Hindsight Cleanup

• The entire film, given Peter Finch's death a few months after the film's release. His fainting at the end of his monologues and the ending are even more difficult to watch, especially if you know that Finch's fatal heart attack happened the morning after he appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show. I can make something out of the fact that he died after appearing on The Tonight Show, but the whole "entire film" thing is stupid and any bullet that lists "the entire film" as harsher or hilarious needs to burn.
• One specific example: A fourth major television network, backed by a huge corporation, built upon content that's trashier than its rivals. One of its flagship shows features Real Life footage of criminals, and it quickly cancels any shows that don't keep up in the ratings? This may as well have been a documentary on the rise of Fox, if it hadn't been made in 1976. Complaining.
• A meta example. Peter Finch, an Australian previously Oscar-nominated for playing a homosexual man, died soon after playing the part of an anti-establishment nutcase and ended up winning a posthumous Oscar for the role. Who does that remind you of? Although I've heard the Peter Finch-Heath Ledger comparison elsewhere, it's actor garbage.
• At the beginning of the film, they mention a journalist named "Snowden" in conjunction with a story about the CIA. Too tenuous, also Snowden isn't that uncommon a name.
• The concept of violent criminals filming their crimes while performing them (and in particular the final scene with reference to that) and subsequently broadcasting the footage has become this in the wake of extremist execution videos. The debate about filming violence and its aftermath was totally a debate during the Vietnam era, so it fails the hindsight clause.
• A major part of UBS' Network Decay is that they give airtime to unstable loons like Howard Beale and extremists like the Ecumenical Liberation Army, allowing them to spout their propaganda virtually unchallenged simply because people think it's entertaining. This became a major criticism of both the "traditional" media and newer social media in the 21st century, that they were delegating their responsibility and giving platforms to violent radicals in the name of ratings and clicks. Maybe?
• In one of his early outlines, Paddy Chayefsky summed up a main theme of the story as being “It is possible through television to take a small matter and blow it up to monumental proportions.” You could only imagine how he would've responded to the Internet, which can be much, much worse in that regard. Not really hindsight because, as Chayefsky said, this was totally a thing possible during this era with the TV.

• Hilarious:
  • Beale's first remarks on the air after he learns he's fired is that he ran out of bullshit, which then turns his show into a rant program. Sounds much like You Know What's Bullshit?. Fan Myopia.
  • The Patty Hearst parody, played by the daughter of a famous TV news anchor, is named Mary Ann Gifford. In The '80s, Kathie Lee Gifford would become a nationally syndicated Talk Show host. Gifford is also not that unusual of a surname, so actor garbage, especially since Mary Ann Gifford herself was not a talk show host in the story.

• Harsher in Hindsight: Howard Beale's death happened on camera on national television. His actor, Peter Finch, himself almost died on camera, dying the morning after appearing on The Tonight Show.
  • A major part of UBS' Network Decay is that they give airtime to unstable loons like Howard Beale and extremists like the Ecumenical Liberation Army, allowing them to spout their propaganda virtually unchallenged simply because people think it's entertaining. This became a major criticism of both the "traditional" media and newer social media in the 21st century, that they were delegating their responsibility and giving platforms to violent radicals in the name of ratings and clicks.

(No Hilarious)

• Noises Off: In the film version, Christopher Reeve (rather impressively) hops up an entire flight of stairs with his pants around his ankles. Three years later, his horse racing accident severed his first two vertebrae, paralyzing him from the neck down. This trope applies to those born in the mid-80s and later, as they pretty much only know the paralyzed Reeve; it becomes Harsher in Hindsight for everyone else. I considered this an okay usage in the wick check, but that last sentence still befuddles me - why would someone older than 35 think the gag was never funny to begin with, as Harsher in Hindsight implies? I think we can keep the first two sentences, but can the last one go?
• Ninotchka: There is a short gag at the train station where the three commissioners mistake a man for their superior, only to see him give a Nazi salute and a "Heil Hitler" to his wife. The joke actually soured between filming and release, because Germany declared war during that time. Now that what the Nazis did is well-known, it's even harsher. Maybe keep?
• The Kliq: Any of Shawn's matches before 2002, and any of Scott or Kid's matches ever, if you know about their drug problems. It's almost guaranteed that they're performing while stoned and/or drunk. If this stays, it at least needs to be reworded, and I don't know enough about Pro-Wrestling to write that. If I can't get any help on this, it'll go entirely.
• Independence Day: 9/11 was often compared to this film. It doesn't help that when they're fleeing the White House, David checks the countdown and "9:11:01" is clearly visible on it. It is a complete coincidence, but still. Irrelevant coincidence of numbers. Cut, please?
  • Joe Viskocil, the film's pyrotechnics expert, later lamented that his work was so realistic that it may have served as the nucleus of an idea someone had to "fly a plane into the White House."^note While Flight 93 crashed over Pennsylvania, it is commonly believed that its target was either the White House or the Capitol building. While having someone who worked on the film helps this one's case, Mr. Viskocil should probably be informed that someone else tried to fly a plane into the White House in the 70's. Thus, it would fail the Hindsight clause, despite Viskocil's statement.
• The Wiz:
  • The Emerald City is represented by the World Trade Center. "Twin Towers appear" HIH.
  • During the second season of American Idol, during the movie theme week, one of the contestants sung "You Can't Win" as their choice which didn't agree with the judges. In the following elimination round, he was knocked out of the running. Should maybe go on American Idol's YMMV page instead of The Wiz's?
• Man on Wire: Despite the lack of mention, 9/11 might still come up in the viewers' mind at several point. The mist shown rising from one tower on the morning of the walk is eerily similar to the smoke from the attack, and Roger Ebert mentioned to have first mistaken the past footage of the towers being built for the wreckage of Ground Zero. Given this film's deliberate attempt to dodge talking about 9/11, I'm calling this a shoehorn.
• The Velvet Underground: The lyrics to "Sunday Morning", given that Lou Reed died on a Sunday morning in 2013. Lines like "watch out, the world's behind you" change meaning completely. "Sunday Morning" is not about death, so cut?
• Santana (the web video, not the band): "The deaths of Ragoo and Sookdeo in the series is more uncomfortable to watch now that their voice actor and puppeteer passed away." "Character dies, actor dies" nonsense.
• Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: "The cover for N.W.A's final album Niggaz4life/Efil4zaggin makes it appear that Eazy-E's ghost is about to grab you." Given that, on that album cover, it appeared that Eazy-E was killed by gun violence, while in the real world he died of AIDS, I'm inclined to say it shouldn't count on account of the differing causes of death.
• The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp: "Spud boasts that should he live to see 1983, he will at least be an old gentleman. His actor, James McKechnie, didn't get to be that old, dying in 1964 at fifty-three." Actor garbage, right?
• Iron Chef:
  • For those lucky bastards that got to see the two battles with Rory Kennedy, this comes into play once you remember he died about a year after his battles. (In the procession of chefs in the final battle, he is represented by a portrait.)
  • Kobe, the youngest of the Iron Chefs, was the first one to die (in 2019 from a head injury).
  • Favored heel Toshiro Kandagawa has also died as of April 2021 due to complications from COVID. Watching him be moved to tears as he gets a medal for his clean sweep against Sakai can hit hard when you realize that this was his last appearance for more than one reason... All "actor dies later" garbage. The fourth bullet point on the page can stay though.
• Four Weddings and a Funeral: "Carrie says that she's slept with fewer men than Madonna but more than Princess Di, a joke that seems much more awkward after Princess Diana's death in 1997." It's just a "Princess Di gets mentioned, then she died". The joke has nothing to do with anything bad happening to her.
• Little Nicky: "Todd imagining Nicky as Kevin Spacey, in order to kill him." Controversial person gets mentioned.
  • Also, while we're on Little Nicky, let's axe these Fan Myopia Hilarious In Hindsights:
    • Adrian, Cassius and Dante are half-demon, half-prostitute.
    • Nick and Dante are also half-demon, half-angel.
    • In Injustice 2, the Joker looks just like Little Nicky, even an interaction with Batman references Hell.
• The O.C.
  • Chris Brown's three-episode guest spot in Season 4 as the young fifteen-year-old Kaitlin Cooper's nerd boyfriend is slightly odd to rewatch now.
  • Of course, this is nowhere near as bad as seeing the late Johnny Lewis, who possibly murdered someone as nerdy Chili. Controversial people appeared in this show, oh no!
• Forza: There are two songs by Lostprophets in Horizon 1's soundtrack. Cue a few months after the release of the game and Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins has been charged with child sexual abuse. The music is still awesome, but you can't help feeling a little awkward or disgusted while you hear them. As previously mentioned, neither of these songs is about child sexual abuse.
• Step Up: Revolution features a scene of the heroes crashing the villain's party, where they throw in smoke bombs and then dance around while dressed completely in black with gas masks, to a song that includes gunshot sound effects. Even considering that this is plot-relevant, it's rather jaw-dropping that the studio didn't feel the need to remove this scene after the massacre at an Aurora, Colorado screening of The Dark Knight Rises the week before the film's release, although advertising featuring said scene was pulled as a result. Since it didn't take place at a movie theatre, I'm inclined to pull. At least let's get rid of the pearl-clutching tone of the last sentence.
• M*A*S*H S3 E21: Big Mac: Frank Burns destroys some of the literature read in the camp because MacArthur might find them immoral. That sounds very familiar to all the people in modern times saying that classic family films such as those made by Disney are much too violent and dark for a young child audience and demanding that all future films and kids' shows are to be made Lighter and Softer. As I previously said, I'm guessing that Frank Burns probably found those books immoral 'cause they were too erotic (these were a bunch of men stationed overseas without a ton of women around, if you know what I'm saying), hard to tie that into people calling Disney films too dark. This also really sounds like complaining about Moral Guardians.
• Highlander: Roxanne Hart would go on to star in the TV movie Our Mother's Murder as Anne Scripps Douglas, whose abusive husband drives erratically to terrorize her, much like the Kurgan. Not only is the scene not played for laughs, but it's also Based on a True Story. Casting Gag.
• Law & Order: UK: "DI Chandler comments to Ronnie and Matt that whoever cleaned a crime scene "must be a fan of CSI". Shortly after leaving the show, Jamie Bamber, who played Matt, guest-starred on an episode of CSI: Miami. Even "funnier", after several years of playing a by-the-book cop, he was now playing a criminal. . .named Ronnie.^note  To top it off, he killed someone named Ellie" Casting Gag again.
• Singin' in the Rain: "Thanks to A Clockwork Orange, it can be hard to watch the titular musical number without being disturbed." Meta Connection.
• Peggy Sue Got Married: "After Peggy Sue returns from her time travels, Charlie said he would cut his right arm off for another chance to reconcile with her. Ronny, Nicolas Cage's character in Moonstruck, is missing a hand due to an accident at the bakery after his fiancée dumped him." Casting Gag
• Oliver Twist: "In the 1997 adaptation, Dodger is sent to prison instead of Australia, presumably not to offend Australians. Dodger's talk about all the things he'll learn in prison becomes less funny and more disturbing the older you get." I'm no expert on Nineteenth Century jails, but I'm taking a wild guess that Prison Rape isn't a concept that originated between 1838 and 1997.
• amiibo: On July 10, 2015 the Ness and Smash Bros. King Dedede amiibo were both restocked at Gamestop. These characters came from Earthbound and Kirby respectively which both franchises's second games Satoru Iwata were personally involved in. The very next day, Iwata died with a public announcement not too long after. This restocking is like an unintentional way of giving another chance to obtain Iwata's remembrances before he died. There also might been a chance that this restocking was that last Nintendo news he knew about before his passing. Really coincidental connection; I know there was a massive gush-fest after Satoru Iwata died and this seems like something that slipped through the cracks on that cleanup.
• The Electric Company:
  • The skit "Spidey Meets the Yeti" where a woman's demand on Spider-Man that she will stop reading his comics if he failed to stop the title Yeti became less hilarious after the negative reception of Spider-Man comics, such as The Clone Saga and One More Day. Poorly received Spider-Man comics probably existed before those two, and probably before this skit too.
  • The Adventures of Letterman short had a villain, the Spellbinder, whose primary mission was to wreak havoc by changing letters of words into new words, causing humorous situations ... for the most part. However, there were several episodes that, while when aired in 1974-1976 might have been seen as funny, would have such situations classed as terrorism today. These include Spellbinder changing "plane" into "plant" (by changing the "e") and causing it to fall toward the earth, and removing the "b" in bridge to create a "ridge" and a way for a high-speed passenger train to fall into the crevice; both incidents put the lives of dozens of people, including children, in jeopardy. These segments would be banned from television after Sept. 11, 2001. Although 9/11 would cause this scene to become a Banned Episode, plane and train crashes are not new.
  • "Spidey Meets Silly Willy", 'No one would expect a clown to rob them!' with how ironic clowns have completely overwhelmed the unironic ones in popular culture and the 'scary clown' craze that happened, this scheme doesn't feel as plausible like it used to. Although scary clowns are more popular now than Non Ironic Clowns, I don't know how that reflects poorly on this skit's premise.