The Hindsight tropes, Hilarious in Hindsight, Harsher in Hindsight, and Heartwarming in Hindsight, are among the most misused Audience Reaction tropes on this site. Many people don't understand that the tropes require more than just "This happened, so that happened", and end up adding examples which either lack connection or the substance that makes them funny/serious/not-so-funny/heartwarming. Some of them may be suited better for other tropes (ex: Life Imitates Art), while some may not belong on TV Tropes at all (such as ones involving politicians, due to Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment).
Please report any Hindsight example that you feel are questionable, and we'll analyze them to see if they are actually examples or not.
Remember that the Hindsight tropes are Audience Reactions. That means if an example under review discusses significant fan response pointing out the hindsight, the example can't be cut solely for being too tenuous for this thread.
- Creator's character/portrayal dies in work and then creator dies in real life, unless their fictional death is closely similar to their real one (such as Billy Bob Joe portraying a character who dies from pancreatic cancer, then Billy Bob dies from pancreatic cancer himself)
- Mundane word related to something terrible (such as "corona" or "Epstein") unless there's more to the connection (such as someone named "Corona" having the flu)
- Creator appears in work then becomes more controversial later on.
- A common event (such as a typical natural disaster) happens in work, then happens in real life (unless they are closely similar, such as the event happening to the same area in both reality and fiction around the same time) For once, not everything related to disease has to do with COVID-19, not everything related to racism and Police Brutality has to do with George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, and not everything related to sexual abuse has to do with #MeToo.
- A common/generic concept was used in this work and then later reused in that work (too loose for a connection, unless the concept is so unique it's identified with the work)
- Two actors appear together then do so in another work
- Hindsight examples involving recent events, due to them often being shoehorns. Specifically:
- COVID-19 examples, before 75% of the population has returned to normal
- George Floyd/2020 Black Lives Matter examples, before protests have declined
- Examples which fall guilty of Older Than They Think, such as "Make X Great Again" slogans. Aside from violating the ROCEJ, this slogan has been in use since the 1940s.
- Characters using slurs which are treated as annoying at worst in the work, but is now harsher due to how severe the slur is made now. Discrimination has always existed with that slur. (May qualify for Values Dissonance if work is at least 20 years old.)
Note: As of January 2022, "Funny Aneurysm" Moment is no longer separate from Harsher in Hindsight.
- The former redirects to the latter and all wicks to the former (with the exception of ones on archive pages and the YMMV Redirects index) must either be moved to the latter (if they're valid) or removed (if they're invalid).
- The subpages for the former are still accessible from this page
. After a subpage for "Funny Aneurysm" Moment has been completely cleaned up, turn it into a redirect to the Harsher in Hindsight subpage for the same medium to preserve inbounds.
Edited by Tabs on Jun 21st 2023 at 11:51:25 AM
From Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2:
- Harsher in Hindsight: The No Russian level arguably hits even harder now than it did in 2009, given increased awareness of mass public shootings in American schools and cities throughout the 2010s, such as the Las Vegas and Orlando nightclub shootings.
"No Russian" features a mass shooting at a Russian airport, so I don't think I need to explain why none of those cited events make it harsher, or how 2009 wasn't a year where mass shootings didn't exist.
Angry babby
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Tainted by the Preview implies this ruined people's perception of the movie. All the Company Cross References stuff seems to be getting a mixed reaction, which the movie already had, and that meta stuff isn't really coming up a lot.
Obvious cut, mass shootings aren't new and the connection's flimsy.
Edited by mightymewtron on Apr 27th 2022 at 1:07:41 PM
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
Industrious Incisors
Well, the people who know the story behind Peter Pan definitely are in agreement that it's seriously bad taste. I guess the problem is so few people know that story.
But it seems like the character may not be meant to be Peter Pan anyway.
Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Apr 28th 2022 at 6:51:09 AM
SoundCloud
These are from Aquaman (2018). Not seeing much of a connection here...
- The voice of Julie Andrews, Mary Poppins herself, as a sea creature becomes this since the film opened against Mary Poppins Returns, in which Andrews declined to appear.
- Jason Momoa's Real Life stepdaughter would later become part of DC when she was cast as Catwoman for Matt Reeves's Batman reboot.
Friends forevermore
Both of those are extremely flimsy and can easily be cut.
So I found this example in one Simpsons episode.
- Harsher in Hindsight: The Reality Subtext of outsiders (allegedly even including professional researchers that are supposed to be authentically documenting the peoples they encounter) engaging in ethically dubious activities, committing human rights abuses and contributing to patterns of conflict that devastate the Yąnomamö and other indigenous communities.
I don't get what it's trying to say. I don't think it's hindsight if it's supposed to be commentary on researchers and filmmakers acting out on tribes.
Edited by PlasmaPower on Apr 28th 2022 at 11:04:30 AM
Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!
The fact that the entry begins with 'The Reality Subtext of...' indicates that it isn't Hindsight.
This example (related to a... certain controversy) is probably a shoehorn, but no harm in checking, right?
- Any time Rochelle threatens to slap Chris in an exaggerated manner becomes this after the Oscar incident where Will Smith slapped Chris Rock.
Friends forevermore
It's close (because it actually involves Chris Rock this time), but I tend to err on the side of cutting any hindsight related to the Smith/Rock incident.
I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.
"... becomes this when you know/after you learn..." might as well be shorthand for "not hindsight."
Yet another questionable JK Rowling transphobia shoehorn...
- Harsher in Hindsight: In the series, Barry Fairbrother, who is the hero, tells his nephew Paul that he "doesn't want to be riding a girl's bike". (Paul has a girl's bike, because his father Simon is a sadist). While Barry obviously doesn't want Paul to ride a bike to save his nephew from embarrassment, J K Rowling's latter transphobic behaviour makes this come across as a lot nastier.
Friends forevermore
Bring out the Fiendfyre.
Angry babby
I kind of see the logic with this one, if it is meant to be depicted as sympathetic (it's not overtly transphobic, just casually sexist, but it bears resemblance to homophobic/transphobic panic), but it might be closer to Values Dissonance or something.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
This was just added to Pinocchio.
- Harsher in Hindsight: The Coachman scene, the fact that boys get taken to an island called “Pleasure Island” and the fact that they’ll “never come back as boys” becomes a LOT WORSE nowadays, considering similarites to Jeffrey Epstien.
Angry babby
Cut. It doesn't explain enough specific connections and Jeffrey Epstein did not invent pedophilia.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
From YMMV.The Tracey Ullman Show, this is a huge stretch:
- Hilarious in Hindsight: Bart Simpson's screaming in the "Scary Movie" short sounds a lot like Chuckie Finster, whom Bart's voice actress Nancy Cartwright would go on to actually do the voice of in the later Rugrats seasons and All Grown Up! (after the late Christine Cavanaugh retired in 2001).
![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
I thought so. Chopped.
Edited by FernandoLemon on May 6th 2022 at 4:27:29 PM
I'd like to apologize for all this.
"Two characters with the same voice actress sound similar" is not hindsight.
This was just added to Monsters, Inc., and it feels like a stretch to me.
Both extremely common names, it's not hilarious at all that another pair of best friends has those names.
Trivia.Dr Quinn Medicine Woman has a Names The Same entry about this too (though that's a case of Mike and Sulley rather than James). Just shows how common those names are.
Wanted to check this example from I Love Bees:
- Harsher in Hindsight: One of the protagonists is a practicing Muslim from a prominently majority-Muslim colony, and through him, the narration explores how desperate survivors from destroyed (or about to be destroyed) colonies and countries are to get to prosperous and free Earth, as well as how they're treated and discriminated against, with a huge uptick in discrimination and nationalism, as the world changes, the war gets closer to home, intelligence agencies pair off against each other, and electronic warfare and spying become a new norm as sophisticated artificial intelligence may shift the world's balance in spying on others or waging war.
- A decade and some change later, and the Western world deals with refugees desperate to get in, fleeing war-torn countries, as well as a huge nationalist and racist backlash. Intelligence agencies fight each other via extended spying and electronic warfare to steal plans or shift allegiances, and more and more companies focus on AI's powerful applications - including spying and, well, waging war.
Incorrect indentation aside, this was 2004, which I think automatically excludes any "it's just like conflict in the Middle East!" comparisons. Running this here since this entry casts a very wide net, so maybe something from it might be somewhat valid after a rewording?
Find a Covid example in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
The second episode "Epidemic" is difficult to watch in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not just because it deals with a killer infectious disease, but because the episode eerily recreates, beat for beat, the same scenarios that became prominent at the start of the pandemic, including distrust of medical science, distrust of medical doctors, use of dangerous and unregulated home remedies that ended in death, hoarding of food and supplies, general civil unrest, and racism (in this case, towards Native Americans).
Would this still count since it does bring example of noticeable instants of the Covid pandemic?
While epidemics and pandemics have been around long before COVID, this example is too uncannily similar to ignore. I'm actually leaning towards keeping it.
For a Hindsight example based on a recent event that I'm pretty sure is a shoehorn is this:
- Harsher in Hindsight: In Episode 4, one of Erin and Orla's family refers to Katya, Erin's foreign exchange student from the Ukraine as "the Russian". While the joke was supposed to be that Erin's family member was being ignorant, after Russia's appalling treatment of the Ukraine in 2022, that now comes across as completely tasteless.
From YMMV.Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers 2022:
Obviously this needs to go because of the order of events, but this still feels like it warrants a mention under something. Could it be reworded for Tainted by the Preview, or perhaps a different item?
SoundCloud