Hindsight Cleanup

Basically any song like that can be funnier if you imagine it's about an unrelated, same-named character. Doesn't mean it's a valid example; cut.

This is on Despicable Me 2 under Harsher in Hindsight:

• Gru telling Margo that there must be the standard six feet of distance between her and boys takes on a different meaning in the era of social distancing.

Take a shot.

Seriously, this wouldn't make for a bad drinking game. It'd at least make these examples more tolerable. Before you, ya know, die of alcohol poisoning.

Cut with edit reason "No. No it does not. Random things being similar to the COVID situation do not a Hindsight trope make." Added a null edit to include the "do not add" note on the Harsher in Hindsight page itself. Also sent a Murky Example notifier to the person who added it with the URL to the reporting post and quoting the same "do not add" note.

Edited by sgamer82 on May 30th 2020 at 10:46:08 AM

Honestly, at this point, I'm sorely tempted to add something along the lines of "it also caused rampant misuse of "Funny Aneurysm" Moment and Harsher in Hindsight on TV Tropes" to COVID-19, but I know that wouldn't go over well.

Bringing up these examples from So This Is Basically...:

• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment:
  • The Danny Phantom video opens with "Have you ever wondered what it would be like if Spider-Man was dead?". Thanks to Avengers: Infinity War and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Peter Parker has died twice in movies released since then.
  • In his video for Star vs. which was made shortly after the season 3 premiere, he expresses some optimism for the future of the show, and begs it to "please don't go back to the bad stuff". Many Star fans consider season 4 (the final season) to be the worst season of the series with an underwhelming finale, and Jello himself dropped the show prior to the finale.
  • In the Fire Emblem video, the creepy old man boasts about being the only Gay Option. Come Fire Emblem: Three Houses where it's revealed two-thirds of the same-gender S Supports for Male Byleth (and therefore widely understood at the time to be Gay Options) are men old enough to be his father.

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • A moment in his So This Is Basically Miraculous Ladybug video has him bring up that Chloe is the real villain and that Ladybug should just let her die. While this would have lightened up with her becoming Queen Bee, her actions in Season 3's finale might help cement what Jello suggests...
  • The joke in So This Is Basically Sonic the Hedgehog about Sonic losing all his rings (and potentially losing a life) over a stubbed toe takes a darker twist in Epithet Erased, an animated series developed by Jello, where Mera actually breaks a toe when she stubs it, and could have easily shattered her whole foot, due to having a superpower that also makes her whole body extremely fragile.
  • The Danny Phantom video has Butch Hartman giving Parody Assistance. Back then, Hartman was quite popular, but after everything he's been up to it can leave a bad taste in one's mouth.

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the Overwatch video, Jello jokes that the game has no diversity because there's no girl robots, then questions if girl robots even exist. Around eight months after the video was made, Orisa, a female Omnic, was added to the roster.
  • In the Rick and Morty video, Jello jokes about the series' tendency to have Mood Whiplash and end episodes on a somber tone with an obscure song as background music. Jello further snarks in the captions how fans will find a way to relate this back to Evil Morty. This is exactly what wound up happening three weeks after the video.
  • The Fire Emblem video also depicts the character of the Gharnef archetype as an attractive young woman, in all FE games published when the video was made, the Gharnef archetype has been exclusively male and typically elderly, a pattern which would coincidentally be broken in Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
  • In the RWBY video, Qrow shouting and singing as a crow was a small running gag in the video. The DC comic that was written half a year after featured his sister Raven doing the exact same thing.
  • Also in the RWBY video, Penny appears in a fictional cover of Volume 7. When Volume 7 finally aired, Penny did return to the series.
  • In the "Pokémon" video, he says every type has a gym except Dark, which finally got its own gym in Pokémon Sword and Shield.
  • Jello would wind up encountering most of his criticisms about the Ace Attorney games in spades when Jello himself played through Ace Attorney Investigations on his Twitch channel.
  • In the Animal Crossing video, he states that the next game will be the same as New Leaf with a few changes. The next game, New Horizons, revealed that it will be making several changes to the series formula.
  • In the Sonic The Hedgehog video, Sonic mocks Movie Sonic, saying he isn't even good enough to be his fake. This video was released before the official redesign was revealed, and when the movie actually came out, plenty of people stated that they liked it more than the actual series as of late. In short, Movie Sonic did make Sonic eat those words!

Regarding the RWBY video...

The entry about Qrow and the DC Comic is probably a keeper, but the content of the entry looks wrong. The date of the video is 9th June 2019, and the comic began in August 2019. It's only May now. I'm not sure when the comic chapter in question was published but it's clearly not after a year-and-a-half.

Having just watched the video to see what it's about, the Qrow gag only happens twice, in the last half of the video, and there's only shouting, no singing occurs. He's just bitching about being cursed to turn into a bird, which a parody of the fandom's reaction to Raven in the real show, where she implied to Yang that Ozpin cursed her and Qrow. Yang attacks Ozpin over doing that only to learn from Qrow that Raven's basically lied to Yang, and the pair of them volunteered for it to be done.

The fandom was left mocking both Raven's angst and the fact the teenage heroes seemed so hung up on shapeshifting when Dust and Semblances exist in the work. The creators concluded they hadn't done a good job of explaining why shapeshifting is considered weird.

So, the video is kinda parodying the fandom's big 'what's the issue with shapeshifting?' reaction — but uses the wrong character (deliberately, I suspect).

The DC Comic just has Raven, in bird form, screaming at Ruby about how her dead mother was a loser and therefore Ruby's a loser, too.

The video does have Qrow screaming in the same way Raven screams in the comic, so I'd say that's eligible. But it definitely needs to be rewritten to clean up the errors.

I don't see how the Penny reference is eligible. She's barely mentioned in the video in question and a lot of the fandom guessed she'd appear in Volume 7 because she's Atlas tech and Volume 7 was going to be set... in Atlas. It was an easy guess for the fandom to make and speculation about it had been going on for years. Penny being in Volume 7 is just a case of I Knew It! in action.

Edited by Wyldchyld on May 31st 2020 at 3:32:55 PM

This is on YMMV.The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air under Hilarious in Hindsight:

• In "Working It Out", Hilary's Jerkass mistakenly refers to her as Heather. In 2018, the Heathers movie was adapted into a t.v. show in which one of the titular Heathers is African-American.

....Please cut that unless it was actually referring to the film Heathers itself

1. Hilary's jerkass what?
2. Random word choice in a random situation does not hindsight make. Maybe if Hilary's actress was involved in Heathers somehow.

There are many about Keiji Fujiwara's passing. I think they might be cut since it doesn't explain the similarities with the deaths of the characters he played.

Avengers: Endgame

• Unless Marvel still have plans in the future, this film is Robert Downey Jr.'s final appearance as Tony Stark due to the latter's Character Death. Around a year after Endgame's premiere, Tony's Japanese voice actor Keiji Fujiwara passed away from cancer.

Dr. STONE

• Harsher in Hindsight: Byakuya's entire character and goals seem even more poignant after the passing of his voice seiyuu Keiji Fujiwara.

Final Fantasy VII Remake

• Cloud's first meeting with Reno is changed to now being a fight that Cloud wins and nearly kills Reno before the Arbiters of Fate step in and save Reno. Within the same week Remake was released, Keiji Fujiwara, Reno's Japanese voice actor, passed away from cancer.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep

• Axel's original self, Lea, explaining how he can live forever in people memories becomes far more poignant after Keiji Fujiwara's death in April 2020.

Tokumei Sentai Gobusters Returns Vs Dobutsu Sentai Gobusters

• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: What kickstarted the plot of this special was the death of Cheeda Nick as the 1 millionth death in the year 2012, being given a wish to live in a world where Messiah was nonexistent. This special was sold in 2013, and 7 years later, the plot becomes somber with the real-life death of Cheeda's voice actor, Keiji Fujiwara.

If it happened soon after the work in question was released, then I think it's appropriate. So I think FFVII Remake is OK, considering it was his last role (came out as close as a single week before his death) and involves Reno being kept alive for a performer who won't be able to reprise him. Dr. Stone may also be valid if he was one of the active cast until his death. The others can be tossed considering how far off they are.

Edited by AlleyOop on May 31st 2020 at 3:15:12 PM

His Dr. STONE character is primarily a Posthumous Character whose main contribution is that he was able to Fling a Light into the Future to aid main protagonist Senku.

As it is, though, the example is zero context in that it does not explain why Byakuya's entire character and goals seem even more poignant following the voice actor's death.

I commented it out as a ZCE and sent the person who put it there a notifier in case they want to add to it.

The Avengers one seems speculative since, as written, it's dependent on Marvel continuing to use Tony.

Edited by sgamer82 on May 31st 2020 at 12:13:58 PM

This is on YMMV.Saturday Night Live under Harsher in Hindsight:

• The "He will kill us all!" card from "Hilary Actually" hits differently now as the US approached 100,000 dead in the coronavirus pandemic due to inaction. The image has been since used as a Black Comedy meme.

And this is on the "Funny Aneurysm" Moment page for the same show:

• Larry David as Bernie Sanders ended up losing the vote for Democratic candidate just because he refused to shake someone's hand, because he just saw her cough into it - fast forward to 2020, and not only had Bernie suspended his campaign before even reaching the voting stage, but his concerns about coughing into hands is finally validated with the COVID19 pandemic.

Took care of both of those myself. Can we seriously bring all the Hindsight tropes to TRS sometime soon?

I don't think that's necessary at this point in time, but I can definitely see why you're asking.

Cut the SNL one (well, finished cutting it, jandn2014 started it but missed the very first part). I included the "don't add COVID examples" note from the HiH page itself to it. There's another coronavirus entry on teh page, but honestly I think it's legit enough to stay:

• During a late February episode, Michael Che made several separate jokes about the coronavirus pandemic (which was in it's early stages at the time) and his grandmother, only to lose her to the illness a few weeks later.

Would it be worth adding that "Do not add coronavirus examples" note to "Funny Aneurysm" Moment? If only to make it a clear thing to point to when removing examples?

Edited by sgamer82 on Jun 1st 2020 at 9:50:34 AM

Honestly, I think we should declare a moratorium on all examples related to the pandemic, unless approved by the thread of course.

That's what I've taken those notes as, since they read:

We've got it on Harsher and Hilarious. I was wondering if we should add it to Funny Aneurysm, too.

Honestly, I feel like "don't add examples, period" is a bit of an overcorrection. I think a better idea would require people to take them to this thread for approval. This might have the added benefit of tropers staying around, or at least having a better idea of what qualifies for these tropes and what doesn't.

Found this on YMMV.Kamen Rider Ex Aid.

• Kuroto's plan in Another Ending ends up somewhat resembling unleashing a virus on people to create a pandemic. Based on the timeline, Another Ending takes place in 2020. There is a real life pandemic occurring in 2020. Whoops.

The pandemic started in 2019 (hence the name "COVID-19"). Aside from that, it's just "a plague happens". Cut.

Well, at least it happens in the year 2020.

I could rework it into an Accidentally-Correct Writing example, but you guys most likely won’t approve of that.

Edited by GeneralGigan817 on Jun 1st 2020 at 12:26:21 PM

This is on YMMV.Lilo And Stitch 2002 under "Funny Aneurysm" Moment:

• In the ending montage, one scene shows Lilo, Stitch, and the girls dancing. In the background is a sign advertising the fictional airline Tsunami Air. A little less funny after the "Boxing Day" tsunami of 2004.