Fans of the classic British sitcom Only Fools and Horses have been left astonished after a clip emerged from a legendary episode making a prediction about how the world would look 30 years later, on this exact date. The show's 1996 Christmas special Heroes and Villains is famous as the episode in which Derek 'Del Boy' Trotter and his brother Rodney dress up as Batman and Robin.
The show features a dazzling number of iconic moments over its 22-year run, including the infamous chandelier mishap, Trigger's long-serving broom, and, of course, Del Boy falling through the bar. Another is the incredible moment in which the Trotter brothers, dressed as the Dynamic Duo, accidentally foil a group of muggers attempting to rob a local councillor.
The episode, first aired on Christmas Day 1996, was the first in a trilogy of instalments broadcast over a few days, ending with the famous finale Time on our Hands, in which the Trotters finally become millionaires. Although this was intended to serve as the sitcom's triumphant conclusion, it would later return for a series of three specials broadcast between 2001 and 2003.
What did Only Fools and Horses predict about November 2, 2026?
Fans have been shocked to discover the legendary episode opens with a dream sequence set in the distant future of November 2, 2026, which is today. The dream sees an older Rodney, not looking a million miles from how actor Nicholas Lyndhurst actually looks today, walking through a hellish Blade Runner-esque version of Peckham.
He throws a handful of change to a group of vagrants who scramble to pick it up, before passing billboards advertising Trotter Air, Trotter's Meat Fingers ("guaranteed to contain no natural ingredients"), and Trotterex Family Planning. Approaching a foreboding skyscraper marked Trotter Towers guarded by two ominous figures, we see what looks uncannily like one of Elon Musk's Cybertrucks parked outside, as what might be a drone flies overhead.
Inside he meets his brother, who looks remarkably similar to how Sir David Jason actually looks today, complete with trademark cigar and smoking jacket, along with his wife Raquel. The group moves to a cavernous board room, where an adult version of Del Boy and Raquel's son Damien is on the phone to 'President Reeves', implied to be Matrix actor Keanu Reeves.
Clearly taking more than a little after his father, Damien misuses French and calls his counterpart a "tart" before demanding he declare war on China. Saying "war is good", he says: "You just sit there in the White House all day twiddling your thumbs. You're just playing at leadership."
It's revealed Rodney's wife Cassandra is a maid after Damien bought the bank she worked at and closed it, and a very decrepit Uncle Albert has his brain hooked up to electrical wires, repeating "during the war". Rodney protests: "I want to go back to how it used to be", before waking up.
What did Only Fools and Horses get right about November 2026?
TikTok user Skippy, who usually uses his account to raise awareness of the condition Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG), highlighted the moment on social media. "It's amazing what they actually did predict," he said. "Because on that day (in) 2026 they are predicting riots, they are predicting a potential war with China, and they are predicting drones."
Thankfully, Peckham today isn't quite as hellish as it appears in Rodney's dream, but the sequence did get a surprising number of other things right. The idea of one global giant controlling every sector of the market isn't too far from where we are today, although, perhaps thankfully, the Trotters are nowhere to be seen.
Keanu Reeves isn't president, as a Canadian he wouldn't be eligible to run, even if he wanted to, but perhaps the idea of Donald Trump being in the White House might have seemed just as ridiculous in 1996. The idea of a power-mad dictator demanding to declare war on a foreign country because "war is good" also has a few parallels to modern global situation.
Perhaps most striking is the vehicle parked outside Trotter Towers, which looks an awful lot like a Tesla Cybertruck, as well as the appearance of what looks like a drone. While Del Boy's famous prediction "this time next year we'll be millionaires" did eventually come true, perhaps thankfully not everything predicted by Peckham's finest became reality.
