This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Morgan Wick: How is this not Narm?
Falcon Pain: Narm is when something (usually unfunny) comes across as funny due to delivery, circumstances and the like. Basically, when it ends up funnier than it was supposed to be. This trope is when something (which can actually be funny by itself) is retroactively made funnier by later events, real or fictional. These really aren't the same at all, except for how they both increase something's humor value.
Pulling out discussion:
- A friend of this editor defined censorship as 'Imagine Torchwood with no violence, swearing or sex. That's censorship'. Oh dear...
- And this editor thought that already existed...
- No violence in Doctor Who? Are you kidding?
- And this editor thought that already existed...
Man Called True: Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgment on the Onion article bit, please. (Much later...) I don't care if it applies, it's a lightning rod for an Edit War. It goes.
Shale: Yanked this:
- This was deliberate, no coincidence involved; principal photography for Wag The Dog took less than a month, suggesting that the scriptwriters drew heavily from the already-existing Paula Jones/Linda Tripp/Gennifer Flowers rumors and murmurs. (Also, the script was loosely based on a book about how Desert Storm was faked to win George H. W. Bush a second term. This was a sort of update.)
It's "correction"" natter and misses the point to boot - the parallel is to the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the escalation of tension with Iraq that led to Operation Desert Fox, neither of which had happened yet when the movie hit theaters, much less when principal photography was still ongoing.
- Mel Gibson seems to be some sort of Hollywood Nostradamus - in the film that made him a star, Mad Max, he utters the line, "Any longer out on that road and I'm one of them, a terminal psychotic, except that I've got this bronze badge that says that I'm one of the good guys". Three guesses as to why that's funny.
I give up.
Suzloua: I assumed it was because of the whole Mel/drink driving/"sugar tits" incident - like Mad Max, he turns into a psychotic on the road.
BLG: Does the Public Enemy song Caught, Can We Get a Witness?, which features Flavor Flav complain "Y'all can't copyright no beat!" count as a RFA moment? The song was written three years before Grand Upright v. Warner established a legal precedent in the United States that "beats" are copyrighted and not to be used without permission.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Not sure, but that looks like a true Funny Aneurysm. {Later} Then again, the version actually in the entry looks like it qualifies.
Star Bright: Okay, I give up. What does the Letterman sketch have to do with Torchwood?
- One scene (can't remember which episode) had Ianto say: 'lots of things to do with a stopwatch'
Silent Hunter: Two quibbles with entries here- 1. Cheney was Secretary of Defense in 1992. 2. Saddam Hussein was captured on 13 December 2003.
Silent Hunter: The Wag The Dog example. I think the editor has confused their Balkan countries. That's what happened in Albania
.
Ninjacrat: This is pretty much the quintessential example of a shit example:
- While listening to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City's in-game radio, this troper came across a song that has, since the game's release, taken on a completely different meaning. Twisted Sister's I Want To Rock. If you haven't caught on, google search "Goofy Goober".
- Or, better yet, don't.
Scud East: Deleted the following:
- Read Snow Crash. Pay especial attention to the way it describes the growing Internet culture. Now realise that the novel was written a decade before there even was an Internet culture.
Was there something here before The Great Crash about a scene in one of the X-Men/Star Trek crossovers where people commented on the resemblence between Picard and Xavier, years before they were played by the same actor? —Document N
Ceniac: Removed the following, since it seems the writers misleading the viewer:
- Futurama once had Kif making out with Amy and writing in his diary that he "made love for the first time". We're left to assume Kif was just being incredibly naive, but a latter episode shows that his species can get pregnant from direct physical contact as simple as holding hands without gloves.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this for now and put it here (though not before I edited it, alas). The justifying edit kills the punchline.
- In the Angel episode "Dad," Wesley says that modern baby diapers were created with NASA technology. He then says that brings to mind an uncomfortable image of an astronaut in a diaper. This became funnier when a real life astronaut wore a diaper so she could drive 900 miles without stopping for a bathroom break.
- Actually, it is not known where Captain Nowak intended to take Captain Shipman, or (in light of the alarming list of hardware found in her car) what she would have done with her if the kidnap attempt had succeeded. Captain Nowak's 900-mile drive was from Houston, where she lived, to Orlando International Airport, where she waited for Captain Shipman's plane to arrive. Her attorney has denied that she "drove from Houston, Texas, to Orlando, Florida, nonstop, wearing a diaper"; certainly, she would have had to refuel at least once on the way.
- Actually, it is not known where Captain Nowak intended to take Captain Shipman, or (in light of the alarming list of hardware found in her car
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here because of the uncertainty of accuracy.
- In the 2002 movie Bad Company, Chris Rock taunts CIA agents with "You guys can't even find Saddam Hussein!" (instead of Osama bin Laden). Next year in real life, the CIA couldn't find Saddam, either.
- Actually, Saddam actually was captured in 2003. Whether it was thanks to the CIA though is still up in the air.
Rissa: Cutting this because presumably they knew what they were getting into.
- With The Suffering having been released for free (supported by US military ads), the fact that the US military is sponsoring a game where you play as an ESCAPED MURDERER who kills horribly executed monsters while accompanied by someone who speaks in cluster F bombs is just funny.
Twilightdusk: Pulling this example until someone can explain how later events make it funnier (and include those events into the example):
- The final panel of this Detective Conan page: "Alright, search for Death Notes."
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. This is a true "Funny Aneurysm" Moment.
- Arrested Development is a show about a failing real estate company. We used to laugh as we watched them struggle to turn a profit and to hold onto their property.
Grev: Moved the Thomas Nast / Horace Greeley example over to plain old "Funny Aneurysm" Moment, because it fits much better over there. Unless Nast was laughing when Greeley died.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this because of chronological difficulties.
- This is the Lumberjack Song. Note the scene before it. Does this remind you of anything? This one goes either way, depending on your perspective. Note that this was made sometime in the 1960's - Sweemey Todd was made in the 70's.
- The musical was written in the '70s, but the story itself is quite a lot older...
- This is the Lumberjack Song
- Straddling the line between Reverse Funny Aneurysm and Swiss Moment is the famous "Ross and Rachel kiss for the first time" scene. The set-up seems normal at first, but try to remember this exchange while wearing your Troper Glasses - and remember it happened before Internet culture:
Ross: What matters is I-I don't need this right now. I'm happy! This ship has sailed.Rachel: Ok, you go ahead and you do that, Ross, because I don't need your stupid ship.
Pulled this from the Chris Rock example:
- It should be noted, however, that this was a "Heaven Can Wait" plot, wherein a black man's soul is inserted into a white man's body.
That would be an interesting point, if Head of State and Down to Earth weren't two different films.
Prfnoff: Not an example of this trope. It might fit under Values Dissonance, but I don't want to bother.
- Smoke filled cubicle/offices/conference rooms in old movies. Funny because if such cancer-fog filled landscapes were present in office workspaces today, there would be lawsuits filed before the parking lot emptied. Relatedly, when a non-smoker lets a smoker breathe smoke all over him. Crazy.
Dragon Quest Z: As discussed in this thread
, and voted in this crowner, we've decided to change the4 name of the trope to the current name.
Paul A: A whole lot of Natter:
- Additionally, the entire novel Jingo became funnier in the last few years. It features a conflict between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch (the Discworld version of the Middle East/Africa). While there are few parallels between the book and the recent war in Iraq, this troper still found it funnier.
- The book seems to be against war in general (while Monstrous Regiment more clearly refers to the Iraq War). You can find the Falklands in Jingo without even looking hard.
- MR is about the Iraq War? With its direct parodies of Vietnam movies, its "Eastern European" location, and the "Westerners" (Ankh-Morpork) being there as a peace-keeping force? But yes Jingo is about the Falklands (and to a lesser extent, the first Iraq War).
- A government that oppresses women and considers painting and photography abominations? Surely Borgrovia is a stand-in for Afghanistan.
- Painted clogs, dozens of small countries constantly brawling and and a vaguely European feel? It's the Balkans.
- Mass starvation? Repressive, demented regime ruled by semi-divine figurehead? Military only effective institution of government? Come on, people, it's North Korea.
- Completely Missing The Point. It's not about any one war or country, it's about all wars, as those things happen over and over and over in every generation. Everything Old Is New Again.
- Army full of effeminate fops and cross-dressers? It has to be France.
- Making Money is about a bank which is perilously short of "real" money and describes finance as "the bank agrees to provide the value of the coinage in gold if asked, providing the customers agree not to ask". At the same time as it came out, Northern Rock collapsed. Instantly Hilarious in Hindsight.
- Then, in 2008, it turned out that all the banks were playing by this rule, shoving this one right back into "Funny Aneurysm" Moment.
- Banks have been playing by this rule for longer than that, in one form or another. In fact, a variant forms the basis of our economy (essentially, because everyone in the country agrees that a dollar is worth a dollar and buys a dollar's worth of things, a dollar is worth a dollar and buys a dollar's worth of things, and the instant we all decide this is bullshit, we're screwed); it's what you call a faith-based economy. That Discworld's is a gold-based economy is, as I say, merely a variant on the rule. Now, it is true that it's gotten a lot worse in more recent times, since digital storage and all that means that almost all the country's money now exists only as numbers in cyberspace. But don't act surprised that banks have more money than they can actually provide on demand-in fact there's a law that states that if too many people try to withdraw all their money at once, the bank can close it's doors for thirty days until they can have enough physical money shipped in to meet the demand.
- This is a Justified Trope here, because Making Money is a DeConstruction of the way finance is portrayed in fiction just like Going Postal deconstructs telecommunications or, seriously, just like so many other things in the series, where they show how the genre would work in the real world. It is utterly inevitable in an accurate deconstruction such, it transpires, as this that replicating the circumstances in the real world as was done by Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, the Keating Five, and George W Bush, respectively financial and telecommunications deregulation, will create similar results to those portrayed in the deconstruction. [[Spoiler:In Real Life, the government wades in eventually and reregulates everything]].
- Additionally, the entire novel Jingo became funnier in the last few years. It features a conflict between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch (the Discworld version of the Middle East/Africa). While there are few parallels between the book and the recent war in Iraq, this troper still found it funnier.
Dmmaus: While it's gratifying to see the Darths And Droids examples there, I'm not sure they qualify for this trope, since we (the authors of the comic) planned both of those things. We had Qui-Gon wonder about the AC of Amidala's dresses specifically because we knew later on (though well before the readers did) he would be playing Padme. And we made Pete's initial reaction to Sally derisive because we knew later on he would get along with her better than any of the other players. So the later events that made those initial things funnier were very carefully scripted, not happenstances.
Seven Seals: removed this:
- Another candidate from PA is the Ozymandias-inspired line in this one.
- Another candidate from PA is the Ozymandias-inspired line in this one
- That question, in and of itself, will become hilarious in hindsight when the Original Poster stabs Mike Krahulik in the mouth, which is pretty much the only way I can see his example making sense.
Lostlibrarian: removed the example on the SNL predicting Gerald Ford's death. If there was any more significant link than ford actually dying I could understand, but it really isnt funny. Someone felt it nessesary to explain the joke, which is a pretty bad sign already, but said explanation- that he died 'exactly' ten years later- is baffling to me because a) several different possible years of death (all, it turns out, incorrect) were mentioned, b) no actual specific dates were predicted beyond the actual year(s) of death. c) the real comedy of the skit surrounds the implausibility of the predicted causes of death and thus the actual date of Ford's death is pretty much irrelevant. Links to skit transcript here: http://snltranscripts.jt.org/96/96dbrokaw.phtml
Can someone explain what makes the Final Destination poster hilarious in hindsight? I'm completely missing it
Falcon Pain: The phrasing is very similar to the Memetic Mutation portrayal of "Stop Having Fun" Guys in the Super Smash Bros fandom. "NO ITEMS. FOX ONLY. FINAL DESTINATION."
Personally, I wonder why the Duff Beer example was pulled. Even the useful notes page for Mexico makes the "don't drink the water" comment. —- "That Mitchell and Webb Look" ran something on toothbrush companies running out of ideas and thinking of a toothbrush that would brush your tongue... Then I seem to remember actually seeing a REAL commercial for one. Does this count? I don't have dates...
Doktor von Eurotrash: "A black US president in fiction who has an unfortunate middle name would be." OK, someone explain to me how one of the most common names in the Islamic world is "unfortunate" without sounding like they buy into the idea that Islam is a Religion of Evil. And I doubt it would be because "Hussein" reminds people of Saddam Hussein, because 1) Hussein is, as I said, a really common name, and 2) I didn't hear that many jokes about it during Obama's campaign, it was more a case of OH NO HE'S A MUSLIM THEREFORE EVIL.
You might as well say that the name "Obama" is "unfortunate" because it sounds African. Not Cool.
Sgamer82: What happened to the "Anime" section for this trope? For now, I've put up what was in the page history under anime. Hopefully that's all of it.
