Hilarious In Hindsight / Friends

• In the second episode of the series, Ross is at work when Carol comes to visit. One of his coworkers, who he's having an argument with, says, "Isn't that your ex-wife?", to which he replies "No it's not". The hilarious part is that her actress changes after that episode, so it really isn't.
• The One With Barry and Mindy's wedding has a character being called Princess Bubble Yum way before Adventure Time has a literal Princess Bubblegum.
• In 'The One with George Stephanopoulos' when the girls are discussing what 'their guys' would be like to sleep with, Phoebe and Rachel think Chandler would be repressed, but Monica insists he's more sophisticated than he lets on. Guess who turns out to be the 'best sex she's ever had'?
• "The One with the Dozen Lasagnas" opens with the Friends all humming the theme for The Odd Couple (1970). Twenty one years later, and Matthew Perry was cast as Oscar in his own version of that series.
• In "The One With The Giant Poking Device", after Monica accidentally hits Ben's head on a beam in the apartment, Ben says "Monica bang", but with his childish pronunciation, "Bang" sounds very like "Bing"; a few years later, Monica will at least have the potential to be legally known as 'Monica Bing'...
• In "TOW Joey Moves Out" Judy suggests setting Monica up with Richard's son. Two seasons later they do date and it's as awkward as you'd expect.
• Season 5 ends with Ross and Rachel getting married while drunk in Vegas. Ross promises he'll get it annulled, but he doesn't want to have his third marriage fail as well, so he ends up lying to Rachel about it. Rachel finds out three episodes later that they're still married, and she furiously asks Ross, "When were you going to tell me? After the birth of our first secret child?". Two seasons later she gets pregnant with Ross's child, and Ross is the last one to find out.
• In "TOW No One's Ready", Phoebe wears a Christmas ornament in order to hide a stain on her dress, stating that she'll explain it away as a political symbol. When Chandler asks her what she is supporting, she responds "Duh, Christmas." It's hard to believe that something treated as an absurd joke reflecting Phoebe's personality would become an actual politically charged issue a decade later.
• When Carol and Susan get married, someone asks who is the most likely to get married last and everyone looks at Chandler. He actually marries Monica a few seasons later, while other main characters are still single.
• In "The One With All The Resolutions", Ross says "no divorces in '99!/Just the one divorce in '99!". He ends up Divorcing Rachel less than a year later in "The One with Joey's Porsche" (Which aired on October 21st, 1999) making his 'resolution' hilarious indeed.
• Joey asked Rachel "How you doin'? You all right?"? in the season 2 premiere. Who would have thought that the first half of that would be his catchphrase?
• Invoked in-universe during the One with the Thanksgiving Flashbacks when Ross brags about Carol playing "for both teams."
• The episode where Rachel was freaked out that Ross has been planning their future, down to the name of their kids. The first he came up with was Emily.
• In "The One With Rachel's Big Kiss", Ross gets a tux worn by Val Kilmer in Batman Forever, resulting in Chandler getting upset, because "Ross is Batman". Years later, The Dark Knight Trilogy by Christopher Nolan gave Batman a Love Interest named Rachel.
  • From the same episode, Chandler saying Batman is much cooler than James Bond becomes this, because, back then, it sounded ridiculous. After the success of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy and the popularity of comic book movies in general, Batman, as of 2020, is genuinely more popular than James Bond.
  • For added hilarity, in November 2000, Matthew Perry appeared along then-Bond star Pierce Brosnan as one of GQ's "Men of the Year", and going into Heartwarming in Hindsight, Brosnan was among the many stars that paid tribute to Perry after his untimely death in 2023.
• Ross once tried to explain the concept of Unagi to Rachel and Phoebe and they simply laughed it off. Maybe he would've had more success if he'd used the term Ultra Instinct instead.
• Season 1: Chandler offers Monica a Fallback Marriage Pact if they're both single when they're forty. Turns out he cashes in on that deal a lot sooner...
• And from the same episode, Monica complaining that a woman has two babies and she doesn't even have one. Chandler promises she'll get one.... And nine seasons later when their baby arrives? It's twins. Boy when Chandler makes a promise he'll damn well follow through with it!
• In Season 3 Chandler spends an episode fruitlessly convincing Monica she should date him. She refuses for numerous reasons. (He's not 'mature' enough, puts on weird voices, is 'Chandler' and would always be the guy who peed on her). They go on to not only date, but fall in love, start a relationship, move in together, get engaged, get married and raise a family together.
  Chandler: There's a nuclear holocaust, I'm the last man on Earth. Would you go out with me?
  Monica: Eh.
• Season 6 has one episode that shows how different the cast would be if they did something in their lives that changed them forever. In this alternate continuity, Chandler is the one who is unemployed and has to borrow money from Joey instead of it being the other way around. Season 9 has an episode where the same exact scenario is played out, except Chandler swallows his pride to ask Joey for the money.
• In Season 4 Monica gives Chandler a crash course in 'pleasing women' in the rather famous "Seven, Seven, SEVEN!!!" scene. Cue Season 5 and her new boyfriend is the "best she's ever had".
• In Richard's first appearance, Phoebe simply says "James Bond!" because he was wearing a tuxedo. Tom Selleck later appeared as a retired spymaster in Killers, alongside Ashton Kutcher. In another episode, Ross asks if Richard was "in 'Nam". Tom Selleck later appeared in Blue Bloods, where his character explicitly served in Vietnam. Magnum was also a Vietnam vet.
• Monica marries the guy who peed on her. Chandler marries the woman who cut off his toe.
• In "The one with the butt," Joey gets a role in a musical about Sigmund Freud. Years after the episode first aired, an actual musical about Sigmund Freud premiered in Sweden.
• In the episode where the guys play "Bamboozled", Chandler Bing loses after drawing a Google card. That's right, for once, Google ruined Bing.
• The Season 2 episode 'TOW Old Yeller Dies' has Joey and Chandler idolizing Richard who is currently dating Monica. Chandler even tries to grow a moustache to be more like him. This is extremely funny later in the series when Chandler is the one dating Monica.
• In season 5 Rachel lies to a guy saying she'll be at a Regatta Gala. A few seasons later, guess who tries to teach Joey how to sail.
• Straddling the line between Hilarious in Hindsight and Late to the Punchline is the famous "Ross and Rachel kiss for the first time" scene. The set-up seems normal at first, but try to remember this exchange while wearing your Troper Glasses - and remember it happened before Internet culture:
  Ross: What matters is I-I don't need this right now. I'm happy! This ship has sailed.
  Rachel: Ok, you go ahead and you do that, Ross, because I don't need your stupid ship.
• A season 6 episode has a throwaway gag with Rachel robbing some money out of Ross's jacket. When she catches a girl looking at her she replies "Alimony". Which becomes especially funny knowing she has a baby with Ross one year later.
• In "The One With All the Haste" after the girls switch the apartments back, Chandler angrily states that he's going to try and move back in whenever they have to leave for work. As it turns out, two years later he would eventually move back in to the apartment, after he and Monica decided to start living together. Likewise, Rachel's behavior where she absolutely hates living in Joey and Chandler's apartment is pretty amusing to watch knowing that she spends most of seasons 6 through 10 living there with Joey and loving it.
• Matt LeBlanc revealed, when Episodes premiered, that his hair started going gray at the start of Friends' run and that he dyed his hair himself. Rewatching the show after learning that fact can make viewers notice that Joey's hair gets darker and darker and actually stops reflecting light with each progressing season as LeBlanc went grayer and moved from simply dyeing his temples to having to dye all of his hair.
• In the season 7 premiere, Rachel tells Ross that they never had a "bonus night" - when two people break up but they get back together for just one night with no strings attached. The two didn't manage to get that bonus night then, but later while dealing with invitations for Monica and Chandler's wedding, the two of them have sex with apparently no strings attached as far as feelings go... Only for Rachel to get pregnant.
• One episode has Joey accepting a Soap Opera award on behalf of a co-star - and he, Rachel and Phoebe play with it when they get home. Well guess what - none other than Kate Winslet claims she keeps her own Oscar in the bathroom at her home. So that any visitors can play with it if they wish.
• Phoebe's song about sexuality in "The One After the Super Bowl", which includes the bit, "then there are bisexuals, but some just say they're kidding themselves," becomes downright amusing when Phoebe herself started explicitly showing signs of being bi as the series went on.
• Joey finding Rachel's Guilty Pleasure of an erotic novel. A society that's experienced Fifty Shades of Grey can only imagine his reaction to that.
• One episode has a sub-plot in which Monica becomes obsessed with that fact that someone would not have dated her had she been a lesbian, and picked Rachel over her. in 2017, a certain other Monika would become obsessed with winning over another person who picks her friends over her...
• "The One With The Princess Leia Fantasy" is about Ross trying to fulfill his fantasy of Rachel dressing like Princess Leia as Jabba the Hutt's slave in Return of the Jedi. During an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Stephen Colbert, an old college classmate of David Schwimmer, showed a college photo where Schwimmer had long black hair which, as Stephen put it, made Schwimmer resemble Kylo Ren, Leia's son in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy.
• The mini arc about Chandler's psycho new roommate in Season 2 includes Chandler being appropriately creeped out when he learns Eddie's been coming into his room to watch him sleep. "Eddie," of course, is the diminutive form of "Edward"...
• In "The One With Joey's Fridge" (2000), Monica and Chandler get into a heated rivalry with Phoebe over who chose the best guy for Rachel to date, even belittling a different guy Rachel actually likes. It looks like a commentary on the practices of Die for Our Ship and shipping wars... before either of them became widespread online.
• "The One With Monica's Secret Closet" has Chandler desperately trying to get Monica to open a locked door and her at one point begging him to "Let it go!"
• After Phoebe, who was being a surrogate mother, delivers the babies at the hospital, Rachel asks her if it's really as painful as they say. Phoebe says it is, and that Rachel wouldn't be able to take it. Several seasons later, Rachel gets pregnant and finds out for herself.
• "TOW Rachel's Inadvertent Kiss" has Monica obsessed with proving she and Chandler are a hotter couple than Gary and Phoebe, insisting they have to be "the best" couple. Heaven help us if she ever finds out about the endless fandom debate of whether Ross and Rachel or Monica and Chandler are the best relationship!
• "TOW The Cake", Judy and Jack suggest that they may not be alive for their granddaughter Emma's 18th birthday, which becomes this as their actors Christina Pickles and Elliott Gould were alive in 2020, which would be when Emma was 18 and are still alive to this day.
• In the episode "TOW Ross Moves In", Phoebe dates a guy Monica referred to as "Larry The Health Inspector Guy". Years after that episode, comedian Larry The Cable Guy made a movie called "Health Inspector".
• In one of the later series, Chandler's boss made a joke about how "we all support President Clinton.... and her husband Bill!" Years later, Hilary Clinton would run for President.
• Joey, during the premiere of Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E., voices his doubt that he can carry a show on his own. It was proved true a few years later.
• "The One With the Lesbian Wedding" ends with the group talking about marriage. Monica's question of who in their circle will be the first to get married, which fizzles because Ross and technically Phoebe were already married. Joey asks who will be the last in the room to get married instead and all eyes turn to Chandler. Several years later, Chandler and Monica get married while their other friends are all still single. The show ends with Joey being the only member of the group that's still single, so that he'd be free for relationships in his own spin-off. (That show ended with him in a relationship, by the way.)
• Rachel reveals in Season 4 she stole a fossil from Ross' museum, thinking it was a replaceable trinket rather than a priceless artifact becomes this after 2003, when Thad Roberts pulled a similar heist of both dinosaur fossils and moon rocks. This time, though, he stole them with the full intent of capitalizing on their value.

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