Hindsight Cleanup

Hmm, its funny I missed out the NBC / Disney connection, considering I had a Jack Skellington keychain from Tokyo Disneyland back in 2008 (the movie's then 15th Anniversary, the souvenir shop hands those out for free by default)...

... but yeah, the shoehorns are gone

Never got any consensus on these

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 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 (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:
  • Henry Cavill was one of the top two contenders for the role along with Brandon Routh, with the latter getting cast. Routh only got to play Superman for one movie before the studio decided to make the next live-action Superman movie be a Continuity Reboot completely separate from the Donner/Reeve movies, and Cavill got to finally play Superman in his own trilogy that made comic book movie history for Superman and other DC characters (Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Zack Snyder's Justice League).
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Sir Richard Branson cameos as the commander of the space shuttle. In 2021, he actually did go into space on his Virgin Galactic spaceplane.

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

Looking it up, Virgin Galactic had been in the works since 2004 and was already well-known between then and its maiden flight, so at the very least the Richard Branson example wouldn't apply. If anything it's closer to an Actor Allusion.

Edited by bowserbros on Aug 8th 2021 at 12:36:01 PM

This was on the YMMV page for The Simpsons S 12 E 16 Bye Bye Nerdie:

• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment:
  • According to the DVD commentary, the sight gag of the baby greeting card factory shutting down due to massive lay-offs isn't funny anymore due to actual businesses implementing lay-offs due to the shaky global economy.
  • Homer putting bubble wrap on the playground equipment is also this now that many safety-conscious people have gotten seesaws, roundabouts, and other "dangerous" equipment removed from playgrounds.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Similarly to the Smithers example above, seeing how increasingly problematic bullying is, the (usually ineffective) ways to stop and/or prevent it and the drastic, counterproductive ways that others have dealt with being bullied be it becoming a school shooter or killing themselves makes the episode all the more difficult to watch.

The first one might be okay since it's the show creators acknowledging how it is uncomfortable, but the other two are shaky.

Wasn't bullying always a problem? And I know there may have been a stronger anti-bullying movement in the early 2010s (cuz South Park made fun of it), but that's kind of subsided in recent years. This may be Values Dissonance if anything, if it's old enough.

According to IMDB, the episode aired on March 11th, 2001. Though what would make this example Values Dissonance? The episode treats bullying as a bad thing, though it is played for laughs. Is the idea that jokes about bullying are in poor taste now? Or is it that Lisa's solution to bullying is too simplistic?

Anti-bullying movements wax and wane in cycles. There was a big push in the 1990s, then that waned around the turn of the century, and then it picked up again in the 2010s.

The FAM entries have similar problems: Massive lay-offs have always been an issue in real life, and that goes in cycles, too, depending on the state of the economy. And there were issues in 1990s about safety in the playground, which led to various measures like putting that outdoor padded tiling down on playground flooring. My thought when I saw the bubble wrap example is that it was parodying the padded tiling craze that occurred in 1990s[1]. However, I haven't seen that particular episode, so I don't know the context of it.

[1] I think there was a US study at the end of the 1980s that highlighted how damaging playground injuries could be for children; it caused waves across western countries, and that's what triggered the safety movement of the 1990s.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 9th 2021 at 10:37:59 AM

Ahh yes, more stop-motion and Henry Selick stuff.

James and the Giant Peach

• Hilarious in Hindsight
  • The undead pirate scene, which is led by Jack Skellington, has an expy of Donald Duck among his crew. Six years later, Kingdom Hearts was released, with Donald as one of the main characters and Halloween Town being a playable world, with Jack serving as its Guest-Star Party Member. Likewise, the main party become undead there, though Donald is turned into a Mummy instead. Even more hilarious in the French dub of the film; Sora and James have the same voice actor! — I've seen that movie before but I don't remember it having any Donald Duck Expy. Also the second line is just some Kingdom Hearts fanboy trying to Pimp his favorite game in an entirely unrelated movie.
  • A giant mechanical shark tried to take down the peach? No wonder Grunty imprisoned him in her lair. That monster is dangerous! — Robot sharks are a thing since old-timey Marvel comics. Shoehorn.
  • James begins his adventure by entering a fantastical ribbed tunnel to a strange house, at the climax, he has to run to safety as platforms are being torn away beneath his feet, and he defiantly shouts "no, I'm not!" in the final confrontation. All of these are also experiences that the eponymous heroine of a later Selick film will have. — This one sounds more like a trademark of the director than a Hindsight stuff. And YES, I'm discussing the other Selick film later, but this one's better off being cut.
    • Not to mention finding a mother figure in a spider-like creature. Thankfully, Miss Spider is actually benevolent. — Shoehorn.
  • Miss Spider (French) and Centipede (Brooklyn) often squabble despite being on the same team. Another famous team would later feature two characters of the same nationalities with much the same dynamic. — I don't remember TF 2 having any giant, talking insects... yeah, gonna cut this.
  • At one point the earthworm says "I'm Wonder-Worm!". —... wat. Another bad shoehorn.

... aaaaand the Henry Selick Opus, Coraline

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • From this clip:
    Coraline: Huh? How can you walk away from something and still come back to it? — It's a common saying, isn't it? Shoehorn.
  • The first time we see Coraline's mother (the real one), she's in a jumper with a bob haircut and her laptop casts a bluish glow all over her, making her look like Sadness. — Don't have a clip right now, but this is just Pixar shoehorn.
  • In both the book and the movie, Coraline is mistakenly called "Caroline", much to her irritation - years later the movie would get a belated mockbuster called Caroline and the Magic Potion ^note Caroline might not have originally been an intentional knockoff, as it was originally in Spanish and had a completely different title, but at very least the packaging of the English dub emphasizes that the main character looks like a Coraline Expy — IDK, the mockbuster in question actually comes 6 years after the more well-known Hollywood counterpart. Not sure...

Plus one more stop-motion flick to cleanup, Kubo and the Two Strings

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The film debuted a few months after Blizzard's Overwatch, a game also featuring a Japanese feudal-style archer named Hanzo. Even better: Hanzo and Genji used to be, conceptually, a single character named Hanzo that also wielded a bow/arrow and sword. — Isn't Hanzo a super-common stock Japanese name? Also the second plot element line is something extremely common. Going to cut this one.
  • This wouldn't be the last movie Travis Knight directed featuring a child protagonist and their large warrior pal named after a type of insect being pursued by twin antagonists. — So... basically two movies shares the A Boy and His X trope, makes it hilarious? Bad Shoehorn.
  • The Japanese dub is not the first time that Atsuko Tanaka's character was secretly the hero's mother all along. — Yes, we know, troper, you're a Jojo fanboy. But let's not shove it in here for no reason.

Edited by RobertTYL on Aug 9th 2021 at 9:09:38 PM

From The Last Jedi

• Harsher in Hindsight: One possible ending for the original trilogy was much more depressing than what we ultimately got: Luke fell to the Dark Side, replacing his father as 'Darth Vader'; Han died in battle; and Leia became 'queen of her people'. But while Return of the Jedi had a far happier outcome, between The Force Awakens and this movie, those plot beats or ones very similar start to play out: Luke being briefly tempted by the Dark Side leads to his nephew falling and becoming the next Vader, who kills his father, Han Solo, and leaving his mother, Leia Organa, the 'queen of her people' in a way - leading the few remaining Resistance members.

The usual way those things work is about a work turning darker by either real-life events or the plots of new installments. Here, we are not talking about a released work, but about a preliminary idea for a work that never got published (we have What Could Have Been for those). We can't really say if this work that was never made would have been made darker by "The Last Jedi", because it has never been made.

Excelsior 123 just added this hilarious in hindsight example to YMMV.Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer 1964.

• "Hey, what do you say we both be independent together, huh?"

ZCE, but I might be generous if that phrase hasn't really been used elsewhere besides that special and the SU song.

Pretty sure "Let's be X together!" is a line that crops up every time misfits and friendship appear together in a work's theme. Which is all the time.

I agree with RobertTYL's James cuts. Maybe the coraline one could be a Creator Thumbprint, but those usually require more than two examples to establish the pattern

On Nier:

• Hilarious in Hindsight: Ray Chase first came into the franchise as Eve and now here he is playing as post-timeskip Nier.

Eve and Nier aren't all that alike as characters, and all it really indicates is that Squenix has a good enough working relationship with Chase to recast him across multiple games of theirs.

Heck, even if they were similar as characters, you sure couldn't get that from the current writeup. I'd cut it just for being a ZCE if nothing else.

Yeah. There's a Hindsight I've seen recently that's basically the same thing. It's something like, "David Kaye played Iron Man in a video game and JARVIS in an animated series later". I'll do some link-hunting to find that one and remove it.

Edit: Found it on the page for Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. Terminated with a healthy amount of prejudice.

Edited by easytorememberhandle on Aug 10th 2021 at 1:21:07 AM

Hey I was thinking of uploading a video example to Harsher in Hindsight, specifically this one. Would it fit, or no?

It's definitely a great in-universe example, but it relies on the audience to recognize the then-current events that made the clips harsher.

Would the video description be a way to explain that, or is that the video equivalent of JAFAAC?

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Aug 10th 2021 at 6:17:05 AM

It would help, though since there's several guys there, it might run a bit long. Unless you just summarize all their stuff as something like "sex crime allegations" since I think that's the common factor.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

You've got a shoe-horn in me, you've got a shoe-horn in me...

Toy Story

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • After the other toys think Woody murdered Buzz when the former accidentally exposes the latter's severed arm to them through the window at an attempt to prove Buzz is with him, Mr. Potato Head tells Woody he hopes he gets his voice box pulled out. Guess what happens to Woody in Toy Story 4? — Well, this one sounds like it could work. Or maybe it's just Foreshadowing that takes 24 years to materialize.
    • This could be Harsher in Hindsight in another way, as by the time the fourth movie was in production, Mr. Potato Head lost his own voice, and the producers had to utilize archived recordings to keep him as part of the cast. — This, on the other hand, is just another "XYZ actor died" shoehorn. CUT.
  • Mr. Potato Head and Hamm comment on Buzz's quality voicebox. In the fourth film, the wear and tear has set in and he sounds "like a car ran over him". — Because a decade-old toy not in as good quality as a brand new toy counts as "Harsh", obviously... NOT. Cut.
  • During the scene in which Woody and Buzz watch as Andy and his mom drive away from the gas station, Woody complains that he's a "lost toy", which definitely sounds more gut-wrenching now after his decision in the end of the fourth film. — Not sure. Another 24-year Foreshadowing.
  • Hearing Mr. Potato Head say to Woody, "That's Mr. Potato Head to you, you backstabbing murderer!" becomes this (or Hilarious in Hindsight, depending on how you view it) since they recently dropped the "Mr." in "Mr. Potato Head". — Entry violates Examples Are Not Recent, also I don't think any toy stores actually enforce the inclusion of the "Mr." in the name... not that kids could tell any difference. Gonna cut this for being vague.

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • "You're a Buzz Lightyear! Any other toy would give up its moving parts just to be you!" The most commonly available Buzz Lightyear toys sold in stores are stripped down to only having one or two of the features the movie version had and often have limited articulation. — Next thing you know, someone's going to complain that real-life toys DON'T come to life unlike the movies as "Harsher". CUT.
  • In the Norwegian dub, the brief cameo of the song "Hakuna Matata" during the car chase sequence became this when the Norwegian actor for Woody also played Timon. The song was even changed into the Norwegian version. — Maybe. Any Norwegians gonna weigh in on this?
  • During the ending scene, Rex anticipates that Andy will get another dinosaur for Christmas. Preferably, a leaf eater. In the third movie, Trixie the triceratops becomes his best friend. — Aren't T-Rexes and Triceratops Stock Dinosaurs? Leaning to cut.
  • Buzz lets out the Famous Star Wars Scream when he is knocked off the window by a lamp in Andy's Room while Sid imitates Darth Vader when he "interrogates" Woody; in Toy Story 2, Emperor Zurg is an obvious Darth Vader Parody, and in Toy Story 3, Big Baby tosses Lotso into the dumpster in a manner similar to Darth Vader tossing the emperor into the Death Star's reactor shaft in Return Of The Jedi. In 2012, Disney buys the rights for Star Wars and the rest is all history! — Am I the only one who's tired of seeing the "Disney bought Star Wars" jokes being pointlessly crammed in YMMV of various old Disney movies? These weren't even funny in the first place. Going to slice it if nobody objects.
  • The Little Green Martians all believe that their being chosen from the claw machine by a human represents their ascension into heaven, and the LGM who gets picked by Sid constantly chatters about "reaching Nirvana"... only for harsh reality to set in as he becomes violently tortured and picked apart. This thread would eventually become the entire plot of the first R-rated CGI animated feature film. — Yeah, let's cram an R-rated film into the YMMV page of a kid-friendly movie for shits and giggles. Bad shoehorn is BAD.

Toy Story 2

• Harsher in Hindsight
  • Woody saving Wheezy from being put in a yard sale. Sometime between the second and third Toy Story movies, Wheezy was one of the toys lost before Andy left for college, possibly even having been sold off in a yard sale. Punctuated by this line:
  Wheezy: What's the point in prolonging the inevitable? — Maybe this one's a keep. Just maybe.
  • After Frozen (2013), you can almost hear Emily recite those infamous words at the end of the When She Loved Me sequence. For another Disney example, the Stitch! anime has an episode showing Stitch going through a similar experience of being left behind by Lilo, running contrary to the franchise motto of 'ohana: "Nobody gets left behind or forgotten." (Although in that case, it was a misunderstanding.) — Forced connection with a common plot thread. CUT.
  • When watching Al's tapes of their old show, Jessie mournfully shuts off the TV before the conclusion of "Woody's Finest Hour" because, as Pete claims, the show was canceled before it could air. However, during the scene when Woody rejects Buzz and co.'s rescue, you can hear the conclusion playing in the background. This means Pete has been lying to Jessie and using her abandonment issues for who-knows-how-long to secure his own fate. — Gonna move this to the main page, under "Foreshadowing" if it wasn't there already.
  • Prospector accurately predicts the events of the third film - the toys are forgotten and do get sent to a landfill in an experience that they almost don't survive. Thankfully, the toys' ultimate fate is resolved in a happy manner, subverting Prospector's predictions, and he was wrong about Andy not wanting to take Woody with him to college. — Well, Hindsight can't be subverted, so... CUT.
  • Jessie's backstory (being lost by the girl who loved her so much, and believing herself to be abandoned) is even more depressing when it turns out that's basically what happened to Lotso in the following movie. — This one is just a Foil character comparison, not Hindsight. CUT.
  • During the blooper reel, Flik and Heimlich appear on scene and are under the impression that the film they're in is a sequel to A Bug's Life, before Heimlich breaks the bad news to Flik. Pixar's most overlooked film, A Bug's Life has never been considered for a sequel treatment, being the only pre-Disney era Pixar film with this distinction. Now that a good chunk of its actors are dead, and it still isn't all that well-loved, it probably never will. — Another complain-y entry whining on how A Bug's Life doesn't get enough love. I get it, I like that movie too, but let's not cram a review in the YMMV page of a different film.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Al of Al's Toy Barn resembles another real-life toy maniac... — Fan Myopia Shoehorn.
  • The relationship between Zurg and Buzz (well, second Buzz) is a deliberate Affectionate Parody of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Disney now owns Star Wars. — Unfunny "Disney own Star Wars now lolz" shoehorn.
  • In the end-of-movie outtakes, Stinky Pete tells the Barbies about Toy Story 3 and getting them a part in said film. In Real Life the Barbie played a substantial role. — It's just Barbie becoming an Ascended Extra in the sequel. Not really "hilarious" in any way.
  • Pete asks Woody if he honestly believes that Andy is going to take him to college. Come the sequel, and Andy really is planning to take Woody with him when he goes to college. — Not sure. Borderline keep, maybe.
  • Buzz's wings popping out when he sees Jesse being an Action Girl is hilarious now that another fandom has coined the term "wingboner". — MLP shoehorn.
  • When the toys arrive at the apartment building, Rex suggests using balloons to float up to the top. The other toys quickly dismiss this suggestion. Apparently Pixar didn't... — There are old-timey Hannah-Barbera cartoons from the 1940s that uses that balloon gag. Not really a good fit.
  • Woody's Large Ham persona when he struts out of a box and "flirts" with Jessie brings to mind the "Creepy Woody" meme. — Memetic Mutation Shoehorn.
  • Kelsey Grammer plays a Big Bad of an even-numbered sequel who is a Well-Intentioned Extremist and expresses Fantastic Racism towards "space toys". Over a decade later, Grammer would later play another Well-Intentioned Extremist Big Bad in another even-numbered sequel known as Transformers: Age of Extinction who would bear Fantastic Racism towards the Transformers, who in Real Life are based on the Hasbro toyline that would qualify as a "space toy" brand due to their alien origin. — Transformers Fan Myopia shoehorn.
  • Stinky Pete's punishment is to be stuck at a new home with a girl and her Barbie doll. Three years later, Grammer played as a Big Bad within a Barbie film. — Fan Myopia shoehorn.
  • While reading his guide, Rex comments on the scheme of video game developers making the games so that the player had to buy the book to beat them. Andrew Stanton later revealed that the guide joke came from having to read video game guides to his son as bedtime stories. Now who do you think paid for those guides? — Sounds like a bad attempt at a joke, plus how is this even related to the plot? CUT.
    • On the subject of Rex and video games, the system that Rex is shown to be playing the video game on very much looks like a SNES. Nearly two decades later, Nintendo's latest system saw the release of a now popular JRPG, whereas the protagonist's name is also Rex. — Xenoblade Fan Myopia shoehorn.
  • One that's downright hysterical in hindsight: while searching for Woody's hat, Ham says, "The lawn gnome next door says it's not in the yard, but he'll keep looking." On the DVD Commentary, Andrew Stanton jokes about a spin-off movie with the lawn gnomes, which John Lasseter jokingly replies "Shhh! Don't give them any ideas!" Not only did Disney eventually produce a lawn gnome movie, but it was actually John's decision not to have it be part of the Disney Animated Canon. — Not sure if a throwaway line is "downright hilarious"... borderline keep, maybe.
  • During the second 2016 U.S. presidential debate, undecided voter Ken Bone became an overnight meme hero, and several memes revolved around how heavily he resembled◊ Al, and that Toy Story 2 predicted the rise of Bone. — Maybe.
  • The climax involves Woody and Jessie having to escape from a plane during takeoff. This is not the last film with Tom Hanks to have him in peril on a plane; there are the plane crashes in Cast Away and Sully, the latter of which introduced the meme "Never travel with Tom Hanks". — Forced Memetic Mutation shoehorn.
  • Wayne Knight would later go on to voice Zurg in the Buzz Lightyear animated series. — Actor Allusion shoehorn.

Toy Story 3

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In this movie, Richard Kind voices Bookworm. The next Pixar character he played couldn't read. — Actor Garbage shoehorn.
  • Several cases regarding Five Nights At Freddys: — '''
    • This won't be the last time a Crapsaccharine World is run by an evil teddy bear, even if Freddy isn't exactly evil. — FNAF shoehorn. All of it.
    • The monkey could easily be mistaken for one of the infamous animatronics, right down to the square metallic teeth. It even pulls a Jump Scare! There is even a fan-game with a monkey! — The creepy Cymbal-Banging Monkey trope has been around since the 1970s, shoehorn.
    • The Chatter Telephone is the equivalent of the Phone Guy since they both tell The Hero everything that happens at Sunnyside/Freddy Fazbear's Pizza (especially during the night), have been around for years, and suffer for it (Chatter through Cold-Blooded Torture, the Phone Guy is Killed Off for Real). — Shoehorn.
  • The Walking Dead would premiere later in the year Toy Story 3 was released, and its' third season coincidentally features a few beats similar to this film: the Big Bad is a ruthless tyrant with a southern accent ruling a potential safe haven under the guise of a benevolent, fatherly Team Dad persona. A blonde finds out she's been romantically involved with the enemy. And the main cast moves into a prison where they're besieged by the Big Bad. The Dragon pulls a Heel–Face Turn out of love for one of the main cast (though out of familial love than romantic love), and ultimately the Big Bad's community turns on him when they see how evil and insane he really is. David Morrissey even sounds a lot like Ned Beatty with the heavy southern drawl he uses as The Governor! Also, taking into account The Walking Deads fourth season, both villains are given chances for redemption, only to then prove just how far gone they really are by trying to kill the heroes again, and ultimately falling victim to a well-deserved karmic fate (though Lotso survives, unlike The Governor). — TWD Fan Myopia shoehorn, by cramming a gory, R-Rated series in the YMMV section of a Pixar film . Isn't that just absolutely hilarious?'

Edited by RobertTYL on Aug 10th 2021 at 11:34:58 PM

There's no way the voice box thing was foreshadowing when they didn't even expect Pixar to make a third movie (they were gonna delegate it to another studio), much less a fourth.

I might be lenient on that Kelsey Grammar Barbie example. Maybe. Possibly. It's a funny connection.

Edited by mightymewtron on Aug 10th 2021 at 11:33:33 AM

This was just added to YMMV.Peter Pan, and the grammar is so bad I have no idea what it's trying to say.

• When Peter Pan asks the mermaids about a story about. Cut off Hook's hand and threw it to the crocodile. which technically in another multiverse.