It was indeed.
But that joke isn't funny anymore
It's too close to home
And it's too near the bone,
More than you'll ever know
— The Smiths, "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore"
A scene, joke, or offhand line that was originally meant to be funny or light-hearted but which, due to traumatic events in future episodes of a show or in
real life, now makes the viewer cringe when it is seen in reruns.
This often has to do with a character or actor's death and is named for a line from the
Buffy episode "The Freshman" in which Buffy hopes that her mother will have a "
funny aneurysm" when she sees the cost of Buffy's college textbooks. The line becomes cringeworthy after Buffy's mother
dies of an aneurysm later in the series.
The inverse of this, where something in real life or more recent canon retroactively makes a lighthearted moment
funnier, is
Hilarious In Hindsight.
In a
Roger Ebert Movie Glossary column, he defines the (related)
Pentimento Paradigm: "Pentimento is when images from an old painting seep through and become visible in a newer picture that has been painted over the old. Thus the relation is when what we know about a filmmaker or actor seeps into our perception of his film work. Example: Any old Rock Hudson movie now that his private life is no longer private. Being aware of the reality behind the fiction may add to the complexity of the drama (Taylor and Burton in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?") or distract from its intentions (Woody and Mia in "Husbands and Wives")." The Rock Hudson and
Husbands and Wives examples are definitely
Funny Aneurysm Moments.
There is also the
Unfunny Aneurysm Moment where the scene or joke, which is already unfunny or tragic, becomes worse because of
Reality Subtext or more recent canon. (A joke about jumbo jets hitting skyscrapers published before 2001 will likely be a
Funny Aneurysm Moment; a serious plotline about jumbo jets hitting skyscrapers that was published before 2001 is an
Unfunny Aneurysm Moment.)
If this is done
intentionally, this trope becomes a
Cerebus Retcon. Compare
Hilarious In Hindsight.
Sub-categories:
