Line #3 YMMV/GeorgeCarlin


1	* HarsherInHindsight:
2	** ''It's Bad For Ya'', his final HBO special a few months before his death, features a lot of routines about death, a fact which was not lost on his surviving family. His daughter Kelly made several allusions to his "Things We Say When People Die" bit at his funeral, knowing George would have wanted them to laugh. [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments Which they did]].
3	** The album ''I Kinda Like It When a Lot of People Die'' features a TitleDrop, with George saying that he always hopes for a disaster to happen, and always hopes it gets worse. The audio was recorded [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror September 10, 2001]].
4	** 1999's ''You Are All Diseased'' has a bit about how airport security's leniency towards carrying dangerous items on board made it both ineffective and pointless, going so far as to joke that anything could conceivably be used as a weapon ("You could even beat a man to death with the Sunday New York Times! But it could take a while, s'pecially if he's hefty."). Two years later, the security at Logan airport in Boston failed to so much as slow down eleven guys armed with nothing but box cutters, allowing them to hijack an airplane and fly it into the World Trade Center (even more awkward, Carlin outright states in his routine that he didn't believe terrorists were out to hijack planes, which of course is exactly what happened). Since then, airport security has been tighter than ever, to the point that anything that ''could'' be conceivably used as a weapon of any kind is strictly prohibited.
5	** His 2001 HBO special ''Complaints and Grievances'' was originally titled ''I Kinda Like It When a Lot of People Die,'' but it had to be retitled after the September 11th attacks a couple months earlier. The title was later intended for ''Life Is Worth Losing,'' but scrapped yet again some time later before becoming the name of a posthumous release.
6	** During a rant on Americans being overly concerned with germs and other micro-organisms, Carlin asks what the "well-scrubbed" Americans are going to do when a "super-virus comes along that turns all your internal organs into liquid shit". 12 years after his death, in 2020, America found out when Covid-19 reached US shores and as per Carlin's grim prediction, began killing thousands of Americans. Naturally, those with weakened immune systems were particularly vulnerable, and severe lung damage is common in survivors.
7	** During his final special, he remarks on rights that “all we’ve ever had in [The U.S.] is a list of temporary privileges, and if you read the news, even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter.” These remarks have made the rounds online following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the immediate banning of abortion in Republican-dominated states.
8	* HilariousInHindsight
9	** ''It's Bad For Ya'' opens with a vicious TheReasonYouSuckSpeech against Lance Armstrong, in which he curses out Tiger Woods as well. At the time it seemed out-of-pocket. But then Woods was caught two-timing his wife in 2009, and Armstrong was found guilty of doping in 2012.
10	** In his 1990 special ''Doin' It Again'', George Carlin complained that due to Political Correctness, cities would start referring to manholes as "personholes". [[https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/18/us/berkeley-gendered-language-ban-trnd/index.html Berkeley, Calfornia announced in July 2019 that they are actually going to do that]], although the name will be the more reasonable "maintenance hole."
11	** In his 1992 special ''Jammin' For New York'', his solution to solve homelessness was to close golf courses and build housing on them. Decades later, that idea has become a reality as the popularity of golf has plummeted since then with many golf courses closing and being turned into housing estates and public parks.
12	** In his "Keeping People On Their Toes" routine, one example he gives is walking up to strangers and saying "Pardon me, I have nothing to say!" A common pet peeve among social media users is strangers leaving meaningless comments on posts that either contribute nothing to the conversation or are completely redundant, in effect announcing that they don't actually have anything to say!
13	** Of Boxing, Carlin said: "It's two people beating the shit out of each other, it isn't a sport." The same case was later made (with less cursing) by the International Olympics Committee, schools, and gymnasiums for removing the sport altogether.
14	* MemeticMutation:
15	** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5YVhDSkcBI A clip of Carlin yelling]] "GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!" has been used when someone loses their job. WebVideo/UrinatingTree uses it quite a bit in his videos where he documents "A Legacy of Failure."
16	** A similar clip of him saying, "What are you, fucking stupid!?!" has also become a bit memetic. WebVideo/SomecallmeJohnny tends to use it in his video game reviews when something really stupid happens in the stories of the games.
17	** The fact that Carlin narrated a ''children's television show'' did not go unnoticed by fans, and as such, there are plenty of clips from Carlin-narrated Thomas & Friends episodes with the audio intermixed with recordings of his stand-up routine.
18	* MisaimedFandom:
19	** His routine about people's immune systems needing practice on strong germs has occasionally been co-opted by the anti-vax movement, especially once he was no longer alive to rebut it. However, his daughter has enthusiastically taken up the task, making clear he was a strong supporter of vaccines.
20	** Similarly, his rants on media censorship have been co-opted by bigots on social media who want to be able to say whatever they want online with no repercussions, including hate speech. However, these people fail to grasp that while Carlin was was indeed against needless censorship of more adult language in the media, it was primarily because he saw most of what was censored to be relatively harmless on TV. Furthermore, while he has defended the right for people to use offensive language or racial slurs, he did not necessarily condone the use of it to pick on underdogs or minorities, especially in comedy.
21	** In 2024, an AI-generated comedy special, "I'm Glad I'm Dead" was created using George Carlin's voice. Carlin had nothing nice to say about modern technology -- in "It's Bad for Ya," he complained that "We've been bought off by our toys and gizmos" in reference to the popularity of cell phones in 2008. It's safe to say he would not have approved of using technology to imitate his voice without permission. His daughter sued the creators of the special over this.
22	* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: Noted above under HarsherInHindsight, his bit about how lax airport security is would probably come off as baffling to anyone who have only flown post-9/11, when outright draconian security measures were established in response.
23	* ValuesDissonance: His routine on eating disorders shows a staggering misunderstanding of a mental illness that is very difficult to manage even with support and treatment and can lead to severe illness and premature death:
24	-->See, somehow, I can't feel sorry for an anorexic, you know? Rich cunt, don't want to eat? Fuck her. Fuck her. Don't eat! I give a shit. Like I'm supposed to be concerned about this. "I DON'T WANNA EAT!" Go fuck yourself. Why don't you lie down in front of a railroad train right after you don't eat? What kind of a God damned disease is that, anyway? "I DON'T WANNA EAT!" How do we come up with this shit in this country? Where do we get our values from? Bulimia, there's another all-American disease. This has got to be the only country in the world that could ever have come up with bulimia. Got to be the only country where some people are digging in the dumpster for a peach pit, other people eat a nice meal and puke it up intentionally.

Context YMMV / GeorgeCarlin