Hindsight Cleanup

Found this on YMMV.Fast And Furious 6:

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The cable guns are surprisingly similar to the grappling hook in Just Cause 2 in the way tethering one vehicle to another creates over-the-top physics-related havoc.

I think this is tenuous at best. Also, Just Cause 2 came out three years before Fast And Furious 6.

Even if it wasn't tenuous, it's wrong-way. Cut it.

A somewhat minor one, but this is another hindsight entry that editors seemingly loves to shoehorn. Especially celebrity gossipers. Anyway here goes...

Old Master Q

• Harsher in Hindsight: The live-action 2001 movie has a romantic subplot between Nicholas Tse and Cecilia Cheung's characters, who do end up married in real life in 2006. In 2011 however, the two have divorced. — Ok, so Romance on the Set didn't really work, but celebrity divorces are really common regardless its Hong Kong, Hollywood, Bollywood... by that logic, Willow can also shove a hindsight on how Val Kilmer and Joanne Whaley got divorced later on. Leaning to cut this (and similar ones)

EDIT: Whoopee-doo, what'ya know, found a similar one just a minute later. Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)

• Harsher in Hindsight: The film is about the titular Smiths having an explosive break-up (in more ways than one). Their actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie would famously have a Romance on the Set and live together for a decade before marrying… only for Jolie to file for divorce from Pitt in 2016, apparently in less-than-amicable circumstances.

Edited by RobertTYL on Aug 13th 2021 at 10:19:48 PM

From WandaVision

• In the first episode, there is much confusion between Wanda and Vision over what the heart on the calendar means, since it's the 23rd of the month. The show ended up predicting just how many Emmy nominations it would receive.

Is this a stretch?

Edited by magnumtropus on Aug 13th 2021 at 7:16:59 PM

Yep.

Let's take a look at YMMV.Sonic Underground, shall we?

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In "Art of Destruction", Manic complains to his siblings and the recently reformed ART that the prophecy never said when they would win, and that it could be twenty years later. Given the show was Cut Short before they could win, and the Development Hell and eventual cancellation of the epilogue meant to be in Sonic Universe, it's depressing if you were a fan of the show. '''This doesn't seem so right to me, TV shows ending isn't really "harsh".
  • "Virtual Danger", the last aired episode of the show, ends with ships being flown into the tower that is Robotnik's main base, causing it to explode. This aired about two years before the 9/11 attacks. I don't really know the full extent of which 9/11 entries are legit, so I'm gonna go with keep, because it does seem uncannily reminiscent of that.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • When the halves of the names Sonia and Manic are switched, they make up the words "Sonic Mania". Looks like a shoehorn to me.
  • Chomps, Knuckles' pet dinosaur, shares almost the exact same colors as the Biolizard. Seems keepable to me.
  • One of the early concepts for Sonic 1 when it was still in production was to have Sonic as part of a rock band, though sources say they had to take that part of the game out to save space on the cart, and that Sega of America told their Japanese counterpart that that concept for Sonic wouldn't go over well with American audiences. Again, this seems strange, especially since that happened before this show.
  • Some five years after the show stopped, Robotnik had to deal with The Power of Rock once again. Maybe?
  • One episode has Sonic playing tennis against himself, and throwing a McEnroe-esque tantrum when the umpire (also himself) makes a call against him. Twenty years later, the second trailer for the film adaptation has Sonic playing both table tennis and baseball against himself. Sounds alright to me.
  • In "No Hedgehog is an Island", when Dingo double-crosses Sleet and plans to become ruler of Mobius himself, Sleet objects on the basis that "[He] can't even drink a glass of water without using both hands!". 21 years later, Donald Trump drinking a glass of water with two hands was seized upon by opponents for jokes and as a sign of him being physically unfit for office. Seems like our usual ROCEJ violation.

This one actually strikes me as rather dubious, because playing sports (especially table sports) against themself is kinda a common thing for characters with Super-Speed. Quicksilver does it in his introduction in X-Men: Days of Future Past, for instance.

It's OK.

YMMV/Casino

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Sam makes a very big deal about Nicky being put in the "Black Book" and sees it as evidence that Nicky is out of control. In 1988, Frank Rosenthal, Sam's real life counterpart, was put in the Black Book as well. Which happened before the film was made. Not hindsight
    • This is possibly alluded to in the film, in a subtle way. Notice how in the final scene of the movie, set in what is presumably the present day (or at least a few years after the events of the movie), an older Sam Rothstein is now based in San Diego rather than his beloved Las Vegas. (Rosenthal, in real life, didn't stay working for the Chicago Outfit, instead completely deserting them in 1983)
  • Maybe "hilarious" isn't the right word, given the scene, but Nicky (played by Joe Pesci) being beaten with a baseball bat by Frankie (played by Frank Vincent) feels like sweet revenge after what Pesci's characters did to Vincent's in both Raging Bull and GoodFellas. And the kicker? Vincent's character in the latter film was named Billy Batts. This was intentional on Scorcese's part. Hindsight goes on the earlier work, and this is a Casting Gag and/or Mythology Gag
  • It can be amusing to hear Ace introduced as a leading figure in "the gaming community". Seems like a reach
  • Knowing now that Frank Rosenthal was an FBI informant himself makes the film even funnier, as the mob bosses kill everyone including the ultra-loyal Stone... but the actual rat is untouched because he can still make them money. Seems valid, as this was revealed in 2008 after Rosenthal's death (his wife Geri — Ginger in the film — was also an informant and even had the same handler, but neither ever found out about the other)
  • A film starring Don Rickles that was released in theatres on Nov. 22, 1995. Are you sure we're talking about Casino? Irrelevant actor trivia and Fan Myopia

Edited by maxwellsilver on Aug 15th 2021 at 1:05:41 PM

Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail has come up on the fanfiction cleanup thread for having an absurd amount of subpages for tropes and audience reactions, and two of those are Hilarious and Harsher. I won't copy the whole thing; I'll just go through the subpages and point out ones that seem particularly unfitting.

HilariousInHindsight.Infinity Train Blossoming Trail

• Chloe is portrayed as a writer of horror stories in this fanfic. Her focus episodes in JN038 and JN050 reveal that she writes reports in regards to Fossil Pokémon. The only thing these two things have in common is that they involve writing.
• The premise of Vermillion City's Arc 2 revolves around a brown-haired person in grieving and angry at how everything was taken away from them obtain Reality Warper powers to do what they want and create an ideal little home for the two while those who refuse have to play certain roles and also using mind control powers? Wait, are we talking about Parker Cerise or Wanda Maximoff? For even more hilarity, both of them made a construct of the person they wanted most and the female of the pairs are associated with witches and the color red. Finally, the last construct with a connection to them is a pure white being with clear blue eyes (Zeno and White Vision). Rhetorical questions in hindsight examples are always a red flag. The stuff under the spoiler tag is mostly about colours, which makes it feel even more shoehorn-y.
• The themes of the story deal with bad communication, a fallout between two childhood friends involving a dream, Amelia questioning the role of the Train, a callous One-One about the fate of passengers, deconstructing catharsis, flawed characters....Are you sure Infinity Train Book 4 wasn't stealing ideas from this fanfic? This feels like gushing.
• Chloe was written to have personality traits based off Luz Noceda. Then the episode "Hunting Palismans" reveals that Luz also suffers through some of Chloe's traits and she teams up with the Golden Guard...who is voiced by Zeno Robinson, who voices Goh but the white outfit with pale hair brings up either Lexi or Specter. Similar to the Wanda one.

Most of HarsherInHindsight.Infinity Train Blossoming Trail seems more like intentional foreshadowing.

Edited by NitroIndigo on Aug 16th 2021 at 8:22:57 PM

If it's intentional foreshadowing, cut it.

Wyrd Sisters

• Harsher in Hindsight: Granny Weatherwax's commentary on the power of media hits uncomfortably close to home in 2020, where media and big tech companies increasingly cooperate to spread their favored narratives while aggressively censoring others.

I'm not too sure about this one, especially the part about aggressively censoring others.

Cut it. Companies exercising control over the media, as well as fake narratives, are not recent phenomenons. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of History knows that propaganda and censorship were major strategies that contributed to the rise of the Nazi party in post-World War I Germany, for example.

Edited by TantaMonty on Aug 17th 2021 at 7:34:03 AM

Hilarious in Hindsight from YMMV.Frasier.

• One of the running gags in the earlier seasons was Niles constantly wiping down his seat in the coffee shop and being very aware of touching surfaces for fear of germs. His behaviour would look much more normal during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Covid shoehorned?

Cut it.

I thought we already discussed and deleted that.

Checked the history, it was never deleted.

Well it definitely came up before so I guess we just... forgot, lol.

I like to examine pages, I like to examine pages, did you find? SHOEHORNS!

YMMV.Madagascar:

• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: When the gang first washes up on the island, Melman deduces that they have arrived in San Diego, and Alex laments having to compete with Shamu and his "smug little grin". Modern audiences who have seen Black Fish would know Shamu is anything but smug. Seems alright.
• Harsher in Hindsight: A tamer example: "the wild" Marty's Arc Words. After one discovers that this was a pre-emptive ripoff of The Wild, it not only feels awkward, but kind of sleazy. Is it really a rip-off? I highly doubt it.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Alex threatens to clone Marty after killing him, and then kill all his clones. In the sequel, while Alex doesn't harm them, Marty encounters a herd of zebras, that are absolutely identical to him and have Marty's voice, which causes Alex to confuse Marty with other zebras. Again, sounds alright.
  • Melman was originally an okapi, but was changed to a giraffe for fear of audiences not knowing what an okapi is. In 2013, in the Valentine's special Madly Madagascar, an okapi character appears as Marty's love interest. Keep, I guess?
  • During the scene with Marty ice skating at the Rockefeller Park rink, a parody of the NBC News building dubbed PDI News (a reference to Pacific Data Images, the division of DreamWorks Animation that produced the film) can be spotted in the background. NBC's parent company, NBCUniversal, would later buy DreamWorks Animation in 2016. Don't know, it looks like a "Disney-Fox" example.
  • In the Korean dub, watching Alex talking to "Spaulding" (a reference to "Wilson" from Cast Away) is particularly funny once you remember that Song Kang-ho, the voice of Alex in that version, is commonly referred to as "the Korean Tom Hanks". This seems like a stretch to me.

• Harsher in Hindsight: The film features some poachers luring cub!Alex away from an animal reserve where he promptly gets kidnapped. This is exactly how Cecil the Lion was killed. Seems OK.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This isn't the first time Hans Zimmer composed a score to an animated movie centered around a lion and set in Africa. Needs to be cut or moved to the The Lion King (1994) page, as this film came out after it.
  • Julien gets the line "I would invade a neighboring country and impose my own ideology, even if they didn't want it!" His voice actor, Sacha Baron Cohen, later played The Dictator. Again, this seems like an actor-related stretch.

• Hilarious in Hindsight: A certain R-rated film would unintentionally parody Afro Circus five years later. Gia's voice actress then went on to appear in that film's sequel. Another actor-related stretch.
  • Also counting on this exact same regard, Jessica Chastain, the voice actress of Italian jaguar Gia, would later on marry an Italian nobleman five years later. Seems a bit like a stretch.

Guys, I think I just found 15 or 16 new candidates for Harsher in Hindsight.

Nearly all those examples reference things that were issues before 2020.

And we still don't allow examples where the pandemic itself is all that made the movie "harsher."

The article might be worth listing as in-universe on Web Original or something, even if it's got a lot of reaches. (The only connection to Jurassic Park seems to be "people be dumb." The majority are simply movies about isolation, with illness not even being a factor.)

Edited by mightymewtron on Aug 19th 2021 at 3:48:23 PM

...And even if they were valid examples, why did you not just add them?

Found this 9/11 shoehorn on YMMV.Descent.

• Harsher in Hindsight: Dravis bombing the PTMC headquarters. It doesn't help that the news broadcast in the cutscene outright calls it a terrorist attack, or that the PTMC building looks rather like a skyscraper (and even has a bunch of smoke coming out of it, much like with the Twin Towers before they collapsed.) The building in question looks nothing like either of the Twin Towers. The explosion was not caused by any aircraft crashing into it. The attack didn't lead to the building being demolished. So the only connection to 9/11 is "tall building on fire".

Edited by JAG01 on Aug 19th 2021 at 10:29:38 AM

Found this on Fraggle Rock:

• Harsher in Hindsight: Boober's fear of germs, including advising Wembley to wear a face mask while balancing a pickle on his nose, should resonate to anyone watching during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Even more so considering that Fraggle Rock: Rock On, made in 2020, featured the Fraggles self-isolating due to said pandemic.