History FunnyAneurysmMoment / WesternAnimation

!!Shows with their own pages
[[index]]
* ''FunnyAneurysmMoment/FamilyGuy''
* ''FunnyAneurysmMoment/GravityFalls''
* ''FunnyAneurysmMoment/SouthPark''
* ''FunnyAneurysmMoment/StevenUniverse''
[[/index]]
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* In the BaseballEpisode of ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius'', Jimmy scientifically lines his team's equipment with the talents of Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds and Mark [=McGwire=]. This becomes less amusing after the latter two got busted for using steroids.
* In Disney's 1925 [[WesternAnimation/AliceComedies Alice Comedy]] ''Alice's Egg Plant'', Alice has trouble filling out an order of eggs when a Bolshevik chicken heads her hens on a strike. In 1941, the Disney studio would undergo a crippling strike, which Creator/WaltDisney, in his 1947 testimony to the House of Un-American Activities Committee, blamed on Communist sympathizers.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'':
** The short "Magic Time" features [[{{Expy}} expies]] of Siegfried & Roy who mistreat their animals and wind up getting attacked by them at the end. Six years after it aired, Roy Horn got attacked by one of his own tigers.
** Jokes towards 90s celebrities didn't exactly age well, particularly this line which was no longer true after 1994:
--> '''Dot''': "What's Christie Brinkley got that I ain't got?"\\
'''Yakko & Wakko''': "Music/BillyJoel."
** "A Quake, A Quake" is pretty funny, but the end line (which references the then-recent Lebanese Civil War) takes on a new OhCrap meaning after 2006 and ''especially'' 2020:
-->''"We want to find some peace and quiet, so we're moving to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War Bei]][[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions rut]]"''
** The episode "Plane Pals" has an in-flight safety film that pokes fun at various potential in-flight disasters. A few years after the episode aired, one such scenario [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800 came true:]]
-->''"Welcome to Air Pacific, the Jolly Airline. Our deluxe 757 is equipped with a number of safety features to use in case of an emergency, such as our fuel tanks explode, and we crash like a fiery ball into the sea."''
** "Potty Emergency" has a scene where Wakko tries to use the women's restroom at a movie theater due to the men's room being out of order and gets kicked out. The controversy over transgender people and gender-specific bathrooms in the mid-2010s makes this moment cringe-worthy.
* In a bad naming coincidence, the organization which the protagonists of ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}'' work for is named ISIS, the International Secret Intelligence Service. Among other things, they have engaged in counter-terrorism and espionage, unintentionally racking up high body counts and causing international incidents. The group is a parody of intelligence agencies, and allows the writers, usually through Lana or Mallory, to give their opinions on the fubared nature of covert geopolitics, and the horrible things that happen when said politics go wrong. Unfortunately, in early 2014, an organization known as ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, rose to prominence, the result of several geopolitical disasters in the Middle East. Among other things, they have engaged in terrorism and mass murder, purposefully causing an international incident and racking up a high body count. The trouble caused by the real life ISIS has led the creators to drop the name from the sixth season onwards.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' episode "Binky Barnes, Art Expert," Arthur and Buster tell Binky that the school burned down, to which he replies, "Wow, great!" Several seasons later, the episode "April 9th" aired, in which the school actually ''did'' have a fire (it didn't burn down, but was closed for a few weeks afterwards). Binky has a far more concerned reaction to the fire in this episode.
* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': The season 3 episode The Ember Island Players, about a Fire Nation play about the cast, which is about as hilarious a warping of reality as the Unalaq play. Then came TheMovie, where pretty much everything the actual Gaang had a NoJustNoReaction to in the play was true of the movie's portrayal. The movie goes on to be considered InNameOnly, universally reviled by fans, got a lukewarm reception at best by non-fans, [[StarDerailingRole derailed a lot of the cast's careers]], and put a hitch in the 3D revival with it's last minute conversion and the Razzies that it won for it.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'':
** Early into "Who Do You Trust?", [[ComicBook/{{Hawkeye}} Clint]] taunts [[ComicBook/IronMan Tony]] for messing up his welcome speech to ComicBook/{{Carol| Danvers}}, prompting Tony to mockingly threaten to fire Clint. Soon afterwards, Tony finds himself in a position where he must consider ''actually'' renouncing Hawkeye's membership, [[spoiler:for possibly being a Skrull]].
** "Along Came a Spider..." has a gag in which Franchise/SpiderMan tries to speak in a BadassBaritone, but fails so badly at sounding tough, ComicBook/{{SHIELD}} agent Clay Quartermain asks, "What's wrong with your voice?" Before this episode aired, ExecutiveMeddling had the writers' first choice for Spider-Man's actor, Creator/JoshKeaton, dubbed over by Creator/DrakeBell, as synergy with ''WesternAnimation/UltimateSpiderMan''.[[note]]Never mind how many other characters sound and/or look completely different between the two shows...[[/note]] After the airing, cue peeved Josh Keaton fans decrying Drake Bell's performance as inferior, and questioning the need to change an already-animated Spidey's voice. Eventually, even the head writer of ''EMH'' called it "[[CreatorBacklash pretty unnecessary]]" of Marvel to replace Keaton with Bell.
* The series finale of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'' was a [[NoFourthWall very meta]] story that basically discussed the show and what kind of series may replace it. The possible sequel show is given a lot of friendly riffing, with predictions that it'll be animated with cheap CGI, be DarkerAndEdgier in contrast to ''Brave And The Bold's'' LighterAndSofter {{Reconstruction}}, that it would be CutShort, and various other such jokes. Nearly ''every single prediction'' made about such a show ended up actually happening to the next Batman show, ''WesternAnimation/BewareTheBatman'', all the way down to the show getting ScrewedByTheNetwork just as it was GrowingTheBeard.
* Most of ''WesternAnimation/TheBoondocks'' episode "Thank You for Not Snitching" follows the militarization of a Neighborhood Watch group that targets young black children. Considering what happened to Trayvon Martin, this makes the episode harder to watch.
* "Colonel [[PunnyName Heeza Liar]]" was a recurring character featured in a series of Creator/BrayStudios shorts during UsefulNotes/TheSilentAgeOfAnimation. During his first run (1913-17), many of his cartoons had him getting involved in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI[[note]] (prior to direct US involvement)[[/note]], where he was [[ExplosionPropulsion bounced around]], [[AshFace singed]], or [[ClothingDamage otherwise inconvenienced]] by enemy fire. When the US finally entered the war, any doughboys who saw the cartoons [[DeathFromAbove after being incessantly bombarded by German artillery]] [[WarIsHell would have found the Colonel's antics a lot less amusing]].
* One of Zurg's lines in the ''WesternAnimation/BuzzLightyearOfStarCommand'' episode "Stranger Invasion" suddenly gets very disturbing after seeing ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory3'', when [[spoiler:Andy's toys come very close to being burned alive in an incinerator]].
--> '''Zurg''': And if I may remind you, no [[Franchise/StarWars giant]] [[Film/ANewHope trash compactor]]! When heroes fall in, they always have enough time to figure a way out! Make it [[spoiler:an incinerator]]!
* ''WesternAnimation/CelebrityDeathmatch'':
** When Steve Irwin gets tail-whipped by Medusa, he rips his heart out and puts it back in, saying "What a stinger!" This is now seen in bad taste due to Irwin's real-life death after being stung in the heart by a stingray.
** Siegfried getting attacked and killed by the tiger in Penn & Teller vs. Siegfried & Roy match became less funny when Roy was mauled by the tiger in RealLife.
* [[http://37.media.tumblr.com/8f1fbad48bcc082e97bbd15b2faa0791/tumblr_n84b213Gcx1t2c5yyo1_1280.png This ad for]] ''WesternAnimation/{{Clarence}}'' is a lot less funny after the creator was fired from Cartoon Network over allegations of sexual assault. However, the episode where this scene came from, "Slumber Party", did eventually air unaltered.
* A dropped pilot for ''Constant Payne'' has a scene where the daughter squeezes a balloon plane in between two buildings, shattering the windows. This came out in 2001 and is a theory for why the pilot didn't pass (though in reality, it was because the creator was pushing for unionization in the animation industry).
* ''WesternAnimation/TheCritic'':
** One episode has a banner advertising the New York City Marathon, which Jay later runs in, with the slogan "It's More Fun to Run When it's Not From a Gun". Terrorism at a marathon was unthinkable until the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 that left three dead and more than two hundred and fifty injured, making this one hit a bit close to home.
** Jokes about Doris' smoking habits are this ever since her voice actress, Doris Grau, died in 1995 from respiratory failure. A notable one is when she blows a smoke cloud of an evil figure telling her that her time is coming soon.
** There's more than one joke at the expense of Creator/DudleyMoore and his apparent drunkenness and resemblance to his ''Film/{{Arthur 1981}}'' character. Two years after the show ended, he was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, a disease in the same family as Parkinson's.
* In ''[[WesternAnimation/DisneySingAlongSongs Disney Sing Along Songs-Disneyland Fun]]'', [[Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit Roger Rabbit]] panics in front of ''Ride/BigThunderMountainRailroad'', pleading "P-p-p-please! Slow down! Slow down!" as if he were on the ride. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_at_Disneyland_Resort#Big_Thunder_Mountain_Railroad 13 years later, the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad incident happens]]. Further, Roger Rabbit's ride has [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_at_Disneyland_Resort#Roger_Rabbit.27s_Car_Toon_Spin also been responsible for an accident]].
* ''WesternAnimation/DrawnTogether'':
** The show's portrayal of Creator/BillCosby became much less funny after the accusations of sexual assault against him were brought into light.
*** The episode "Unrestrainable Trainable" has Captain Hero investigate the city under attack from a giant midget (which later turns out to be his inbred son), with one of the evidence of destruction being a giant reservoir of banana pudding being drained. Bill Cosby is seen standing over it, saying that he's just another unemployed sexual predator without it.
*** Then there's the episode "Foxxy and the Gang Bang/Toot Goes Bollywood", where Toot challenges Foxxy to stop having sex and viceversa. In Foxxy's plot, she tries to find out the reason for her heavy sexual appetite, and tracks it back to memories of ''WesternAnimation/FatAlbertAndTheCosbyKids'' {{exp|y}}ies sexually assaulting her when she was young, later turning out that the memories were fake and implemented by Wooldoor.
** Spanky's crude and perverted behavior becomes quite creepy for Latin American viewers after his voice actor Creator/LuisDanielRamirez was accused of sexual harassment by other voice actresses, resulting in him getting banned from several dubbing studios.
* From ''WesternAnimation/DuckDodgers'':
** The episode "The Menace of Maninsuit" (first aired in 2004) had Dodgers fight the titular {{kaiju}} on the Japan-like planet of Nippono in a mecha, who eventually crashes into a nuclear power plant and comments on how it's a bad idea to have one near the ocean. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, along with the subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster, show how it's a bad idea.
** "Samurai Quack" has one gag where Dodgers carves his way through countless robots, but pulls back from striking a human because he can't get away with that with a Y7 rating (a jab at how ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'' got away with plenty of violence because it was directed towards robots and not organic beings). Then Season 5 of the latter show aired, it is no longer rated Y-7, and Jack brutally slashes the throat of one of the (very human) Daughters of Aku, whom he had assumed was just another one of Aku's robotic minions.
*** Likewise, Achoo's (Aku's) spoof of Darth Vader's iconic WeCanRuleTogether scene doesn't sound as hilarious when the 9th episode of Season 5 had shown that the daughters of Aku being the [[NotHyperbole ''literal'']] Daughters of him.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Duncanville}}'' episode “Undacuva Mutha”, Annie burns various police-related [=DVDs=], including ''WesternAnimation/PAWPatrol''. Fast forward to June 2020, and some people began criticizing police-related media, ''PAW Patrol'' included, in wake of the George Floyd protests, because some of them portrayed cops in a positive light.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'':
** One of the stations in the New New York tubeway system was given as "J.F.K., Jr. Airport". After the real-life John F. Kennedy, Jr. died when his private plane crashed, the line was replaced with "Radio City Mutant Hall".[[note]]Though the original line can still be heard on the full-episode animatic that appears on ''Futurama'' volume one DVD and on the UK airings.[[/note]]
** The line in the first episode about the Stop & Drop Suicide booths being "Americans' favorite suicide booth since 2008" becomes a bit wince-worthy in light of 2008's economic meltdown and the invention of an actual suicide machine in the same year.
** In the pilot, Fry's reaction to realizing that his parents and everyone he's ever known died hundreds of years ago is a triumphant "[[BlackComedy Ya-hoo!]]" As the series continued, episodes such as "The Luck of the Fryrish," "Jurassic Bark" and "Game of Tones" explored Fry's relationships with the family he left behind and showed how profoundly he, and they, were affected by the loss, leading to the show's most infamous [[TearJerker Tear Jerkers]].
** In "The Lesser of Two Evils", the main characters visit a theme park modeled on 2000s New York. There's a brief scene where the stock market drops from about 11,000 to 7,200, similar numbers to the real life 2008 crash.[[note]]Fortunately, it jumps right back up to 11,000, and all the stockbrokers who jumped to their apparent deaths float back up into the building via jetpack.[[/note]] Considering that the scene was supposed to be a "distorted history" take on the crash that started the Great Depression; that makes this a sort of bizarre life imitating art imitating life.
* One of the recurring characters in the ''ComicStrip/USAcres'' segments of ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'' was Aloysius Pig, an InkSuitActor version of comedian Kevin Meaney. In his final episode, "Kiddie Korner", the gang tries to find a wholesome nursery rhyme that won't offend him. During one part, Aloysius says "More death, to say nothing of high cholesterol!" in reaction to Orson showing him Humpty Dumpty. On October 21, 2016, Kevin Meaney died in his home of a heart attack, which is sometimes caused by a diet that's high in cholesterol.
* ''WesternAnimation/GodzillaTheSeries'' Randy Hernandez's line "Who's been playing dominoes with the World Trade Center?" in the episode "Future Shock" straddles between this and HarsherInHindsight, due to having time traveled to a BadFuture.
* In ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'': At the end of "The Flood", as floodwaters surround PS 118, Principal Wartz stands on the roof of the school singing, "Way down yonder, in New Orleans..." This became a lot less funny after Hurricane Katrina caused extensive flooding and damage in New Orleans in 2005.[[note]]Hurricanes have flooded New Orleans multiple times, the most recent pre-Katrina occurrences being in 1940, 1947, 1965, and 1969. The joke post-Katrina is pretty much the same amount of Funny Aneurysm as it always had been, it's just that the target audience's shallow reference pool now contained an event that had occurred during their lifetime.[[/note]]
* The relationship between demon dragon and BigBad Shendu and his son [[FinalBoss Drago]] in the final season of ''WesternAnimation/JackieChanAdventures'' starts carrying more weight when the real Jackie Chan became estranged from his own son Jaycee, which culminated in Jaycee being arrested for drug possession, which in the People's Republic of China could have given him the death penalty. The relationship between the cartoon Chan and his niece Jade falls into this as well, and the [[BigScrewedUpFamily strained]] [[SealedEvilInACan relationship]] between Shendu and his [[BigBadDuumvirate own]] [[PhantomZone siblings]] has the possibility of qualifying.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Kaeloo}}'': Like most [[ButtMonkey comic relief]] [[ChewToy cartoon characters]], Stumpy the squirrel is often made fun of by other characters or placed in dangerous or unpleasant situations for the audience's amusement. [[spoiler: The Season 3 premiere revealed that he's genuinely hurt by this, because it makes him feel like his friends don't care about him enough to help him out of bad situations or treat him with respect and love.]]
* There is a [[http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2ep3lx/til_in_1999_mike_judge_got_a_thankyou_letter_from/ck90avc not-so-untrue]] UrbanLegend about a ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'' episode and a UsefulNotes/{{Columbine}} survivor who was hiding during the shooting and wrote a love note she intended to give to a friend after realizing how close she was to dying, but the friend turned out to be one of the perpetrators. "Wings of the Dope," the episode with Buckley's angel, aired two weeks later and watching it helped the girl realize she didn't need permission or approval from anyone to mourn her loss (or the loss of what could have been had she spoken up sooner). In the episode, when Hank is tired of everyone talking about the angel and tries to get Luanne away from him, he says:
--> "I'm sure with his help you'll do just fine. You'll pass the test and he'll have finished his good deed and there'll be no need for him to come back to Earth again. '''And if you do see Buckley's angel again, it will actually be an evil angel of death.'''"
** In another episode "That's What She Said"[[note]]With guest star Creator/BenStiller[[/note]], Hank's co-worker makes inappropriate jokes and remarks in the workplace, much to Hank's chagrin. The episode, which aired in 2004, might be a little cringy to watch now in light of the [=#MeToo=] and [=#TimesUp=] movement which both deal with sexual harassment and toxic workplaces.
** In the episode "Happy Hank's Giving", Hank packs a smoked turkey in a box which is mistaken for an explosive by the bomb squad and blown up. Considering that the episode aired ''two'' years before 9/11, the episode might be uncomfortable to watch.
* The short-lived Comedy Central series ''WesternAnimation/LegendsOfChamberlainHeights'' had a 2016 gag where NBA legend Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash. Come January 2020, this might be one of the worst non-9/11 example of this '''ever'''. Thankfully, the creators pulled all clips and encouraged the Internet to keep it buried.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'': The ShowWithinTheShow [[{{Flanderization}} flanderizes]] Unalaq, the BigBad of book 2, in an effort to get people to realize that he was indeed the bad guy by showing him as an OmnicidalManiac. [[spoiler:This became unfunny InUniverse when it turned out that Unalaq was indeed such after becoming the Dark Avatar.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'' had quite a few things that became a bit awkward ever since Chris Savino's firing from Nick following [[http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/loud-house-showrunner-chris-savino-fired-nickelodeon-sexual-harassment-charges-1202594788/ accusations of sexual harassment and threats of industry blacklisting]] that goes as far back as ''2004'', such as:
** Two newspaper gags featured in both "The Loudest Yard" (where one of the headlines is "Savino Indicted") and "Health Kicked" (with one of the headlines being "Savino Trial Takes a Turn");
** Lincoln's attitude towards his crush Cristina in "Making the Case", such as attempting to kiss a picture of her and showing it his chest hair, when it's made clear she doesn't reciprocate his feelings and is so uncomfortable about it that she changes classes (or even schools);
** Hugh being [[StalkerWithACrush stalked and harassed]] by the lovestruck sisters in "Study Muffin";
** And finally, Clyde's repeated cringeworthy pining after Lori. It's likely not a coincidence that this recurring gag was dropped after said firing.
* ''WesternAnimation/MoralOrel'''s early episodes in general. The show got [[CerebusSyndrome considerably darker around the middle of the first season]] and put a lot of focus on how miserable most of the main cast are. A lot of these traits (Clay's drinking, Blobert'a StepfordSmiler tendencies, etc.) are still present in the early episodes though. They're just played for laughs and not explored very deeply. Making those scenes a little cringe-worthy if you watch them after you've seen season 2 and especially season 3.
* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' has a surprising amount of this:
** Season 1's "Call of the Cutie" sees Scootaloo tell Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon they're "stuck being stuck up". [[spoiler:"Crusaders of the Lost Mark" reveals Diamond Tiara's mother is practically abusing her to act like a proper 'rich pony', which basically translates into being a stuck up snob to anyone beneath her, meaning Scootaloo was more right than one would think.]]
** The Season 1 episode "Over a Barrel" has Fluttershy's memetic statement of her desire to be a tree. [[spoiler: In Season 7's "A Health of Information", she is one of the victims of the "Swamp Fever" disease which ends with turning into a tree.]]
** Happened with the Season 2 episode "Hurricane Fluttershy". Fluttershy pretends to be sick to get out of training, painting spots all over her body and calling her ailment "pony pox". [[spoiler: In Season 7's "A Health of Information", the same colored spots turn out to be one of the symptoms of the aforementioned "Swamp Fever" disease]].
** The Scootachicken jokes which originated in Season 1's "Stare Master" became considerably less funny when it turned out that in Season 4's "Flight to the Finish", Scootaloo has trouble flying in canon and Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon tease her for it.
** A ''lot'' of the various Spike gags became somewhat sadder in hindsight after "Equestria Games" revealed he has serious self-esteem issues.
** The episode "Amending Fences" does this to ''the very first episode''. The EstablishingCharacterMoment of Twilight brushing aside a party invite to focus on her studies with Nightmare Moon's imminent arrival? [[spoiler:Turns out the party that she was invited to was for an old friend of hers named Moondancer, and by snubbing it and moving to Ponyville without even saying goodbye it effectively ruined the entire pony's life. Moondancer's scene where she breaks down and delivers a [[TearJerker tear-filled]] [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech reason you suck speech]] is easily the most heartrending thing the show has ever produced.]]
** Season 5's ''Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?'' had Big Macintosh turning himself into an Alicorn princess during the DreamSequence. It was seen as nothing more than a funny gag at the time... then later that season, ''Brotherhooves Social'' reveals that Big Mac developed an inferiority complex as a result of Applejack becoming a hero of Equestria and being adored by his baby sister Apple Bloom, while he was ignored. This puts his dream in [[IJustWantToBeSpecial a very different light.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'':
** In "Summer Belongs to You", Doofenshmirtz's evil plan is to drop a giant water balloon on Tokyo to flood out the Annual Good-Guy Convention. This was almost a year before the infamous quake in Japan that caused massive flooding.
** In "Unfair Science Fair Redux (Another Story)", Candace finds herself stranded on another planet and feeling more beloved there than on Earth. This was played for laughs. ''[[WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerbTheMovieCandaceAgainstTheUniverse Candace Against the Universe]]'' would ''also'' have Candace being on another planet where she feels more beloved there than on Earth. But this time, it ''isn't'' played for laughs.
** ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerbStarWars'' makes plenty of jokes about the Death Star's thermal exhaust port, comparing it to a [[SelfDestructMechanism Self-Destruct Button]] multiple times. Less than three years later, ''Film/RogueOne'' would be released, revealing that [[spoiler:the thermal exhaust port weakness was intentional, and that many people died to obtain the death star plans.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain'' did a SelfParody—"Pinky and the Brain and Larry"—where a TemporaryScrappy joins the main cast. Not so funny after the series was made into the much reviled {{Retool}}, ''WesternAnimation/PinkyElmyraAndTheBrain''.
* WesternAnimation/PixarShorts:
** ''WesternAnimation/KnickKnack'': Now that John Lasseter's history of sexual misconduct has come to light, ultimately resulting in his resignation from Disney/Pixar, ''Knick Knack'''s premise of the snowman pursuing an attractive, swimsuit-clad women feels a lot skeevier. Worse if you know that he has previously stated that it was created by the staff to "blow off steam" (though if it's any consolation, it was Lasseter's idea to remove the woman's comically oversized breasts).
* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'': In "Powerpuff Bluff", a gang of impostors commit crimes dressed as the girls, leading to a scene where a SWAT team bursts into Pokey Oaks Kindergarten to apprehend them while firing their machine guns all over the place. After the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, this scene becomes much harder to stomach.
* Mixing with HarsherInHindsight, ''WesternAnimation/TheRealGhostbusters'' episode ''Janine's Genie'' has a scene where mischievous ghosts hijack a passenger jet and the Ghostbusters narrowly prevent it from crashing into multiple buildings, including the World Trade Center.
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'' episode "Reptar 2010" has {{Imagine Spot}}s where Reptar versions of the kids tear up New York City, the last one having Phil and Lil tear up two buildings that resemble the World Trade Center.
** The episode "Let Them Eat Cake" is set during a wedding, during which Stu sees that Chas is crying and tells him, "Get ahold of yourself, Charles. It's just a wedding." Fast-forward to "Mother's Day" and we learn that Chas is a widower. What previously seemed like a good-natured joke about how sensitive Chas is has become downright tragic; there's a chance he was in fact weeping as he thought of his deceased wife.
* The ''WesternAnimation/SamAndMaxFreelancePolice'' episode "Fools Die on Friday", originally aired in 1997, is about ''a terrorist who hijacks an aircraft and almost crashes it into a tall structure in New York City''. Of course, the aircraft is a blimp, the terrorist is just a mildly insane loser, and the crash (into the Statue of Liberty) is averted. But the overall plot and dialogue still parallel 9/11 enough that it makes the episode harder to laugh at. The episode was not shown on Gametap when they began streaming the series in 2006, but it is fully present on the DVD release.
* ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'' has always had lots of jokes around Shaggy being addicted to some kind of drug, and Scooby Snacks containing (or being a metaphor for) some sort of substance, but they all took a sour note when it came out in 2016 that Bill Lutz, the original writer for the first season, was an alcoholic around the time of writing, and that the addiction was so bad, it broke up his marriage (his wife was alcoholic as well, but was able to recover), estranged him from his family, and caused him to die of liver failure only two years after the series premiered. One almost wonders if ‘Scooby Snacks’ [[ItsPersonal had a personal]] and [[WriteWhatYouKnow not-so-innocent (and not-so-funny) connotation for him.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/StarVsTheForcesOfEvil''
** Whenever we saw someone mention St. Olga's School For Wayward Princesses, it'd [[RunningGag usually be accompanied]] by a CutawayGag of a hilariously out-of-place conveyor belt dragging someone screaming into a dark, shadowy castle. It ''was'' funny, until we saw [[BoardingSchoolOfHorrors what St. Olga's was really like]]...
** In "Game of Flags", Star complains that her mother, Queen Moon, was allowed to join the game of Flags when she was Star's age, and Moon replies "I did a lot of things you won't be doing." Fans speculated that Moon was a FormerTeenRebel, until the season 3 episode "Moon the Undaunted" revealed [[spoiler: Moon became queen at a young age when her mother ''was killed by Toffee, then a rogue monster soldier, during the signing of a peace treaty''. Not only that, Moon was driven to make a DealWithTheDevil with [[TheDreaded Eclipsa, Queen of Darkness]] in order to learn a dangerous dark magic spell in order to defeat Toffee and put a stop to his rebellion.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TexAveryMGMCartoons'': ''WesternAnimation/BlitzWolf'', a WartimeCartoon, features the Three Little Pigs blowing up Tokyo after an [[OverlyLongGag overly long gun barrel gag]].[[note]]The edited version on Creator/CartoonNetwork makes it look like the pigs were aiming their gun at the Hitler Wolf's trench.[[/note]] This was ''three years'' before two Japanese cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) really would be blown to pieces -- [[ILoveNuclearPower with atomic weapons]]. Tokyo itself was also bombed by incendiary weapons.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'': At the end of "Only Human", which takes place in the then-future year 2006, "Old Snake"[[labelnote:*]]who is all but stated to be a future version of [[WesternAnimation/GIJoe Cobra Commander]][[/labelnote]] laments that "they simply don't make terrorists like they used to..." as the episode's villains are taken away. Even beyond 2006, real life has proven that they ''do'' make terrorists like they used to.
* ''WesternAnimation/UncleGrandpa'' had a gag in "Pizza Eve" involving an awards show where Uncle Grandpa wins every single award. The gag ends with Uncle Grandpa telling the stars of the other Cartoon Network shows that they're not getting picked up for another season. Not long before this episode aired, it was established that no new ''Uncle Grandpa'' episodes would be made anymore and the crew had already been fired. Whoops.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheWildThornberrys'' contains an episode where Eliza meets a pack of wolves in Yellowstone National Park. Eliza claims that there has never been a single human in North America killed by a wolf. The deaths of Kenton Joel Carnegie and Candice Berner, who were both killed by wolves in North America (Carnegie was Canadian, Berner was American), make this quote hard to stomach.
* ''WesternAnimation/XiaolinShowdown'': In the episode "Enter the Dragon" one of Dojo's attempts to convince Omi to release him from the cage is by disguising as an older woman (among other things) and saying that he's Omi's mother, something he doesn't fall for, knowing that he's an orphan. Then comes the episode "Omi Town", which not only shows how serious his parental issues is, but falls for a real [[TheTrapParents trap]]. When he thinks he finally found his true parents, they turn out to be robots built by Jack Spicer and made to look like Omi's possible relatives with the Moby Morpher.
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* ''FunnyAneurysmMoment/TheSimpsons''

** The show's portrayal of Creator/BillCosby became much less funny after the accusations of sexual assault against him were brought into light make these jokes not so funny.

** Spanky's crude and perverted behavior becomes quite creepy for Latin American viewers after his voice actor Creator/LuisDanielRamirez was accused of sexual harassment by other voice actresses, resulting in getting banned from several dubbing studios.

** The episode "Unrestrainable Trainable" has Captain Hero investigate the city under attack from a giant midget (which later turns out to be his inbred son), with one of the evidence of destruction being a giant reservoir of banana pudding being drained. Bill Cosby is seen standing over it, saying that he's just another unemployed sexual predator without it. Then there’s the episode “Foxxy and the Gang Bang/Toot Goes Bollywood”, where Toot challenges Foxxy to stop having sex and viceversa. In Foxxy’s plot, she tries to find out the reason for her heavy sexual appetite, and tracks it back to memories of ''WesternAnimation/FatAlbertAndTheCosbyKids'' {{exp|y}}ies sexually assaulting her when she was young, later turning out that the memories were fake and implemented by Wooldoor. The accusations of sexual assault against Cosby make these jokes not so funny.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' episode "Binky Barnes, Art Expert," Arthur and Buster tell Binky that the school burned down, to which he replies, "Wow, great!" Several seasons later, the episode "April 9th" aired, in which the school actually ''did'' have a fire (it didn't burn down, but was closed for a few weeks afterwards).

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'':

* In a bad naming coincidence, the organization which the protagonists of ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}'' work for is named ISIS, the International Secret Intelligence Service. Among other things, they have engaged in counter-terrorism and espionage, unintentionally racking up high body counts and causing international incidents. The group is a parody of intelligence agencies, and allows the writers, usually through Lana or Mallory, to give their opinions on the fubared nature of covert geopolitics, and the horrible things that happen when said politics go wrong. Unfortunately, in early 2014, an organization known as ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, rose to prominence, the result of several geopolitical disasters in the Middle East. Among other things, they have engaged in terrorism and mass murder, purposefully causing an international incident and racking up a high body count. The trouble caused by the real life ISIS has led to the creators to drop the name from the sixth season onwards.

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': The season 3 episode The Ember Island Players, about a Fire Nation play about the cast, which is about as hilarious a warping of reality as the Unalaq play. Then came TheMovie, where pretty much everything the actual Gaang had a NoJustNoReaction to in the play was true of the movie's portrayal. The movie goes on to be considered InNameOnly, universally reviled by fans, got a lukewarm reception at best by non-fans, [[StarDerailingRole derailed the lot of the cast's careers]], and put a hitch in the 3D revival with it's last minute conversion and the Razzies that it won for it.

** The line in the first episode about the Stop & Drop Suicide booths being "Americans' favorite suicide booth since 2008" becomes a bit wince worthy in light of 2008's economic meltdown and the invention of an actual suicide machine in the same year.

* One of the recurring characters in the ''ComicStrip/USAcres'' segments of ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'' was Aloysius Pig, an InkSuitActor version of comedian Kevin Meaney. In his final episode, "Kiddie Korner", the gang tries to find a wholesome nursery rhyme that won't offend him. During one part, Aloysius says "More death, to say nothing of high cholesterol!" in reaction to Orson showing him Humpty Dumpty. On October 21, 2016, Kevin Meaney died in his home of a heart attack, which is sometimes cause by a diet that's high in cholesterol.

* In ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'': At the end of "The Flood", as floodwaters surround PS 118, Principal Wartz stands on the roof of the school singing, "Way down yonder, in New Orleans..." This became a lot less funny after Hurricane Katrina caused extensive flooding and damage in New Orleans in 2005.[[note]]Hurricanes have flooded New Orleans multiple times, the most recent pre-Katrina occurrences being in 1940, 1947, 1965, and 1969. The joke post-Katrina is pretty much the same amount of Funny Aneurism as it always had been, it's just that the target audience's shallow reference pool now contained an event that had occurred during their lifetime.[[/note]]

** The episode "Amending Fences" does this to ''the very first episode''. The EstablishingCharacterMoment of Twilight brushing aside a party invite to focus on her studies with Nightmare Moon's imminent arrival? [[spoiler:Turns out the party that she was invited to was for an old friend of hers named Moondancer, and by snubbing it and moving to Ponyville without even saying goodbye it effectively ruined the entire pony's life. Moondancer's scene where she breaks down delivers a [[TearJerker tear-filled]] [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech reason you suck speech]] is easily the most heartrending thing the show has ever produced.]]

* In the ''Series/{{Duncanville}}'' episode “Undacuva Mutha”, Annie burns various police-related [=DVDs=], including ''WesternAnimation/PAWPatrol''. Fast forward to June 2020, and some people began criticizing police-related media, ''PAW Patrol'' included, in wake of the George Floyd protests, because some of them portrayed cops in a positive light.

** "Along Came a Spider..." has a gag in which Franchise/SpiderMan tries to speak in a BadassBaritone, but fails so badly at sounding tough, ComicBook/{{SHIELD}} agent Clay Quartermain asks, "What's wrong with your voice?" Before this episode aired, Marvel had the writers' first choice for Spider-Man's actor, Creator/JoshKeaton, dubbed over by Creator/DrakeBell, as synergy with ''WesternAnimation/UltimateSpiderMan''.[[note]]Never mind how many other characters sound and/or look completely different between the two shows...[[/note]] After the airing, cue peeved Josh Keaton fans decrying Drake Bell's performance as inferior, and questioning the need to change an already-animated Spidey's voice.

* ''WesternAnimation/StarVsTheForcesOfEvil''
** Whenever we saw someone mention St. Olga's School For Wayward Princesses, it'd [[RunningGag usually be accompanied]] by a CutawayGag of a hilariously out-of-place conveyor belt dragging someone screaming into a dark, shadowy castle. It ''was'' funny, until we saw [[BoardingSchoolOfHorrors what St. Olga's was really like]]...
** In "Game of Flags", Star complains that her mother, Queen Moon, was allowed to join the game of Flags when she was Star's age, and Moon replies "I did a lot of things you won't be doing." Fans speculated that Moon was a FormerTeenRebel, until the season 3 episode "Moon the Undaunted" revealed [[spoiler: Moon became queen at a young age when her mother ''was killed by Toffee, then a rogue monster soldier, during the signing of a peace treaty''. Not only that, Moon was driven to make a DealWithTheDevil with [[TheDreaded Eclipsa, Queen of Darkness]] in order to learn a dangerous dark magic spell in order to defeat Toffee and put a stop to his rebellion.]]
* Most of ''WesternAnimation/TheBoondocks'' episode "Thank You for Not Snitching" follows the militarization of a Neighborhood Watch group that targets young black children. Considering what happened to Trayvon Martin, this makes the episode harder to watch.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'':
** One of the stations in the New New York tubeway system was given as "J.F.K., Jr. Airport". After the real-life John F. Kennedy, Jr. died when his private plane crashed, the line was replaced with "Radio City Mutant Hall".[[note]]Though the original line can still be heard on the full-episode animatic that appears on ''Futurama'' volume one DVD and on the UK airings.[[/note]]
** The line in the first episode about the Stop & Drop Suicide booths being "Americans' favorite suicide booth since 2008" becomes a bit wince worthy in light of 2008's economic meltdown and the invention of an actual suicide machine in the same year.
** In the pilot, Fry's reaction to realizing that his parents and everyone he's ever known died hundreds of years ago is a triumphant "[[BlackComedy Ya-hoo!]]" As the series continued, episodes such as "The Luck of the Fryrish," "Jurassic Bark" and "Game of Tones" explored Fry's relationships with the family he left behind and showed how profoundly he, and they, were affected by the loss, leading to the show's most infamous [[TearJerker Tear Jerkers]].
** In "The Lesser of Two Evils", the main characters visit a theme park modeled on 2000s New York. There's a brief scene where the stock market drops from about 11,000 to 7,200, similar numbers to the real life 2008 crash.[[note]]Fortunately, it jumps right back up to 11,000, and all the stockbrokers who jumped to their apparent deaths float back up into the building via jetpack.[[/note]] Considering that the scene was supposed to be a "distorted history" take on the crash that started the Great Depression; that makes this a sort of bizarre life imitating art imitating life.
* There is a [[http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2ep3lx/til_in_1999_mike_judge_got_a_thankyou_letter_from/ck90avc not-so-untrue]] UrbanLegend about a ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'' episode and a UsefulNotes/{{Columbine}} survivor who was hiding during the shooting and wrote a love note she intended to give to a friend after realizing how close she was to dying, but the friend turned out to be one of the perpetrators. "Wings of the Dope," the episode with Buckley's angel, aired two weeks later and watching it helped the girl realize she didn't need permission or approval from anyone to mourn her loss (or the loss of what could have been had she spoken up sooner). In the episode, when Hank is tired of everyone talking about the angel and tries to get Luanne away from him, he says:
--> "I'm sure with his help you'll do just fine. You'll pass the test and he'll have finished his good deed and there'll be no need for him to come back to Earth again. '''And if you do see Buckley's angel again, it will actually be an evil angel of death.'''"
** In another episode "That's What She Said"[[note]]With guest star Creator/BenStiller[[/note]], Hank's co-worker makes inappropriate jokes and remarks in the workplace, much to Hank's chagrin. The episode, which aired in 2004, might be a little cringy to watch now in light of the [=#MeToo=] and [=#TimesUp=] movement which both deal with sexual harassment and toxic workplaces.
** In the episode "Happy Hank's Giving", Hank packs a smoked turkey in a box which is mistaken for an explosive by the bomb squad and blown up. Considering that the episode aired ''two'' years before 9/11, the episode might be uncomfortable to watch.
* The ''WesternAnimation/SamAndMaxFreelancePolice'' episode "Fools Die on Friday", originally aired in 1997, is about ''a terrorist who hijacks an aircraft and almost crashes it into a tall structure in New York City''. Of course, the aircraft is a blimp, the terrorist is just a mildly insane loser, and the crash (into the Statue of Liberty) is averted. But the overall plot and dialogue still parallel 9/11 enough that it makes the episode harder to laugh at. The episode was not shown on Gametap when they began streaming the series in 2006, but it is fully present on the DVD release.
* ''WesternAnimation/GodzillaTheSeries'' Randy Hernandez's line "Who's been playing dominoes with the World Trade Center?" in the episode "Future Shock" straddles between this and HarsherInHindsight, due to having time traveled to a BadFuture.
* ''WesternAnimation/DrawnTogether'':
** The episode "Unrestrainable Trainable" has Captain Hero investigate the city under attack from a giant midget (which later turns out to be his inbred son), with one of the evidence of destruction being a giant reservoir of banana pudding being drained. Bill Cosby is seen standing over it, saying that he's just another unemployed sexual predator without it. Then there’s the episode “Foxxy and the Gang Bang/Toot Goes Bollywood”, where Toot challenges Foxxy to stop having sex and viceversa. In Foxxy’s plot, she tries to find out the reason for her heavy sexual appetite, and tracks it back to memories of ''WesternAnimation/FatAlbertAndTheCosbyKids'' {{exp|y}}ies sexually assaulting her when she was young, later turning out that the memories were fake and implemented by Wooldoor. The accusations of sexual assault against Cosby make these jokes not so funny.
* ''WesternAnimation/TexAveryMGMCartoons'': ''WesternAnimation/BlitzWolf'', a WartimeCartoon, features the Three Little Pigs blowing up Tokyo after an [[OverlyLongGag overly long gun barrel gag]].[[note]]The edited version on Creator/CartoonNetwork makes it look like the pigs were aiming their gun at the Hitler Wolf's trench.[[/note]] This was ''three years'' before two Japanese cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) really would be blown to pieces -- [[ILoveNuclearPower with atomic weapons]]. Tokyo itself was also bombed by incendiary weapons.

* ''WesternAnimation/CelebrityDeathmatch'':
** When Steve Irwin gets tail-whipped by Medusa, he rips his heart out and puts it back in, saying "What a stinger!" This is now seen in bad taste due to Irwin's real-life death after being stung in the heart by a stingray.
** Siegfried getting attacked and killed by the tiger in Penn & Teller vs. Siegfried & Roy match became less funny when Roy was mauled by the tiger in RealLife.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'': The ShowWithinTheShow [[{{Flanderization}} flanderizes]] Unalaq, the BigBad of book 2, in an effort to get people to realize that he was indeed the bad guy by showing him as an OmnicidalManiac. [[spoiler:This became unfunny InUniverse when it turned out that Unalaq was indeed such after becoming the Dark Avatar.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheWildThornberrys'' contains an episode where Eliza meets a pack of wolves in Yellowstone National Park. Eliza claims that there has never been a single human in North America killed by a wolf. The deaths of Kenton Joel Carnegie and Candice Berner, who were both killed by wolves in North America (Carnegie was Canadian, Berner was American), make this quote hard to stomach.
* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'':
** Season 1's "Call of the Cutie" sees Scootaloo tell Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon they're "stuck being stuck up". [[spoiler:"Crusaders of the Lost Mark" reveals Diamond Tiara's mother is practically abusing her to act like a proper 'rich pony', which basically translates into being a stuck up snob to anyone beneath her, meaning Scootaloo was more right than one would think.]]
** The Season 1 episode "Over a Barrel" has Fluttershy's memetic statement of her desire to be a tree. [[spoiler: In Season 7's "A Health of Information", she is one of the victims of the "Swamp Fever" disease which ends with turning into a tree.]]
** Happened with the Season 2 episode "Hurricane Fluttershy". Fluttershy pretends to be sick to get out of training, painting spots all over her body and calling her ailment "pony pox". [[spoiler: In Season 7's "A Health of Information", the same colored spots turn out to be one of the symptoms of the aforementioned "Swamp Fever" disease]].
** The Scootachicken jokes which originated in Season 1's "Stare Master" became considerably less funny when it turned out that in Season 4's "Flight to the Finish", Scootaloo has trouble flying in canon and Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon tease her for it.
** A ''lot'' of the various Spike gags became somewhat sadder in hindsight after "Equestria Games" revealed he has serious self-esteem issues.
** The episode "Amending Fences" does this to ''the very first episode''. The EstablishingCharacterMoment of Twilight brushing aside a party invite to focus on her studies with Nightmare Moon's imminent arrival? [[spoiler:Turns out the party that she was invited to was for an old friend of hers named Moondancer, and by snubbing it and moving to Ponyville without even saying goodbye it effectively ruined the entire pony's life. Moondancer's scene where she breaks down delivers a [[TearJerker tear-filled]] [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech reason you suck speech]] is easily the most heartrending thing the show has ever produced.]]
** Season 5's ''Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?'' had Big Macintosh turning himself into an Alicorn princess during the DreamSequence. It was seen as nothing more than a funny gag at the time... then later that season, ''Brotherhooves Social'' reveals that Big Mac developed an inferiority complex as a result of Applejack becoming a hero of Equestria and being adored by his baby sister Apple Bloom, while he was ignored. This puts his dream in [[IJustWantToBeSpecial a very different light.]]

* In a bad naming coincidence, the organization which the protagonists of ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}'' work for is named ISIS, the International Secret Intelligence Service. Among other things, they have engaged in counter-terrorism and espionage, unintentionally racking up high body counts and causing international incidents. The group is a parody of intelligence agencies, and allows the writers, usually through Lana or Mallory, to give their opinions on the fubared nature of covert geopolitics, and the horrible things that happen when said politics go wrong. Unfortunately, in early 2014, an organization known as ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, rose to prominence, the result of several geopolitical disasters in the Middle East. Among other things, they have engaged in terrorism and mass murder, purposefully causing an international incident and racking up a high body count. The trouble caused by the real life ISIS has led to the creators to drop the name from the sixth season onwards.
* "Colonel [[PunnyName Heeza Liar]]" was a recurring character featured in a series of Creator/BrayStudios shorts during UsefulNotes/TheSilentAgeOfAnimation. During his first run (1913-17), many of his cartoons had him getting involved in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI[[note]] (prior to direct US involvement)[[/note]], where he was [[ExplosionPropulsion bounced around]], [[AshFace singed]], or [[ClothingDamage otherwise inconvenienced]] by enemy fire. When the US finally entered the war, any doughboys who saw the cartoons [[DeathFromAbove after being incessantly bombarded by German artillery]] [[WarIsHell would have found the Colonel's antics a lot less amusing]].
* One of Zurg's lines in the ''WesternAnimation/BuzzLightyearOfStarCommand'' episode "Stranger Invasion" suddenly gets very disturbing after seeing ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory3'', when [[spoiler:Andy's toys come very close to being burned alive in an incinerator]].
--> '''Zurg''': And if I may remind you, no [[Franchise/StarWars giant]] [[Film/ANewHope trash compactor]]! When heroes fall in, they always have enough time to figure a way out! Make it [[spoiler:an incinerator]]!
* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Rugrats}}'' episode "Reptar 2010" has {{Imagine Spot}}s where Reptar versions of the kids tear up New York City, the last one having Phil and Lil tear up two buildings that resemble the World Trade Center.
** The episode "Let Them Eat Cake" is set during a wedding, during which Stu sees that Chas is crying and tells him, "Get ahold of yourself, Charles. It's just a wedding." Fast-forward to "Mother's Day" and we learn that Chas is a widower. What previously seemed like a good-natured joke about how sensitive Chas is has become downright tragic; there's a chance he was in fact weeping as he thought of his deceased wife.

* ''WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain'' did a SelfParody—"Pinky and the Brain and Larry"—where a TemporaryScrappy joins the main cast. Not so funny after the series was made into the much reviled {{Retool}}, ''WesternAnimation/PinkyElmyraAndTheBrain''.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'':
** The short "Magic Time" features [[{{Expy}} expies]] of Siegfried & Roy who mistreat their animals and wind up getting attacked by them at the end. Six years after it aired, Roy Horn got attacked by one of his own tigers.
** Jokes towards 90s celebrities didn't exactly age well, particularly this line which was no longer true after 1994:
--> '''Dot''': "What's Christie Brinkley got that I ain't got?"\\
'''Yakko & Wakko''': "Music/BillyJoel."
** "A Quake, A Quake" is pretty funny, but the end line (which references the then-recent Lebanese Civil War) takes on a new OhCrap meaning after 2006 and ''especially'' 2020:
-->''"We want to find some peace and quiet, so we're moving to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War Bei]][[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions rut]]"''
** The episode "Plane Pals" has an in-flight safety film that pokes fun at various potential in-flight disasters. A few years after the episode aired, one such scenario [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800 came true:]]
-->''"Welcome to Air Pacific, the Jolly Airline. Our deluxe 757 is equipped with a number of safety features to use in case of an emergency, such as our fuel tanks explode, and we crash like a fiery ball into the sea."''
** "Potty Emergency" has a scene where Wakko tries to use the women's restroom at a movie theater due to the men's room being out of order and gets kicked out. The controversy over transgender people and gender-specific bathrooms in the mid-2010s makes this moment cringe-worthy.
* A dropped pilot for ''Constant Payne'' has a scene where the daughter squeezes a balloon plane in between two buildings, shattering the windows. This came out in 2001 and is a theory for why the pilot didn't pass (though in reality, it was because the creator was pushing for unionization in the animation industry).
* ''WesternAnimation/MoralOrel'''s early episodes in general. The show got [[CerebusSyndrome considerably darker around the middle of the first season]] and put a lot of focus on how miserable most of the main cast are. A lot of these traits (Clay's drinking, Blobert'a StepfordSmiler tendencies, etc.) are still present in the early episodes though. They're just played for laughs and not explored very deeply. Making those scenes a little cringe-worthy if you watch them after you've seen season 2 and especially season 3.
* ''WesternAnimation/UncleGrandpa'' had a gag in "Pizza Eve" involving an awards show where Uncle Grandpa wins every single award. The gag ends with Uncle Grandpa telling the stars of the other Cartoon Network shows that they're not getting picked up for another season. Not long before this episode aired, it was established that no new ''Uncle Grandpa'' episodes would be made anymore and the crew had already been fired. Whoops.
* In Disney's 1925 [[WesternAnimation/AliceComedies Alice Comedy]] ''Alice's Egg Plant'', Alice has trouble filling out an order of eggs when a Bolshevik chicken heads her hens on a strike. In 1941, the Disney studio would undergo a crippling strike, which Creator/WaltDisney, in his 1947 testimony to the House of Un-American Activities Committee, blamed on Communist sympathizers.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'': At the end of "Only Human", which takes place in the then-future year 2006, "Old Snake"[[labelnote:*]]who is all but stated to be a future version of [[WesternAnimation/GIJoe Cobra Commander]][[/labelnote]] laments that "they simply don't make terrorists like they used to..." as the episode's villains are taken away. Even beyond 2006, real life has proven that they ''do'' make terrorists like they used to.

* In ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'': At the end of "The Flood", as floodwaters surround PS 118, Principal Wartz stands on the roof of the school singing, "Way down yonder, in New Orleans..." This became a lot less funny after Hurricane Katrina caused extensive flooding and damage in New Orleans in 2005.[[note]]Hurricanes have flooded New Orleans multiple times, the most recent pre-Katrina occurrences being in 1940, 1947, 1965, and 1969. The joke post-Katrina is pretty much the same amount of Funny Aneurism as it always had been, it's just that the target audience's shallow reference pool now contained an event that had occurred during their lifetime.[[/note]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'':
** Early into "Who Do You Trust?", [[ComicBook/{{Hawkeye}} Clint]] taunts [[ComicBook/IronMan Tony]] for messing up his welcome speech to ComicBook/{{Carol| Danvers}}, prompting Tony to mockingly threaten to fire Clint. Soon afterwards, Tony finds himself in a position where he must consider ''actually'' renouncing Hawkeye's membership, [[spoiler:for possibly being a Skrull]].
** "Along Came a Spider..." has a gag in which Franchise/SpiderMan tries to speak in a BadassBaritone, but fails so badly at sounding tough, ComicBook/{{SHIELD}} agent Clay Quartermain asks, "What's wrong with your voice?" Before this episode aired, Marvel had the writers' first choice for Spider-Man's actor, Creator/JoshKeaton, dubbed over by Creator/DrakeBell, as synergy with ''WesternAnimation/UltimateSpiderMan''.[[note]]Never mind how many other characters sound and/or look completely different between the two shows...[[/note]] After the airing, cue peeved Josh Keaton fans decrying Drake Bell's performance as inferior, and questioning the need to change an already-animated Spidey's voice.
* The series finale of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'' was a [[NoFourthWall very meta]] story that basically discussed the show and what kind of series may replace it. The possible sequel show is given a lot of friendly riffing, with predictions that it'll be animated with cheap CGI, be DarkerAndEdgier in contrast to ''Brave And The Bold's'' LighterAndSofter {{Reconstruction}}, that it would be CutShort, and various other such jokes. Nearly ''every single prediction'' made about such a show ended up actually happening to the next Batman show, ''WesternAnimation/BewareTheBatman'', all the way down to the show getting ScrewedByTheNetwork just as it was GrowingTheBeard.
* ''WesternAnimation/XiaolinShowdown'': In the episode "Enter the Dragon" one of Dojo's attempts to convince Omi to release him from the cage is by disguising as an older woman (among other things) and saying that he's Omi's mother, something he doesn't fall for, knowing that he's an orphan. Then comes the episode "Omi Town", which not only shows how serious his parental issues is, but falls for a real [[TheTrapParents trap]]. When he thinks he finally found his true parents, they turn out to be robots built by Jack Spicer and made to look like Omi's possible relatives with the Moby Morpher.
* Mixing with HarsherInHindsight, ''WesternAnimation/TheRealGhostbusters'' episode ''Janine's Genie'' has a scene where mischievous ghosts hijack a passenger jet and the Ghostbusters narrowly prevent it from crashing into multiple buildings, including the World Trade Center.
* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'': In "Powerpuff Bluff", a gang of impostors commit crimes dressed as the girls, leading to a scene where a SWAT team bursts into Pokey Oaks Kindergarten to apprehend them while firing their machine guns all over the place. After the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, this scene becomes much harder to stomach.
* One of the recurring characters in the ''ComicStrip/USAcres'' segments of ''WesternAnimation/GarfieldAndFriends'' was Aloysius Pig, an InkSuitActor version of comedian Kevin Meaney. In his final episode, "Kiddie Korner", the gang tries to find a wholesome nursery rhyme that won't offend him. During one part, Aloysius says "More death, to say nothing of high cholesterol!" in reaction to Orson showing him Humpty Dumpty. On October 21, 2016, Kevin Meaney died in his home of a heart attack, which is sometimes cause by a diet that's high in cholesterol.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' episode "Binky Barnes, Art Expert," Arthur and Buster tell Binky that the school burned down, to which he replies, "Wow, great!" Several seasons later, the episode "April 9th" aired, in which the school actually ''did'' have a fire (it didn't burn down, but was closed for a few weeks afterwards).

* The short-lived Comedy Central series ''WesternAnimation/LegendsOfChamberlainHeights'' had a 2016 gag where NBA legend Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash. Come January 2020, this might be one of the worst non-9/11 example of this '''ever'''. Thankfully, the creators pulled all clips and encouraged the Internet to keep it buried.
* ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'' has always had lots of jokes around Shaggy being addicted to some kind of drug, and Scooby Snacks containing (or being a metaphor for) some sort of substance, but they all took a sour note when it came out in 2016 that Bill Lutz, the original writer for the first season, was an alcoholic around the time of writing, and that the addiction was so bad, it broke up his marriage (his wife was alcoholic as well, but was able to recover), estranged him from his family, and caused him to die of liver failure only two years after the series premiered. One almost wonders if ‘Scooby Snacks’ [[ItsPersonal had a personal]] and [[WriteWhatYouKnow not-so-innocent (and not-so-funny) connotation for him.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerbStarWars'' makes plenty of jokes about the Death Star's thermal exhaust port, comparing it to a [[SelfDestructMechanism Self-Destruct Button]] multiple times. Less than three years later, ''Film/RogueOne'' would be released, revealing that [[spoiler:the thermal exhaust port weakness was intentional, and that many people died to obtain the death star plans.]]

** There's more than one joke at the expense of Creator/DudleyMoore and his apparent drunkenness and resemblance to his ''Film/{{Arthur}}'' character. Two years after the show ended, he was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, a disease in the same family as Parkinson's.

* In ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'':
** At the end of "The Flood", as floodwaters surround PS 118, Principal Wartz stands on the roof of the school singing, "Way down yonder, in New Orleans..." This became a lot less funny after Hurricane Katrina caused extensive flooding and damage in New Orleans in 2005.[[note]]Hurricanes have flooded New Orleans multiple times, the most recent pre-Katrina occurrences being in 1940, 1947, 1965, and 1969. The joke post-Katrina is pretty much the same amount of Funny Aneurism as it always had been, it's just that the target audience's shallow reference pool now contained an event that had occurred during their lifetime.[[/note]]

** In "Helga on the Couch", Mr. Simmons gets nervous when he learns that the school psychologist will be observing his class, stuttering and asking for reassurance that she will just be observing the students, and not him, the teacher. While this is a moment played for laughs when the viewer is a child, as an older viewer who knows about [[WordOfGod Mr. Simmons being gay]] he was likely still in the closet and worried that the school psychologist would see through him and expose him, which could have disastrous backlash from the parents whose children attends P.S. 118.
** While Curly's TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior is meant to be PlayedForLaughs, albeit [[BlackComedy dark laughs]], the school would've been sued for ignoring his behavior and not hiring therapists. Best case is in:
*** In "Curly Snaps", Curly loses his mind because he feels like he isn't respected by the other students and teachers, locks himself in the principal's office, and assaults people with dodgeballs. The episode aired half a year before the UsefulNotes/{{Columbine}} High School Massacre, when such behavior would be considered way less funny. There's also the fact that if Curly pulled something like this the 2010s, with the many controversial "Zero-Tolerance" policies and extreme rules in place at schools, this kind of behavior would likely have the police called.

* In the BaseballEpisode of ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius'', Jimmy scientifically lines his team's equipment with the talents of Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds and Mark [=McGuire=]. This becomes less amusing after the latter two got busted for using steroids.

** The short "Magic Time" features [[{{Expy}} expies]] of Sigriend & Roy who mistreat their animals and wind up getting attacked by them at the end. Six years after it aired, Roy Horn got attacked by one of his own tigers.
** Jokes towards 90s celebrities didn't exactly age well, particularly this line.
--> '''Dot''': "What's Christie Brinkley got that I ain't got?" '''Yakko & Wakko''': "Music/BillyJoel." [[DerailingLoveInterests Not true after 1994.]]

-->''"We want to find some peace and quiet, so we're moving to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War Bei]][[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions rut]]"''

* In the WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}} Episode "Binky Barnes, Art Expert," Arthur and Buster tell Binky that the school burned down, to which he replies, "Wow, great!" Several seasons later, the episode "April 9th" aired, in which the school actually ''did'' have a fire (it didn't burn down, but was closed for a few weeks afterwards). Binky's reaction to ''that'' was...[[Main/{{Understatement}} less enthusiastic]].

* Scooby-Doo has always had lots of jokes around Shaggy being addicted to some kind of drug, and Scooby Snacks containing (or being a metaphor for) some sort of substance, but they all took a sour note when it came out in 2016 that Bill Lutz, the original writer for the first season, was an alcoholic around the time of writing, and that the addiction was so bad, it broke up his marriage (his wife was alcoholic as well, but was able to recover), estranged him from his family, and caused him to die of liver failure only two years after the series premiered. One almost wonders if ‘Scooby Snacks’ [[ItsPersonal had a personal]] and [[WriteWhatYouKnow not-so-innocent (and not-so-funny) connotation for him.]]