US elections 2016: How the entertainment world predicted a Trump presidency

The Simpsons has raised the idea of a Trump presidency several times

Across film, television and music, the prospect of Donald Trump becoming the US commander-in-chief was raised long before he became the president-elect on Wednesday.

The election of Trump as the 45th US president has led many fans of The Simpsons to recall an old episode which apparently predicted it.

Bart To The Future, first broadcast in 2000, showed how the lives of the main characters might turn out.

A grown-up Lisa Simpson was seen as the White House incumbent, explaining to her staff she has "inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump".

She then asks her secretary of state, childhood friend Milhouse Van Houten, how bad the country's finances are as a result of Trump's time in office. He replies: "We're broke."

Earlier this year, The Simpsons writer Dan Greaney described the 16-year-old episode as "a warning to America".

"That just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom. It was consistent with the vision of America going insane," he told The Hollywood Reporter.

"What we needed was for Lisa to have problems beyond her fixing, that everything went as bad as it possibly could, and that's why we had Trump be president before her."

Trump was depicted in another episode of The Simpsons last year

More recently, the show once again referenced his candidacy for president, although by this point Trump had publicly confirmed he would run for office.

Trumptastic Voy­­age, broadcast last year, saw him on an escalator with Homer Simpson - a reference to the real-life entrance he made to announce his candidacy with wife Melania.

Earlier this year, the show officially endorsed Hillary Clinton, releasing a clip of Homer and Marge discussing who to vote for, before settling on the democratic candidate.

But the team behind the animated comedy series was not alone in predicting a Trump presidency.

In 1999, a music video by US rock band Rage Against The Machine also appeared to allude to a bid by Trump for the White House.

A man can be seen holding up a sign that reads "Donald J Trump for President" in the band's video for Sleep Now in the Fire.

At the time, Trump had thrown his hat into the ring to be the Reform Party's nominee in the next presidential race, but he withdrew his candidacy in February 2000 - nine months before the election.

Rage Against The Machine's music video was released in 1999

The music video was directed by documentary filmmaker Michael Moore - who has more recently addressed the prospect of a Trump presidency directly.

Moore, who is known as a left-wing political commentator, released a film earlier this year entitled TrumpLand, in which he warned of the dangers of his potential election.

The filmmaker also posted an article on his website, headlined "Five Reasons Trump Will Win", although by this time it was a more realistic prospect than it had been when he directed the music video 17 years earlier.

A slightly more indirect reference to a future Trump presidency was seen in the Back To The Future films.

In the second movie, released in 1989, the trilogy's villain, Biff Tannen, is seen becoming a successful businessman, which leads him to open a 27-storey casino and, more pertinently, use his money to influence US politics.

Fans long believed that this was based on Trump - a theory which was confirmed by the film's writer last year.

Back To The Future's Biff Tannen was loosely based on Trump, the film's writer said

Asked about the similarities between Tannen and Trump, Bob Gale told The Daily Beast: "We thought about it when we made the movie."

Gale highlighted one scene in particular that appeared to allude to Trump.

"There's a scene where Marty confronts Biff in his office and there's a huge portrait of Biff on the wall behind Biff, and there's one moment where Biff kind of stands up and he takes exactly the same pose as the portrait," he said.

In the movie, Biff uses the profits from his casino to shake up the Republican Party, before eventually assuming political power himself. He is later seen transforming California's Hill Valley into a town riddled with crime and corruption.

Trump was elected president 27 years after Back To The Future Part II was released.