# The most prescient words ever uttered in film or fiction **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 9, 2009, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-prescient-words-ever-uttered-in-film-or-fiction/488804 "2009-03-09T04:26:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2009, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-prescient-words-ever-uttered-in-film-or-fiction/488804/61 "2009-03-13T19:04:46Z")
Eric Cartman was certainly prescient when he said that indewpendent movies were always about “Gay cowboys eating pudding,” as the success of “Brokeback Mountain” confirmed. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2009, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-prescient-words-ever-uttered-in-film-or-fiction/488804/62 "2009-03-13T19:11:53Z")
> [@Unintentionally\_Blank](#): > > Taco Bell is owned by Pepsico…which gives us Long John Silvers/A&W/Pizza Hut/KFC/Taco Bell all in one shiny restaurant! Technically, Taco Bell, and the other chains you mentioned, are owned by Yum! Brands. TB, PH, and KFC were spun off from Pepsico in '99; that company eventually renamed itself Yum!, and bought another company, which owned LJS and A&W. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2009, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-prescient-words-ever-uttered-in-film-or-fiction/488804/63 "2009-03-13T19:28:53Z")
I wrote a powerful thesis full of imagery supported with cites and a stunning array of bullet points only to be eaten by the infamous SDMB glitch. I’m not writing it again. Suffice it to say Graham Greene’s book _The Quiet American_ was written in 1955 and predicts the Vietnam War. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2009, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-prescient-words-ever-uttered-in-film-or-fiction/488804/64 "2009-03-13T20:55:11Z")
“The rats have business with you, I think.” - _Graveyard Shift_, Stephen King I’m a little creeped out by the fact that when I did a Dope search on this line just now, one of the threads that popped up was “Things to do in Princeton, NJ”. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2009, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-prescient-words-ever-uttered-in-film-or-fiction/488804/65 "2009-03-13T20:58:55Z")
> [@cactus\_waltz](#): > > Interesting simul-post there. I was responding to **Loach** , so not quite a simulpost. One of the Columbine kids wrote in his diary about crashing a plane in New York, although that wasn’t fiction. Point is, a story containing planes-as-missiles isn’t really prescient because the idea itself is so obvious. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2009, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-prescient-words-ever-uttered-in-film-or-fiction/488804/66 "2009-03-13T22:13:31Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > How about this headline in The Onion of January 17, 2001: [Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’](http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784) I kinda like [this one](http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930) from the onion. ---
**Author:** ![Stephe96](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Stephe96](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stephe96)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-prescient-words-ever-uttered-in-film-or-fiction/488804/67 "2009-03-14T05:21:11Z")
John Lennon plays Private Gripweed in 1967’s _How I Won The War_. At end of the movie the character is fatally shot and Lennon, holding his arms across his stomach, looks up at the camera and says, “I knew this was gonna happen…didn’t you?” :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Damfino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-prescient-words-ever-uttered-in-film-or-fiction/488804/68 "2009-03-14T11:34:30Z")
H.G.Wells in his short story “The Land Ironclads,” written in 1903, pretty accurately described the development of the tank. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-prescient-words-ever-uttered-in-film-or-fiction/488804/69 "2009-03-14T12:37:36Z")
Days of Our Lives ran and adoption story and later a surrogacy story in 1976-1981 that had several elements of the real life “Baby M” surrogacy trial–The surrogate mother’s name was Maggie & her sterile husband was Mickey (the surrogate mother in Baby M was Mary & her sterile husband was Rick); Mickey was claimed to be the father of the adopted child (Mary Beth claimed that Rick was the father of her surrogate child), Maggie lost custody because of her drinking (Rick was a drunk), the father of Maggie’s child was a doctor (the adoptive mother in the Baby M trial was a doctor) and most odd, the adoptive child was named Melissa (Melissa was the name the couple gave to the child, and Maggie’s surrogate child was named Sarah (the name the surrogate gave to the child). ---
**Author:** ![Sofis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Sofis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofis)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-prescient-words-ever-uttered-in-film-or-fiction/488804/70 "2009-03-14T13:43:52Z")
> [@willthekittensurvive](#): > > I sent the link to some friends and one of them thinks its a post-date edit, anyone know how I can prove it is a original piece? How about a [Usenet post from March 2001](http://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.bush/browse_thread/thread/8834984be7ac4c4f/373e908f00c6794a)? ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-prescient-words-ever-uttered-in-film-or-fiction/488804/71 "2009-03-14T13:53:21Z")
The most prescient thread ever (note the date of the OP):[Impossible for every plane to land?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=85362) ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-prescient-words-ever-uttered-in-film-or-fiction/488804/72 "2009-03-16T12:12:00Z")
George Orwell _1984_ words on the lottery: > [@George Orwell'](#): > > They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked back > when he had gone thirty metres. They were still arguing, with > vivid, passionate faces. The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out > of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the > proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were > some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal > if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their > delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual > stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who > could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate > calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole > tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems, > forecasts, and lucky amulets. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-prescient-words-ever-uttered-in-film-or-fiction/488804.md?page=3)