YMMV / Bob & Ray

• Harsher in Hindsight: In one early episode, Ray explains that he was off yesterday due to 'a sharp pain in my lower back', joking to the effect that since he's in radio, he didn't know if it was a cold (ie., a kidney infection) back there or a knife. In hindsight... he's evidently joking about a very early symptom of the kidney failure that would kill him years later.
• Once Original, Now Common: Bob and Ray are subject to this to an extent: now that the Deadpan Snarker is ubiquitous and subversion an essential part of the American comedy landscape, it's hard to realise just how cutting-edge hip B&R were considered for popularising and refining those elements back in The '50s. Partly because of their unassuming style and partly because, as one commentator put it, they influenced a lot of people who've become a lot more famous building on their innovations.
• Parody Displacement: Many of the radio parodies, notably by spoofing the then-hit Soap Opera "Mary Noble, Backstage Wife" as "Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife". The former was a deadly-earnest story of an 'ordinary woman' married to a matinee idol; the latter... culminated, around 1970, in Mary and her family leaving showbiz altogether to open a toast-themed restaurant. The series having earlier openly mocked Senator Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Army hearings. It is still one of B&R's best-known skits.

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