Hindsight Cleanup

I posted this back in May, but it never recieved any response.

From This is Spın̈al Tap:

Proposed keep:

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The song "Gimme Some Money", in light of the recent lawsuit spearheaded by Harry Shearer (which Guest, McKean and Reiner all joined later) against Vivendi over their Hollywood Accounting practices, which means the creators have seen hardly any royalties for the three-plus-decades of Spın̈al Tap projects. This seems accurate and valid.

Proposed cut:

• Harsher in Hindsight:

  • In 1992, Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro died of a heart attack after spraying pesticide in his garden. It's disputed, though, exactly how he died; the coroner's report pinned it on cocaine use, but his friends and family disputed this, arguing that Porcaro almost never used drugs and pinning it on an allergic reaction to the pesticide, combined with a heart condition that ran in his family.
  • In 2020, Brian May was hospitalized for tearing his buttock muscle in "a moment of over-enthusiastic gardening".
  • Ronnie James Dio severed his thumb while working in his backyard, in an incident he himself refers to as a "bizarre gardening accident". He's probably referencing the film.

• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • The experience making this film actually helped Tony Hendra, who played the manager, get over his suicidal depression. The Power of Rock indeed. This is great, but I'm not sure if this is the right trope.

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Billy Joel retiring from rock to write classical piano pieces is bizarrely reminiscent of Nigel's own hidden talents. This seems too general.
  • Rob Reiner and Christopher Guest worked together again in The Princess Bride, in which Guest's character has eleven fingers. This stretch goes up to 11!

Unsure or missing context:

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The story about Spın̈al Tap's first drummer dying in a "bizarre gardening accident" has led this appellation to be used for any accident involving a rock musician that even vaguely could be described this way: All of these seem too general, except for the Abba drummer, which I am unsure of.
    • Abba drummer Ola Brunkert died in 2008 in a "bizarre gardening accident" in Spain - he fell though a greenhouse glass pane and cut his neck artery.

• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • In the film:
    Nigel: David? Have a good show.^note David: You had me at hello. Needs context. What makes this heartwarming?

Edited by VerySunshine on Jul 1st 2022 at 4:33:27 AM

the "Gimme Some Money" example violates Examples Are Not Recent, should be tweaked.

The Harsher entries are just "XYZ" people died after the movie's release. Cut them all

Family Guy S 2 E 8 I Am Peter Hear Me Roar has this example, which sounds like a shoehorn for the sake of complaining about the later seasons (which is a common occurrence, sadly), and the specific example stems from only a single line of dialogue:

• Harsher in Hindsight: Gloria's comment about how screwed up the Griffin kids must be, and her implication that Lois is responsible, is conveyed by the episode as her being pompous and condescending before Lois rightfully teaches her a lesson. But her assessment hits very differently in later seasons, after all the main characters underwent Flanderization and they, and the show as a whole, became significantly more mean-spirited. Chris is now a masturbation-addicted idiot, Meg is treated like a punching bag to the point where she frequently self-harms and attempts suicide, and Stewie is an entire cauldron of mental and sexual problems. And Peter and Lois have gone from being flawed but well-meaning parents to self-absorbed sociopaths who have shamelessly abused their children in a variety of ways, making it apparent that Gloria was right after all.

This new example in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie could be an Ukraine War shoehorn:

• Plankton's use of Plan Z to successfully enslave all of Bikini Bottom and attempt to Take Over the World becomes all the more disturbing after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the usage of the letter Z as a pro-war symbol. One Russian comment on this video describes it as having, "Too many parallels."

Yeah, especially after Putin deployed his new buckets to mind-control the Ukranian population.

Yeah, really bad shoehorn. It should be deleted.

just a rule of thumb, if a hindsight example mentions the ukraine war, it needs to be removed, since it's an ongoing event.

RE: Fire emblem. I mostly deleted those entries mostly by request, I didn’t really think that some of them are valid, because the Fan Myopia ones kinda clouded my judgment. That being said, I’ll add the ones Alley Validated, if that’s ok.

Edit: They have been restored per Alley’s post.

Edited by Ayumi-chan on Jul 7th 2022 at 5:10:25 PM

Uf O@ It could be rewritten to be less complaining, but there could be validation to the claim.

...I knew someone was going to do something like this. From Yu-Gi-Oh!:

• During Yugi's duel with Jonouchi under Marik's control, they get tied to an anchor and the loser will drown. This is harder to watch after Kazuki Takahashi's death in 2022, where his body was found on the shore of a beach and his cause of death is believed to be drowning.

Thoughts? I'm thinking this is not an example. They do have water in common, but no one actually drowned in the manga scenario and none of the details are really similar beyond that.

I think the means of (almost-)death makes it close, even if nobody actually dies in the work, though if it were the actor and not the creator, it'd probably be a stronger connection, weirdly.

pure creator mortality garbage, imo. cut.

no one was forcing Takahashi to play a game in the water, he just drowned. with how many ludicrous duel scenarios were in the series, his death probably would have inevitably invoked one.

How can you be so sure about that?

But anyway. Yeah, it seems just author mortality. There were many other duels that involved water, (Thanks Mako). And even if is likely, they still admit we don't know if he drowned. But as many have pointed out, even then, there is not enough coincidence for it to be relevant.

Found in YMMV.Kamen Rider Revice under Harsher in Hindsight (warning: spoilers)

• Daiji killing Akaishi by shooting him becomes hard to watch due to a Japanese politician getting shot and killed earlier in the week it premiered.

For context, this refers to the death of Shinzo Abe, who was shot and killed a few days earlier.

Edited by Siegfried1337 on Jul 10th 2022 at 12:39:53 PM

It's not hindsight if the event happened before the work.

Come on, it has been less than a week. And of course, this example assumes that no politician has ever been killed before. Assuming the character is even a politician, as without that it just boils down to "character was shot and this real life person was also shot". I think it should be cut.

There's similar misuse in Avataro Sentai Don Brothers

• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: #18 has Shinichi attempting to shoot Taro In the Back with a paintball rifle, in a scene parodying a sniper assassination. A mere few days after the episode aired, former Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe was assassinated via gunshot from behind, which makes the scene more than a little uncomfortable to watch.

Edited by Psyga315 on Jul 10th 2022 at 10:16:32 AM

That might be something, cuz at least it's from the same country as the assassination, is set up as an assassination, and is in close temporal proximity to the assassination. Not sure if it'll be seen the same way in the long run though.

I'll admit that I am feeling somewhat more lenient toward examples related to the Abe assassination coming from Japanese media, just because part of what made it such a big deal is how rare gun violence and political violence both are in reality there. The last major assassination occurred decades ago, and even then the guy was stabbed, not shot.

The troper who added that entry should realize that "Funny Aneurysm" Moment redirects to Harsher in Hindsight.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Jul 11th 2022 at 7:23:26 AM

Found this on Dinosaurs under Harsher in Hindsight:

• In "Driving Miss Ethyl," Ethyl arrives at her high school reunion only to learn that all her schoolmates are dead, including her best friends Dorothy, Blanche and Rose. This revelation is more poignant as of 2022, now that the actresses who played the Golden Girls' Dorothy, Blanche and Rose have all passed away.

Standard actor mortality, and Betty White died in 2021.

Isn't that just actor mortality?

Edit:

Edited by TantaMonty on Jul 13th 2022 at 10:15:53 AM

It'd only qualify if it was Dorothy, Blanche, and Sophia, as they were the first three actresses to die (not in that order).

TBF she died on December 31, 2021 but that's besides the point.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 13th 2022 at 2:26:21 PM

Found on Harsher in Hindsight in YMMV.Kamen Rider Revice:

• Aguilera and Sakura's habit of tracking each other down without permission is a bit hard to watch after Aguilera's actress became the victim of stalking in real life and her agency did nothing about it (not even calling the police), forcing her to stay with a friend for safety.

This a bit too soon? This happened 6 days ago.