History HarsherInHindsight / Literature

* The ''Conrad Stargard'' series, written by a Western author and having its first book first published in 1986, plays straight many negative tropes and stereotypes that would later become tired and oversaturated in the overcrowded {{Isekai}} genre. This includes a bland modern protagonist quickly becoming overpowered and being treated as a god by everyone in the medieval setting he winds up in, having convenient access to modern technology despite being stuck in a pre-industrial setting, and ''having a harem of sex slaves, many of whom are underage''.

* In the ''Literature/StarChallenge'' gamebooks series, your spacecraft is named "Challenger", it's considered a shuttlecraft in-universe, and in most bad endings she ends up destroyed, of course with you and your robot inside, as well as in some good ones. It's [[YetAnotherStupidDeath less funny]] when UsefulNotes/{{NASA}}'s Challenger shuttlecraft blew up in 1986 shortly after having taken off.

* ''Literature/EarthsChildren'': The part where a pre-teen Ayla is repeatedly raped by Broud is particularly hard to stomach once you read the other books in the series and realise that even if she'd been raised by the Others and not by the Clan she would still have lost her virginity at a young age. The Others believe that an adolescent female is vulnerable while she lacks both the protective spirits of childhood and the power of full womanhood and that having sex for the first time is what makes a girl a woman. Among the Others, however, the custom is to hold a [[SexAsRiteOfPassage special ceremony]] at which girls are deflowered by young men who are carefully supervised to make sure they don't get too rough, which is what Ayla's first time would probably have been like had her circumstances been different. And if she'd still had the misfortune of being raped, her tribe would have supported her and the man or men responsible would have bee suitably dealt with.

* ''Literature/ThePianistFromSyria'': Early in the novel, the author repeatedly mentions "[[Main/{{Anime}} a popular manga show]]" named ''Anime/HelloSandybell'' in his country. ''Hello! Sandybell'' is about a little girl SearchingForTheLostRelative after her father dies. Later, the author's brother goes missing during the Syrian Civil War after his own father dies, and he ''breaks''.

* Creator/DavidSedaris wrote several essays that mention his sister Tiffany. At age six, her older siblings convinced her to lie in the middle of the road and get hit by a car to make their mom feel guilty, telling her death is "like sleeping, only you get a canopy bed." In another essay, her father browbeats her for stabbing David with a pencil until she couldn't hold a crayon without bursting into tears. Finally, in "Put A Lid On It," he describes how his parents put her in a reform school (the now infamous [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elan_School Elan School]]), causing her to resent her family and separate herself from them as much as possible. All of this presents enough of a sad portrait of his sister's life, but when you learn she died of suicide in 2013 and, in her will, banned her entire family from attending her funeral (all chronicled in David's essay "Now We Are Five"), the whole thing becomes downright heartbreaking.

* Listening to a certain children's story by Creator/DickKingSmith is rather uncomfortable with hindsight. Renaming a cat you've found out is female? Okay, yes, female cats are called queens. the cat's a queen. So we get this line:

** Hermione's House Elf plotline in Book 4, where Hermione is jokingly portrayed as a SoapboxSadie for opposing the use of House Elves for slave labor, and for protesting the idea of HappinessInSlavery. Fast forward to ''Theatre/HarryPotterAndTheCursedChild'', where the play caused a hubbub when it cast a black actress to portray Hermione and all of a sudden the portrayal of S.P.E.W. as silly and reactionary becomes two or three times more awkward than it already is.

** Hermione's House Elf plotline in Book 4, where Hermione is jokingly portrayed as a SoapboxSadie for opposing the use of House Elves for slave labor, and for protesting the idea of HappinessInSlavery. Fast forward to ''Theatre/HarryPotterAndTheCursedChild'',
where the play caused a hubbub when it cast a black actress to portray Hermione and all of a sudden the portrayal of S.P.E.W. as silly and reactionary becomes two or three times more awkward than it already is.

* ''Literature/TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea'': Since the beginning of his career as a writer, Verne has being accused by critics of being [[ScifiGhetto "only" a HardScifi writer that paid little heed to the social ramifications of technology]]. But with ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea'' Verne wrote in 1869 about Captain Nemo, a man from an oppressed country who [[MajoredInWesternHypocrisy had training in the west]], and has [[{{Fiction500}} money enough to pay a country’s national debt,]] who decides to create an [[NGOSuperpower organization strong enough]] to [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters fight ]] an [[TheEmpire entire Western country]] [[MoralEventHorizon through terrible acts of violence]], [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror and therefore is chased as a menace by all established countries in the West.]] After UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden, 9/11, and UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror, we must admit that Verne really knew much more than anyone ever suspected about how the world will turn in the next 130 years!

** In the last book of the series (published in May 2001, set in 2002 or thereabouts) Jake mentions that since the war ended there's been a rise in terrorism, particularly religiously motivated terrorism.

--> '''Tobias''': Marco has a point. Particularly Americans. I mean, we've got no enemies at sea, not many on land, and those aren't exactly real scary. The country's just not ready for war. Maybe it's arrogance, maybe a combination of things, but the average person on the street just doesn't think another World War is possible.

* At one point in Alex Garland's ''Literature/TheBeach'', Sal (the only character who keeps a calendar) mentions that it's the 11th of September, and several other people are surprised at the news. Why? Because it means there's a big annual party a few days away! The book was written in the mid-90s, and the date was presumably picked at random.

** In ''Literature/Fahrenheit451'', Clarisse [=McClellan=] tells Montague how her teenage peers are extremely violent, and how her grand-grandfather told stories about a time where teenagers used not to kill each other, "but this was long, long ago". Given the rising level of school violence, including school shootings, this is almost prophetic.

* In ''Literature/BridgeToTerabithia'', there is a scene where Leslie (child from a non-religious family) discusses faith with Jess and Maybelle (children from a religious family), and the latter says to Leslie: "If you don't believe in Jesus, you go to Hell when you die". Then later [[spoiler: Leslie dies in a [[ContrivedCoincidence freak accident]] and Jess fears she is in Hell -- and [[ItsAllMyFault all because he wasn't there to save her]]. This is just one big TearJerker]].

** His book ''Literature/ABigBoyDidItAndRanAway'' describes an attempted terrorist attack on the 6th of September 2001. While the book was published on October 4th of the same year, the writing took place before the events of September 11th. To make this even more cringeworthy, the tagline of the book was "Terrorism, it is the new Rock'N'roll". Needless to say that some re-wrapping was needed after that. Brookmyre's universe tends to incorporate real-world events into the canon established by his previous titles; thus, more recent titles, such as 2008's ''Literature/ASnowballInHell'', consider the unfortunate coincidence of timing and the resultant impact this has on the characters involved.

** An new Islamic caliphate gets established by terrorists mirrors ISIS -- the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria -- which was a splinter group from Al-Qaeda that became its own independent militant group that declared itself a worldwide caliphate.
** One of the main [=POV=]s is a Christian girl that endures repeated sexual abuse at the hands of Islamists. One of the most infamous things ISIS is sanctioning rape on religious grounds towards non-Muslims with their primary victims being the Yazidi (an ethnoreligious group regarded as "sorcerers" and "devil worshippers" by ISIS).

** ''Cuban Storm'' focuses on the death of UsefulNotes/FidelCastro in June of 2016. Cussler was off by just five months.

** In ''Literature/{{Maskerade}}'' and ''Literature/TheTruth'', several characters agree that multiple exclamation marks are a sign of a diseased mind. In ''Literature/{{Thud}}'', the text uses them for [[spoiler:Vimes's PunctuatedForEmphasis moment]]. As said above, Terry Pratchett later announced he had Alzheimer's, making reading the latter passage nearly ''physically painful.'' There are also the passages in ''Literature/SmallGods'' where Om worries about losing his memories (again), how it would feel to have the knowledge drain away and how a part of him would be there, helpless, as he dwindled. The despair of the Great God takes on an even more moving and depressing tone in light of the above.
*** ''Literature/{{Snuff}}'' is even worse for this. In ''Thud'' the multiple exclamation marks tend to be used with precision. In ''Snuff''... less so. And other aspects of the style and technique show similar changes.

* French writer and officer Emile Driant (1855-1916) wrote many adventure / war / science fiction novels (he's sometimes described as a Creator/JulesVerne focused on warfare). In one of them, ''L'Aviateur du Pacifique'' (''The Aviator of Pacific''), the Japanese attack the American fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1942. This had been published in ''1910''.
* Averted in ''Literature/DrStrangelove'': They quickly dubbed over all mentions of "Texas" because of the Kennedy assassination.

** Humorously, there, in fact, [[LoopholeAbuse Ain't No Rule]] that says that a robot can't be mayor of New York.[[note]]" He or she needs to be 18-years-old and a resident of NYC on Election Day."[[/note]] The only legal leg to stand on would be arguing for or against citizenship of a robot. This is also the case for the US President, who has but three requirements, none of which refer to species.[[note]]be a natural-born citizen of the United States; be at least 35-years-old; have been a permanent resident in the United States for at least fourteen years.[[/note]]

* One inspiration for ''Literature/TheGiver'' was Lois Lowry's conversations with her son, a USAF fighter pilot, prior to the Persia Gulf War. Her son would later die in a plane crash after the novel's publication.\\

** '''Diana:''' (In response to Caine's angst over his mother abandoning him) Wow, it's a shame dr. Phil isn't here. Look, she was probably just a ''messed up teenager then.''

** Many fans have been disappointed that [[AmbiguousGenderIdentity Nymphadora Tonks]] became softer and more feminine by the end of ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', compared to her wilder debut in ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix''. In late 2019, author Creator/JKRowling [[Website/{{Twitter}} tweeted]] in public support of Maya Forstater, a vocal TERF[[note]]Trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a sub-group of feminists who argue that transgender women are men, and should be treated as such by laws regarding gender equality[[/note]]. On June 10, 2020, Rowling published an essay that was intended to explain her views on trans identity, but only ended up angering the LGBTQ+ community even more as it was full of offensive transphobic stereotypes. One of them was the idea that gender dysphoric teenagers will eventually "grow out of" their dysphoria. In the wake of Rowling's essay, [[https://www.vox.com/culture/21285396/jk-rowling-transphobic-backlash-harry-potter this]] article on Vox.com by a non-binary writer bitterly concluded that Tonks' "taming" was not only a conscious rejection of trans identity, but had been planned all along.

*** Especially then scene with the Mirror of Erised in the first book. Warm pair of socks, anyone?

* At the end of Emily Neville's ''It's Like This, Cat'', troubled college drop-out Tom decides to enlist in the Army for three years as a way of getting his life back on track, finding stability and, with some luck, making money to continue his education and marry his girlfriend. He even speculates that he'd be drafted in a year or two, anyway, but seems very convinced, and no one contradicts this, that he can be stationed in New York throughout his three years of service. Well, the book was published in 1963, and guess what happened in 1965...

* ''Literature/JaineAustenMysteries'': ''This Pen for Hire'' has a moment where Jaine fantasizes about what her life could be like [[ItMakesSenseInContext if she got rich off of a screenplay]]. In that fantasy, she is married to Creator/MelGibson. In 2002, this could be a cute joke. After that... it gets awkward.

* The German novella ''Mario and the Magician'' written in 1929 and set in 1926, describes the changes happening to FascistItalia, as seen by eyes of a liberal family from then democratic Germany, and repeatedly shows how the change makes Italian people intolerant, arrogant and aggressive. When Nazis came to power, they made the same to Germany, only much, much more worse.

* ''Literature/TheMoviegoer'' has a series of crippling TakeThat's against the entire 60s counter culture movement, except that the book came out in 1961 when those things hadn't become popular yet.

** Christie's detectives also take Jewishness as indicative of moral weakness or outright criminality -- descriptions of eyes "lighting up" at the thought of money and "thick Semitic lips" become painful to read given what was to happen in the 30s and 40s.

* ''Literature/NoCountryForOldMen'' by Creator/CormacMcCarthy: The novel takes place in 1980, and in it, Ed Tom Bell mentions the recent murder of a federal judge in San Antonio, TX. He's referring to the murder of Federal Judge John Howland Wood, who was assassinated outside his townhouse by a contract killer named Charles Harrelson on May 29, 1979. In 2007, Woody Harrelson (yes, the son of Charles) would co-star in the [[Film/NoCountryForOldMen film version of the novel]].

* In ''Literature/OurMutualFriend'' (written in the 1860s) Mr. Boffin mistakenly thinks ''The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' is ''The Decline and Fall of the '''Russian''' Empire''. During Dickens' lifetime the Russian empire still existed and was in relatively good shape, but over the next fifty-odd years it really did [[UsefulNotes/RomanovsAndRevolutions decline]] and [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober fall]].

* ''Place of Angels'' by Erika Fatland is a book about a terrorist attack of Beslan (happened on 1 September 2004). Erika Fatland, a Norwegian sociologist who studied terrorist attacks, went to Beslan in 2007 and then again in 2010 to study how the attack proceeded and what happened in the aftermath. The book concludes with the notion that it is important to learn about such tragedies, even for people living in "safe" Norway. The book went into print on 11. July 2011. Just '''eleven days''' after that, the book wasn't even sold yet, the Oslo/Utøya massacre happened, scarring Norway as severely as Beslan. The fact that many of Utøya victims stripped down to their underwear (albeit for different reasons than in Beslan) didn't help matters.

** His first book under the Bachman pseudonym, ''Literature/Rage1977'', which was about a boy shooting students and teachers at school. It was taken out of print following [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_High_School_shooting a 1997 school shooting in Paducah, Kentucky]], when copies of the book were found amongst the gunmen's possessions.

* Creator/DavidSedaris wrote several essays that mention his sister, Tiffany. At age six, her older siblings convinced her to lie in the middle of the road and get hit by a car to make their mom feel guilty, telling her death is "like sleeping, only you get a canopy bed." In another essay, her father browbeats her for stabbing David with a pencil until she couldn't hold a crayon without bursting into tears. Finally, in "Put A Lid On It," he describes how his parents put her in a reform school (the now infamous [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elan_School Elan School]]), causing her to resent her family and separate herself from them as much as possible. All of this presents enough of a sad portrait of his sister's life, but when you learn she committed suicide in 2013 and, in her will, banned her entire family from attending her funeral (all chronicled in David's essay "Now We Are Five"), the whole thing becomes downright heartbreaking.

--> '''Theon''': [[MadnessMantra You have to know your]] ''[[MadnessMantra name.]]''

* ''Literature/{{Spellbinder|1996}}'', published in 1996, features Blaise's deranged ex Randy threatening her and other students with a weapon at a school dance, though he's disarmed before anyone is seriously hurt. Three years later, the Colombine shooting occurred, after which mass killings at American schools came to much greater attention (and unfortunately increased in frequency). While the incident in ''Spellbinder'' is certainly disturbing, it no longer seems as shocking as it would've been in 1996.
* ''Literature/StarCarrier: Earth Strike'' devotes a paragraph to explaining how, in the latter half of the 21st century, a Hurricane Cynthia overcame a dam across the Verrezano Narrows and helped risen sea levels [[RuinsOfTheModernAge permanently inundate New York City]]. This became a lot less {{science fiction}}y after [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Sandy Hurricane Sandy]].

* The Robert R. [=McCammon=] novel ''Literature/SwanSong'' has a chapter where a militant cult is laid siege to. The siege ends when their building burns down with them in it. A few years later, this happens to the Branch Davidians.

** Particularly uncomfortable is the subplot in ''Further'' where Michael hooks up with an old movie star who is strongly implied to be Creator/RockHudson. A few years later, the real Hudson contracted HIV... and then Michael did, too.

* In the movie version of ''Literature/WaitingToExhale'' by Terry [=McMillan=], Gloria finds out her ex-husband is gay after trying to seduce him. Years later, Terry [=McMillan=] and her husband split up after he reveals that he was gay and marrying her to get a [[CitizenshipMarriage green card.]]

** "The Veldt" features two kids using a virtual reality playroom to create violent fantasies about man-eating lions on an African veldt. When their parents try to stop these gory fantasies after the family therapist tells them they need to live a low-tech lifestyle, the kids trick them into getting trapped in the room and eaten by the lions. In TheFifties, when it was written, it served as a critique of mindless and often violent TV. Nowadays, with concerns that video games can potentially become addictive and encourage youth violence, the story is even more chilling (even though a good deal of the allegations surrounding video games are dubious).

** Creator/HPLovecraft's horror writings weren't ever meant to be funny, but they were harmless thrills because of their obvious reliance on fantasy. Then you suddenly realise one day that Cthulu and R'yleh work quite well as a metaphor for the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis "methane clathrate gun"]]. [[note]]It's huge, it's been "sleeping" deep under the sea for countless eons, and when it rises, it will cause TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt through runaway climate change and a mass extinction possibly as big as the "Great Dying" at the end of the Permian era. And there are many people (climate scientists) who really do have nightmares about it, and at least a few particularly pessimist dark-green activists have developed mental illness (depression) and even committed suicide.[[/note]]

** It's not as horrible as Sir Terry's current condition, but descriptions of the lack of rain in ''Literature/TheLastContinent'' hit a little too close to home in certain parts of Australia of late. Like the towns that are ''completely out of water''. Some inhabited places in Australia have not seen rain in six years.

*** There is also a bit in the same book about Dirk and the police officer experiencing 'a chill as the dead man's voice filled the room' while listening to an answering machine message. Not too bad... except when the author reads those lines on the audiobook.
** His final Hitchhiker's Guide book ''Mostly Harmless'' introduced The Guide Mark II, an effectively omniscient and omnipotent version of The Guide, existing singularly in the entire multiverse. (The rest of this entry is a spoiler for Mostly Harmless, Harsher In Hindsight, and FridgeBrilliance all rolled into one. You have been warned.) The device is revealed as a Vogon plot to destroy Earth once and for all, and prevent its resurrection in any parallel universe by the expedient of collapsing quantum timelines so that its final destruction is truly final. Anyone that The Guide Mark II can use to further its goals will think their life to be going swimmingly until the Guide has finished using them, at which point they'll probably be killed. The author's most spectacular example is Agrajag the Ever-Murdered, who trapped Arthur Dent before Arthur Dent visited Stavromula Beta (actually Stavro Mueller's "Beta" nightclub) and ducked an assassin's bullet which slew Agrajag yet again. This ensured that Arthur Dent would survive anything the universe threw at him until this event happened. This was orchestrated by The Guide Mark II to ensure Arthur Dent was on Earth when it actually blew up. Did The Guide Mark II ensure Douglas Adams would complete and publish this and then ensure Douglas Adams would not alter the fate of Earth?

** Like with any author of a long series of {{DoorStopper}}s, there were plenty of jokes about Jordan dropping dead before finishing the series. They all became suddenly much less funny when he was diagnosed as fatally ill.

--> '''Dr. Crusher''': Tasha, stay out of trouble. I don't want to see you in sickbay again for a long time.
--> '''Yar''': Don't worry, I'm not coming back.

* In Literature/TheBible, [[http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25:8-9 Matthew 25:8-9]] has become more disturbing from UsefulNotes/WorldWarII to this day.
** [[http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+8:7-12 Genesis 8:7-12]] talks about Noah's Ark during the time when the whole earth is already submerged in floods. On August 7, 2012, much of Manila, Philippines was submerged in floods due to heavy monsoon rains.
** Given the Bible's enormous length and scope, there is almost always a passage somewhere that relates to contemporary events -- people see analogues to the Roman Empire in the European Union, to "the four horsemen" in Genghis, Subotai, Kublai and Ogedai Khan, etc.

** Some of the early ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' [[ExpandedUniverse novels]] become HarsherInHindsight with regards to [[WeHardlyKnewYe Tasha Yar]]. The novel "Survivors" contains an epilogue that takes place during "[[KilledOffForReal Skin Of Evil]]", but this dialogue from "The Children of Hamlin"[[note]]Published 1988, probably written 1987[[/note]], which is chronologically right before that episode according to [[TheWikiRule Memory Beta]] contains rather creepy {{irony}}:

* ''Literature/UnderThePendulumSun'': Ariel the [[ArtificialHuman changeling]] is an indelicately BigEater despite [[EatingOptional not needing food]]. Then she admits that she still feels hunger even though she can't starve. ''Then'' she reveals that she was once sent to a workhouse with her human family, who starved to death around her.

** Then there's the famous open letter the author wrote to fans who didn't like the ending, where she pronounces that she always wanted her story to reflect that WarIsHell and that if fans don't like that her fictional war left their favorite characters dead, shattered, or otherwise changed and unhappy, they ought to remember the real world and that they'll be of voting and drafting age.