History YMMV / MichaelJackson

* {{Glurge}}: He wrote a book called ''Dancing the Dream'' about, as a reviewer summarized: "a fanciful collection of poems, reflections and photographs that champions kids, endangered species, the homeless, AIDS victims and planet Earth."

* AccidentalInnuendo: The opening line for "Bad", "Your butt is mine". Of course it simply means "I'll kick your ass", but [[HoYay there is a certain other meaning...]] (The song was originally supposed to be a duet with him and Prince. Prince refused, saying, "There is no way I am singing 'Your butt is mine' to you and you are not singing it to me.")
** [[ADateWithRosiePalms Beat it]]. The fact that he rhythmically repeats it during the mostly TitleOnlyChorus doesn't help.

* {{Bowdlerise}}: The original version of the "black panther" scene from the Black or White music video became conversional due to Jackson being shown to destroy glass from mostly walls. A altered version with racist text added on the glass (as in vandalism) exists, as if Jackson was a anti-Racism protester and wanted to remove all evidence of racism jokes.

** Whether or not Bob Fosse had a influence on the Billie Jean dance.

** The Thriller video became scarier by the mid-2000's when the real appearance of Michael mimicked his zombie makeup.
** There are t-shirts originally printed for his upcoming tour featuring Thriller zombie Jackson with the words "This is It" (the name of the tour) emblazoned across them. They didn't go on sale until after his death.
** Then there's the things not about his death, but the child molestation allegations. Say hello to [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Michael-Jackson-Disney-Adve_8467.jpg this cover]] to Disney Adventures's June 1993 issue. Michael's smiling and hoisting Pinocchio on his shoulders, and there's the promise of things the reader (probably) didn't know about Michael Jackson. This was a mere two months before the disturbing sexual abuse allegations became public and shone a whole new light on the cover.

** Michael singing about the things that begin to beginning to "notice boys you like" during his 1991 appearance on ''TheSimpsons''. It's a song about the changes an eight-year-old girl goes through, but, still.

** "Off The Wall" qualifies too. If there was ANYONE (other than Elvis Presley before him and Kurt Cobain later) who needed LESS craziness and MORE 9-5 everyday normality in his life, it was Michael Jackson.

%%** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMQ3jwqH_lU He's also "falling" in this rarely known Whatzupwithu video with Eddie Murphy]]

* Bowdlerise: The original version of the "black panther" scene from the Black or White music video became conversional due to Jackson being shown to destroy glass from mostly walls. A altered version with racist text added on the glass (as in vandalism) exists, as if Jackson was a anti-Racism protester and wanted to remove all evidence of racism jokes.

%%** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMQ3jwqH_lU He's also "falling" in this rarely known Whatzupwithu video with Eddie Murphy]]

%%** And [[http://www.theonion.com/articles/neverland-ranch-investigators-discover-corpse-of-r,1303/ this]].

** A good portion of fans believe that ''Dirty Diana'' was about Diana Ross. Other fans believe what Michael said about how the song was just about a random groupie. The amount of fans that believe the former reason is significantly higher, though.

* AccidentalInnuendo: The opening line for "Bad", "Your butt is mine". Of course it simply means "I'll kick your ass", but [[HoYay there is a certain other meaning...]]

** [[ADateWithRosiePalms Beat it]].

** The song "Morphine". Made in 1997, it was about his addiction to prescription drugs. Even when he was alive it was pretty chilling. But now that it is suspected his death may have been linked to use of prescription drugs, and that's when it became downright scary.
** There's also Harsher in Hindsight if you watch ''Ghosts'', which is about Michael's character's house being raided by an angry mob of people who hate him because he's strange. At the end, he asks them if they still want him to go and the mob leader says yes. He says something "Fine, I'll go" and pounds himself into dust on the floor. It was just a ruse on Michael's character's part, but it's still creepy as hell now that the guy is actually dead, especially considering how much of his poor mental state and isolation was due (from his perspective) to people treating him like this.
%%** And [[http://www.theonion.com/articles/neverland-ranch-investigators-discover-corpse-of-r,1303/ this]].
** Also, the burns he suffered while filming a Pepsi commercial back in ''1984'' was downplayed back then. In hindsight, the severity of said burns marked the beginning of his troubles with painkillers and other medication.
** The song “Who Is It?” is about Michael trying to figure out who stole his girlfriend from him. At one point he asks, “Is it my brother?” Michael’s brother Jermaine actually married their brother Randy’s long-time girlfriend soon after the two had broken up.
* HarsherInHindsight:

* AccidentalAesop: While definitely not the first FormerChildStar to have an equally difficult adulthood, he's easily one of the most famous, and his life is now seen as a cautionary tale about child abuse and the negative effects fame has on a young person.

* EpilepticTrees: Considering the guy's strange life, it can generate all manners of theory, particularly about his death.

* FamilyUnfriendlyAesop: The public relations folks at Motown taught Michael and his brothers that it was okay to lie for the sake of their image. [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity He took this seriously once superstardom hit in the 80s, fabricating some of the weirder stories about him that spread through tabloids.]] It [[HoistByHisOwnPetard came back to bite]] him when the media took it as a challenge, resulting in the rumors that would eventually ruin him.
--> '''[[Series/TheEdSullivanShow Ed Sullivan]]''': How old are you, Michael?\\
'''Michael''': Nine. (He was eleven.)

* FunnyAneurysmMoment:

*** And of course, there's the fact that now he's actually dead, which has just launched roughly a billion or so of these moments, from the amount of parodies and jokes at his expense over the years. Of course, there's a limit to how much it applies, given that he's presently dead as opposed to undead like in the music video.

** There was a painting done by artist Dana Schutz, called "Autopsy of Michael Jackson". It was painted in 2005.
** In This Is It, the new video for "Thriller" ends with Michael and the other zombies ascending into heaven...
** In "They Don't Care About Us", these lyrics are sung by Michael:
-->"Beat me, hate me / You can never break me / Will me, thrill me / You can never kill me"

** The bridge of "Give In To Me" all but predicts the joke he would become later in life and has the chilling line "You won't be laughing, girl, when I'm not around"
** Comedian Creator/RichardJeni opened his show ''A Big Steaming Pile of Me'' with five minutes of Michael Jackson jokes because, according to Jeni, Jackson was the one topic he could riff on, "without pissing anybody off." By 2009 both Jackson and Jeni were dead before their time.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMQ3jwqH_lU He's also "falling" in this rarely known Whatzupwithu video with Eddie Murphy]]
* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: As popular as he was in the United States, he was more popular in other countries (including Germany) due to the negative press being not as bad there. In the end, while he had tours for ''Dangerous'' and ''[=HIStory=]'' mounted, they did not include stops in the continental U.S.; he was planning for the Dangerous tour to reach the U.S., but then the first round of abuse allegations arrived. His This Is It tour was planned to be exclusively held at a single stadium in London.
** [[http://yurikageyama.com/2013/09/why-the-japanese-love-michael-jackson-an-essay-by-yuri-kageyama/ This heartwarming essay on why Japan LOVES Michael Jackson to death]].
* {{Glurge}}: He wrote a book called ''Dancing the Dream'' about, as a reviewer summarized: "a fanciful collection of poems, reflections and photographs that champions kids, endangered species, the homeless, AIDS victims and planet Earth."
** "Heal the World", ''Ghosts'' and "Earth Song" also qualify, especially the notorious Brit Awards performance of the latter in 1996 (see Messianic Archetype on the main page) which {{Pulp}}'s Jarvis Cocker crashed at the midway point.
** There's a lot of this in the rabid fandom too — the website Inner Michael is completely devoted to propping him up as a shining exemplar of humanity who was pure and perfect, a helpless victim of the black-hearted folk of the world who displaced their evil onto him by distorting his forever-innocent behavior.
** He also collaborated with Creator/EddieMurphy on the song "What's Up With You", the video for which features the two of them singing amidst a sea of fluffy white clouds as innocent schoolchildren frolic and sing around them. It's even more diabetes-inducing than it sounds.
* HarsherInHindsight: The song "Morphine". Made in 1997, it was about his addiction to prescription drugs. Even when he was alive it was pretty chilling. But now that it is suspected his death may have been linked to use of prescription drugs, and that's when it became downright scary.
** There's also Harsher in Hindsight if you watch ''Ghosts'', which is about Michael's character's house being raided by an angry mob of people who hate him because he's strange. At the end, he asks them if they still want him to go and the mob leader says yes. He says something "Fine, I'll go" and pounds himself into dust on the floor. It was just a ruse on Michael's character's part, but it's still creepy as hell now that the guy is actually dead, especially considering how much of his poor mental state and isolation was due (from his perspective) to people treating him like this.
** Then there's the fact that his never-performed 2009 comeback tour was to be called This Is It.
** And [[http://www.theonion.com/articles/neverland-ranch-investigators-discover-corpse-of-r,1303/ this]].
** Also, the burns he suffered while filming a Pepsi commercial back in ''1984'' was downplayed back then. In hindsight, the severity of said burns marked the beginning of his troubles with painkillers and other medication.
** He was taught that it's ok to lie for the sake of your image. This came back to bite him when he suffered severe burns while filming a Pepsi commercial back in 1984. The severity was downplayed in public, but after his death, it was acknowledged that the burns marked the beginning of his troubles with painkillers and other medication, as well as his addiction to altering his appearance (though he had already had at least two nose jobs prior to this).
** The song “Who Is It?” is about Michael trying to figure out who stole his girlfriend from him. At one point he asks, “Is it my brother?” Michael’s brother Jermaine actually married their brother Randy’s long-time girlfriend soon after the two had broken up.

* HesJustHiding: When his death was announced, several people thought he was staging it in order to boost his sales and a lot of fans believed/still believe he is actually still alive.

* MemeticMolester: [[NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead People try to make the joke as little as possible nowadays]] but Michael spent the latter half of his life with this reputation due to being accused more than once of sleeping with a minor.

* UncannyValley: Michael's physical appearance became more and more inhuman toward the end of his life, resulting in this trope.
* UnnecessaryMakeover: While not all of the changes in his appearance were his fault, it is universally agreed that Michael got carried away with altering his look.
* ValuesDissonance: Not an example of the man himself, but for folks who have come of age in the 21st century it can be somewhat difficult to understand why he suffered so much obvious child abuse with nobody doing much about it. That's simply how it was in TheSixties and TheSeventies, especially earlier in that decade; while attitudes were beginning to change, parents were still largely allowed to control and "discipline" their kids, especially if they got famous. In TheNewTens, a lot of Joe Jackson's ''publicly-known'' treatment of his family would draw harsh condemnation, and some of his antics in particular (like smashing in a door to scream at Michael, which was known about even in the [=70s=]) would put him in real danger of getting an express ticket to prison for child endangerment.
* VindicatedByHistory: ''Blood on the Dance Floor'' and some of his other later works were re-examined after his death and found to be actually quite good.

* TheWoobie: He never had a normal life, had an abusive dad, and had his public image ruined forever due to the child molestation accusations, most (if not all) of his fans and even some non-fans regard him as this.

* ValuesDissonance: Not an example of the man himself, but for folks who have come of age in the 21st century it can be somewhat difficult to understand why he suffered so much obvious child abuse with nobody doing much about it. That's simply how it was in TheSixties and TheSeventies, especially earlier in that decade; while attitudes were beginning to change, parents were still largely allowed to control and discipline their kids, especially if they got famous. In TheNewTens, a lot of Joe Jackson's ''publicly-known'' treatment of his family would draw harsh condemnation, and some of his antics in particular (like smashing in a door to scream at Michael, which was known about even in the [=70s=]) would put him in real danger of getting an express ticket to prison for child endangerment.

* FamilyUnfriendlyAesop: The public relations folks at Motown taught Michael and his brothers that it was okay to lie for the sake of their image. [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity He took this seriously once superstardom hit in the 80s, fabricating some of the weirder stories about him that spread through tabloids.]] It [[HoistedByTheirOwnPetard came back to bite]] him when the media took it as a challenge, resulting in the rumors that would eventually ruin him.

* FamilyUnfriendlyAesop: The public relations folks at Motown taught Michael and his brothers that it was okay to lie for the sake of their image. [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity He took this seriously once superstardom hit in the 80s, fabricating some of the weirder stories about him that spread through tabloids.]] It [[HoistedByHisOwnPetard came back to bite]] him when the media took it as a challenge, resulting in the rumors that would eventually ruin him.

* EvenBetterSequel: ''Off the Wall''? Awesome. ''Thriller''? SUPER AWESOME.

* FamilyUnfriendlyAesop: The public relations folks at Motown taught Michael and his brothers that it was okay to lie for the sake of their image. [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity He took this seriously once superstardom hit in the 80s, fabricating some of the weirder stories about him that spread through tabloids.]]

* FriendlyFandoms: Thanks to his contributions to the soundtrack for ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog3AndKnuckles'', a good number of Michael Jackson's fans also happen to be fans of the ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' series.

* StuckInTheirShadow: With the exception of [[JanetJackson Janet]], who launched her career in 1982 but didn't hit it big until '86, no one seemed to care about Michael's siblings once he became a megastar.

* PopularityPolynomial: Started to decay after ''Dangerous'' and by the TurnOfTheMillennium, only his most die-hard fans stood by him. Was beginning to go back into the spotlight prior to his farewell tour - only for the unfortunate AuthorExistenceFailure to ensure he remains popular and revered instead of a reviled freak.

* DawsonCasting: In his short film "Bad", he played a high school atudent despite being 29 years old at the time. However, [[http://images4.fanpop.com/image/user_images/2650000/IloveMichael28-2650180_650_500.jpg he looked rather convincing.]]

** He was taught that it's ok to lie for the sake of your image. This came back to bite him when he suffered severe burns while filming a Pepsi commercial back in 1984. The severity was downplayed in public, but after his death, it was acknowledged that the burns marked the beginning of his troubles with painkillers and other medication.

* TheWoobie: He never had a normal life, had an abusive dad, and had his public image ruined forever due to the child molestation accusations, so many (if not most) of his fans and even some non-fans regard him as this.