One chapter of Assassination Classroom has an image of a man taking a bite out of an Anpanman caricature. Takashi Yanase, the creator of Anpanman, passed away during the same week that this chapter was published in Shonen Jump.
Astroganger: The scenes of the Blasters destroying buildings and putting Kentaro's friends in danger hit a lot harder when you remember that when the same time period, Lebanon (where the Arabic dub was being filmed) was also undergoing a civil war, and even Ganger's own voice actor was affected.
Khaled El Sayed: “We had to come from different places to reach the recording studio & doing it under the violence, destruction & fear of being hit or killed during those horrifying times. But our passion and commitment for doing the voices of these shows as a duty for us made us feel the importance of finishing them so that it can be remembered by many generations to come”
The Animatrix: one memorable scene from The Second Renaissance, the backstory for the machine war of The Matrix, shows a female android being brutally murdered by an angry mob, her last words being a desperate cry of "I'M REAL!" The scene is reminiscent of transgender people being victims of violence, which makes it all the more uncomfortable following the Wachowskis coming out as trans women.
Azumanga Daioh: In the manga, Chiyo gets a part-time job at Magnetron Burger, an in-universe knockoff of McDonald's, with her first summer there featuring the manager commenting on how strange it is to be hiring a ten-year-old to work at a fast food joint. Just over 20 years after the manga ended, an actual McDonald's location in Louisville, Kentucky was busted for hiring two ten-year-olds to do various jobs around the restaurant.
Berserk is far from a happy story, but a chapter that was taken out of the volume release for revealing too much about the world too early revealed that the setting's God, called the Idea of Evil and literally representative of suffering humans wanting to look for a God to believe in exists in this world. It's appearance resembles that of a giant human heart. Kentaro Miura, the author of the series, would die at a young age on May 6th, 2021. The cause of death? Aortic Dissertion, which ruptures the heart. Ouch.
The fifth Case ClosedNon-Serial MovieDetective Conan Film 05: Countdown To Heaven featured twin towers (that looked eerily enough like the real ones) being bombed. The movie was released in April 2001. And in the end, the suspect the public thinks is responsible for the bombing is innocent, and the real people behind the destruction of the "Twin Towers" are a mysterious "black organization" in the background. This mirrors certain theories about 9/11.
In a series about cells fighting various diseases in the body, Cells at Work! has two against Cancer. The main White Blood Cell's English voice actor died of colon cancer in 2022.
The episode "Wild Horses" has an old old Space Shuttle being brought out for one last mission. The shuttle? Columbia. Cartoon Network actually pulled this one off the air for a while after the disaster.
The episode "Cowboy Funk" was pulled off the air after the events of September 11th, due to the episode involving the bombing of tall buildings. To boot, the buildings are two towers situated right next to each other.
The Movie was released just a few days before 9/11 and didn't get a release in America until two years later due to its terrorism theme.
Scott Freeman's conviction also makes scenes of Sarue of The Devil is a Part-Timer! creeping on various women not as funny as originally intended and especially when he's creeping on Chiho who is a minor.
Rui's backstory in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba involves him becoming a demon at a young age in order to be free of a condition that he has had since birth which left him sickly and frail. In 2022, the fate of his English voice actor Billy Kametz tragically paralleled that of his character when he was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer in April and died from it a mere two months later in June, at the age of 35. Making things even sadder is that one of the members of Rui's demon "family", which he created as a means to ease his loneliness after killing his own family, was voiced by Erica Lindbeck in English, who Kametz had been friends with and dating before his passing.
In Digimon Tamers, Tokyo's City Hall was damaged by an explosion midway up its length caused by a digimon attack. The building is a twin tower, and the episode was aired on the 9th of September of 2001. The dub understandably edited the explosions when it aired in the USA in December of the same year.
Digimon Fusion: In Episode 30, Taiki and Shoutmon have returned to Tokyo only to find that Tactimon is on the rampage, obliterating buildings and even destroying a bridge. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake struck just three days later.
Viewers who feel uncomfortable with Kuze and Mizuki's May–December Romance may even feel more uncomfortable when they learn that Kuze's English voice actor, Illich Guardiola, was arrested in May 2014 for having a relationship with a 16-year-old girl.
Chihiro Shindou's amnesia-inducing car accident in the preceding season a tale of memories (which first aired in 2007) is also this when her sister Kei's English voice actress, Brittney Karbowski, would actually get involved in a car crash in 2010.
The Fire Force anime, which is about superpowered firefighters, aired during the Summer 2019 season. The day before the third episode, in which an arsonist tries to burn down a building and kill the people inside, was to air, the anime community was shaken by the news that one of Kyoto Animation's studios was targeted in an arson attack which killed 30 people. The episode was delayed and edited out of respect for the victims of the incident.
Early on in Fist of the North Star, Kenshiro faces off against Golan/God's Army, a brutal militia of men who believe themselves to have been chosen by God to found an independent nation in His name. They easily suppress the people of a desert city through fear and violence, and their leader cites the reality of the prewar government as the motivation for his beliefs. Following the rise of ISIS and other Middle Eastern Islamist militias in the 2000s — 2010s, this subplot has become rather home-hitting.
4Kids Entertainment, a rather infamous dubbing company, ironically ended up being this when they went out of business. While many actually cheered when it happened, 4kids was actually the last haven of the Saturday-Morning Cartoon block. After they went out of business, the CW temporarily replaced the block, but eventually scrapped it all together thanks to American government wanting more kid-friendly educational programming.
In Fullmetal Alchemist, there is a war between the military state of Amestris and the ethnic tribe of Ishvalans. What makes this quite disturbing among Western readers and viewers is that Ishvalans share many similarities to Islam and the Arabs on a superficial level. The Ishvalans follow a monotheistic religion that forbids occult and sorcery as well as having very strict rules. In addition, Ishvalan culture is shown to be incredibly insular and tribalistic and has a tendency to engage in revenge violence, and the Ishvalans are portrayed as brown-skinned and living in a desert region. The Amestrians are shown as a modernized state resembling Europe, with technology as advanced as radios and automobiles and having quite a lot of freedom. In addition, the populace looks very Caucasian, with a fairly diverse amount of brunettes, blonde blue-eyed people, redheads, and other features associated with real life whites. So the war brings to many Western readers analogues to the current war on terror in The Middle East as well as the Iraqi and Afghani wars, and thus even made some readers bring accusation a genocide will soon be committed in the West. As the war gets more brutal, reading or watching FMA to anyone unfamiliar with Mid-Eastern culture or the mangaka's comments on the Worldbuilding would be quite uncomfortable.
In the first episode of Future GPX Cyber FormulaZERO, Hayato and Randoll nearly get killed in the British Grand Prix when their cars collide, Hayato's car goes off the track banking and crashes to the ground. Then came the Formula One San Marino Grand Prix a month later, in which 2 separate accidents resulted in the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and 3-time champion Ayrton Senna (and three others injured Rubens Barrichello, some mechanics, and some spectators).
The series explores on the refugee crisis which is one of the important storylines of the show. The 2015 migrant crisis in Europe caused by the political and religious unrest in the Middle East made the show very relevant.
Grave of the Fireflies ends with the spirits of Seita and Setsuko looking out over the then-modern-day city of Kobe. A few years after the film was made, Kobe would be hit by Japan's worst earthquake in over 70 years. The quake killed over 6,000 people and caused 10 trillion yen in damage.
Volume 9 of Gravitation is about Shuichi being Shanghaied to New York to perform for a new record label. During one of the last major climaxes, as Shuichi and company flee from his new boss, Reiji, in order to return to Japan, part of New York City gets the ever-loving crap blown out of it. Later, though it's on a plane headed for Japan, hi-jinks once again ensue, including K busting into the cockpit and shooting (with non-lethal rounds) and bounding the pilots and taking control of the plane. Volume 9 was released in Japan on January 2000, over a year before 9/11. This is made even more jarring when the reader is treated to a nice shot of the New York skyline, which includes the World Trade Center, when Shuichi first arrives to New York City.
Issei Hyodo living together with Asia Argento and using Dress Break on Riser Phenex's peerage becomes even less funny when his English VA, Scott Freeman, would be convicted for multiple counts of child pornography.
Asia can get assertive towards Issei at various points in the story, which is sometimes Played for Laughs. Her real-life namesake was accused of sexually assaulting Jimmy Bennett, whom she met when he was seven and paying him off $380k of hush money. Now watch these scenes with this fact in mind...
The Khaos Brigade's terrorist attacks on the Three Factions becomes even more nightmarish when actual terrorist attacks would occur in the Middle East, such as those in Iraq and Syria, as well as in Europe, such as those in Paris and Nice. And all of these took place during the course of the series' run.
The series is banned in New Zealand on the counts that it promotes child pornography. Then it was shown why Scott Freeman was unavailable for voicing Issei in BorN, as it came out that he got arrested and convicted for multiple counts of possession of child pornography. It also makes the scene where Issei uses his Dress Break against Riser Phenex's peerage uncomfortable to watch in the English dub. What's even worse is that he was arrested months before BorN aired!
In volume 6, Diodora Astaroth mentioned how he would enjoy raping Asia while she screams for Issei's help. Along with The Reveal that Diehauser Belial and Roygun Belphegor were actually in on the Rating Game corruption in Volume 20, Diodora's planed sexual assault is a lot harder to swallow after film executive Harvey Weinstein was dismissed from The Weinstein Company in 2017 following reports of his history of sexual misconduct and mistreatment of female employees and actresses, including Asia's Real Life namesake, Asia Argento.
In Inuyasha, Miroku's primary character arc in the series is unless Naraku is defeated, he will die at an early age as the cursed Wind Tunnel he is afflicted with will eventually kill him. This became a lot more tragic by the end of the 2010s, as both the Japanese and English voices for him ended up being the first members of the main cast to die- Kouji Tsujitani passed away in 2018, with Kirby Morrow sadly following suit two years later in 2020. Morrow's death came just after he reprised his role in the first episode of Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon which even further deepens the sorrow.
Phantom Blood: On the English Dub's broadcast, the episode where Jonathan defeated Tarkus aired on December 3, 2016. A few days later on December 7, Greg Lake, the lead singer of the album where Tarkus got his namesake from, passed away.
The last arc prior to reaching Egypt in Stardust Crustaders, involves the protagonists, a group of five men led by the wealthy Joseph Joestar, trying to travel to Egypt in a submarine when it springs a leak due to an enemy Stand attack, forcing them to abandon the sub and swim the rest of the way. In 2023, a sub that was touring the wreckage of the Titanic imploded, resulting in the deaths of all five men on board.
From the anime adaptation of Diamond is Unbreakable, seeing Joseph Joestar reduced to a senile old man with a noticeably frailer voice is even sadder after the passing of his voice actor, Unshō Ishizuka, in 2018, two years after the anime aired.
Golden Wind: Shortly before Cioccolata's debut episode aired, a news story surfaced about a hospital nurse named Reta Mayes, who murdered 7 elderly patients by purposely administering lethal doses of insulin to them.
Stone Ocean, written in 2000, has a Villain of the Week named Thunder McQueen, with the power to damage a target by injuring himself. He uses this ability by trying desperately to commit suicide, thus bringing a hero down with him. He was named after fashion designer Alexander McQueen, who committed suicide in 2010.
In Macross Frontier: The False Songstress, Alto and Sheryl fall off a cliff with their Segways, but they managed to survive. Less than a year later, Jimi Heselden, the company owner of Segway died in an accident falling off a cliff... while riding his Segway.
The final stretch of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The MOVIE 1st, which happened in the course of a single day, involved a duel over a devastated city submerged in sea water, a flashback that involved a disastrous power plant meltdown, and a climax where the protagonists had to stop a massive quake caused by the Big Bad. The movie was released in 2010. One year later, Japan was devastated by a 9.0 earthquake that was immediately followed by a tsunami, causing a radiation leak from a nuclear power plant that eventually grew into a level 7 nuclear accident.
In Paprika, Detective Konakawa is tormented in his dreams by the cry of "what about the rest of it?" in regards to a film he started with a friend in school that was left incomplete after he walked away from the project and the friend dies. Satoshi Kon, director of Paprika, died in August 2010 with his next movie incomplete.
The anime suffers a really bad track record of having certain episodes banned or temporarily eliminated from broadcast, rewritten, and sometimes Retconned entirely out of canon when they can be linked to tragic events in the real world. Other anime episodes not aired by networks for being too close in subject matter would include an episode in which a skyscraper is destroyed by a giant Tentacruel. Ironically, that didn't stop the scene from being in the show's opening for the rest of the Indigo League season.
The episode "Tower of Terror" was banned in North America after September 11 solely on the basis of its name, and the episode "A Scare in the Air" was renamed "Spirits in the Sky" until the anime Channel Hopped to Cartoon Network, and reverted back to the old name.
The Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma two-parters were not only unaired but, as the story of Episode N can attest, completely written out of the plot because of the earthquake in Japan. The special contained such scenes as a Paul-lookalike Plasma Grunt and a Liepard blowing up a building, and James blowing up the city. It also forms a nasty Plot Hole, because the Team Rocket Trio, who Took a Level in Badass, had acquired a meteor for Giovanni that would be used to generate seismic waves, and after this scheme failed, they would be told their services under Giovanni were no longer of importance and slowly backpedal to comic relief. Instead, because the two-parter was nixed, they just abruptly go back to their old selves and the meteor is never brought up again like the infamous GS Ball.
A Rescue Team during Episode N deals with evacuating a factory fire, which Team Rocket takes advantage of to steal Pokémon. This becomes much harder to watch after the bombing of the Boston Marathon and the explosion of a factory in Texas in April 2013.
The Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon series Necrozma arc begins with many characters having their life force sapped from Necrozma's influence, including Samson Oak. Ten days before the arc began airing in Japan, his actor Unshō Ishizuka died of cancer.
In RahXephon Episode 3, a Kabul Olympics is implied to be taking place sometime after 2024. Kabul's already low chances of hosting the Olympics are made lower by its fall to the Taliban in August 2021.
The motion picture (the animated movie, not the life action) after seeing the aftermath of yet another battle, Kenshin nearly starts to cry and states that he thought he was fighting in "the war to end all wars" 10 years prior. In real life, the war he fought in ended in 1868 or so, just 46 years before World War I, which before it ended was considered "the great war" or "the war to end all wars" since it was so terrible.
When Kenshin first meets Misao in the series she sees his disheveled appearance and asks if he wife ran away from him. He answers that he isn't married but after watching the Trust and Betrayal OVA or reading Volumes 19-21 in the manga you learn he wasn't only married at one time, but accidentally kills his wife 15 years before the series takes place.
Saint Young Men has a chapter set in a music store, where Buddha almost reveals to the clerk a secret of the music industry: whenever a famous musician dies before their time (Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix are mentioned), it's because Sarasvati is scouting for her personal band and music festival. Come 2016 and a big number of deaths among high-profile musicians, from David Bowie to George Michael, and the joke becomes even more bittersweet.
Due to the rather..."special" nature of the mangas she wrote for Shogakukan, it was speculated that Mayu Shinjo may have been an abuse victim in her past, as a way to explainher penchant for melodrama, Sexual Harassment and Rape Tropes, etc. Guess what; She actually was. And at the hand of her Shogakukan editors, the same ones she wrote these "special" mangas for. And worse, she's not the only one. Even worse, some sources are claiming that she hates smut (or at least grew to hate it) and never wanted to write it in the first place, leading some to believe she may have been crying for help.
Yoshinobu Nishizaki, producer of the iconic anime television series Space Battleship Yamato passed away on November 7, 2010 after falling off his steamboat named Yamato.
Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 is a 2009 anime where in 2012 a magnitude 8 earthquake erupts from northern Tokyo Bay. In 2011, the Tohoku Earthquake, a magnitude 9-9.1, happened.
The episode "Palace" begins with Demolishor buried in a desert, taking sniper shots at the Autobots as they struggle to find him. The episode aired during the time of the Beltway sniper attacks.
The later episode "Tactician" begins with a news report of a space shuttle nearly colliding with something in space, which somehow appeared to be an exact duplicate (it turns out to be Jetfire). Two days after the episode aired, the shuttle Columbia disintegrated.
The premise of the hentai manga series Utaite no Ballad is about a singer that frequently takes sexual advantage of his underage female fanbase. Already harrowing then, but has become even more sobering after the #MeToo movement of 2017, as numerous musicians (most prominently R. Kelly) found their careers irreparably tarnished by pedophilia allegations and/or convictions.
Violence Jack: The world went to crap following a major natural disaster. The disaster took place on September 11, around the 1970s.
Another one for the WTC September 11th attacks: with another 70s Combining Mecha show, Voltes V. Part of the first episode shows a series of stills showing the invading aliens' armada laying waste on the world's military forces and key cities, and among them was a certain pair of twin towers. What's more disturbing is that this image was flashed right after the montage of the Liberty getting blown up.
The plot of Episode 5, Battleship Mikasa Calls For Crisis, also counts. In the start of the episode, Kenichi and Hiyoshi are arguing because Hiyoshi wants to go the annual ship racing competition but Kenichi orders him to stay in case the Boazanians attack again. Despite being warned of the huge risk, Hiyoshi attends the annual racing competiton anyway. At the competition, a Beast Fighter attacks, which results in Hiyoshi's Volt Frigate being heavily damaged and sinking into the ocean, while the team at Big Falcon desperately try to regain contact with it. Due to the damage, the Volt Frigate is rendered useless in the battle and needs repairs. Hiyoshi temporarily loses the ability to communicate with the Voltes Team and Kenichi even considers abandoning Hiyoshi. Luckily, Ippei finds Hiyoshi's location and sends him back underwater so he can repair the Volt Frigate, and later the team are able to form Voltes V and defeat the Monster of the Week. While the episode originally aired on July 2, 1977, it has uncanny similarities with The 2023 Titan submersible incident.
The Wind Rises: At the beginning of the film, Jiro Horikoshi experiences the Great Kanto Earthquake while traveling by train to study aeronautical engineering. Nearly three years following the film's release, another earthquake happened in Kumamoto Prefecture, and in September 2018, yet another earthquake struck Hokkaido.
Yu-Gi-Oh! has Ryota Kajiki (Mako Tsunami in the dub) who lost his father at sea when he was young. Creator Kazuki Takahashi was found dead off the coast of Nago City in Okinawa on July 6th, 2022. It was later reported that Takahashi went into the water trying to save lives from a rip current.
Arachnid: Alice's friendship with her former bully Yoriko. After already being betrayed by Kuramoto and begrudgingly killing her in self-defense, it turns out the spider-girl risked life and limb for another person who didn't actually exist either ("Yoriko" is actually an ageless telepath, and the Arachnid Hunt would have been called off if Alice escaped instead of looking out for her) and who even rubs on Alice's face that deep down she's nothing more than a unhinged murderer. Yoriko's bullying of Alice and her internal thoughts over Alice being a depressed orphan come off as horribly cruel once one knows it was her fault Alice's mother Ayana was killed in the first place (and she casually orders Alice's father shot dead right in front of her too!). The end result is that Alice becomes fully alienated from other people and pointlessly attempts to fight a damn zombie apocalypse all on her own. The icing in the cake is that even her last friend Gokiburi is manipulative and wants to have sex with her by force, though she doesn't get the chance to try it.
The characters often made teasing gender jokes at Nagisa's expense, due to his androgynous appearance. And then we meet his mother, who makes him keep his hair long, wear girl clothes, and frequently tells him how she'd always wanted a daughter instead. Nagisa is forced to live out the life she didn't have, referring to himself as "her second play-through". Worse still, any act of defiance causes her to fly into a fit of rage, screaming and sometimes even hitting him. Everyone is horrified, with one of the girls who frequently teased him apologizing for it, though she immediately goes back on her word when she sees the opportunity to make money off of a guy who had previously taken interest in a cross-dressed Nagisa a few months back.
Much of the humor involving Kayano concerns her chest, even once being labelled "Forever Flat". In Chapter 173, "Number Two" makes it so she really has nothing in that area (fortunately, Koro-sensei was able to save her).
Everything good involving Reiner, Bertolt, and Annie once you find out that they're human Titans bent on wiping out the people of Eldia, AKA, everyone inside the Walls!
The Running Gag of Sasha stealing food, with the revelation that she once survived a major food shortage. The refugees from Wall Maria swarmed the area, and ended up leaving very little prey for the hunting-dependent village. Everyone in her village suffered and as a direct result, she became obsessed with food.
Every single Titan kill, now that we know that all Titans are humans trapped in Titan form.
The Smiling Titan. This is the Titan that, back in the first chapter, ate Eren's mother. Eren is able to take his revenge on this Titan later in the series. Even later than that, as we learn about the past of Eren's father Grisha, we learn his first wife, Dina, was part of a La Résistance movement with Grisha in a nation outside the walls. When the resistance was sold out, Dina was one of many sentenced to be turned into a Titan and set loose behind the walls. Dina swears to Grisha that no matter what she becomes she'll find him. Then she transforms into the Smiling Titan. Essentially, the Smiling Titan was Grisha's first wife who, even as a mindless Titan, managed to find where he lived, killed Grisha's second wife, Carla, and was eventually killed by his and Carla's son.
Near the beginning of Bloom Into You, it's revealed that Akari, one of Yuu's friends, chose to go to Toomi East because Oogaki, her senpai in the basketball club, whom she has an obvious crush on, is going there. Early on in the series, Akari confesses to Oogaki, who turns her down because he has to focus on basketball, and she takes the rejection gracefully in part because she has hope that he'll change his mind. In Chapter 27, it turns out that Ooogaki is in a Secret Relationship with the team captain — the guy she liked thought so little of her that he didn't even bother being honest with her.
While Bokurano is already quite harsh, there are still instances in which remarks become harsher once you look back on them.
In the anime, when Ushiro accuses one of the pilotsWho it isDaichi, who's in charge of looking after his younger siblings of getting cold feet, Misumi admonishes him, saying that "Everyone's scared." When you consider that she's his mother and is all but certain that her son is going to die, you can see that she's referring to herself and her comment has more weight.
In the manga, after a kid who falsely claims to be a Zearth pilot gets shot dead by a security guard(who's apparently seeking vengeance on behalf of those who lost loved ones in Zearth's battles), Machi suggests that assassins might come after the kids. Near the end, an assassin shoots Machi in the head and Koyemshi has to Mercy Kill her.
In Cross Ange, when the protagonist Angelise meets a mom who apparently has a baby who is a Norma, Ange's advice was to basically make a new baby who can use Mana. Eight episodes later, Hilda's mom did exactly what Ange said in the beginning of the episode and named her Hilda. After their reunion, her mother Inge drives her away because to her, she's a monster.
Many Monster of the Week Digimon in Digimon Data Squad were good Digimon in prior series. Some fans were horrified about old favorites getting creamed by the new heroes.
In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Zenitsu comically throws a long rant about how Tanjiro and Inosuke shouldn’t dare to feel broken over taking part in such a grueling training for demon slayers, during their first stay in the Butterfly Estate, because according to Zenitsu being trained by cute girls is the only thing that matters, and that will always be good regardless of how tough the training is, Zenitsu tells them to commit seppuku for acting like that. Much later in the series a seppuku becomes one of the biggest tragedies in Zenitsu’s life, for his beloved master Jigoro commits said ritual suicide in order to repent for his other disciple, Kaigaku, betraying the demon slayers only to become a demon himself.
Broly, in the climax of Dragon Ball Z Movie 8, says to Goku after being powered up by his friends "No matter how much power you absorb from those idiots, it won't be enough to kill me!" Movie 10 reveals that Broly was actually quite correct about that statement (at least in regards to being killed by Goku's power increase, although just barely).
In Durarara!!, Celty describes Shizuo's level of strength to a reporter by saying, "You know how, no matter how good a martial artist is, you can just shoot him and it's all over? Shizuo's the gun." The pithy line seems to take on a much darker meaning in a later arc when Horada nearly kills Shizuo doing exactly that.
In Elfen Lied, Kouta's sister, Kanae, tries to tell him that Lucy kills people. This ends up in a rather depressing scene where Kouta yells-at and slaps his sister; his final words to her were "Apologize to her! If you don't I'll hate you!" Immediately after, Lucy brutally kills her right in front of him. The fact that those were his last words to his little sister, who was telling the truth the whole time and whose last words were a plea for him not to hate her ("No, Kouta! Please don't say you hate me!"), is pretty damn harsh in hindsight.
In Fairy Tail, a backstory reveal explained a lot about the bizarre quirks and weird habits of Erza Scarlet. When she was younger, she was one of the slaves forced to build the Tower of Heaven. Her obsession with fashion and armor? She was forced to wear nothing but rags during that time in her youth. Her being a Big Eater who tends to fly into an Unstoppable Rage when interrupted? During that period of time in her youth she had to grow up on the edge of starvation. Her deadpan reactions to the guild's antics? She never got to interact with others when she was younger, so she doesn't know how to react normally.
The plot of Fly Me to the Moon is kicked off when Tsukasa saves Nasa from being hit by a truck and mysteriously disappears after he proposes to her, only to reappear before him when they're old enough to get married. At a few points early on in the manga, Nasa worries about Tsukasa disappearing again, this time for good. It isn't played all that seriously, but then in Chapter 143, Nasa wakes up and finds that Tsukasa has left during the night, neatly folding her bedding, then returns to her family's house, feeling troubled about her past and an apparent gap in Nasa's memory of their first meeting.
Natsuki Takaya is the queen of this trope with Fruits Basket and Hoshi wa Utau. Yuki takes the cake with: "There was something I wanted, something I envisioned, loving parents, a happy home with everyone smiling at me. A home that no one would ever want to leave, a warm place, a warm person. It exists, I know it does." When we first meet him it's beginning to become true, but later in the manga, it becomes clear how he became SO desperate for it.
Mustang tells Hughes that the soldiers who won't shut up about their girls back home always die. Surprise, he was right, just years later, in a death that involved both the girl he was talking about, and was shot to death, where directly after making this comment, Mustang makes a gun motion at him. It's worth noting that this is actually an inversion; the scene in question is presented as a flashback and is shown to the readers long after Hughes's death.
Shou Tucker's transmutation on Nina to make a talking chimera. One has the nasty feeling that someone out there did a better job. Guess what? To make matters worse, one of the chimeras shown later is apparently part dog, just like Nina and Alexander. In fact, the fact that there are superior human chimeras out there drives home how senseless what happened to Nina was and how incompetent of an alchemist Tucker is.
If one were to watch Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) prior to reading the manga or watching Brotherhood, the scene where King Bradley (a.k.a. Pride) kills his son gets a sense of irony in the manga when the kid's revealed to be a homuculus himself, namely Pride (Bradley being Wrath in this canon).
Grave of the Fireflies opens with the scene of a child dying and meeting his sister in the afterlife. It's a pretty heavy Tearjerker to begin with. It's somehow made even worse once you actually watch the movie and see what they both went through leading up to that moment.
In one chapter of Gravitation, after Shuichi and Hiro get into a fight at school, Shuichi goes to Yuki's house to get cleaned up so his mom wouldn't see him all bloody. Yuki jokingly asks if Shuichi got gangbanged in gym class. A few chapters later, Shuichi actually does get gang raped.
In an early chapter of Gunslinger Girl, we get Henrietta making it clear that she would kill herself if Jose stopped caring about her. Jose eventually gets weary of his cyborg's constant need for affection, and when she suffers a traumatic awakening of her memories at a crucial moment during a mission, he doesn't oppose her being reconditioned into an Emotionless Girl and even admits this makes it easier on him, not having to care for her anymore. Then her memories resurface again and Henrietta shoots Jose in a moment of berserker rage, after which they shoot each other in a joint Mercy Kill/Suicide Pact.
There's a scene during which Enrico Maxwell, the head of Iscariot, is being chewed out by Integra Hellsing for allowing her men to be killed by Alexander Anderson. He responds by saying, "Two men? If we killed two million of your worthless Protestant scum I would not have shed a single tear." It becomes a whole lot scarier in hindsight when that's exactly what he does. The killing people, not shedding tears.
Jan Valentine said that he planned to kill Integra and violate her corpse afterwards. Later, we find out that thugs did the same thing to Seras's mom.
During the dodgeball game in Volume 3, Issei Hyodo ends up taking a blow to the crotch to protect Kiba while the latter's attention is elsewhere, with Rias Gregory swearing vengeance as if Issei had just been killed. Fast forward to Volume 12, where Issei's temporary death leaves the Club stuck between depression and a lust for revenge.
One of the short stories of the series was about the Issei clones that Azazel had played a prank on Issei. It was mostly funny until the part where they had to use the memory-erasing machine Azazel had invented (at best, they could only erase the memory of the clones running around but didn't erase the fact that an Issei clone did it, leaving the victims thinking the real Issei had done it to them because it would damage their brain memory). At that point in time, it was hilarious, albeit a bit unfair to Issei who didn't really deserve all that. Fast forward to volume fourteen, and that memory-erasing machine incident suddenly doesn't become funny any more thanks to the student council group using it to wipe off the memories of the students were the victim of a rouge wizard terrorist attack at the school, which leaves students traumatized of something but not what. This left a bitter taste to the student council and the protagonists.
Asia Argento being exiled from the church as The Heretic becomes more disturbing when Xenovia gets banished for learning the truth about God; and Diodora Astaroth, the devil whom Asia healed, raped quite a few nuns and got them exiled even before he met the latter.
At first, Rias and Sairaorg Bael are criticised for being kings who fight in addition to commanding their pieces. But later, we learn that Bedeze Abaddon and Roygun Belphegor have used their King pieces for not-so-legal reasons in the Rating Games.
At first, Rias Gremory and Sairaorg Bael are lectured for using their king pieces to fight in addition to commanding their pieces. But then, we learn that Bedeze Abaddon and Roygun Belphegor have used their King pieces for not-so-legal reasons in the Rating Games.
Raimon first meet Fubuki on the Northern Ridge and save him from the cold by inviting him in their caravan. The driver says that many avalanches take place there, which Fubuki half-heartedly confirms. It turns out his family died in one of those avalanches when he was little and still can't get over it after all these years.
The entire Episode 15 becomes this after the events of Episode 45. In the former Kazemaru has to choose between staying in the soccer club and going back to the athletics club, which isn't easy for him with Miyasaka pushing him to go back to the latter and his teammates of the former accusing him that he only joined the club temporarily and would have left it at one point anyway. However, Episodes 15 and 16 also highlight his Character Development in that he learns how much he loves the current team, development which takes the opposite turn in Episode 45, where all the circumstances with the seemingly unbeatable evil aliens teams force him to cross the Despair Event Horizon and leave the team. His teammates were right that it would happen after all, they just weren't right when, and he's the only one whose withdrawal made the captain have a Heroic BSoD and the first one to leave the team on his own free will. Worse yet, Kurimatsu was the first one to revolt against the idea of Kazemaru leaving the team and when his nightmare comes true, he crosses the Despair Event Horizon and leaves the team as well. He really didn't want that to happen.
Kageyama giving Zeus the Aqua Of The Gods (which are some kind of drugs) in the Season 1 finale to give them superhuman powers and make them believe they're Gods becomes harsher after 10 years later, we get Episode 4 of Outer Code, which has Aphrodi go through a Heroic BSoD over the fact that he accepted Kageyama's offer and believes he's a failure of a captain. note he did acknowledge the mistake in the original series as well, but he didn't get a Heroic BSoD on-screen
Seeing how well Fubuki works with his brother in Ares, where he's Spared by the Adaptation, makes his death in the original series even worse.
When Naruto first defeated Neji in the chuunin exam, he convinced him that he isn't bound by fate, just as Naruto is able to defeat him even though he is a failure, while Neji is born with a pedigree that makes him strong. Later, we learn that Naruto's father was the Fourth Hokage and his mother came from a clan that was related to the first two Hokages, making his pedigree even better than Neji's, and meaning that if fate existed, it was fated for Neji to be defeated by Naruto. What makes this worse is that Naruto is The Chosen One of a prophecy, destined to either save the world or destroy it. No matter which way you spin it, Neji turned out to be right in the end.
Nagato/Pain's plan involved using the combined power of all nine Tailed Beasts within the Gedou Mazou statue, so that he can use a kinjutsu powerful enough to wipe out a nation, pressuring people to peace, for prolonged periods of time. Already it sounds disturbing, so that could possibly be worse than that? Well, in Chapter 594, Tobi revealed that the Gedou Mazou is a vessel for the Ten-Tailed Beast! Meaning Nagato would have revived a demon whose chakra is so evil and foul it endangered the world by existing, planned to only use it as a weapon to use to wipe out a nation and leave ituntil war broke out again and one side got to it first, would have reintroduced the world to unspeakable horrors, all in the name of world peace. Nagato would have likely learned very harshly that Evil Is Not a Toy, since Kurama/Nine-Tails itself said the Ten-Tails formed entire continents and swallowed oceans. When Minato told Naruto that Nagato was probably an Unwitting Pawn to Tobi, he wasn't kidding. By the way, he used to use that THING as a combat summon.
In Chapter 244, after Kakashi passes out while fighting the Rock ninjas, and having to leave Obito behind under a pile of rubble, two sentences come up, "Have I died?" and "Where am I?" The first happened on a black screen after Kakashi passed out. The second appears right after that on the next page on a star filled sky, we see Kakashi wake up, and assume he thought those words. In Chapter 601 (YEARS later in-story and in the real world), those words are repeated as Tobi flashes back to when he awoke half-dead, and missing his right half of his body, Madara having saved him.
Way back around Volume 7, Negi reveals his past: how, when he was four, he tried several times to get himself into danger so his Disappeared Dad would show up and rescue him. One night, a horde of demons attacked his village, turning many people to stone and slaughtering the rest. With only Negi and his cousin Nekane alive, his dad Nagi did show up and fight off the demons. Ever since, Negi felt that the entire thing was his fault, and that it was some divine punishment for his earlier actions. Asuna calls him an idiot and says that it couldn't possibly been his fault; one 4-year-old cannot inadvertently catch the attention of a demon horde. And then, late in the Magic World Arc, we find out that the demon attack was specifically an assassination attempt on Negi's life, made by the Megalomesembrian Senate because Negi was the son of two of the Senate's most powerful enemies. So, in short, the massacre was Negi's fault; they came there and butchered everyone specifically to try to kill him.
In Episode 9 of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Asuka is clearly upset when Rei is better at the synchronisation test with Shinji than she is, and runs off when Misato suggests that Asuka should be replaced with her in the upcoming fight. At first you may believe she's just upset by losing her chance to show off her skill in her official debut battle, until you watch Episode 22 and you find out about her tragic backstory, including how her mother, turned mad by a contact experiment with Unit-02, stopped seeing Asuka as her daughter and thought that a doll was her child, essentially replacing Asuka with it. Add in the fact that Asuka sees Rei as an emotionless doll who follow any order given to her without thinking and that Gendo seems to see Rei as more valuable, and the similarities make themselves painfully clear, giving Asuka's sadness a new meaning.
In No Game No Life, near the start of the series, Sora and Shiro, the protagonists, play a magical game of chess with Kurami. Shiro, who is otherwise unmatched at chess, is shocked to find out that the pieces refuse to obey her orders to sacrifice themselves, and Sora points out that realistically, soldiers wouldn't willingly throw away their lives unless they were incredibly loyal to their leader or morale was high. In No Game No Life Zero, the movie adaptation of Volume 6 of the light novel, Riku, the leader of Imanity(who is implied to be Sora in a past life), is able to order his subordinates to sacrifice themselves if necessary, and they do so out of the belief that their deaths can help secure Imanity's survival in the Great War.
In The Prince of Tennis, Ryoma oversleeps and arrives late to a match, and when asked he says "I was helping a pregnant woman to the hospital." Later in the story Oishi makes the same excuse, but he was actually telling the truth...and since he caught the soon-to-be-mom when she fell down a flight of stairs, he got a serious injury in his arm.
Promare: The scene in Galo-hen where Kray tells Ignis to consider Galo for Burning Rescue becomes a lot harsher after it's revealed that putting him there in the first place was just one big Uriah Gambit.
The Quintessential Quintuplets: In Chapter 21 (Episode 8 of the anime), there's a brief scene where Yotsuba tells Fuutarou that the reason she takes his side over his sisters is not because she wants better grades, but because she likes him. Then she grins evilly and says she was just joking, and the narration even plays it up by saying "In that very moment, Fuutarou's heart hardened a bit" after he says he won't trust anybody ever again. Come Chapter 90, we see that Yotsuba was not lying when she said that, and has been in love with him for years (the chapter even foreshadows it by establishing that Yotsuba is a Bad Liar).
In the "Freaky Friday" Flip episode of Revolutionary Girl Utena, Utena jokes about wanting to get out of Anthy's body before she gets caught up in some weird ritual sacrifice. Neither she nor the audience knows then that the whole Rose Bride thing works a lot like that.
In-universe example: In Rosario + Vampire, the Security Committee wanted Tsukune's blood just because he was human. In the second serialization, we find out why. Turns out their leader at the time was actually a mole for Fairy Tail and was even willing to put the entire Security Committee at risk by murdering Tsukune. This means that if Tsukune died and the Security Committee was eventually caught afterward, Fairy Tail would've won for sure.
The intros and out-tros in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei look like surreal nonsense. The manga's finale showed that these intros and outros might as well have been foreshadowing Kafuka being Dead All Along.
Science Ninja Team Gatchaman episode Farewell, Red Impulse. The title character gives up his life to save the world, including his son who just learned his father isn't dead as he believed for several years. It makes the episodes he appears in earlier in the series much more painful, especially the occasional rivalry between G-1 the son and Red Impulse.note In Japanese culture, Kentarou "Red Impulse" Washio leaving his son Ken behind as a child to secure his future, by securing the world's future, is one of the most selfless and loving things he could have done, considering the Japanese stance on family and its importance to society; here in the West, however, he's viewed as a neglectful or even abusive father who left his child behind to throw himself into his mission for years, and then dies when he's about to come back.
In Yu-Gi-Oh!, certain duels concerning the Blue Eyes White Dragon and Dark Magician is this, after seeing their history in the Memory World Arc.
In his duel with Pegasus, Kaiba has one of his Blue Eyes captured and turned into a Toon. He is forced to destroy it with his second Blue Eyes. Pegasus mocks him by saying as loyal as Kaiba is to his Dragons, they don't return the sentiment as Pegasus is soon able to capture the second Blue Eyes as well. Think back to Kisara and Priest Seto's relationship and what the Toon Dragon could represent. It's in essence Pegasus kidnapping Kaiba's girlfriend and driving her insane to turn her against Kaiba.
Pandora/Arkana extracts his Dark Magician's soul with his Ectoplasmer magic card in an attempt to win against Yugi. Yugi's Dark Magician is also affected by the same magic card since they have the same name and essentially sacrifices himself for Yugi by shielding the attack. Mahad, who was one of the Pharaoh's closest childhood friends, promised he would always protect the Pharaoh by becoming the Dark Magician after his defeat by Yami Bakura. It makes a whole new context whenever any villain gloat about destroying Yugi's favourite monster.
.Khaled El Sayed: “We had to come from different places to reach the recording studio & doing it under the violence, destruction & fear of being hit or killed during those horrifying times. But our passion and commitment for doing the voices of these shows as a duty for us made us feel the importance of finishing them so that it can be remembered by many generations to come”