Days of Thunder Predicts The Future

I was watching the great early 90's movie, Days of Thunder, the other day when I noticed a couple of strange coincidences.  First, it's weird that I like this movie at all considering I think NASCAR is stupid.  And second, this movie literally predicted the future more than once.  I'll show you what I mean:

• One of the first things they tell you about Tom Cruise's character (the appropriately name Cole Trickle) is that he is a hot shot driver from California.  Why is this important?  Up to that point in NASCAR history, the vast majority of drivers were from the South (including all of the Top 10 Winningest Drivers).  That was until a hot shot driver from California came along in 1992 (two years after this movie was released) named Jeff Gordon.  The Rainbow Warrior has since moved past legendary drivers like Dale Earnhardt, Bobby Allison, and Carl Yarborough into 3rd place in All-Time Wins in NASCAR History with 85 wins and he has won four Cup Championships.  (Another strange coincidence is that both Tom Cruise and Jeff Gordon are really short, both standing in at whooping 5 feet 7 inches tall.)  After Jeff Gordon, another driver from California came along by the name of Jimmie Johnson who has dominated since his arrival and even won five straight Cup Championships and is now 8th in All-Time Wins.  Days of Thunder predicted this.
• Next up, another big plot in the movie involves Cole Trickle and his rival, Rowdy Burns, getting in a major wreck at Daytona.  After the wreck, Rowdy is diagnosed with a broken blood vessel in his brain that occurred because of a concussion he suffered during that wreck.  In other words, Days of Thunder knew the seriousness of concussions well before it became a problem in other sports, namely football.
• And the last prediction was just a throw-away line used to give one of the smaller characters a little bit of background.  Right after Cole won his first, his crew had a couple of fake cops pull their RV over and pretend to arrest everyone for having moonshine.  Then one of the fake cops turned out to be a hooker and presumably banged Cole's brains out.  Just before that happened, Cole was talking to one of his crew members (played by John C. Reilly) and found out that he was the son of a famous fictional driver.  That famous fictional driver died when he hit the wall during a race at Daytona.  What other famous driver with a son in the business died when hitting the wall during a race at Daytona?  Yup, this movie predicted the death of Dale "The Intimidator" Earnhardt who died when he hit the wall at a race in Daytona.  Creepy.

So, as you can clearly see, Days of Thunder was not only a great movie, but it also foresaw two huge parts of NASCAR History and the seriousness of concussions.  How crazy is that?

"It also predicted that John C. Reilly would be in the only other movie about NASCAR."