10 Movies That Eerily Predicted Things In Real Life

Coincidences are funny things. Cinema is most commonly a reflection of life itself

holding up a mirror to the defining life events that make us human, no matter what a movie's subject matter might be. But occasionally, films have beaten real life to

the punch by accidentally foreshadowing it, from world-famous tragedies to events so bizarrely

specific that the predictions are extremely difficult to ignore. Now, of course, it's all

pretty much coincidental, bar one or two cleverly educated guesses, but it's tough not to be stunned

by how life appeared to imitate art with such an eyebrow-raising level of accuracy

So I'm Ellie with WhatCulture here with movies that eerily predicted things in real life

Liam Neeson losing his wife, Love Actually. In Richard Curtis's iconic ensemble rom-com, Liam Neeson plays widow Daniel

who is struggling to cope with the recent death of his wife while raising his stepson Sam alone

Daniel ultimately deems himself confined to celibacy, but at the film's end, he gets smitten with the mother of one of Sam's classmates

In 2009, some six years after the film's release, the film took on an unexpected relevance for

Neeson as his wife of 15 years, Natasha Richardson, died unexpectedly following a skiing accident

The actor returned to shoot a short film sequel to Love Actually for Red Nose Day 2017

which he said caused him to reflect once again on his wife's untimely passing

Quote, Plenty of times I've thought about this film and my own life. Love Actually, that's the way it is

That's the tapestry of life. Jack Nicholson's surprising parentage, Chinatown. The big twist in Roman Polanski's terrific film noir is that Catherine Cross is not merely the sister of female lead Evelyn, but also her daughter

As it turns out, Evelyn was raped by her grotesque land mogul father Noah Cross, resulting in the birth of Catherine

This pays off horrifically in the film's final moments, as Evelyn is shot dead by the police, and the villainous Noah gains custody of Catherine

Weirdly enough, Catherine's deeply icky parentage foreshadowed the film's star learning the

surprising truth of his own birth just as Chinatown was due to release. Time magazine called

Nicholson to fact-check some information for a feature about the actor, where he was informed

that the woman he believed to be his sister was actually his mother. A 37-year-old Nicholson

initially denied the claim, but later learned from other family members that it was true

His mother got pregnant with him at just 16 years of age to an unknown father

prompting June's mother to raise the child so June could pursue a dancing career

Thankfully the circumstances of the actor existence don quite match Chinatown down to the grossest details but the shared subject matter between life and art is nevertheless fascinating The Beltway sniper attacks

Phone Booth. Joel Schumacher's cult classic thriller stars Colin Farrell as a man who answers a ringing phone

only to find himself held hostage by the caller who has a sniper rifle trained on him

Phone Booth was shot at the end of 2000, but didn't end up being released in cinemas until the spring of 2003

due to the film's unexpected relevance to real-life events. From February to October 2002, John Alan Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo

terrorise Maryland, Virginia and DC by killing 17 random people with high-powered sniper rifles

By modifying their car to contain a sniper's nest in the trunk

the pair could surreptitiously shoot people through a small hole in the trunk without alerting suspicion

Six weeks after phone booth's September 2002 premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival

the pair were finally brought to justice, the publicity around which caused Fox to push the

film back almost six months from its planned November release. Unsurprisingly, though

the press was still all too eager to compare the movie to real life when it finally landed in

cinemas. Christopher Reeves' Paralysis Above Suspicion HBO's 1995 erotic thriller Above Suspicion stars Christopher Reeves as Dempsey Cain

a police officer who ends up paralysed from the waist down after being shot in the spine

during a botched bust. Just six days after the film premiered on May 21st, 1995, Reeves sustained

a cervical spine injury after being thrown off his horse, instantly paralyzing him from the neck down

The depressing irony of life-imitating art notwithstanding, Reeves' injury received widespread media attention and only further fuelled the much-discussed Superman curse that actors who

play the Man of Steel on screen tend to suffer major misfortunes afterwards. Sadly, Reeves passed

away nine years later at the mere age of 52, though to many remains the most iconic and

faithful screen adaptation of the beloved superheroes. The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and the rise of fake news, wag the dog. Barry Levinson's political satire documents a sex

scandal involving the President of the United States and the attempts of a top-spin doctor

and Hollywood producer to create a fictional war to distract from the POTUS's transgression

A month after the film's December 1997 release, allegations came to light of President Bill

Clinton improper sexual conduct with White House intern Monica Lewinsky inciting a relentless media frenzy and leading to his eventual impeachment at the end of 1998 However just a week after the scandal broke

Clinton's administration bombed a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory, which they claimed was being used to manufacture a dangerous nerve agent. The bombing was widely interpreted to be

a wag the dog moment to distract from Clinton's personal foibles, while it was later confirmed

that the intel on the facility wasn't solid. The film can also be said to have predicted the recent

rise of misinformation, fake news, as evidenced by various political campaigns spreading misinformation

through social media. In 2017, it was reported that Levinson and Robert De Niro were developing

a Wag the Dog TV series which will examine the original premise through the lens of contemporary

politics and technologies. An omen of decapitation, the omen. Richard Donner's iconic 1976 horror

classic follows an American ambassador coming to learn that the son he's been raising, Damien

is the Antichrist. One of the film's many memorable death scenes sees photographer Keith

Jennings end up decapitated by a sheet of glass. Jennings' grisly demise unfortunately foreshadowed

the similarly gnarly death of one of The Omen's crew members less than two months after the horror

film was released. Two of the movie's special effects artists, John Richardson and Liz Moore

were involved in a car crash while in the Netherlands working on their next project

Richardson survived and went on to win an Oscar in 1987 for his work on Aliens

but Moore wasn't quite so lucky, being decapitated in the crash. But that's not where the creepiness ends

The crash took place on Friday the 13th of August, and the name of the nearby Dutch town

Omen. Ooh, spooky. Madeleine McCann's disappearance, Gone Baby Gone. Ben Affleck's terrific adaptation of the classic crime novel

explores the mysterious disappearance of three-year-old Amanda McCready, resulting in a media frenzy as investigators try to recover the missing child

Gone Baby Gone was shot in the summer of 2006, and the film's marketing campaign ramped up just as four-year-old British citizen

Madeleine McCann went missing in Portugal in May 2007. The eerie physical similarities between the movies Missing Child and McCann

were noted by countless media outlets, not to mention the fact that Amanda McCready's actress had almost the same first name

Furthermore, the film's story depicts Amanda's mother as heavily negligent towards her child

reflecting the McCann themselves being investigated for negligence after leaving their young daughter unattended prior to her abduction The Tate Murders Rosemary Baby Roman Polanski unforgettable 1968 horror masterpiece follows a pregnant young woman

Rosemary, who eventually comes to learn that she was preyed upon by a satanic coven

who drugged her and allowed the devil to rape her, leading to her birthing the Antichrist

Several plot elements foreshadowed events in Polanski's own life, namely the murder of his

pregnant wife Sharon Tate barely a year after the film's release by members of the Manson family

Elsewhere, Polanski and Tate relocated shortly before their pregnancy, just as Rosemary and her

husband did. There were even theories at the time that Polanski struck a deal with the devil

sacrificing his wife and unborn son in exchange for a prosperous filmmaking career. I mean

that's utterly ridiculous, isn't it? The Decline of Detroit, Robocop 1 and 2

The masterful 1987 action satire Robocop takes place in a dystopian future Detroit

where financial ruin and high crime rates have turned the city into a barren cesspool

As a result, the government is forced to get in bed with a corporation, OCP

giving them complete control of Detroit's police force and allowing them to effectively

gentrify the city's most run-down areas into a desirable new neighbourhood, Delta City

The latter plot point is further explored in Robocop 2, where Detroit ultimately ends up going bankrupt. In fairness, Detroit wasn't exactly in sterling

shape prior to Robocop's release, but its decline picked up significantly in the years following

1991 saw crime rates for the city peak, tourism dropped off dramatically

unemployment rose, and urban blight reached unprecedented levels. Granted, the city of

Detroit never partnered up with a conglomerate in a desperate bid to better itself, but in Robocop

that's ultimately a heightened expression of Detroit's destitution. Still no Robocops, though

The Three Mile Island Accident, The China Syndrome This Oscar-nominated 1979 thriller follows news reporter Kimberly Wells and her cameraman

Richard Adams, as they witness safety cover-ups at a nuclear power plant that only narrowly

avoids a meltdown. Just 12 days after the film hit cinemas, the Three Mile Island Accident occurred, where

a Pennsylvania nuclear reactor sustained a partial meltdown caused by operational failures

and human error. And to this day, there continues to be suspicion about how much of the catastrophe's

true effects were actually made public. To their credit, Columbia Pictures removed the film from

some regional markets so as not to appear to be crassly exploiting the tragedy, though the

incident unquestionably helped boost its box office