* {{Anvilicious}}: "I've Never Met A Nice South African" (and the two sketches surrounding it in the original episode) is about as subtle as a sledgehammer with a boombox installed in the head that constantly screams "APARTHEID IS BAD!".
* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Almost every single song composed by Philip Pope, but mainly [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AgB4sADPmk Atheist Tabernacle Choir]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ1rjRVs_7M Pinstripe Wizard]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccM4wVgZN9o Chicken Song]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA1ePzf99vI Kill An Estate Agent Today]], and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZIV4tQ63tM Santa Claus Is On The Dole]].
* SugarWiki/FunnyMoments: The "Vegetables" sketch, David Coleman mistaking the opening credits of ''Grandstand'' for live footage of the Liverpool-Everton match...
* HarsherInHindsight:
** The sketch that had UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher wandering an empty House of Commons is regarded as a very moving piece of writing and probably the only time when they showed her any sympathy. It was seen by two Tory [=MPs=], friends of [[Magazine/PrivateEye Ian Hislop]], who were so touched by it that they voted to keep her as party leader in the ballot when they previously planned on abstaining. Although this wasn't enough to save her from the axe, their votes proved to be the decider in tipping the scale towards a second round of ballots (the rules of the leadership contest were that she needed to win by a margin of 15% to win outright). So in over a decade, the writers actually did more to keep Maggie in power than they ever did to get rid of her.
** In 1988, when the Shadow Chancellor John Smith suffered a near-fatal heart attack, a sketch was run showing Neil Kinnock (who was depicted as regarding Smith as a potential rival for the Labour Party leadership) visiting him in hospital advising him to take up smoking and eat lots of lard. This sketch became less funny after 1994 when John Smith suffered another heart attack that ultimately killed him.
** Princess Di singing a version of "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" by Music/TheSmiths.
** UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan being portrayed as completely oblivious (and extremely forgetful), years before it was revealed he had the early signs of dementia at the time.
** The sketch where Creator/JimmySavile is portrayed as a dangerous psychotic has become not so funny, following allegations that he molested and raped hundreds of children over the course of his career.
** Similarly, all the sketches about Prince Andrew being something of a womanizer (including the "Randy Andy" musical number,) became a lot less funny when he was implicated in the dealings of the infamous trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, including one victim claiming part of the assault she endured involved his '''actual''' ''Spitting Image'' puppet in the process.
** The Labour Party political broadcast of 10th October 1996 (using the puppets from the series shortly after it had wrapped) shows the wall behind John Major's bed being decorated with illustrations from Literature/TheRailwaySeries. Wilbert Awdry died on 21st March the next year, just four days after Major announced the election.
* HilariousInHindsight:
** Looking back on how Reagan was portrayed in the series, the parallels between him and UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush make his sketches twice as funny.
** As mentioned above, the RunningGag about John Major having an affair with a female member of the Cabinet (funny at the time because it was such a silly idea) became a ''lot'' funnier once we learned he ''had''.
*** If only they'd picked Edwina Currie as the (un?)lucky lady instead of Virginia Bottomley.
*** It's this InUniverse too. A sketch from an earlier season dealt with Major facing controversy for being monogamous.
*** There's also a bit of humor in the fact that the U.S President that the show ended with was Bill Clinton.
** The ''Series/LastOfTheSummerWine'' parody is much funnier now that most of the actors from it really are dead now.
** An early episode depicts a scene where public figures give reasons why they dislike the Guardian. Prince Andrew states that “It couldn’t give a toss about my sex life.” After the sexual abuse allegations against him came out, and the Guardian began covering it as a main news story, this can be seen as a good moment of BlackComedy.
** A RunningGag featured the Chancellor of the Exchequer panicking over a crisis he allegedly caused. In RealLife, Nigel Lawson enthusiastically supported the infamous "poll tax" which led to a near-economic collapse in 1989.
** The economic cycle has ensured that a great wodge of the 1989-1994 sketches and songs about falling house prices, currency devaluation, and economic recession have become just as relevant today.
** In The "Princess Michael" Royal Family sketch, Prince Harry is seen wearing a Waffen-SS helmet. Prince Harry would later get into trouble with the press in 2005, for wearing a German military uniform and a Nazi swastika armband.
** The Nigella Lawson puppet that pops up in 1986 (her dad's puppet in drag) before anyone knew [[HeadTurningBeauty what she actually looked like]].
** The Social Democrats contending that they could be part of the ''two''-party system with the Tories ''and'' with Labour is pretty funny when their successors, the ''Liberal'' Democrats, ended up doing exactly that by forming a coalition with the Tories.
** In a sketch, David Steel sees the Ghost of Liberal Party Present (who looks and sounds exactly like Cyril Smith) warning him that David Owen would destroy the party. Ironically, over 30 years later, it would be the abuse scandal that emerged from ''Smith’s'' activities that would lead Steel to resign from the House of Lords.
** A recurring joke on the show was to depict Pope John Paul II as a guitar playing rock 'n' roller. Then in 2015, Pope Francis [[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCcQFjADahUKEwjLjcGz3pzIAhUFcD4KHf9fDFo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rollingstone.com%2Fmusic%2Fnews%2Fpope-francis-to-release-pop-rock-album-wake-up-20150925&usg=AFQjCNFdmk9FOkaCbejE8coJcK6LE5wqyw announced plans to release a rock album.]]
** Music/RodStewart's penis nose becomes more funny when one considers that after the show ended, he continued to have children well into his ''60''s [[note]] That's both his kids with third wife Penny Lancaster[[/note]].
** The [[WesternAnimation/CamberwickGreen "Camberwick Greenbelt"]] segment, with it's stop-motion animation and SubvertedKidsShow format plays out a lot like something you would expect to see on WesternAnimation/RobotChicken ''17 years'' before it started airing!
** "We're Glad Not To Be Gay", a musical number where Music/JasonDonovan and Philip Schofield sing about how [[HaveIMentionedIAmHeterosexualToday totally straight and not-gay they are]], was vindicated almost three decades after the fact when Schofield finally came out.
*** In addition, the puppets of several other celebrities suspected of being gay were used as backup dancers in the song and one of them, TV presenter Michael Barrymore, ended up coming out as gay a couple years after the sketch aired.
** When Boris Johnson holds a séance that sees him possessed by the ghost of Margaret Thatcher, his cabinet holds a VirginSacrifice of Matt Hancock in order to get rid of her. In June 2021, Hancock resigned after being caught breaching COVID-19 regulations by kissing and embracing an aide who was not his wife.
** In March of 2022, when scandals began piling up on Boris Johnson and his eventual ouster... either through a resignation or removal by outside forces, whether it be his own party or the voters... started to seem inevitable (and indeed, he would eventually resign shortly after in July,) the show's Youtube channel released a "Best Of" [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4mEvvtuWac&ab_channel=SpittingImage compilation video]] of Rishi Sunak's most memorable moments... and notably, no similar compilations for any others, making it pretty clear they were placing their bet on the idea that Sunak would be Johnson's inevitable successor. While they probably found themselves surprised that it was instead Liz Truss who would win the subsequent race, they would ultimately have the last laugh when her government utterly collapsed and she herself would resign after only seven weeks, and Sunak would in fact become Prime Minister after all.
* SeasonalRot: Many believe the show lost its way after Maggie left. The show's producers themselves agree, noting that with Thatcher's departure, so too left the cartoonish bombast of her administration, replaced by the far drier and stonefaced John Major, who, despite providing some memorable laughs like the peas sketch, was nowhere near as exploitable for comedy as Thatcher.
** LampshadeHanging, coupled with a bit of a TakeThatAudience, in a {{Mockumentary}} about ''Spitting Image'' itself: "''Spitting Image'' [[BlatantLies began in 1888]], and even then, it wasn't nearly as good as it used to be."
* {{Squick}}:
** Norman Tebbitt puts Robin Day's hand in a blender, before proceeding to drink the resulting mulch straight from it.
** In "The President's Brain Is Missing" special, Reagen's assistant opens up the former's head and dusts its innards in a rather clumsy almost violent mangling of the puppet's inside, with one of its eyes even bulging out as he does so.
** The revival has Donald Trump's anal prolapse creeping out of his bed to operate a smartphone, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0c66bf-g1Q as seen here.]]
* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: How most of the musical numbers operated, although there were a few straight-up [[SongParody Song Parodies]].
* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: More than a few fans wish that the show did more with the Exchequers, unfortunately the Exchequers sketches were dropped after the first series and the puppets of Wilson, Home, Callaghan, Macmillan and Heath were largely relegated to being background puppets in house of commons sketches.
* UglyCute: The briefly-seen puppets for Prince George and Princess Charlotte, who were 7 and 5 respectively when the show was revived.
* UnintentionalUncannyValley: Those puppets became far more realistically looking as the seasons went on, with blinking eyes and puppeteers walking around with puppet heads on their own body for scenes that required such actions.
* TheWoobie: John Prescott in the later seasons.
** John Major has his moments as well.
** Hancock in the revival, who is portrayed as pathetic and bullied by the other Cabinet members.
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