YMMV / The Simpsons S 4 E 21 Marge In Chains

• Crosses the Line Twice: Professor Frink trying to imply that Marge^note who, depending on retcons, either was a small child at the time or wasn't even born yet was involved in the Kennedy Assassination, particularly how he came to this conclusion (believing that a tall bush on the grassy knoll that just so happened to resemble her hairdo was her).
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Jokes on how Japanese people are workaholics even when ill or with broken bones have become distasteful by the late 2010s after reports on people dying from a lack of rest from overworking became commonplace, and by working too much, the birth rate in Japan has lowered significantly.
  • There have been many instances of The Simpsons predicting things that later become true, but this episode as a whole can easily sum up 2020 in a nutshell. Starting with the Osaka flu that hits Springfield with over 300 cases reported bearing a resemblance to the worldwide COVID-19 Pandemic, followed by the people of Springfield pushing down a truck containing killer bees in their hysteria for a cure not unlike the "murder hornets" discovered in the US in May 2020, and finally, they later tear down a statue of Jimmy Carter in outrage and began rioting all over town, Chief Wiggum at one point even deciding to use excessive force on the rioters only for that to backfire on him, just like the numerous protests and riots that have occurred in the wake of George Floyd's death by cops. Mike and Jay of RedLetterMedia discuss this oddly prophetic episode here.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Seeing how this episode and other, older episodes portray former President Jimmy Carter as "history's greatest monster" (to the point of the unveiling of the statue of him that the town had to buy instead of the desired Abraham Lincoln statue because it was cheaper caused a riot) becomes this as later episodes would instead paint him as a Cool Old Guy.
  • Mayor Quimby going on vacation during the virus outbreak and lying about it became funny when in 2021 Ted Cruz was caught flying off to Cancun while Texas was going through the worst winter storm in decades and then lied about it.
    • Relatedly, the mayor of Austin went on vacation during the COVID-19 outbreak after encouraging citizens to stay home.
    • Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison also took a vacation during the peak of the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires, and didn't bother to let the public know, leading to scrutiny when he returned.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "He's history's greatest monster!" often appears in discussions about Jimmy Carter, with varying degrees of sarcasm and seriousness.
  • The "Can you imagine a world without lawyers?" sequence.
• Squick: After Arnie Pie throws up from his helicopter, we then see it fall on a sunbathing Otto via the perspective of the vomit itself. Because the camera zooms straight into Otto's mouth as he screams in horror, it makes it seem like he swallowed it.
• Woolseyism: In Italy, the scene with Apu claiming he can recite Pi to 40 thousand places was changed to him saying he memorised the formulas for every geometric shape "from square to cone", cue Homer saying "Mmm... cone." ^note He was thinking of an ice cream cone.

---