YMMV / Asterix and the Black Gold

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The Romans burn all the petroleum in Palestine so the Gauls can't bring it back home. The book was written in 1981, ten years before an actual military-induced oil fire in the Middle East (the Iraqi troops setting fire on Kuwait's reserves as they left following The Gulf War).
  • There's also a scene where oil is thrown off a boat and hits a bird. While it's a reference to a spill on the French coast in 1978, the seagull covered in oil ends up evoking the Exxon Valdez in 1989 (and the Deepwater Horizon 19 years later).

---