Strangely Specific Horoscope

Three guesses to what happens next.

"Now, you may find it inconceivable or at the
very least a bit unlikely that the relative position
Of the planets and the stars could have a special deep significance
or meaning that exclusively applies to only you;
But let me give you my assurance that these forecasts and predictions
are all based on solid, scientific, documented evidence
So you would have to be some kind of moron not to realize
that every single one of them is absolutely true!"

— "Weird Al" Yankovic, "Your Horoscope For Today"

This week, all Aquariuses will turn into mermaids, Tauruses will hear some funny stories about a guy named Jimmy, and Leos will be eaten by gigantic land shrimp.

Usually, horoscopes employing Western Zodiac are about as broad as possible, so that anyone can feel like it applies to them. It follows from the so-called Barnum Effect/Forer Effect. It happens that individual people consider descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically to them as highly accurate even though the descriptions are in fact very vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.

In fiction, however, it's often more entertaining to have horoscopes that describe something totally insane, either to prove how accurate the horoscope is or just to keep people on their toes. Sometimes the crazy, specific or crazily specific horoscope is left unexplained in-universe. Often, however, it gets revealed that somebody is messing with their friends and acquaintances on purpose because it's fun.

It's sometimes seen with other kinds of fortune-telling, such as fortune cookies. One variation is for the horoscope to be fairly specific, but still open to multiple interpretations so that the prediction can come true in an unexpected way.

It may overlap with Horrorscope or Misfortune Cookie. See also Suspiciously Specific Sermon.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Jojos Bizarre Adventure: The existence of fate in this series is about as observable and debatable as that of gravity. As such, fortune tellers are a legitimate business and not exclusively charlatans looking to scam gullible people out of their money. Additionally, some characters have Stands that let them predict the future. The predictions given by such stands are unchangeable and will happen no matter what, though they're typically just vague enough to either horribly backfire on the user or to make an attack that should've by all rights killed them into something that instead just severely wound them.
• Horoscopes tend to be incredibly specific when they show up in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War despite the series otherwise lacking any supernatural elements. A website that gauged compatibility based on birthdays even gave Shirogane a "The Reason You Suck" Speech over his and Kaguya's inability to confess to each other.
• Transformers: Robots in Disguise has Sky-Byte reading one of these in one episode, advising against everything he just did in the episode. The Transformers wiki even lampshades how scarily advanced it is.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics:
  • Big Ethel is on the beach when she reads her horoscope that says she'll meet a pair of stars today. Swooning with anticipation of meeting the likes of Paul Newman, a wave suddenly crashes over her. When the water recedes, two starfish are clinging to her.
  • Veronica is on a tennis court, hoping to win a tennis match and thus a winning "cup". Her horoscope says she will definitely get a cup today. But her hopes are dashed when Archie approaches and offers her a cup... of coffee or tea.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: The "Wonder Women of History" Anne Dacier feature includes an overtly sexist opening where her father and a male friend think her horoscope must be wrong since it says she's going to become famous, wealthy and successful and she's a girl of all things.

Films

• Played with in Sliding Doors. When Helen claims to be over her boyfriend Gerry, (whom she recently dumped after she came home early from work and caught him cheating) Helen's best friend Anna calls her out for lying, noting that Helen is still counting the days since the breakup, and is still reading Gerry's horoscope in the hopes that it will say that something terrible will happen to him. Later Anna pretends that the horoscope does in fact say that something terrible will happen to Gerry in a way that would make the horoscope specific to Gerry.
  Anna: You're still counting how long you've been apart in days - and probably hours and minutes - but the big-flashing-red-light way of telling you're not really over someone is when you're still reading their horoscope in the hope that they're going to get wiped out in some freak napalming incident. [Later Anna looks at the horoscope] What is he?
  Helen: A wanker. [Beat] Oh. Aries.
  Anna: Aries... Aries... well, just shows how much I know. [pretends to read] "With Mars your ruler in the ascendancy, you will get wiped out in a freak napalming incident and Helen says bollocks to you." This guy's very good.

Literature

• A justified example in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, where the horoscope writer for the local paper knew Dirk at university, and aims his horoscopes specifically at Dirk. Since he strongly dislikes Dirk, this resulted in the newspaper losing 1/12 of its readership.
• In Good Omens, the local newspaper serving Tadfield has a surprisingly specific horoscope for Libra, on the day The Antichrist is born. This is just after a discussion of 17th century Bishop Usher's great contribution to Creationism, in which he conclusively worked out from Biblical revelation that God created Earth in October 4004 B.C.E. Which makes the Earth a Libra...
  You may be feeling run down and in the same old daily round. Home and family matters are highlighted and are hanging fire. Avoid unnecessary risks. A friend is important to you. Shelve major decisions until the way ahead seems clear. You may be vulnerable to a stomach upset today, so avoid salads. Help could come from an unexpected quarter.
  This was perfectly correct on every count except for the bit about the salads.
• In The Light Fantastic, the University's astrologer reads Rincewind's horoscope in hope of tracking down his location. It rambles a bit, but warns those born under the Small Boring Group of Faint Stars not to annoy any druids twice, which is very good advice for someone in Rincewind's circumstances that day.
• In the spin-off book Mr Bean's Diary to the series Mr. Bean, he sees a horoscope telling him that he will receive shattering news on 27th March, possibly regarding the number 77. This is just after he bought a raffle ticket number 77 for a raffle which is drawn on 27th March, with a first prize of a week in the Bahamas. Believing that he will win, he buys all his holiday supplies before the raffle is drawn. The ticket does win, but unfortunately, he has lost his ticket, which may be in a rubber band round his diary, as seen on the back cover.

Live Action TV

• Black Hole High: In "Probability", Marshall shoves off a school assignment and submits silly horoscope predictions to the school paper instead of a serious article and made them obviously about his friends. Because the school sits on a do-anything-black hole they come true. And he made a typo saying one of them would die rather than diet.
• In the first episode of Dirk Gently, one of the cases involves a man whose horoscopes are always coming true. Gently tries to convince him that it's a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy — he had an affair because the horoscope said he would, not because he wanted one.
• Full House: In "A Pinch For A Pinch", Kimmy Gibler is given the job of "Madame Kimmy" on the school newspaper and starts writing horoscopes. She gives one to Stephanie: her day will start off with good fortune, then an unpleasant surprise at school, and finally a misunderstanding will occur at home. It spooks Stephanie when the predictions start to come true. Kimmy then reveals that she's been copying the horoscopes out of an old newspaper she found at home, so she wasn't trying to scare Stephanie at all—but by astounding coincidence the events did happen.
• A skit on the 80s UK sketch show Little and Large has Eddie Large impersonating 80s UK fortune-teller Russell Grant, with increasingly specific and bizarre horoscopes, including this gem: "And tomorrow, you will die."
• A variation on Monty Python's Flying Circus, where the newspaper prints horoscopes for strangely specific dates of birth.
  • Derry & Toms: April 29 to March 22 (even dates only): You have green, scaly skin, and a soft yellow underbelly with a series of fin-like ridges running down your spine and tail. Although lizardlike in shape, you can grow anything up to thirty feet in length with huge teeth that can bite off great rocks and trees. You inhabit arid sub-tropical zones and wear spectacles.
  • Basil: June 21 to June 22: You have green, scaly skin, and a soft yellow underbelly with a series of fin-like ridges running down your spine and tail....
  • Aquarius, while not being noted as having an out of the ordinary date, has the horoscope "Roger Moore will drop in for lunch, bringing Tony Curtis with him. In the afternoon a substantial cash sum will come your way. In the evening Petula Clark will visit your home accompanied by The Mike Sammes singers. She will sing for you in your own living room. Before you go to bed, Peter Wyngarde will come and declare his undying love for you."
• There was one episode in Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide where Cookie writes the horoscope for the school paper. When he sees that everyone does exactly as told, he begins to have fun with it and starts writing overly specific predictions.
• Psych: "Meat Is Murder, But Murder Is Also Murder" has Shawn going semi-undercover at the local paper as a horoscope writer. When Gus criticizes his horoscopes for being too specific, Shawn replies that he wrote them with specific people in mind.
• Played for Laughs on Gilmore Girls, when it's revealed that Luke has been carrying around a horoscope that Lorelai gave him the day they met. She had been begging for coffee while he brushed her off, and she asked him what his birthday was. He told her, and she presented him with a horoscope she'd torn from the newspaper and doctored that read "You will meet an annoying woman today. Give her coffee and she'll go away."

Music

• Most of the horoscopes in "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Your Horoscope For Today" are this. Aquariuses are told their tongue will freeze to the back of a speeding bus, Arieses are told that a 40-pound watermelon will be found in their colon. Geminis are told that they will ruin their own birthday party with their explosive flatulence (again) and that their fiancé(e) will hurl a javelin through their chest, Virgos are told that their head will be impaled on a stick, Libras are told that their appendix will burst next week, Scorpios are told they will fall out of an open window. Meanwhile, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Tauruses get an extremely vague prediction that they will "wake up, do a bunch of stuff, and then go back to sleep". The rest of the horoscopes only contain advice, not predictions.

Newspaper Comics

• One brief FoxTrot arc had Jason trying his hand at writing horoscopes, claiming that the ones in the newspaper were too vague to be of help to anyone:
  Jason: They need clear-cut instructions. With mine, there'll be no ambiguity at all.
  Peter: [reading Jason's writing] "Scorpio: Give Jason Fox all your money."
  Jason: Hee hee. Bill Gates is a Scorpio.
• Huey in The Boondocks would always write off his horoscope as ridiculous despite it basically describing his current situation and a sensible solution to it every single time Caesar read it. Caesar's was similar only he put stock it them, so naturally they gave no solutions.
• Sherman's Lagoon: At the start of one week-long arc, Sherman and Megan are reading from their fortune cookies at a restaurant. Sherman gets a standard fortune, but Megan's fortune says that the reader should beware of incoming fishing nets. Cue Sherman getting scooped up by exactly such a net.
  Megan: I think I got your cookie.
  Sherman, while being carried away: Let's discuss this later.

Podcast

• Episode six of Welcome to Night Vale features a horoscopes section where each of the zodiac signs are given increasingly odd/hilarious horoscopes. Among other things, Cecil warns Capricorns that "those were not contact lenses you put in this morning", announces that its Taurus's "annual crime day" where they're exempt from all laws, and simply curses Scorpios and their families and calls them "vile" for no understandable reason. (Steve Carlsburg, Cecil's hated brother-in-law, later turns out to be a Scorpio.) These strange horoscopes ended up becoming a recurring segment of the show.

Radio

• The D Generation radio show had a horoscope sketch where the horoscopes started of as the normal generalities but became odder and more specific as the announcer moved along the zodiac, including "Do not eat sharp metal objects", "Beware of people who say they want to hack you death with an electric chainsaw", and "You owe me twenty bucks".

Video Games

• Lampshaded in the original Gabriel Knight game. Gabe reads his horoscope almost every day of the 10 day period, and it's always eerily accurate to what he's going through. At the end of the game, on day 10, when he reads his incredibly doomy-sounding horoscope, he remarks, "There's a schoolteacher somewhere who's really confused."

Web Comics

• Izzy, in Ennui GO!, gets one of these in her morning newspaper, much to her consternation - we also learn she's a Scorpio, a sign that seeks the extremes. Her horoscope specifies what the weirdnesses will be for today.

Web Original

• The Onion loves this one. Every issue has an insane horoscope with strangely specific and violent predictions. Played for Laughs. Couple of concrete examples to illustrate the nature of these horoscopes:
  • Pisces: After years of work, you will be asked to submit your paper called "There Is Nothing Like A Good Plate Of Bacon And Eggs" to the philosophy department at the Sorbonne.
  • Aries: Your plan to put on a spectacular song-and-dance show to raise desperately needed cash will somehow fail to save your foundering musical.
  • Taurus: You will realize too late that an absolute monarch is still in thrall to the needs of his subjects when your hamsters start dying of starvation.
• SCP Foundation: SCP-377 is a box of fortune cookies whose fortunes are inconsistent with the factory standard and always accurate. While it's unknown whether these cookies cause or merely predict future events, correct fortunes have included "It's a boy!" predicting the sex of the subject's child, and "The weather is really just not your friend today," where the subject was soon thereafter struck by lightning.
• The Twitter account Sorrow-scopes regularly provides these:
  • Gemini: Your insufferable personality will finally pay off when the kidnappers release you before receiving the ransom.
  • Leo: Your big Super Bowl party will be referred to as an "incident" on several popular true crime podcasts.
  • Pisces: Take the time to learn morse code. "Shave and a haircut" doesn't get the job done when you're banging on the hull of your stranded submarine.

Web Video

• In the second part of The Dom's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 review he mentions that his horoscope predicted he'd be killed by a mob of ravenous fangirls when such a group attacks him and Terrence for saying Snape's backstory didn't excuse his horrible behavior or make him any less of an asshole.
• Lumpy Touch's Gorefield horoscope series. The creator has commissioned 11^note There are 12 signs in the Western Zodiac... artists to design Gorefields after the Zodiac signs.
  Lumpy Touch: Depending on your astrological sign, a special Gorefield is hunting YOU, the viewer.
• In the credits of To Boldly Flee, they show alternate takes on the Executor's final lines. One of them is "Oh, it's just like my horoscope predicted."

Western Animation

• The Simpsons:
  • In the segment "G-G-Ghost D-D-Dad" from Treehouse of Horror XI, Homer reads his horoscope, which claims that he'll die that same day—after Lisa notes how "that seems unusually specific for a horoscope," Marge (now worried) reads her own horoscope, which says, "Today your husband will die." Strangely, Homer focuses on the second part of his horoscope, which says he may get a compliment from an attractive coworker—this makes him think of his friend, Lenny.
  • Subverted in "Skinner's Sense of Snow". When Homer and Ned crash Ned's car with his rooftop attached inside a crackers factory into a salt silo, a security guard says that his horoscope was right, but when he takes the paper out, it only says "You will face challenges today".
  • "A Hunka-Hunka Burns In Love" saw Homer being hired to write for Chinese fortune cookies. One of the fortunes he came up with was "Your store is being robbed, Apu."
• Family Guy: "To Live and Die in Dixie" has a criminal robbing a convenience store, but he's told that the cash register won't open unless he makes a purchase.
  Crook: Alright, give me one of those Horoscope scrolls! ..."Financial transaction benefits you today"? (amused) Ooooh!
  Clerk: (also amused) Weirrrrrd!
• Phineas and Ferb: Doofenshmirtz gets an oddly accurate horoscope:
  Doofenshmirtz: Shot in the butt while covered in honey and hair. What do you know, my horoscope was right.
• In the Gravity Falls episode, "Carpet Diem" while Old Man McGucket is chasing Soos in Waddle's body.
  Deputy Durland: A bearded witch chasing a talking pig!
  Sheriff Blubs: My horoscope came true.
• In a VeggieTales special released as a tie-in to Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie, hosted by The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, Pa Grape tries to fix the projector they're using for the special by banging on it with a hammer. Larry and Lunt pass the time with a musical number about their Chinese take-out, which ends with them opening a fortune cookie:
  Larry: "Beware of grape with wooden mallet."
  Lunt: Ain't that the truth.

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