Hilarious in Hindsight/Comic Books

Marvel Comics

 * If only one of them wasn't spoileriffic as hell, these two "Homage Covers" would be the perfect image for this page because they both are canon now.[[hottip:(Why?): Because... wait for it....
 * The Incredible Hulk #418 featured Marlo selling her soul to Mephisto (she thought it was just a dream) in order to have a perfect wedding day. Over a decade later Spider Man: One More Day comes out, a story which involves Mephisto convincing Peter Parker to sell his marriage to him.
 * The Marvel humor Comic What The? did a Batman parody where all the actors playing Batman's villains were being killed. Near the end it is revealed that everyone in Hollywood is afraid to work with him, including Michael Caine, who would go on to play Alfred in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.
 * This is also a normal Funny Aneurysm Moment, what with Heath Ledger and all.
 * There's also the fact that one of the very first Batman storylines from 1939 (the introduction of Clayface I) was based around actor Boris Basil Karlo (obvious expy for Boris Karloff) having gotten so into the character of movie villain Clayface that he had become him in real life.
 * In Amazing Fantasy #15, the introduction of Spider Man back in 1962, the wrestler Peter defeats is called Hogan...
 * When John Byrne redid the origin in the late '80s, he deliberately redesigned Crusher Hogan to look like Hulk Hogan as a result of this.
 * The Movie referenced this by having Macho Man Randy Savage play the wrestler, who was called Bonesaw. Macho Man and Hogan have a long past.
 * A 1996 issue of Excalibur has Pete Wisdom, in a wheelchair and a bald cap, humorously pretending to be Professor Xavier, including a reference or two to Jean-Luc Picard while he's at it. Four years later, Patrick Stewart was in fact cast to play Xavier in the X-Men films.
 * This similarly makes the X-Men/Next Generation crossover comics/novels that much funnier, since many people pause at the resemblance between Xavier and Picard. It's even lampshaded by Storm in the novel.
 * Even more hilarious, Patrick Stewart related a tale from that comic while on the Daily Show promoting X-men 2. Apparently, he was told about the comic during its production, as well as the fact that Picard and Xavier would be "facing off" on the cover. Sir Stewart jokingly objected, claiming "If I took that role someday, I'd be on the cover twice. That just doesn't seem fair." It's good to know that Sir Patrick Stewart himself appreciates this trope.
 * In issue #41 of Generation X, Skin went to rent a bunch of horror movies, the titles of which were parodies of classic horror movies (like Yell! instead of Scream. But among these horror flicks was a film called Sicko, which nowadays makes readers think more of Michael Moore and less of Psycho.
 * Once, Deadpool claimed, "If you looked like Ryan Reynolds crossed with a shar-pei, you'd understand!" Ryan Reynolds had already outted himself as a Deadpool fan and expressed interest in playing him in a movie at this point, though.
 * And then he did play a ...version of Deadpool in X Men Origins Wolverine, as well as signing on to do an official Deadpool movie.
 * In the 1990s, Marvel published a few comic books starring Disney characters. They have since been bought by Disney.
 * In the early days of The Mighty Thor, Thor, in his human guise of Dr. Donald Blake, had a romance with his nurse, Jane Foster. However, he kept the secret of his dual life from her, and Jane, knowing that there was some deep secret that the man she loved refused to tell her, slipped into a crippling depression that took a toll on her physical health. Donald finally snapped her out of it by transforming into Thor at her bedside to prove his love, saving her from "dying of a broken heart". Now, in the upcoming Thor movie, who play Jane Foster? Natalie Portman.
 * In Marvel Year In Review 1993, there was a fake ad for Alpha Flight: "We're the Canadian Football League of superhero teams! (Except our best heroes don't go to the U.S. and join the Avengers)". Several years later, Wolverine joined the Avengers.
 * They also had a bit where they discussed the progression of Darker and Edgier versions of characters, and theoretical Darker-er and Edgier-er extensions. One of them was named Red Hulk. Later on, Red Hulk became a Hulk villain.
 * There's also a Reverse Funny Aneurysm when US Agent and Spider-Woman, two American heroes, joined Omega Flight.
 * Another one with Spider-Man. Peter David wrote that Ned Leeds was the original Hobgoblin. Not only was this questionable, but the original writer of the Hoboglibn mystery, Roger Stern, came back to do a miniseries where it was revealed Leeds wasn't the original Hobgoblin at all. Even if David himself doesn't appreciate the irony, one does have to find it a little funny that the same thing happened to him about the (Green) Goblin mystery in Spider-Man 2099.
 * In Marvel Civil War, shapeshifting alien Hulkling of the Young Avengers replaced Hank Pym to free the anti-registration heroes. This becomes funny when Secret Invasion reveals that the Hank Pym Hulkling replaced was himself a shapeshifting alien that had replaced Hank Pym.
 * And before that in an issue of Fantastic Four, as a prank, it showed Hank Pym using an image inducer to pose as a car stealing skrull.
 * This cover of Avengers 221 published in 1982 is amusing when you look at the original lineup for Brian Michael Bendis's New Avengers published 23 years later.
 * Spider-Man's Clone Saga was originally going to be revealed as the work of Mephisto, but it was decided that it was stupid for Mephisto to get involved with Spider-Man.
 * In The Ultimates, Captain America was apologizing to Nick Fury about breaking his nose. Nick just waved it off and said, "My nose has been smashed more times than Robert Downey Jr." And later on, guessed who played Iron Man?
 * becomes funnier after knowing what Captain America does during the Civil War storyline.
 * This Superman cover is more funny after Spider-Man's breakup with Mary Jane...
 * Look at the first panel of the fourth page of this Spider-Man gallery. Yeah.
 * An old Marvel Comics Star Wars comic dated about 1980 (before Empire or Jedi came to theaters) had a letter to the editor complaining about how the writers of the comic were writing Luke and Leia out of character saying and I quote "they're obviously in love with each other but you're writing them like they're brother and sister or something."
 * One issue of the Marvel Star Wars comic, also pre-Empire, had a story about Darth Vader and Luke's father as two different people. Naturally, going off the first movie there was no reason to suspect they weren't two different people, but it's still hard to ignore.
 * Much of Marvel Star Wars came out between the films. After The Empire Strikes Back, they ran a storyline involving a new Imperial superweapon called the Tarkin. During a briefing, someone says to our heroes, "It answers a lot of questions we've been asking ourselves lately. Like for instance, why hasn't the Empire constructed a second battle station like the Death Star that almost destroyed our base on Yavin?"
 * Joe Quesada once said the Classic and Ultimate Marvel universes meeting would be a sign that Marvel had "officially run out of ideas." The makers of Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions didn't get this memo. Well, granted, they don't actually interact with each other, but still.
 * Knowing Joe Quesada, he was, and is, wrong because Spider Man Shattered Dimensions was great and didn't feel stale at all.
 * And then in 2012 came the "Spider-Men" series.
 * Issue #58 of the second run of What If?, released in 1994, asked the question of what would have happened if the Punisher had killed Spider-Man. One splash page of the issue shows a montage of big name Marvel superheroes with ties to Spider-Man beating the crap out of the Punisher. This was released only one year before Garth Ennis's Punisher Kills The Marvel Universe.
 * The very first issue of What If...? asked "What If Spider-Man had joined the Fantastic Four?"; since then, this has actually happened not once, but twice in 616 continuity - Spidey was a member of the short-lived New Fantastic Four, and later a member of the proper team.
 * Moreover, What If...? #30's premise was "What If Spider-Man's Clone had not died?", based on a then-recent story arc. Then in the 90s, the idea was revisited in earnest in the infamous Clone Saga.
 * Similarly, issue #51 of volume 2 was "What If the Punisher became Captain America?", which later became an actual Punisher: War Journal storyline in 2007. Granted, he was never officially Cap, but this was before Bucky stepped into the role, meaning he was effectively the closest thing to the real deal out there.
 * Speaking of Bucky, there's an issue of the first volume ("What If Captain America & Bucky had not disappeared at the end of World War II") where at one point, he takes up the Captain America mantle to replace an aging Steve Rogers. That's right, Bucky was Cap a good 31 years before he takes up the identity in the main Marvel Universe.
 * Not only that, but issue #9 of the second volume asked "What If the New X-Men had died on their very first mission?" X-Men: Deadly Genesis would reveal that this is exactly what actually happened, because Professor X had gathered a new team to save the originals from Krakoa before the more familiar "All-New, All-Different" guys.
 * Washed-up actor Henry Hellrung, alias Anthem, was made leader of The Order, California's Initiative team, by his friend Tony Stark. Henry was famous for playing Iron Man on television, until alcoholism ruined his career. To recap, he's an actor who got fired because of issues with addiction, then came back into the fore of media attention after accepting an offer to do with Iron Man... not unlike Robert Downey, Jr. The Order ran for 10 issues in 2007; Iron Man came out in May 2008
 * In a 2005 issue of She Hulk, Spider-Man had some fun with J. Jonah Jameson by claiming that the real reason Jameson hated him was because he was black. The current Ultimate Spider Man, introduced in 2011, is Miles Morales, a black hispanic.

DC Comics
"The pivotal time will be October, 1986 ... and in that month, the future of the world will be decided. Either the path of the Great Disaster will be taken, and civilization will fall, or the path of sanity will prevail and the Legion of Super-Heroes will emerge triumphant a thousand years later."
 * The 1992 miniseries Lobo: Infanticide has a extended parody of Archie Comics (drawn by Archie Comics house artist Dan DeCarlo) with a teen-age Lobo dating a crazed, shaved-headed... Britney Spears.
 * Anyone in the old "Who's Who in DC" series. Really, pick a character who's still around, and Hilarity Ensues as you see how terribly different The DCU is some 20 years later.
 * You can do the same for The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. Take a look at the Book of the Dead and Inactive from the initial print and see who's still dead...
 * From Amazing World of DC Comics, July 1976, describing the Great Disaster at DC Comics:

""What is it with you people?" I screamed. "Barry is Dead! Gone! Hearsed! Why can't you let him rest honorably, in peace?""
 * That's just I Want My Jetpack, right? Well, not quite. 1986 was the turning point for the Dark Age of Comics. And DC comics from October 1986 include Man of Steel #1, which began the modern revamping of Superman, and Batman #400, which was the last pre-revamp Batman. Depending on whether you think the Dark Age was a great disaster, this may be amusingly prophetic....
 * A 1997 Justice League of America story had the JLA take on a mad scientist who had created a "luck machine" that altered probability in his favor, letting him win the lottery, the Nobel Prize, and become President of the USA in short order. The JLA confront him in the Oval Office and destroy his device, but when reality reorders itself, the President who thanks the team isn't the right President either, and the team realizes that reality is still broken. What's so funny about this? The "wrong" President looks just like Sarah Palin.
 * Then-current Adventures of Superman writer Jerry Ordway would often say "Let's just kill 'im!" whenever the Superman writing team are stuck on ideas. When their proposed "Superman marries Lois Lane" story arc was temporarily shelved to avoid conflict with the Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman TV series (which also planned to marry Superman and Lois in a future episode), Ordway, at the next meeting, said, "Let's just kill 'im!" The end result was The Death of Superman.
 * On the back cover of the Batman: A Death in the Family trade paperback, in which Jason Todd, the then-current Robin, was killed off, then-Batman editor Denny O'Neil jokingly said, "It would take a sleazy stunt to bring (Jason) back", though he did admit that he voted for Jason to live. In 2005, Jason was brought Back From the Dead.
 * Similar Word of God tripping-up occurs in the afterword to The Return of Barry Allen, a storyline in which Barry Allen does not actually return (yet). Mark Waid hyperbolically describes being driven up a bell tower with a rifle out of sheer exasperation at people asking him to bring back Barry.

"Comic Book Guy: I believe that's the sound the Green Lantern made when Sinestro threw him into a vat of acid. Eepaa!"
 * The Green Lantern story arc, Sinestro Corps War, features a rooftop fight with the sound effect "eepaa". The sound effect's origin? A one off gag in The Simpsons Movie.


 * Sadly, no vats of acid were involved.
 * The original Batwoman, Kathy Kane, was introduced in the '50s in response to Dr. Frederic Wertham's allegations that Batman and Robin were lovers. The current version of Batwoman, Kate Kane, is a lesbian.
 * An issue of JLA featured Superman attending the funeral of Metamorpho (again...), and was the only one there. When he questioned the priest about it, he was told that since Superman came back, everyone expected superheroes not to stay dead, so they'd lost interest in memorial services. The service took place in a park dedicated to fallen superheroes, and in an obvious bid to make the point that this wasn't always the case, that sometimes dead heroes stayed dead, the artist had four memorial statues in the scene: Ice, Oliver Queen (Green Arrow), Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) and Barry Allen (the Flash). All of them have since come back from the dead.
 * This panel from Justice League America #33. At the time, it was meant as a dig at Barbara Gordon's fate in The Killing Joke, but with the events of Countdown to Infinite Crisis (Max actually does shoot Blue Beetle in the head) it becomes hilariously prophetic. (Perhaps justified in that Booster Gold was from the future. Was he trying to subtly warn his friend without disrupting the space-time continuum?)
 * This Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos panel states a Chuck Norris fact 20 years early.
 * In the 1970s Batman story "The Man Who Falls", which chronicles young Bruce Wayne's training to become Batman, Bruce meets with an FBI agent who says "we don't pull our piece much. We leave that to Efrem Zimbalist, Junior". Efrem Zimbalist Jr would later be the voice actor for Alfred Pennyworth on Batman the Animated Series.
 * Issue 3 of JLA: Year One (written in March 1998) has a moment that seems to be intended as a Funny Aneurysm Moment, due to being set in the past; the Flash (Barry Allen) and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) have a heart-to-heart conversation about the life expectancies of superheroes, which ends with Hal assuring Barry that "I predict we'll both live to a ripe old age". At that point in continuity, both Hal and Barry were dead. However, these days that moment has reversed into Hilarious in Hindsight due to both having been brought back from the dead throughout the 2000's.
 * In the "World's Finest" where Robin (Tim Drake) and Superboy (Kon-El) first meet, Superboy wisecracks that even with the costume, he knew it wasn't one of the legendary Flying Graysons. Guess which Robin is in the Young Justice cartoon?
 * Speaking of Tim and costumes, DC once released a book about Bruce Wayne's costume designs for him and his team (Knight Gallery). Tim's section 2 entries stating "yeah, cape-wings are stupid". Cue the reboot, and just guess what Tim is now wearing (and everyone is making fun of)...
 * Y the Last Man features a Gender Bender FTM in later issues who bears a striking resemblance to Chris Crocker.
 * This rejected Robin design from the camptastic Batman and Robin looks very similar to the DC Reboot Nightwing suit, minus the belt and the nipples.
 * In Messner-Loebs's run on The Flash, there were several references to T. O. Morrow being stricken with depression after seeing something unspecified and horrible in the future. 15-20 years of canon developments and potential things for a reader to dislike later...
 * Back when Two-Face was still known as Harvey Kent, the editors decided to give him a happy ending, and his face was restored by a doctor. And the doctor's name? Ekhart.

Others

 * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage issue #1 was meant to parody several things, when something happened to those tropes or something.
 * Animal Teams, which ironically made the meme of Animal Teams.
 * The works of Frank Miller, who would later go on to inadvertently parody himself.
 * The classic Sin City story "That Yellow Bastard" at one point has Hartigan talking about how something is "just plain damn screwy" repeatedly. Cue Frank Miller's The Spirit...
 * Straddling the line between this and Funny Aneurysm Moment: read the Astro City story "A Nearness of You", keeping in mind One More Day.
 * Image United is a Crisis Crossover designed to celebrate the history of Image Comics. Due to massive Schedule Slip, it's now fallen many months behind. One of the most infamous issues of early Image being its delays.
 * Judge Dredd's Democracy Now 1990s story line had the quote "When some creep's holding a knife to your throat, who do you want to see riding up...me - or your elected representative? Think about it." Fast forward to 2009 and the elected Mayor of London Boris Johnson saved a woman from a mugging that he witness as he cycled home. Since Mayor Of London comes with no 24 hour bodyguards or police escort it seems elected representatives are a better choice than coppers.
 * Can be considered an inversion, Dr. Seuss's wartime political cartoon showing a man in the future telling his grandson about his days during WWII, which he apparently spent complaining about fuel shortages. This becomes much less ludicrous when you look at the date this is supposed to be taking place: 1973, when everybody talked about fuel shortages. If you didn't know this was written in 1943, there isn't much of a joke, since it is perfectly reasonable that the grandfather is recounting his past experiences with fuel shortages.
 * Don Rosa's 2002 Uncle Scrooge story "The Dream of a Lifetime" features the Beagle Boys using an invention stolen from Gyro Gearloose to sneak into Scrooge's dreams and learn the combination to his money bin's main vault. It also features a staggering amount of similarities to the lucid-dreaming mechanics, and some of the plot elements, of Inception.
 * In 1996 Marvel and DC made a crossover (Elseworlds) Batman & Captain America. No comment about the story itself, however epilogue has a very significant detail. Batman and Robin found frozen Cap, and save him. Then they reveal that Batman is now Dick Grayson former Robin (and Bruce retired now), and Robin is... Bruce Wayne Jr. son of the original Batman! Now where have i heard that one before?

Newspaper Comics

 * Tintin has many of these moments:
 * In "Explorers On The Moon" (1954) Tintin becomes the first man to walk on the moon. Almost 15 years later man would really walk on the moon surface.
 * British author Harry Thompson noted in his biography "Tintin and Hergé: a double biography" that in "The Mysterious Star" (1940) mushrooms grow to enormous size before they explode. Five years later, he wrote, the first atomic bomb would explode and produce large mushroom clouds...
 * Asterix : In "Asterix in Britain" (1966) Asterix, Obelix and their British friend Anticlimax cross the English Channel and arrive while it rains. Obelix remarks that building a tunnel between the French and British coast might be a good idea. Anticlimax answers: "We thought of a tunnel ourselves. We've even started digging one but it seems to be taking a jolly long time, what." When the story was first published in 1966 people had thought of building a tunnel between Great Britain and France for centuries, but it didn't seem likely that this plan would ever come to fruition.
 * In a Dilbert strip from early 1992, Dogbert announces his intention to run for president, "hoping [his] charisma will unify a divided political party" - not the Democrats, but the Communists, as he wants to have a chance. A few years after Bill Clinton won the election, Scott Adams wrote in a compilation, "This joke made sense in 1992. Trust me."
 * In a Bloom County Sunday strip, Steve Dallas has a fantasy of dancing around as Michael Jackson. Of course it was cool and badass in 1986...
 * Also in Bloom County, a Star Wars parody arc ended with this. Mind you, this strip is from 1983.
 * In the collected volume, Breathed comments "I was off one year. Funny thing looking back is that George apparently did lose his head."
 * And then there's the strip from 1988 where Frank tells Binkley's dad "The first black in the White House will be a conservative". Well, it kind of depends on how you define "conservative"... a lot of Obama's policies tend to be somewhat in the Nixon range, but he is a Democrat...
 * Obama's health care law closely copied the one Republicans proposed in 1993, so there's no disputing Obama's conservative bona fides (without resorting to a Chewbacca Defense). However, he campaigned as a progressive liberal, so it's pretty ironic all around.
 * In the lead-up to the release of The Phantom Menace, FoxTrot had a strip about Jason posting fake news about the movie in order to convince other fans not to see the movie, allowing Jason a better chance to get tickets on opening day. One of the rumors he posted concerned how all CGI effects had been removed from the film, and as such Jar-Jar Binks had been renamed "Jar-Jar Binks, master of invisibility." Considering the eventual fan reaction, Peter's comment about why Jason's plan won't work is made a bit funnier.
 * Not to mention that the whole strip seems eerily like it could be a parody of notorious Fanon website SuperShadow.com.
 * Word of God even acknowledges the unintentional humor in his Best of Foxtrot collection.
 * In another strip, Jason made a violent video game, but it could also be played in a hyper-sanitized mode to avoid parental backlash. ("Your flower is spurting butterflies from its chest wound.") Then, Serious Sam HD comes, with Super Happy Funtime mode.
 * In one strip from June 1988, Peter calls a woman on the phone, who thinks he's someone named "Steve", causing Peter to ask who Steve is. Four months later, we meet Peter's best friend, named Steve.
 * A Pearls Before Swine strip showed Rat writing about a fake interview with Saddam Hussein who was found in a spider hole, playing a Game Boy. As Stephan Pastis wrote in commentary, Saddam Hussein was found in a spider hole, but not playing a Game Boy.
 * In a strip from an arc where Pig had Newt Gingrich as a pet, Rat said that Newt can never be president and John McCain is a lock for 2008. He was proven right about the former, considering Newt's dropout of the 2012 election, but wrong about the latter, considering the other nominee won that election.
 * Re-runs of the For Better or For Worse comic strip featuring Lawrence are funnier when you realize that Lawrence is gay. Like when he teases Michael for liking girls, when the boys take turns pulling each others' uvulae (it's that hangy thing in the back of your throat) or when teen Michael tries to comfort a dateless loser friend by pointing out Lawrence doesn't date either.
 * A Peanuts comic strip had Snoopy try to get Schroeder to recommend him for "Neighborhood Dog Of The Year". Schroeder said that Snoopy never said anything good about Beethoven. Snoopy then thinks that he didn't know Beethoven wanted to be "Neighborhood Dog Of The Year". 20 years later, a film series was made about a dog named Beethoven.
 * This strip.
 * In one Calvin and Hobbes Sunday strip, Calvin is out shopping with his mother and tries on some sunglasses while Hobbes watches. It's pretty funny on its own, but after Gurren Lagann made its debut, it was noticed that the pair he settles on before his mom sends him back just happens to be orange Kamina Shades.
 * This Garfield strip.
 * Any pre-2006 strip involving Liz is especially funny to read nowadays, considering Jon and Liz are a couple now.
 * There was one 1982 strip where Garfield said that Monday moves in a mysterious way.
 * In an early Get Fuzzy strip, Bucky doctored one of Satchel's Where's Waldo books by changing it to Where's Osama?. At the end, a bunch of American troops find him, and presumably kill him, prompting Rob to say "you can't sell this to kids". In 2011...
 * There's an issue of Twisted Toyfare Theater about Wolverine's busy day-to-day schedule, wherein he guest stars in several comics over the course of the day. At the end, Alan Moore pops in to quote Oscar Wilde, saying the only thing worse than being talking about is not being talked about. Cut to Speedball, sullenly waiting by the phone, hoping he'll get a call from the Marvel Team Up guys. Speedball's next major appearance was in the last arc of Marvel Team-Up -- and not long after he became thrust into the spotlight as Penance in the wake of Marvel Civil War.
 * The Far Side once showed a strip of cowboys being chased by UFOs.
 * Leroy and Loretta Lockhorn's doctor is called Dr. H. Blog. And to think that "blog" would eventually become an actual word in the English language...