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7!!Literature works with their own pages:
8[[index]]
9* ''HarsherInHindsight/StarWarsLegends''
10[[/index]]
11----
12!!Individual examples:
13* ''Literature/TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea'': Since the beginning of his career as a writer, Verne has being accused by critics of being [[ScifiGhetto "only" a hard sci-fi writer that paid little heed to the social ramifications of technology]]. But with ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea'' Verne wrote in 1869 about Captain Nemo, a man from an oppressed country who [[MajoredInWesternHypocrisy had training in the west]], and has [[{{Fiction500}} money enough to pay a country’s national debt,]] who decides to create an [[NGOSuperpower organization strong enough]] to [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters fight]] an [[TheEmpire entire Western country]] [[MoralEventHorizon through terrible acts of violence]], [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror and therefore is chased as a menace by all established countries in the West.]] After UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden, 9/11, and UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror, we must admit that Verne really knew much more than anyone ever suspected about how the world will turn in the next 130 years!
14* In the late Creator/DouglasAdams's books:
15** There's the scene towards the end of the fourth ''Hitchhiker's'' book, ''So Long and Thanks For All the Fish'', in which Marvin reads God's Final Message To His Creation ... which turns out to be 'We apologize for the inconvenience'. Given Douglas Adams' [[DiedDuringProduction sudden death from a heart attack]], leaving the sixth book unfinished (and eventually written as a posthumous sequel called ''And Another Thing...'' by Eoin Colfer), that message takes on a whole new meaning.
16** From ''Literature/DirkGentlysHolisticDetectiveAgency'' is the line, 'I think a ghost is someone who died either violently or unexpectedly with unfinished business on his, or her - or its - hands. Who cannot rest until it is finished or until it is put right'. Between the unfinished nature of ''The Salmon of Doubt'' and the author's own dissatisfaction with the DownerEnding of ''Mostly Harmless'' it seems terribly apt.
17** There is also a bit in the same book about Dirk and the police officer experiencing 'a chill as the dead man's voice filled the room' while listening to an answering machine message. Not too bad... except when the author reads those lines on the audiobook.
18* In the final chapter of Erich Maria Remarque's ''Literature/AllQuietOnTheWesternFront'', a novel about a soldier's experience during World War I, the protagonist, Paul Bäumer, reflects on how miserable the rest of his life is going to be if he does manage to survive the war. One of the reasons he gives is that the next generation, having not known war, will not be able to understand what he endured.
19* ''Literature/AlsoSprachZarathustra'': In the opening story of Part Two, Zarathustra has a nightmare in which he looks in a mirror and sees his reflection distorted into a demonic-looking form. Upon waking, he realizes this is an omen that if he doesn't go back to the city to continue his teachings, his enemies will take the ideas he's espoused so far and warp them into something revolting. This chapter takes on a whole new level of significance after the Second World War, when selectively-edited versions of Nietzsche's work were promoted by the Nazis as justification for their atrocities.
20* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'':
21** Jake is shown a BadFuture in which the Yeerks have taken over Earth. The only part of the New York skyline left standing? The World Trade Center.
22** In the last book of the series (published in May 2001, set in 2002 or thereabouts), Jake mentions that since the war ended there's been a rise in terrorism, particularly religiously motivated terrorism.
23** And then of course there's the book where they get into the Yeerk pool by ''ramming a plane into a building'' (the building is hollow, so they put it on a collision course with the roof, bailed out as birds, and flew after the wreckage).
24** In the last several books, there's a lot of musing that America isn't ready to defend itself because it doesn't have any enemies. The books in question were published in the Spring of 2001, just before UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror began, and since then the idea that America has no enemies has come to seem [[MakeTheBearAngryAgain rather ]] [[ChinaTakesOverTheWorld naive]]. For example, in Book #46, Marco gives a rant on the state of events. Tobias concurs with an unintentionally sad comment.
25--->'''Tobias''': Marco has a point. Particularly Americans. I mean, we've got no enemies at sea, not many on land, and those aren't exactly real scary. The country's just not ready for war. Maybe it's arrogance, maybe a combination of things, but the average person on the street just doesn't think another World War is possible.
26** Then there's the famous open letter the author wrote to fans who didn't like the ending, where she pronounces that she always wanted her story to reflect that WarIsHell and that if fans don't like that her fictional war ended with unhappiness and not a lot of back-slapping and chanting of "We're number one!", they ought to remember that real wars ruin the lives of many of the people who participate in them, and that often the end of one war seamlessly transitions into the start of another. Her letter ends with the reminder that her fans will soon be of voting and drafting age.
27* Reading Creator/PiersAnthony's references to his family life in his early works' Author's Notes, and especially the dedication to his daughter Penny, "Heaven-Cent", becomes a TearJerker when you know that Penny died of respiratory distress following brain surgery in 2009.
28* John Fante's ''Ask the Dust'' for two reasons. The main character, Arturo Bandini, didn't see what the big deal was about up-and-coming UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler. This book was published in 1939, two years before [[UsefulNotes/UnitedStates America]] entered UsefulNotes/WorldWarII against UsefulNotes/{{Germany}}[[note]]World War II itself began in 1939 -- the same year ''Ask the Dust'' was published -- when UsefulNotes/NaziGermany invaded UsefulNotes/{{Poland}}, but America didn't directly get involved until December 1941, though they did provide military support to their allies before then[[/note]], and English editions of Hitler's ''Literature/MeinKampf'' had overshadowed the book, contributing to the book and author's obscurity.
29* Creator/PGWodehouse has one tucked away in ''Bachelors Anonymous''. This book, written in the seventies, includes this throwaway joke:
30--> Mr Llewellyn's plane was on its way. A complete absence of hijackers enabled it to reach New York...
31* This happens in (of all things) ''Creator/DaveBarry's Guide to Guys''. While talking about a mechanic he knew who was ''deeply'' into fireworks, Dave writes, "If those radical Muslim fundamentalist terrorists had had Ed on their team in 1992, the World Trade Center would now be referred to as the World Trade Pit." This was probably funnier in 1995, when the book was written, before a pair of precision-aimed airplanes created a World Trade Pit. Hey, those skyscrapers collapsed all the way down -- and had underground levels and a subway connection. Their footprints are now filled by two sunken pools with water fountaining down the sides, an enduring memorial to where the Twin Towers once stood.
32** Another moment based around the same event: The movie ''Film/BigTrouble'', based on another of Dave Barry's books, was one of several that had their release delayed because of 9/11, due to the plot involving hijackers breezing through airport security. With a bomb. And the Air Force being sent to shoot the hijacked plane down. Did we mention that it was scheduled for release on Tuesday, September 11th, 2001?
33** Dave predicts the future again, albeit on a smaller scale, in his 1991 book ''Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need''. He talks about how on a road trip through South Dakota, there was a hyped store called "Wall Drug", advertised on the side of the road for hundreds of miles on billboard after billboard ("153 miles to go", "146 miles to go", etc). His wife, Beth Barry, wanted desperately to go there, but he drove right past it, much to her chagrin. At the end of the story, he laments jokingly, "You know how certain incidents become permanent sore points in a marriage?...That's the status that the Wall Drug Incident has achieved in our marriage... If she ever files for a divorce, this is the first incident she'll mention to the lawyer." Dave must have a jinx or something because they divorced in 1993. Whether she did, in fact, bring up "The Wall Drug Incident" to the lawyers is unknown.
34* At one point in Alex Garland's ''Literature/TheBeach'', Sal (the only character who keeps a calendar) mentions that it's the 11th of September, and several other people are surprised at the news. Why? Because it means there's a big annual party a few days away! The book was written in the mid-'90s, and the date was presumably picked at random.
35* Double whammy for Creator/SylviaPlath. "How did I know that someday -- at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere -- the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?" In the month following the publication of ''Literature/TheBellJar'', she killed herself. For the same reason, ''Lady Lazarus'', a poem about her previous suicide attempt and foreshadowing her next attempt, is just ''heartbreaking'' when she writes: This is Number Three./What a trash/To annihilate each decade.
36* In ''The Black Book and Schwambrania'', an autobiographical novel by Lev Kassil, the narrator and his brother write down some documents for their imaginary country, which are later accidentally discovered by police detectives inspecting a theft and thought to be evidence of an anti-Soviet political plot until the narrator's brother Os'ka (Joseph) explains the matter. This is one of the most comic and lighthearted moments of the book… unless you know that the real-life Joseph Kassil was shot almost two decades later, accused of involvement in an anti-Soviet political plot.
37* Creator/RayBradbury:
38** ''Literature/TheVeldt'' features two kids using a virtual reality playroom to create violent fantasies about man-eating lions on an African veldt. When their parents try to stop these gory fantasies after the family therapist tells them they need to live a low-tech lifestyle, the kids trick them into getting trapped in the room and eaten by the lions. In TheFifties, when it was written, it served as a critique of mindless and often violent TV. Nowadays, with concerns that video games can potentially become addictive and encourage youth violence, the story is even more chilling (even though a good deal of the allegations surrounding video games are dubious).
39** In ''Literature/Fahrenheit451'', Clarisse [=McClellan=] tells Montague how her teenage peers are extremely violent, and how her grand-grandfather told stories about a time when teenagers used not to kill each other, "but this was long, long ago". Given the rising level of school violence, including school shootings, this is almost prophetic.
40* Creator/MarionZimmerBradley edited and put out an extremely long-running anthology series called ''Sword and Sorceress'' which helped launch many careers, including Creator/MercedesLackey. Lackey's frequent contributions to these anthologies included several RapeAndRevenge stories, including one involving a character whose brother had sold her to a pedophile when she was a child. This is made extremely harsh considering the detailed allegations Bradley's own daughter made about her a decade after her death. While Bradley was publishing Lackey's story about Kethry confronting the family member who had betrayed her trust so horribly, she was harming her own flesh and blood in much the same way.
41* In ''Literature/BridgeToTerabithia'', there is a scene where Leslie (a child from a non-religious family) discusses faith with Jess and Maybelle (children from a religious family), and the latter says to Leslie: "If you don't believe in Jesus, you go to Hell when you die". Then later [[spoiler: Leslie dies in a [[ContrivedCoincidence freak accident]] and Jess fears she is in Hell -- and [[ItsAllMyFault all because he wasn't there to save her]]. This is just one big TearJerker]].
42** And, while ''chronologically'' this is NOT "in hindsight", [[spoiler: Leslie's death]] becomes even more tragic when one learns that the book is [[BasedOnATrueStory based on the experience of the author's son]].
43* The RealitySubtext behind ''Broken Gate'', as Amoridere wrote the story to cope [[spoiler: with an abusive situation in which she endured some times prior]] and its aftermath, which makes the DownerEnding to the story worse, as [[spoiler: Nezumi dies in the end and said author's note implies that the authoress contemplated suicide]].
44* The Literature/LincolnRhyme novel ''The Broken Window'' has a plot that revolves around intrusive government surveillance that can reach into every aspect of a person's life and is abused by "God" the BigBad of the story to put people through a living hell, which at the time it was written in 2008 was plausible but still firmly in the realm of fantasy. Cue the revelations about the NSA's PRISM program and suddenly Jeffrey Deaver seems almost prophetic.
45* Creator/ChristopherBrookmyre:
46** His book ''Literature/ABigBoyDidItAndRanAway'' describes an attempted terrorist attack on the 6th of September 2001. While the book was published on October 4th of the same year, the writing took place before the events of September 11th. To make this even more cringe-worthy, the tagline of the book was "Terrorism, it is the new Rock'N'roll". Needless to say, some re-wrapping was needed after that. Brookmyre's universe tends to incorporate real-world events into the canon established by his previous titles; thus, more recent titles, such as 2008's ''Literature/ASnowballInHell'', consider the unfortunate coincidence of timing and the resultant impact this has on the characters involved.
47** In his first book, ''Literature/QuiteUglyOneMorning'', a character reflects that a doctor character who has quietly been killing elderly patients for years (and who is finding it hard to tell which of the doctor's patients have died naturally and which were murdered, or even for how long this has been going on) whose death toll is in the double if not triple figures is the worst serial killer in British history. And then, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman just two years later...]]
48* ''Literature/BruceCovillesBookOf Magic'': The protagonist's situation in ''Phoenix Farm'', in which her father loses his job and leaves the family because of a recession, became this with the advent of the Great Recession about twenty years after the story came out.
49* Creator/TomKratman's 2008 novel ''Literature/{{Caliphate}}'' was fairly ominous about the future:
50** A new Islamic caliphate gets established by terrorists mirrors ISIS -- the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria -- which was a splinter group from Al-Qaeda that became its own independent militant group that declared itself a worldwide caliphate.
51** One of the main [=POVs=] is a Christian girl who endures repeated sexual abuse at the hands of Islamists. One of the most infamous things ISIS is sanctioning rape on religious grounds towards non-Muslims with their primary victims being the Yazidi (an ethnoreligious group regarded as "sorcerers" and "devil worshippers" by ISIS).
52** In the book, the US President declares Islam a "dangerous political movement that is only dishonestly a religion" and proceeds to put all Muslims inside internment camps. While this hasn't happened in America, something similar happened in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps China]] of all places, where they locked up 1 million Muslims in re-education camps and referred to Islam as a "contagious disease".
53** Mecca is destroyed by the US on September 11 in retaliation for the World Trade Center attacks. In 2015, a crane collapsed in the Great Mosque killing a hundred people and injuring 400. What really made this event qualify for this trope is that it also took place on September 11 and the crane belonged to Osama bin Laden's family.
54* There is an off-hand remark in ''Literature/TheCandidatesBasedOnATrueCountry'' about Creator/BillCosby being a good role model. The book was written in 2011 when Cosby was still considered to be the human embodiment of wholesomeness - you know, before fifty-odd women came forward to accuse him of having drugged and raped them...
55* Early on in ''Literature/TheCatcherInTheRye'', the main character Holden quips "This is my people shooting hat. I shoot people in this hat." This was a harmless bit of sarcasm for decades until the book became associated with Mark David Chapman and John Hinckley, John Lennon's assassin and the attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan, respectively.
56* ''Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'': Viewers might view the Oompa-Loompas in a different light once they learn about the real-life child slavery issue the cocoa industry has (that Mr. Wonka smuggled them into the country doesn't help) -- especially since in the original 1964 text they were just pygmy Africans. (The OrwellianRetcon in TheSeventies was to combat the UnfortunateImplications of that.)
57* Literature/{{Cinderella}} was finally identified when the prince fit the glass slipper on her foot. Several centuries later, the O. J. Simpson trial used a similar method (fitting a glove onto O. J.'s hand) to determine whether or not O. J. was guilty. Even worse, the saying "if the shoe fits" sounds eerily similar to a phrase used by one of O. J.'s lawyers: "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit."
58* The Spider novel ''City Destroyers'' featured a structure called the Sky Building collapsing. In the 1970s, a redacted version of this novel changed it to the World Trade Center.
59* In an earlier part of ''Literature/TheComfortableCourtesan'', when Sandy brings Clorinda the digitalis for Docket (which he believes is for an unhealthy client of Clorinda's who might otherwise be in danger of going OutWithABang), she jokes to him that she's sure Hector, her butler, wouldn't have any hesitations about disposing of a body for her. [[spoiler:This will happen for real in the final arc of the novel, and it will be someone who she premeditatedly murdered.]]
60* In the ''Literature/ConanTheBarbarian'' franchise:
61** Creator/RobertEHoward killed his AuthorAvatar in the 1935 short story ''Literature/BeyondTheBlackRiver'', and committed suicide the next year, leaving us to wonder if he was already planning to kill himself when he wrote it.
62** ''Literature/TheHourOfTheDragon'' is about an EvilSorcerer taking power in the FantasyCounterpartCulture of Germany, instorating a dictatorial regime with the intent of perpetrating "the greatest bloodbath the world had ever seen" in order to bring back the glories of an ancient empire, then invade the FantasyCounterpartCulture of France. This disturbingly prescient novel was written in 1934, well before the start of World War Two.
63* Vlad Dracula and Elizabeth Bathory in ''Literature/CountAndCountess'', who write letters to each other across time and have been doing so since childhood. In this story, Elizabeth suffers from chronic epilepsy. When they are children, Vlad lists a number of ancient epileptics to try and cheer Elizabeth up about her disability. Vlad brings up Socrates, Caesar, and Alexander the Great. [[{{Foreshadowing}} Elizabeth quickly retaliates with Caligula.]]
64* ''Literature/ACourtOfThornsAndRoses'': Near the end of the first book, when Amarantha is torturing Feyre to death and demanding she deny her love for Tamlin, Feyre declares that nothing Amarantha can do will stop her from loving Tamlin. Come the second book, the trauma Amarantha inflicted upon the couple ends up playing a large role in Feyre and Tamlin's highly acrimonious break-up.
65* Franchise/CthulhuMythos:
66** Yog-Sothoth, a tentacled monstrosity who [[Literature/TheDunwichHorror impregnates a human woman]]. Squicky, yes. But it gets even worse when you consider {{hentai}}. For some, this might actually be HilariousInHindsight.
67** Creator/HPLovecraft's horror writings weren't ever meant to be funny, but they were harmless thrills because of their obvious reliance on fantasy. Then you suddenly realise one day that Cthulhu and R'yleh work quite well as a metaphor for the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis "methane clathrate gun"]]. [[note]]It's huge, it's been "sleeping" deep under the sea for countless eons, and when it rises, it will cause TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt through runaway climate change and a mass extinction possibly as big as the "Great Dying" at the end of the Permian era. And there are many people (climate scientists) who really do have nightmares about it, and at least a few particularly pessimist dark-green activists have developed mental illness (depression) and even committed suicide.[[/note]]
68* ''The Dancing Girl of Izu'': The revelation that the titular character is [[YoungerThanTheyLook underage]] makes subsequent rereadings of prior descriptions of her beauty uncomfortable to read.
69* Yet another 9/11 reference: Creator/TomClancy's 1994 novel ''Debt of Honor'' ends with a distraught Japan Air Lines pilot flying a 747 into the US Capitol building during a joint session of Congress, killing the President, most of Congress, the Supreme Court, and many others. Unlike the 9/11 terrorists, however, the pilot ensured that no passengers were on board (it was an empty ferry flight) and murdered his copilot prior to the attack so that he alone would bear the blame. The Capitol building was the most likely intended target of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in a rural Pennsylvania field instead thanks to the actions of its passengers and crew.
70* Literature/DirkPittAdventures has this happen a few times.
71** Crossed with DatedHistory, ''Literature/RaiseTheTitanic'' has the ''Titanic'' in one piece and, aside from the iceberg gash, in good enough shape to be salvaged. When the ship was found in 1985 (two years before the date the novel is set in), it was in two pieces and falling apart, in no condition to be salvaged.
72** ''Treasure'' was written in 1988 and set in 1990 and imagines that Muammar Gaddafi died of cancer while Ayatollah Khomeini was still alive. By 1990, Khomeini had been dead for a year while Gaddafi would live until 2011.
73** ''Cuban Storm'' focuses on the death of UsefulNotes/FidelCastro in June 2016. Cussler was off by just five months.
74** In ''Valhalla Rising'', the CorruptCorporateExecutive bad guy plans to have his goons blow up an oil tanker in San Francisco Harbor, thereby destroying the SF "World Trade Towers", making America revolt against imported energy, and increasing the value of his own domestic oil holdings. Wincing yet?
75*** It gets better; [[spoiler:one of his lieutenants leaks the plan, and the ship is boarded by special forces troops, who find it a perfectly normal oil tanker. The hero of the book realizes that the baddie had planned to say "World Trade Center" as a decoy, and had ''not'' gotten SF's WTC and the one in New York confused. Yes, that's right, the bad guy ''planned to blow up the base of the Twin Towers and a good portion of Manhattan.'' Thanks to the Freudian slip, the real ship being delayed, and the hero's submersible, disaster is averted. But barely.]]
76* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}''
77** ''Literature/LordsAndLadies'' has a segment where Esmeralda Weatherwax, strongest and most focused of witches, thinks she is losing her mind, remembering parts of the house that she doesn't have. In light of Sir Terry's... ''embuggerance'', that was painful to read.
78** In ''Literature/{{Maskerade}}'' and ''Literature/TheTruth'', several characters agree that multiple exclamation marks are a sign of a diseased mind. In ''Literature/{{Thud}}'', the text uses them for [[spoiler:Vimes' PunctuatedForEmphasis moment]]. As said above, Terry Pratchett later announced he had Alzheimer's, making reading the latter passage nearly ''physically painful.'' There are also the passages in ''Literature/SmallGods'' where Om worries about losing his memories (again), how it would feel to have the knowledge drain away and how a part of him would be there, helpless, as he dwindled. The despair of the Great God takes on an even more moving and depressing tone in light of the above.
79*** ''Literature/{{Snuff}}'' is even worse for this. In ''Thud'' the multiple exclamation marks tend to be used with precision. In ''Snuff''...less so. And other aspects of the style and technique show similar changes.
80** Descriptions of the lack of rain in ''Literature/TheLastContinent'' hit a little too close to home in certain parts of Australia. Like the towns that are ''completely out of water''. Some inhabited places in Australia have not seen rain in six years.
81*** Um, [[AMillionIsAStatistic that one might become as horrible]] if it keeps up.
82*** At least that one has a happy ending when Rincewind and the Librarian finally summon the rain. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensland_floods_2010-2011 Thousands of years worth all at once.]] Gets you coming and going, doesn't it?
83** ''Literature/{{Jingo}}'' was written in 1997 and, in addition to parodying ''Film/LawrenceOfArabia'', it contained a number of satirical observations on mindless patriotism and xenophobia against Arabs. Reading it after the start of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars in the 2000s feels a bit awkward in how accurate it gets.
84** In ''Literature/GuardsGuards'', Vimes [[OhCrap nearly panics]] when he sees Constable Carrot is about to try and arrest ''the Patrician'', Havelock Vetinari, for a minor traffic violation. Near the end of ''Literature/{{Jingo}}'', several books later, Vimes is tasked with arresting Vetinari on charges of treason, for turning Leshp over to the Klatchians without consulting the guilds or the nobles, and Vimes has a whole dramatic InnerMonologue about how leaders can't be placed above the law. It somehow manages to be HilariousInHindsight at the same time when Vetinari ''insists'' that he be placed under arrest, including "being run out of town on a rail" and all that, and the whole business with Leshp [[ThePlan turns out to be part of his plan]].
85** Far more depressing is in one of the later books, ''Literature/{{Wintersmith}}'' when Roland reflects on his time in the world of the fairies and all its horrors. He makes the following statement, which just kicks you right in the teeth now: Roland hates things that make you forget who you are. [[TearJerker Once you forget who you are, you lose everything.]]
86* A novel called ''Literature/TheDorsetDisaster'' centers on a nuclear explosion caused by tampering with the reactor's controls due to problems with overly sensitive equipment. It was written in 1985, and has some similarities to the Chernobyl disaster a year later, though the novel was set in the US. Also somewhat eerie is the way everyone assumed the explosion was terrorism, much like fears today when a disaster occurs.
87* In ''Literature/DragonBones'', Ward's mother is drug-addicted, and not quite there, mentally. She sometimes mistakes him for his father, and near the end of the novel, [[spoiler: he stands beside her, trying to find her with his magical ability, and ''can't'' -- her body is there, but ''she'' is gone.]]. Horrible enough as it is, but if you have a relative who suffers from Alzheimer's, you really understand ''how'' bad it is.
88* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' as an unusual in-universe case. During a {{flashback}} to Harry first learning magic under Justin [=DuMorne=], Justin rewards him with a baseball glove and comments that Harry might find baseball to be very rewarding. To young Harry, it seems an innocent enough statement, but a few books earlier, it was revealed that Justin had him practice his shield spell by throwing baseballs at him.
89* French writer and officer Emile Driant (1855-1916) wrote many adventure/war/science fiction novels (he's sometimes described as a Creator/JulesVerne focused on warfare). In one of them, ''L'Aviateur du Pacifique'' (''The Aviator of Pacific''), the Japanese attack the American fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1942. This had been published in ''1910''.
90* Averted in ''Literature/DrStrangelove'': They quickly dubbed all mentions of "Texas" because of the Kennedy assassination.
91** Not just Texas. ''Dallas''.
92** And of course, most people nowadays who've seen the movie know the line was dubbed, so YMMV on whether this is averted.
93* Spice, a ubiquitous drug from ''Literature/{{Dune}}'' and several other science fiction works [[FollowTheLeader after that]], is one of the many genericized trademarks for synthetic marijuana which has far nastier effects & withdrawal symptoms than its natural counterparts and some death records to top it off (compared with natural weed which didn't kill anyone).
94* ''Literature/EarthsChildren'': The part where a pre-teen Ayla is repeatedly raped by Broud is particularly hard to stomach once you read the other books in the series and realise that even if she'd been raised by the Others and not by the Clan she would still have lost her virginity at a young age. The Others believe that an adolescent female is vulnerable while she lacks both the protective spirits of childhood and the power of full womanhood and that having sex for the first time is what makes a girl a woman. Among the Others, however, the custom is to hold a [[SexAsRiteOfPassage special ceremony]] at which girls are deflowered by young men who are carefully supervised to make sure they don't get too rough, which is what Ayla's first time would probably have been like had her circumstances been different. And if she'd still had the misfortune of being raped, her tribe would have supported her and the man or men responsible would have been suitably dealt with.
95* The ComicBook/NickFury novel ''Empyre'' featured a Saddam Hussein counterpart masterminding a plot to attack cities by crashing airplanes. Interesting, since at one point, [[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/vault/stories/data082303.htm 70% of Americans thought that Hussein had masterminded the 9/11 attacks,]] when he had nothing to do with it.
96* Buzz Aldrin's novel ''Literature/EncounterWithTiber'' has a Space Shuttle failing to make orbit and crashing. This is most assuredly a reference to the Challenger disaster of 1986, but in-story, the event takes place in a period of time that, in real life, saw the 2003 Columbia re-entry breakup happen.
97* In Creator/IsaacAsimov's short story "Evidence", Stephen Byerley is a candidate for mayor of NYC who is accused of being a robot, which would disqualify him from the election. The premise seems kind of silly and it's hard to believe that so many people would believe that Byerley is a robot based on such flimsy evidence. Fast forward to 2008, when people are arguing that President UsefulNotes/BarackObama wasn't born in the United States, and it seems much more plausible.
98** It's a little more harsher than that: Quinn, the political boss who propagates the rumor, is a conservative SleazyPolitician who admittedly couldn’t care less for the civil rights of his people, and so his subordinates. Byerley is a liberal public prosecutor who really is doing things to stop crime and redeem criminals. Quinn only opposes Byerley liberal position because, well, he is a conservative. To be a robot is a rumor so incredible that when it proves false, only shows the [[StrawCharacter extremely superficiality and stupidity of those who oppose Byerley]].
99** Humorously, there, in fact, [[LoopholeAbuse Ain't No Rule]] that says that a robot can't be mayor of New York.[[note]]" He or she needs to be 18-years-old and a resident of NYC on Election Day."[[/note]] The only legal leg to stand on would be arguing for or against citizenship of a robot. This is also the case for the US President, who has but three requirements, none of which refer to species.[[note]]be a natural-born citizen of the United States; be at least 35 years old; have been a permanent resident in the United States for at least fourteen years.[[/note]]
100* ''Literature/TheFaultInOurStars'':
101** Hazel's "you could be an axe murderer" line becomes a lot grimmer after watching Creator/JohnGreen's video about how he [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=196&v=wQKwwC72BJE went to high school with a soon-to-be axe murderer.]]
102** For an InUniverse example, [[spoiler:Van Houten insults Augustus' intelligence by saying his cancer must have spread to his brain. A KickTheDog moment on its own, but then Gus later reveals that his cancer did in fact return and has spread to the rest of his body]].
103* On the commentary for ''Film/FightClub'', Creator/ChuckPalahniuk comments that a friend of his named Bob ended up getting testicular cancer after he'd written [[Literature/FightClub the book]], "and so the irony of that was just crushing."
104* The 2004 book ''Forty Signs of Rain'' ends with a massive tropical storm named Sandy hitting the Washington DC area. Fast forward to 2012, and we have Hurricane Sandy.
105* There's a long, ''long'' history of this. A novella called ''Literature/FutilityOrTheWreckOfTheTitan'' was written wherein a drunken old captain has to fight for his life after the ship he pilots -- described as "the largest ship in the world" -- is sunk by an iceberg. The novel was written ''fourteen years'' before the sinking of the ''UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic'' under practically identical circumstances. The ship in ''Futility'' is like a slightly smaller version of the ''Titanic''. Every circumstance surrounding the ''Titanic's'' sinking (number of lives lost, what started the sinking, lack of lifeboats, triple screw propellers, ship described as "practically unsinkable", ship length, and ship speed) matches something in the descriptions about the ''Titan''. It was initially rejected for publication due to being "unbelievable."
106** When it finally was published (in 1914), it included a story called ''Beyond the Spectrum'' which featured [[UsefulNotes/WW2 a Japanese sneak attack and a secret weapon that blinded and burned its victims]].
107* In the 1935 [[Literature/LordPeterWimsey Harriet Vane]] novel ''Gaudy Night'' by Creator/DorothyLSayers, one of the staff at Vane's British alma mater claims that "What this country needs is a [[UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler Hitler]]!" (Of course, a lot of Britons -- including King Edward VIII -- had similar feelings before the full extent of the depravity of the Nazi regime was known.) An ex-soldier who served under Wimsey, and is now working as the college porter, makes an approving offhand mention of Hitler doing "interesting social experiments" in Germany. There are also some mentions of German policies by the dons, especially the Nazi idea of keeping women “in their place”. [[note]]If you follow these references carefully, you’ll find that Sayers was (presciently) using lack of disapproval of the Nazis as an indication that a character is either naïve, or opposed to Harriet’s (and Wimsey’s, and clearly Sayers’s) position on gender relations.[[/note]] However, Sayers gets across her opinion that the last thing ''any'' country needs is a Hitler. None of the protagonists agree with this sentiment. Even in 1935, she saw him for what he was.
108%% ** For an in-story example, in ''Unnatural Death'' Wimsey becomes rather annoyed at Parker after being stuck in a car with him for some time and warns him that there's a heavy spanner under his seat "and Bunter can help to bury the body". Later in the same book, [[spoiler:a woman is found with her skull smashed in by a spanner]].
109* In ''The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest'' from Stieg Larsson's ''Literature/TheMillenniumTrilogy'', there is an incident where a newspaper editor [[spoiler: drops dead of a heart attack at his desk]]. It's very difficult to read the passage for anyone who knows how Stieg Larsson died.
110* One inspiration for ''Literature/TheGiver'' was Lois Lowry's conversations with her son, a USAF fighter pilot, prior to the Persian Gulf War. Her son would later die in a plane crash after the novel's publication.\
111\
112It gets harsher when you know the details. The novel opens with a plane flying low over the community. A few years after the novel was published, a USAF pilot, who was known for low overflights and showing off [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Fairchild_Air_Force_Base_B-52_crash crashed his plane, killing all on board]]. Later in the novel, the Giver told Jonas of how wars had been started when planes were fired on by mistake. A few years later, two US fighter jets misidentified two US Army Blackhawk helicopters and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Fairchild_Air_Force_Base_B-52_crash shot them down, killing all on board]]. These two incidents resulted in a push for greater accountability among USAF personnel. On May 30, 1995, Major Donald Lowry's F-15 crashed. The cause: two airmen had misconnected two control rods. The Air Force sought to prosecute the two airmen involved, despite evidence that the Air Force knew of the potential for such an accident and had done nothing to fix it. They sought the Lowry family to testify for stiff punishment of the men involved, but the Lowrys wrote a letter asking for leniency. The day the court-martial was to begin, one of the airmen charged left the base and headed to a wooded location he frequented. The airman's father and other Air Force personnel joined a search. The airman in question was in a hunting shack. As his commander approached, he shot himself in the head. He left a note for the Lowrys, in which he stated, [[http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,135113,00.html "I know I am going to heaven. And in heaven I cannot hurt anyone else, not even by accident."]]
113** In ''Literature/{{Messenger}}'', a sequel to ''The Giver'', the villagers, under the influence of the mysterious Trademaster, decide they want to stop letting any more people into the community (which was built by people from other communities, with one of the founding principles being that everyone is welcome), even proposing building a wall to keep out any additional newcomers. ''Messenger'' was written in 2004.
114* Diana from ''Literature/{{GONE}}'' gives a reason you suck speech/comfort talk to Caine in the first book...
115** '''Diana:''' (In response to Caine's angst over his mother abandoning him) Wow, it's a shame Dr. Phil isn't here. Look, she was probably just a ''messed up teenager then.''
116*** This was hilarious until the 4th/5th book when Diana ''actually'' [[spoiler: gets herself into this situation ({{teen pregnancy}}) with Caine. Only she's tortured by Drake for it goes insane from having to give birth in a mine whilst getting flogged and having horrible mind tricks played on her for hours.]]
117* ''Literature/GoodOmens'':
118** An off-handed joke about even a demon not being cruel enough to turn someone into Music/FreddieMercury is now a lot less funny, knowing that at the time, he was dying a slow and painful death of AIDS. At the time of the book's publication, there were rumors that he had contracted the disease, but he had repeatedly denied them. The truth came out a little over a year later, shortly before his death.
119** In the book, Pollution replaced Pestilence, who retired in defeat after the invention of antibiotics. Fast forward 25 years, and we have scientists worrying about worldwide flu pandemics, there was a big Ebola outbreak killing tens of thousands that was barely kept from spreading to the rest of the world, an entire generation (and their young children) are dying of AIDS in Africa, and we are confronted with an increasing number of multiple-drug-resistant strains of bacterial diseases like tuberculosis. And there haven't been any real breakthroughs in finding new antibiotics in ages. Then, just a few months after the miniseries adaptation was released, a little year called 2020 happened...
120* ''Literature/TheGreatGatsby'':
121** There is the Jewish mobster Meyer Wolfsheim who works in an office labeled "The Swastika Holding Company." In 1922, when the book was written, ThoseWackyNazis had only recently adopted the swastika as a symbol and were still a decade away from coming to power.
122** In addition, [[spoiler: upon (the possibly Jewish) Gatsby's death from a madman]], the narrator ends the description of the scene with "...and the holocaust was complete."
123** Fitzgerald seems to be astonishingly unlucky with these. In ''The Beautiful and Damned'', Anthony meets a disagreeable character who happens to be Jewish:
124-->I detest these underdone men, he thought coldly. Boiled looking! Ought to be shoved back in the oven; just one more minute would do it.
125* ''Literature/TheGreatPacificWar'' by Hector Bywater has a major one of these because, even though it was written in 1925 and is set in 1930-1933, it contains a Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
126* The theocratic dystopia pictured in ''Literature/TheHandmaidsTale'' has many parallels with the Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan barely a decade later.
127* Simon Braund's 2013 book ''Literature/TheGreatestMoviesYoullNeverSee'' gave ''The Hot Zone'' a 1/10 chance of ever being made, saying "Unlikely, unless Ebola hits the headlines again." That same year, it [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_African_Ebola_virus_epidemic did hit in West Africa]], and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_cases_in_the_United_States then in the U.S. in 2014]]. Sure enough, 2019 saw a mini-series based on the book premiere on National Geographic's TV channel.
128** In general, a lot of Richard Preston's work became much, much harsher after the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic. Aside from ''The Hot Zone,'' a number of his other books discuss deadly diseases (''The Demon in the Freezer'' is about smallpox and anthrax, ''Panic in Level 4'' goes into further detail about Ebola and other viral hemorrhagic fevers, and ''The Cobra Event'' is a fictional but extremely realistic story about an outbreak of a recombinant virus based on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Polyhedrosis_Virus nuclear polyhedrosis virus.]]) All of these stories were chilling when they were written, but they became an entirely new kind of terrifying after the world witnessed a real pandemic firsthand.
129* In ''Literature/{{Grendel}}'' by John Gardner, the work ends with the words, ''"Poor Grendel's had an accident. So may you all."'' Eleven years later, Gardner died in a motorcycle accident (days before his wedding, no less).
130* ''Literature/HarryPotter'':
131** Many fans have been disappointed that [[AmbiguousGenderIdentity Nymphadora Tonks]] became softer and more feminine by the end of ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', compared to her wilder debut in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix''. In late 2019, author Creator/JKRowling [[Website/{{Twitter}} tweeted]] in public support of Maya Forstater, a vocal TERF[[note]]Trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a sub-group of feminists who argue that transgender women are men, and should be treated as such by laws regarding gender equality[[/note]]. On June 10, 2020, Rowling published an essay that was intended to explain her views on trans identity, but only ended up angering the LGBTQ+ community even more as it was full of offensive transphobic stereotypes. One of them was the idea that gender dysphoric teenagers will eventually "grow out of" their dysphoria. In the wake of Rowling's essay, [[https://www.vox.com/culture/21285396/jk-rowling-transphobic-backlash-harry-potter this]] article on Vox.com by a non-binary writer bitterly concluded that Tonks' "taming" was not only a conscious rejection of trans identity but had been planned all along.
132** And then there is the reporter Rita Skeeter in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire'', who is frequently described as having a "mannish jaw" and "large hands" (both things often used as "gotcha" characteristics that help people "spot" trans women). She's depicted as entirely untrustworthy, and it's later revealed that she uses her secret power as an animagus to turn into an insect and overhear what Harry and his friends say to each other in private conversations. She literally transforms herself in order to spy on children, a false accusation often levelled at trans people.
133** There's also Dolores Umbridge in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix'', another villainous character who dresses in an exaggeratedly feminine style, while the author is always pointing out how "ugly" and "toad-like" she is. Rowling herself stated that this was inspired by an actual teacher she had, who had a similar dress style that Rowling found repellent. Nowadays these descriptions read a lot like the accusations of "performative femininity" that are levelled at trans women, or when transphobes mock them for not being "convincing".
134** Prior to the release of the fifth ''Literature/HarryPotter'' book, a filk of "Cell Block Tango" from ''Theatre/{{Chicago}}'' that contained various fans' predictions on who would die in that book was posted on the [[https://web.archive.org/web/20111002155318/http://www.harrypotterfilks.com/ Harry Potter Filks]] website. The irony of the filk lies not so much in the fact that the character that ''did'' die in that book was not among those listed, but that two books later, three of the ones listed did after all. [[https://web.archive.org/web/20111002155318/http://www.harrypotterfilks.com/places/theorybay.htm#Death_Row_Tango Read at your own risk]] if you haven't finished the series yet.
135** Back in ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix The Order of the Phoenix]]'', Moody goes on and on about the possibility of death while flying to Headquarters, and is told nobody is going to die, and the whole thing is played for laughs. [[spoiler: Guess what happens in ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows Hallows]]'' while ''flying to HQ?'' Yeah.]]
136** Early in HBP, Ron and Harry are talking about hoping that the new DADA teacher, [[spoiler: Snape]], will succumb to the trend of DADA teachers leaving after only one year. Harry flippantly says something along the lines of "I'm hoping for another death". Well, [[spoiler: Snape]] certainly leaves the post after another death...
137*** Ron very often predicted future events with his jokes--more often than not becoming these.
138** Almost every scene with [[spoiler:Sirius]] and [[spoiler:Dumbledore]].
139*** Especially the scene with the Mirror of Erised in the first book. Warm pair of socks, anyone?
140** And, with Fred. "When I get married, I won't be bothering with any of this nonsense. You can all wear what you like and I'll put Mum in a full Body-Bind Curse until it's over." Except, he doesn't get married, does he?
141*** Same with [[spoiler:Cedric]] "That'll be something to tell your grandkids Ced. You beat Harry Potter!"
142*** Everything Amos Diggory says to or about Cedric involves him [[spoiler:living to a ripe old age]]. One can only assume Rowling did that on purpose.
143** In Goblet of Fire "If the Hogwarts Express crashed tomorrow and [[spoiler: George and I]] died, how would you feel knowing the last thing we heard from you was an unfounded accusation?" [[spoiler: As of Deathly Hallows, jokes about Fred dying are rather unfortunate...]]
144*** Even worse, the last thing [[spoiler: Fred]] heard from [[spoiler:Molly]] before he died was her yelling at him for letting [[spoiler:Ginny]] come to the battle... not exactly an '''unfounded''' accusation, but close enough.
145** For that matter, later on in Goblet of Fire, Fred and George temporarily grew long white beards when their attempt to fool Dumbledore's Age Line with an Aging Potion backfired. [[spoiler:That's the closest Fred ever got to true old age...]]
146** One that wasn't even funny in the first place: ''Order of the Phoenix'' has Molly trying to face a boggart, which keeps turning into the corpses of her children. She sobs that she thinks of them dying all the time, and worries that it'll happen before they can reconcile with Percy. [[spoiler:So of course, when Percy shows up for the Battle of Hogwarts in the next book, he makes amends to his family and fights alongside them... and then ''Fred'' is killed.]]
147** Harry near the end of ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheChamberOfSecrets Chamber of Secrets]]'': "Just promise me one thing...Never try to save my life again." [[spoiler: [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows Alas, poor Dobby...]]]]
148** In ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban Prisoner of Azkaban]]'', the Marauder's Map insulting Snape is seemingly hilarious until you reach a [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix certain moment in Book 5]].
149** After the anthrax scare following 9/11, it's more than likely that more than a few insensitive fans have made at least one inappropriate joke about Rita Skeeter sending prank mail infested with anthrax spores to Hermione (kind of like that one "curse mail" incident from Goblet of Fire).
150** Near the end of ''Prisoner of Azkaban'', while Snape is in a rage about the escape of Sirius Black, Fudge comments to Dumbledore that he seems quite unstable and that the Headmaster should watch out for him.
151** In ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheChamberOfSecrets'', they're trying to figure out who Tom Marvolo Riddle is and why he won an award for Special Services to the School, and Ron jokes that it is because [[spoiler:he killed Moaning Myrtle]]. At the end, it is revealed that Tom Marvolo is [[spoiler:Lord Voldemort]], and he ''did'' in fact [[spoiler:murder Moaning Myrtle]] when he opened the Chamber of Secrets. It is also shown that he turned in Hagrid for the murder. In the penultimate book, it's discovered that he [[spoiler: used Myrtle's death to create one of his horcruxes!]]
152** In ''Goblet of Fire'', there's a brief scene before the Quidditch World Cup where a wizard named Archie is wearing a flowery nightgown meant for women and refuses to wear trousers meant for men, even with a Ministry official scolding him for not properly blending in with the Muggles. This little sequence becomes less funny in light of J.K. Rowling's transphobic comments twenty years after the book was published, especially with her infamous June 2020 essay where she claimed men would try to dress as women to enter female changing rooms and bathrooms.
153** Until the penultimate book, Snape was the head of Slytherin house, whose emblem is a snake. [[spoiler:In Deathly Hallows, he dies by being bitten by Voldemort's snake Nagini.]]
154** Hermione's House Elf plotline in Book 4, where Hermione is jokingly portrayed as a SoapboxSadie for opposing the use of House Elves for slave labor, and for protesting the idea of HappinessInSlavery. Fast forward to ''Theatre/HarryPotterAndTheCursedChild'', where the play cast a black actress to portray Hermione and all of a sudden the story treating her as in the wrong for protesting slavery becomes two or three times more awkward than it already is.
155*** The subplot also eerily foreshadows Rowling's own behavior with regard to her controversies on transgender issues, as Hermione tries to advocate for a group whose views she doesn't try to understand, takes actions which the group finds offensive and hurtful, dismisses information that doesn't suit her narrative, and believes herself an authority on the subject simply because she's read books about it, which is similar to Rowling's own behavior toward the trans community. The fact that Rowling modelled Hermione on herself as a child can make it seem like she was projecting her own flaws onto her.
156** A large part of Book 5 involves the Ministry and the Daily Prophet slandering Harry by claiming he's just making up stories for attention and thinks he's a tragic hero. This has aged particularly badly as Rowling has responded to criticism by portraying herself as a victim of similar behavior, accusing her critics of slander (often threatening to sue them) while framing herself as heroically standing up for her views in the face of persecution from the media. The idea of a famous person being desperate to stay in the limelight has also been raised as a likely explanation for her recent behavior.
157* Creator/DavidWeber pulled one on ''himself'', as he says in the Author's Note in ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' novel ''Flag in Exile'':
158-->''I completed this manuscript in October 1994. At that time, I'd structured the events which occur in [[spoiler:Chapter Nineteen]] because I could think of no more loathsome, despicable, and cowardly act any individual or group of individuals could commit. It is my belief that the sentence "The end justifies the means" -- that suppression, repression, and/or murder become somehow acceptable if committed in the name of a "cause" or belief which reduces individuals to expendable pawns -- is the vilest of human poisons, and that terrorism, regardless of the terrorist's "cause," is the ultimate act of dehumanization. I did not expect that between the time I wrote this novel and the time it was published [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing a United States citizen in Oklahoma City would demonstrate an even worse contempt for human life and the fundamental values of his own society or prove capable of an act even more despicable than my fictional villains.]] That some human beings are capable of such atrocities is an inescapable lesson of history. That we cannot allow those acts to go unpunished or extend to those who commit them any shred of respect, whatever the "cause" which motivated them, is a lesson the civilized human community must teach itself.''
159* The 2002 novel ''Literature/HouseOfTheScorpion'' takes place in a fictional nation created and controlled by drug lords that is between Mexico and the United States. Seeing that Mexico's local governments (and national) are becoming more and more influenced by the drug cartels, this is becoming more of a reality.
160* Creator/MatthewReilly's ''Literature/HoverCarRacer'' features two villainous Renault drivers who team up to put protagonist Chaser out of the race. Come 2008, and Renault would purposely arrange for one of their drivers to crash to give a significant advantage to another in real-life Formula One.
161* ''Literature/InCryptid'': In "The Lay of the Land", Mary jokes that Thomas is "doomed" and should "just accept [his] fate now". We later find out that [[spoiler:Mary brokered the DealWithTheDevil between Thomas and the Crossroads, which led to him eventually being TrappedInAnotherWorld]].
162* Ari Behn's last book ''Inferno'' was published in 2018, and detailed his struggles with mental health issues. On 25 December 2019, he died by suicide.
163* In the 1935 novel ''Literature/ItCantHappenHere'', which depicts a fascist takeover of the USA, a synagogue is barricaded and filled with carbon monoxide, gassing the trapped worshippers to death. [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust Less than a decade later, such scenes were taking place on an industrial scale.]]
164* At the end of Emily Neville's ''It's Like This, Cat'', troubled college drop-out Tom decides to enlist in the Army for three years as a way of getting his life back on track, finding stability, and, with some luck, making money to continue his education and marry his girlfriend. He even speculates that he'd be drafted in a year or two, anyway, but seems very convinced, and no one contradicts this, that he can be stationed in New York throughout his three years of service. Well, the book was published in 1963, and guess what happened in 1965...
165* ''Literature/JackRyan'':
166** ''Literature/DebtOfHonor'', released in 1994 features at its climax [[spoiler:a suicidally depressed Japanese Airlines pilot deliberately crashing his jetliner into the U.S. Capitol building during a special joint session of Congress confirming a newly appointed Vice-President, decapitating all three branches of government]]. One could say this ''predicted'' 9/11 to a certain extent, as Clancy went out of his way to illustrate how easy such an attack might be to carry out -- the fact that the Capitol may have been the target of the 4th plane makes it even worse.
167** In ''Debt of Honor'', deaths caused by faulty gas tanks in a popular model of Japanese car prompts the US government to enact punitive trade legislation against Japan. In 2010, major recalls of Toyota cars due to safety defects [[http://www.autoblog.com/2010/01/28/breaking-house-to-hold-hearing-on-toyota-recalls/ prompted a Congressional investigation.]]
168* ''Literature/JaineAustenMysteries'': ''This Pen for Hire'' has a moment where Jaine fantasizes about what her life could be like [[ItMakesSenseInContext if she got rich off of a screenplay]]. In that fantasy, she is married to Creator/MelGibson. In 2002, this could be a cute joke. After that...it gets awkward.
169* In the novel ''Literature/{{Jumper}}'', the main character [[spoiler: drops a terrorist from the World Trade Center. He catches him before the man can die, but still...]] 9/11, anybody?
170* While editing her Literature/KieshaRa series, Author Amelia Atwater-Rhodes had a webcomic series called [=ihme*=] (Short for I Hate My Editor), which parodied the events of Kiesha'ra. It delved into possible alternative skylines, freely played with {{flanderization}}, and makes humorous events out of what would actually be traumatic and disastrous in the series' canon.
171* In Creator/SpiderRobinson's ''Lady Slings The Booze'' a throwaway comment is made in connection with a terrorist plot to the effect that they "aren't going to blow up the WTC because that only impresses the people that live within sight of the WTC".
172** You'd think Robinson of all people would have realized that with [[TechMarchesOn advances in communications technology]] in the decade and a half after when the novel was set (1985), the ''entire world'' would live "within sight of the WTC".
173* ''The Last Lecture'' is the memoir of educator Randy Pausch as the final summation of his life's wisdom as he was dying of pancreatic cancer. It was co-written with professional author Jeffrey Zaslow. Only a few years later, Zaslow himself died suddenly in a car wreck, cutting his own life just as short as Pausch's, but without the opportunity to say goodbye or leave something behind.
174* In the YA book ''Legend'', some people are protesting the state-sponsored execution of a poor teenager. Though they're pretty peaceful, they are quickly and brutally killed by the many soldiers standing by. If you don't check the copyright date (early 2011) and consider the book's [[AuthorTract political leanings]] you'd think it was a thinly veiled Ferguson allegory.
175%%remember the rule of caution editing judgement in the above, alright?
176* During ''Literature/LeiaPrincessOfAlderaan'', Leia brings a shipment of vaccines to the ailing Chalhuddans in a charity mission. Their leader rejects them out of hand and says she must think they have no pride. Leia becomes ''furious'' and starts yelling at them - saying this disease is killing their children. If ''her'' people were dying and the only way to save them was to swallow her pride, she would do it, she would get on her knees in the dirt and beg and plead and do anything to preserve their lives. Anyone who would not do the same doesn't deserve to be a leader.
177* Creator/VictorHugo, ''Literature/LesMiserables'': "Citizens, the nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century will be happy. Then there shall be nothing like ancient history: there shall be no more fear, as today, of a conquest, an invasion, a usurpation, an armed rivalry of nations, an interruption of civilization because of the marriage of kings, a birth of hereditary tyrannies, a division of peoples by congress, a dismemberment by the collapse of dynasty, a combat of two religions butting each other like two goats of darkness on the bridge of infinity; there shall be no more fear of hunger, exploitation, prostitution through adversity, misery from unemployment, and the scaffold, and the sword, and battles, and all the brigandage of chance in the forest of events." Ouch.
178** Javert's [[DrivenToSuicide suicide]] was always tragic, but it got even more depressing [[https://www.apnews.com/523a7ebf90794bfd8b3726b969fbbc6a after France had a wave of police suicides.]]
179* In the fantastic history book ''A Little History of the World'' it talks about how humanity has come a long way from mindless persecution and hatred of other cultures and at the end of the original print, which was about WWI, it had a message of hope for the future. This was in 1935; the German-born Jewish author added another chapter after WWII really lamenting some of the things he said in the book.
180** In the original German edition, the last chapter involves a scathing critique of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, accusing him of just letting France and the UK impose the Treaty of Versailles, and says "so this is how Wilson treats his opponents." In TheNineties, when the book was finally translated into English, the writer includes a footnote explaining that many people in Germany really had no idea of Wilson's far lighter proposal for the defeated Central Powers, and bought into the "stabbed-in-the-back legend", and that [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone he was horrified at the fact that he had just repeated Nazi propaganda without knowing it]].
181* ''A Man in Full'' by Creator/TomWolfe has a sex scene in which the characters do "that thing with the cup". Wolfe has admitted that he himself [[NoodleImplements has no idea what they're doing.]] Nowadays, an [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Girls_One_Cup infamous]] ShockSite turns this into NauseaFuel.
182* Anthony Horowitz wrote a short story called ''The Man With the Yellow Face'', where a boy is frightened of a mysterious man he believes is coming to kill him, and worries that the man might be "one of those suicide bombers you read about in the Middle East." The story was published in 1998 ...
183** The climax of the story features the protagonist being injured in a train crash near Grantham (on the East Coast Main Line) caused by an object deliberately placed on the line. Three accidents took place on the East Coast Main Line between 2000 and 2002, one of which, at Great Heck, near Selby, was caused by a passenger train striking a car that comes off the motorway and fallen down the embankment onto the line.
184* The German novella ''Mario and the Magician'' written in 1929 and set in 1926, describes the changes happening to FascistItalia, as seen through the eyes of a liberal family from then democratic Germany, and repeatedly shows how the change makes Italian people intolerant, arrogant and aggressive. When Nazis came to power, they made the same to Germany, only much, much more worse.
185** Also in the end, Cippola is shot dead by Mario, whom he previously brainwashed into doing icky things. Mussolini (for whom Cippola was an obvious stand-in) was in the end shot by people of his own nation.
186* ''Terroristerna'', the last novel in the ''Literature/MartinBeck'' novels by Mäj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö ended with the Swedish Prime Minister (An {{Expy}} of then-Prime-Minister Olof Palme) getting shot and killed due to horrendous police incompetence. In 1986 the real Olof Palme was shot and killed on the street in Stockholm, the killer escaped and was never found due to horrendous police incompetence.
187* Van Wyck Mason wrote a novel positing an attack on Pearl Harbor, written in the early 1930s. Actually, numerous works depicted this, such as the first Shield/Wizard meeting.
188* ''Literature/MeinKampf'' by none other than UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler himself was published in 1925, eight years before Hitler became Führer of Germany. The book exposits Hitler's political ideology, including his beliefs in "Aryan purity" and hatred for the Jews, but readers in the 1920s would not have taken his book seriously. After Hitler became Führer in 1933, gradually passed laws during his rule that oppressed the Jews to the point where their lives were made miserable, and the horrors of UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust, Hitler's book is now treated as ominous {{foreshadowing}}, is taken dead seriously, and was [[BannedInChina banned in many countries]] until 2016 when it became PublicDomain[[note]]Though ironically not in Germany; instead, the Free State of Bavaria which owned the copyright refused to print it[[/note]].
189* ''Literature/TheMoviegoer'' has a series of crippling {{Take That}}s against the entire '60s counterculture movement, except that the book came out in 1961 when those things hadn't become popular yet.
190* In Dame Creator/AgathaChristie's ''Literature/MurderOnTheOrientExpress'', the German Lady's-Maid comments on the kidnapping and murder of a child, then adds: "We are not so wicked as that in Germany." The novel was written in 1933.
191** Christie's detectives also take Jewishness as indicative of moral weakness or outright criminality -- descriptions of eyes "lighting up" at the thought of money and "thick Semitic lips" become painful to read given what was to happen in the '30s and '40s.
192* ''Literature/TheNeanderthalParallax'': In the last book, Mary lists Bill Cosby as one of the men who ''isn't'' evil while thinking about male violence. This was before the accusations against him were well known. It's especially ironic since she's a victim of rape, and this is a large part of her character's arc throughout the books.
193* The Zack Files book ''Never Trust A Cat Who Wears Earrings'' features a curse that is turning Zack into a cat that he can only break by performing a ceremony in the shadow of the World Trade Center. Reading it now, the FridgeLogic seems to be that he would keep turning into a cat, which now has some pretty dark implications.
194* ''Literature/NoCountryForOldMen'' by Creator/CormacMcCarthy: The novel takes place in 1980, and in it, Ed Tom Bell mentions the recent murder of a federal judge in San Antonio, TX. He's referring to the murder of Federal Judge John Howland Wood, who was assassinated outside his townhouse by a contract killer named Charles Harrelson on May 29, 1979. In 2007, Creator/WoodyHarrelson (yes, the son of Charles) would co-star in the [[Film/NoCountryForOldMen film version of the novel]].
195* Although the work wasn't published until the 2000s so no one could have read it, but Creator/JRRTolkien's story ''The Notion Club Papers'', written in 1944, is set in 1987. The characters mention that six months ago in 1986 there was 1) a disaster involving a spacecraft, 2) a nuclear disaster, and 3) during the course of the book the greatest storm in history hits England. [[ParanoiaFuel All three proceeded to happen in]] RealLife.
196* ''Literature/OperationChaos'' opens in the midst of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, in which the "Moslems" invaded America.
197** Moslems is more a case of SpellMyNameWithAnS, unless you're talking about the [[HurricaneOfPuns Nation of Islam, who claim the "O...E" stands for "Old English"]].
198* Margaret Atwood's ''Literature/OryxAndCrake'' has a passage describing several kinds of futuristic snuff sites. One of them is an assisted suicide site, founded for entertainment. It's sickening as it is, but then the main character Jimmy goes and compares the site to Alex the parrot saying "I'm going away now." A few years after the book was published, Alex died.
199* In ''Literature/OurMutualFriend'' (written in the 1860s) Mr. Boffin mistakenly thinks ''The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' is ''The Decline and Fall of the '''Russian''' Empire''. During Dickens' lifetime, the Russian empire still existed and was in relatively good shape, but over the next fifty-odd years it really did [[UsefulNotes/RomanovsAndRevolutions decline]] and [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober fall]].
200* Radar, who's black, getting a t-shirt with a confederate flag on it that says, "Heritage not Hate", was hilarious in ''Literature/PaperTowns'', which came out in 2008. Fast-forward to 2015, the year [[Film/PaperTowns the movie]] came out... and also the year when the controversy over the Confederate flag, and whether it stands for racism or not, has reached violent levels of protest and conflict. Suddenly the scene isn't so funny.
201* Erik's [[UnseenPenPal deceptive communication]] with Christine in ''Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' must have been creepy enough in 1910, but its resemblance to the m.o. of modern Internet predators makes it even creepier a century later.
202* ''Literature/ThePianistFromSyriaAMemoir'': Early in the novel, the author repeatedly mentions "[[Main/{{Anime}} a popular manga show]]" named ''Anime/HelloSandybell'' in his country. ''Hello! Sandybell'' is about a little girl SearchingForTheLostRelative after her father dies. Later, the author's brother goes missing during the Syrian Civil War after his own father dies, and he ''breaks''.
203* In ''Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray'', Dorian blackmails a character Alan Campbell into helping him dispose of a body. While not stated outright, the strong implication is that Campbell was Dorian's ex-lover and Dorian was threatening to expose him as homosexual, thereby ruining his professional life and potentially exposing him to the threat of imprisonment. Later, of course, Wilde himself was ruined by exposure of his homosexuality, something widely considered unacceptable in Victorian England.
204* ''Place of Angels'' by Erika Fatland is a book about a terrorist attack on Beslan (happened on 1 September 2004). Erika Fatland, a Norwegian sociologist who studied terrorist attacks, went to Beslan in 2007 and then again in 2010 to study how the attack proceeded and what happened in the aftermath. The book concludes with the notion that it is important to learn about such tragedies, even for people living in "safe" Norway. The book went into print on 11. July 2011. Just '''eleven days''' after that, the book wasn't even sold yet, the Oslo/Utøya massacre happened, scarring Norway as severely as Beslan. The fact that many of Utøya victims stripped down to their underwear (albeit for different reasons than in Beslan) didn't help matters.
205** Her next book, ''The Year without Summer'', which is about the Utøya massacre, makes it even worse. There Fatland describes how, after obtaining a publishing deal, she toured Norwegian high schools advertising her book, partially to boost sales and partially to get the students to study sociology in university. The students often asked her whether such a tragedy could happen in Norway and she confidently explained how the differences between Norway and Caucasus made such an attack extremely unlikely. Some of those students were later among the victims.
206* In Creator/AlbertCamus' ''Literature/ThePlague'', Tarrou says, "In fact one might go farther; have you ever heard of a man with cancer being killed in an auto smash?" Camus had a life-long struggle with Tuberculosis. He died in a car crash.
207* The 2004 novel ''A Planet for the President'' talks of New Orleans being virtually wiped out by a category 5 hurricane. The book was published in 2004, a year ''before'' Katrina.
208* Creator/EdgarAllanPoe:
209** "Literature/TheMasqueOfTheRedDeath" features a particularly nasty disease that causes people to die in agony, sweating blood. This was and still is all very fine and creepy, standard for Poe. Then [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola#Signs_and_symptoms the Ebola virus came along...]]
210* Another story is Emil and the Detectives, about a German boy in 1929. Around ten years later, [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII he'd be old enough...]]Not just that, he'd probably end up shooting and killing the French boys that helped him.
211* In the semi-autobiographical ''The Provincial Lady in Wartime'', published serially in late 1939, a tactless neighbor asks the narrator if her son is still too young to be drafted. (He is in his final year at school.) The following year, when he ''was'' drafted, the author’s real-life son killed himself during basic training.
212* The 1996 book ''Quite Ugly One Morning'' by Christopher Brookmyre has a doctor character who is described as the worst serial killer in British history, with a kill count of about 30. And then, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_Harold_Shipman just two years later]]...
213* The ending of Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/TheRunningMan'' is another 9/11 example, as Ben rams a hijacked passenger airplane in a suicide attack on the television network's high-rise headquarters. [[SugarWiki/MomentofAwesome While giving the Corrupt Corporate Executive the finger.]]
214** ''Literature/{{Insomnia}}'', where an extremist (driven mad by the Crimson King) attempts to pilot a Cessna loaded with C4 into the Derry Civic Center.
215** His first book under the Bachman pseudonym, ''Literature/Rage1977'', was about a boy shooting students and teachers at school. It was taken out of print following [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_High_School_shooting a 1997 school shooting in Paducah, Kentucky]], when copies of the book were found amongst the gunmen's possessions.
216** ''Literature/MrMercedes'' features a madman [[http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Man-Plows-Car-Into-Crowd-at-Venice-Boardwalk-218400411.html driving a car]] into a [[http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/18/speeding-car-drives-into-crowd-of-people-in-new-york-city-6646439/ crowd of people]], and the ending has a bomb being set up to explode at a [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/24/manchester-arena-terror-attack-salman-abedi-ariana-grande-victims/ concert filled with tweens]]. Not sure if Mr. King is psychic or just aware of the capacity humans have for crazy.
217* As the storm clouds gathered over Europe and the Far East, PulpMagazine hero ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operator_No._5 Secret Service Operator #5]]'' (1934 -- 1939) fought attempts by various foreign armies from South America, [[ThoseWackyNazis Europe]] and the [[YellowPeril Orient]] to [[DayOfTheJackboot conquer the United States]]. The events are completely over-the-top as benefits the pulp genre, except for the time the Japs destroy ''an entire city'' (Philadelphia) with their atomic bomb! Only those evil Orientals would do such a dastardly deed...
218* The last word that Creator/WillRogers wrote before he died was the word "death".
219* In Catherine Alliott's 1999 novel ''Rosie Meadows Regrets'', the titular character is wistfully musing that her life would have been much better if she'd married someone else other than her alcoholic, bigoted, mentally abusive, uncaring, and unsupportive husband. The celebrity she specifies? Creator/MelGibson. Hmm.
220* In 1973, one year after the last Apollo moon mission, Creator/CarlSagan wrote a book showing one of the landing sites on the moon with the caption "The party is over and the guests have gone home." Nobody has been back to the moon since.
221* Creator/DavidSedaris wrote several essays that mention his sister Tiffany. At age six, her older siblings convinced her to lie in the middle of the road and get hit by a car to make their mom feel guilty, telling her death is "like sleeping, only you get a canopy bed." In another essay, her father browbeats her for stabbing David with a pencil until she couldn't hold a crayon without bursting into tears. Finally, in "Put A Lid On It," he describes how his parents put her in a reform school (the now infamous [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elan_School Elan School]]), causing her to resent her family and separate herself from them as much as possible. All of this presents enough of a sad portrait of his sister's life, but when you learn she died of suicide in 2013 and, in her will, [[FuneralBanishment banned her entire family from attending her funeral]] (all chronicled in David's essay "Now We Are Five"), the whole thing becomes downright heartbreaking.
222* In ''Sewer, Gas and Electric'', a TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture CyberPunk parody from 1997, the Empire State Building has been replaced by a mile-high skyscraper called the Phoenix. The original building had been destroyed by a colliding airliner. No longer funny in hindsight. Given how the building had already had a plane crash into it in the past, it probably had this effect on some at the time it was written too.
223* InUniverse in the Creator/DaleBrown novel ''Shadows of Steel'': [[spoiler: Hal Briggs]] is chastened for taking a risk that gets him hurt by a ZSU-23 antiaircraft gun. Guess how he dies, several books later?
224** Another Creator/DaleBrown novel, ''Storming Heaven'',[[note]]published in 1994[[/note]] concerns a terrorist group using cargo planes to attack American airports and other targets. Eventually, they attempt to crash a 747 into the White House.
225* The ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' story "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" features a villain who's locked his daughter up as a tormented prisoner, and whose young son tortures helpless animals. At the time, the son's behavior was seen as a hereditary clue to the father's cruel nature, and the villain's motives were financial only; nowadays, readers are more likely to deduce the man was molesting (or beating up) both his kids.
226** And the first line he says to Watson ("You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.") is somehow made more cringeworthy by the fact that now, over 100 years later, this ''still'' makes sense. Not for nothing is Afghanistan known as "the graveyard of empires".
227* Creator/AaronAllston's ''Sidhe-Devil'' came out in June 2001. The back-cover blurb (accurately) describes part of the situation the heroes have to deal with as "a mad genius is sending fiery destruction against the city's skyscrapers."
228* Literature/SisterhoodSeries by Creator/FernMichaels: In the book ''Fast Track'', Jack Emery brags to reporters Ted Robinson and Joe Espinosa that the ''Post'' is going to be sold to a new owner. Joe turns green upon hearing this because that means he and Ted could lose their jobs. At that point, it seemed like a brilliant and cool way to upset the apple carts of those reporters, who had been thorns in the Vigilantes' sides. Then, in a later book, ''Under the Radar'', Ted explains to the Vigilantes why they can trust Joe. Joe is the only son out of eight kids. His father died early on, leaving his mother to take care of all of them. He's the youngest in his family. The family managed to get enough money to send Joe to college. He's the only one in the family to have a college education. Joe is a citizen of the United States, and he sends every cent of money he can back to his people in Tijuana. Joe cannot afford anything to live in except a one-room dump, and his immediate family has 37 members in it! Also, his family supports the Vigilantes quite strongly, and his salary combined with some other jobs he moonlights as help his family, but it's not nearly enough. His family is not lazy, but the economy in that area sucks. Boy, that not only explains why Joe turned green at the possibility of losing his job, but it makes Jack's bragging come off as a KickTheDog moment!
229* Listening to a certain children's story by Creator/DickKingSmith is rather uncomfortable with hindsight. Renaming a cat you've found out is female? Okay, yes, female cats are called queens. The cat's a queen. So we get this line:
230--> "Or Diana... That's what the Princess of Wales is called, she'll be Queen one day!"
231* ''Literature/SoBig'' is about Selina, a widow who makes a success out of her late husband's far and sends her son Dirk off to school. Selina is eventually disappointed when Dirk abandons a career in architecture, which Selina regards as noble and artistic, and settles for money-grubbing as a bond trader. Dirk achieves financial success but realizes that he's essentially wasted his life. What makes this Harsher In Hindsight? The novel was written in 1924. All of Dirk's soulless money-grubbing would have resulted in him very likely being ruined five years later in the crash of 1929.
232* ''Literature/SomeoneElsesWar'': [[FriendToAllChildren Lieutenant Panga]] asks the FiveManBand what they would like to be when they grow up. [[spoiler: [[TheHeart Otto]]'s reply is, "Not dead." He dies in the very next chapter.]]
233* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'':
234** In the first book from the series, [[AntiVillain Tyrion]] and [[JerkJock Jaime]] Lannister discuss the fate of Bran Stark, who'd fallen from a tower and would be crippled for life even if he survived. Jaime, who'd been the one to throw him from the tower, commented that if it had been his decision, he'd euthanize the boy rather than having him grow up a cripple. Tyrion disagreed, since he himself was a dwarf, and stated that death was too final and that life held endless possibilities even for "cripples and grotesques." Three books later, Jaime himself became a cripple when his sword hand is cut off and he contemplates letting himself die, before being convinced to live in order to see his family again and avenge himself.
235** In one of Bran's chapters in the first book, he remarks that "Theon Greyjoy had once commented that [[DumbMuscle Hodor did not know much]], but no one could doubt [[VerbalTicName he knew his name]]." The line appears to just be using Theon's {{Jerkass}}ery to launch a humorous tidbit from Old Nan that his real name isn't even Hodor, it's Walder. In the fifth book, [[spoiler:after Theon is tortured into insanity, he's forced to take on the name Reek. He can't even bear to think the name Theon until well into the novel, and doesn't say it aloud until his very last line.]]
236-->'''Theon''': [[MadnessMantra You have to know your]] ''[[MadnessMantra name.]]''
237* ''Literature/SpecialCircumstances'': InUniverse. At the beginning of ''Princess of Wands'', Barbara's martial arts sparring partner says, after watching her warm-up exercises, that he was gay. She calls him on it, the narration commenting that he's married and has five children from two different marriages, and that "[i]f he was gay, it was a very closet condition." Fast forward to the end of ''Queen of Wands'', when it's revealed that [[spoiler:her husband, with whom she's had three children]] is having a homosexual affair.
238* ''Literature/{{Slapshots}}'' Coach Bolitsky being a ForgetfulJones after taking a lot of hockey pucks to the head is PlayedForLaughs, but subsequent real-world insights (the books were written in 2000) into how harsh an effect traumatic brain injuries can have on the lives of athletes can make this characterization uncomfortable and raise concerns about what kind of life he, his wife, and their new baby may have if his [=TBI=] gets worse over time like many such injuries do. The fact that a later Korman book, ''Literature/{{Pop}}'', features a former athlete with [=TBI=] who keeps forgetting that he is an adult and can barely even recognize his own kids can make longtime Korman readers especially conscious of the FridgeHorror that Bolitsky may one day face.
239* ''Literature/{{Spellbinder|1996}}'', published in 1996, features Blaise's deranged ex Randy threatening her and other students with a weapon at a school dance, though he's disarmed before anyone is seriously hurt. Three years later, the Columbine shooting occurred, after which mass killings at American schools came to much greater attention (and unfortunately increased in frequency). While the incident in ''Spellbinder'' is certainly disturbing, it no longer seems as shocking as it would've been in 1996.
240* ''Literature/StarCarrier: Earth Strike'' devotes a paragraph to explaining how, in the latter half of the 21st century, Hurricane Cynthia overcame a dam across the Verrezano Narrows and helped raise sea levels [[RuinsOfTheModernAge permanently inundate New York City]]. This became a lot less {{science fiction}}y after [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Sandy Hurricane Sandy]].
241* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
242** ''Literature/StarTrekArticlesOfTheFederation'' ends up having one within the context of the wider Literature/StarTrekNovelVerse. The novel ends with a somewhat upbeat comment from President Bacco's Chief of Staff and prime supporter, Esperanza Piniero, pointing out that while the first year of Bacco's term has had its ups and downs, at least the Federation is still intact. Given that Bacco herself praised a former president earlier in the novel by stating that if you complete a term with the Federation still intact, you've done the job, this is somewhat heartwarming. Two months after this novel (InUniverse), cue Literature/StarTrekDestiny. While Bacco continued to do a fine job through the apocalyptic mayhem of "Destiny" and its aftermath, the destruction in that trilogy does render Piniero's comment a bit painful.
243** The ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' novel ''Q-in-Law'' has Lwaxana Troi declaring herself to be in mourning for her daughter. Deanna says she doesn't have a sister that she knows of. The mourning is then explained as an old Betazoid tradition calling attention to daughters who don't marry by a certain age. Four years later in-universe and two in the real world, the episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS7E6DarkPage "Dark Page"]] reveals that Lwaxana had another daughter who drowned when Deanna was a baby.
244** Some of the early ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' [[ExpandedUniverse novels]] become HarsherInHindsight with regards to [[WeHardlyKnewYe Tasha Yar]]. The novel "Survivors" contains an epilogue that takes place during "[[KilledOffForReal Skin Of Evil]]", but this dialogue from "The Children of Hamlin"[[note]]Published 1988, probably written 1987[[/note]], which is chronologically right before that episode according to Memory Beta contains rather creepy {{irony}}:
245--->'''Dr. Crusher''': Tasha, stay out of trouble. I don't want to see you in sickbay again for a long time.\
246'''Yar''': Don't worry, I'm not coming back.
247*** It's true, too. She didn't. Not ''alive'', anyway.
248** ''Immortal Coil'', published in February 2002, has a grief-stricken Data, mourning the death of his mother, rant that he would never see the people he'd lost in the afterlife, if there was one, because he would never die -- since with adequate repair, he could in theory last almost indefinitely. Then came ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'', released in December 2002, which killed him off. Appropriately enough, he mentioned Tasha Yar -- the closest thing he'd had to a love interest prior to the book in question -- during said rant.
249* An InUniverse one in the original ''Literature/StarshipTroopers'' novel: Johnnie Rico and his campmates had been joking about the 31 capital offenses in the Terran military, which they called "crash landings". When it came out that one of his comrades was facing a possible crash landing, he finds the jokes of old a lot less funny.
250* ''Literature/StateOfFear'' is a 2004 technothriller by Creator/MichaelCrichton, about a global conspiracy falsifying data to support GlobalWarming. "[[{{Scandalgate}} Climategate and glaciergate]]" are either [[VindicatedByHistory the first signs that the plot of the book is true crumbling through a wall of lies]] or two [[HanlonsRazor minor technical errors]] that were caught by the media rather than peer academics, depending on your preconceived notions. Rorschach Gates, if you will -- what you see in them depends on the contents of your thoughts, rather than of the gate.
251* The Robert R. [=McCammon=] novel ''Literature/SwanSong'' has a chapter where a militant cult is laid siege. The siege ends when their building burns down with them in it. A few years later, this happened to the Branch Davidians.
252* The ''Literature/TalesOfTheCity'' books have many of these. There's just something about cheerful, {{utopia}}n gay-themed romantic comedies written in the 1970s.
253** In the eponymous first book, some of the A-Gays are talking about how it would be a great idea to invest in nursing homes geared toward gay men. Michael ridicules the idea, saying, "Are you gonna have a separate wing for drag queens?" A few years later, the idea of gay men in end-of-life care wouldn't seem nearly so funny.
254** Particularly uncomfortable is the subplot in ''Further'' where Michael hooks up with an old movie star who is strongly implied to be Creator/RockHudson. A few years later, the real Hudson contracted HIV...and then Michael did, too.
255* In the technothriller series ''Talon Force'' book Dire Straits published a few months before 9-11 the plot revolves around Islamist terrorists trying to take over Turkey. Osama Bin Laden is mentioned to be a major backer of the terrorists and one character laments that he's been tried in absentia.
256** Come 2016, and Turkey is hit by a military coup attempt which the government blames on the Islamic Gulen movement. (Though the movement has no connection to bin Laden and is not universally regarded as 'extreme').
257* In the second Literature/{{Temeraire}} novel, there's an amusing little subplot where Laurence hears about a nasty cold going around the English dragons, and many jokes are made about how dragons are such big babies when they're sick. Temeraire comes down with the cold, and it's played largely for laughs. In the fourth novel, it turns out that [[spoiler:the "cold" is a form of dragon tuberculosis that's slowly and painfully killing every dragon in England. If they hadn't stopped at exactly the right port in Africa and prepared exactly the right mushroom for Temeraire on a whim, he and every other English dragon would have died. For that matter, since Temeraire was on his way to China when he came down with the "cold," all of the Chinese dragons would probably have died, too.]]
258** In the fourth book, there's also a throwaway line from Riley worrying about getting dragons out of the ocean and back onto the ''Allegiance'': "What the Admiralty will say to me if I get a transport sunk in harbor on a clear day, I should not like to think." [[spoiler: In ''Crucible of Gold'', due to useless sailors getting drunk directly after a long, severe storm, the ''Allegiance'' sinks with only the worst sailors saved. Riley goes down with the ship trying to save it, and Laurence realizes that he'll be remembered as the captain whose ship sank on a clear day.]]
259* ''Three Men on the Bummel'' by Jerome K. Jerome is a lighthearted Victorian comedy about a bicycle tour through Germany. The narrator laughs about the German love of order and deference to authority. The last chapter is extended chuckling about totalitarianism and authoritarianism: the German citizen will do anything the police tell him, makes the perfect soldier when you give him a uniform and march him into another country, and just might come into some trouble under a bad government.
260* In-story example in Sarah Waters's ''Literature/TippingTheVelvet'': a minor character chats up another by saying something along the lines of "Are you Sue Bridehead? I'm Jude Fawley" -a reference to Thomas Hardy's ''Jude the Obscure'', then being serialised. [[spoiler: Jude and Sue both end up having horribly unhappy lives. In context, it's a terrible line.]]
261* Creator/StephenBaxter's ''Literature/{{Titan}}'' (written in 1997) opens with the Shuttle ''Columbia'' suffering an accident on re-entry, which causes the death of an astronaut and the loss of the orbiter. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_disaster Cue 2003]].
262* Creator/SeananMcGuire's [[AuthorAppeal love of virology and infectious diseases]] means that many of those stories are cautionary tales about how then-current quarantine and sanitation measures were insufficient and the world was unprepared for a serious epidemic. Then the UsefulNotes/Covid19Pandemic hit, proving many of those fears right. Perhaps the most harsh is the author's note on "The Tolling of Pavlov's Bells" in the ''Laughter At The Academy'' anthology, which was published a little over a month before Covid was first identified in Wuhan.
263--> '''[=McGuire=]''': I believe the modern world's disdain for quarantine and willingness to support structures that encourage its violation is going to do a great deal of damage one day, and with new diseases emerging regularly, that day may not be particularly far in the future. [...] Wash your hands.
264* When Literature/TheTomorrowSeries was first published, an attack on any Western state that could actually threaten it seemed inconceivable. Then came 9/11.
265** Another point is that it depicts Australian people fighting the occupiers -- but shortly thereafter, Australia itself participated in the Iraq occupation.
266* The autobiography of former Penn State [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball football]] assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, released in 2001, was titled ''Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story''. Needless to say, the title is now VERY disturbing in hindsight—see [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_State_child_sex_abuse_scandal The Other Wiki]] for the gory details.
267* A rare InUniverse example in ''Triggers'' by RobertJSawyer, where a character wonders whether an {{Expy}} of ''Series/TheWestWing'' will continue to be set in the White House even though the real building was recently destroyed by terrorists.
268* The controversial underground novel ''Literature/TheTurnerDiaries'' has been linked to quite a few illegal activities, but nowhere is this Trope more appropriate than when it was revealed that the book at least partially inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy [=McVeigh=] in planning his attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. (In the book, the FBI Building was destroyed via nearly identical means. Former soldiers who were in the army with [=McVeigh=] recount that he read the novel frequently, and the book was found in his possession when he was arrested.) Even the author of the book, admitted white supremacist William Luther Pierce, could not condone the attack.
269* ''Uncle John's Bathroom Reader'':
270** One edition includes an article with a list of strange unofficial holidays. One of them is "No News Is Good News Day". Date: September 11. At first you might think it's just a bit of tasteless BlackComedy. But the copyright date is 2000.
271** In another edition, published in 2003, there's an article on humourous church bulletins. One of them is "Visitors are asked to stay seated until the end of the recession."
272* Saki's story "The Unrest-Cure" involves a practical joker in pre-WWI England (near Saki's "present day") convincing a sedate gentleman that he's planning to "massacre every Jew in the neighborhood." The gentleman exclaims that it will be "a blot on the Twentieth Century!" but the story ends with the century "unblotted." Later on, the century got good and blotted.
273* In Suzanne Brockmann's ''The Unsung Hero'', the main character, a Navy SEAL on medical leave, imagines reporting to his superior officer:
274--> "Hi, I think I just saw the international terrorist that I spent four months tracking in '96 taking a cab out of Logan Airport. Yeah, that's in Boston, Massachusetts, that teeming hotbed of international intrigue...."
275** Funny in 2000, when the book was published. Much less funny a year later, when two killer planes took off from Logan on 9/11.
276* ''Literature/VampireAcademy'':
277** Early in ''Shadow Kiss'' during the guardian practice exercise, Rose wants Dimitri to have the opportunity to show that he could be a badass Strigoi.
278** In ''Blood Promise'', Rose notices that Sydney doesn't seem to eat much of her food, but doesn't think much of it, and actually steals some of her fries. It's later revealed that Sydney has fairly severe body issues.
279* The Robin Cook thriller ''Vector'' features an antagonist (formerly an employee of a Russian government-run bioweapons project) who manufactures anthrax in preparation for a biological attack and kills someone with an anthrax-laced letter as a test to see how potent his toxin is. The book was published in 1999. Then two years later, it happened [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks for real]]...
280* In his 2009 ''Radio/TheVinylCafe'' book, ''Extreme Vinyl Cafe'', Stuart [=McLean=] prefaced each of the stories with a letter, purportedly from a fan asking his advice. One letter writer couldn't decide if he should be buried or cremated, and what Stuart's thoughts on the matter were. [=McLean=] replied, "Personally, I plan never to die." The book was published six years before the author would be diagnosed with skin cancer, and eight years before he passed away.
281* In the movie version of ''Literature/WaitingToExhale'' by Terry [=McMillan=], Gloria finds out her ex-husband is gay after trying to seduce him. Years later, Terry [=McMillan=] and her husband split up after he revealed that he was gay and married her to get a [[CitizenshipMarriage green card.]]
282* Robert Jordan of ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' fame's biography stub in most of his books included a line that he intended to keep writing "until they nail his coffin shut" -- and so he did, since he passed away in September 2007, [[DiedDuringProduction leaving the last book unwritten]].
283** There was also a joke among certain internet fansites that goes along with the stub stating something similar to that. Thus, some people initially thought that Jordan's real obit was a joke.
284** This is an odd, creepy sort of subversion- he ''meant'' that the last few times he included it. He knew his health was on the decline but stayed at work until the end. He went out of his way to make sure there were enough notes for somebody else to finish ''[[Literature/TheWheelOfTime Wheel of Time]]'' if he didn't quite make it. Brandon Sanderson was chosen to finish the final book.
285** Like with any author of a long series of {{Doorstopper}}s, there were plenty of jokes about Jordan dropping dead before finishing the series. They all became suddenly much less funny when he was diagnosed as fatally ill.
286* Creator/TadWilliams' {{Doorstopper}} novel ''Literature/TheWarOfTheFlowers'' has a scene in which a skyscraper was set on fire and is in danger of collapse after an attack by a flying, fire-breathing dragon, and the main character, who are trapped on a high floor of said skyscraper, has to climb down flight after flight of stairs in the midst of smoke and flames. The book contains an introduction saying that he wrote the scene before 9/11, and the similarity between the events in the book and the experiences of the 9/11 survivors is simply an unfortunate coincidence.
287* A brief passage in ''Literature/TheWildBoy'' mentions how there won't be a New Year's celebration because much of humanity has died. Part of it goes "...And Dick Clark? he's dead." It was written in the early 2000s, though that part was several years in the future.
288* In one ''Literature/WarriorCats'' book, the young blind apprentice Jaypaw is frustrated that one-eyed Brightheart is assigned to be his mentor (considering her to not be a "real" warrior), even more so when Brightheart announces that Longtail, a blind elder, is going to give Jaypaw tips on how to move around the forest without sight. Jaypaw irritably thinks "''Sure, let's lump all the useless cats together and hope a tree falls on them!''". A few books later, a tree falls into the camp, killing Longtail.

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