Harsher In Hindsight / Eminem

• Several of Eminem's songs appear to have foreshadowed Proof's death.
  • The video for "Like Toy Soldiers" (released in early 2005 as a single), which re-enacts the death of former D12 member Bugz in 1999, has fellow member Proof taking the former's role in the video. Like Bugz, he was also shot to death about a year later. It's a little freaky to see him in a hospital dying of gunshot wounds. Eminem commented on this in his book The Way I Am, understandably feeling like he'd cursed Proof somehow with the video.
  • "One Shot 2 Shot" has Em and D12 rapping about a shooting at a D12 concert. Proof's death two years later made this song even scarier than it already was. Even scarier is that despite Proof being alive at the time, he wasn't even on the song, which could mean that in the song's story, he did get shot.
• Most of his songs about drugs become this in light of his overdose.
  • Slim Shady's first words on his first major label studio album is to say, at the end of the Public Service Announcement Album Intro Track, "Don't do drugs". After Eminem's addiction, Creator Breakdown, overdose and brain damage caused by drugs, it turns out you really, really shouldn't do drugs.
  • In the 1997 song "Low Down, Dirty", Slim punningly begs for help "before I OD on an LP". Eminem's 2009 album Relapse contains a serious audio drama of Mr Mathers's overdose as a lead-in to the Sincerity Mode portion of the album.
  • "Drug Ballad" is a wry and witty Age-Progression Song about Eminem wrecking his life with drugs, which becomes extremely dark in retrospect.
  • During the first verse of "Without Me", Eminem raps, "A little bit of weed mixed with some hard liquor/Some vodka that'll jump start my heart quicker/Than a shock when I get shocked at the hospital/By the doctor when I'm not co-operating." Five years later, he wound up in the hospital from a near-fatal overdose.
  • In the music video for "Without Me", a fat old Elvis dying while taking a shit is depicted as another incarnation of Slim Shady. A lot less funny after Eminem's overdose in 2007, as a fat past-his-prime Eminem dying while taking a piss (though recusitated).
• "Kim", an already disturbing song about Eminem murdering his then-wife Kim, is made a bit more disturbing when in "Love The Way You Lie" he reveals they were both mutually abusive towards each other.
  BBC Radio 1: "This is not an autobiographical lyric [...] It's one of Eminem's flights of fancy, albeit one into a very real situation. Clearly, he understands the psychology well and can express the feelings with enormous clarity. Rihanna's role in all of this is interesting though."
• Both "Kim" and his defense of the song become even more disturbing with the revelation that the song humiliated Kim so much that she attempted suicide after a particularly cruel performance.
• Relapse and Relapse: Refill:
  • Both albums contain multiple swipes at Amy Winehouse as a gross, drug-addicted trainwreck. Amy would die a couple of years later.
  • "Same Song and Dance", a song where Slim Shady murders Britney Spears, becomes significantly darker as more has emerged about the abuse she experienced, with the hook analogising her screams of pain and struggling to the way she sings and dances for her fans. The song originally intended Slim to be an Allegorical Character for fame and drug addiction, but the song now seems to make him into an allegory for her conservatorship.
• In "Fast Lane", Royce Da 5'9" says "You let me take a shovel, dig up the corpse of Jack Kevorkian". Jack died exactly one month later.
• In "Cleanin' Out My Closet", Eminem raps about how his father had walked out on him and his mother when he was little, with such lyrics as "Wonder if he even kissed me goodbye? / No, I don't. On second thought, I just fuckin' wish he would die!" On June 26, 2019, Marshall Bruce Mathers Jr. (Eminem's dad) died of a heart attack at age 67. He pretty much confirmed that he still thinks this way on the song "Leaving Heaven" from Music to Be Murdered By, where Em reveals that he didn't feel sorry for his dad's death since he was never there for him. On a more positive note, he also says that if it weren't for his father's neglect, he wouldn't be the man he is today.
• The storming of the Capitol in 2021 made a couple of bits of Eminem's discography harder to enjoy.
  • His video for "Mosh" (a song that was a swipe at the, then, George Bush Jr. administration) essentially had people storming the Capitol to voice their displeasure, though at the least that ended on peaceful terms. A decade later, in 2021, Donald Trump, having lost to Joe Biden in the presidential elections, tries to rally his supporters to get Congress to overturn the election results, which ended with them storming the Capitol and didn't go quite as peacefully.
  • The video for "We Made You" has Eminem dressed up shirtless, dressed in furs, dancing around in a municipal building as he attempts to romance Sarah Palin. Looking at the video now, he looks like he's dressed as the Q Shaman, whose bizarre outfit led to him becoming the most memorable visual of the Capitol invasion.
• "My Band" by D12 revolves entirely around how they're only known by the general public as "Eminem's group." It ended up being their biggest hit. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy much?
• "Bad Guy", a song about Eminem's home getting invaded by a Loony Fan determined to kill him, is darker now that a man did actually invade Eminem's house to kill him in 2020.
• "Stan", which was about a Loony Fan of Eminem, has become this with "stan culture" becoming a thing and people unironically referring to themselves as "stans" of a particular celebrity, character, franchise, etc. A giant case of Misaimed Fandom.

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