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 YMMV.PAW Patrol:
- In season 7 episode "Pups Save the Hot Potato", the episode features a character named Spud. Three years later, humorously enough, a Regretevator NPC named Spud was released.
This seems a bit fan myopic, right?
Edited by BlueBlazes on Apr 21st 2025 at 5:52:50 AM
BlueBlazes
Yeah, that's not just Fan Myopia, it's "This character shares the same name as that character from a later work", which is far too weak of a connection.
HilariousInHindsight.Sonic The Hedgehog Film Series
- When Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was first announced, the movie and logo highlighted Tails' involvement, what with two tails sprouting from the bright yellow "2" in the logo. When the official trailer was released, it spotlighted the arrival of a certain red echidna as well, making this movie ''Sonic the Hedgehog 2 & Knuckles.<—-wrong way hindsight. The meme long predates the movie.
- By pure coincidence, the film ended up directly competing with a movie whose protagonist is also known in-universe for his speed, develops a fear of water, starts his relationship with his future rival by racing him, and has a mentor who touches his heart while saying "in here."..<—-Fan Myopia.
- After the film beat a Disney film 2 weekends in a row at the domestic box office, jokes about how Sonic would be the next franchise Disney would try to buy became widespread on Youtube and Reddit. What Disney would actually end up doing 2 months later was hire a Paramount executive named Daria Cercek
, who oversaw the release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3, to lead their live-action division.<—-This is such a minuscule detail that it comes off as a mega-shoehorn.
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Not to mention that "spud" is just a slang term for "potato", so it's too common of a word/name to make that kind of connection, especially if the two characters are already potato-themed (I'm not really familiar with either work, but I'm going to assume that's the case, especially since the listed episode title mentions potatoes in it).
If the characters had any other major similarities besides the name and/or the character was added to the game very soon after the episode premiered, I could maybe see keeping it, but three years later is a reach.
Cold turkey's getting stale. Tonight I'm eating crow.YMMV.Edward Scissorhands - the same page has a Harsher... anecdote about Vincent Price dying, but maybe that one works
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Johnny Depp plays a guy with scissors for hands. When you consider that he was one of Freddy Krueger's victims in his first film, it's kinda funny. It's even funnier when they were casting A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010); Depp was one of the original choices to play Freddy. - Not sure, sounds like wrong-way Hindsight
- The film has this effect on The Breakfast Club, as it's a bit jarring to see Anthony Michael Hall go from a sweet and picked-on nerd to a slightly more psychotic version of John Bender and/or Andrew Clark. (Or as Hal Sparks joked on I Love the Nineties, he went "from the tortured nerd to the nerd torturer.") - This is just AMH doing the Playing Against Type thing, not seeing the hilarity
- Crispin Glover auditioned for Jim before Anthony Michael Hall was cast as him. Flash forward 20 years later and he's in the Burton-directed Alice in Wonderland, which starred Depp himself (Glover and Depp appeared in the same movie two times prior). - Actors stars in same film Trivia
- The climax of the movie involves the villian sending out a angry mob after the main character and a climax that involves a stabbing and the villian falling to his death from a large height. Sounds similar to a movie that would be released just a year after this one.. Not to mention both movies have the heroine meeting the titular character inside a castle. - Beauty and the Beast (Disney) Fan Myopia
Hi everyone, new troper here and this my first post on this discussion.
Can I add this into Harsher in Hindsight entry of YMMV page of The Penguins of Madagascar:
- The plot of "Maurice at Peace" where zoo animals think that Maurice has only 24 hours to live becomes this for the Polish audience, after Maurice's Polish voice actor, Wojciech Paszkowski, passed of stroke in August 23 of 2024.
Any thoughts on that?
So does this means that connecting Titan's line "There's no Queen of England" to passing of Queen Elizabeth in 2022 is also a misuse?
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It does fit Memetic Mutation, though (and IIRC, there is already an entry for it on Memes.Megamind). I remember that Tumblr users had an absolute field day with that meme that day.
Also from that Sonic page:
- After Tom plays Volleyball with Randall, Maddie comes to see how Tom is getting along with Randall. When Tom comments on seeing Randall and his friends spraying Randall with champagne, Tom and Maddie have this exchange which may bring to mind the teaser poster for the first movie, showing what appeared to be the muscular legs of what would go on to be Ugly Sonic: <—-wrong way hindsight as Ugly Sonic predates the Sonic 2 movie
Tom: Don't you think Sonic should have that?
Maddie: Muscles?
Tom: Control yourself.
Game Changer: Earlier this month, this Harsher entry got posted
:
- In "One Year Later", one of the challenges is to invest $1000 into stocks. The episode released in April 2025, which was marked by one of the worst stock market crashes in history.
A week later, however, there was an edit to correct a detail from the show
:
- In "One Year Later", one of the challenges is to invest $1000, with Jacob specifically investing it in the stock market. The episode released in April 2025, which was marked by one of the worst stock market crashes in history.
As noted in the edit reason, this is a meaningful distinction and may or may not make this truly valid for Harsher in Hindsight, because of the three contestants who were tasked to "invest $1000", only one of them invested in stocks (one of them tried and failed to invest it in a vending machine, the other blew it all on scratchers). The editor even admitted this may no longer qualify, and I'm actually curious as well — any thoughts?
Edited by number9robotic on Apr 24th 2025 at 1:14:52 AM
Thanks for playing King's Quest V!YMMV.Cinderella 1950 has these Hilarious in Hindsight examples:
- Cinderella plans to wear a pink dress to the ball, but ends up wearing a silver one, which is always colored blue in merchandise. This is hilarious when one thinks of the next Disney Princess - whose fairy godmothers had a war over whether her dress should be blue or pink. And the one who changes her dress from pink in this film is voiced by Verna Felton - who voices the fairy that wants to keep Aurora's dress pink.<—-minor detail and voice actor trivia
- Another Sleeping Beauty (1959) one. In both films the heroine arrives home to have her friends greet her with a new dress, saying "surprise, happy birthday". The fact that Gus says the line mistakenly is amusing since it actually is Aurora's birthday the next time around.<—-minor details
- The Grand Duke's Wrong Genre Savvy speech about how the Kings spectators for Love at First Sight at the ball being unlikely becomes this in light of the subsequent live action movies to feature Cinderella and the prince where either they did meet before the the Ball or their love at first sight is fleeting.<—-not sure
- Cinderella's dog is named Bruno. 71 years later, there would be another Disney movie with a character who goes by that name and a certain hugely popular song from said film about not talking about him.<—-a slim similarity, and many Disney films have characters named Bruno
- The moment of Ho Yay between Jaq and Gus after the ball (see below) is funnier in light of the 2015 live-action remake, where Jaq is Gender Flipped into "Jaqueline" and Promoted to Love Interest with Gus, and they have babies together.<—-minor detail
They could be cut across the board, IMO.
From YMMV.The Call Of Cthulhu:
- Harsher in Hindsight: The return of the Great Old Ones is described as when the earth would "flame with a holocaust of ecstacy and freedom". Post World War II, that line sounds a lot more frightening. (It should be noted that the word Holocaust before the Nazis meant "burnt offering to God," although it had been used in reference to genocides going back to the early 20th century.)
This is iffy to me: I think more people understand the word "holocaust"'s old sense of "conflagration" than the entry gives them credit for.
Idk, the word gave me immediate pause when I read it. I genuinely forgot the word even had a different meaning, despite knowing that.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallOn the YMMV.Mario Plus Rabbids Kingdom Battle:
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- The username of RabbidLuigi
, a YouTube gaming countdown maker and Let's Player, became this after the game was leaked and officially announced, given that the character features a character called "Rabbid Luigi." Ubisoft would invite him to a number of the game's pre-release events, and he would joke about the coincidence in both his own videos and that of his friends, such as in Nathaniel Bandy's How Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Triggers You
, where he interrupts to claim that Ubisoft stole his identity. — Wrong way hindsight? I followed this creator in real-time and the ensuing jokes that erupted from his username coincidentally sharing a character with Rabbid Luigi was funny, but rabbidluigi has since been removed from the site, so would it have grounds to stay somewhere else? Like Ubisoft invited him to play the game when it was coming out because of the coincidence.
- Another YouTube related moment comes from SMG4's take on the game in his Stupid Mario series, where Wario takes over a Rabbid version of the Mushroom Kingdom and makes an army of Wario Rabbids. Guess who has a Rabbid counterpart in the real game? — Wrong way hindsight, does it go to the SMG4 page?
- The Denser and Wackier tone of the game compared to the Mario series' already lighthearted setting is even more amusing when one remembers that, when their biggest rival experimented with gunplay, the result was on the exact other end of the tone spectrum. — Wrong way hindsight?
- The username of RabbidLuigi
Edited by taotruths on Apr 28th 2025 at 7:42:57 AM

Edited by Amonimus on Apr 20th 2025 at 8:43:59 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup