History YMMV / Seinfeld

* ValuesResonance: Part of the reason it has so much staying power despite the inevitable SeinfeldIsUnfunny is that every generation can find something about the comedy that they can related to, no matter how much has changed since TheNineties.

** Speaking of "The Outing," the less taboo homosexuality becomes in America, the funnier George and Jerry's knee-jerk reaction of "NotThatTheresAnythingWrongWithThat" becomes. At the time, it seemed like the reasonable response to a heteronormative audience. Now, it makes them come off as thought they're in even ''deeper'' denial of being homophobic, making them even bigger {{butt monkey}}'s.

** George shoving himself though kids, a clown and an old lady on walkers to get away from the "fire" (actually just burnt food) in "[[Recap/SeinfeldS5E20TheFire The Fire]]". That's an incredibly despicable thing to do and if a real person did it, let alone a different character, it would be completely unforgivable. With [[DirtyCoward George]], it's exactly what you expect him to do and is therefore hilarious.

** Susan Ross' death is an outstanding practice of this trope. It began as a challenge for the writers to kill of a character that was neither melodramatic or made the other characters seem cruel, and their only conclusion reads like something out of the Website/DarwinAwards: getting poisoned from licking too many cheap stamps.

** Jerry Seinfeld's questionable acting: Some viewers find it to be pretty charming and would argue he still delivers jokes well, while others find his performance to unfunny, distracting, and even hard to watch.

** "[[Recap/SeinfeldS2E9TheDeal The Deal]]" is probably the only one that plays this (mostly) straight, sending the message that feelings are complicated and you can't just turn them on and off, no matter how diplomatic you try to be about them. Despite their best efforts, Jerry and Elaine's differing feeling about casual sex were going to make having it difficult, no matter what.

* John Cheever was a notorious philanderer that it was often rumored had sexual affairs with men and was based in the Ossining, thus making it easy to believe that he had a fling with Susan's father.

* John Cheever was a notorious philanderer that it was often rumored had sexual affairs with men and was based in the Ossining, thus making it easy to believe that he had a fling with Susan's father.

* FairForItsDay: While George and Jerry's panicked, self-conscious NotThatTheresAnythingWrongWithThat response to being MistakenForGay in "[[Recap/SeinfeldS4E17TheOuting The Outing]]" makes the two seem more homophobic [[SeinfeldIsUnfunny by today's standards]], the sentiments expressed were groundbreaking for a series in the '90s -- making the joke about the two male friends' insecurity in a time and place that they acknowledged as being homophobic, stressing that the problem was their own. There’s also some decent examples of ValuesResonance in the episode, especially with how Kramer is upset that Jerry and George didn’t tell him about being gay, showing that he is supportive. “I thought we were friends!” The scene with the gay soldier is also obviously critical of the US military’s homophobic policies at the time. Season 7's "The Wig Master" outright has a man ask another man on a date, and it's depicted as a perfectly normal thing for two people to do (Jerry even gets offended by the assumption that ''he's not'' seeing one of the men in question).

** There was, at one point, an electronics chain store called The Wiz, their slogan being "Nobody Beats The Wiz," although they didn't have a mascot. The store was eventually phased out at the TurnOfTheMillennium.

** At a time when homosexuals were largely still considered AcceptableTargets by most sitcoms (see the infamous "You kissed a guy" bit from ''Series/{{Friends}}''), this show has been praised for being unusually sympathetic to them, even winning a GLAAD Award for "[[Recap/SeinfeldS4E17TheOuting The Outing]]".

* LoveToHate: All four of them are terrible people but they're fun to watch.

* MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales: Even though his rowdy behavior at hockey games is PlayedForLaughs, the David Puddy character has long been embraced by the New Jersey Devils fan base, if only because it's one of the very few times the team has been depicted in pop culture media.

*** In ''The Stall'', Elaine asks the woman in the toilet stall next to her to pass some toilet paper to her, the woman (who just happens to be Jerry's date) refuses, and Elain latter gets payback by stealing the toilet paper from the Ladies Room the next time they meet. It may have been petty and spiteful on Elain's part but hardly underserving.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: TropeNamer. It's hard to believe that this was considered ''pushing the boundaries of network censorship and sitcom conventions'' back in the day, not to mention how most sitcoms today copy the show's premise of {{jerkass}} city-dwellers getting into trouble (cf. ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'') or a neurotic comedian doing stand-up and having awkward encounters with others (''Series/{{Louie}}'').

** In "The Andrea Doria", Kramer suffers from a chronic cough as a result of inhaling a hot dog. He resorts to taking dog pills to deal with it, but it doesn't help. By the end of the episode, his cough has gotten so bad that he becomes near-incomprehensible, having to literally force words through the coughing to warn two police officers about needing help. Come the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, and seeing a man in his 30s walking around coughing freely, especially right in people's faces, becomes a whole lot less funny.

** In "The Label Maker", Kramer and Newman are playing Risk in a subway with the later reduced to armies in Ukraine. Kramer mocks Newman's armies as weak and feeble within earshot of a passenger from Ukraine, much to the passenger's anger and defiance. The armies of Ukraine are experiencing Risk in real life since the Russian invasion in February 2022.
--->'''Ukrainian Passenger:''' Ukraine is game to you??!! How about I take your game and SMASH!
*** Less significantly but still worth mention, Kramer refers to the nation as "the" Ukraine, usage which is now heavily disfavoured in the English language as it implies the nation to be part of something larger (i.e. the Soviet Union).
** The episode "The Blood" deals with Elaine's friend Vivian's ongoing health problems which prompt her to ask Kramer, Elaine, and ultimately George to babysit her son often (in the latter case potentially raising him altogether if she doesn't survive). The actress who played her, Kellie Waymire, indeed had a heart condition known as mitral valve prolapse since she was a teenager and ultimately died from it six years after this episode aired, at the young age of 36.

*** "[[Recap/SeinfeldS4E7TheBubbleBoy The Bubble Boy]]" has Jerry and Elaine getting lost while driving because George was driving too fast for them to catch up, and he was the only person that knew the address of their destination. This immediately dates the episode to the mid 90s, because this would not have been a problem if George had a cell phone. It even dates the episode to an earlier season, because cell phones appear in later seasons. The mooks vs moops debate would also be resolved through a simple Google search.

** The b-plot of Elaine trying to find out whether her AmbiguouslyBrown boyfriend is a dark-skinned white man or a light-skinned black man without actually asking him in "[[Recap/SeinfeldS9E15TheWizard The Wizard]]" is a bit on the tone-deaf side. While the characters ''do'' try to brush it off as a non-issue in much the same way people 20+ years later might (and even then, asking someone about their ethnicity isn't seen as being all that offensive, so long as it's done politely, which is obviously not going to happen with these characters), the jokes about WhiteGuilt and NWordPrivileges feel more like an awkward reminder of how some white people are more concerned with being MistakenForRacist than having concern for the feelings of people of color. Though arguably, it makes the punchline to the episode, where Elaine and Darryl realize they're both "just a couple of white people" and enthusiastically decide to go to the GAP, [[CrossesTheLineTwice even funnier]].

*** "[[Recap/SeinfeldS4E7TheBubbleBoy The Bubble Boy]]" has Jerry and Elaine getting lost while driving because George was driving too fast for them to catch up, and he was the only person that knew the address of their destination. This immediately dates the episode to the mid 90s, because this would not have been a problem if George had a cell phone. It even dates the episode to an earlier season, because cell phones appear in later seasons.

** In "[[Recap/SeinfeldS9E6TheMervGriffinShow The Merv Griffin Show]]", Kramer finds the original set to the eponymous show and uses its setpieces in his apartment. In the 2010s, a producer [[NamesTheSame also named Mike Richards]] became the executive producer of ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}'', one of Griffin's game shows, and after host Creator/AlexTrebek passed away in 2020, the other Richards was considered to succeed Trebek as host.

*** In "The Alternate Side", Jerry's car has a car phone, which is a minor plot point as it allows him to contact the thief who stole his car. Car phones were a luxury item that began to fall by the wayside in the 90s in favour of cell phones, with the networks being deactivated around 2008 (they were a radiotelephone that would connect to a switchboard, then be directed to the intended phone number).

** In "[[Recap/SeinfeldS9E4TheBlood The Blood]]", George, trying to get Elaine away from Vivian, uses the excuse that Elaine had been selected for "the next Biosphere". He was referring to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 Biosphere 2]] project, which was supposed to study whether humans could live outside Earth in a new artificial atmosphere, and which was all over the news of the 90s (especially the early part of the century), in both good and bad ways (it collapsed because of mismanagement and conflict between those who inhabited the atmosphere). Nowadays it's mostly forgotten, although it briefly came back in the news in 2016, when Steve Bannon -- who briefly managed the project towards its end -- became UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump's campaign manager, as well as an alt-right ideologue.