History Sandbox / HarsherInHindsightWickCheck

# YMMV.CVGWJames: It's kind of hard to read stories that paint One-Shot Wren in a positive light, such as "Wild West Wren" and "The Champion's Challenge", knowing what we know about him in [=SMG4 Movie: Western Spaghetti. Ditto for any and every drawing James made that depict Wren in a positive light, like this one. It's hard to read "Peach's Rocket Escape", knowing that she wouldn't get the chance to do that in the SMG4=] series, due to her transformation into a monster from the chasm she was stuck under.
# YMMV.KarmaInRetrograde: The entire fanfiction is this. Even though it correctly predicted Dabi was in fact Touya Todoroki, his personality was way off the mark. It's made explicitly clear in canon that Touya desperately wanted his father to acknowledge him and blamed his family for him turning out the way he is. More than anything, unlike in this fanfic, Touya hated Shoto, and at one point even tried to kill him. It's quite jarring seeing the normal, if aloof boy Touya is in this fic, and going on to the actual story to find out he was already on the path to villainy before he was even a teenager. Endeavor's reaction first reaction to Touya being Dabi in this fic is nothing but disappointment and shame over his son becoming a villain, and has nothing nice or sympathetic to say to him. In canon, Endeavor is horrified that his son is truely alive, and blames no one but himself for turning him into one. He's so ashamed that he doesn't know if he could truely face him.
# YMMV.FamilyGuyS2E19TheStoryOnPageOne: Peter's line that he would take a bullet for Meg becomes this by the episode "Peter's Daughter", where Peter shoots her at point blank range for so much as saying hi to him, which is one of the many examples of how horribly he treats her by that point.
# YMMV.{{Underdog}}: The ending to "The Vaccum Gun" had Underdog humorously fly into the engine of a plane, with no real consequence. In The Incredibles (in which coincidentally enough Live-Action Underdog's VA Jason Lee voiced the evil Syndrome), it's a much different story.
# YMMV.ChildrenOfRemnant: Jaune's fear of the dark is Played for Laughs at first, since he still sleeps with a night light and it allows Blake to sabotage it so that she could comfort him. With the later reveal that his fear of the dark comes from The Hole that Salem would imprison him in whenever he acted up, Blake's actions come across as one of the most horrible and manipulative things anyone does across the entire story. Every heartwarming or funny moment involving the Claimed's relationship with Salem falls into this when it's revealed that she never cared about them at all, purposefully manipulating and torturing them their entire lives so that they would want nothing more than to destroy humanity - and that Jaune was going to be one of her sacrifices in that endeavor.
# Characters.ElChavoDelOcho: The "El Diario del Chavo del 8" novel reveals that the poor kid had a very crappy life before arriving at the vecindad. He was abandoned by his single mother, lived for a while in an Orphanage of Fear (in which he befriended an older kid that later died of an illness) and lived in the streets until he became traumatized by a fellow kid being run down by a car. Things start looking up to him when he's adopted by a kind grandma that lives in the vecindad's Apartment Number Eight (hence his "El Chavo del Ocho" nickname) until she dies of old age.
# YMMV.DespicableMe2: Lucy smiling while watching Gru and his daughters interact and then referring to him as a "fun dad" takes a sadder note when Word of God revealed later on that Lucy's parents were killed when she was very young.
# YMMV.TheApprentice: MemeticMutation: "You're fired". Paired with HarsherInHindsight and Hilarious in Hindsight after Trump lost his bid for reelection in 2020, when it promptly went viral. Even before the election, the high turnover of officials in the White House led to many jokes that Trump was still using his Apprentice catchphrase frequently in the Oval Office.
# YMMV.TransformersEnergon: HilariousInHindsight: Shockblast is a brash, violent bot, completely at odds with Shockwave's traditional characterization... and then we met Whirl, who has basically the same personality Autobot. Doubles as HarsherInHindsight when you learn IDW Shockwave's Origin Story. This isn’t the last time Unicron’s remains are used to create Terrorcons, or feature the Chaos Bringer possessing Megatron.
# TearJerker.TheForceUnleashed: The Force Awakens.
# YMMV.ControlZ: The fight between Gerry and Luis becomes even much harder to watch when you watch Gerry imagining Bernardo as Luis beating him up when the inmates violently attack him after learning that he is gay.Natalia telling Lulu that her parents will probably make her and María move away becomes this in season 3 when you realize that, after they do move away, María could not move on from the traumatic experience of Susana being murdered, eventually causing her to kill herself.
# YMMV.{{Unstoppable}}: Ever wondered what would've happened had the train carrying toxic chemicals derailed? The 2023 Ohio train derailment resulted in mass evacuations of local residents as the chemicals burnt for two days, releasing toxic chemicals into the atmosphere and soil.
# Funny.LifeIsStrange2: "In case of cougar attack, throw a 20 year old male."
# YMMV.AfterlifeWithArchie: A few years before in the Archie meets Kiss issues they had zombies. It was hilarious and absurd. The family-friendly Archie gang... and zombies? It just didn't mix... until now.
# YMMV.{{Psycho}}: Myra Davis, who was Janet Leigh's stand-in during production of Psycho, was raped and murdered by a neighbor in 1988. For a long time after her murder, Davis was confused with Leigh's shower scene body-double, Marli Renfro, who had been anonymous. All was corrected after Renfro and Davis were the subjects of a book published in 2010. Years later, Anthony Perkins revealed that his own mother was sexually abusive towards him. In-universe, the highway patrolman telling Marion she should have spent the night at a motel, "just to be safe".
# YMMV.DoctorWhoS17E5TheHornsOfNimon: All the talk about the Nimon being the last survivor of his race becomes pretty dark to a New Who viewer where a long-running storyline is about the Doctor being (or believing to be) the last of the Time Lords.
# YMMV.AvatarTheLastAirbenderTheBoilingRockPart2: Yes, it was quite a Badass Boast; but once you remember Azula's Mommy Issues, the last thing Azula probably ever wanted to see or hear was that somebody "loved Zuko more than [she] feared her".
# YMMV.{{Zoo}}: After getting off on the wrong foot with everyone due to her shooting Kovacs, Dariela bitterly stated that if she wanted to, she could "take out the Frenchie (meaning Chloe) with ease." The very next episode, she ends up accidentally closing the door on Chloe before she could get away from poison gas.
# YMMV.TheHuntForRedOctober: The fate of Konovalov in the book is very close to that of Kursk, right up to the rescue buoy being stuck. Jack's uneasiness with handling a gun, coupled with Ramius explicitly warning him, "Be careful what you shoot at", is quite uncomfortable after Alec Baldwin fired a gun that was accidentally loaded with real bullets while making the film Rust, killing the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring the director Joel Souza in October 2021, and was later charged with accidental manslaughter. As an eerie coincidence, Hutchins grew up in Murmansk, the site of Red October's launch within the film.
# YMMV.JaineAustenMysteries: This Pen for Hire has a moment where Jaine fantasizes about what her life could be like if she got rich off of a screenplay. In that fantasy, she is married to Mel Gibson. In 2002, this could be a cute joke. After that... it gets awkward.
# YMMV.Jack1996: Jack's angina attack was already really hard to watch, but after Robin Williams' heart surgery in 2009... The final scene. Listening to Jack talk about not worrying about how much time you have and enjoying every moment is absolutely heartbreaking when taking Robin Williams' suicide into account.
# YMMV.Twins1988: Marnie is seen smoking cigarettes several times, most notably after having sex with Julius. It's hard to see her do it after her actress Kelly Preston died from cancer in 2020 (of the breast, not lung, though smoking is still a risk factor in breast cancer).
# YMMV.ShiningTimeStation: In "Stacy Says No", Stacy goes overboard with enforcing new rules, and when Dan explains the problem to Mr. Conductor, he says that there's no rules against telling Thomas' stories, not yet, anyway. Since 2021, Mattel has been blocking uploads of classic Thomas episodes on Platform/YouTube, and in 2023, this has extended to Shining Time Station episodes due to Thomas episodes being part of them. Not helping matters is that Shining Time Station does not have an official release on DVD or streaming services.
# YMMV.HowDidWeGetHere: When they discussed the Squid Game game show spinoff Squid Game: The Challenge, they joked that they hoped someone would die. Eventually news came out about horrible conditions during filming that led to multiple contestants being hospitalized.
# YMMV.TheSpongeBobSquarePantsMovie: Plankton mockingly calling Mr. Krabs "old buddy" as he steals the Krabby Patty formula becomes even more cruel after the later episode "Friend Or Foe" revealed that Krabs and Plankton were once best friends.
# YMMV.HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse2021: The scene in Episode 2 where Krass, while not liking having to leave the jungle or their lives have changed since Teela showed up with the sword, assures Adam he won't lose her or Cringer becomes this when he ends up losing her due to her betrayal in the Season 2 finale.
# YMMV.TheNegotiator: In Breaking Bad Dean Norris' character is killed for real in a quite similar manner to his fake death in this film. The Accidental Murder of Niebaum that turns out to be not so accidental is especially sad in light of J. T. Walsh passing away before the film was even released. The film features Kevin Spacey as the only one who is definitely heroic.
# Fridge.HomestuckTrolls: During Hivebent, when Gamzee and Equius are talking to each other, Gamzee says "iF i CoUlD mAkE yOu SmIlE iT'd Be ThE bEsT fUcKiN mIrAcLe I eVeR dId PaRt Of." After Gamzee snaps, he finally DOES make Equius smile... by asphyxiating him. Shiver.
# HilariousInHindsight.AtopTheFourthWall: More Less - More - Haiku HarsherInHinds… HilariousInHin… RunningGag WhamLine WhatCouldHaveB…
# GenreTurningPoint.{{Music}}: The Gangsta Rap era ended in disaster in the span of six months in late 1996 and early '97, when The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur were both gunned down, triggering a backlash against the dark lyrical subject matter of gangsta rap that had just been made HarsherInHindsight. Soon after, Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs released his hit album No Way Out, and suddenly Glam Rap became the dominant form of "urban" music on the radio for the rest of the decade and the start of the next.
# YMMV.MayaAndTheThree: Rico insisting that the word for people who do heroic things should be "dead" becomes less funny when two of his True Companions, and an enormous chunk of the overall cast (heroes and villains alike), wind up dead.
# YMMV.DoctorWhoS8E4ColonyInSpace: Mary Ashe's "Jim'll fix it" remark sounds, these days, like an unfortunate nod to the long-running show hosted by Jimmy Savile, now known to be one of the most prolific child predators in modern history. In fact, it's entirely coincidental; Savile's show didn't start until four years later.
# Recap.TheMarvelousMrsMaiselS5E9FourMinutes: In-universe, Midge's joke on the show about what her kids will end up saying to their therapists is this, given that we already know from the flash-forwards that Esther will be in therapy a lot on account of her very strained relationship with her mother.
# YMMV.InTheLineOfFire: Thanks to Leary's manipulations, the police trace his phone call to the wrong address and end up terrorizing an innocent couple. The handful of Real Life examples of this can make one cringe (especially since the couple there are black, but thankfully unhurt). Leary's intended assassination gun for the president is a homemade plastic composite gun, but thankfully, Frank manages to foil the plot. Sadly, another homemade gun (albeit larger and not made out of plastic, though it too sported twin barrels) would be used to assassinate ex-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022.
# YMMV.TwoOfAKind: Ashley's scathing review of the cheer squad includes a line about how she could barely hear over the flapping of the captain's thighs. Nowadays, what with the worry about the thigh gap and eating disorders this isn't so funny.
# Funny.CaptainUnderpantsTheFirstEpicMovie: I just made this tuna casserole and I noticed it had your name on it… in jalapeño peppers. Krupp: (sniffs it) Well, it smells… spicy! Edith: Yep… that's 'cause it's been dry-aged for a week. Krupp: I have no idea what that means, but it sounds very time consuming. Edith: It took a week. George and Harold have their own thoughts witnessing this: George: Ewwww!! They like each other! Harold: Oh, no, George, I think it's much worse. They "like-like" each other! George: What are you talking about? Adults don't "like-like" other adults! Harold: Well, you probably haven't seen it at your home since your parents are married. In my studies, like-liking seems to end with marriage.
# YMMV.TheOwlHouseS1E1ALyingWitchAndAWarden: Luz's near attempt to throw away the first book of The Good Witch Azura in the garbage, and Eda nearly burning it into ashes becomes this after the episode "Thanks To Them", when it is revealed that the book was a parting gift from her father before dying from a what it is implied to be a terminal illness. Speaking of "Thanks To Them", it turns out that Camila never wanted to send Luz into a Reality Check Camp in the first place, but she was pressured into do so, when the principal took advantage of Camila's bullying past, making her fearful that it would happen again with her daughter.
# Characters.InDarknessIHide: LoveHungry: She basically steamrolls over any protests from Steven about the course of their relationship. She talks as if all decisions on how their lives are to be together have already been decided, leaving no room for argument. It is subtly hinted in the story that she lacks the love she is searching for in Steven, which could make the rejection in the epilogue HarsherInHindsight.
# Sandbox.TheNostalgiaCriticTearJerkerCleanup: People who have bad experiences with a lot of throwing up (either stress-related or just illness) will know exactly how he feels when he's sobbing and coughing after his first puking in Junior. Overanalyzing a comedic grossout scene. He sounds truly scared when he thinks he's losing his joke-making ability. And later episodes explain why.
# YMMV.{{Transparent}}: In the second episode, Maura is warned that none of her family will still be around her in five years. When the show was renewed for a fifth season, Jeffrey Tambor himself was fired for sexual harassment, which resulted in the production team having to work around his absence by instead concluding the series with the Finale Movie Musicale Finale and killing off Maura Pfefferman in it.
# YMMV.RedAsh: A lot of fans of Mighty No. 9 were left wondering if the huge delays and poor quality of MN9 was because, partially, Red Ash was taking development time off the project. It's questionable if it will even come out at all, and Comcept itself was sold off, having failed as a independent studio. For a game said to be the Mega Man Legends counterpart for its franchise, the lack of updates on the game make it look like it will be walking the same path as its spiritual older sibling.
# NightmareFuel.LifeAfterPeople: The fate of the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Doesn't help that it's similar to what happened to chunks of the boardwalk in Hurricane Sandy.
# Funny.AtopTheFourthWall2020Episodes: While Linkara points out that correlation does not equal causation, he does note that this is the last occasion in the year where he can review a Mr. T comic... and the last time he didn't do that was 2016 so he is NOT taking his chances.Not only did this prove to actually be a good omen but when Linkara pointed this out on Twitter one of his followers pointed out that this should be added to the super-power counter. And it was.
# YMMV.TheSnapper: It's stated, especially in flashbacks that Sharon was drunk the night she had sex with George Burgess resulting in her baby's conception. The movie was released in 1993. With the #MeToo/#TimesUp movement, it would probably be cringy to watch the movie now and laugh at the flashback scene and not of think of the situation as rape.Making it all the more cringy is that one of the theatrical distributors in the U.S. was Miramax Films, whose founder Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual misconduct and rape in 2017.
# Heartwarming.SamuraiJack: Although it's HarsherInHindsight, Jack's developing camaraderie with "Ikra" is this. The last few episodes he's been very restrained, polite and expressionless (sans his Screaming Warrior mode), and this is the first episode where we see him opening up emotionally and genuinely bonding with someone as a true equal rather than a victim who needs to be rescued. He seemed genuinely happy to be making friends with another warrior he could relate to and even started developing a romantic attraction to her. In any other situation this would have been the beginning of a beautiful Battle Couple, but unfortunately for poor Jack...
# YMMV.MightyMed: Last we see of Agent Blaylock, Skylar turned him into a statue. Four months later, his actor Windell D. Middlebrooks passed away, and that scene becomes a lot harder to watch.
# YMMV.DreamWife: As she's trying to explain how important it is to establish good relations with a friendly regime in Bukistan, Effie mentions Real Life countries Iraq and Iran and how "we're going to have to learn to pronounce Mosaddegh." Mohammad Mosaddegh, president of Iran who had the effrontery to nationalize Iran's oil industry, was toppled in a coup by people like Ellie (specifically, the CIA and MI6), just two months after this movie was released, sparking violence and repression first under the Shah and then under the ayatollahs that has lasted ever since.
# YMMV.DuckTales: Doofus being brainwashed and threatening the heroes in "The Gold Odyssey", considering what he becomes in the reboot.In the same issue, there's the Disney Death of Scrooge and the nephews in the cliffhanger, when Launchpad believes that the brainwashed Doofus killed them. It's sadder now that Terence McGovern really has outlived both Alan Young and Russi Taylor.
# YMMV.WeddingCrashers: It's a bit hard to watch John's Heroic BSoD when Owen Wilson was struggling with depression and contemplating suicide back in 2008. John is seen reading a self-help book written for the suicidal (called "Don't Jump! Life is Worth Living!") Where exactly was this book when Owen Wilson really did attempt suicide in 2008? Also the scene with Jeremy getting shot by Sack while quail hunting became a bit darker after Dick Cheney's "hunting accident" (he accidentally shot Harry Whittington in the head while quail hunting) in 2006.
# YMMV.TheEdgeOfSeventeen: Darian grabs Nadine during one of their earlier fights after he and Krista get together, and he later tries to forcibly drag her to his car at Mr. Bruner's house. Such scenes are already pretty upsetting in context, but become borderline unsettling now that Blake Jenner has been exposed for abusing his ex-wife Melissa Benoist. The scene where Nadine accidentally sends an embarrassing text to Nick is Played for Laughs in many of the trailers. Knowing that the scene comes after Nadine has a fight with her Mom at work, where she tells Nadine that her father would be disappointed in who she had become, visibly breaking Nadine and causing her to speed off in her Mom's car makes it a lot less funny to watch.
# YMMV.SupernaturalS15E09TheTrap: The vision of the future has the Winchesters racing from a city in flames and moaning on "the monsters have taken over." Then comes the date: January 6, 2021.
# WorthyOpponent.VideoGames: Admiral Gregorio in Skies of Arcadia. A completely honourable man and the adoptive uncle of Defector from Decadence Enrique, he is killed by Big Bad Galcian after the latter betrays the Valuan Empire. Intriguingly, even Galcian seemed to consider Gregorio a Worthy Opponent and insists that his body be shipped back to Valua with the highest honours.The soldier in charge of shipping the remains is told that the corpse is more valuable than his life. This becomes HarsherInHindsight when Galcian later summons the Rains of Destruction from the Yellow Moon.
# TearJerker.TheMusicVideoShow: Does your mom understand you? Kiara: [looks at ground, solemn] I think you should leave. Dylan: What if I don't? Are you going to cry to your mom? And that line gets worse in Episode 50.
# YMMV.DoctorWhoS12E5RevengeOfTheCybermen: The Cybermen's next appearance also involves crashing a space vehicle into a planet, only the Doctor doesn't prevent it.
# YMMV.{{Koyaanisqatsi}}: OlderThanTheyThink: Many viewers think the exploding rocket was the space shuttle Challenger, which was destroyed three years after this movie came out. The explosion filmed was with an unmanned Navy Atlas rocket, about 20 years earlier. HarsherInHindsight too, especially considering the ominous song title; "Prophecies".
# YMMV.MediumCool: The film's central message (see: noun, reality television). The lyrics from the page quote were written three years before Kent State, although people got killed in '68 as well.
# YMMV.ThisIsAWildGameOfSurvival: Reading Ha-ri's lack of care towards any of the other Class 2-5 kids aside from her brother in the face of I-sak's death somehow becomes even worse when you learn that I-sak had a crush on Joon-yeong... who had feelings for Woo-jin, and promptly got together with him the day after she confessed to him.
# YMMV.ASingleMan: George's grief over his longtime partner's death is especially heartbreaking to watch after the death of Richard Buckley, director Tom Ford's partner of 35 years, in September 2021.
# YMMV.{{Katzun}}: The cover of “Why I LOVE Furries” was funny with him as a Reluctant Fanservice Girl until he came out as transgender.
# YMMV.CaseFileNoTwoTwoOneKabukicho: Any mention of James's sister during the earlier episodes becomes this after episode 11, where it's revealed that said sister is already dead and none other than Alexandra Moran, one of Jack the Ripper's victims. Josh Grelle is in the show as Watson when he gets to be the assistant (and sometimes second fiddle to Sherlock). In ID: Invaded, he gets to be a detective investigating a serial murder case which involves the murder of his child before his wife killed herself. All of the scenes of James helping the Pipe Cat Bar detectives in solving cases and having fun with them and the Kabukicho Irregulars were eventually downright tragic after it's revealed that he really didn't care about them at all. It's even worse his mourning over Alex's death was not about losing her but because he never took a chance to end her.
# Characters.ASongOfIceAndFireHouseGreyjoy: DiedStandingUp: Died fighting a naval battle. His son Aeron later thanks the Drowned God for granting his father the honor of a death at the sea. Becomes sort of HarsherInHindsight because Quellon's reforms were against Ironborn religion.
# YMMV.FamilyGuyS2E4BrianInLove: When Brian wets himself in public, Peter makes a remark of "Where do you think you are, Payless?" Payless Shoes' popularity has fallen drastically since this episode aired, eventually filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2017, and for added "Harsher In Hindsight", the (rumored) original line of the joke was "Kmart", whose own popularity tanked with them also filing for bankruptcy over a year later in October 2018.
# YMMV.Studio666: Every member of the Foo Fighters except Dave Grohl dies in this film, which makes Taylor Hawkins' death here harder to watch, as he passed away a month after the film's release. Also, the fact that Dave increasingly dedicates their song to the deceased’s memory, after many radio stations and rockstars did just that for the drummer.
# Film.GangsterSquad: In light of an actual incident, the trailers and ads were pulled from films and TV due to a scene where a shoot out takes place in a movie theater. The cast and crew actually got together afterward to film another scene (the Chinatown sting operation) to replace the cinema scene. The result was the film being pushed back several months, but the filmmakers avoided some serious backlash.
# YMMV.TheDollop: The Pinto episode, with the uniqueness of also being simultaneously HarsherInHindsight, becomes funnier or darker, depending on your point of view, regarding the portion about Ford being convinced by penny pinchers that thought it was cheaper to pay settlements than do a recall for an 11 dollar part on every pinto, after the news that Volkswagen recently went through the same thing regarding their diesel cars because they thought a 300 dollar part per car was too expensive and now Volkswagen is looking to lose a whole lot more money than they saved due to fines by several countries, not counting the losses to their stock value.
# YMMV.KingKong: The entire battle at the World Trade Center in the 1976 film is much creepier in the aftermath of September 11th. Kong's more sympathetic portrayal and tragic death in the 2005 film is this in light of the Harambe shooting incident.
# YMMV.GameOfThronesS3E3WalkOfPunishment: Jorah's assertion Daenerys purchasing the Unsullied would prevent a repeat of a bloody sack of King's Landing seems rather hollow in the wake of "The Bells."
# Memes.FireEmblemEngage: Alfred and muscles Explanation (spoilers!) Alfred's love for muscles had quickly gotten notoriety before release due to the fact that the Firenese prince continuously boasts about muscles in the English version of the game, and even gets excited about his own muscles, despite his evident scrawniness. Unfortunately, it no longer becomes funny when the fact that Alfred is Secretly Dying from a chronic illness is taken into account. Evil Alfred / Why is Alfred drawn like this?◊ Explanation Alfred's official art was mocked by fans for looking as if he's a villain, which funnily enough has nothing to do with his disciplined and happy-go-lucky personality. Became Hilarious in Hindsight, as Wave 4 of the DLC reveals an evil counterpart of Alfred.
# YMMV.TacoMan: Taco-Man having trouble with the first level in The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants (which involves turning everything purple not purple) became this when the DVD commentary for Taco-Man Plays Volume 2 revealed that Sam T. is colorblind.
# YMMV.FlightOfTheConchords: Harsher in Hindsight During his lifetime, "Bowie" was just a silly little pastiche written because they couldn't get the man himself to cameo. Now that he's passed, it's more like an affectionate tribute after he ascended to a higher plane of existence. Even sadder is he died on Jemaine's birthday. In-Universe. Jemaine dumps a woman with a fetish for Art Garfunkel impersonators, only to realize that the whole thing was pretty kinky for him too after it's too late.
# TearJerker.ShadowrunReturns: Monika said I would forget. She thought the sims might help. In there, I'm strong. And I never have to lose anyone. But then I come back out... here. Where children play in the street, and I remember. Where I see Dr. Ezkibel, and I remember.
# YMMV.TinyToonAdventuresS3E9TwoToneTown: Not too long after this episode aired, Animaniacs, a new series from Warner Bros. and most of the Tiny Toons production crew premiered. The main characters were black and white 1930s cartoons who become stars in the modern world! Sound familiar? Furthermore, one of the Tiny Toons would eventually be a regular on the show like Plucky does at the end (except in Animaniacs' case, it was Elmyra, and it was on the show's popular spin-off rather than on the show itself). Even worse, after Tiny Toon Adventures Night Ghoulery aired in 1995, the Toons have rarely appeared or been mentioned again. Thankfully, in 2020, it was announced that the series would be rebooted as Tiny Toons Looniversity on HBO Max.
# Heartwarming.BlakeAndFriendsPlay: Renegade and Five Nights at Freddy's 2 Let's Plays, where they can barely stand each other.
# YMMV.TheHungerGames: In the first book, Katniss temporarily becomes deaf in one ear due to an explosion. During the filming of an underwater scene in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, her actress Jennifer Lawrence punctured her eardrum and couldn't hear out of one ear for months. In late 2016, a Russian reality show (Game2: Winter) with a similar premise and a few of the same features as the Hunger Games was announced, with murder and rape permitted.note However, any act of rape or murder can and will be punishable by Russian law afterward. In addition, it was revealed this was nothing more than a social experiment. Thank goodness.
# Fridge.TheFoxAndTheHound: The movie begins with the baby fox's mother hiding him and sacrificing her own life for his, Bambi-style. However, foxes almost never have a single cub. This mother wasn't just carrying her baby to safety. She was carrying to safety the only baby of the litter who survived the hunt.The fox's father isn't seen despite foxes being monogamous and the fox fathers helping to raise the cubs. Shouldn't he have been helping to defend his mate and cub against the hunters, unless ... ooh. It's likely the reason Tod's mom was able to get her cub away safely for a while was probably because her mate stayed behind to fend off the hounds or at least serve as a distraction. In hindsight, this makes the scene where Tod confronts Copper so Vixey can get away even harder to watch.
# YMMV.HappyAppy: Two big ones, both in-universe: the 9/11 scene, and the part where Happy tells children to call him so that they can donate to the people in Japan, who had been hit with a horrible earthquake and tsunami. Then there are the Libyan riots, the space shuttle Columbia disaster, the Sandy Hook shooting, and the list would just go on from there. In 2014, after the story was finished, a company named Happy Apples recalled its stock of candy apples after they were found to be contaminated. Seven people died from eating the apples. A year after the story's conclusion, a Robot Chicken episode showed a segment that was a parody of an actual Nick Jr. show, PAW Patrol, where the pups witness a 9/11-esque disaster, similar to what happened in one of the more infamous episodes of Happy Appy, described in the story.
# YMMV.RamboIII: The Soviets began withdrawing from Afghanistan ten days before the film's premier. And the withdraw of the Soviets did not improve the situation in Afghanistan one bit, with the collapse of the Soviet-backed government in 1992 and rival Mujahideen turning against each other, all resulting in a costly civil war that led to the Taliban taking power in 1996. One terrorist attack later and the glorification of America's intervention in Afghanistan took a turn for the worse. The Taliban offensive and subsequent fall of the US-backed government in 2021 didn't help either.
# YMMV.ResidentEvil5: Mixed a little with HarsherInHindsight, considering the circumstances, but in this game, D.C. Douglas voices a villain who mind-controls a leading female into being his Dragon and sics on the hero, who has to snap her out of it. Douglas also played Alexei in Tales of Vesperia, which not only had the same plot point, but came out that same year.
# YMMV.KnockAtTheCabin: The first apocalyptic event in the film is a Pacific megatsunami spawned by a pair of massive earthquakes. Within the same week the film was released, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, killing tens of thousands of people.
# Recap.BabylonFiveS02E07SoulMates: HilariousOuttake: Also HarsherInHindsight. Londo falls to the ground because of the poisoned dart, and Boxleitner (Sheridan), yells into the link: "Medlab, this is Sinclair". The set had to shut down for five minutes. Notice the edit of the right line in the aired version.
# AdaptationalSuperpowerChange.FanWorks: In My Hero Academia, Izuku was born Quirkless but is given “One For All” by All Might. Having him born with a Quirk, or acquire a different one, is common in fanfic (with the added bonus of someone else getting One For All insteadnote Which unfortunately becomes HarsherInHindsight following the reveal that anyone who already has a Quirk will have their lifespan reduced).
# YMMV.ImperatorRome: This game is a Remake/Creator-Driven Successor of much older Paradox title, Europa Universalis: Rome. EU:Rome was somewhat a punching bag for jokes about being just regular Europa Universalis with ancient paint job over it, offering bland experience without anything interesting going for it, boring gameplay mostly decided by modifiers and lacking any sort of content to encourage playing as different countries, since everyone played the same. Comes Imperator: Rome, and it gets the exact same kind of reception, only this time around, it was intended as a big hit game, rather than a throw-away experiment with a new game engine. And unlike EU:Rome, which got quickly abandoned, I:R is going through one overhaul after another, each of them failing to gain any favour from the playerbase and shrinking number of active players further.
# YMMV.JerrySeinfeld: In one routine where he joked about screwing around in the doctor's exam room after being called out of the waiting room only to wait longer, one of the things he did was lick all the tongue depressors. As Doctor Mike put it, that joke did not age well with COVID. An old bit about airport security not being able to decipher certain objects on their x-ray machines also became cringeworthy after 9/11. "What's this? A hair dryer with a scope on it? That's fine. What about this? A bowling ball candle? Yeah, we'll let that through."
# YMMV.TeenTitansGoVsTeenTitans: The jokes about the DC Animated Movie Universe being edgy, as well as 2013 Robin attempting to join that universe's Titans by replacing Nightwing takes on a darker tone considering the team's fate in Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, where Nightwing was killed, resurrected by the Lazarus Pit and driven insane as a result; Starfire was killed and turned into a cyborg; Cyborg himself was dismembered, fused to Apokolips, and had to die to take out Darkseid and Trigon; Beast Boy was killed; and Raven, though physically okay, contemplates suicide twice.
# YMMV.TheLivingLegendsOfSuperman: The Living Legends of Superman aims to show how Superman's history would evolve into half-remembered and hilariously-inaccurate but inspiring myth through the millennia. Nonetheless, Crisis on Infinite Earths and Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? would invalidate TLLoS only two years later by showing Superman losing his powers and faking his death only a few years before his universe's annihilation.
# YMMV.ThreeFugitives: Watching this when knowing that Sarah Rowland Doroff's real mother passed away in 1995 (when she still a child)...
# YMMV.WhereOnEarthIsCarmenSandiego: Anytime the Chief lists three things and then says "Oh my!" becomes this when we learn that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was Carmen's favorite childhood story. Just think about it a little.
# YMMV.PrideOfBaghdad: Shortly after the pride is freed from the zoo, Safa tells the other lions that she'd rather stay locked away in captivity and die of old age than venture out into the real world and die much sooner. While she was being selfish at the time, her assumption about the pride perishing from leaving the zoo comes true.
# YMMV.{{Casper}}: If this film is to be considered canon to the Ghostbusters films, then with the events of Ghostbusters: Afterlife in mind, Ray's cameo makes a lot more sense.
# YMMV.RoomiesItsWalkyJoyceAndWalky: As pointed out by Willis himself, Sarah and Joyce's poor relationship compared to their sisterly bond in Dumbing of Age. Even worse when she reappears in the finale of It's Walky, helping to take down SEMME out of spite and telling Joyce she never considered her a friend.
# YMMV.{{Madeline}}: "Lost in Paris", a story about Madeline being forced to work in a sweatshop, becomes this after the 2007 abduction and possible murder of Madeleine McCann. And In-Universe example in the movie: when Uncle Horst brings the girls lace collars as gifts, it seems like a sweet sentiment from a relative who just met his niece just now. ...And then later in the movie, you learn about the Lace Factory, and all those orphaned girls who slaved to make them.
# YMMV.TheDirt: The found family elements and triumphant ending are sadly undercut by Mick Mars suing the band in April 2023, accusing the rest of the group of trying to replace him — even as far back as 1987 — and not giving him the respect he deserves, ending with him signing a severance agreement.
# YMMV.HenryIVPart1: The starling is mentioned just once in passing as part of a joke, and nowhere else in any of the Bard's plays. So you'd expect no one to think anything of it. Unfortunately, the bird is not native to America, and in the 19th century a group of American Shakespeare fanatics imported a mating pair of starlings and set them loose in Central Park, so that every species of bird mentioned in Shakespeare would have a presence in the New World. It worked too well, the population skyrocketing due to a lack of natural predators, while driving out native species from their habitat, wrecking the ecosystem, and generally being pests. Environmentalists and birdwatchers alike wind up wishing the Shakespeare had chosen any other songbird for Hotspur's line.
# YMMV.LivingBooks: In Arthur's Reading Race, Page 11 has Arthur feeding Pal his chocolate ice cream cone, despite the fact that chocolate is toxic to dogs. The TV show episode "Sick As a Dog" has Pal getting very sick due to Arthur sharing him foods that are not appropriate for dogs, including candy. Thankfully, by the 2015 episode "One Ornery Critter", Arthur warns Buster not to have chocolate around dogs since it's really bad for them.
# YMMV.GeneratorRex: At the end of "A Family Holiday," after Six nearly dies, he and Rex have a Heartwarming Moment in which Rex tells him, rather affectionately, never to do anything like that again. Seems like a throwaway line until "Six Minus Six," when we see what happens the next time Six jams his magnetized blades into a machine.
# YMMV.AngProbinsyano2015: The Puliscredibles, a similarly-themed film which also co-starred Coco Martin — Francis Joseph Cruz of Rappler stated "If this kind of violence-based entertainment has become so mainstream to the point that it is readily fed to children, then there is a bigger issue here than just the gross lack of creative ambition."
# YMMV.{{Midsommar}}: The especially brutal deaths of all the BIPOCs, who, with the exception of Josh were entirely innocent; Nazi imagery and anti-immigrant propaganda scattered throughout the film becomes harsher in hindsight with the rise of the Sweden Democratic party and the uptick in hate crimes against BIPOCs in Sweden see here: https://archive.ph/oro8n
# YMMV.RecessS1E19TeachersLounge: In a fantasy sequence, Miss Grotke's award case features an Emmy Award. In real life, the series was nominated for two Emmys and lost. It did get a Young Artist's Award, though.
# YMMV.TheTerryFoxStory: HeartwarmingInHindsight: Three years after Terry's death, another amputee runner, Steve Fonyo, managed to finish what Terry had started by making it all the way to the Pacific coast. A further one year later, paraplegic athlete Rick Hansen, a personal friend of Terry's, went for a worldwide marathon tour in his wheelchair to raise money for spinal cord research. The former also qualifies as HarsherInHindsight, though, as Fonyo later became involved in legal troubles that eventually resulted in him being stripped of his membership in the Order of Canada.
# Funny.XWingSeries: (looking at her intently) Gerwa Patunkin? Lara: No. Face: Totovia Lampray? Lara: No. Stop it. Face: Dipligonai Phreet? Lara: (laughing) Shut up. Face: Moploogy Starco? Lara: Face, I'm going to shoot you. note Ironically, it's not her who ends up doing this, but Donos.
# YMMV.ChillingAdventuresOfSabrina: EVERYTHING about the original comic and live-action series seems to be heading this way in the comic. Sabrina has to decide whether or not she loved Harvey? In the comic and the series, the worst she got was heartbreak and having to become a human. In this comic, she can potentially be turned into a tree like her father was.
# LyricalDissonance.{{Music}}: The solemn instrumentation and raspy voice of Louis Armstrong make "What a Wonderful World" feel very sad, but it's actually about the many good and beautiful things that exist in the world. It's made even more dissonant when the song is used in media to portray sad or harsh scenes. He makes it sound like he is dying, but he is happy and content with the good things in life he has remembered. Made even more tearjerking in that he died 4 years after the song was released.
# YMMV.{{Minder}}: "Aces High and Sometimes Very Low" sees Terry got revenge on heavy who hit his girlfriend. Dennis Waterman's third wife later accused him of abuse. "Monday Night Fever" has Arthur trying to woo an aspiring nightclub singer by bragging up his non-existant music credentials, saying that he had a drink with Jimmy Savile.
# YMMV.TheSimpsonsS15E8MargeVsSSCCATAG: The Gator Baiter getting eaten alive by a gator became this when a stingray killed Steve Irwin three years afterward. While the Springfieldians are taking away every kid friendly aspect in Springfield, they changed the Toys R Us. Moe switches the backwards "R" into a normal "R", making the children cry. In 2018, Toys R Us went out of businessnote (in the UK and the US respectively, international subsidiaries still operate), making real-life children, whether current or former, sad just like the kids in Springfield.
# YMMV.{{Once}}: Try watching this film after listening to The Swell Season's album Strict Joy, about the end of Hansard and Irglová's real life romantic relationship. Also the documentary The Swell Season, where we literally get to watch their relationship disintegrating. This is at least a little softened by the fact that the two remain friends to this day, so it's obvious none of it was for nothing.
# YMMV.{{Kodocha}}: In the anime, Ms. Andoh points out that she's heard from the other students that both Sana and Akito do "very questionable adult things", which is probably referring to Akito kissing Sana. Towards the end of the manga, however, the two nearly engage in unprotected and (at least outside of Japan) underage sex. A few lyrics used in the album versions of the song "PINCH ~Love Me Deeper~" only make this even more alarming. Sana accidentally forgetting about Hisae's birthday is arguably symbolic of how little Hisae's importance to the story is compared to her friends. She's later dropped from the manga and Demoted to Extra in the anime. Even if it is a lame first-place prize compared to what the other contestants earned, the 100-year supply of toilet paper and pocket tissue that Sanekichi wins in episode 20 will certainly come in handy during the shortages caused by a certain pandemic.
# Funny.TheTransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye: Spinister: The fire's giving me funny looks Krok. I think I'm gonna shoot it. Might become slightly less funny (Or not) when you realize that it probably was. They were burning an Autobot corpse. Except it wasn't a corpse.
# YMMV.VariableGeo: In the OVA, Yuka nearly concedes defeat to Jun, but wouldn't have suffered the penaltynote In the H-games, the loser of each match is publicly raped by members of the audience, or the tournament committee since the OVA is based off the Advanced V.G. reboot. That was changed years later, due to two new pieces of official art set during the original H-game continuity. The first one shows Yuka with her shirt torn, from being KO'd by Jun. The second one shows Yuka staring down her soon to be rapist. The decision to include the losing conditions from the H-games made some fans wonder why KSS bothered to censor it. Then along came V.G.: NEO, an AU series which also enforced the losing conditions - without censorship. It was poorly received, causing many to dismiss it as non-canon.
# YMMV.TestDrive: Pitbull Syndicate's logo as seen on the [=PS1=] games in the series would later be co-opted by white supremacist hate groups.
# ComicBook.JLAAvengers: Likely unintentional, but it's almost eerie seeing the Scarlet Witch becoming corrupted by the evil of chaos magic, and nearly having a nervous breakdown when confronted with the memory of her children. This was a full year before Avengers Disassembled and House of M, remember.
# TearJerker.Persona2: Maya gets one too. A flashback shows her father leaving her at the shrine to go off on the assignment that would kill him. After telling her that dreams can come true if she wishes at the shrine, she gives him a good-luck charm Mr. Bunbun. He tries to cheer her up saying "Mr. Bunbun will laugh at you if you don't stop crying." He then leaves, with the adult Maya, who is looking on pleading with him not to go. The entire team ends up in tears and Tatsuya can allow a Cry into Chest option for Maya. After calming down, she then recites a poem about how the only thing worse than death is to be forgotten. The entire team then tries to cheer her up, saying that they will never forget her again. Cue the ending... Many of the conversations about memories and how they define people end up being very much HarsherInHindsight.
# TearJerker.TheGardenOfSinners: The moment where Enjou gives Mikiya his farewells and gives him Shiki's key to her apartment. HarsherInHindsight when you remember Enjou's childhood memories about the key to his house. "Just take it. It's you who needs to keep it safe from now on".
# YMMV.SupergirlsBigBrother: After losing their son, the Danvers comfort themselves with the thought they still have their lovely adoptive daughter. Flash forward several years and their daughter gets killed in action.
# YMMV.DuckTales2017S1E24TheShadowWarPartIITheDayOfTheDucks: Lena's complaining about her family and Beakley asking who raised her becomes this with The Reveal that Lena isn't even a real child or a person, but rather a construct that Magica created as a last resort. It especially becomes harsh when Scrooge isn't able to honor his promise to make Lena part of the Duck family because Magica destroys Lena's corporeal form. Magica promises Scrooge that she will destroy everything and everyone he loves. We find out in Season 3 that he started it by doing the same thing to her, albeit by accident: his fighting Magica inadvertently led to her turning her brother Poe into a nonsapient raven, and he ignored her pleas to save Poe in favor of robbing Magica and then using the townsfolk she transformed into goats as milk money, literally.
# YMMV.AmericanSplendor: At the end of the story "Uncapped" (during the Vertigo run), Harvey says with a sly grin, "It's a wonder my carelessness hasn't killed me yet!" Harvey would later pass away after an accidental overdose of his antidepressant medicine.
# TearJerker.StrangerThings: More Less - More - AlternativeCha… BaseBreakingCh… Foreshadowing FriendlyFandom… HarsherInHinds… HateSink HilariousInHin… Memes ReferencedBy SpiritualAdapt… TheyWastedAPer… Unintentionall… Woobie
# YMMV.EyesWideShut: When the wife tells her tale to the protagonist, what you get to see is the face of Tom Cruise listening to Nicole Kidman — his wife — describing how he doesn't understand women. The couple's real-life consecutive break-up makes this almost prophetic. A secret society that hosts orgies doesn't seem that ludicrous in late 2010s with Katie Couric mentioning in her memoir that she attended convicted sex trafficker and offender Jeffrey Epstein's private party which eerily resembled one in the film.As an addition, journalist Larry Celona, who acts as the film's journalistic advisor and wrote the news article for Mandy's death in the newspaper that Bill reads, also wrote a news article about Epstein's death in Real Life.
# YMMV.{{Gate}}: At the time the novels were first released (mid 2000s), the idea of sending the JSDF to foreign lands to fight was absurd due to Article 9 of Japan's Constitution forbidding war (later interpreted as offensive war so that the US wasn't the sole military defense force). However, in 2015, the same year the anime began airing, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushed and passed legislation to allow Japanese troops to fight overseas. The Crunchyroll simulcast of the first episode took pains to edit out the flag of the rising sun for fear of offending other Asian countries. Around the same time this was happening, America was having a similar controversy over the Confederate Battle Flag after the murder of 9 black churchgoers by a white man trying to start a race war in June 2015.
# YMMV.MirandaLambert: Miranda's song "Automatic" includes the line: "Staying married was the only way to work your problems out." About a year after she released this song, she and her husband of four years Blake Shelton announced their divorce.
# YMMV.TheBlingRing: Marc being portrayed as the most moral member of the group can be awkward to watch following his real-life counterpart Nic Prugo pleading guilty to stalking and soliciting rape in 2016. Marc being portrayed as Ambiguously Gay is kind of awkward considering the actor playing him got in trouble for homophobic tweets. Among them was him complaining about always playing gay roles, which he does in this. Ironically enough, Emma Watson had her wallet stolen while filming.
# YMMV.TheOwlHouseS1E18AgonyOfAWitch: Luz's worry over the curse worsening and her immediate assumption that Eda will die when it fully consumes her hits a lot harder when we later learn that it's not the first time she's had to watch a parent waste away from a terminal illness.
# TearJerker.ToTheMoon: The reason why is fairly clear - River was never aware of WHY Johnny forgot his promise, along with her. Her condition was the reason she never asked outright, but she was never aware of what had happened to his brother, because by the time they reunited, he'd had that memory suppressed. On top of that, this adds a huge dose of Fridge Brilliance to what she said at the movies - that she believed that they were watching it together without being physically near each other, just as she'd probably done the next year at the carnival. All that grief because of one tragic event...
# NightmareFuel.TheDownwardSpiral: And to rub more salt to the wound, the album was released one month BEFORE Kurt Cobain's suicide on April 5th, 1994. And the title song obviously has some similarities with the actual event that happened.
# YMMV.TheHindenburg1975: An ironic twist of fate happened on November 7th, 2023 when Hangar Number One at MCAS Tustin suffered heavy damage from a three alarm fire…the very same hangar that stood in for both Lakehurst and Frankfurt.

# YMMV.PCGamer: One letter in the mail corner of the US version complained about a previous issue (May of 2000) being the "shortest PC Gamer I have ever read". Back then, the magazine regularly had many features and articles. Over a dozen years later, the magazine is now commonly the thickness of this May 2000 issue.
# YMMV.{{Freezing}}: Everyone laughed at Stella when she freaked out at the thought of undergoing a "baptism" with Kazuya, at Elizabeth's behest, because there was just way too much sexual symbolism in it, including her shaking in fear and Squick. Then we find out what Louis did to her. Then, as if that wasn't enough, there's Elizabeth's reaction to Kazuya using her and Arnett as People Puppets, in an act of desperation to save them all from the five transcendent nova. She is reacting exactly the same way Stella was at the mention of the "baptism" and nobody's laughing. The idea that a neo-natal nurse such as Isabella Lucas would kill infants under her charge for the thrill of it suddenly became more sickening when it became reality in the United Kingdom barely a year after the last chapters related to the Busters Arc were released.
# YMMV.AlmostParadise: The presence of an American military base in Cebu is harder to swallow (at least in watching the show) when President Duterte has publicly mentioned that he's leaving the Visiting Forces Agreement and has bitter feelings against the West and prefers to gravitate towards China and Russia. While Duterte has chosen to suspend it, it's still possible for him to revoke the VFA before he leaves office.
# YMMV.TheSimpsonsS5E5TreehouseOfHorrorIV: In Bart Simpson's Dracula, Mr. Burns leads an undead army of vampires in search for blood. 16 years later in "Don't Have A Cow, Mankind", he joins the undead again, this time as a flesh-eating zombie.
# Heartwarming.{{Fillmore}}: Ingrid's introduction to the show, where she says if just one person had been nice to her by two pm, she wouldn't have confessed to doing something she didn't do. Fillmore would've been there sooner, but he was busy trying to clear a friend's name.The scene at the end with Wayne and his new partner Emily who look to have the dynamic Fillmore and Ingrid develop. Too bad about Emily being driven out of the school by "South of Friendship, North of Honor".
# Heartwarming.AttackOnTitan: Captain Ackerman calling Levi "his pride". HarsherInHindsight, but still...
# YMMV.LegoDimensions: Clara Oswald's presence in this game after her death and then sort-of revival in the final stretch of Series 9 of Doctor Who, which unfolded less than two months after this game's release and just weeks after the release of the show-specific level pack. To turn the screw even tighter for fans, Clara's final words in the main game are "Run you clever boy, and remember me," which fall into tearjerker territory for those familiar with the outcome of Series 9. The fact that the first two Adventure Time packs were released around the same time the show's creators announced the series will end in 2018 could be seen as this. Betelgeuse warns Batman to "quit while you're ahead," as a nod to Michael Keaton following up Batman (1989) with only one sequel. Keaton eventually reprised the role again in The Flash (2023), a critical disaster that threatened to ruin the finances and reputation of Warner Bros. Discovery.
# YMMV.MobileSuitGundamUnicorn: In Episode 7, Bright and Chairman Marcenas find common ground as fathers, and how they shouldn't act in a way that would make their children ashamed of them. This is especially tragic in light of Hathaway's Flash. If you've seen Mobile Suit Gundam F91 or Mobile Suit Victory Gundam, both of which take place decades after the events of Unicorn, you'll know that the opening of Laplace's Box will ultimately be in vain. But at least there's consolation in that there's possibility again. This is further compounded considering the situation in Gundam: Reconguista in G pretty much suggests Earth and Space goes the way Full Frontal would have wanted: the latter more self-sustaining than Earth ever was. Even Harsher since...∀ Gundam is the ultimate end result of Universal Century.
# Awesome.BigBrother: Just knowing that The Big Brother Fanclub got away with flying an airplane banner over the house and the houseguests saw it. However, it has become HarsherInHindsight. While it was totally harmless to do this at the time, being just an innocuous message and a wily stunt no one really expected, it gave producers quite the scare because they realized it can violate the premise of the game of no contact with the outside world and banners could be rigged to provide hints to certain houseguests, prompting a condition in the rules where you can't read them on threat of penalty or even expulsion.
# YMMV.AlongCamePolly: The line about a cook thinking Sandy had died fifteen years ago hits different after Philip Seymour Hoffman's untimely death.
# Characters.KanColleOne: ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman: She proved useful on the E-1 Map of the Summer 2015 event, as having her would allow the fleet to divert to the safest, shortest, and most economical route, with just 2 encounter nodes per sortie (compared to three to four on other routes, including the Boss node), and an ammo node in between the two nodes. Serves as HarsherInHindsight as the map's design is patterned on the campaign where the real-life Kikuzuki sank (with the Boss node marking the shipwreck's location.)
# YMMV.WaterMargin: StealthPun: Wu Yong's name is pronounced the exact same way as a Chinese phrase meaning "Useless". The pun is doubled if one considers the man's nickname, "the wise/resourceful star". Becomes HarsherInHindsight when you realised that Wu was helpless in preventing the tragic fates of the Liangshan outlaws.
# YMMV.SchlockMercenary: Since Elf invoked what everyone else saw as her Cartwright Curse to get her squad to shut up, Pronto and Brad have been Killed Off for Real. Not to mention that Kevyn and Schlock (who were also kissed) have both died at least once as well. Heck, Kevyn dies in the same arc. Both of them got better, though.
# YMMV.TheSlap: The scene where during his disastrous attempt to apologise to Gary and Rosie for said slap, Rosie blasting Harry on how he treats his wife can be uncomfortable to watch after it is revealed that Melissa George (who played Rosie) recently separated from her partner due to allegations of domestic abuse.
# YMMV.IronLung: In June 2023 when the OceanGate Titan Submersible exploring the wreckage of the RMS Titanic imploded, resulting in the death of its five occupants, some people immediately started snidely comparing the situation to the game and making fun of the whole ordeal. David made his thoughts clear on Twitter. I definitely see the dark humor in this whole Titanic sub thing, it's just... like, I made Iron Lung the most nightmarish thing I could think of, and knowing real people are in that situation right now is pretty horrific, even if it was their own bad decisions. Like all the jokes I've been seeing are hilarious but also good lord nobody should have to die like that.
# YMMV.MoonOverMiami: Jeff tells Barbara that a good man will snap her up one day, and the third act deals with her feeling sad that the man she loves is marrying someone else. Carole Landis would become known for her string of short marriages and affairs, including one with Rex Harrison, whom she viewed as the great love of her life. She left her husband for him but he wouldn't divorce his wife, and the heartbreak from this is viewed as a major factor in her suicide only seven years later.
# Film.TheHangover: {{Scandalgate}}: Mike Tyson's tattoo artist threatened to block the release of Part II after he claimed copyright over the facial tattoo Stu gets in the movie; this was dubbed "Tattoogate" by the media. Had this been released before the lawsuit was filed, Tyson himself recommending that Stu remove his tattoo at the end of the film would really be a HarsherInHindsight.
# YMMV.QuickAndFlupke: Some gags make fun of Hitler. After the Holocaust, quite some people felt these jokes weren't as funny anymore.
# YMMV.TheWarOfTheFlowers: Williams was tempted (possibly pressured) to remove the initial attack by the dragons because of something that happened during writing: 9-11-01. The similarity is striking and, for some, unpleasant.
# YMMV.GloveAndBoots: The ending to "Your Ad Here", where the blog's equipment is taken away after Mario and Fafa insult Pepsi during what was supposed to be product placement, is less funny after a lack of money and views led to the blog going on hiatus in late 2017. The ending to "Jobs That Don't Make Sense Anymore", where Fafa considers the blog a "sinking ship", and leaves to audition for Avenue Q, is awkward for similar reasons.
# YMMV.TheCanterburyTales: The Prioress cannot abide cruelty to animals — nor can she abide a lack of cruelty to Jews. Hmmm... Even back then, there was probably an implication that she had a major case of Moral Myopia (even if the anti-Semitism would be condoned). Some scholars have noted that it was common when writing of virtuous characters to start with good manners and love of animals and then move into their charity toward the poor. Chaucer makes you expect that he'll start talking about her charity, but he doesn't — it's pretty clear she's nicer to animals than people. Also, historically anti-Jewish predjudice has often had an Even Evil Has Standards aspect in some corners. It is not implausible to imagine Chaucer disliking Jews while satirizing other anti-Semites, simply on the grounds that "they didn't deserve to be treated that badly."
# YMMV.NoGoodDeed2014: As if the numerous scenes of women being brutalized weren't bad enough, the film was released the same week that a video of Ray Rice punching his fiance came to light.
# YMMV.MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E19PuttingYourHoofDown: Fluttershy's lament "I am the monster" becomes this after she turns into a vampire.
# YMMV.PokerNightAtTheInventory: When Team Fortress 2 went Free-To-Play, Tycho claimed he hated the game. Well, there goes ever seeing a Penny Arcade cameo in a sequel, unless he changes his mind...
# Anime.PleaseTwins: Karen fainting at any surprise or stress is a running gag, though like many such things, it tapers off as the series goes on. Becomes a bit less amusing when you consider the parent series, Please Teacher!, which had a condition called Standstill, in which a person can spend years in a coma-like condition (without aging) after too much extreme emotion. One of these days, Karen might not wake up for a long time...

# YMMV.TestDrive: Pitbull Syndicate's logo as seen on the PS1 games in the series would later be co-opted by white supremacist hate groups.

# YMMV.CVGWJames: It's kind of hard to read stories that paint One-Shot Wren in a positive light, such as "Wild West Wren" and "The Champion's Challenge", knowing what we know about him in SMG4 Movie: Western Spaghetti. Ditto for any and every drawing James made that depict Wren in a positive light, like this one. It's hard to read "Peach's Rocket Escape", knowing that she wouldn't get the chance to do that in the SMG4 series, due to her transformation into a monster from the chasm she was stuck under.

# YMMV.ShiningTimeStation: In "Stacy Says No", Stacy goes overboard with enforcing new rules, and when Dan explains the problem to Mr. Conductor, he says that there's no rules against telling Thomas' stories, not yet, anyway. Since 2021, Mattel has been blocking uploads of classic Thomas episodes on YouTube, and in 2023, this has extended to Shining Time Station episodes due to Thomas episodes being part of them. Not helping matters is that Shining Time Station does not have an official release on DVD or streaming services.

# TearJerker.{{Rugrats}}: More Less - More - AlternativeCha… EarlyInstallme… HarsherInHinds… HilariousInHin… Memes ReferencedBy WhatAnIdiot WhatCouldHaveB…

# YMMV.PokerNightAtTheInventory: When Team Fortress 2 went Free-To-Play, Tycho claimed he hated the game. Well, there goes ever seeing a Penny Arcade cameo in a sequel, unless he changes his mind...