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FunnyAneurysmMoment: Live Action TV |
- Now that we've subdivided the Funny Aneurysm Moment page, let's reiterate the Trope Namer, from Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Early in the series, Buffy wishes her mom would get a funny aneurysm or something. A few seasons later, Buffy's mom has a deadly aneurysm...
- Another Buffy The Vampire Slayer example: In an early episode of Season 7, Buffy kills a flesh-eating demon named Gnarl by poking his eyes out with her thumbs, a sight that Xander responds to with understandable and amusing disgust. (His exact words are 'Eww, thumbs?") Several episodes later, psychotic preacher Caleb drives his thumb into Xander's left eye.
- Cordelia comments to Giles in the season 3 episode "Gingerbread" that he was going to "wake up in a coma" on account of all the head traumas he had received. At the end of season 4 of Angel, Cordelia was left in a coma; she died without ever waking up.
- The season six episode "All The Way," in which Xander dressed as a pirate, complete with eyepatch. (Xander's first line after he loses his eye mentions that pirate costume).
- The season five episode The Replacement, in which Xander is split into two versions of himself. At one point he says to Anya that "very soon you won't be worrying about growing old!" Roughly three years later, Anya is killed in the Final Battle.
- The Columbine High School massacre occurred one week before the original planned air-date of the season three episode Earshot. The story revolved around a plot to murder students at the school (admittedly a common occurrence at Sunnydale High), but also included a scene where a student (Jonathan) is loading a rifle in the school's bell tower. It was a Red Herring - Jonathan was planning suicide, not mass-murder - but the airing was delayed until the following fall because of the imagery.
- "Bad Girls", in which Xander covers his eye to keep Buffy from seeing his post-sex-with-Faith twitch, and "Something Blue", in which Xander asks to be blind along with Giles after watching Spike and Buffy kiss.
- Naked Spike is season 6? Yay! After hearing how uncomfortable James Marsters got with it? ...Less yay.
- In episode 9 of season 7 Andrew has a conversation with Warren's ghost. At a certain point, Andrew asks why he has to do all the wetwork. Warren says it's because he can't take corporeal form. Andrew sticks his hand through him. He says it's cool. like Patrick Swayze.
- This qualifies because in the comics (which are considered canon), Warren does take a corporeal form!
- Angel: watching the first season adds an extra tragic taste to all of Doyle's funny moments, not only because of his later Heroic Sacrifice, but also because, only a couple of years later, Glenn Quinn, the actor who played him and a close friend of other cast members, would die of a heroin overdose.
- Fred's Screw Destiny speech becomes a lot more heartbreaking after she's killed by the destined, inevitable return of an ancient demon.
- Cordelia once lamented that ghosts were never Patrick Swayze when you needed them to be. So Yeah.
- Newsradio: One of the more severe examples would have to come from the Titanic episode. At the end of the episode, Phil Hartman addresses the audience as Phil Hartman (rather than his character Bill McNeal), and explains that no one in the cast really died, at which point the rest of the cast show up and explain that Dave (Foley) drowned while filming the last scene. Hartman then explains that "Okay, one cast member died." This was Hartman's last scene ever: he was killed soon after this episode aired. This scene was removed in syndication, probably for this reason, but kept in the DVD release.
- Another cringe-inducing moment comes in an earlier episode where McNeal is arrested, and Dave concludes that the only way the police could have dealt with him would have been to shoot him.
- The Halloween one, where the whole B plot revolves around Bill being depressed that a psychic tells him he's going to die 'so soon' (for him, although it was still far in the future) but ends when the psychic gets tired of him and tells him he'll live a ridiculously long time. Funny then, but in retrospect...
- Friends: In one early episode, Chandler jokes about being abducted by aliens, saying, "They did experiments on me! I can't have children!" Later, Joey thinks Chandler has gotten Monica pregnant, and upon learning Monica is not pregnant, replies, "Slow swimmers?" In Season 9, Chandler learns his sperm have low motility and he and Monica are unable to conceive a child. This actually earns double painful points, due to Courteney Cox-Arquette's long real-life battle with infertility.
- The Thanksgiving episode of season eight guest-starred Brad Pitt (then married to Jennifer Aniston) as a friend of Monica's from high school who fervently hated Rachel. Given the couple's highly publicized and very painful divorce, this episode is hard to watch without cringing.
- The storyline of everyone trying to get Chandler to quit smoking, given Matthew Perry's later substance-abuse problems.
- Joey's constant plights to find work as an actor. Matt le Blanc has not had a decent role since the show and his spin-off Joey got cancelled.
- Scrubs: Michael J. Fox playing a doctor with OCD is lent extra weight by his later commercials showing the effects Parkinson's has had on him. (The Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder was originally added to explain the already-apparent tics.)
- In one of John Ritter's appearances as JD's father, he utters the line "Heart murmurs? I love those things!" Ritter died of an aortic dissection, an undetectable heart condition. And the character died as well, of a massive heart attack.
- In the fourth season episode 'My First Kill', Dr. Cox tells J.D that every doctor eventually kills a patient. When asked if he's ever killed a patient, Cox replies "no, but I'm the exception that proves the rule". Next season, he ends up killing three patients and becomes almost catatonic with guilt.
- When Elliot falls into an open grave in the fourth season episode 'My Boss' Free Haircut,' Carla assures her that the groundskeeper will help her out after burying a man sharing a name with actor Paul Newman. As the humor here comes from Elliot's momentary shock when she thinks Carla meant the actor, the line comes off somehow different after Newman's 2008 death.
- The first person in the first skit on the first episode of the first season of the incredibly long-lived show Saturday Night Live was John Belushi. After the show had had a couple years of great success, a rather heartwarming short film called "Don't Look Back In Anger" was filmed in black and white, where Belushi played an elderly version of himself walking around a graveyard and making nostalgic comments on the rest of the first cast as he walked past their graves. In a sad twist of irony, Belushi was the first member of the originals to pass away.
- Not to mention an episode where Phil Hartman hosted and his opening monologue was about how he didn't know what to get his wife for Valentine's Day.
- The last two episodes of Phil Hartman's SNL career as a cast member had some creepy foreshadowing moments that were meant to be funny
- In the penultimate episode, there was a sketch with Hartman as Bill Clinton that had a COPS setting in Arkansas. It involved a domestic disturbance caused by Mrs. Clinton in the sketch. The part that drove it home was one of the cops, played by Kevin Nealon, saying to him "One of these days, she's gonna kill you"...This Troper saw this sketch a few weeks after Hartman died and it seriously creeped her out
- Then in the final episode and the final sketch, they had Chris Farley as Matt Foley singing at the end. Then Hartman comes out saying his goodbyes and singing the final lines of "So Long, Farewell" from The Sound of Music. The fact that it was the two cast members who would end up losing their lives so tragically only a few years later makes it very bittersweet.
- Seinfeld: The episode "The Blood" features Elaine's friend Vivian, who is having health problems and wants Elaine to look after her son if she dies. Vivian was played by actress Kellie Waymire, who later died at age 35 of a heart condition.
- Despite its status as THE classic Seinfeld episode, it's hard to watch "The Contest" and not wince a bit during the John F. Kennedy Jr-related parts following his fatal plane crash.
- There was an episode where Kramer had a black girlfriend, and at the end of the episode, he shows up at her apartment with a very thorough tan, prompting her father to say "I don't see no white boy, I see a damn fool!" The actor who played Kramer got in trouble later over his treatment of blacks during one of his stand-up gigs.
- The Price Is Right had episodes filmed immediately before Hurricane Katrina in which contestants were offered a package containing both a luxury boat and a trip to New Orleans. After the hurricane struck, CBS raced to pull these episodes before they were shown, but in some cases and some time zones they were unable to do so in time.
- The Cliff Hangers pricing game also had a Funny Aneurysm Moment: On the '70s nighttime version, Dennis James jokingly called the mountain climber caricature "Fritz" on the first playing of the game. The contestant lost the game, causing the caricature to topple over the cliff with a crashing sound, and James added "There goes Fritz!" Unfortunately, Janice Pennington, one of the show's models, lost her first husband Fritz, a famed mountain climber, in what was presumed at the time to be a mountain-climbing accident.
- Maybe this is why Drew Carey just calls him Yodely Guy.
- One episode of Bones features a murder on a college campus. This episode, set to be aired almost immediately after the Virgina Tech massacre, was pulled from the lineup and aired in a later season after being altered.
- In an early appearance of Dr. Sweets, Booth makes one of many digs on his apparent inexperience and youth, wondering if he ever had serious problems in his life. Later, we find out that Sweets was abused as a child, and his loving foster parents recently died.
- CSI In season 8, Warrick Brown, who was already deep in trouble with Grissom for his lack of responsibility, gets drunk while working on a case; on that same night, it is strongly implied that the exotic dancer he slept with slipped him a few drugs to knock him out. In early May, 2008, Gary Dourdan (who plays Brown) was arrested for possession of narcotics.
- And with the events of the most recent season of the show, some viewers will remember an earlier episode that ended with Gil Grissom telling Warrick something to the effect that when he (Gil) left, he'd be gone like a ghost, but Warrick would still be there to replace him. No such luck...
- Mystery Science Theater 3000 isn't immune. In the infamous Hobgoblins episode, Tom Servo makes a joke about a handgun saying "If found, please return to Hunter Thompson." Back then, it was just referring to the fella being a gun enthusiast, but Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide by shotgun in 2005. There's also the line when a job is described as easy and Tom says "So easy John F. Kennedy Jr. can do it".
- What, without killing himself? That IS easy!
- In the episode Werewolf, Crow makes fun of a gas station for its unusually high prices. The gas station sign said that regular unleaded gas was one dollar and thirty-four cents per gallon. This was in the year 1995. In 2008, people often pay three times that amount.
- In the episode Horror Of Party Beach, Mike, tormented by bad 50s beach music and white people dancing poorly, says that he agrees with the Taliban that dancing should be considered a crime. The episode was first aired in September of 1997, four years before 9/11.
- In the episode Riding With Death, a TV movie made in the late seventies, Crow jokes "I hope my swine flu test results came back!", referring to the 1970's outbreak, just proving that potentially deadly global pandemics can ruin any joke. The Legionnaires Disease crack is still hilarious though.
- Don't forget "Let's Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas"
 by Crow T Robot.
- While the internal Mood Whiplash of Supernatural's "Mystery Spot" made Dean's joke deaths slightly less funny, his being Killed Off For Real (at least until the 2008 fall season premiere) made them, and all of his other deaths and death wishes, unbelievably painful to watch during the summer of 2008.
- The Trickster's antics in Tall Tales (one of their breather episodes) become a hell of a lot less funny when you learn just how cruel the Trickster can be—specifically, that he could kill Dean over and over again to stop Sam from thinking that he could save him.
- Absolutely anything that Richard Hammond says in episodes of Top Gear relating to "flying through the Pearly Gates backwards in a fireball" (or similar) that was recorded before his miraculously non-fatal high-speed crash.
Richard: I love that vision of just blasting through the gates, backwards, in a flaming Swedish supercar! "Yes! I'm here! Where are the women?"
- Well, clearly doing it upside-down in a rocket car at 288 mph is the only way to top that.
- Similarly, there is a clip of Jeremy Clarkson saying that "no series would be complete without an earnest attempt to kill Richard Hammond"; the BBC had to remove that from its website some time after the crash.
- Reruns of the episode where Hammond managed to roll his van during the police chase challenge have omitted Clarkson's "Well, we've just killed Richard Hammond. If you'd like a job presenting Top Gear, please write to the BBC..." gag.
- In a particular irony, that van show (S08-E08) was the last aired episode of Top Gear before Hammond's accident, which (had it not gone wrong) was intended to have been a feature in series 9. The footage was still shown in S09-E01, but it wasn't the footage they expected to have.
- There was even a real time Funny Aneurysm Moment when the crash footage was aired: The entire studio audience, plus co-presenters Clarkson and May, winced when the videotaped Hammond (in what was meant to be the lead-up to an uneventful segment) described the 10,000hp afterburner on the Vampire as "possibly the biggest accident you've ever seen in your life." Clarkson unfailingly pointed out that the fateful line was meant to be funny.
- In the fifth season of Babylon 5, Richard Biggs, who played Dr. Stephen Franklin, complained about an episode where a character nearly died of a heart attack, since there had been no previous indications that the character had any kind of heart problems. Producer J. Michael Straczynski countered that many people live their whole lives with heart problems with no idea they're there until they suddenly strike. At the end of the series, Biggs came back asking why Franklin didn't get a big sendoff scene like G'Kar, played by Andreas Katsulas. Straczynski replied that he always saw Franklin as the type who would just leave with no warning, without saying goodbye, while G'Kar was more the type who would make a big production over his departure. A few years later, Biggs was killed instantly by a previously unknown congenital heart defect. A couple years after that, Katsulas died after a long battle with lung cancer, during which he got all his friends and family together for one last big party.
- The famous running gag of Fred Sanford faking a heart attack on Sanford And Son is painful to watch now since Redd Foxx died of a heart attack while relaxing between takes... which he might have survived had everyone around him not thought he was just doing his old schtick. (It's the source of the main page image.)
- During the 1993 Academy Awards broadcast, Billy Crystal joked that cult leader David Koresh, holed up with his followers at the Branch Davidian Compound in Texas at the time, would be performing "(You Ain't Never Had A) Friend Like Me" (from Aladdin) via satellite. Given the gruesome outcome of that standoff, the joke isn't as funny now.
- House did this subtly with Amber's death in season 4. In episode 12, Don't Ever Change, House confronts Wilson about why he is dating Amber (since he usually only dates extremely needy women and Amber is anything but) and asks, jokingly, if she's dying. This is only compounded by Wilson's response, a sigh and a "Yes".
- And Amber's very first words to Wilson were "I was never here." Cute at the time because she was acting like a sneaky little CTB but after she died? Not so much. (Events near the end of season 5 don't help either.)
- They got two Funny Aneurysms for the price of one in "Mirror, Mirror": Kutner and Amber are arguing over which one of them their patient will imitate when they notice that the patient's blood has gone solid. Kutner quips, "I'd say he's mimicking whichever one of us happens to be dying." That doesn't narrow it down.
- They did it again in season 5. The reason for Kutner
to get the cat to go peeing on House's chair? To quote the man himself: "Blood on my face." Technically it was cranberry juice, but he, uh, fixed that inconsistency two episodes later.
- In the episode "Painless", the patient of the week attempts suicide, and the fellows argue over his mental status. When Taub attributes Kutner's position on "right to die" to Kutner's tragic childhood, Kutner argues that his past makes him less likely to commit suicide. Figures don't lie - but liars figure.
- Unintended example: A case is caused by a father accidentally passing his supplemental testosterone on to his children (He made contact with them when it was dissipating from his body). The FDA has recently issued a warning about exactly this, with exactly the same effects.
- "The Itch," an episode that aired in the first half of season 5, had as one of its plots House trying to convince Wilson that he really is getting bitten by a mosquito and not imagining it. He is right in the end - he kills the mosquito. Then, in the season finale, it turns out that House hallucinated the sex with Cuddy he had in the previous episode - and was also hallucinating that he had the evidence of that encounter, a lipstick that was really a Vicodin bottle. This at best makes the resolution of that plot "The Itch" a Funny Aneurysm Moment, and at worst destabilizes it altogether.
- Some dialog from Season 3, episode 23, regarding treating the patient of the week with magic mushrooms:
Cuddy: I assume you've considered he could have a psychogenic experience. Possibly suffer a fit of severe paranoia.
House: Well, I have now. Yeah, it's definitely better that the Dean of Medicine prescribes it instead of an unhinged doctor with a history of drug use. Takes the stink off if the patient decides to put on a cape and fly off the roof.
- The above lines became quite the Funny Aneurysm Moment for this troper when she watched this episode after having seen the premiere of Season 6, in which one of House's fellow patients at Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital actually does jump off a parking structure, believing he is a superhero and can fly. Granted, that was for a completely different reason, but still.
- A second season episode of NCIS shows Tony and Kate having yet another sniping contest, this time about Tony appearing lazy. He says to her, "Work smarter not harder, Katie - you'll live longer." Six episodes later, Kate is killed on the job. By a sniper.
- In the second episode of Samantha Who, Samantha goes to a prescheduled doctor's appointment, assuming he's a neurologist, only to find out halfway through that he's actually a plastic surgeon that pre-amnesia Sam had planned to go to for breast implants. The year after this episode aired, Christina Applegate, who plays Samantha, was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a double mastectomy.
- In the 30 Rock episode "Jack Meets Dennis", Pete wonders if they'll be preempted by a national news event and says "how's Gerald Ford's health?" Gerald Ford died less than a month after the episode aired. The line was edited out of the DVD release.
- In the ''unaired'' pilot episode (NBC-only screener copy), Rachel Dratch plays the role of Jenna De Carlo (later renamed), who excitedly tells Liz, "I got that apartment! [...] I'm living in New York, I have my own TV show. I mean, dreams do come true, right?" When 30 Rock was picked up for a full season, Dratch was replaced by Jane Krakowski (among other casting alterations). While Dratch hasn't exactly been out of work (and even briefly reprised some of her SNL characters in the first season), the line already nodding to an impending retooling to her own show takes on an additional unfortunate meaning.
- The episode of The Muppet Show hosted by Zero Mostel contains a skit where he recites a poem about his fears, ending with his greatest fear: something for which he himself is only a fear that can be erased by that realization, upon which he vanishes into thin air. Mostel died suddenly before the episode aired, which must have made the scene pretty eerie.
- And then there's the scene in Peter Sellers' episode where Scooter finds him dressed in a bizzare mix of costume pieces in his dressing room. ("I was trying to do Queen Victoria, but I've forgotten what she looked like.") When Scooter responds that it's okay for him to be himself on the Muppet show Sellers replies "That would be impossible. There is no me. I do not exist. There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed." The scene has since been quoted many times as summing up Sellers' view of himself as doomed to be seen only as his various characters and not his true self. In fact, he contributed to the sketch in lieu of the show's usual scene of the guest star out of character backstage, due to his discomfort at being seen out of character.
- Bernie Mac's untimely death now makes the episode of his TV show about getting old horribly depressing.
- Back in season 3 of Stargate Atlantis, when Rodney was blasted by some weird Ancient technology and worrying about the effects it could have on him, Elizabeth jokingly asked Dr. Beckett "What are the chances it could make him more pleasant?" Then, in season 5, Rodney contracts a brain parasite whose effects are to take away his memory, drastically reduce his intelligence, and make him much friendlier.
- Firefly: The episode "The Message" has this exchange that isn't so amusing after The Movie:
Jayne: You'll read over me when its my time to shuffle off, won't you preacher?
Book: Oh, I'm sure you'll outlive us all.
- Another Firefly example - in the pilot, when the federal agent falls apart early on in Jayne's interrogation of him, Jayne laments "I was going to get me an ear, too," while playing with his knife. Later on in the series, Niska's interrogator cuts off Mal's ear with a knife as "compensation" for Zoe.
- The scene in Shindig where Wash jokes about reading a poem at Zoe's funeral; it's a genuinely sweet and funny scene, until Wash ends up dying in the Big Damn Movie.
- The part in "Heart of Gold" where Zoe and Wash are talking about having a child, and Zoe says, "I want to meet that child someday." Cue tears.
- Zoe is pregnant at the end of The Movie. She gorram must be. Nothing makes any sense otherwise.
- Seven Days, "Pinball Wizard": The story features a smart female gamer, recruited by the bad guy to play what she thinks is a game; it controls real weapons. We see someone piloting a companion ship/missile through a video-game city and then crashing into a five-sided structure to "win the game". Cut to news footage of the Pentagon with one side blown in, wreckage, and mass casualties. The episode was filmed in 1999. The real news footage would turn up in 2001...
- D'Argo jokes in Farscape that he hopes his half-Sebacean son has grown to have "his mother's nose." His son is later revealed to have mutilated his own nose to look less like his father's out of shame at being a hybrid.
- The West Wing, "The Birnam Wood": After President Bartlet fires Leo McGarry, Leo wanders off into the woods around Camp David and has a massive heart attack. Though he survives, it takes until the morning for security to find him. During the filming of the seventh season, John Spencer, Leo's actor, died quite suddenly of a heart attack, necessitating the killing off of his character (by the same method).
- In addition to that, when Leo returns to work after his heart attack, the rest of the senior staff pitches in to buy him a present: A defibrillator. Not quite so funny now...
- The clearest example, though, is in the first episode of season 7. Leo suggests that maybe he shouldn't be Santos's running mate, to which Santos replies, "I'm not gonna fire you. You wanna get out of this, you're gonna have to drum up another heart attack or something." Of course, Leo dies of another heart attack and does "get out of" being VP.
- Also in the episode that aired directly after John Spencer's death, which had been preceded by a message from Martin Sheen relaying the news, Toby Zeigler has the line "Disappointed to reach me? Somebody dead?" when Josh complains about how hard it was to reach him by phone.
- This was a case of Real Life Writes The Plot, as John Spencer was having heart problems before he died; they wrote all those in as a way to reduce his screen time.
- The first season finale is a twofer— the plot both concerns reentry problems with the Space Shuttle Columbia and has the President half-seriously threaten to invade Baghdad.
- The Grey's Anatomy episode where Meredith describes the attempted suicide of her mother to her shocked therapist is no doubt dramatic, but also slightly cringey considering the fact that the actress playing Meredith, Ellen Pompeo, states her earliest memory to be when she was 4 and her elder siblings were trying to wake her mother, who had accidentally overdosed on pain meds, and killed herself. Wonder if the writers knew that when they wrote it.
- Also, when Izzy was convincing Alex to take a chance on her after his traumatizing experience with Ava, she promised him passionately that she "wasn't going to go crazy." Later that same season, she began hallucinating her dead fiance due to a brain tumor. So much for that promise...
- Pretty much the entire final two episodes of Season 5; when the gang finds out George enrolled in the army, they start joking about how he'd die. They talk about him over a John Doe that got hit by a bus...and then the bombshell that John Doe is George, who'd left early to start his basic and saved a girl from being hit by that bus, taking the blow himself.
- The episode of Chuck where the Buy More employees were being prepared for the chaotic stampede that would ensue on Black Friday, complete with plans for an emergency evacuation if necessary, was a lot funnier before a Wal-Mart store employee was trampled to death in just such a situation on Black Friday.
- On an episode of Family Feud, the question was something along the lines of "Name something people think of when they're depressed/have a problem." One of the unrevealed answers wound up being "suicide", which is disturbing in and of itself (though logical); but the real shock comes because the episode was hosted by Ray Combs... who later committed suicide after a string of show-business failures. During the show, he even remarked, "No one should think of suicide." Bad survey group! Bad!
- This sketch from the original 1971 Electric Company where Morgan Freeman plays a vampire who sings about bathing in a casket almost became a Funny Aneurysm Moment when Freeman almost died in a car accident in 2008. And the less said about his narrating a VISA commercial about taking your granddaughter to the aquarium on a Tuesday (given the allegations that he had an affair with his step-granddaughter), the better.
- There's a scene in the Torchwood miniseries "Children of Earth" where Jack and Ianto attempt to get some alone time and try to make the most of the time they have together, but it's prevented because Rhys is making beans. The scene goes from funny to sad when Ianto dies in the next episode.
- Gwen in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang": "Maybe you didn't realise: you can beat, shoot, threaten and even poison us and we'll keep coming back, stronger every time." Yeah...
- In a way, the show's opening monologue makes the grade: for the first two seasons, viewers were told at the start of each episode that Torchwood would "be ready" for the challenges of the 21st. century; season three's miniseries "Children of Earth" effectively proved that the team was anything but ready.
- Although it's actually an aversion too. The almost-arc phrase, "The 21st century is when everything changes", comes true. The 21st century IS when everything changed for the team. It just took a couple of series for it to happen.
- In a recent episode of Desperate Housewives, a flashback reveals Gabriel making a joke referring to shooting herself in the head and the person who would later commit suicide doing just that, sitting next to her right in the middle of the scene. They're beating a dead horse, but within the show's continuity, it still counts.
- In the episode where Carlos's mother awakes from a coma but dies anyway, Bree remarks upon seeing the ensuing ostentation, "You have to hand it to the Catholics, they do grief better than anyone". Pope John Paul II died a day before the US airing, so the line was changed to "Gabby and Carlos" in place of "Catholics" (there was not enough time to bring Marcia Cross back into the studio to overdub the line, so the audio was pasted from another instance where she had used the phrase). The original line is used in syndication - this wasn't a Funny Aneurysm Moment for long.
- In the last series of Coupling, Susan is pregnant, and the dialogue sometimes dwells with relish on the potential gruesomeness of the process. Kate Isitt (Sally) was pregnant for real at the time.
- An even "better" example is the episode in which Jeff, for reasons of typical Jeff-ness, has ended up pretending that his girlfriend is dead. A great episode is horribly dampened when you realise that Lou Gish, the actress playing said girlfriend, died prematurely from terminal cancer a few years ago. Especially when, all flu-ed up, she says to Jeff "don't mind me ... I'm dead."
- A while ago, there was a reality show called Murder in Small Town X. The game was ultimately won by Angel Juarbe, a New York firefighter. The MiSTX finale airdate? September 4, 2001. Angel died in the attacks one week later.
- Lots of the early M*A*S*H episodes have scenes or bits with Henry Blake that have a new meaning now that we know the character's ultimate fate. In "Cowboy," Henry survives repeated attempts on his life by a disgruntled chopper pilot; in "Showtime," his wife back home gives birth to a son whom Henry will never see in person; in "O.R." he mentions his reluctance to go home, as he's done the best work of his career in Korea; and so forth.
- Though it was only ever very darkly funny in the first place, the scene in early season 3 of the new Battlestar Galactica where Ellen sleeps with Cavil to get Tigh out of prison becomes a lot more disturbing after it's revealed in season four that Ellen was the head of the team that built Cavil, thus making the scene toaster-incest. And the toaster's design was based on her father.
- Made even more disturbing when you realize that, while Ellen was unaware of the connection (and that she was a Cylon), Cavil was fully aware of it and definitely thought of Ellen as his mother figure. That scene gets even worse because Tigh later kills Ellen for "collaborating" with the Cylons, only to discover still later that HE'S a Cylon.
- Another in-canon example — in the very first episode of the series, Baltar quips to Six, "Well I'm sure someday, if you're a good Cylon, [God] will reward you with a lovely little walking toaster of your very own." Caprica Six had a devastating miscarriage of her full-Cylon baby in season four.
- Dee and Billy are the subjects of Adama's line "They better start having babies" in the Miniseries. Both die childless, and not together.
- The entirety of Flipper can become one of these once you learn that the dolphin who usually played Flipper died - possibly even committed suicide - in the arms of her trainer, Ric O'Berry, and that O'Berry now campaigns heavily against dolphin captivity.
- Kids Incorporated - "Space Case". During "Space Week" at the P*lace, the kids are all writing to NASA, petitioning them to put a kid into space. Mickey mentions that NASA is "going to start taking regular people into space." This episode was filmed in 1984, and what Mickey's referring to is the then-recent announcement of the Teacher In Space project. The fruition of that project was the 1986 shuttle mission STS-51-L, which ended 73 seconds ater launch with the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. So Yeah...
- Also, the number of times over the years these prepubescent kids mention how much they want to be like Michael Jackson.
- The Nickelodeon game show Double Dare was centered around making huge messes, with tons of wet, gooey multicolored slime getting everywhere. So it's a bit unsettling to watch after the show's host Mark Summers revealed he had pretty severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, especially considering how often he got covered in muck during the show's run. Seriously; go back and watch an episode where the team completes the obstacle course and embrace him, while covered in muck, then go watch him line up the fringe on a throw rug. Very unnerving.
- Also, a Fed Ex commercial featuring Steve Irwin in which he "dies" from a snakebite because the antidote was being delivered by another company.
- In a confessional, Rachel from Season 2 of Hell's Kitchen jokingly pantomimed shooting herself in the head. She died of a gunshot to the head about a year later.
- A syndicated episode of That70s Show parodying Charlie's Angels, including the boys' giving their reason for watching- "the hot blonde with the big rack" happened to air the day Farrah Fawcett died.
- A good in-universe example of an almost immediate funny aneurysm moment:
Eric: You know, it wouldn't kill you to be nice once in a while.
- Battlebots example: During on of Surgeon General's fights, the announcer opened with "Do you believe in life after death?". Julio Roqueta, Surgeon General's driver, died a couple years later
- On Lost:
- Pilot Frank Lapidus successfully lands a commercial plane on a small runway on the island when the plane undergoes instrument failure as a result of jumping through time. This episode aired a few weeks after (but was clearly written and filmed many months before) Sully Sullenberger became a national hero for successfully landing a commercial jet on the Hudson River with no loss of life. Since no one died, this is thankfully a less disturbing version of a Funny Aneurysm Moment.
- Unfortunately, the same can not be said for Air France flight 447. When this passenger jet disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean in June 2009, some pointed out the loose similarity with Lost. However, as the days passed, more and more eerily Lost-related coincidences began to appear, including the discovery of the plane's tail section (Losts flight 815 lost its tail section during the crash), the statement that the plane was found on the bottom of the ocean with bodies (Charles Widmore hides a fake flight 815 and bodies on the bottom of the ocean to throw off investigators), and, most disturbingly, a Spanish pilot's claim that he saw a "flash of bright light" where flight 447 disappeared (Losts flight 316 disappeared in a flash of time travel-related light). Finally, conspiracy theorists began pointing out that the area where flight 447 vanished is known for heightened electromagnetism as one of the infamous "vile vortices;" flight 815 on Lost was brought down in an electromagnetic incident. Sure enough, the claim that unusual levels of electromagnetism were in the area on the day of the disappearance was backed up by imaging reports from independent researchers.
- The last sentence could be rephrased to say, "The crash took place in the vicinity of thunderstorms which were picked up by American and Canadian weather satellites".
- This appearance by Robert Blake on The Tonight Show, on New Year's Eve 1976, includes a discussion about what happens when Blake fights with his (then) wife, Sondra Kerr: "The blood flows," he says. In 2002, Blake would be arrested and tried (though ultimately acquitted) for the murder of his second wife, Bonnie Lee Blakely.
- Don't forget Blake's appearance as a satanic figure (or embodiment of wrath and violence...or whatever...freakin' David Lynch...) in the film Lost Highway, which is primarily concerned with a man who is arrested for murdering his wife.
- An episode of Star Trek The Next Generation featured David Ogden Stiers as a scientist who starts a relationship with Lwaxana Troi, but despairs that it's too late for them to truly be together as he turns sixty in a few days, which is when his species undergoes compulsory euthanasia. Stiers came out of the closet at age 66, expressing his regrets that keeping his homosexuality secret for so long had prevented him from having any kind of stable relationship, and that he hoped to finally have one in his remaining years.
- Thought not as conspicuous an example, the Mystery Science Theater 3000 short "Design For Dreaming" features a woman singing about how much she loves GM cars and how they're the cars of tomorrow. It's very surreal to watch the short now considering GM's looming bankruptcy.
- The Rat Stew scene in one episode of Merlin isn't quite as funny when you realise that Colin Morgan is a vegetarian... who is being force-fed meat.
- Actually, it was later revealed in a Q&A that the stew was made of mushrooms and quorn.
- On I Love the New Millenium, while discussing Rihanna's "Umbrella," the commentators note how she was discovered by Jay-z. Cue the joke about how Beyonce will probably want to beat Rihanna with an umbrella.
- The final scene of the last episode of Father Ted was initially going to show the titular character, driven to despair with his life, climb out on a ledge with the implication that he was going to commit suicide. The scene was played for laughs. Not long before the final series aired Dermot Morgan, the actor who played Ted, died from a heart attack.
- The scene was changed post-production to a montage celebrating the series in tribute.
- One of the final episodes of I Dream of Jeannie was "Mrs. Djinn Djinn", an episode where the other characters mistakenly believe that Jeannie is pregnant and shower her with baffling gifts and praise, all while trying to coax out her (non existent) secret. In real life, Barbara Eden was struggling with infertility. Her second child (conceived shortly after the cancellation of I Dream Of Jeannie) died in utero and she was forced to carry it to term despite knowing the child was already gone. She kept the tragedy a secret, and endured two months of strangers congratulating her and asking when "the little genie" would be born without saying a word...the trauma eventually broke up her marriage.
- In a similar vein, the episodes of Married with Children where Peggy is pregnant are a little uncomfortable to watch, knowing that Katey Segal's pregnancy ended in a stillbirth.
- The Soup, for a while, was making hay with an Alternative Character Interpretation of reality show Jon and Kate Plus 8 with Jon as a henpecked husband to needlessly bossy Kate — one skit took an argument over coupons and ended it with him commiting suicide. As it turns out, the marriage may indeed be a miserable one, and while The Soup is irreverent by nature and is still keeping up with the show, they joked in one episode that it's "just kind of sad now".
- The two of them officially filed for divorce in June 2009. "Jon Minus 9" indeed...
- A mid-May 2009web-exclusive segment of Australian advertising program The Gruen Transfer featured ad-man Todd Sampson quipping that in the future, Michael Jackson could be the new face of Touched By An Angel. While at the time, it was a crude joke about his history and his inevitable death, it takes on new elements of Dude Not Funny after his unexpected June 2009 death.
- Why? He didn't become an angel.
- The Colbert Report had a segment on Obama's health care plans done in the style of a infomercial. At one point, Stephen mentions faking a cardiac arrest. The episode aired the same day that Michael Jackson died. Worse, it was originally reported that Jackson died of a cardiac arrest. (In reality, nobody actually dies of a cardiac arrest: the heart stopping is a result of whatever causes the death, not the actual cause.)
- Since it was done infomercial style, it hit again as it was aired a day before Billy Mays' death.
- On an early episode of "Pitchmen", Anthony Sullivan is looking over recorded footage of Billy Mays driving for a commercial spot. When remarking on Billy's acting (as it's obvious he's not really driving), Anthony exclaims "It looks like he's about to have a heart attack!" Two months after airing, Billy Mays died of a previously unknown heart condition.
- In a later episode, when Billy Mays was pitching for a life insurance commercial, fellow pitchman Anthony Sullivan quips before filming, "Ok, Billy. Proud father, and loving husband.... I'm reading your obituary."
- The Very Special Episode of Diffrent Strokes dealing with child molestation featured a line where Mr. Drummond says that he's going to have a "hand to butt talk" with Arnold after learning that the boy has been drinking wine. Normally, the line would be a funny allusion to spanking, but considering the subject matter of the episode...
- The Thick Of It: Chris Langham oozes sarcasm as Hugh Abbot. "What, Hugh Abbot as Home Secretary? But the man's a social spastic and probably a registered nonce." Not such a funny line in light of later events.
- In Whose Line Is It Anyway, one episode featured Weird Newscasters. Wayne Brady, who is doing the sports, becomes Michael Jackson who is trying to show that he can still perform even if he is 100 years old. On June 25 2009, he only lived half this age.
- The episode of M*A*S*H with Patrick Swayze. In it he plays a soldier who ends up finding out he has leukemia, a form of cancer. Cancer eventually killed Patrick Swayze.
- Mork And Mindy and Taxi both feature scenes where characters extol the virtues of O. J. Simpson.
- In the first episode of Dad's Army, during his introduction, Private Joe Walker says something along the lines of "I won't be around for long.". Then at the end of season six, he disappeared, due to the sudden death of James Beck, his actor. He wasn't around for long.
- Beloved BBC Radio DJ John Peel's 2002 appearance on Room 101 made for a very sweet and funny episode... which is also very sad to watch now, since one of his nominated items was death, and he spends a lot of the time talking about his eventual death and how he would or wouldn't like to go. He died suddenly in 2004.
- A season 1 episode of Extras has Kate Winslet, playing a very conceited version of herself, offhandedly tell Ricky Gervais that the key to winning an Oscar is to be in a Holocaust movie. Cut to a few years later when Winslet wins an Oscar for her performance in The Reader, where she plays a Third Reich prison guard who committed war crimes during the Holocaust.
- Any episode of I Love Lucy that involves a joke about philandering, or Lucy and Ricky's marriage being in trouble, or both.
- The Kids In The Hall have a sketch that Hangs A Lampshade on this (with a healthy bit of Gallows Humor thrown in): Dave Foley (still living as of this edit) is the guy in charge of a PBS-style fundraiser and he talks about how everyone should call in and send money...
"Unless this is a rerun. In which case I wonder if I'm dead?"
- There was a segment done about the Challenger space shuttle, that was written and filmed before it exploded, but because of the incident, the segment aired after the disaster. Eerily prescient was a line by the reporter about the fame given to Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who went into space, in which he said something like, "She was just another teacher, who became famous for being selected, but soon, it will all be over."
- In an pre-flight interview, the Commander of the Challenger on that flight, Dick Scobee, said "By the time the next mission takes off, everything that happened on this flight will have been forgotten."
- The original airing of the launch of the Challenger shuttle ended in one of these. Many, many students gathered to watch what they thought would be a routine shuttle launch, special only because of who was on there. It went up, and up... and then it went up in flames...
- Many "TV Blunders" shows have featured a clip from The Late Late Show of Boyzone when they first started out, performing an unrehearsed and embarrassing dance routine. With Boyzone member Stephen Gately's death in October 2009, it's no longer funny.
- That's not quite a Funny Aneurysm Moment, more that it's sad/poignant to watch someone being young and energetic when they've recently died. If he'd made some quip about 'having a heart attack' or 'not being around for long', etc, that would've qualified.
- In the penultimate episode of season 2 of Veronica Mars episode, Weevil tells Cassidy (who is helping him with algebra, long story): "If this is your idea of terms I'll understand? I'm going to kill you. Or myself. It's a toss up." One episode later, Cassidy commits suicide.
- "Ain't No Magic Mountain High Enough" contains two painful FAMs, given the solution to the season's mystery: Dick, relative of the perpetrator mocking Jackie, daughter of who he thinks is the perpetrator, and Dick's "You gonna pop his cherry?" speech, given the truth of Cassidy's backstory.
- Season 1's "Like A Virgin" features someone pretending to be Veronica sending an email to Duncan, saying she had VD when they were dating. Late in season 2 it is revealed Veronica has chlymadia... which she contracted being raped by Beaver, on the same night she slept with Duncan. It sucks to be Veronica.
- Also in Like A Virgin, the plot becomes darker when you realise just how bad Meg's parents really would have taken it.
- Again, there's the rather odd discussion of Chlamydia/Crazy Bitchy Teacher between Veronica, Gia and Dick, which is a bit uncomfortable to watch given Veronica got chlamydia being raped by Dick's brother, who got it being molested by Gia's father.
- An episode of Big Wolf On Campus featured a parody of the film Ghost in which a ghost Merton spoofs the famous "Vase Scene" and tells Lori to "Feel the Swayze". Since Mr. Swayze passed away, the joke isn't as funny.
- The first episode of the short-lived X Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen involved a government plot to crash an airliner into the Twin Towers. This was early 2001.
- Six Feet Under : Brenda at one point makes fun of what was likely an embolism that Nate had during his sleep. Nate responds by jokingly suggesting that he got a brain tumor from formaldehyde exposure. Oh dear.
- Watching The District in reruns, this troper wondered whatever happened to Ella Mae (Lynne Thigpen, also know as "The Chief" on Whereinthe Worldis Carmen Sandiego?). The character was dying of (I think) brain cancer on the show. Apparently, the actress died of a cerebral hemorrhage a year before the show's cancellation.
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