Hilarious In Hindsight / Invader Zim

Invader Zim

Hilarious in Hindsight in this series.

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• In one episode, Zim catches Dib sneaking around his house in a squirrel disguise. After Dib runs off, Zim yells a parting insult to him, calling him "Squirrel boy!" Several years later, Zim's voice actor would go on to voice the titular character in the series Squirrel Boy.
• This, when you consider the internet meme involving trollface an "u jelly?"

  Dib: You're just jealous...
  Zim: This has nothing to do with jelly!

• Pretty much everything, if you've played Psychonauts. A short, goggle-wearing character voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz, dealing with a paranoid security guard, enjoys setting things on fire, and screaming about meat? Both Raz and Zim (who share a voice actor) are also deathly afraid of water, and there's also Zim trying to justify his green skin with "a skin condition". The Psychonauts' cast features several green, blue, and purple-skinned characters.
  • Come the second game, and Rikki Simmons (GIR) would once again star as a sidekick to a character voiced by Richard Horvitz, with a similar personality to boot.
• Almighty Tallest Purple was voiced by Kevin McDonald. A year later, he would be voicing another wacky alien in a science fiction story.
• Zim's species' skin seems to burn by water. One year later, Signs came out.
• One of the most common Fandom Specific Plots among Invader Zim fanfics is Zim finding out the truth about his mission being fake and becoming depressed over it. That exact plot ended up being used in the movie.
• One of the original plans for the series was being a parody of 50s B-Movies, which was ditched due to Jhonen Vasquez hating it and finding it too predictable. The game series Destroy All Humans! is essentially this very concept, even featuring Richard Steven Horvitz as deuteragonist Orthopox (using almost exactly the same voice as Zim), and has a similarly pitch-black sense of humor.
• Remember that episode where Mars and Mercury were essentially spaceships? Well, not quite the same, but The Wandering Earth has the titular planet being propelled by rockets.
• In this show, Melissa Fahn voices Gaz, a purple-haired, misanthropic Little Miss Badass with a tendency towards the occult. Nearly a decade and a half later, she would go on to voice Rider in the English dub of Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works], who is a purple-haired, misanthropic fully-grown badass with magical powers. And just to make things even funnier, Fate/Grand Order - Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia features a child version of the character, also voiced by Fahn... and she just sounds like Gaz doing a slight European accent.
• The Vortians who built the Irken flagship have horns that make them look like this. Guess which series Richard Horvitz would later star in.