Hindsight Cleanup

We should probably purge all pointless Covid shoehorns... which should be easy to spot by glancing at it's 2000-ish related pages, starting at their YMMV section.

See, it took me 20 seconds to catch a bad shoehorn. From Electric Soldier Porygon

• Harsher in Hindsight: The episode opens at a panicked, busy Pokémon Center with all the nurses scrambling at the amount of Pokémon pouring in. It’s eerily prophetic, not just because of the hundreds of children hospitalized because the episode aired, but also due to another event that crowded hospitals two decades later. — Really? Really? REALLY?

The seizure one might be valid. The COVID one definitely is not.

And we're already purging COVID shoehorns — some examples rarely have the ability to stay if they refer to events that were affected by COVID and not COVID itself, but mostly they're just "anything medical = COVID."

If anything I'm surprised nobody tried to force in a mention of the first SARS outbreak considering its greater proximity to the episode. Regardless, cut the COVID mention and focus only on the mass seizure hospitalizations, because that in context genuinely is pretty uncanny (i.e. the episode that starts with a hospitalization crisis ends up causing mass hospitalizations).

From The Thief and the Cobbler:

• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment:
  • The thief stealing the film at the end, considering what happened to the film in Real Life. Feels legit to me.
  • Also, the film was finally released under the title "Princess and the Cobbler" in September 1993. A month later, Vincent Price passed away. So Zigzag's final line "For Zigzag then, this is... the end!" is oddly prophetic. Actor mortality. Insofar as I know, Vincent Price was not devoured by crocodiles.
• Harsher in Hindsight: It's implied in at least one version that the Thief is keeping the film until the reviews come in. The film has never been nominated any awards, and it's only the workprint that has been archived. Maybe one day he might actually give it back... Just restates the FAM entry, and the "awards" bit feels unnecessary. Anyway, since the Thief stealing the film itself is a gag, it belongs in FAM, not Harsher.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The women Mighty One-Eye keeps as slaves each resemble a more rotund Lord Dominator. Fan myopia.

Any other opinions?

I agree with keeping the first FAM and removing the other ones.

Edited by MrMediaGuy2 on Aug 6th 2021 at 2:27:36 AM

I'm confused. Did someone in real life literally steal the only print of the film?

Anywho, keep the first example but add a little more detail.

Not in the literal sense. From the looks of it, the point is invoking the more metaphorical meaning of "a big studio abruptly seized the ownership rights to the movie from its original creator, thus giving him no real say over the final product." Maybe rewrite the point to clarify that.

Granted, what happened was actually the result of director Richard Williams not holding up his end of his contract with Miramax, but the film's YMMV page notes elsewhere that popular opinion still describes the events as the studio robbing Williams of the rights.

Edited by bowserbros on Aug 6th 2021 at 3:09:15 AM

Dawn of the Dead (1978) — yeah, somehow this old zombie movie is "Harsher" because of stuff that happens 40 years after its release. Wat.

Harsher in Hindsight:

• The cop who uses the zombies as an excuse to indulge his horrible racism is rather shockingly relevant again after the 2010s rash of police shootings of unarmed Black people. — Police Brutality shoehorn that borders on ROCEJ violation.
• The opening scenes in Philadelphia, showing a deadly, rapidly spreading, and largely misunderstood disease that scientific and medical experts are desperately warning people about how to stop only to run into violent backlash, can feel this way in the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which saw the public health effort to fight it met with protests against lockdowns, masks, and vaccines, as well as (related to the above) public mistrust of the police stemming from the deaths of unarmed Black suspects causing backlash and mistrust toward all policemen like in this movie. — Yep, you can cram Covid into anything if you shove hard enough.

The Last of the Mohicans — Another quick, random one that I'm just going to delete entirely, if nobody objects.

• Hilarious in Hindsight: This wouldn't be the last time Jodhi May jumps to her death rather than face a much crueler fate. — Because suicide is such a great source of hilarity... NOT. Fictional characters killing themselves is so common we have a whole trope to it, CUT.

Edited by RobertTYL on Aug 6th 2021 at 9:46:22 PM

This Harsher in Hindsight example was just added to YMMV.The Angry Video Game Nerd:

• In his review of the Dick Tracy video game, he mentions "What's this all about? A fake $20 bill?" In 2020, George Floyd was killed by police during his arrest for suspicion of using a fake $20 bill.

Is this comparison in poor taste, or even violating the ROCEJ? Feels weird to compare the circumstances of someone's murder to an offhand comment.

Edited by harryhenry on Aug 7th 2021 at 2:01:35 AM

Agreed. Burn it and send a notifier (we have one for ROCEJ now, right?)

Surprisingly, no. But yeah, I'll get rid of the example.

Speaking of COVID shoehorns, Astral Chain:

• Harsher in Hindsight: With numerous NPCs wearing face masks and an event known as "the Pandemic" in the game's backstory, it can be hard to remember at times that the game was released about one year before the COVID-19 Pandemic, not after.

Because pandemics involving airborne illnesses have never happened before.

And Aretha Franklin:

• Hilarious in Hindsight: Who'd ever have thought Aretha's song, "Who's Zoomin' Who?" would become such a pertinent question in the COVID-19 Pandemic with the rise of the online video conferencing service, Zoom?

Because Zoom didn't exist before COVID.

Edited by AlleyOop on Aug 6th 2021 at 10:33:24 AM

Zoom was nowhere near the level of popularity it was before COVID, and definitely not a household term like it is now. Also I feel like I have heard that joke before but maybe it was just on this wiki.

Do any of these examples from Iron Man count?

• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: "Next time, baby". Well, not so much for Terrence Howard. He gets replaced by Don Cheadle in all of the following Marvel movies.

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The POV shot of Tony while falling in the iced-up armor is exactly like Rhodey's in Captain America: Civil War. In the very same suit no less.
  • Rhodey also has an offhand comment, "Look who fell out of the sky!" Ouch.
  • In the beginning press conference, Tony offhandedly announces that he never got to say goodbye to his father. With a Freeze-Frame Bonus in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, we find out that this is because HYDRA had Tony's parents killed. In Civil War, this is revealed to be a major source of trauma for Tony and finding out that Bucky killed Howard and Maria AND that Steve knew about it effectively kills any hope of a truce between Steve and Tony. Though it swings back into Heartwarming in Hindsight where due to time travel, Tony gets to meet his father in the past and reassure him about having a son.
  • Doubles as Heartwarming in Hindsight. When Pepper finds out that Tony is Iron Man, Pepper attempts to quit her job, telling him that he will "kill [him]self" eventually, and that she won't "be a part of it.". In Avengers: Endgame, Tony literally kills himself with gamma radiation when he uses his nano-tech Infinity Gauntlet to snap away all of Thanos's forces. Pepper is the last person that approaches and speaks to him at his deathbed.
    • Another moment: as Tony repeatedly demands Pepper to blow the arc reactor, she eventually says: "You'll die!"
  • The moment where Dr. William Ginter Riva tells Obadiah Stane "Well I'm sorry; I'm not Tony Stark" takes on a different tone after you've seen Spider-Man: Far From Home, when Ginter shows up again working with Mysterio, the latter of whom's motivated by what Tony Stark previously did to him.
  • When Tony returns to the United States, he says he wants a cheeseburger against Pepper's wishes of wanting to take him to a hospital. At Tony's funeral in Endgame, Happy Hogan starts laugh-crying, as does most of the audience, when Tony's four-year-old Morgan asks if they can get cheeseburgers. Kid's exactly like her father, in the best way possible.
  • Rhodey is visibly worried when he finds a dehydrated and injured Tony in the desert, saying, "Next time you ride with me." Rhodey and Iron Man "ride together" again in Avengers: Endgame in the final fight, only this time Rhodey doesn't get to save his best friend.

• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • Tony's final act in Avengers: Endgame, finger-snapping Thanos and his entire army with his own nano-tech Infinity Gauntlet" re-frames the last line "I am Iron Man" in a whole new light. Since Robert Downey Jr. solidified the existence of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with that single line alone, saying it as his last words in Endgame just reminds viewers of how far the MCU has gotten in the past 11 years. It's also safe to say that Tony heeded Yinsen's own last words with that one act of self-sacrifice.
  • In a conversation early on, Yinsen comments on how empty Tony's life is, a "man who has everything and nothing". 15 years later in Avengers: Endgame, he has a family with a wife, daughter and a child he mentors. There is an enormous crowd of friends and family at his funeral showing just how many lives Tony touched and how much he gained after the cave.
  • The first thing Tony asks for once he's back home, even before the press conference, is a cheeseburger. During his funeral in the epilogue of Endgame, his daughter tells Happy that she wants a cheeseburger - followed by Happy saying they were her dad's favorite.
  • At the press conference Tony mentions he never got to say goodbye to his father. In Endgame, not only does Tony meet his father in the past, but he gives him a very heartfelt goodbye, complete with a hug.
  • In regards to Pepper's line: "You're going to kill yourself, Tony. I'm not going to be a part of it.", while Endgame had Tony willingly sacrifice himself, Pepper still played a part in the final battle, decked out in one of Tony's suits! And he didn't die without his precious wife at his side.
  • In the opening scene, a soldier tries to get a picture with Tony before terrorists attack the convoy. The soldier makes a peace sign, which Tony give him some light teasing for. Throughout the MCU, Tony has a tendency to make peace signs in the soldier’s memory.

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The formal event in the middle of the first film takes place at the Disney Concert Hall. Guess who owns Marvel now? (The Walt Disney Concert Hall has nothing to do with the Disney company and was endowed by a private foundation in Walt's name, but it's still pretty funny.)
  • Downey is also seen at the Disney Hall in The Soloist with Jamie Foxx a year later.
  • The fighters pursuing Tony go by "Whiplash" One and Two. A version of Whiplash (although with heavy liberties taken) appears in Iron Man 2. Even better, Mark Scarlotti (the first Whiplash in the comics) went on to appear in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
  • In this movie, Rhodes briefly considers using the Mark II to fight alongside Tony. In the sequel, the first time he uses it is to fight against Tony. Rhodey's "Next time, baby." line is also somewhat ironic coming from Terrence Howard, considering that Don Cheadle replaced him for that role from Iron Man 2 onward.
  • Tony’s line about a “Titanium/Gold alloy” sounds like a Hand Wave from the writer(s) to justify Iron Man’s red-and-gold color scheme, but eight years later, A lab did indeed discover a Gold/Titanium alloy that’s up to four times stronger than most forms of Steel. Tony literally was ahead of his time there.

Redundancy aside (a lot of them are that way on purpose, as deliberate Call Backs), most of those make decent sense to me.

I don't see what's wrong with the Iron Man entries. Ok, the "Disney own Marvel now, lol" are bad shoehorns, but the rest sounds more like Call-Back(s) for later MCU films.

See, you can't just lump a whole Wall of Text and ask for our opinions; at the very least, put your own opinions or comments at the end of each Hindsight / Aneurysm example, to review why it's a shoehorn, otherwise you're just wasting people's time.

Case in point — Kill Bill

• Harsher in Hindsight
  • The Bride's storyline of being raped and has her body being taken advantage of is painful enough after stories about the abuse Weinstein and Tarantino inflicted on Uma Thurman were made public, but in 2018 a woman in Arizona gave birth despite having been in a coma for the majority of her life, which made the plot point regarding the Bride giving birth to a live baby in her coma all the more gut-wrenching. — The second line sounds like a case of Reality Is Unrealistic, but otherwise I fail to see how this is considered "harsh".
  • The Massacre at Two Pines chapel in the movie where Bill and his assassins kill everyone inside the church with firearms certainly hits harder after the Sutherland Springs church shooting in November of 2017. — Its a public shooting that takes place 14 years later. CUT
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Lucy Liu aka O-Ren Ishii would later go on to provide voiceovers in Kung Fu Panda, where her character was proficient in kung fu and viper; which in China is known as a Bai-Bu-She or "Hundred-Step-Snake" (the amount of time it takes the venom to kill you), or more colloquially in the west as a "Cottonmouth." — Actor Allusion that's better suited for the KFP page, if it wasn't there already.
  • A specialized assassination unit using snake-themed codenames? Hmm... why does that sound familiar...? — Snake-themed names sounds cool by default, and this is just Fan Myopia
  • The references to The Green Hornet and Game of Death became funnier when Bruce Lee was a character in Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. — Sounds kind of forced. Leaning on CUT.

And then, more Travolta in Grease

• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment:
  • The lyrics of "Sandy" took on another tragic meaning when Hurricane Sandy hit the northeastern US in late October/early November 2012. — Shoehorn, gonna cut this.
  • "Greased Lightning" can be hard to watch, knowing that Jeff Conaway suffered a back injury filming the number that would plague him for the rest of his life and ultimately led to his fatal painkiller addiction. — This is one of those "Behind the Scenes Real-life events" stuff that we've circumcised more than once, and this one's another easy cut.
  • The lyrics to ""Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee" originally mentioned Sal Mineo but due to his murder the movie changed it to Elvis Presley. Presley died the day they filmed the song. — Celebrity Death shoehorn.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • During the "You're the One That I Want," one ride Danny and Sandy dance around is called "Shake Shack." In 2004, a burger joint called Shake Shack opened in New York City, soon expanding nationwide. — Sounds like Myopia.
  • The "Oh well, oh well, oh well..." in "Summer Lovin'" sounds an awful lot like "lol" after a while. — No it doesn't.

Edited by RobertTYL on Aug 7th 2021 at 1:45:16 AM

Yeah, feel free to remove those. Knowing Tarantino's interests, the Bruce Lee one sounds more like him indulging in Author Appeal than hindsight.

Cleaning up YMMV.Action 52, consensus on these?:

• The Action Gamemaster was a failed system, but nowadays, the Retro Duo Portable System can play both NES and SNES games with today's technology. And the Retron Console can even play Genesis games as well. If only Action 52 was a decent game and the company would've waited until today ... On the fence about this one
• The Big Guy of the Cheetahmen trio, Hercules, has a glitch that enables him to jump indefinitely. 25 years later, and in another infamous video game flop, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, Knuckles - who has been redesigned to be given The Big Guy treatment - also has a now-memetic glitch that enables him to jump indefinitely! Seems acceptable, keep
• Nintendo would later release a collection of 52 games (albeit mainly tabletop games and sports games) for a fifth of the cost and with much higher quality: Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics^note if you count Piano as the 52nd game. Seems like a shoehorn, cut
• Megalonia would take on a whole new meaning in the anime series Megalo Box, which is about a boxing tournament with the same name as that game. Shoehorn, cut

The YMMV page of Superman Returns has several entries in the Hindsight tropes that could be interpreted as misuse, such as:

• Harsher in Hindsight: 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 (2019), 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...

and...

Hilarious in Hindsight:

• The wig Lex wears is the same hairstyle that Jesse Eisenberg sports in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
• This wouldn't be the last time that James Marsden played a human sidekick in a movie to a Primary-Color Champion coloured iconic protagonist who is also an alien that moves at super high speed. And unlike this film, that one went on to spawn a franchise despite having the opposite initial public reaction.

I could be wrong and this examples could be valid, but I wanna know what you guys think.

This is on Vivo under Hilarious in Hindsight:

• Lin Manuel Miranda's songwriting journey has taken him to places like the barrio of Washington Heights, the [[Theatre/Hamilton Revolutionary-era past of New York and London,]] [[Western Animation/Moana ancient Polynesia,]] [[Western Animation/Vivo the modern day cities of Havana and Miami,]] and a planet in a galaxy far, far away.

Edited by fragglelover on Aug 7th 2021 at 6:18:52 AM

Wrong link formatting, indentation, and overall not an example. Easy cut.

This is shoe-horning, this is shoe-horning, in The Nightmare Before Christmas...

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Sally's red hair, pale face, and Glasgow Grin can bring to mind the disguise of a certain super-villain. — Yes, we get it, everybody LOVES The Dark Knight, but there's no reason to shoehorn it here is there?
  • When Jack starts on his walk in the beginning of the film, he pauses next to a grotesque statue that looks surprisingly similar◊ to the villain Discord from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. — MLP Fan Myopia
  • Jack himself looks like a distant relative of Slenderman. — No he doesn't.
  • One of the toys made is a wheeled duck that brings to mind duckroll, the predecessor to Rickroll. — Oh great, so a vintage toy duck makes a random cameo in a movie, and its "hilariously related" to a meme? CUT.
  • The movie ending with an epic throw-down confrontation between Santa Claus and the Boogeyman. Sounds familiar... — We have a trope called Badass Santa, who dates back to the 60s, decades before this movie came out.
  • Take a look at the curtains in Town Hall◊. Now take a look at the logo for Kingdom Hearts. And yet ironically, the interior of Town Hall isn't accessible in any of the KH games. — Kingdom Hearts shoehorn.
  • A few of the headstones◊ in the Halloween Town cemetery resemble ghostly versions of the famous Edvard Munch painting, The Scream. Three years after this film came out, another film gave us Ghostface, who not only fits that same description as those headstones, but has also become the best-selling Halloween costume of all time, making his appearance in Halloween Town highly appropriate. — Scream shoehorn.
  • Thank Skellington that Oogy Boogy didn't turn out to be just Dr. Finklestein’s disguise like he would’ve been, cause Disney would have enough of stuff like that in the 21st century... — This is just pointless complaining about Disney's tendency to use Hidden Villain(s) in their most recent films... in the YMMV page of an old, NON-Disney film, no less. CUT

Edited by RobertTYL on Aug 8th 2021 at 5:47:08 PM

Give ‘em all the cut!

Actually, A Nightmare Before Christmas is a Disney Film - It was produced under Touchstone.

In any case, the example seems to be more about a certain thing not happening...

Edited by magnumtropus on Aug 8th 2021 at 5:29:45 AM

Yes, I think all of those examples can be cut.