Yes, of course “The Simpsons” put Lady Gaga in an aerial harness and flew her over a concert crowd five years before the performer actually did so at Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Given the degree to which the record-breaking Fox show has so savvily blanketed pop culture for three decades, “The Simpsons” can be interpreted as having “predicted” everything from NSA surveillance to President Trump.

Granted, there are striking visual similarities between the 2012 episode of “The Simpsons,” titled “Lisa Goes Gaga,” and Gaga’s own halftime act over the weekend, in which she is suspended above the audience in full glittery costume before being lowered by wires to take the stage like, as The Washington Post’s Chris Richards wrote, “a glam rock Spiderwoman.” But what is more striking than this precursor image is the “predictive” content and context of the episode.

“Lisa Goes Gaga” was dreamed up in 2011, after executive producer James L. Brooks was impressed by the singer’s interview on “60 Minutes.” Showrunner Al Jean approached the musician, who was game for playing a cartoon avatar of herself donning more than a dozen outfits that parodied her own headline-worthy costumes. She was also up for performing a tune that nods to the singer’s “Little Monsters.”

Yet beyond the visuals, the true connective tissue here is that in both the May 2012 “Simpsons” episode and in her Super Bowl performance, Gaga is delivering a message of inclusion in difficult times.

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