Hindsight Cleanup

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Bringing up the following examples from Superman Returns:

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The already tense scene where Lois and her son are held hostage by Lex Luthor can be quite uncomfortable to watch in light of the revelation that Kevin Spacey was a prolific sexual predator who targeted underage actors. Bryan Singer has also been accused of that.
    • Not to mention that his Establishing Character Moment has him swindling an old lady into getting her will and she mentions how he "shown [her] pleasures that [she] never known".
  • The ending with Superman promising never to leave Earth, Lois and his son again becomes absurdly devastating 13 years later, when this version of the character returns in the crossover of Arrowverse Crisis on Infinite Earths, and it is revealed that the Joker murdered Lois, Perry White, and Jimmy Olsen. It's even worse when you remember this is the same Superman from the Christopher Reeve movies...
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Henry Cavill (who would go on to play Superman in Man of Steel) was one of the top two contenders for the role along with Brandon Routh when it was still going to be a reboot. Singer later revealed that he gave the part to Brandon Routh because Routh bears a greater resemblance to Christopher Reeve. Singer's slavish devotion to replicating Richard Donner's film, rather than any apparent interest in anything else about Superman, was at the core of the problems that audiences had with Superman Returns, and it even extended to casting the lead.
  • The reveal that Superman is a father would become a reality when Convergence revealed that pre-New 52 Superman and Lois now have a son named Jon, who would return to the main DC Universe when DC Rebirth came out.
  • The wig Lex wears is the same hairstyle that Jesse Eisenberg sports in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, as pointed out by Honest Trailers.

Most of those sound pretty alright actually, aside from the second one being unclear what the connection between events is. It's probably closer to Happy Ending Override.

Zapped this on Trivia.Pulp Fiction for being on a trivia page. Actor garbage so I'm not moving it to the YMMV page.

• Hilarious in Hindsight: Jules comparing himself to Caine from Kung Fu when discussing his idea of Walking the Earth. Guess who would star in a Tarantino film nearly a decade later?

There's also this, which was originally about Lance being amazed by being called on a cell phone.

• Unintentional Period Piece: Inverted, in that when Vincent calls Lance for help, Lance pauses and exclaims about Vincent calling him on a cell phone. Cell phones are near ubiquitous now, making it weird for someone to be amazed at a phone call, however it becomes clear later in the scene that his reaction wasn't amazement, but anger that he would use one to talk about illegal activities. At the time it would portray Lance as an overzealous tinfoil hat nutcase, but with the rise of the NSA and other government surveillance initiatives, it's now a perfectly understandable concern. Why him using a landline would make any difference, though, is another question.

What the fuck did I even read??

Agreed, they should be removed.

Could someone check me, please?

Edited by DookieIdiotNimrod on Apr 6th 2021 at 9:21:38 AM

All of that looks to be shoehorned connections.

Found on Superman: The Animated Series.

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The second episode has a passenger plane hit with a missile and nearly crash into Metropolis. To make it worse the missile was fired by a terrorist^note okay so they're more like mercenaries, but everyone called them terrorists in the episode. Similarly, the first part of "World's Finest" has a scene where terrorists take over Air Force One. Terrorists hijacking planes and planes crashing into buildings were both things that happened long before the airing of Superman: The Animated Series, let alone any real-life events this troper would have had in mind when they added this. The part about Air Force One is also left without context or valid reference. There is no mention on Wikipedia of anyone having ever hijacked or attempted to hijack the real Air Force One, and the movie Air Force One came out before "World's Finest" aired.
  • The finale of "World's Finest" has the Joker firing missiles on multiple buildings, sending them crashing to the ground. No context given for why this is hindsight.
  • Dan Turpin being killed by Darkseid can be this if you read Final Crisis, in which a dying Darkseid pulls a Grand Theft Me on Turpin himself.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Dan Turpin's funeral in "Apokolips... Now" has become this, following the death of his voice actor Joseph Bologna. How so?
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When Jor-El is surveying the planet at the start of the first episode, the creature that attacks him looks very much like a Hunter Metroid. Because "flying jellyfish squid monster" is actually a pretty stock monster design.
  • In "New Kids in Town", one of Clark's classmates screams at Brainiac, calling him Darth Vader as a joke. Corey Burton will later on voice his predecessor, Count Dooku.
  • In the same episode, Martha wants to give Clark and Lana some alone time so they can talk. So she tells Jonathan that The Dukes of Hazzard is on. And who plays Jonathan Kent a couple years later in Smallville? John Schneider, of course. It works, though I'd work in a mention of John Schneider playing the original Bo Duke, for the benefit of people who haven't seen the original Dukes of Hazzard.
    • Another Smallville-related one in the same episode: young Clark informs Lana Lang about how he is seeing through things; she asks if he's looked towards the girls' locker room. This ended up becoming Hilarious in Hindsight just five years later, when in the Smallville episode "X-Ray", Clark discovers his x-ray vision by accident and ends up inadvertently seeing into the girls' locker room... directly at Lana. I don't see any issues aside from the indentation.
  • In "Knight Time", Brainiac's line to Superman disguised as Batman, "You are every bit the detective your followers on the Internet believe.", has gotten funnier in light of the rise of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and their copious use of the Memetic Badass trope. The "rise of social media" started with the inventions of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and Internet Relay Chat (IRC), both of which were invented in the 1980s and had been widely used for years by the time this episode first aired.
    • In the same episode, Superman's impression of Batman is so spot on, Robin tells him never to do that again. Recently, Ben Affleck has been chosen as the next Batman. Affleck is well-known for his impressions, and while filming The Sum of All Fears, he did his impression of Morgan Freeman for Freeman himself, prompting him to respond with "If you ever do that again, I'll kill you." Stretching.
  • The first episode's ending of Superman simply staring at Luthor who becomes enraged at his silence is very similar to the ending of Lex Luthor: Man of Steel released nearly a decade later.
  • A female Guardian (seemingly head of the council) appears in "In Brightest Day...". Context not found for why this is hindsight.
  • In "Double Dose", Livewire sees Superman wearing a rubber suit and jokes that "the Boy Scout brought protection". Starting in 2002, the scouts would mandate that condoms be available at the World Scout Jamboree and all other large enough events. Taking a scene already laden with innuendo to a much creepier place.
  • The Grand Finale of Kim Possible features a male-and-female alien duo invading Earth, which many would compare them to Jax-Ur and Mala. For bonus points, both Jax-Ur and Warhow were voiced by Ron Perlman.

Of the entries without comment, the Dan Turpin example is probably good, and maybe the Kim Possible one too, but the Count Dooku example seems a bit weak in my opinion.

What about this one:

The first episode's ending of Superman simply staring at Luthor who becomes enraged at his silence is very similar to the ending of Lex Luthor: Man of Steel released nearly a decade later.

Cuts made.

I checked the Recap YMMV pages while I was at it. The ones that exist are stubs consisting entirely of the hindsight examples I just zapped on the main YMMV page.

From The Great Santa Claus Caper:

• Hilarious in Hindsight: Just imagine if Alexander had known about obsessive adult collectors of toys...

I have no idea how this qualifies as an example of HIH. There's no point of reference to a work, actor, date, or anything of the sort.

Slice!

Added the page to the Cut List, since that was the only example.

So, I stumbled upon V for Vendetta 's YMMV page and...

Harsher in Hindsight: -One of the first actions of open rebellion and anarchy by the citizens against the Norsefire government is when a Norsefire officer kills a little girl for spraypainting a V on a Norsefire Propaganda sign. On August 7th, 2011, London started suffering from a continuous riot by the population over a police officer shooting someone during a dispute.This one's rather old. I don't think it counts, given that the connection seems to be relatively spurious

-The film takes place in 2020, and prominently involves a virus that has killed hundreds of thousands of people note And while COVID-19 wasn't some kind of bioweapon released just for this purpose, plenty of governments worldwide have used the pandemic as an excuse for human rights violations, just like with Norsefire as well as mass protests and rioting in a Western country as a result of a law enforcement officer killing an unarmed individual note . Good thing that was just part of the apocalyptic scenario envisioned by the movie/comics, right? COVID-19 shoehorn AND specific reference to American current events that have happened again and again? I don't think it counts.

Edited by Euvou on Apr 7th 2021 at 12:32:06 PM

El Eternauta is a comic book from Argentina that makes heavy use of the Eiffel Tower Effect: the action takes place across Buenos Aires, and several locations are namedropped, shown in passing or even used as plot locations. The YMMV page has this:

• Harsher in Hindsight: There's some right after the first battle against the cascarudos (beetles) at the roundabout, when Salvo, Favalli and the rest of the army move along. The narration then proceeds to name some distinctive buildings and locations as the characters pass by them. One of them is the Escuela Mecánica de la Armada, which was, from 1957 (when the story was written) to 1983, one of the most important military buildings of Argentina, so to speak. Exactly thirty years later in Real Life, the author, Héctor Germán Oesterheld, was carried there during the last Argentinean dictatorship (then, and now euphemistically, called "National Reorganization Process"), which is infamous for the disappearance of people by arresting them illegally, extreme physical and psychological torture and illegal executions. Extra points if you know about the tortures enforced there and in every other illegal detention center: drowning, raping, fusillade simulations, electric shocks to the genitals while tied up to a table, birth and appropriation of babies born while their mothers were in captivity (which didn't earn them any special treatment), all to be buried in mass graves afterwards. The very next year, his four daughters, which were probably as young as many of the people reading this, were also illegally arrested, systematically tortured and disappeared like their father, one of them while being pregnant and other while already being mother of a baby. The grandson born in captivity was rescued by Elsa Sánches, Oesterheld's widow, while the other was raised by the father's grandparents.

To Make a Long Story Short, the author of the comic was detained by a military dictatorship, tortured at the "Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada" and killed. The entry may need some trimming, but is it even an example? The place was just name-dropped, see here◊ (the linked Wikipedia article translated it as "Navy Petty Officers School of Mechanics", the comic book as "School of Naval Engineering", but we're talking about the same place). Trim or remove?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure both of those can be cut.

Assuming that place is literally only mentioned once and nobody gets tortured there in the comic, I'd have no problems with cutting it.

I still believe that "a virus breaks out in 2020" examples are more valid than "a virus breaks out" and I think I have seen people make V for Vendetta comparisons. If the virus is similar (not necessarily the circumstances of its creation) then that might be valid. And it might not violate the recency issue cuz it's about the events of 2020 specifically.

Bringing up the following examples from King Kong (2005):

• Harsher in Hindsight: A giant gorilla getting shot to death while grabbing a woman feels more tragic following the incident involving "Harambe" at the Cincinnati Zoo, where the eponymous ape was shot to death when he grabbed a child that fell into his enclosure.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Remember Lumpy the cook and the little kleptomaniac kid? This wouldn't be the last time the two of them were together on a boat...
  • Andy Serkis using motion capture to portray Kong makes King Kong vs. Godzilla funny, because Serkis helped out with the Godzilla franchise in the latter's own 2014 remake.
  • Kyle Chandler, who plays Bruce Baxter, stars in the sequel to Godzilla (2014), Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). The film itself is part of a Shared Universe involving King Kong, who already made his debut in the MonsterVerse with Kong: Skull Island - and Chandler is confirmed as returning for 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong.
  • The companion book featured the Vultursaurus, small theropod dinosaurs that evolved bat-like wing membranes in place of feathers. While it still has feathers, an actual small theropod dinosaur with bat-like wing membranes was described a mere ten years after the film was released.

Cut Harambe, that's a bad shoehorn.

For Hilarious, only the latter two seems to fit, the former 2 is just grasping straws

Just ravage it all.

Edited by Delibirda on Apr 8th 2021 at 11:00:18 AM

Just a quick observation.
Harsher:
— Harambe: Gorillas attacking humans (or appear to do so) is too common. Cut.

Hilarious:
— Lumpy: Actor garbage. Cut.
— Serkis: There's a trope about this. Cut.
— Kyle Chandler: Actor garbage. Cut.
— Vultursarus: Move to Accidentally-Correct Writing?

Works for me.

For Western Animation/Clarence:

Harsher In Hindsight:

• Hurricane Dillis shows Clarence's grandmother presumably suffering from senile dementia. In the next episode to mention her (Plane Excited), it is revealed that she has died. Is this really harsher in hindsight? It feels like a shoehorn, as the only thing connecting is Clarence's grandma.

• In Straight Illin, Clarence around his friends even though he was really sick. This could mean he could be so desperate to make other people happy that he'd risk his life. This is fridge brilliance/horror, not harsher in hindsight.
  • With the school being infected by Clarence as the infection spreads through is being closely drawn to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, taken 5 years after the episode was released. COVID shoehorn. Only connection is "Virus."

Heartwarming in Hindsight:

• On a lighter note, however, this could also mean that Clarence loves his friends so much, he would literally risk his life. Again, fridge.

"Clarence around his friends even though he was really sick" ???

The first is character mortality (assuming they never said or implied dementia was the cause of death), the COVID one can be nuked, and the other two don't even make sense.