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• The commercials for the Ayds appetite-suppressant candy (which, yes, died slowly during the '80s because of the rise of AIDS combined with its unfortunately similiar name) are either this or the opposite.
  • "Thank goodness for Ayds!" Um....
    "Why take diet pills when you can enjoy Ayds?"
• Commercials for health insurance, of all things, hosted by the recently-late Billy Mays.
• A Federal Express ad with Steve Irwin dying of a snake bite because they used the wrong service.
• In 1955, a public service announcement about car safety was filmed in which a famous movie actor, when prompted by an interviewer (who happened to be troubled actor Gig Young) to say a word of advice to the young people viewing the ad, quipped, "Take it easy driving, the life you save might be mine." That famous movie actor was James Dean. Even worse: he went straight from filming the announcement to his fatal car accident... where he was going over ninety miles an hour killed when an inattentive driver rammed his car. According to his passenger his last words were: "He's got to see us."
  • No, he wasn't. He was going 55 miles an hour. Still too fast for Dead Man's Curve, though...

• For a public political figure, having a publicity photograph taken with someone admired in a local scale is a great way to gain respect amongst people. However, it can become a complete nightmare◊ if you are the First Lady of the United States and you are photographed shaking hands with John Wayne Gacy, whom, at the time of the photograph, was admired as a local volunteer.
  • Similarly, new spin on old pictures made a certain '80s photograph with one of the President's Middle East envoys shaking hands with a trusted ally◊ much, much colder...
• "If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president's." The person who said this was President John F. Kennedy. Two days later, his assassin was shot and killed on live TV.
  • This is a common observation among security professionals - "The hardest thing to protect against is a lone assassin who is willing to give up his life to kill the target." It's just that the timing is unusually bad...
    • Lee Harvey Oswald (JFK's assassin) is less of an example of the statement because he didn't expect to be assassinated himself. Jack Ruby (Oswald's assassin), however...
  • Another notable example from JFK: when discussing pros and cons of picking Johnson for his vice-president, he apparently said, "It really does not matter that much; I am 42, I am not going to die in the office".
• This postcard from 1910◊ features an ancient Hindu good luck symbol and an associated verse explaining its significance and wishing the recipient well. A few decades later, the symbol in question would take on a much darker meaning.
  • Defied Trope. Swastikas are still everywhere in India. It's at first tremendously disconcerting to be surrounded by them on saris, market stalls, door-posts, carvings, etc. Then, when you get used to it, it becomes sort of poignant and touching that it can still be used innocently by millions of people and Nazism's perversion of the symbol never reached its native land. It's like a testament to Hitler's failure.
    • Or perhaps a dadaist testament to his prior roaring successes.
  • Swastikas like those on the postcard are common in Buddhist temples.
    • You mean Buddhist manji? They have been around a lot longer than the swastika, and they have different meanings depending on which way they face.
    • If any of them look like swastikas, then they count.
• In a political cartoon from 1918, two dejected German soldiers ride home after the war. One says "Vell, it didn't pay," referring, of course, to the war. The other soldier says "Not this time."
• Related: This statue◊ may have been fine and friendly during the 1928 Olympics, but looks a touch suspicious now.
• This◊ famous political cartoon depicts how the leaders of the victorious forces from WWI leave the Versailles peace conference which preceded the outbreak of World War Two by twenty years. The weeping child in the background has "1940 class" (that is, the child will be old enough to be conscripted in 1940) written over its head.
  • It must be noted that a number of people predicted another war in twenty years' time at the end of the First World War, among them General Pershing and Marshal Foch.
• Unusual one from the US election of 1872: On October 23rd, the legendary cartoonist Thomas Nast published in Harper's Weekly, the Time Magazine of its era, a cartoon featuring newspaper publisher Horace Greeley, then running for president, being carried back into his home like a corpse. One week after the cartoon was published, Greeley's wife died. On November 29th, a little more than a month later, Greeley would die. You can see the cartoon and read more about it here.
• Although obviously written before, Parade Magazine ran a cover story about Benazir Bhutto running for Prime Minister of Pakistan, calling her something like "a shining beacon of hope for the Middle East"...a couple of weeks after she was assassinated. Yikes.
• Several days before his 1861 inauguration, Abraham Lincoln stated in a speech at Philadelphia's Independence Hall that he "would rather be assassinated on the spot" than to surrender the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
• This article appeared in The Onion on January 17, 2001. It's a bit scary when you stop to think about just how many of the things described happened during the George W. Bush presidency.
• Before Trotsky was even a Bolshevik, he claimed that if Lenin was to rule Russia, then he would be a tyrant and a veritable Spiritual Successor to Robespierre. Fast-foward to 1917 and beyond, and look at what Lenin's doing... and who's standing next to him...

• An episode of Im Sorry I Havent A Clue from 1995 where, after they both try to speak at once, Willie Rushton says to Barry Cryer, "No, you go first, you're likely to die sooner than me". Willie Rushton died the next year.
  • During a game of predictions in 1986, Willie predicted — to much laughter — that one of the sad events he foresaw for 1996 was his own death that January; he actually died in December.
  • In 1995, Tim Brooke-Taylor predicted that a 2010 Radio Times would include a listing for "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue with Humphery Lyttelton, Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden, and Tim and Samantha Brooke-Taylor." Willie, the only one of the regulars left out, died the next year, while the others were all alive up to Humph's death in 2008.
  • Willie often complained about the "___'s Ball" games full of punning names about various subjects. At his last ISIHAC recording, the chosen subject was "Undertaker's Ball," full of puns about death and burial.

• Many Americans are familiar with Rollen Stewart, more commonly known as the "Rainbow Man" who attended many sports games from the 1970s and 1980s wearing a cute rainbow wig and carrying a sign that simply said "John 3:16." Sports fans from that time period watching games on television would always see the cameras occasionally focusing on Rainbow Man, guaranteeing him a positive place in American pop culture. That was, until he was sentenced to life in prison in 1992 for kidnapping and terrorist threats.
• All those highlight-reel moments of Dale Earnhardt's failures in the Daytona 500. Especially the last lap blow-out in 1990 that happened yards from where he crashed and died on the last lap eleven years later.
• This Subway commercial features an American football referee with a number 85 shirt admitting to missing a call. In 2008, referee Ed Hochuli admitted to missing a call to the San Diego Chargers coach, which ended up costing the Chargers the game. Hochuli's shirt number? 85.
• At the age of 25, college basketball legend "Pistol" Pete Maravich stated in an interview, "I don't want to play 10 years in the NBA and then die of a heart attack at 40." A leg injury necessitated his retiring from basketball after 10 seasons. And he died of a heart attack, at 40.
• In a Take That to the accusations of rules violations regarding overseeing his players' academic progress that led North Carolina State basketball coach Jim Valvano to resign in 1990, he titled his autobiography Valvano: They Gave Me a Lifetime Contract, and Then They Declared Me Dead. The book came out in February of 1991. Valvano was diagnosed with cancer in June of 1992 and died less than a year later.
• Eugene Robinson was a longtime free safety who joined the Atlanta Falcons in 1998 after having appeared in the previous two Super Bowls with Green Bay. The morning before the 1999 Super Bowl (the third consecutive he appeared in), Robinson, who had been outspoken about his Christian faith, received the Athletes in Action Bart Starr Award for outstanding Christian character. That night, Robinson got arrested for soliciting a prostitute who turned out to be an undercover cop. Robinson returned the award, but his distraction was made obvious when Bronco wide receiver Rod Smith burned him for an 80-yard touchdown pass near the end of the first half.
• In September 2009, troubled former NHL player Theoren Fleury began a much-publicized attempt at a comeback by signing a tryout contract with the Calgary Flames. On September 25, though making an admirable effort to return to the game after recovering from alcohol and drug addictions, he was released from his contract. Even worse for Fleury? An article about his comeback published by Canada's largest sports network TSN was titled "Snuffed Out." Given Canada's obessesion with the game of hockey, this being just an oversight is... well, unlikely.

• The core rulebook for White Wolf's Vampire The Requiem includes, in a passage about storytellers embellishing the "dark and gritty" elements of the World Of Darkness, a description of the differences between the real world version of New Orleans and the World Of Darkness version; this was an example for the book. The last paragraph detailed how the street level was just below the water level of the Mississippi River and that the water was held back by levies that were ill-kept. Vampire: The Requiem was first published in 2004, one year before Hurricane Katrina caused the levies in New Orleans to break and flood the entire city. That has been described as the worst natural disaster in American history... The street level of New Orleans was, and still is, several feet below the water level of the Mississippi. And the levees were not especially well kept at the time of Katrina; they were supposed to withstand a level 3 hurricane's flood, but clearly didn't.

• In light of recent events involving the murder of his wife and son, professional wrestler Chris Benoit's entrance music takes on a disturbing new meaning:
  There's no holding me back
  I'm not driven by fear, I'm just driven by anger
  And you're under attack...
  • In addition, pretty much everyone stopped laughing at Kevin Sullivan, who in 1996 wrote TV depicting Benoit as trying to break up the Sullivan marriage - which is what happened in real life and what led to Benoit meeting the wife he would murder.
• At One Night Stand 2005 during the Mike Awesome vs Masato Tanaka match, Joey Styles commented, "Suicide dive by Mike Awesome, and it's a damn shame he didn't succeed in taking his own life!" In February 2007, Mike Awesome committed suicide.
• In 1995 or so, the WWF featured a character named Rad Radford, an attempt to cash in on the then-hot (well, more like then on the way out, but never mind) Grunge Music fad. He was booked as the ultimate Grunge musician and was hinted to be romantically involved with Courtney Love. All goofy fun from wrestling's Dork Age, until you realize that Louie Spicolli, the young, up-and-coming wrestler who played Radford, later died of a drug overdose, much as many prominent Grunge musicians did, at the age of 27, the same age Kurt Cobain was when he committed suicide.
• And don't forget the "plotline" where Vince McMahon himself was supposedly blown up in his limo, which became an example of this trope mid-plotline and was called off after the Benoit family murder/suicide. Then the WWE had to take it further and intentionally invoked a Reverse Funny Aneurysm Moment in order to set up McMahon's "illegitimate child" arc.
• Eddie Guerrero's title match vs Brock Lesnar. Throughout the match Lesnar is heard to clearly yell, "Just die Eddie". Eddie would be found dead just over a year later in his hotel room.
  • An equally chilling moment is found on the 'Cheating Death, Stealing Life' DVD, where Dean Malenko says (having told management of Eddie's substance abuse problems) that he didn't want to "be told my friend is dead in hotel room somewhere'.
  • The Wrestling Fan's Great American Bash 2005 recap included mention of Vickie Guerrero's backstage promo with Eddie in which she claims that he "has a big heart". The recapper then mentions that maybe he should get that looked at by a doctor, as it could be dangerous.
  • This ad for Wrestlemania XIX features the announcer mentioning that all people will eventually die... over a shot of Eddie in the locker room. As well as 'We are all mortals' over Chris Benoit.
• Owen Hart, as the Blue Blazer, cut a promo on a 1989 Saturday Night's Main Event where he said he'd fly from the rafters if necessary.
  • About a year and a half before Owen's death, WCW had "Sting" crash down from the rafters in the middle of the ring during an nWo promo on their Monday Nitro program. This was just a dummy; it was a set-up by the nWo to mock Sting's usual rappelling entrance. But after Owen's death, it came off far worse. In Scott Keith's Retro Rant on the episode (written a couple of months after Owen's accident), he asked, "Is it possible for something to be retroactively tasteless?"
• At the 2001 Royal Rumble, Jim Ross made a comment about the ring looking like a hurricane had hit it. The event was held in the New Orleans Arena. We all know what happened next.
• As part of his faceheelturn, CM Punk claimed his straight edge lifestyle made him better than a drug addict hippie. Then Jeff Hardy, whom Punk had just finished feuding with, was convicted of drug dealing and rightfully crucified. Guess the Pepsi swilling smart mark favourite had a point.

• An early Monty Python sketch was a mock current affairs article about young men who fall into a culture of "mice" - people who dress up in mouse costumes and hang out acting like mice. At the time it may have been absurd and funny; nowadays, with furry culture (and, with it, the cosplay/"fursuit" subgroup) being common knowledge, the sketch feels oddly close to reality, and therefore there isn't really a joke anymore.
  • However, it was probably meant to be parodic of the backlash against homosexuals and other "deviant" cultures, but played in a ridiculously odd and unrecognizable manner. The fact that it now resembles a current source of moral panic debatably makes it funnier.
• A 2000 sketch in Saturday Night Live had George W. Bush say, "I hope I get a war. Wars are like executions supersized."
  • And how uncomfortable does watching Chris Farley faking a "funny heart attack" during the skits with the Chicago sports fans make you feel? It happened in all of those skits...
  • Another Saturday Night Live example: Phil Hartman singing a lullaby-ish Farewell song alone with Chris Farley at the end of Phil's last episode. Both actors suffered tragic deaths within several years of the scene's airing.
  • "Yeah.. they all thought I'd be the first one to go. I was one of those 'Live Fast, Die Young, Leave A Good-Looking Corpse' types, you know... ...I guess they were wrong"
    • Don't forget the fact that one of the deaths in the skit was from a heroin overdose. Remember, this is John Belushi saying this.
    • And wasn't Gilda Radner the first grave he stopped by?
  • A lesser known example from the "Not Ready for Prime Time" era is in a sketch known as "Least-Loved Bedtime Stories." Michael O'Donoghue narrates a story called "The Little Engine that Died," where he says "I think I can...I Think I Can...HEARTATTACK...OHMYGODTHEPAIN!" In 1994, "Mr. Mike" woke up, felt what was thought to be a severe migraine headache, and screamed "OH MY GOD" in pain and later died from cerebral hemorrhage.
    • To clarify, O'Donoghue had severe migraines for many years; his performance in the sketch above was based on his experiences with them.
  • There was a sketch where Phil Hartman was displaying all the wigs he had worn on the show. After showing off a "Latin Lover" wig, Phil comments, "My wife and I first met while I was wearing that wig. It wasn't till our fourth date that I revealed the truth. Sure, she felt angry and betrayed, but, hey! By that time she was pregnant. So what choice did she have?" At the time of Hartman's death, one couldn't help but wonder if this was the same wife who murdered him.
    • It probably was. Hartman married his third wife one year after joining the cast.
  • A less extreme one: In 1975 the show did a parody commercial for a razor that had three blades. The fact that it had three blades was the entire joke, with the tagline "Because you'll buy pretty much anything." These days someone could be forgiven for thinking it was a real commerical.
  • The SNL skit on election night 2000 in which George W Bush "killed [Dick Cheney] in a hunting accident".
  • Saturday Night Live has a lot of Funny Aneurysm Moments:
    • On the Seth Rogen/Phoenix episode from season 34, Seth Meyers (the Weekend Update anchor) did a report on how during Michael Jackson's summer world tour, he would bring his son onstage, who would be accompanied by a police officer who would have Michael Jackson arrested. Unfortunately, the concert (and the punchline to the joke) would never come to pass due to Jackson's death two months after the episode originally aired.
    • Or how about the last sketch of the Michael Phelps/L'il Wayne episode where Michael Phelps plugs his 12,000-calorie diet that only works for him, and how Jared Fogle from the Subway commercials claimed that the diet "sucked a foot long"? Fast forward to the Bradley Cooper/TV on the Radio episode on February 7, 2009, where Seth Meyers does a Weekend Update joke about Michael Phelps getting busted for smoking marijuana from a bong, with the punchline, "Though, suddenly, the Michael Phelps Diet makes a lot more sense," with a photo of Michael Phelps surrounded by two stacks of pancakes (which were featured in the "Michael Phelps Diet" commercial). Fast forward further to June/July, where Subway actually had a commercial with Jared Fogle and Michael Phelps, together again.
    • And how 'bout this one: An SNL Digital Short where Bill Hader plays a man who writes a letter to his sister and his friend (played by Andy Samberg) shoots him, leading to the shooting deaths of another man (played by episode host Shia La Beouf), the sister (played by Kristen Wiig), and two police officers (played by Fred Armisen and Jason Sudeikis). Two days after the sketch aired, the shooting at Virginia Tech happened, which was one of two reasons why the sketch never appeared on NBC's Saturday Night Live web page, which has video highlights of past and present sketches (the other reason being that NBC never cleared the copyright to the song used in the sketch).
• In possibly the fastest Funny Aneurysm in history, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show once summed up the American situation - failing economy, no strong political leadership - in two words: "We're doomed." The date was September 10th, 2001.
  • And later, in July of 2008, he joked that Robert Novak contains "the cure for the cure for cancer"... the week before he was discovered to have a massive brain tumor.
• MA Dtv had a parody of a Chanel No. 5 commercial, where Anna Nicole Smith (played by Stephnie Weir) is an alluring, fallen celebrity who ultimately commits suicide by falling off a building. Except for the "falling off a building" bit, the rest rang true for the real Anna Nicole Smith in 2007 (the sketch first aired in 2004 or 2005, I forget). What's even more chilling is when MA Dtv did a parody of "The Anna Nicole Show" where it showed Anna Nicole Smith's son, Daniel (played by Josh Meyers, brother of SNL castmember Seth Meyers), being taken away from her (though on the sketch, it was by a social worker), Howard K. Stern (played by MA Dtv mainstay Michael Mc Donald) saying that he's only putting up with Anna because one day she'll be rich, and Anna Nicole (once again played by Stephnie Weir) slipping into a perscription pill-induced coma at the end of the sketch.
• Rodney Dangerfield made a statement to his fan club before going into surgery saying "If all goes well, I will be out in a couple weeks. If not, a couple of hours." He would die from complications from that operation within a few weeks. Lightened by the fact that the statement was so typical of his style of humor, and that he might have thought the irony funny.
• Comedian George Carlin, who died of a heart attack in 2008, made several, including:
  I'm always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I'm listening to it.
  Two heart attacks has changed my diet, but I still cook bacon for the smell.
  • Not to mention "I like watching old Saturday Night Live episodes and counting all the dead people''. Carlin himself hosted the show's first episode, which was rerun the Saturday after his death.
    • And one of his monologue jokes on that episode was about watching old movies on TV and thinking about how most of the people in the cast are now dead.
  • His final HBO special It's Bad For Ya! is almost half comprised of death jokes, including ones about deleting dead friends' email addresses from an email program.
    • His next-to-final HBO special Life Is Worth Losing is even more grim and death-fixated.
  • Then there's his rants about airport security, made before 2001, in his book Napalm and Silly Putty...
    • His special "You Are All Diseased" (released in February 1999) has at least two: he mentions school shootings; two months later: Columbine happens. Earlier in the special, he does a routine about airport security; 9/11 happened two-and-a-half years later, as well as an ensuing crackdown on airport security continuing to this day. Also, he intended to name two of his specials "I Like It When A Lot Of People Die" but one of them was renamed ("Complaints and Grievances", which came out after 9/11) and another one as well ("Life is Worth Losing" came out after Katrina).
    • In You Are All Diseased, Carlin speculated about a gunman opening fire in a church a few years before such incidents started hitting the news broadcasts:
      I'm not worried about guns in school. You know what I'm waiting for, guns in church. That's gonna be a lot of fun, and it will happen, you watch. Some nut will go fuckin' apeshit in a church and they will refer to him as a disgruntled worshipper.
    • In his subsequent book Napalm and Silly Putty, he stated that in his view, it was a Reverse Funny Aneurysm: "You know the fun part? I prayed for it!"
  • "You know what we haven't had in a long time? A big fire at a really crowded nightclub." Probably not a good idea to repeat that joke in Rhode Island after the 2003 fire at The Station nightclub killed a hundred people. He did it anyway later that year and was booed off the stage.
• Bill Hicks on smoking in a stand-up routine: "I'll cough, I'll get the tumors, I'll die. Deal?" And, in 1988: "I do have this fear of doing smoking jokes and then coming back in five years and saying (with voice box buzz) 'Good evening everybody, y'all were right smoking's bad'" He died due to pancreatic cancer but considering all the carcinogens in tobacco the fact that it isn't lung cancer doesn't make the funny Aneurysm go away.
• This occurs in Mitch Hedberg's second (and last) stand-up album, Mitch All Together. One of Hedberg's jokes therein goes, "I drink a lot of red wine. This girl asks me, 'Doesn't that give you a headache?' I say, 'Yeah, eventually, but the first and the middle part are amazing.' I'm not going to stop doing something just because of what happens at the end. 'Hey, Mitch, do you want this apple?' 'No, eventually it'll be a core.'"
  • Very recently, a CD of an old performance of his, titled "Do You Believe In Gosh?" was released. It also has a cringe-inducing line. Mitch is receiving answers to his questions from a member of the audience before he asks them, (It Makes Sense In Context) when the following exchange takes place.
    Phil: Downhill!
    Mitch: Hey, Phil, which way is my career going?
  • It doesn't help that through the whole thing, he's mentioning how he needs to practice more, so his next show will be better.
• In Bill Cosby Himself, there's a whole bit that begins, "My son is 10 years old, and I don't think he's going to live to see 11..." and then details a plot by his sisters to kill him. Later in the same, there's a bit where his wife tells him to go upstairs "And kill that boy." Ennis Cosby was murdered on January 16th, 1997. One cringes everytime one watches that part of the routine nowadays, though the rest still makes me die laughing every time.
• In a particularly horrifying example, British magician and comedian Tommy Cooper had a heart attack and collapsed live on stage, being broadcast to millions across Britain. As this was not out of character for his act, the audience started laughing, before realising that it was serious. Watching his old acts and particularly scenes where he pretends to be shocked, in pain or surprised (often clutching his chest during it) now becomes very uncomfortable.
• Sam Kinison had several:
  • He did a rant about how people overreacted to drinking and driving... later, his untimely death was caused by some drunk asshole crashing into his car. (To be fair, Kinison reportedly had drugs in his system at the time, making his advocacy of drug use a second Funny Aneurysm Moment.)
  • The "driving to Barstow" bit on Have You Seen Me Lately eerily echoes the time and place of Kinison's death, in a car crash in the California desert.
  • At the end of Louder Than Hell, a fan can be heard crying out "Sam! Where are you?!" A question many asked after his death, and after two decades of American stand-up comedy that has produced no one to fill his shoes.
  • And his role in the Married... With Children It's A Wonderful Life parody as a wingless angel, who finally ascends after showing Al how happy everyone is in a world where he isn't born.
• On one episode of Good News Week, Wil Anderson commented that people going around wearing Australian flags made them look like they were a bad superhero, Aussieman, joking that he wouldn't be useful: "Help, Aussieman, there's a fire!" "...nah, the cricket's on." The episode must have been prerecorded, but it aired the day after the worst natural distaster in Australian recorded history: a deadly bushfire. Dude Not Funny.
  • The ABC Radio News station began running weather and bushfire updates with "breaks for the cricket".
• When you consider that comedian Richard Jeni was diagnosed with clinical depression and killed himself two years after his last HBO stand-up special... watching "A Big Steaming Pile of Me" is like watching an hour-long suicide note.
• Any of Victoria Wood's routines about life with her husband when viewed after their seperation.
• One of Gilda Radner's characters, Rhonda Wiess, is a stereotypical Long Island Jewish princess who is furious at the FDA for banning saccharine. The disturbing line, "statistics show men prefer skinny girls with cancer to healthy girls with bulging thighs," got a huge laugh during her one-woman show on Broadway. 10 years later, Gilda died at 42 of ovarian cancer.
• On his album 222, Patton Oswalt does a bit where he says he'd like to go into suspended animation, then come out forty years later, and type "Michael Jackson" into Google, to find out all the weird things he's done in the interim.
• Christopher Titus has based his stand-up routine almost entirely on the events of his life. His first two routines, "Norman Rockwell Is Bleeding" and "5th Annual End of the World Tour" featured humor that most people are unlikely to joke about, but because it all happened to him it becomes hilarious. A major part of his routines are about him finding his wife and eventually having children. In the midst of "End of the World" he and his wife divorced, and the material associated with the divorce and him returning to the dating pool formed the basis of his follow-up routine "Love Is Evol." While still funny and doesn't entirely diminish the comedy of the previous routines, it does put a slight damper on the time he spends praising his wife and how she is everything to him (A "Swiss Army Wife").
• After The Chaser was pulled for two weeks following a particularly offensive sketch, the next show they aired showed them doing good things for the community, including: Closing scientology down for good, getting rid of all the Andre Rieu C Ds in the world, and Taking Kyle Sandilands off the air permanantly. Four days later, This happens, three days after that... So Yeah. Although, most Australians would argue that this doesn't count as a Funny Aneurysm Moment, given the Mr. Sandilands... Personality
• Parodied in The Whitest Kids U Know when a hunter attempts to make a joke about hunting accidents using his friend as a punch-line. The only problem? His friend died in a hunting accident just the other day. He insists that this makes it even funnier, while the other members of the hunting party are more reluctant to laugh.
• On the Firesign Theatre's 1980 album Fighting Clowns, they have a song called "Reagan" which includes the line "and it's never too late to lose again". This song was later released as a single, with, as its B-side, a song called, "Carter", where they talk about Jimmy Carter winning re-election, then being followed by eight years of Mondale.
• In his 1997 special Lock And Load, Denis Leary talks about people riding bicycles in New York, and remarks, "The last person to get a speeding ticket in New York was the guy who crashed his plane into the Empire State Building back in 1937!"
  • Another Denis Leary one from No Cure For Cancer; he jokes that when Keith Richards dies, people will have to smoke his ashes. Years later, Keith caused an uproar by joking about snorting his father's ashes.
• In his film "Live In Concert", Richard Pryor joked that John Wayne could kick death's ass. As we soon found out, he, uh, couldn't. So Yeah...

• In a bizarre historical example there is a medieval story written by Alfonso the Tenth about a Jewish family where the son is given a communion wafer and decides to become Christian as a result of it. So the father decides to punish him by burning his son alive in a bread oven... ha ha... tragic.
• The New Hampshire state quarter◊, initially circulated in 2000, depicts The Old Man of the Mountain, which was a state landmark. Three years after the quarter was released, the Old Man naturally collapsed.
• Every joke about Dick Clark's eternal youthfulness has suffered from this since Clark's stroke in late 2004, which rendered him...somewhat less youthful.
• Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 on a business trip. He was 2 miles away from the epicenter of the blast from the atomic bomb that was dropped on that fateful day. He survived with some injuries, and decided to quickly return home. To Nagasaki. Reportedly, the day that bomb was dropped, his boss was insisting to him the reasons that a bomb could not detroy an entire city, and was convinced Yamaguchi was making it up.
  • To top things off, Nagasaki wasn't even the original target. It was a last-minute choice after not only one, but two, other target cities were too obscured by clouds to attack with any accuracy.
  • You know what's really funny? As of 2009, despite suffering from cancer, Yamaguchi is still alive: this guy was nuked twice, has outlived the pilots who threw the bombs and became a dedicated anti-nuclear weapons protester: there is still a guy here to remember us that nukes are not magical devices.
• From "The Good War" — the massive set of WWII-based interviews by historian Studs Terkel (the brackets are part of the title, by the way): The interviewee, Maurice E. Wilson, talks about an apparently white man called Robert Brooks in his unit whom Wilson often called Nig on account of his features and hair. After Brooks died, it emerged that he was black and had lied about his race (he was pale enough to pass for white) to get into a white outfit.
• Jim Fixx, the guy who made jogging popular, died of a heart attack while he was jogging.

• In the Eddie Murphy stand up special RAW, the comedian talks about the problems with marriage. In one (extremely politically incorrect) part, he details how he would court and marry a poor impoverished African woman as opposed to an American one, as all American women are interested in are "half" of a man's net worth, however he notes that in the US, the African woman would soon be interested in the same thing. Then in the movie Coming to America, Murphy plays a prince of an African kingdom, who comes to America to find love, because all of the women in his kingdom only want him for his status. In Real Life, Murphy married an American woman, who eventually divorced him, and fathered a child with a British singer (Scary Spice).
• An Alternate Reality Game based on NUMB3RS called Chain Factor revolved around a flash game designed by a villain with the goal of forming an algorithm to destroy the world's economy. The ending ended up revealing that the plan succeeded, though it would be impossible to tell when it would actually go into effect.