YMMV / The Simpsons S 26 E 12 The Musk Who Fell From Earth

• Angst? What Angst?: The lead-in plot sees the Simpsons spending four weeks nursing an injured eagle back to health and becoming attached to him, with Marge and Bart telling him they love him as they send him off. He's killed instantly by Elon Musk's arriving rocket and that's the end of that.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The gag about the eagle being killed by Elon's rocket plays a lot darker today due to the controversy around SpaceX's Starbase being built within Boca Chica State Park, with its rocket testing and launches causing major damage to the migrating birds that inhabit the reserve. A bird being killed by Musk also reflects his controversial handling of Twitter whose symbol was a bird up until 23-24 July 2023 when Musk decided to switch the Twitter bird to an 'X' in a move criticized by many, but nonetheless was him killing the iconic blue bird.
  • Lisa, an avowed progressive, praising Musk becomes this after Musk ended up flocking towards right-wing figures years after the episode aired. One cannot imagine Lisa buttering him now, and even then the episode was criticized for the left leaning Lisa praising an avowed capitalist when it aired.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Hello, I'm Elon Musk" "DIE!!!" ^note After Elon introduces himself, Homer throws a bat at him and yells at him to die. The meme ended up seeing a spike in usage by Elon's detractors when he proceeded to gain more infamy over his personal views, accusations of anti labor practices, and criticized handling of Twitter.
  • "Elon Musk is the world's greatest living inventor!" ^note A widely mocked comment from Lisa, often used to mock the show's Seasonal Rot and endorsement of celebrities.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The episode is dated to a time in the 2010s where tech entrepreneurs were held in very high regard with the general public, with Musk himself being the biggest of them all, spurred on by his cameos and fond mentions in shows and films like this very episode. In the later 2010s and the 2020s, that reputation became far more contentious, and Musk became increasingly viewed as a Corrupt Corporate Executive for his opposition to worker's rights and relationships with right-wing figures, culminating in his buyout of Twitter that saw him implement various controversial changes to the platform. This heavily dates the rather rosy view of Musk that the episode takes, in particular Lisa's description of him as "the greatest living inventor", something she could never be written as describing him as only a few years later.^note Even then, the episode received flack for Lisa praising Musk as even prior to his controversies, leftists like her were last on the list for being fans of the Tech CEO world.

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