Irony / Other Media

Advertising

• A 2014 commercial for 7Up shows a pickup truck with a flat tire. The truck is overloaded with used tires. The announcer says "If we can pack this much irony into one scene, we can pack genuine 7Up flavor into ten calories."
• A commercial for Cliff's Notes has a pair of teenagers attending a festival where the local firefighters put on a display for fire prevention. A mishap causes the firefighters' display to catch fire. One of the teenagers consults his Cliff's Notes for Fahrenheit 451 and points out the irony.
• Honda's "Hoodie Ninja" commercial for the new Civic drew criticism from Asian-American groups for portraying a Japanese actress as a ninja. The actress in question, Tania Gunadi, actually has Indonesian ancestry, so the complainers were guilty of a particular Asian stereotype themselves.
• A 2019 commercial for Miracle-Gro features Alice Merton's "No Roots". Miracle-Gro is a line of products used for gardening, you know, working with things that have roots.
• An announcement at E3 for Skyrim on the Nintendo Switch used the song "Take a Walk" by Passion Pit. However, the song is actually about a businessman burdened by financial troubles.
• A series of commercials for Volkswagen featured a German mechanic extolling the brand's German engineering with the proclamation "Representing Deutschland". The mechanic is played by Peter Stormare who's actually Swedish.
• A 2021 commercial by Apple for their Airpods featured the song Fallin’ Apart by Young Franco (featuring Denzel Curry and Pell). The irony comes from how Apple, a tech company that is commonly perceived as overpricing their products, uses a song with the lyrics “the cost of living is getting so bad” in the chorus.

Comedy

• Bill Cosby's '60s standup album Revenge has multiple cases from his own childhood:
  • In the title track, Bill plans to hit Harold with a snowball, only for Junior Barnes to hit him with one instead (prompting Bill to complain in much the same way Harold always does). Bill ends up saving a snowball in his freezer, but when he goes to use it against Junior Barnes in the middle of July, he discovers his mother had found it and thrown it away. (Undaunted, he spits on Junior Barnes instead.)
  • In "Buck, Buck", Bill is taken in by a prank involving a statue of Frankenstein's monster. When he tries to help play the same prank on Fat Albert, it backfires on him:
  "I forgot I was behind him."
  • Then they take him to the hospital and put him next to "a wino who was run over by two kids". In the previous track, "9th Street Bridge", Bill and Harold ran into a wino in the dark, mistaking him for a monster and trampling him as they ran away. Furthermore, it was posted on a page that explains what are and what are not examples of irony.
• Part of Jeff Dunham's act, usually happening when he brings Peanut out, describes an occasion when he noticed that someone, against all logic, had brought deaf people and a signer to a ventriloquist act, apparently without a trace of irony in their heart (but plenty in their situation). Not one to let irony go unpunished, Peanut first begins gibbering nonsense and then mouths vigorously without actually saying anything, driving the deaf people nuts as the signer isn't translating anything that's being "said".

Comic Books

• Batman supporting character and the third incarnation of The Spectre, Crispus Allen, has two ironies: the first being he loathes Bruce Wayne and likes Batman, and the second being the person who killed him (thus how he became the third Spectre) shares the name of the original Spectre, "Jim Corrigan".
• Be Prepared: Vera begged her mom to send her and her brother to ORRA, while Phillip wanted to stay home for summer. When they get there, however, Vera has a miserable time, while Phillip takes to it like a duck to water. Then Phillip admits that the kids at ORRA could get very nasty to him.
• The first appearance of Captain America featured him punching out Hitler. Cap's secret identity, Steve Rogers, has blond hair, blue eyes, and after taking the Super Serum is a specimen that anyone would be happy to call ubermensch.
  • The origin of the Super Soldier Serum underwent some retconning in the 90s, which added an extra layer of irony: the scientist working on the serum was in fact a Nazi agent, using American resources to perfect the serum, and he was killed by a different spy who wasn't in on the charade. So a Nazi scientist actually created the ubermensch, who spent his career kicking fascist ass up and down the globe.
• Concrete is hired to be a spokesperson for a controversial radical population control program in The Human Dilemma because he is "race-neutral, childless, and sterile". We already know from An Armchair Stuffed With Dynamite that he's not race-neutral, but it gets better. Guess who somehow ends up pregnant the night before accepting the job?
• In Death of the Family, The Joker is using this to create very darkly comedic crimes based after his first crimes. An example is when he threatens to kill the mayor at midnight, who is hiding in City Hall. Everyone in City Hall but the mayor dies, excluding Batman and Gordon.
• One of Freelance Peacekeeping Agent Death's Head's early cases is when he is hired by a group of rebels to assassinate an oppressive king. During the hit, Death's Head discovers he was actually set up by the King as part of an ongoing ruse to stop assassins before the real rebels can hire them. Peeved, Death's Head proceeds to kill all of the guards and the King — completing the original contract.
• Diabolik examples:
  • The rarely used Running Gag of the titular Villain Protagonist, the world's best thief, finding out that someone has stolen something from him (usually his car, but sometimes it's something from one of his hideouts or, in one occasion, jewels from the boat he was on) without even realizing they were dealing with Diabolik. Lampshaded by his lover Eva usually laughing about it.
  • The whole plot of the story "Mocking Diabolik": to protect some gold statues that Diabolik wants to steal and will have to be moved before the Diabolik-proof room at the museum is ready, Ginko stole a bunch of Diabolik gadgets confiscated by the police and used them to steal the statues first, so that Diabolik will search them everywhere but at the museum while the Diabolik-proof room is completed.
• Dynamo5: Out of all of Captain Dynamo's numerous illegitimate children, the one he personally raised and that inherited all his powers became a super-villain, while the ones who never knew him and only got one of his powers became heroes.
• Empowered is about a superheroine who is almost always the Damsel in Distress.
  • An extra layer is added by, despite her being derided as an incompetent because of this, she is really one of the most noble and selfless heroes in the setting, unlike the idiots and Glory Hounds that most of the other heroes are.
• Forever Evil (2013)
  • Lex Luthor watches as the Crime Syndicate of America takes over Earth and utters one line you'd never expect him to say.
  Lex Luthor: This looks like a job for Superman. So, where the hell is he?!
  • Lex Luthor's Injustice League, which would otherwise be a classic Legion of Doom, having to save the day.
• The Incredible Hulk has General "Thunderbolt" Ross, who will stop at nothing while trying to stop the Hulk, even hulkifying himself and his daughter (becoming Red Hulk and Red She-Hulk, respectively). However, Red Hulk has his own General Ripper, General Fortean, Ross' former apprentice, who blames Red Hulk for Ross' death, as he is unaware that Red Hulk is Ross.
• In Judge Dredd, this is where a good portion of the humor is derived from, a lot of it being of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy and Hoist by His Own Petard variety. One of the most lasting pieces of subtle irony is how Mega-City One's city wall, originally ordered built by Chief Judge Cal to keep the citizens from escaping (so he could kill them), has since become used as an integral part of the city's defense and protection against any foreign threats and invasions.
  • Whenever a story focuses on a robot, computer or similar machine, there will almost always be disaster, tragedy and multiple deaths because the machine is too capable and/or too self-aware and empathic. The reason robots are programmed to be sentient, aware and empathetic? To help people more effectively.
  • One story focusing on Mega-City's extreme unemployment problem had a man go on a shooting spree after he was fired from a post he'd held for years. Judge Dredd arrested him... and sentenced him to several years of hard labor, to the man's great delight. Dredd reflects that for once, he was able to use the law to bring a bit of happiness.
• In the various versions of Spider-Man, the protagonist finds a school nemesis in Eugene "Flash" Thompson, who bullies Peter while simultaneously idolizing his alter ego Spider-Man, an irony in which Peter takes delight and gratification.
  • Besides the myriad of powers, the spider bite gave Peter better eyesight. In real life most kinds of spiders are extremely nearsighted, which is why they mostly set traps for their prey.
• Superboy Prime (an obscure character from 1985) was reintroduced to continuity in Countdown to Infinite Crisis, where he served as an explanation for any inconsistencies in the DC Universe; Superboy-Prime punched reality so hard that it changed history (seriously). As his role in Infinite Crisis and later stories developed (especially following the end of Legion of 3 Worlds), he became a Straw Fan, complaining that They Changed It, Now It Sucks!. So the one character they reintroduced as an answer to fanboys' questions about continuity problems is now used to make fun of the same fanboys.
• In the old Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi comics, one of the main characters falls to the Dark Side and eventually kills his helpless brother in a fit of rage. The irony is that, normally, such an act would be a character's Moral Event Horizon, would have sealed his fate as a Dark Sider forever. That's how it's always played in Star Wars. Instead, performing the irredeemable act of evil prompted him to turn away from the Dark Side and seek redemption.
• The entire concept of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Turtles are known for being slow animals and here, they've been trained as ninjas.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye:
  • Historical irony at work: During the "Shadowplay" arc, set millions of years before the present, Prowl says, "I hope I never get to be as jaded and cynical as you, Orion Pax" when Pax points out that the Senate can't be trusted. Prowl would subsequently go on to become the most bitter, abrasive, cynical, cold and ruthless Autobot in the comics, while Orion Pax would go on to become Optimus Prime, the Transformers franchise's most heroic champion of freedom and justice. So technically, no, he never got to be as jaded and cynical as Pax/Prime was being; he got to be considerably worse.
  • The entire IDW continuity was full of grim historical ironies. Early on in the war, a case could be made that Megatron was actually the hero, as a crusader against a corrupt and autocratic Senate, with Orion Pax as its Noble Top Enforcer. Of course, readers at home who've even vaguely heard of the Transformers franchise know how that turned out.
  • Star Saber is an Egocentrically Religious Knight Templar who, upon murdering Dai Atlas, spits, "Primus hates you," at his fallen foe. We later learn that Primus is Rung - as in, a kind, humble, physically unimposing Nice Guy psychiatrist who has never hated anyone. In other words, the god in whose name Star Saber commits atrocities is literally everything Star Saber isn't.
• The Unbelievable Gwenpool is a teenager themed around everyone's favorite Merc With A Mouth, right down to the Leaning on the Fourth Wall aspects. As it turns out, she never read Deadpool in her life - she feels he's too "LOL Memes" for her tastes.
• Watchmen:
  • Rorschach dismisses Comedian's crimes (including attempted rape and the murder of a pregnant woman) as "moral lapses" of a hero, when the two crimes that drove him to be Rorschach were the rape of a woman and the murder of a child.
    
    It's implied that he believes that those accusations are wholly invented or at least significantly exaggerated. He specifically doubts the accuracy of Hollis Mason's Under the Hood. Also, when he was a little kid, Rorschach absent-mindingly writes a school paper about why dropping the atomic bomb at the end of WWII was justified to prevent any further deaths. As an adult Rorschach is horrified to discover that this is exactly the kind of philosphy that Ozymandias uses to justify his actions.
  • Nuclear physicist Jon Osterman accidentally locks himself inside a disintegration chamber minutes before it's due to activate. When he begs to be let out, his supervisor Dr. Glass tells him that the automatic door lock can't be overridden once the countdown has started: "It's...it's a safety feature." The last four words are set in tiny print, indicating that Glass is all too aware of the situational irony.

Comic Strips

• In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin saves a snowball in his freezer for months. He then misses Susie when he throws it at the back of her head. While Calvin laments missing, Susie gathers up the snowball and hits Calvin in the face with it. Calvin then lampshades this event by saying "The irony of this is just sickening."
• In a Dilbert comic, Dilbert is typing on his computer while Wally stands behind him and says "Have you ever noticed that people continuously bother you when you're trying to work? That's why I come here - to get away from those morons." In the final panel, Wally has "an unpleasant realization".
• A Doonesbury strip from July 2012 has Jeff complaining that Alex married Leo and not him, saying "If I hadn't been off serving my country...". Of course, Leo is a veteran who served in Iraq.

Films — Animation

• At the beginning of Beauty and the Beast, Gaston is told that "No beast alive stands a chance against you!" In the climax, he fights a character called "the Beast" and loses.
• In The Book of Life, Xibalba's human disguise in the framing device is Guicho, a security guard, someone bound to uphold the rules. And he frequently cheats in wagers, thereby disobeying the rules.
• In Brother Bear, Kenai kills the bear (Koda's mother) by stabbing it right through the chest with his spear. In spite of the dark tone of the first part of the movie, there's no blood seeping from the bear or dripping from the spear. Come Brother Bear 2, though, and this Lighter and Softer sequel actually has a scene where a spear grazes Kenai's shoulder, and blood sprays from the wound.
• Cars has a tragic example. When the citizens of Radiator Springs hear that an interstate highway will be passing by the town, they enthusiastically prepare to welcome an influx of potential new customers. Instead, the interstate allows travelers to bypass the small town, thus sending it into financial ruin.
• In Coco:
  • One of Ernesto de la Cruz's quotes is "Never underestimate the power of music". It was music that started a chain of events that eventually revealed Ernesto's true nature and condemned him.
  • One of Ernesto's loyal fans who always followed his advice and tips was the one who exposed Ernesto as a murdering fraud.
• The Disney Princess franchise includes some non-royal heroines like Mulan, but excludes other heroines that actually are royal like Eilonwy. Additionally, actual princesses who become queens are not counted as official members.
• Food Fight is about how name brand products are better than the generic store brand products yet all name brand good guy characters could be seen as mascots for generic store brand products in real life.
• Frozen (2013) has some:
  • Anna wonders if that night she'll meet the one, she believes he is "a stranger, tall and fair." While she thinks it's Hans, Kristoff is "tall and fair" (being a husky blond), and she does meet him that night.
  • Olaf's song, "In Summer", is riddled with Black Comedy and irony because everything he daydreams about is something that melts him more quickly, and Kristoff almost contemplates interrupting this song to tell Olaf this, only for Anna to say, "Don't you dare!"
    Olaf: Just imagine how much cooler I'll be in summer!
  • "Let It Go" is about Elsa's finding happiness and freedom after years of being forced into self-isolation... by isolating herself even further.
• In Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, Pinocchio, a wooden puppet with an exuberant personality and childlike innocence, is more free than the flesh and blood people who live in fascist Italy around him because he has no understanding of political ideology or social norms.
• Overlaps with Bilingual Bonus and Ominous Latin Chanting in Frollo's Hellfire in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. While he's busy condemning Esmeralda and absolving himself of any blame, the choir behind him is singing the Confiteor, a Latin prayer for the confession of sin. For a specific example:
  Frollo: It's not my fault!
  Choir: Mea Culpa ([it is] my fault)
  Frollo: I'm not to blame!
  Choir: Mea Culpa ([it is] my fault)
  Frollo: It was that gypsy girl, that witch who sent this flame!
  Choir: Mea Maxima Culpa ([it is] my most grievous fault)
• The opening interviews of The Incredibles provide an ironic look into the past and present. In the interview, Mr. Incredible said he wouldn't mind settling down but in the present Bob is pining for the glory days of adventure. Elastigirl scoffed at the idea of domestic life but Helen ends up being content and happy raising a family. Frozone thought the idea of revealing your secret identity in a relationship was amusing, while Lucius is so honest with his wife she knows where to find his supersuit and hide it from him if she needs to.
• In Incredibles 2, Elastigirl is among the hypnotized supers who gives a televised speech to the world about how supers have become bitter whilst in hiding. It contrasts sharply with the Helen we've come to know from the first movie, the one who didn't become embittered, but instead made the most of her normal life (by raising a family).
• Towards the end of Lady and the Tramp, the dogcatcher picks up Tramp and takes him to the pound to be put down once and for all. Fortunately, Jock and Trusty intercept the wagon and save Tramp — but in stopping the wagon, it falls over, and a dog, in this case Trusty, seemingly is killed, crushed by the fallen wagon. Miraculously, this is averted in the last scene, where Trusty only broke his leg.
• The whole song "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" from The Lion King (1994). Turns out Simba could wait. He had to. And when the time came he even resisted the call.
• Migration: While stuck on a crane, Uncle Dan admits that he doesn't like heights.
• Many bronies were angered by the announcement of the My Little Pony: Equestria Girls films as they depicted the ponies as humans. A movie featuring them as ponies was eventually made. It ended up being considered not as good as most of the Equestria Girls movies.
• In Shrek, Shrek tells Donkey that he doesn't like annoying creatures who never stop talking (paraphrasing here). Donkey launches into a rant about how much they annoy him, too.
  Donkey: And there's that awkward silence, you know...
  AWKWARD SILENCE
  Donkey: Can I stay with you?
• Strange Magic: Marianne tells her father that she'll marry a boy she can look into his eyes and not want to punch in the face. Later on in the film, she falls in love with the Bog King, who she punched in the face during their first interaction. The two of them started having romantic tension during their first duel, which was shortly after said punch.
• Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay: The movie is about a bunch of supervillains—and Amanda Waller—fighting over the fabled "Get Out Of Hell Free" Card, which allows one person, upon their death, to bypass divine judgement and go straight to Heaven. Depending on what you believe about God and forgiveness, the person who was ultimately given the card when they died was the Token Good Teammate who probably would have gone to Heaven anyway.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie shows that Mario hates mushrooms. Anyone who knows Super Mario Bros. well would know exactly where this is going - many of the power-ups are mushrooms, and he has now become a visitor in the Mushroom Kingdom, so Mario is forced to tolerate their taste, at one point throwing up since he ate too many mushrooms during the montage where he is running through Peach's practice course.
• In Turning Red, in order to continue looking perfect, Mei often allows her mother to believe she's so pure and perfect that she'd never draw suggestive pictures of her and Devon, or actively hustle her red panda form. Her lying unto itself compromises the very "perfection" her mother has built her daughter's image around.
• WALL•E, a robot who crushes trash into manageable cubes, is at one point found in a trash cube that was made by a larger trash-compactor bot. Also, towards the end, he is crushed to Disney Death by a machine whose purpose has nothing to do with crushing.

Jokes

• When you're in the hospital, why do nurses wake you up in the middle of the night? To give you your sleeping pills.

Professional Wrestling

• Ring of Honor, who by this point had long been boasting about having the deepest Tag Team division in the world, brought Stuka Jr, whom they hyped as a tag team specialist^note likely based on winning two different tag team mask vs hair matches with Rey Cometa and Metal Blanco, holding the Mexican national trios titles for almost a year as part of MSM fly or holding CMLL's Arena Coliseo Tag Team Titles with Flash\Fuego for five years. On the hook they'd be giving him his first one on one match with Kamaitachi, who had been running amok alongside The Addiction, ROH's World Tag Team Champions (of the world).
• When TNA iMPACT changed its name to Impact Wrestling in 2011, many thought the company itself was changing its name too. After purchasing TNA in late 2016, Anthem did just that: changing the promotion's name and dropping the "TNA" branding.
  • After the company, against the network's wishes, rehired the infamous Vince Russo, Spike TV pulled the plug on Impact in 2014 (leading to its short run on Destination America in 2015). Yet, the U.K version of Spike will air Impact in 2017, somewhat bringing the company back to the very network they got themselves booted off from in the U.S.

Roleplay

• In Embers in the Dusk, the most expensive STC find on Avernus before the Emperor's death was a type of Rejuvenat twice as powerful as the best known. The discussions stated that one of the reasons it is so valuable (enough to nearly buy out the nearby Forge World) is that even the High Lords of Terra will want to live twice as long. Considering what the Death of the Emperor did to the Solar System, it is unlikely this particular group got to enjoy the increased lifespan or even their regular one.

Tabletop Games

• An example of dramatic irony is pointed out in the Mage: The Awakening sourcebook "Night Horrors: the Unbidden", in a section dealing with the Franklin Working. This enchantment, created by a conservative, sex-negative and homophobic mage, affects the students at the high school with reduced libido and embedded "traditional values"...and is focused on a statue of Benjamin Franklin, one of American history's most notorious horndogs.
• The Planescape campaign "Faction War", Duke Rowan Darkwood was looking for a gemstone containing the soul of a mad mage who tried to overthrow the Lady of Pain. He found it, broke it open to release the soul inside, and was promptly sent back in time by the Lady. In the process, he lost his memories and became the very same mad mage who tried to overthrow the Lady. But that's not all. This time, the Lady imprisoned his soul inside a gemstone, where, a couple of centuries later, he finally died when the gemstone was broken open by his younger self. Irony to the power of Three indeed.
• Warhammer:
  • The Dwarfs are the Warhammer-world's primary grudge-holders, but their conflict with the High Elves is purely driven by the elves; the Dwarfs consider the conflict settled after they killed Caledor II and took his crown, and the Elves are welcome to get it back by coming to Karaz-a-Karak and asking for it. The Elves, however, consider the fact that one of their sacred artifacts is in Dwarf hands to be a personal insult, and refuse to lower themselves to begging thieves to return their property.
  • Nurgle loves life, and eternally seeks to create more. However, so many of his creations are utterly inimical to other forms of life, Nurgle is far more likely to be seen as a destroyer than a creator.
• In Warhammer 40,000, the Imperium is a star-spanning racially-supremacist theocratic dictatorship which worships the purity and superiority of the human race... and is protected by armies of Super Soldiers so heavily augmented by biological enhancements and cybernetics that they aren't even remotely human anymore. And the actual pure human soldiers they have tend to die in droves.
  • For dramatic irony, the early days of the Imperium, prior to the Horus Heresy, are viewed in-universe as a lost golden age that was doomed by Horus's betrayal. When the Horus Heresy books came out, it became pretty unambiguous that the early Imperium was merely a different flavour of totalitarian fascism, with the Emperor's campaign being "better" only in that there was an actual R&D budget and the Inquisition didn't exist yet.
  • More dramatic irony: Lorgar Aurelian wrote the holy book for the Lectitio Divinitatus, which would eventually give rise to the Imperial Cult. Lorgar was the first Primarch to fall to Chaos, and his Legion has since dedicated ten thousand years to fighting a religion that mostly exists because of Lorgar.
  • Mortarion's early life was spent on a poisonous hell-world with small human settlements toiling for superhuman alien overlords, leading to him leading the humans in a battle against their oppressors. Replace "alien" with "so heavily augmented and mutated that they only barely count as human" and that's the world Mortarion built in the Eye of Terror, except that he's too busy being the oppressor to consider rebelling against anyone.
  • Horus's rebellion was motivated, in part, by a vision from the Gods of Chaos, portraying the eventual state of the Imperium as a totalitarian theocracy where the Emperor and some of the Primarchs are revered as gods, while others are forgotten. That's how the Imperium ended up as a result of his rebellion (the Emperor's original vision was more of a totalitarian secular autocracy). Tzeentch probably had a good chuckle over that one.
• Cyberpunk: The genetically engineered grain that is the base for production of CHOOH-2 (a particularly energy-dense blend of alcohols which is the favored fuel for combustion engines in the setting) is also more nutritious, tastier and better suited for baking bread than almost all other grains. However, the demand for CHOOH-2 is so high that no-one can actually afford to eat it.

Theatre

• An example of verbal irony shows up in Chicago, during Billy's song "All I Care About". Taken out of context, it is a song about a man whose sole priority is saving damsels in distress, and who cares nothing about money. In-context, however, the show makes it clear that he's just a money-grubbing Amoral Attorney.
• Meta-example: during a performance of Hair at the Hollywood Bowl, which is an outdoor amphitheater, it was a beautiful day... Until the show reached "Let The Sun Shine In." Then it started raining.
• Historical irony in Hamilton: "I am not throwing away my shot!" Sung by a man any educated American knows will eventually die after missing his shot in a Duel to the Death, literally throwing away his shot^note There is evidence suggesting that Hamilton intended to miss his shot in the duel, but the shot he fired hit a tree directly behind Aaron Burr, so we know he didn't fire straight in the air as the show suggests.
• Gabe in Next to Normal has a Motif of seeing himself as immortal, with his signature song being called "I'm Alive", which is ironic on account of the fact that Gabe is actually a recurring hallucination, and the real Gabe died as an infant. Similarly, Gabe and his sister Natalie have a duet called "Superboy and the Invisible Girl", which is about how their mother only seems to care about Gabe and pays little attention to Natalie, when it should be the other way around due to Gabe being long dead.
• Oedipus Rex uses both Tragic Irony and Cosmic Irony.
• The plot of The Producers is as follows: the titular producers determine they can make more money if their next play flops than if it succeeds. So, they set out to produce a play that intentionally bombs by getting the worst play they can find ("Springtime For Hitler"), the worst cast, and the worst director. Somehow, this perfect storm of ineptitude comes across as satire and the resulting play is a massive hit. (So much so that the trope for when someone attempts to fail on purpose and has massive success as a result is called Springtime for Hitler.)
• Rock of Ages.
  • The soundtrack consists mostly of rock and pop songs of The '80s. Notably absent (they couldn't get the rights): Def Leppard's "Rock Of Ages".
  • Another example from the musical: a group of Moral Guardian-types protesting a rock club while singing "We're Not Gonna Take It". Especially when you consider the protestors' similarity to the PMRC and how the lead singer of the band that performed that song felt about that group.

Theme Parks

• Disneyland, whose main mascot is a mouse, goes to great lengths to kill any mice in the park, even allowing feral cats to roam the park to keep the population down.
• The Haunted Mansion, where the ghosts are forever cursed to be trapped in the mansion and endlessly wander the hallways, is located in the Liberty Square area at Magic Kingdom.
• The children of Walter Knott refused to sell the struggling Knott's Berry Farm to Disney, believing that they would remove too much of what their father built. Cedar Fair, the company they eventually sold it to, ended up removing far more of the park than what Disney had planned to in their theoretical brainstorming of turning the park into "Disney's America".
• The characters in Marvel Superhero Island at Universal's Islands of Adventure are all now owned by Disney, Universal's biggest rival in the theme park business.
• Tomorrowland at the Disneyland parks always proved to be a challenge to Imagineers, as it kept becoming "Todayland" or even "Yesterdayland" as the technology of the outside world advanced. Nowadays, it's filled with many sci-fi franchises that are either set in the present or the past (Lilo & Stitch, Iron Man, Star Wars, Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc., and so on).
• The Tree of Life at Disney's Animal Kingdom, a park all about the conservation of animals and the environment, is built on an oil rig^note it's not pumping oil, they just needed something that could withstand hurricane-force winds.

Visual Novels

• ''C14 Dating': One of the scenes with Kyler has him reveal that he's wary of Melissa flirting with Deandre in part because one of Sherri's (Melissa's professor) previous students started a romance during the class, then dropped it without warning to travel to another country with her new boyfriend. It's entirely possible for Kyler to become the next person to romance one of Sherri's students.
• At the beginning of "The Atonement Chapter", of Higurashi: When They Cry, Shion went on a killing spree the last few episodes before that,and died in the last episode. She is then seen just sitting at Angel Mort, with her body guard, just being Shion.
• Juniper's Knot: Before the fiend was trapped within the magical circle holding her captive, she had a human friend. When her friend was killed by humans, the fiend burned the town and killed them all. Years later, she returned to her friend's grave to find an ugly olive tree had grown over it. Still bitter over her death, she smashed the olive tree but left the roots alone because she didn't want to disturb her dead friend. Because olive trees are strong, it grew again, even uglier than before. In the present time, when the boy is looking to place a different life form within the circle so the fiend can get out^note the circle must always have one life within it, meaning the fiend can only escape if someone trades places with her, an olive tree is the only thing that manages to take root in the hard soil. It works, and the fiend goes free.
• Tsukihime: So you have Brunestud of the Crimson Moon, a borderline cosmic entity and strongest being on Earth's moon. In comes Zelretch, looking to kill it. He goes about this by first using his power to manipulate dimensions to move their fight to another dimension. He then proceeds to drop the moon on Type Moon.

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