Harsher in Hindsight/Live-Action TV: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

** History Channel's ''Underwater Universe'' has been preceded by a sympathy message and filmed-prior-to-3/11/11 disclaimer ever since the quake. This is particularly relevant for the episode featuring a previous tsunami in Samoa.

* The ''[[SeaQuest DSV]]'' episode "The Regulator" contains the following dialogue:

* On ''[[Angel]]'', Doyle's {{spoiler|[[Heroic Sacrifice]]}} - just nine episodes into the series - became even more heartbreaking after Glenn Quinn, who played him, died three years later in 2002.

** In the very last episode "Not Fade Away," Lorne (the Host, a usually fun-loving karaoke-singing demon) has a melancholic plotline in which he eventually {{spoiler|shoots Lindsey dead before resigning from Angel's crew}}. Afterwards, as if talking to the audience, he says, "Good night, folks." Though not meant to be funny ''or'' light-hearted, it's become even sadder; a month after the May 2004 finale, Andy Hallett, Lorne's actor, got a dental infection that spread to his bloodstream. Five years after that, he died of the heart disease that resulted. In Hallett's memory, the writers of the comic-book sequel ''Angel: After the Fall'' retired the character of Lorne in 2010.

** Thankfully, not related to a real-life tragedy, in the fourth season of ''Angel'', Fred and Gunn are discussing whether or not it's good to feel. Fred says she'd rather feel the pain, she'd "take that over being a shell any day." In the fifth season, she dies and her body is used by the demon Illyria, who repeatedly refers to Fred as a shell.

** There's also Angel lightheartedly reassuring Lorne that all families have problems, some more than others. Angel has ''no idea'' how many problems his family is going to have in the next two seasons.

** The page picture as of November 9th, 2011 comes from ''[[Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger]]''. It is a vision of a [[Bad Future]], of what would happen if the Zyurangers failed to fully unite as a team. It was distressing enough back then, but after the earthquake in March 2011 that devastated Tokyo it's even worse.

* The Granada ''[[Sherlock Holmes]]'' episode "The Dying Detective" takes on a whole new significance when you know that Jeremy Brett, who played Holmes, died the year after it was filmed.

** An in-universe example, the ending of the episode "Lie To Me". Depressing and sad when aired, but the characters hadn't suffered great tragedy or major deaths yet. By the time the show is over that ending is second only to "The Body" in tear factor.

** The season 3 episode "Earshot" -- whose plot involved a school sniper -- was originally withheld from airing in the U.S. because of the Columbine shootings in April 1999. The season finale, "Graduation Day, Part Two" was also postponed the following month for similar reasons. Both episodes eventually aired later that summer, "Graduation Day, Part Two" in July and "Earshot" in September.

** In the same season, after Tony learns that Michelle {{spoiler|is trapped inside a hotel whose inhabitants are infected with the Cordilla Virus}}, Ryan Chappelle tells him that the best way to focus is to assume the worst and think about getting revenge. {{spoiler|In season 7, Tony's desire for revenge for Michelle's death at the start of the fifth season leads him to attempt to curry favor with the main antagonists so that he can meet up with and kill the man responsible, even if thousands of innocent civilians die in the process}}.

* The diffusion of the first episode of ''[[Fringe]]'', which contains a plane accident, in France coincided with the Rio-Paris plane crash...The episode was broadcast one week later instead.

**** ''And'' it was probably intentional

** Ten's heartwarming "Goodbye - ''my Sarah Jane!!''" from "School Reunion" becomes absolutely heartbreaking after [[Elisabeth Sladen]]'s untimely death. Just...ouch. ''Ouch.''

* ''[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]'' story ''Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith'' is about Sarah Jane struggling with senility brought on by a terminal illness. {{spoiler|In fact, the illness was fabricated by Sarah Jane's replacement, and once she's defeated, Sarah Jane instantly recovers.}}) And to think [[Elisabeth Sladen]] must have known she was ill when she filmed them.

* At the end of season two of ''[[Dexter]]'', Dexter {{spoiler|has trapped James Doakes in a cage inside a remote cabin in the Everglades after he found out Dexter was a serial killer.}} Trying to convince his captor to turn himself in, {{spoiler|Doakes}} describes Dexter's urge to kill as being "like a cancer - and in case you haven't noticed, it's spreading". Michael C. Hall contracted Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 2010, before recovering later that year.

** To top it all off, the working title for ''[[The Royal Family]]''? ''Chest Pains''.

* Parodied in ''[[The Whitest Kids U' Know]]'' when a hunter is making a tasteless joke about hunting accidents at the expense of a friend -- the friend died in a hunting accident just the other day. He insists that this makes it exceptionally funny, while the other members of the hunting party are more reluctant to laugh.

*** Another example would be an early episode called "Second Opinion", where the victim was killed by a quack remedy for her cancer, and Lt. Van Buren and Detective Briscoe are discussing the woman's condition. Briscoe's actor, Jerry Orbach, died of cancer, and a final season story arc involved Van Buren receiving a scare about possible cancer.

*** {{spoiler|Approximately a year later, Matt was killed in a drive-by shooting}}

* There were a lot of moments on the TV show ''[[Titus]]'' in which Titus's dad doubted that his son and Erin would be together forever, which Titus tried to prove wrong time and again. In reality, Christoper Titus and his wife Erin Carden (the inspiration for the character's girlfriend) divorced three years after the show was canceled (and, in ''Love Is Evol'', Titus has nothing good to say about his ex-wife Erin, I mean, "Kate" and really lets it be known that she was a two-timing bitch who tried to murder him and crushed his self-esteem to the point where Titus wanted to kill himself and made him doubt his faith in God -- until God "told" Titus that he made the divorce happen so he could date a 20-something year old who had two college degrees, paid for her own breast implants {as opposed to Erin using Titus's money to surgically make herself over [or as Titus put it, "re-build this bitch from the ground-up"] just so she can have affairs behind his back}, and worked as a model).

* The [[Mockumentary]] ''Oil Storm'' is about an oil shortage caused by a major hurricane making landfall near New Orleans in September 2005. It aired in June 2005.

* "The [[Uncanny Valley]]" episode of ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' featured a disturbed unsub who was molested by their father, the head of the local sanitarium. Today I opened the paper and read [http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hospital-director25-2010feb25,0,5761517.story this real-life occurrence], and now I'm not sure which came first since they only started investigating that guy in September. {{spoiler|I suppose the one thing the real-life bastard has going for him is that it's not mentioned whether he used ''shock therapy'' to give his victims [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]].}}

** In an in-universe example, a conversation between Hotch and Prentiss about the importance of family and how Hotch is trying his best for Hayley and Jack becomes heartbreaking after having watched season 5, in which {{spoiler|Hayley is murdered}}.

* In the episode of ''[[Friends]]'' where Monica and Chandler went on their honeymoon, their entire storyline had to be re-written and re-shot at the last minute. The original storyline involved the two of them getting arrested by airport security because Chandler made a joke about a bomb. The re-shoot version of their storyline involved a sort of one-sided competition for free upgrades with another honeymooning couple, with several of the original gags recycled. The episode aired October 11, 2001.

** Although the deleted scenes were eventually made available on Youtube.

* An earthquake hits [[Washington DC]] in the pre-credits sequence of the ''[[Bones]]'' episode "The Bones on a Blue Line". It aired a month after a earthquake hit Chile, and Chilean fans weren't amused.

* Taub and Kutner discuss suicide in the ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' episode "Painless". {{spoiler|This is one of the things later latched on to fans as [[Foreshadowing]] towards the latter's suicide, which was ''specifically'' written to come completely [[Shocking Swerve|out of nowhere]].}}

** In his second Emmy hosting gig, Conan opened the show with a [http://youtu.be/KHv8IACWSpM song and dance lamenting the trouble NBC was experiencing]. What was funny in 2006 became [[Harsher in Hindsight]] in 2010.

* On an early ''[[Frasier]]'' episode, the [[Girl of the Week]] arrives on American Airlines Flight 11. [[It Got Worse|It Gets Worse]]: David Angell, one of the show's executive producers, was on that exact flight on 9/11. {{spoiler|Niles and Daphne's son}} is named for him.

** The [[Quentin Tarantino|Tarantino]]-directed season 5 finale had the team desperately try to find their colleague Nick, who'd been buried alive and who began to suffer delusions from oxygen deprivation and being eaten by ants. They find the guy who did it... who then blows himself up with a bomb strapped to his waist rather than tell them where he is. The episode was put back from its original showing in the UK because of the London 7/7 bombings.

* In the fourth episode of ''[[Gossip Girl]]'', Blair's mother tells her not to have croissants like her friend Serena, and instead to have fat-free yoghurt. Then Blair says she lost two pounds and her mother says "And you look ''amazing''" in a patronizing sort of way. Then, it's just showing she's a bad mother, who likes Serena better. Then six episodes later we find out Blair's bulimic, and that scene becomes much more sad.

* Watching a repeat of [[Sandra Bullock]]'s Feb. 2010 post Oscar-nom appearance for ''[[The Blind Side]]'' on ''The Tonight Show'' is doubly harsh: her intro-music was "Jessie's Girl" (she's no longer Jessie's girl after she found out about his affair), and she teased David Letterman about whether he'd ever kissed a woman (he admitted to doing [[If You Know What I Mean|a bit more than that]] after being threatened with blackmail, although that could've happened before and my memory is faulty).

* The ''[[Seven Days]]'' episode "Pinball Wizard" featured an aircraft being crashed into the [[The Pentagon]] during an attack, complete with faux footage of the building with one side blown in, and faux news coverage of the wreckage and mass casualties. It was filmed in 1999.

* In the ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek TOS]]'' episode "Assignment: Earth", Spock mentions that one of the events that occurred during the Enterprise's visit to Earth in 1968 was an assassination. The episode was first aired on March 29, 1968. Six days later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. Robert F. Kennedy was killed that year as well.

* The ''[[Route 66]]'' episode "I'm Here to Kill a King" has Tod and Linc encountering a would-be political assassin who [[Evil Twin|looks just like Tod]]. The episode was originally scheduled to air on the night of November 29, 1963; after the real-life assassination of President [[John F. Kennedy]] exactly one week earlier, CBS pulled the episode from its schedule, and it was not seen until the series went into syndication several years later.

* [[The Colbert Report|Stephen Colbert]]'s astronaut training clips are a bit less funny since the wife of the shuttle pilot who helped him was [[wikipedia:2011 Tucson shooting|targeted for assassination]] -- she was shot in the head but survived; unfortunately the mentally unstable shooter killed six other people, including a federal judge and a little girl who was born on 9/11 who had just been elected class president.

* The ''[[Hill Street Blues]]'' season one episode "Life, Death, Eternity, Etc." features the sudden death of a secondary character due to ill health, causing Sgt. Phil Esterhaus (perhaps the most beloved character in the series, played by Michael Conrad) to ponder the transient nature of life. Michael Conrad would die three years later at the age of 57 due to cancer, with Sgt. Esterhaus dying in a special episode timed to correspond with the actor's death.

** The same episode had this trope intentionally written-in. When Swayze's character learns he has leukemia, and Hawkeye urges him to go to Tokyo to begin experimental treatments, Swayze's character cynically predicts "they'll have a cure in twenty years!" The episode aired in the early 80s, more then twenty years after the Korean War ended. And still no cure.

* Following a nasty contract dispute, Susan St. James was [[McLeaned]] from ''McMillan And Wife'' by having her character and infant son killed in an airplane crash. Nearly 30 years later, St. James' son was killed, and her husband and another son critically injured, in a plane crash.

** Pretty much ''anything'' that focused on Phil in Season 6, to deliberate effect. 'Catch' fans knew that Phil's death was going to be documented and thought the four months between his death and the showing would help steel themselves, but it still made it all the more unnerving when it happened on TV. One particular moment: In the episode "Valhalla", which documented the fleet's reactions to the death of Phil, Sig Hansen goes to meet ''Cornelia Marie'' relief captain Derek Ray in Saint Paul. While talking with Sig, Derek commented he could only take up so much of Phil's space in the wheelhouse so the only thing he removed was the ashtray. Sig joked that Phil would find that funny. Problem was, none of the fleet knew that Phil had passed yet, so Derek broke the news. It was awkward from that point on.

* The ''[[X-Files]]'' episode "Beyond The Sea" opens with Captain William Scully, Scully's father, dying of a massive coronary off screen. Fourteen years later Don S Davis who played Captain Scully would die of the exact same thing.

* In the ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' episode "2010", it was mentioned that General Hammond (Don S. Davis' character) had died of a massive heart attack in 2004. It turned out that only four years after this date, Davis did indeed die of a heart attack.

** Also, In the Season 5 two-parter finale (the end of the first part, more specifically), when introduced to Hammond's temporary replacement, Weaver, Bra'tac asks if Hammond of Texas (his term of respect for the General) had fallen in battle. It becomes a lot more harsh when watching it after Davis' death.

* ''[[The Golden Girls]]'' featured an episode in which the girls, in the end, made a pact to always take care of each other, even if it meant going to the same nursing homes. At which point, Rose, played by [[Betty White]], asks the question "What happens when there's only one of us left?" Cue 2010, where White is the only member of the cast left alive.

* One episode of ''[[Two and A Half Men]]'' had this exchange:

{{quote|'''Berta''': You ever gonna stop drinking?

* The Japanese game show ''[[DERO]]!'' had a round where a team of contestants is put inside a room a bit more than 2 meters tall, and have to solve a series of puzzles via [[Linked-List Clue Methodology]] involving various objects in the room, while water is pumped into the room, gradually making it harder to find and reach those objects. They win money if they successfully complete the challenge in time, but if the water level reaches a height of 2 meters first (leaving them with a couple inches of breathing room), the water stops, the game ends in failure, and the team gets nothing (besides wet) from the round. This game suddenly became considerably less fun and exciting a year later when the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster left a ton of houses in Sendai underwater and drowned many of their residents. It got so bad that the show was immediately pulled off the air with its [[Missing Episode|remaining taped episodes never aired, including a two-hour special]]. The production team ended up [[Retool|Retooling]] the show into ''[[TORE]]!'', a [[Spiritual Successor]] which premiered 4 months later.

* The already unsettling ''[[Millennium (TV series)|Millennium]]'' episode "TEOTWAWKI" became even more disturbing to watch after a certain high school massacre.

* The original TV version of [[Edge of Darkness]] features Bob Peck as the lead character, who through the course of events contracts and subsequently dies of radiation poisoning. Peck himself died of Cancer some years later, making the slow decline of his character due to radiation rather tragic. In addition to this, it's established his character's wife died of Cancer some years previous, making a number of scenes where he reflects on this downright uncomfortable now.

* In ''[[Kamen Rider Den-O]]'', Yuuto Sakurai/Kamen Rider Zeronos' [[Super Mode]] is powered by special cards that {{spoiler|erase the memories of his younger self}}. While it was a fairly ominous idea then, it becomes more depressing knowing that Yuuto's actor, Yuichi Nakamura, has had his future in showbusiness erased since he was forced to retire due to chronic back pain.

* There's a season 3 ''[[Highlander (TV series)|Highlander]]'' episode where Richie asks Duncan if they'll ever have to fight each other. Guess what happens in season 5, that leads to Richie's death?

* "The Siege of AR-558", an already very bleak and tragic episode of ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Star Trek Deep Space Nine]]'', is turned into [[Shaggy Dog Story]] / [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]] in a later episode when {{spoiler|the system for which the protagonists fought so hard, and many [[Red Shirt|Red Shirts]] lost their lives fighting, is effortlessly recaptured by the enemy thanks to a new superweapon.}}

* Ray Combs, the host of the 1988 edition of ''[[Family Feud]]'', was blamed for the low ratings the show was experiencing in the 1993-94 season, being replaced with original Family Feud host Richard Dawson the following season. His dismissal sent him into [[Creator Breakdown|a downward spiral]] as he got divorced, injured in an auto accident, and his attempted comebacks with a talk show and the game show ''Family Challenge'' all failed, and he ultimately committed suicide in 1996. It didn't help that his last episode had one of the worst Fast Money rounds, with the first contestant getting only 77 points and the second getting ''none at all''.

* The last episode of the third and last season of the Irish sitcom ''[[Father Ted]]'' was supposed to end with the airplane on which the main character was finally flying to America falling and, presumably, the character dying. As on the day after the last day of filming actor Dermot Morgan, who played Father Ted in the series, died of a heart attack, the ending was rewritten with Ted changing his mind at the last moment and deciding to remain in Ireland.

* ''[[Sesame Street]]'' has the story arc where Big Bird's nest is blown away in a hurricane, and everyone else trying to help him build a new one.

* ''[[The West Wing]]'' season six episode "The Birnam Wood" sees Leo McGarry suffer a massive, near-fatal heart attack. Although not exactly pleasant viewing in the first place it becomes even more poignant due to John Spencer, the actor who played Leo, suffering a fatal heart attack just over a year after the episode aired, while The West Wing was still on air.

* In the series finale of ''[[Desperate Housewives]]'', Karen McCluskey succumbs to cancer. What made it sadder was that Kathryn Joosten, the actress portraying her, died from the same disease twenty days after the episode premiere.

* Assuming that given the nature of this trope, we have a tiny bit of leeway with spoilers here, it's worth noting that in Game of Thrones, there's the following Jaime Lannister quote: "Even if the boy lives, he'll be a cripple, a grotesque. Give me a good clean death any day." Oh, dear.