliminated From Playoff Contention." The Cubs went on to make the playoffs that year.
- "Michael Moore Honored With New Ben & Jerry's Flavor" mocks that company's liberal leanings by saying they have invented a new flavor named after Michael Moore called "The Waffle Truth" that had vanilla ice cream with chocolate-covered waffle cone pieces. Two years later, Ben & Jerry's did come out with a new flavor named for liberal (faux-conservative) icon Stephen Colbert called "Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream", which has... vanilla ice cream with chocolate-covered waffle cone pieces.
- "Historic 'Blockbuster' Store Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past", due to both the 2013 announcement of Blockbuster shutting down their physical stores as a result of the popularity of Netflix and internet downloads, and the Bend, Oregon location becoming a tourist attraction due to being the final Blockbuster shop that is still running. The video was widely cited in actual news reports of Blockbuster's demise. Another business that had a historical museum was Borders, which also folded not long after the video was made.
- With the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington state, it looks like the drugs are actually winning the drug war (that was a headline from Our Dumb Century).
- "Song About Heroin Used to Advertise Bank" ran in 2001. In 2005, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines began using "Lust For Life" by Iggy Pop, the very song mentioned in that article, for an ad campaign that ran for the rest of the decade. Then, in 2010, AT&T used Lou Reed's song "Perfect Day", which is also commonly believed to reference heroin addiction, in a commercial.
- "Moon Finally Hatches" gained an extra level of funny when a few months later a Doctor Who episode aired in which the same thing happened.
- "Fire-Ninja Inferno Becomes First Openly Gay Fatal Melee Fighter", a spoof of Mortal Kombat, becomes this when Mortal Kombat X unveiled the first gay character of the series.
- "Guy At Bar Complaining About His Job Turns Out To Be Eli Manning". Published in 2007, Manning was at the time still under a tremendous amount of scorn having just played an atrocious game against the Green Bay Packers to drop the New York Giants to 0-2. Manning rebounded to make the playoffs, defeat the Packers in the NFC Championship Game, and win the Super Bowl against the undefeated New England Patriots in one of the greatest upsets in NFL history with one of the most memorable plays in sports.
- "LAPD Discovers Hidden Deformed Olsen Triplet", came out in 2003, long before Elizabeth Olsen became much more famous than her older sisters. Honest Trailers even called her "The Olsen Triplet" in their video for Godzilla (2014).
- "Mother Teresa Sent To Hell In Wacky Afterlife Mix-Up" is a little funnier after the inverse became the plot of the sitcom The Good Place.
- Back in 2015, The Onion had an article where a small child insists he'll eat one of the multi-colored detergent pods. Come December 2017, the Tide Pod Challenge is now a thing. A few months prior, they did a story about sour apple flavored Tide Pods
- "Miley Cyrus will be depleted by 2013". When 2013 rolled around, Cyrus hit a full-on Career Resurrection with the release of "Wrecking Ball".
- "Residents Of Indiana Join Together To Form Collective Consciousness" inadvertently predicted a major plot point from season three of Stranger Things, in which the Mind Flayer creates a Hive Mind in a small town in Indiana. This one only manages to encompass thirty people rather than the entire state, but it more than makes up for it with the Body Horror that it subjects those thirty people to.
- "South Korea Developing New Pop Group Capable Of Reaching U.S.", published in 2017. Around 1 year later, K-Pop became massively popular in the United States.
- "Man Just Buying One Of Every Cleaning Product In Case Trump Announces It's Coronavirus Cure", published on 25 March 2020. One month later...
- The 9/11 issue had an article titled "President Urges Calm, Restraint Among Nation's Ballad Singers" which warned musicians like Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson not to record any "mawkish, insipid all-star tribute ballads." In October 2001, Carey and Jackson were among the biggest names in the televised benefit concert United We Stand: What More Can I Give, which suffered massive technical problems and performances that were widely criticized as uninspired. And that title references Jackson's actual "mawkish, insipid all-star tribute" "What More Can I Give", performed at that show as the finale, but with the actual single not seeing an official release for two years!
- The 2011 Onion News Network video "Today Now! Interviews The 5-Year-Old Screenwriter Of Fast Five" becomes even funnier when F9: The Fast Saga director Justin Lin revealed that one of that film's wildest set pieces involving magnetized cars was an idea from his 9 year old son.
- 2019's "Bugs Bunny Explains How LeBron Helped Him Get Sober For Role In ‘Space Jam’ Sequel" is a bit funnier after the actual Space Jam: A New Legacy has a sequence where Bugs drowns his sorrows in carrot juice as LeBron helps him find his resolve again.
- '9/11 Conspiracy Theories Ridiculous' - Al Qaeda has the news network correspond with an actual Al Qaeda member because the latter were not amused with 9/11 not being credited to them while being appalled at how ridiculous the theories were. When the 2021 Afghanistan pull-out happened, BBC had an actual interview with a Taliban spokesman.
- And a decade before that, al-Qaeda actually went after Iran for spreading 9/11 conspiracy theories!
- And a decade before that, al-Qaeda actually went after Iran
- From 2020, Paleontologists Unearth Rare Mint Condition Triceratops Skull In Goodwill Bin. In 2022, a statue a woman in Texas bought at a Goodwill really did turn out to be an Ancient Roman artifact!
- ‘Literally Nobody Calls Me That Or Has Ever Called Me That’: Our Interview With Ol’ Musky is funnier now because after it got popular, some people really do call Elon Musk that.
- Not only did ‘Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks’ become this with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the game that was supposedly the subject of the article, but it also predicts the rise of Simulation Games, which often center around banal tasks like the very driving and repairing mentioned in the video.
- "Disney Geneticists Unveil New Child Stars", a parody of the Disney Channel star system that depicted their Teen Idols as literally created in a genetics lab, had the Disney scientist describe Zac Efron as one of his more flawed creations, criticizing his acting ability and saying that, because of a bug, he had only a few more years left in him before his skin would start to dissolve. In real life, Efron wound up having one of the more successful acting careers among his generation of Disney Channel stars, pulling off a successful pivot to dramatic roles in the late 2010s and early '20s.
