Joke: The Chris Rock Show (1997)

Reality: OJ Simpson's "If I Did It, Here's How It Happened" (2006)

In their first ever sketch, the writers of HBO's "The Chris Rock Show" really did predict that OJ would one day come clean and tell us with a wink how everything happened. Chris Rock's comedy was always fearless - his guest for that premiere episode was Johnnie Cochran. There was a little bit of luck in how close Chris came to foretelling the future, but it wasn't magic. He just extrapolated OJ's smug attitude and thought, "Where is this heading, and how can we take it one step further?" Unfortunately, like so many writers on this list, they underestimated how far their subject would go.

Unfortunately, Pootie Tang has yet to come true.

Joke: Mr. Show's "Blowing Up The Moon" (1997)

Reality: Toby Keith's Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American" (2001)

When "Mr. Show"s Bob Odenkirk and David Cross wanted to lampoon the aggressive American pride of country music in 1996, they wrote "Blew Moon," a patriotic music video by "C.S. Lewis, Jr." Lewis celebrates an absurd NASA plan to blow up our lunar neighbor by standing in front of the Stars and Stripes with a guitar and warning the celestial object, "You don't mess around with God's America." It was therefore surprising when, five years later, real-life country musician Toby Keith, in an equally pompous though far less ironic move, decided the best way to respond to our crucial post-9/11 international relations was by throwing on a Stetson hat and informing the Middle East, "We'll put a boot in your ass." Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" expresses a nationalistic desire to do to every country east of Turkey what "Blew Moon" wanted to do to a heavenly body. And while the Moon may seem the more foolish target, unlike the Middle East, it doesn't have Kalishnikovs and angry Muslims.