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
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It's a wall-of-text for one, so...
Agree to keep.
Cut as a shoehorn.
I don't think the Dr. Quinn example should be kept. It's only eerie if you don't know history. The things that happened in the COVID pandemic also happened in the Spanish Flu pandemic, which is why public health experts were sounding the alarm right at the very beginning of the pandemic before it had even truly taken root in western countries. They knew from history what happened to ethnic and minority groups during epidemics and pandemics.
Other experts were also sounding the alarm early on for trust messaging (I flagged it in the COVID thread back in February 2020). Experts who were running pandemic trial scenarios with governments and emergency services in previous years had created lists of key Dos and Don'ts for local and national officials to follow because of issues such as trusting medics, scientists, politicians, etc. Every time they ran a trial, these mistakes kept being repeated because the politicians and officials kept ignoring this advice. So, when COVID hit, all the same mistakes got made.
Dr. Quinn is probably a case of the writers doing their research, and certain viewers — who didn't know about past issues — only seeing it now because of the pandemic happening around them. It is possible, perhaps, that a Hindsight example could be created out of the fact that we haven't learned from the past, so the scenarios playing out in Dr. Quinn — which you would hope are confined to the historical setting the story takes place in — are in fact still as real and present in today's modern society as they were back then. But, I think, that's the only potentially valid Hindsight angle there is for this, and an argument could be made that only people from privileged backgrounds would be so sheltered anyway, as people in ethnic and minority communities are much more aware of the health disparities still facing them today.
I've put two sources in a folder for anyone who's interested. One is from a 2017 Smithsonian article on the political and medical consequences of mishandling pandemic messaging, as learned from 1918 and unfortunately still being repeated. The second is from a 2020 Harvard Public Health article on the health disparity parallels between the pandemics.
How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America
Another key step to improving pandemic readiness is to expand research on antiviral drugs; none is highly effective against influenza, and some strains have apparently acquired resistance to the antiviral drug Tamiflu.
Then there are the less glamorous measures, known as nonpharmaceutical interventions: hand-washing, telecommuting, covering coughs, staying home when sick instead of going to work and, if the pandemic is severe enough, widespread school closings and possibly more extreme controls. The hope is that “layering” such actions one atop another will reduce the impact of an outbreak on public health and on resources in today’s just-in-time economy. But the effectiveness of such interventions will depend on public compliance, and the public will have to trust what it is being told.
That is why, in my view, the most important lesson from 1918 is to tell the truth. Though that idea is incorporated into every preparedness plan I know of, its actual implementation will depend on the character and leadership of the people in charge when a crisis erupts.
I recall participating in a pandemic “war game” in Los Angeles involving area public health officials. Before the exercise began, I gave a talk about what happened in 1918, how society broke down, and emphasized that to retain the public’s trust, authorities had to be candid. “You don’t manage the truth,” I said. “You tell the truth.” Everyone shook their heads in agreement.
Next, the people running the game revealed the day’s challenge to the participants: A severe pandemic influenza virus was spreading around the world. It had not officially reached California, but a suspected case—the severity of the symptoms made it seem so—had just surfaced in Los Angeles. The news media had learned of it and were demanding a press conference.
The participant with the first move was a top-ranking public health official. What did he do? He declined to hold a press conference, and instead just released a statement: More tests are required. The patient might not have pandemic influenza. There is no reason for concern.
I was stunned. This official had not actually told a lie, but he had deliberately minimized the danger; whether or not this particular patient had the disease, a pandemic was coming. The official’s unwillingness to answer questions from the press or even acknowledge the pandemic’s inevitability meant that citizens would look elsewhere for answers, and probably find a lot of bad ones. Instead of taking the lead in providing credible information he instantly fell behind the pace of events. He would find it almost impossible to get ahead of them again. He had, in short, shirked his duty to the public, risking countless lives.
And that was only a game.
Deadly Parallels: Health disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic mirror those in the lethal 1918 flu
“When the 1918 influenza epidemic began, African American communities were already beset by many public health, medical, and social problems, including racist theories of Black biological inferiority, racial barriers in medicine and public health, and poor health status,” Gamble wrote. Black physicians and nurses established their own groups of medical professionals, because they were barred from white professional organizations. They also established separate hospitals and other care networks to tend to their communities. When the pandemic raced across the country, it overwhelmed these separate, resource-poor facilities and home-based caregivers. And the injustice and indignity didn’t end with death: In Baltimore, for example, white sanitation workers refused to dig graves for Black flu victims.
Drawing on this context, Gamble offers several hypotheses for the apparently lower incidence of pandemic flu cases in Black communities. She suggests that African American deaths were probably underreported, because health departments simply didn’t keep good data on Black people. At the same time, she surmises that racial segregation in housing may have had a paradoxical protective effect on Black Americans, serving as a kind of de facto quarantine.
The Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper from that era, observed the 1918 flu trends with indignation, as historian Elizabeth Schlabach recounted in a study published in 2019 in the Journal of African American History. Weeks after the deadliest day of the influenza outbreak in that city, the newspaper ran a story about the employment crisis at the Chicago Telephone Company: More than 300 white women were stricken—employees whom today we would call “essential workers.” “What we would like to know is whether or not this company is willing to accept applications from our girls, and if not, why not?” the Defender inquired. “The company is employing young women of every nationality on earth, French, German, Polish, Lithuanian, Irish and Swedish, the only test being that they must be white, apparently.”
The plea fell on deaf ears. Under that era’s Jim Crow laws—state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation—Black people were barred from the coveted telephone jobs. As a Defender editorial observed, “The whole situation is ridiculous and could obtain in no other country except America. The disease is strictly Dementia Americana.”
The 1918 flu pandemic and the 2020 coronavirus pandemic are both prisms on racial injustice—the “Dementia Americana” that the Chicago Defender diagnosed more than a century ago.
“When you have a public health crisis, an infectious disease that is sickening and killing people, it brings out in some ways the best of people—those who are health care providers, those who care for one another—but also the worst, because there’s so much fear,” says Villarosa, whose book Under the Skin: Race, Inequality and the Health of a Nation will be published in fall 2021. “It also brings out the underlying racist ideology that’s floating around. When people are tired, afraid, panicked, and looking to blame someone, these ideas come out.
That was as true in 1918 as it is today, she says. “At the time of the 1918 pandemic, Black people were at the breaking point, a crisis point—newly freed but still facing disenfranchisement, anti-Black violence, including lynchings—and they were still legally segregated. There was racism in health care. And there were long-standing racist ideas that some-thing is wrong physiologically with the Black body, and that something is wrong mentally, emotionally, and morally with Black people in general. Black communities were segregated, unclean, left to falter from our society in a state-sanctioned way that brought on disease and lowered life expectancy.”
Edited by Wyldchyld on May 8th 2022 at 5:25:02 AM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
This is on A Christmas Carol:
- Hilarious in Hindsight: Since Ebenezer's nephew is an important character, yes, there is more than one instance where the hero is referred to or addressed as "Uncle Scrooge.""note
As the note points out, the character of Scrooge McDuck was named after Ebenezer Scrooge.
On the other hand, the phrase "Uncle Scrooge" is definitely associated with McDuck over Ebenezer, so...
Edited by fragglelover on May 8th 2022 at 7:44:09 AM
Peeks from Under Rocks
Found this while checking on a wick listed on the Ambiguity Index cleanup:
- Hilarious in Hindsight: Elizabeth wears an "Annie" wig to disguise herself when she seduces the testing official. Three years later, Cameron Diaz would be cast as Ms. Hannigan in the Annie (2014) remake.
- Elizabeth would no longer need to discreetly smoke marijuana, considering the state of Illinois has legalized recreational marijuana in 2020.
The second bullet improperly indented... but is it correct use? Seems a stretch, but I'm new to this particular AR.
From Falling Down
- Harsher in Hindsight: It's a thriller about a man who is pushed to his breaking point and goes on a rampage against the ills of modern America. Already a horrifying premise in 1992, even moreso in the 21st century in an age when mass shootings are a regular occurrence. General example. And technically Foster isn't a mass shooter, since he only shoots two people, and only one fatally (the FBI defines a mass shooting as four or more people killed/injured in a single shooting incident)
- One particularly horrifying example being in March 2021, when a man in Atlanta, Georgia murdered 8 Asian-Americans. To make matter worse, the sheriff's office initially described the man's actions as "a bad day for him", a marked contrast from how Det. Prendergast in this film explicitly tells Foster that "having a bad day" doesn't justify his behavior. That doesn't resemble the events of the film
- The scene where Bill trashes a Korean-owned convenience store became even more gut-wrenching after April 2021 when a Korean-owned store owned in North Carolina was trashed by a brute who was hired by a customer who was banned due to his racism. Except he trashed the store out of spite for high prices, not racism
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Michael Douglas' character, Bill Foster, shares his name with a Marvel Comics superhero who was the best friend of Hank Pym. Some 22 years later, Douglas would actually play Hank Pym in Ant-Man, and faced Bill Foster, played by Laurence Fishburne, in its sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp. This seems specific enough to be valid
- Even more hilarious, the Whammy Burger counter girl, Sheila, is played by actress Dedee Pfeiffer, sister of Michelle Pfeiffer. In Ant-Man and the Wasp, Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer are husband and wife. This seems a bit too tenuous
- Also during the Whammy Burger scene, a woman spits out her food in a panic when Foster walks up to her, causing him to remark to the manager "I don't think she likes the special sauce, Rick." In 2017, McDonald's held a one-day promotion where they brought back a special sauce that they hadn't had in their stores in almost twenty years (namely, the Szechuan sauce they carried as part of a promotion for Mulan), thanks to a show starring a character named Rick turning that sauce into a Memetic Mutation — leading to packed lines, flare-ups, and fights at many McDonald's locations across the country, not unlike when Foster pulled out his gun at Whammy Burger. People were panicking in the Whammy Burger because someone was waving a gun around, not because they ran out of dipping sauce. And I don't recall anyone shooting up a McDonalds because they couldn't get sauce
- Foster's Villainous Breakdown, intended to be tragic, becomes a bit unintentionally funny for Billie Eilish fans thanks to one line:Fan Myopia
Foster: I'm the bad guy?
Billie: Yeah.
- Michael Douglas' character, Bill Foster, shares his name with a Marvel Comics superhero who was the best friend of Hank Pym. Some 22 years later, Douglas would actually play Hank Pym in Ant-Man, and faced Bill Foster, played by Laurence Fishburne, in its sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp. This seems specific enough to be valid
found this on EAS scenarios
Harsher in Hindsight: All pandemic scenarios after 2020 thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. From Russia with Nukes scenarios are quickly gaining on that thanks to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Those are misuse. Nukes and pandemics were a serious matter before 2019.
From The Diary of Anne Frank:
- Harsher in Hindsight: A number of Anne's innocuous musings on the end of the war and what she wants to be when she grows up are considerably harsher in view of the real life Everybody Dies ending to the story.
Does this even count as hindsight considering that the book's tragic ending is a Foregone Conclusion? It's also awkward because it's technically troping real life... Nukes and
Edited by TantaMonty on May 10th 2022 at 7:28:02 AM
I mean, it wasn't a Foregone Conclusion when she first wrote it.
Edited by magnumtropus on May 10th 2022 at 3:37:36 PM
The Hindsight tropes care about the time of publication, which was of course after the war and after all its atrocities were well known.
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
From YMMV.Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness
- Harsher in Hindsight: The plot of Captain America: Civil War was started by Wanda accidentally killing dozens of innocent people, and one of the reasons for the rift between Steve and Tony was Steve's refusal to consider her as a weapon of mass destruction that needed to be controlled. This movie shows how far an out-of-control Wanda can take the "mass destruction" part, and has her slaughter at least hundreds of innocents without battling an eyelid.
How is this Hindsight if Civil War came out before MOM?
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I will keep that in mind for next time.
Edited by Bullman on May 11th 2022 at 10:16:45 AM
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
Best Ogre
It's not. You can remove those types of things without even bringing them here.
Too old for this
As the original perpetrator of this entry, I'd be very much interested in understanding why this is such an obviously wrong use of the trope (and if this is not the place to ask this question, where I could ask it).
At the very least, it's on the wrong film's page.
Hindsight examples go on the page for the work that has the moment that becomes harsher, not the page for the work that made the previous moment harsher.
Too old for this
Got it, thanks.
This was just added to YMMV/Aggretsuko.
- Harsher in Hindsight: The scene of Aggretsuko boarding the private jet of a wealthy man she just met (Tadano) aged poorly immediately, as the release of Season 2 happened not long after the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein.
Lots of coffee
Shoehorn aside, if it came out after his arrest then it's not an example.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
I would like to verify the Harsher in Hindsight examples found in the YMMV page of Man of Steel and confirm whether or not they really qualify:
- Jonathan Kent had already gotten a lot of hate for telling Clark he was wrong to save his classmates from the bus crash, but then the Supergirl (2015) series made him look even worse, as Kara also gets a family member chewing her out for revealing herself to the world... and not only does Alex have a much more concrete and understandable reason for it, but she completely turns around just by the end of the first episode. - Reception to Jonathan Kent's portrayal in Man of Steel aside, the DC Extended Universe and the Arrowverse are very two different universes with different forms of storytelling. The DCEU is darker and realistic, while the Arrowverse is grandiose and operatic.
- Lara worried that the people of Earth would ostracise and kill her son. And another scene has Martha tearfully confess that she's worried that Superman's race will take Clark away from her, something that the latter denies. In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, both mothers' fears come true when Superman dies in a Heroic Sacrifice. - That's... predicting a future story, but it could work.
- Johnathan's insistence that Clark hide his powers and alien heritage - even when said powers can be used in a heroic manner - gets reinforced when The Suicide Squad reveals that the US government imprisoned an extraterrestrial in a developing nation where it was subjected to unethical experiments. Again, predicting a future story but it could work.
- Only a month-and-a-half after Man of Steel premiered, the animated film Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox was released. In that story about history getting altered, what happened to Kal-El was even more horrible than what Lara feared. What is this entry trying to say? This happened happened in the original story.
- Superman being forced to snap Zod's neck painted him as a much darker interpretation of the character. Years later, Brightburn, Homelander from The Boys, and Omni-Man from Invincible (2021) would take a much, much darker route. *sigh* This entry comes off as if it's trying to blame the existence of those other characters on DCEU: Superman. Beware the Superman has been popular ever since the creation of Ultraman from the Crime Syndicate.
- A Sears store is clearly shown as a location wrecked during Superman and Faora's battle. In the years after the film's release, the store chain has been rapidly fading into becoming near-defunct. And this is Man of Steel's fault because... why, exactly?
- Yeah, I'm not seeing the connection here. Looks more like an excuse to complain about the film's portrayal of Pa Kent.
- This one looks fine to me.
- Same.
- Not only did the Flashpoint event precede Man of Steel, but the "Clark is experimented on by the government" plotline came even earlier. Cut.
- Fan Myopia + "Work is Darker and Edgier because Superman kills someone" is a cliché at this point.
- Massive stretch, if you ask me.
Any more opinions on that Anne Frank example? I mean, she wrote her diary before she died, sure; but the book was edited and published long after her tragic death was made public.
This example from HilariousInHindsight.Dragon Ball Z Abridged feels like natter but it's missing the context for this scene.
- Much later in the Super manga, Vegeta gets his own unique form to match Ultra Insinct. As if calling back to this particular scene, he decides to name it Ultra Ego.
Vegeta: I AM THE HYPE!
I do know which scene it's talking about though, it's from Episode 36:
Tien: Yeah, more like "pure, unadulterated ego".
So I just want to brign these examples from The Simpsons S3 E17 "Homer at the Bat".
- Seeing Jose Canseco lifting all those heavy appliances out of a house fire has a different meaning now, after it was revealed that he was using steroids throughout his career. The same arguably applies to Roger Clemens throwing a pitch that destroyed Wonderbat. Player is shown moving appliances, turns out he was using steroids. Seems like a flimsy connection.
- Darryl Strawberry's "misfortune" consists of being benched by Burns in favor of Homer during the last play of the championship game. Since retiring, he's suffered a long list of serious health problems and legal troubles, possibly the worst out of any of the players who guest-starred in this episode and he's also the only one who didn't take part in the follow-up Mockumentary. Again, seems like a flimsy connection. Unless he was benched during his career, there is no connection. This is just "beloved star did bad thigns in the future."
Lots of coffee
Well technically, within-work examples still count (i.e. something in the work makes previous events harsher), but the diary wouldn't have been published if not for what happened to Anne, so it's not like there's really a change in mood from people reading the book when it was first released and people reading it later.
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It's a ahoehorn and also makes the person who added it come off as really unaware of the history of the USSR. There are significant chunks of time prior to February 2022 where conflating Ukraine and Russia would be tasteless
Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?