Hindsight Cleanup

I'm not sure about all these in YMMV.Osmosis Jones:

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Thrax describing Ebola as being a case of dandruff pales in light of the 2014 epidemic.
    • Thrax's name sounds similar to Anthrax. This film was released mere months before the Anthrax attacks that followed 9/11.
    • Thrax uses the symptoms of the common cold before nearly killing Frank. This has become hard to watch since the 2019 Coronavirus outbreak, which has similar symptoms.
  • The movie building up Osmosis x Leah as a couple goes down the drain when you put the spin-off show into account where Osmosis and Drix are forced out of Frank and transferred to a different body.
  • Here and in Cells at Work!, medicines are depicted as Mecha-Mooks. However, in C@W!, they're mindless killing machines, whereas here, they're shown to be self-aware.

I don't see the harsher or the hindsight in that last example with Cells at work.

Found this on Drake & Josh under Harsher in Hindsight:

• Josh teaching Megan's class with those college textbooks, at the dismay of the students and along with an unanimously certain but obvious reaction from many viewers who watched that episode. But when you think about it, the kids had a promising advantage to obtain some early head-start, college-advanced knowledge, as some of them heading into college years later would've been dumbfounded there's more to the four core main subjects than they were taught K-12. And yes, they'll probably get that old "High school nor middle school never taught you this" saying.

I'm not even sure what that's saying...

Sorry if it is an example...

It sounds like it's saying that accidentally giving grade-schoolers college-level material would actually be good for them in the long run, even though the show portrays this as bad. What the hell that has to do with HIH is anyone's guess, but that's par for the course here.

Cut.

All of these feel bad, but the last one doesn't even make sense.

Edited by nrjxll on Mar 11th 2020 at 1:41:47 PM

Yeah, the only one of the Osmosis Jones entries I'd keep is the love interest one because at least that's within the franchise. All the others seem unfair or forcing a connection when none exists.

YMMV.The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe

• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: The throwaway joke about the population of Golgafrincham being wiped out from a virulent disease contracted by a dirty telephone is a lot less funny in the wake of the 2019-20 novel coronavirus outbreak.

I'm cutting per unanimous consensus of ATT. Should we create a list things that are too common to fall under hindsight tropes unless miraculously similar or ironic? (Outbreaks happen every few years, there's a flu seasons. That sounds too common to be this trope.)

YMMV.Spyro Reignited Trilogy:

"Glitchy game continues to be glitchy" doesn't seem particularly harsh to me.

This is more a case of vetting an entry than checking an already existing one, but given how these tropes are so often misused I figure better to check first.

This is for Harsher in Hindsight

• The Last Podcast on the Left: Towards the end of the episode on Howard Unruh, who perpetreated one of the earliest known mass shootings in 1949 New Jersey, the hosts mention that one of the attack's survivors went on to have a grandchild that also survived a mass shooting, this one the Parkland, Florida school shooting of February 2018.

If this works there's probably another entry or two to be had, but I don't know if this entry would be considered valid or not.

There seems a direct enough link, a man and an immediate relative each surviving similar harrowing circumstances decades apart, and it's specifically brought up in the course of the show itself.

Edited by sgamer82 on Mar 12th 2020 at 12:20:01 PM

Given that the work describes it as such, it's probably OK.

Eh, there's a difference between outbreaks and pandemics. What's most stupid about that example is the lack of connection between the coronavirus and dirty telephones.

OTOH I guess it could cut down on the "Actor X died let's add Harsher in Hindsight to any role they had associated with death" stuff, but I thought there were already warnings about that and people just don't read.

Edit: To be clear, this is not saying that adding HIH examples for any work with a deadly disease whenever there's a disease in real life is anything but stupid.

Edited by nrjxll on Mar 12th 2020 at 12:36:06 PM

YMMV.Preacher 2016:

The third example is "two unrelated shows have vaguely similar plot points".

The second might've been able to work, if this show didn't premiere three years after this happened. Where's the hindsight?

I don't even know what the first one is trying to say.

Edited by Primis on Mar 12th 2020 at 1:14:25 AM

Me neither. Cut.

Fireball 20 XL has this entry:

• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: Back in the day, there were a lot of people who portrayed Psyguy as a sort of Lovable Sex Maniac in fanart as a joke. These became pretty easy to wince at once the sexual abuse allegations against him came to light.

Which a while back I edited down from this overly bashy example...

• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: Back in the day, there were a lot of people who portrayed Psyguy as a sort of Lovable Sex Maniac in fanart and the like as a joke. Now that who he really is is common knowledge, this art feels like a middle finger towards the people he's hurt, because while he's a sex maniac all right he's anything but lovable.

Now I’m thinking I should just delete this all together, since fan art and the actual content don’t really correlate with each other.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Mar 12th 2020 at 6:05:45 AM

Yeah, it should go on the page(s) for the fan art(s) in question - if they get pages, that is.

I had a thought the other day. How many Harsh, Hilarious, and Aneurysm "examples" are just Accidentally-Correct Writing?

I've seen several new entries comparing various movie calamities to the recent coronavirus outbreak. For example: movie X shows NYC deserted; flash-forward to 2020, and NYC appears deserted due to people staying indoors to prevent the spread of covid-19.

Just to be clear, are these acceptable Harsher in Hindsight examples?

If you have to ask, the answer is likely "no".

More seriously, this sounds like a virus equivalent of "this actually was in a movie and this actor then died". Unless the work virus is eerily similar to coronavirus, I'd say no. It's just 'this work had a pandemic and now so does real life."

Not unless it's specifically about quarantining a disease (and IMO it should be a disease disease, not a Zombie Apocalypse or something).

Edit: And yeah, even that might be a bit too far.

Edited by nrjxll on Mar 17th 2020 at 7:31:43 AM

From YMMV.A Bugs Life:

• Harsher in Hindsight: Kevin Spacey would find out just how true Hopper's "getting buried by grain" analogy was, as his career survived a few singular accusations of sexual abuse over the years, but was finally destroyed when a whole bunch came at once in 2017.
  • A similar wave of misconduct allegations around the same year would also bring down the film's own director and future ex-Disney chief creative officer, John Lasseter.

It's been a long time since I saw the movie, so I don't remember the scene with Hopper's analogy very well, but this still feels like a stretch. My vague memories and quick research tell me that the analogy was along the lines of "weak people can band together and stand up to us", not "too many bad actions will eventually destroy you" like the entry is interpreting it. What do you guys think?

The #MeToo movement, as I understand it, is a bunch of women gathering together to put out mass accusations of sexual abuse that had gone under the radar for years. I see the analogy between "victims standing up en masse to their abuse(r)s" and "people standing up en masse to their tyrant and his mooks".

Clip for reference:

It still dosent have anything to do with sexual assault though.

Hmm... I'm still wondering if it's a stretch, but I can see the connection of "Hopper fearing a group gathering to oppose him when people gathering as opposition ruined the career of his voice actor". Not sure if it justifies the entry though, especially the John Lasseter one. Maybe we could rewrite it?

It's extended to random gags, too; there's a Running Gag in an episode of Steven Universe: Future where Pearl gives toilet paper to people as a way to write stuff down, and both the episode's YMMV and series' pages have entries relating that to the toilet paper epidemic — I've had to cut the former twice because it was the only example.

This was in YMMV.Tangled.

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • For some people, watching the movie and the animated series can be a lot harder due to how the name of the kingdom, Corona, sounds eerily similar to the deadly Coronavirus.

I don't think this is an example, because it wasn't harsh to start with, and "Corona" is generally a pretty word (even name of a beer brand!). Is this still noting or no- Okay, just found out that Corona is a general word for a star's aura of plasma, so that should go.

EDIT: In fact, there are many instances of fiction that use "Corona" as a name of somewhat. Examples referring to those should be thrown out unless they're more specific to the virus. Did you know "coronavirus" was coined because its spikes look like a crown?

Edited by PrincessPandaTrope on Mar 17th 2020 at 8:11:01 AM

Yeah, "Corona" is just a word.