Harsher in Hindsight/Real Life: Difference between revisions

* ''War of Machines'' contains the line "Japanese scientists further advised their government that neither the Germans nor the Americans could possibly deflect enough of their productive resources to a bomb project to have a weapon [usable] in the current war."

* During [[World War I]], the Entente frequently propagated lurid stories claiming that Germany and its allies were committing genocide in its occupied territories. They were, but nowhere near the level that they were accused of being, which ironically led to most dismissing the entire issue out of hand, and thus [[Crying Wolf|when the same accusation was made three decades later, not a lot of people believed it.]]

** He wasn't alone in this prediction, either--the list of people who expected this to happen (especially at the end of [[World War I]] as the peace was negotiated) is sufficient and push it through this trope and into wondering how ''un''[[Genre Savvy]] you'd have to have been to think it really ''was'' going to be the War to End All Wars.

*** Among the most influential voices warning of conflict as a consequence of the peace treaties was the great economist [[wikipedia:Economic Consequences of the Peace|John Maynard Keynes]].

* German romantic-nationalist poet and liberal thinker Heinrich Heine is most famous today for his observation that "Where they burn books, in the end they will burn people too", made in 1821 in a play about the Spanish Inquisition. Heine's works were censored in his own time and later literally burned by the Nazis. Heine was a Jew.

** This is the concluding passage of Heine's ''Religion and Philosophy in Germany'', written in 1832: "Christianity -- and that is its greatest merit -- has somewhat mitigated that brutal German love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame...The old stone gods will then rise from long ruins and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and Thor will leap to life with his giant hammer and smash the Gothic cathedrals....Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder...comes rolling somewhat slowly, but...its crash...will be unlike anything before in the history of the world. ...At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead, and lions in farthest Africa will draw in their tails and slink away. ...A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll."

*** Also, it is a typical Romantic 'pagan revivalism' that has pretty much nothing to do with political, materialistic nature of the Third Reich. And there was no dramatic revolution, just a long, cruel war that ended with fall of the Germany and final demise of German militarism.

*** This is actually an example in a different way - it can also be seen to refer to WWI. Rather than "mitigate the German brutal love of war", the Evangelical Church enthusiastically endorsed the Kaiser's army, and continued to be a bastion of conservatism and monarchism right through until 1945.

* [[wikipedia:Pete Maravich|"Pistol" Pete Maravich,]] at age 25: "I don't want to play 10 years and then die of a heart attack when I'm 40." After a 10-year NBA career, Maravich collapsed and died of a heart attack on January 5, 1988 -- a little more than six months shy of his 41st birthday.

* During an interview, [[The Doors|Jim Morrison]] heard about the deaths of [[Jimi Hendrix]] and Janis Joplin. Turning to the interviewer, he held up his glass and said "You're drinking with number three." Not too long afterwards, he was gone.

* Once during the 50's, a Japanese girl called [[The Ojou|Michiko Shouda]] went through an arranged date with a promising novelist named Kimitake Hiraoka, but they didn't marry. She went on to marry none other but [[The White Prince|Crown Prince]], [[The Emperor|later emperor]] Akihito...and in [[The Seventies]], her ex-boyfriend of sorts Hiraoka (now known as [[Yukio Mishima]]) staged a coup to give Akihito's father [[The Emperor]] (Hirohito, properly known since his death as Showa, after the name of his reign) back his powers as the leader of the country, and committed [[Seppuku]] when it didn't work.

* In [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjf27-uY0Ss&feature=related this interview], David Foster Wallace talks about how, even though there have been hard times in his life, and he doesn't have a clear path or motivation going forward, it's not like he's going to kill himself or anything.

* Before the start of the [[Olympic Games|Vancouver 2010 Olympics]] Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili's last phone call to his father included "I'll win or die trying."

* [[Sarah Palin]]'s "Take Back the 20" website showed crosshairs over various states, including the very district in Arizona Gabrielle Giffords was elected for. A fundraiser event for Gifford's opponent, Jesse Kelly, featured shooting a fully automatic M15 with Kelly. Then Mrs. Giffords was shot in the head...However, she survived.

* Related to the above note, a blogger had stated that Giffords was, "dead to me", just days before her shooting [http://twitpic.com/3o7s5c] It should be noted it was a figure of speech.

* In January 2001, Oklahoma State University basketball coach Eddie Sutton aired a broadcast of his regular OSU Basketball show, which opened with a CGI plane flying over an open field. The guest was OSU point guard Nate Fleming. The show ended with Coach Sutton thanking the OSU donors who provided the planes to transport the OSU players and staff to and from various road games. However, on the return trip from the following road game, one of the planes crashed in a field, killing ten passengers, including Nate Fleming.

* The fact that [[Demi Lovato]] has been criticized for being 'larger' than the average Disney star, when in reality she actually has an eating disorder.

** The line in "La La Land" of "I'm no supermodel, I still eat McDonald's" might count as HIH/FAM, yet in performances of the song on her 2011 comeback tour, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBNjM2q20iI she's very definitely] both [[Lampshade Hanging|throwing a lampshade on it]] and [[Girls Need Role Models|using it notationally]], [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|all at the same time]]. [[Earn Your Happy Ending|All to rapturous applause, too]].

* When Pat Nixon died on June 22, 1993, an observer opined that [[Richard Nixon]], without his wife, "wouldn't last a year". He died on April 22, 1994, four days after having a massive stroke.

* In 2006, Bam and April Margera said that they had Jackass co-star Ryan Dunn [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbhh_fcfl_k "in the death pool" for "death by vehicle".] On June 20, 2011, Ryan Dunn and his friend died in a fiery car crash after a night of drinking.

* At the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner, Seth Meyers joked that [[Osama Bin Laden]] was hosting a talk show on C-SPAN. The next day, Obama announced Bin Laden's death. This one was arguably [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] for most people.

** Hillary Clinton had been at a wedding that weekend and someone had asked her "when are we gonna get Bin Laden?" Being one of only a handful of people who knew about the raid (she couldn't even tell her husband), she quickly made some non-committal remark and excused herself.

** The ''pastor'' allegedly [[It Got Worse|had even told her]] that "she was lucky not to have been born during Old Testament times when she would have been stoned to death".

* Jokes about former NFL bust Ryan Leaf are a lot harsher since he got cancer.