YMMV / Fatal Vision

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In what is possibly one of the saddest coincidences ever, the film is based on the story of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald. Judith Barsi, who played one of the murdered MacDonald children, met with the same fate four years after the film aired, being killed by her father along with her mother, who Ate His Gun after torching their home. Furthermore, the scene where Mildred is looking at a picture of Kimberley and remembering her time with her before Collette gave birth to Kristen is all the more sadder due to Eva Marie Saint, who's still alive in 2023, outliving Judith by several decades (especially since Judith played Kimberley in that scene).
  • The actor who portrayed the judge presiding over MacDonald's murder trial, Albert Salmi, killed his wife before committing suicide six years after it aired.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: While the book is still considered a landmark in the True Crime genre, it's often held up as a Anti-Role Model for journalistic ethics. Joe McGinniss was recruited by MacDonald to write the book on the understanding that McGinniss would tell his side of the story (though McGinniss had MacDonald sign a release form giving McGinniss permission to write the story as he saw fit). Instead, McGinniss became convinced that MacDonald was guilty, but rather than quit, he continued to be embedded with MacDonald and his legal team and pretended he was still sympathetic to MacDonald. MacDonald even sued him for breach of contract (a suit that went to trial and ended in a hung jury, leading to a settlement, after which the Kassabs sued MacDonald for profiting on a crime). For his part, McGinniss (who died in 2014) always insisted he did nothing wrong.
• Retroactive Recognition: Collette is portrayed by Wendy Schaal, now best known as a voice actress, particularly her role as Francine on American Dad!.