Hindsight Cleanup

I'd say that most of those examples can indeed be cut. Regarding the vinyl one, it might apply given how the Vinyl Revival led a lot of people to look back on the LP's dismissal in popular culture during the '90s as a Popularity Polynomial version of It Will Never Catch On (especially since vinyl is now marketed as the premier audiophile format). That said, IDK how much real-life social trends apply for Hindsight examples, so if anyone else has a bean to toss in the jar, feel free to do so.

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Going back to the Deltarune example, moving it from Harsher in Hindsight to "Funny Aneurysm" Moment is a simple enough cut-and-paste job, but I'm not sure how well it can be amended considering the previously-described issues it centers around. There does seem to be room for a rewrite, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to do that.

Edited by bowserbros on Oct 16th 2021 at 10:11:51 AM

Be kind.

Honestly? With the way it's written that entry appears to be a troper's personal opinion that they're attempting to shoehorn as a more general one, along with the aforementioned Speculative Troping issues. I'm not sure if it really has much ground to stand on as an Audience Reaction.

And if that is a reaction shared by a significant group of fans, I doubt tea analysis (which in my experience is primarily used as ammunition for Ship-to-Ship Combat, aka an eternal morass of Fan Dumb I have no desire to step into) is a major component of it.

Hmm. In that case would it be better to remove the point?

Be kind.

I'd think so, unless an unrelated editor attempts to add something similar.

Alright; just took it out.

Be kind.

I found these on The Apprentice:

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Donald Trump has himself been fired from NBC. As a result of Arnold Schwarzenegger replacing Trump as host of the series, this Photoshopped meme◊ featuring an infamous scene from from True Lies where Arnold's character "fires" the main antagonist made the rounds.
  • Donald Trump also got 'fired' from his next job as President of the United States following the 2020 election.
  • One of the guest CEOs from Season 5 of The Apprentice was DreamWorks Animation founder and former Disney studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg (Disney, of course, have their own Donald), who is a good friend of producer Mark Burnett and worked with him on another NBC show, The Contender. A decade later, Trump ran for president against Hillary Clinton, with Katzenberg, Burnett, and Disney boss Bob Iger being three of her biggest donors in an all-out war against Trump (Katzenberg's former boss, Michael Eisner, is no fonder of Trump at this point than they are; Iger had given a tongue-lashing to Bernie Sanders earlier that year for criticizing his business).

It all just seems like anti-Trump stuff that has no place here

All three can be cut — for the first two, people have been fired from jobs (especially high-profile ones) all the time. The third is just "two people are rivals in one work and are rivals someplace else".

Bringing this up from Dark Shadows:

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The numerous mentions of nearby Bangor, now well known as the hometown of horror author Stephen King.
  • The State of Maine has been represented for many years in the US Senate by popular Senator Susan Collins, whose surname makes her sound like a relative of the Collins. To make it funnier, Collins is from also northern Maine, albeit from Caribou in the interior and not on the coast.

These feel like shoehorns (and are derived from a common trope — New England was often infamous for the supernatural), and the second is also name-based and thus generally not allowed. I'd cut both. Thoughts?

And they're gone.

Edited by Coolnut on Oct 17th 2021 at 8:31:29 AM

Agree with the cuts. Just amazing watching how much people can stretch these

Edited by MatthewLMayfield on Oct 17th 2021 at 6:04:17 AM

In space, no-one can hear you shoehorn...

Alien

• Harsher in Hindsight: The order the characters die in the film^*  (strictly speaking, in the director's cut, which removes the ambiguity about Dallas's fate) eerily mirrors the order the actors passed away in real life: John Hurt, Harry Dean Stanton, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto. — Normally we'd give this the "Actor Mortality" shoehorn, but this entry argues that the actors died in real life in the same sequence they died in a movie they made 40 years ago. If it's keepable, it's BARELY. (?)

Aliens

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In-universe, there's the early scene where Ripley has a nightmare about having a chestburster inside her, which actually happens in Alien³. — This one might work better under Foreshadowing, moving to the main page.
  • Inside the Atmosphere Processor, Ripley desperately mashes the call buttons for both elevators, summoning them both to her level and allowing the Alien Queen to board the Sulaco. At the time it seemed like an innocuous moment of panic, but that one single careless button press directly caused the heartbreaking events of the next film. — Foreshadowing too, moving to main page.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Vasquez asks Ferro about Ripley "Who's Snow White?" Ten years later Sigourney Weaver plays Snow White's stepmother in Snow White: A Tale of Terror. The line was also meant to use Snow White as a metaphor for 'weak female'. Then comes Snow White's Xenafication in the film Snow White & the Huntsman and the TV show Once Upon a Time. — While the first sentence sounds arguably keepable, the second one is just plain shoehorn. CUT?
  • We almost got two future Legend of Korra veterans in this movie. In addition to Bishop, who shares an actor with Amon's Lieutenant, James Remar (the future voice of Korra's father) almost got to play Corporal Hicks, but lost the role after being arrested on drug charges. — ALMOST, he said... easy CUT.
  • The Marines' jokes about a mission to rescue 'dumbass colonists' are hilariously prophetic when we consider everything the characters did wrong in Alien: Covenant. — Keep, this one's good.
  • One of the original ideas that ultimately got cut was that Weyland Yutani were bought out and shut down. In a deleted scene in Alien Resurrection, Ripley learns that Weyland Yutani was bought out by Wal-Mart. The fact both scenes are deleted makes the whole thing hysterical. — I fail to see the hilarity? It's just a couple of throaway lines that failed to make it into either film, so... cut?
  • This wouldn't be the last time William Hope played a character who quite literally blows himself up to save his teammates. — It's just a Heroic Sacrifice trope (that happens all the damn time) shoehorned under Hindsight. CUT.
  • Ripley sagely observes that xenomorphs refrain from "fucking each other over" to get ahead. Two films later, it turns out that under some circumstances, they actually will. — This entry is referring to a moment in Alien 4 where two Xenos kills one of their own to use his acidic blood to break out of a cell. Unsure, but if it's a keep its a borderline keep.

And of course, her sister franchise, Predator — honestly, most of the hindsight ones are actually legit, like Arnie and Jesse both being future governors, but then there are garbage like these:

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Jesse Ventura (Blain) spends the first movie wearing a MTV t-shirt under his combat gear. While MTV still had some rebel cred in 1987, the sight of a hulking badass wearing the shirt of a network now mostly known for Tween reality shows is hysterical. — This troper thinks he's a funny guy, so he wrote a hindsight joke which is just plain shoehorning. CUT.
• ** In pre-production, Jean-Claude Van Damme was supposed to play the Predator, but dropped out. Cue Mortal Kombat X and the original Predator, a DLC character, is able to face off against Van Damme Expy Johnny Cage, who Van Damme himself was originally going to play at one point. — But the actual Van Damme was nowhere to be seen in either the film or the game. CUT.
  • Jesse Ventura's character derides his teammates as a bunch of "slack jawed faggots" at one point. Later in life, Ventura would become an advocate for gay marriage and other LGBT rights. — It's an R-Rated movie using "faggot", a common cuss word. CUT.
  • The Predator sees humans through their body heat. Ten years after the first movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger would play a character that has no body heat to speak of. — Batman Fan Myopia, CUT
  • One of the soldiers being found flayed alive at the beginning of the film is named Jim Hopper, and one solder on the team is named Hawkins. Almost exactly 30 years later, the series Stranger Things (which is chock full of references to 80s popular culture) is set in the fictional town of Hawkins and features Police Chief Jim Hopper. Probably unintentional but still hilarious. — Stranger Things Fan Myopia

Predator 2

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The film opens with a group of criminals who are heavily armed with automatic weapons managing to pin the police down for some time. In the year of 1997. — This movie contains a shootout, so let's cram a real-life public shooting into a hindsight entry!... not. CUT.
  • Jerry Lambert is said to have transferred over from the Rampart Division in order to see some action, and is generally regarded as a safer, less gritty assignment compared to what Mike and his fellow offers deal with when fighting gangs on the streets. A few years later, the real-life Rampart Division's C.R.A.S.H anti-gang unit became the focus of an investigation into what may easily be the most serious incident of widespread police corruption in America's history, exposing the involvement of nearly a hundred officers in various crimes ranging from robbery to drug dealing to homicide and was largely blamed on the unit's Cowboy Cop mentality. For double the irony, the Rampart Scandal was also exposed in 1997. — I get that the film is set in 1997 while released in 1990, but didn't the police have scandals once every few years? Sounds a bit forced.
  • The City Hunter carelessly leaving behind pieces of technology and its severed arm, as Predator: Hunting Grounds reveals that the OWLF program picked up the City Hunter's evidence. This led them to have a better grasp on killing Predators and possibly led to the events of fourth film, where a clan of Predators planned to take over the Earth and caused havoc in a Project Stargazer facility. In turn, this led to Stargazer being shut down and becoming a terrorist group selling black market Predator tech and destabilizing regions in hopes of attracting Predators. If the City Hunter and its clan hadn't been so careless with its lost equipment, an untold amount of pain for both species would have been avoided. — Sounds like plot happens. Not sure though...
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Adam Baldwin plays a member of a shady government agency task force, then comes Justice League, where Baldwin would voice the leader of such a government task force. — Justice League Fan Myopia.

Alien vs. Predator

(from the video game)

• Hilarious in Hindsight: in AVP 2, one of the runner alien's growls sounds strikingly like "Gollum!" — (face, meets palm) CUT, CUT, CUT...

Regarding the "Gollum" hindsight, it's also a case of Mondegreen, which makes it an easy cut.

Kirby is awesome.

Chicken Run has some weird examples bashing Mel Gibson:

• Harsher in Hindsight: You know how this movie has the concentration camp metaphor? You know how Mel Gibson is in this movie? You know how Gibson made anti-Semitic comments that one time?

And the Hilarious examples are all actor trivia:

Permission to cut them all?

That first one reads like an entry in the “That’s a HORRIBLE Hindsight entry!” game. Slash ‘em.

This is on Gordy:

• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: The fact that President Clinton (or at least an imitation of his voice) appears in a children's movie, considering the turn his presidency would take in two short years.

My fellow Americans, I would once again like to say that I did not have sexual relations with that woman. I did, however, make for a Hindsight shoehorn...

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

On Evil Dead 2

• Harsher in Hindsight: Seeing Jake dying after being accidentally stabbed by Annie becomes more wincing when in June 2020, Jake's actor Danny Hicks announced he's been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer.

This is just "bad thing happens to the character and then an unrelated bad thing happens to the actor" entry. Permission to cut?

—signature not found—

Yes. That's just actor mortality.

It has been removed

—signature not found—

This was just added to YMMV.Winnie The Pooh 2011.

• Hilarious in Hindsight: Hearing Tom Kenny's Rabbit serve as the straight man to Jim Cummings' Pooh is even funnier when you realize, just two decades prior, the two served the exact opposite roles.

Wrong-way actor association. That's a cut.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

From YMMV.Panty And Stocking With Garterbelt:

• Hilarious in Hindsight;
  • "If The Angels Wore Swimsuits" is very reminiscent of another scantily-clad, supernatural face-off that gets interrupted by a giant sea monster.
  • In "Turmoil of the Beehive", Queen Barby, the Villain of the Week, looks like a teenaged Lusamine.

Can we just say cut every "X looks like Y" shoehorn?

Come play Character Uplift Game!

Here's an example on YMMV.Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla:

• Hilarious in Hindsight: Kiryu being built from the original Godzilla's remains sounds like something from Neon Genesis Evangelion, right? Hideaki Anno himself would eventually direct Shin Godzilla a decade later.

Anyone else think this connection sounds flimsy? The fact it has to say that plot point just sounds like something that would happen in Eva to me indicates that.

Dont know if it be better, but Evangelion had some crossover merch that included a Evangelion color Mechagodzilla.

That works a lot better—but put it on the Evangelion page or something.

Edited by PurpleEyedGuma on Oct 20th 2021 at 11:06:54 AM

Found this on Planet of the Apes (1968):

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Landon speculates that the ship could have landed on a planet orbiting the star Bellatrix. Nowadays, due to Popcultural Osmosis, most viewers who hear that name will think of a certain character named after that star.
    • Similarly, the original novel sets the story on a planet orbiting the star Betelgeuse, the name of which is sometimes pronounced as Beetlejuice. Coincidentally, the movie Beetlejuice was also directed by Burton just like the Planet of the Apes remake.
  • Seeing the future NRA president heft a shotgun and declare "I'm pretty handy with this!" Or Harsher in Hindsight depending on your view of the NRA.

The first two (Bellatrix, Betelgeuse) are name-based with no other connections and should be deleted. The third (NRA) sounds like a keep... but it's a bit hard to tell if it is Hilarious or Harsher. Or should it just be deleted for being too ROCEJ-y?