The only episode of Saturday Night Live that Chris Farley hosted, which aired about a month before he died of a drug-induced heart attack (it was the 23rd seasonnote 1997-1998 and the musical guest for that episode was The Mighty Mighty Bosstones). Watching it again, it's hard not to notice how pale, clammy, and out of breath he is, not to mention his voice sounding really hoarse (which actually had more to do with him blowing it out during rehearsal, and not from drug abuse as initially speculated). In fact, Chris Rock was brought in as a back-up host in case anything happened to Farley (also Chevy Chase, even though Chase has been banned from ever hosting SNL due to his backstage shenanigans from when he hosted during the 22ndnote 1996-1997 season, which included getting wasted on painkillers and sexually harassing the female staff by asking them for handjobs).
The opening credits to Saturday Night Live during Phil Hartman's time there include a clip of him sitting in a booth with a blonde woman... his wife, who was to end both their lives in a murder-suicide. Later when he returned to the show as guest host, he says in his monologue that "Oh, boy, but I'll tell you, I'm a lucky man but I'd be nothing without my lovely wife, Brynn. Our anniversary's coming up and I want to buy her a diamond necklace, just to show her what's important to me: family, friends, good times..."
The iCarly special, iPsycho, shows a depressed Gibby saying that he has nothing better to do than to watch Diff'rent Strokes reruns. This episode aired the same week Gary Coleman passed away. Considering the "Awww" that came from the canned laughter, it may be possible that they added it at the last minute to pay tribute to him.
History Channel's Underwater Universe has been preceded by a sympathy message and filmed-prior-to-3/11/11 disclaimer ever since the quake. This is particularly relevant for the episode featuring a previous tsunami in Samoa.
The Sea Quest DSV episode "The Regulator" contains the following dialogue:
Crocker: Not dead either.
Bridger: Might as well be. A genius who's every effort failed. And then he fakes a suicide to escape the ridicule of his peers.
Lucas: I can sympathize with that.
Pretty depressing considering Jonathan Brandis (who played Lucas) committed suicide a few years ago...
Perhaps the most eerie example was the pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen, in which The Government nearly succeeds in crashing an airliner into the World Trade Center and thereby creating a new era of conflict. It aired in March 2001. Yikes.
The BBC children's drama Grange Hill had a nasty and quite personal example of this back in 2000. The character of Judi Jeffreys was (long story short) locked in a storage room that was on fire. She tried to escape by climbing out of the window onto a nearby fire escape, and ended up falling head first to her death. The actress who played her, Laura Sadler, met her own sad and untimely demise in the exact same way about 3 years later. (That is, she fell head first out of a building to her death; but while drunk and drugged up with vodka and cocaine, not while trying to escape a fire).
On Angel, Doyle's Heroic Sacrifice - just nine episodes into the series - became even more heartbreaking after Glenn Quinn, who played him, died three years later in 2002.
In the very last episode "Not Fade Away," Lorne (the Host, a usually fun-loving karaoke-singing demon) has a melancholic plotline in which he eventually shoots Lindsey dead before resigning from Angel's crew. Afterwards, as if talking to the audience, he says, "Good night, folks." Though not meant to be funny or light-hearted, it's become even sadder; a month after the May 2004 finale, Andy Hallett, Lorne's actor, got a dental infection that spread to his bloodstream. Five years after that, he died of the heart disease that resulted. In Hallett's memory, the writers of the comic-book sequel Angel: After the Fall retired the character of Lorne in 2010.
Related to this, there is a HORRIBLE moment on the commentary for "Not Fade Away" where the director mentions jokingly that Andy Hallet was suffering a tooth abcess while shooting and is practically propped up in the shot. This is the tooth abbcess that would lead to Andy Hallet's heart disease and death.
Thankfully, not related to a real-life tragedy, in the fourth season of Angel, Fred and Gunn are discussing whether or not it's good to feel. Fred says she'd rather feel the pain, she'd "take that over being a shell any day." In the fifth season, she dies and her body is used by the demon Illyria, who repeatedly refers to Fred as a shell.
There's also Angel lightheartedly reassuring Lorne that all families have problems, some more than others. Angel has no idea how many problems his family is going to have in the next two seasons.
In the season 1 episode "Expecting", upon seeing the magically pregnant Cordelia, Wes utters the phrase: "Mother of God". Well, yeah.
Also in the first season episode "Rm wa Vu", Cordy is being haunted by a ghost in her rent-controlled apartment. She mutters "How come Patrick Swayze's never dead when you need him?"
In Scrubs, Dr Cox reacted badly to the birth of Jack, feeling ignored and like he couldn't love him. He's critical of Jordan for paying too much attention to the baby. Harmless, until we find out three years later that Jordan had post-partum depression.
The ending of the Mork and Mindy episode "Mork MeetsRobin Williams", where Mork gives his report to Orson about the downside of fame, which ends with a listing of celebrities who became victims of their own fame (mostly from drug overdoses). About a year later, Robin's friend, John Belushi, would die of a drug overdose.
It's also tough looking at that knowing that Robin himself had a pretty nasty cocaine habit at the time. He's said that John's death was one of the reasons he quit.
In Sanford and Son, Fred Sanford had a Running Gag where he would fake a heart attack whenever something shocked or upset him. In real life, Redd Foxx died of a heart attack during a rehearsal on the set of his later show, The Royal Family. At first some cast and crew members thought he was just reprising his "I'm coming, Elizabeth" gag.
To top it all off, the working title for The Royal Family? Chest Pains.
The 1984 Super Sentai show Choudenshi Bioman was the first installment in the franchise to feature a female Yellow Ranger (the original Yellow Four). However, the actress playing her (Yuki Yajima) had to leave the series, so her character was killed off early in the series in what was also one of the few instances in the franchise where a core member of the team was killed off. While only one hero in Power Rangers was killed off within the actual show, Thuy Trang (the actress who played the first Power Rangers Yellow Ranger in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers) ended up dying in a car accident in real life. And that's before we make it a yellow trio by mentioning the real life typecasting-induced suicide of Baku Hatakeyama, the actor who played the first Sentai Yellow Ranger in Himitsu Sentai Goranger.
And when Hatakeyama took a break from the show, his character was replaced with a Suspiciously Similar Substitute, who was also killed off so Hatakeyama's character could return.
Power Rangers has now suffered another real life Ranger death. Peta Rutter, who played Udonna, the White Ranger in Power Rangers Mystic Force. While Udonna was still alive at the end of the season, ironically, her Mahou Sentai Magiranger counterpart was killed off at the start of the series. Also, while Mystic Force was in production, Machiko Soga (Rita Repulsa from MMPR) died, so footage of her from Magiranger as another character, which would normally have been skipped over, was used in tribute in the finale, and said to be a reformed Rita.
The page picture as of November 9th, 2011 comes from Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger. It is a vision of a Bad Future, of what would happen if the Zyurangers failed to fully unite as a team. It was distressing enough back then, but after the earthquake in March 2011 that devastated Tokyo it's even worse.
The Granada Sherlock Holmes episode "The Dying Detective" takes on a whole new significance when you know that Jeremy Brett, who played Holmes, died the year after it was filmed.
For Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the speech to Cordelia about wanting to live in the world for a moment, in spite of her duty, at the time? Sad. Given everything Cordelia goes through over the course of Angel for her duty? Oh dear God. * sobs*
An in-universe example, the ending of the episode "Lie To Me". Depressing and sad when aired, but the characters hadn't suffered great tragedy or major deaths yet. By the time the show is over that ending is second only to "The Body" in tear factor.
The season 3 episode "Earshot" — whose plot involved a school sniper — was originally withheld from airing in the U.S. because of the Columbine shootings in April 1999. The season finale, "Graduation Day, Part Two" was also postponed the following month for similar reasons. Both episodes eventually aired later that summer, "Graduation Day, Part Two" in July and "Earshot" in September.
Early in 24's third season, Jack is occasionally seen wrapping a belt around his arm in preparation for shooting up heroin. This becomes even more horrifying in the season finale, when he's wrapping it around Chase's arm in order to cut his hand off.
In the same season, after Tony learns that Michelle is trapped inside a hotel whose inhabitants are infected with the Cordilla Virus, Ryan Chappelle tells him that the best way to focus is to assume the worst and think about getting revenge. In season 7, Tony's desire for revenge for Michelle's death at the start of the fifth season leads him to attempt to curry favor with the main antagonists so that he can meet up with and kill the man responsible, even if thousands of innocent civilians die in the process.
And that in turn winds up becoming all the more harsher for the final season when Jack goes down nearly the exact same path to avenge Renee, even justifying starting a world war in order to kill the ones behind her death.
The diffusion of the first episode of Fringe, which contains a plane accident, in France coincided with the Rio-Paris plane crash...The episode was broadcast one week later instead.
The Doctor Who serial "The Tenth Planet", first shown in 1966, has a spacecraft lost with all hands in 1986.
In-universe example: the final scene of "Blink", which implied that every statue could be a Weeping Angel, was already horrific enough." "The Time of Angels" turned that concept into reality. Have sweet dreams.
Another one from "Blink"/"The Time of Angels": Sally gave the Doctor a photo of an angel. Image of an Angel, anyone?
The episode "Forest of the Dead" ends with River Song making a Heroic Sacrifice. At the time, it's pretty sad, but we don't really feel much connection to her since she'd only just been introduced. But as the show continues, we find out more about her and her relationship with the Doctor, and that first episode becomes simply heartbreaking to watch...especially once you realise the Doctor himself should have mourned her death far more than he did, it was just unlucky chance that he didn't know her when she died.
And remember, the Doctor KNOWS River's fate. He knows the date and destiny of the daughter of Amy and Rory Pond. As uplifting a note as the episode "A Good Man Goes To War" ends on, remembering that the Doctor already knows when it is that she dies, and that she dies for him, can be quite the Fridge Horror moment - the daughter of the companions that he has come to look at as his family died for him before he knew who she was or even met her parents.And it was probably intentional.
The Seventh Doctor, distraught over the apparent death of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, in "Battlefield", tells him "You should have died in bed!" Fast forward to "The Wedding of River Song"...
Ten's heartwarming "Goodbye - my Sarah Jane!!" from "School Reunion" becomes absolutely heartbreaking after Elisabeth Sladen's untimely death. Just...ouch. Ouch.
The conclusion of The War Games where the Doctor is forced to "change his appearance" before going into exile is now seen as being forced to use one of his 12 regenerations. Ergo, the modern viewer would see this as the Doctor being executed after a fashion by shortening his lifespan.
It's even worse. Remember what the Tenth Doctor was saying about regeneration? The man he was dies and a new person walks off. He was executed.
In "The Pandorica Opens", the Eleventh Doctor makes a big, grandiose speech to all the alien spaceships, telling them that if they want the Pandorica, they have to get through him, and reminding them of all the times he beat them. It turns out that the aliens weren't after the Pandorica at all, and it was instead a trap set by them to imprison The Doctor. Bet that speech doesn't seem so grand now.
It is obviously unimaginably horrible to have your child stolen from you. This is made even worse when we find out in "Asylum of the Daleks" that Rory ALWAYS wanted children and Amy is infertile as a result of what happened on Demon's Run. Made even more heartbreaking when you realize that Amy had a very noticeable BSOD in "A Good Man Goes to War" but Rory never outwardly reacted, opting to stay strong for his wife even though he must have been completely crushed.
"Day Of The Moon", in which Amy Pond shoots the little girl in the astronaut suit to save the future Doctor's life becomes almost painful to watch when you realise that said little girl was actually Melody/River Song, the baby daughter stolen from her later in the season.
The crossover sketch the original show did with Jim'll Fix It, "A Fix with Sontarans". Did the Sixth Doctor and Tegan give Whoniverse Gareth the meson gun to protect him from Jimmy Savile or to protect Savile — and the timeline — from them? Six had been shown to kill...
The Sarah Jane Adventures story "Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith" is about Sarah Jane struggling with senility brought on by a terminal illness. In fact, the illness was fabricated by Sarah Jane's replacement, and once she's defeated, Sarah Jane instantly recovers. And to think Elisabeth Sladen must have known she was ill when she filmed them. The episode was also the last one to air while Lis Sladen was still alive.
Even worse, in the fourth episode of the fifth series, which was aired after her death, Sarah Jane says "It feels like someone has died."
At the end of season two of Dexter, Dexter has trapped James Doakes in a cage inside a remote cabin in the Everglades after he found out Dexter was a serial killer. Trying to convince his captor to turn himself in, Doakes describes Dexter's urge to kill as being "like a cancer - and in case you haven't noticed, it's spreading". Michael C. Hall contracted Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 2010, before recovering later that year.
The Touched by an Angel story "Netherlands", which aired in May of 2001. The plot has heroine Monica witnessing a building being destroyed by a bomb. Many are killed, and though she's an angel she has a crisis of faith that culminates in her being tempted to forsake God by Satan himself. (CBS pulled a scheduled repeat in the wake of 9/11.)
Its longevity has made Law & Order and its numerous versions teem with examples of this:
In a season 16 episode of Law & Order, after a hit list is discovered with Jack's name on it, Alexandra Borgia advises him to hand the case off to someone else because it might save his life. Five months later she's tortured and killed because of a case she's working on. What's more, Arthur Branch tells Jack she would have fought him tooth and nail if he'd tried to take her off the case.
Another example would be an early episode called "Second Opinion", where the victim was killed by a quack remedy for her cancer, and Lt. Van Buren and Detective Briscoe are discussing the woman's condition. Briscoe's actor, Jerry Orbach, died of cancer, and a final season story arc involved Van Buren receiving a scare about possible cancer.
In an April 2009 episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent entitled "Rock Star", a musician falls to his death in an elevator shaft in a building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In November of that same year, Jerry Fuchs, the drummer for various indie rock bands such as !!! and The Juan Maclean, died pretty much the same way in a similar building in the same neighborhood. However, unlike in the episode, where the musician was pushed down the shaft, Fuchs actually fell while trying to jump from a stalled elevator to the next floor. Still pretty damn eerie.
Law & Order: SVU : Life Imitates Art, although at least one version might have been deliberate: An episode about a pedophile coach aired a few weeks before the Penn State scandal broke and an episode about a couple faking a kidnapping to cover up the accidental death of their baby may have caused a real-life woman to try and do the same thing maybe she missed the end where they couple was caught. Fortunately the next episode (about a pair of killers who kill their classmate and almost succeed in pinning it on a feeble-minded neighbor) hasn't happened... as far as we know...
Law & Order: UK: An episode in which the detectives are investigating the shooting death of an officer has DS Matt Devlin musing to partner Ronnie Brooks that it must be tough to lose a partner, then immediately cringing as he remembers that Ronnie has lost a partner to violence. Another episode that also involved the shooting death of an officer had Ronnie stating, "God forbid Matty here got himself shot, I'd be out there straightaway trying to find who did it and string him up myself"
Approximately a year later, Matt was killed in a drive-by shooting. The irony becomes even crueler when you recall that it was always MATT who would flip out if/when Ronnie was in danger.
Parodied in The Whitest Kids U Know when a hunter is making a tasteless joke about hunting accidents at the expense of a friend — the friend died in a hunting accident just the other day. He insists that this makes it exceptionally funny, while the other members of the hunting party are more reluctant to laugh.
There were a lot of moments on the TV show Titus in which Titus's dad doubted that his son and Erin would be together forever, which Titus tried to prove wrong time and again. In reality, Christoper Titus and his wife Erin Carden (the inspiration for the character's girlfriend) divorced three years after the show was canceled (and, in the comedy special Love Is Evol, Titus revealed that Erin [renamed "Kate" for legal reasons] tried to ruin his life to the point that Titus wanted to kill himself and denounce his faith in God — until he found love with a woman who wasn't a psycho-bitch and had a normal, loving family, something that Titus initially found odd as he's never been around mentally stable women or loving, functional families).
In a 2007 episode of Kitchen Nightmares, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay told New Jersey restaurateur Joseph Cerniglia that his business was "about to swim down the Hudson." In 2010 Cerniglia's body was found — in the Hudson — in an apparent suicide.
In the Star Trek TOS episode "Assignment: Earth", Spock mentions that one of the events that occurred during the Enterprise's visit to Earth in 1968 was an assassination. The episode was first aired on March 29, 1968. Six days later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. Robert F. Kennedy was killed that year as well.
Stephen Colbert's astronaut training clips are a bit less funny since the wife of the shuttle pilot who helped him was targeted for assassination — she was shot in the head but survived; unfortunately the mentally unstable shooter killed six other people, including a federal judge and a little girl who was born on 9/11 who had just been elected class president.
The Hill Street Blues season one episode "Life, Death, Eternity, Etc." features the sudden death of a secondary character due to ill health, causing Sgt. Phil Esterhaus (perhaps the most beloved character in the series, played by Michael Conrad) to ponder the transient nature of life. Michael Conrad would die three years later at the age of 57 due to cancer, with Sgt. Esterhaus dying in a special episode timed to correspond with the actor's death.
The M*A*S*H episode "Blood Brothers" features Patrick Swayze as Pvt. Sturgis, a wounded soldier diagnosed with leukemia (which in the 1950s had a much higher mortality rate than it does now). Almost thirty years after the episode aired, Swayze himself died of cancer (it was pancreatic cancer, not leukemia).
The same episode had this trope intentionally written-in. When Swayze's character learns he has leukemia, and Hawkeye urges him to go to Tokyo to begin experimental treatments, Swayze's character cynically predicts "they'll have a cure in twenty years!" The episode aired in the early 80s, more then twenty years after the Korean War ended, and no, there's no cure.
Following a nasty contract dispute, Susan St. James was McLeaned from Mc Millan And Wife by having her character and infant son killed in an airplane crash. Nearly 30 years later, St. James' son was killed, and her husband (Dick Ebersol — the same one who was hired to fix Saturday Night Live after Jean Doumanian wrecked it in the early 1980s) and another son critically injured, in a plane crash.
Pretty much anything that focused on Captain Phil Harris in Season 6, to deliberate effect. 'Catch' fans knew that Phil's death was going to be documented and thought the four months between his death and the showing would help steel themselves, but it still made it all the more unnerving when it happened on TV. One particular moment: In the episode "Valhalla", which documented the fleet's reactions to the death of Phil, Sig Hansen goes to meet Cornelia Marie relief captain Derek Ray in Saint Paul. While talking with Sig, Derek commented he could only take up so much of Phil's space in the wheelhouse so the only thing he removed was the ashtray. Sig joked that Phil would find that funny. Problem was, none of the fleet knew that Phil had passed yet, so Derek broke the news. It was awkward from that point on.
Similarly, season three's final moment (as part of the Northwestern crew meeting with their families at the docks at the end of the season) is a shot of Jake Anderson hugging his father, who was waiting for him along with the families of the rest of the crew. Several seasons later, Jake's dad was murdered under mysterious circumstance (the murder remains unsolved) and worse, his body was not found for over 18 months, leaving Jake tormented with the lack of closure.
The Jake Anderson/Phil Harris tragedies were made harsher when you consider that they happened at the same time. Worse, was Jake having to repress his anger and jealousy towards Josh and Jake Harris, over the fact that they at least had closure regarding their father's death. At the time of filming, Anderson's father's body had not been found (and ultimately was found inbetween seasons 7 and 8)
This year's After The Catch is/was in New Orleans, where that area's fishermen are experiencing some very bad times due to the Gulf Coast oil spill. This is addressed a few episodes later when the captains see the effects of the spill up close; having lived through the Exxon Valdez oil spill themselves the Gulf spill is especially disturbing. It's also noted that all the fishing-related activities they did have since been shut down indefinitely.
In the home video of a crew not associated with the show, one man jokingly said that his friends ought to be on Deadliest Catch. The video aired as part of a special episode after the ship sank with either one or no survivors.
Burn Notice: S1, Episode 9, "Wanted Man". The Libyan spy that Michael is cultivating comments, "The security forces of my country are not known for being gentle." This has been dramatically proven; as of the day of this edit, the 2011 Libyan Uprising riots are being suppressed—with gunship strafing.
The Route 66 episode "I'm Here to Kill a King" has Tod and Linc encountering a would-be political assassin who looks just like Tod. The episode was originally scheduled to air on the night of November 29, 1963; after the real-life assassination of President John F. Kennedy exactly one week earlier, CBS pulled the episode from its schedule, and it was not seen until the series went into syndication several years later.
The X-Files episode "Beyond The Sea" opens with Captain William Scully, Scully's father, dying of a massive coronary off screen. Fourteen years later Don S. Davis who played him would die of the exact same thing.
In the Stargate SG-1 episode "2010", it was mentioned that General Hammond (Don S. Davis' character) had died of a massive heart attack in 2004. It turned out that only four years after this date, Davis did indeed die of a heart attack.
Also, In the Season 5 two-parter finale (the end of the first part, more specifically), when introduced to Hammond's temporary replacement, Weaver, Bra'tac asks if Hammond of Texas (his term of respect for the General) had fallen in battle. It becomes a lot more harsh when watching it after Davis' death.
The Golden Girls featured an episode in which the girls, in the end, made a pact to always take care of each other, even if it meant going to the same nursing homes. At which point, Rose, played by Betty White, asks the question "What happens when there's only one of us left?" Fast forward to 2012, where White is now the only member of the cast who's still alive (making that line from her SNL monologue, about how she uses a Ouija board instead of Facebook to contact old friends, really sad in an episode that's otherwise considered one of the funniest in recent memory).
To rub salt in on the wound, Estelle Getty, who played Sophia, the oldest character on the show, nonchalantly replies that she'll be able to take care of herself at that point. Getty would die first of the four, despite being younger than Co-Stars Betty White and Bea Arthur.
Meant as a joke, but considering that Charlie died due to his hedonismnote and the actions that his actor did that resulted in his getting fired from the show. as of season 9...it's not
On Everybody Loves Raymond, during the Vacation Episode in Italy, the climax of the story involves Ray exulting in the midday siesta and scorning his own community, wondering why they can't have this type of lifestyle back home, and matter-of-factly proclaiming "They know how to live here." Fast-forward to 2012 and the Euro Zone crisis, when many northern Europeans—who were essentially being forced to subsidize the siestas of southern Europe—are now rather ticked off about the practice and are demanding reforms and austerity. YMMV, obviously, but given the tense financial politics currently swirling about, the practice is definitely no longer seen as 100% positive by many observers, at least in northern Europe.
On The Nanny, there was one episode where Fran and Maxwell are being hounded by the paparazzi, who invent a phony story about Maxwell and Fran. Later on, they go to the tabloid's office to confront the editor, and he glibly announces his plans to go back to hounding Princess Diana. Given the fact that just a few years later Diana died—while trying to escape from the paparazzi no less—this scene is certainly much more awkward now.
The last episode of St. Elsewhere, released in 1988, had a Logo Joke where throughout the credits, Mimsie, the cat from the MTM logo, was seen on a hospital bed as the beeps of a life monitor played in the background. When the credits ended, Mimsie flatlined. Mimsie died for real that exact same year.
There was an episode of Jack And Bobby where teenaged Jack gets a track injury that sidelines him for the season. At first, one is inclined to believe that this will only lead to some usual teenage Wangst and nothing more...until the documentary from the future reveals that the injury became a long-term weakness. It gave Jack recurring pains in his knee that eventually resulted in his not being fast enough to escape enemy fire during a war in the future, resulting in his death.
Tori Spelling's short-lived sitcom So NoTorious was a self-parodying look at her life as a struggling actress and daughter of Hollywood royalty. It featured caricatured versions of her parents: her mother as a glamorous yet passive-aggressive nutjob, and her father as...basically the speakerbox from Charlie's Angels. A year later, Aaron Spelling dies, and Candy Spelling basically disinherits Tori. Maybe she hit a nerve there...
The Daily Show: In one episode, Jon Stewart was commenting on the rising unemployment rates, the increasing deficit, and lack of solid political leadership with a very simple "We're doomed!" The day that episode aired? September 10th, 2001.
Several BBC shows hosted by Jimmy Savile have him copping feels whenever he gets the chance live on air. At the time no one thought anything of it and it just looked like he was being playful. Then it turned out he'd molested over 400 children, reportedly.
Similarly, one episode of pre-school show The Tweenies has one character impersonating Savile.
Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Billy getting the most love interests out of the entire cast might seem Hilarious in Hindsight when you learn that actor David Yost is gay...until you also learn that some of the staff gay-bashing him behind the scenes (and nobody actually doing anything about it) was the reason he left the series. Not to mention that him having that many girlfriends may have been a desperate attempt by the producers to have him NOT seem gay (even though he didn't).
Friends: There's a running storyline through the show that Monica is The Unfavourite. The main reason for this is because the Gellers believed they couldn't have children, so Ross was a huge (and happy) surprise to them. Monica coming along later wasn't such a special event and the situation was made worse by Ross winning lots of scientific awards in school whereas Monica wanted to be a chef which isn't so overtly prestigious. The storyline was always played for bitter-sweet humour, but in the later years of the show, when Chandler and Monica try to have children, they learn they're both infertile. The storyline was triggered by Monica's actress having problems in real life and the writers deciding to address it in the show. With hindsight, knowing the pain Chandler and Monica go through later in the show, the subject of infertility being in the Geller family is even harsher than it was before, an all infertility jokes (including Chandler joking that he's incapable of having children in the final episode of series 3) are much less funny when rewatched.
More of a heartbreaker than "harsh", but still: The Series 1 finale of Downton Abbey has Mrs. Hughes warn Tom, following a warm moment with Sybil, "Be careful, my lad, or you'll end up with no job and a broken heart." Come 3x05, that's exactly what has happened, with his wife dead and his job in Ireland forever out of reach.
Could be this or Hilarious in Hindsight depending on your point of view, but the comment from Mrs Miggins in Blackadder regarding a French aristocrat being served a horse's willy instead of a sausage takes on a different meaning after the UK "horsemeat in beef products" scandal.
Padre Coraje: The people thought that dictator Manuel Costa had "died", and got divided in two halves: those who openly celebrated his death, and those who tried to give him the respect Due to the Dead. A funeral was hosted at the church... and Manuel Costa, who was Not Quite Dead, interrupted it shouting "Don't celebrate yet!". The problem was not in the plot, but in the date: the episode was aired on March 5 of the 2013 rerun at the "Volver" channel. Yes, the same day that Hugo Chavez died. There's nothing intentional: it was a daily telenovela, and on March 5 they simply aired the next pisode of the annual queue, as every other day.
During The West Wing season 5 finale Leo suffers a major heart attack. 2 years later John Spencer died from a massive heart attack.
Made even harsher by the fact that in the one of the last episodes Spencer appears Josh asks Leo to take a bigger role in the presidential campaign to which Leo responses "You're all trying to kill me." And then within weeks Spencer was dead.
On Storage Wars there episode of Darrell baiting Mark Balelo into buying a multi-vault causing him to lose money and to go ballistic. Normally, it would be funny but Mark had committed suicide before that episode aired.
Conan did an extended gag about the English nurse who was fooled by an Australian DJ pretending to be the Queen in December 2012. The episode was repeated on Australian television in March 2013, three months after the nurse committed suicide.
Seeing footage of Crowded House drummer Paul Hester on shows such as Rockwiz and his own Hessie's Shed can be painful given that his goofy public persona masked depression that eventually led to suicide.
The SevenDays episode "Pinball Wizard" featured an aircraft being crashed into the The Pentagon during an attack, complete with faux footage of the building with one side blown in, and faux news coverage of the wreckage and mass casualties. It was filmed in 1999.
There was also an episode where a bunch of terrorists rammed a helicopter full of explosives into the Statue of Liberty.
