Harsher In Hindsight / Radio

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• In 1998/1999, Glenn Beck was talking about a report of threats against the US made by Osama bin Laden. When a caller said we shouldn't take him seriously, Beck responded with, "Mark my words, within ten years there will be blood, bodies, and buildings in the streets of New York. Will you take him seriously then?" Then came 9/11/01. Could also count as The Cuckoo Lander Was Right.
• The villains of the Big Finish Doctor Who original U.N.I.T. series is the Internal Counter-Intelligence Service, an ultra-nationalist U.N.I.T. counterpart with plans to take over the UK. And this military terrorist organisation threatening the British government is referred to as I.C.I.S., pronounced "Isis".
• One of the Running Gags on Car Talk, established in the show's early years, was that Tom could never remember the previous week's Puzzler. Tom eventually developed Alzheimer's disease. Ray boldly Lampshaded the trope in his on-air announcement of Tom's death, saying of his brother's inability to remember the Puzzler, "I guess he wasn't kidding."
• The special 25th-anniversary edition of I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again in 1989 ended with David Hatch reading the credits and finally saying "I hope to see you all again in 25 years' time", to laughter and cheers from the audience. By 2014, 25 years later, all of the original performers were still alive — except David Hatch.
• In an interview by Dr Anthony Clare for the radio series In the Psychiatrist's Chair in 1991, Jimmy Savile appeared to be "a man without feelings". "There is something chilling about this 20th-century 'saint'", Clare concluded in 1992 in his introduction to the published transcript of this interview.
• Journey into Space: The 2008 radio play Frozen in Time, which was set in 2013, was the final Journey into Space story written by Charles Chilton. It starred David Jacobs as Jet. Both men died in 2013.
• Frank Kramer of Frosty, Heidi, and Frank fame has had a long career's worth of jokes mocking the ideas of love and monogamy. In late 2017, however, he claimed to begin seeing a therapist about his "intimacy issues" as he called them. In their October 24th, 2017 broadcast, inspired by the rising #metoo movement, Frank admitted for the first time ever that he was molested as a young toddler, and had the realization that this might be where his intimacy problems stem from. His history of jabs at love and marriage is considerably less funny now, knowing where it's supposedly coming from.
• Rush Limbaugh quit smoking cigarettes early in his career, and one of his most common catchphrases would be to say that he grabbed a story with his "formerly nicotine-stained fingers." However, a large part of his persona was as a proud and defiant aficionado of cigars. He was often photographed with a fat cigar in his hand to portray himself as wealthy, successful, and powerful. He would occasionally go on long diatribes claiming that smoking does not cause cancer. As late as 2015, he stated, "Smokers aren’t killing anybody," and "I would like a medal for smoking cigars." In February 3, 2020, he announced that he had been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, which became terminal by October of that year and ultimately claimed his life on February 17, 2021.
• The Radio Drama of Star Wars: A New Hope has this scene, in which Darth Vader is interrogating Leia with a combination of drugs and the Dark Side of the Force, making her suggestible. Vader tells her that her father wants to know what she's done with the Death Star plans, and goes from gently coaxing to telling her her father orders she tell them. When she gasps that Father wouldn't, Vader switches to telling her that she's in incredible pain. Burning alive, and her flesh has been torn apart, she's dying!
  • This has the one-two punch of harshness that the writers themselves weren't aware of. Vader himself had been cut to pieces and burned severely, then was left to die, so he's drawing on personal experience...and Leia loves Bail Organa dearly, but Vader is her biological father, and this is the only time he's ever spoken to his daughter sweetly. Seconds before torturing her. Is it any wonder that when she met his spirit after he died and he told her that he'd inadvertently helped the cause, she didn't want anything to do with him?
• From the opening of the 1938 version of The War of the Worlds: "In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment, near the end of October....the war scare was over."

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