Hilarious in Hindsight/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Hilarious in Hindsight in Western Animation include:

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The Simpsons

Due to its status as a Long Runner, The Simpsons has no shortage of moments like these:

  • In one episode, Sideshow Bob said about conservatives: "We're not all Billy No-funs, Johnny Bible-thumpers, or even — God forbid — George Bushes!"
  • On the episode where George Bush Sr. moves to Springfield (which premiered in 1996), Homer tricks George Bush, Sr. into answering his door by propping up two cardboard cutouts of George's sons: Jeb Bush, and George Bush Jr. According to the audio commentary on the season 7 DVD set, the writers (and the 1996 audience) had no idea that there was a "George Bush Jr." and figured this was Homer being a moron as usual.
  • And in a very early episode, Satan informs Bart that he isn't due in Hell until the Yankees win the World Series. They've won five since that episode, so shouldn't Bart be in Hell by now?
    • In the French-Canadian dub of the episode, Satan tells Bart that he's not due until the Nordiques, an NHL hockey team based in Quebec City, won the Stanley Cup. In 1994, the team was bought, moved to Denver and renamed the Colorado Avalanche. Does this mean Bart is immortal now? Or does it mean that eventually Quebec City will reacquire the Nordiques?
  • In a 1995 episode, Rainier Wolfcastle was cast as the title character in the Radioactive Man movie. Two years later, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the primary inspiration for Wolfcastle, played Mr. Freeze in Batman and Robin. The fact that the film was awful only makes this funnier; the Agony Booth recap was even able to reference the episode.
    • Another episode had a clip from "McBain", where he makes an awful ice pun after smashing through an ice sculpture.
  • In the episode "Lemon of Troy", Bart mentions the film Rocky VII: Adrian's Revenge. Then came Rocky Balboa (which technically would be Rocky VI...)
  • Homer and Moe have a falling out when Moe steals the recipe for the "Flaming Homer" and markets it himself. The secret ingredient? Cough syrup. Flash forward several years, and we now have Sizurp, a cocktail made by mixing cough syrup with alcohol.
  • Another, this time from a Treehouse of Horror Special: After Kang and Kodos have taken over 1930s Springfield, they look over the devastated town and The Inkspots' "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" plays. Sound familiar?
  • The writers on The Simpsons have very little faith in American athletic teams, especially in international competition. Especially at the Olympics. In the episode "Boy Meets Curl," when Homer, Marge, Skinner and Agnes become the United States' curling team, and subsequently win (with curling being a demo event, no less), Bob Costas announced that this would be the only medal the United States wins in these games period. This episode aired during said Olympics. The United States would have the highest medal count, with nine gold, 15 silver and 13 bronze medals.
  • In a What-If storyline, Lisa has become President and comments that she's the first "straight female President of the United States"; later on, after a scandal comes up, Lenny remarks "Don't blame me, I voted for Chastity Bono!" This whole train of thought either becomes hilarious or harsh now that Chastity Bono has become Chaz Bono.
  • The season 11 premiere episode "Beyond Blunderdome" featured Mel Gibson being loved and adored by everyone and Gibson hating it, and Gibson creating a bloody, violent controversial movie that ruins him and alienates his fans. It's like the Simpsons writers are psychic.
  • The season 7 episode "Homerpalooza" had Homer trying to explain to a Gen. X-er who Steve Jobs and Apple Computers (now Apple Inc.) were, less than a year before Jobs returned to Apple and helped bring it back on top.
  • The plot of the episode "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy," first aired in 1994, is largely revolved around the "Simpson and Son's Revitalizing Tonic," an elixir that boosts one's sex drive. Fast-forward to 1998, and Viagra is introduced to the market.
  • In the season 4 episode "The Front", an unnamed cartoon writer becoming disillusioned with his current work is heard to mutter, "To hell with cartoons. I'm gonna do what I always dreamed of doing: I'm going to go write that sitcom about the sassy robot."
    • There's also the episode where the Itchy & Scratchy studio run a focus group on what the show should be:

"So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show that's completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots?

  • An odd case is the "Homer at the Bat" episode which involved numerous Major League stars (Boggs, Clemens, Canseco, etc) being hired to play on the company softball team so that Burns can win a bet. A Running Gag in the episode was Burns demanding that Don Mattingly cut his sideburns (Don had no sideburns; Mr. Burns was probably talking about his mustache). Eventually Mattingly is benched even after shaving a good chunk of his hair with Don saying, "I still like him better than Steinbrenner". Two weeks before the episode aired Mattingly would be suspended from the Yankees for failing to cut his mullet in accordance to George Steinbrenner's player policy.
  • The Spinoff Showcase episode from season 8 predicts that future seasons of the show will have wacky subplots featuring magic powers, multiple weddings, and Bart meeting long-lost triplets. Okay, the magic powers were relegated to the Halloween episodes (mostly), but the "Bart meeting long-lost triplets" storyline and the multiple ridiculous weddings storylines (one involving Patty coming out of the closet as a lesbian and nearly marrying a man thinking it's a woman and Selma marrying Grampa Simpson) did happen.
    • "Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie" is Hilarious in Hindsight for similar reasons.
    • As is the last part of the "Gump Roast" song, that had lines about even wackier future storylines (Marge becomes a robot, Moe gets a cell phone, Bart owns a bear, and more crazy weddings). An Imagine Spot on season 16's "The Heartbroke Kid" had Homer imagine what life would be like if Marge was his Robotic Spouse, there was a season 15 episode in which Homer and Bart deal with a bear ("The Fat and the Furriest"), and, as mentioned on the above post about the spinoff episode from season eight, there were two crazy weddings involving Marge's sisters.
    • Also from the Spinoff Showcase, the idea that Fox would create spinoffs of one of its its popular animated shows is a lot funnier now that The Cleveland Show has been spun off from Family Guy.
  • This tribute to The Cosby Show.
  • In "Lisa the Skeptic", Mr. Burns tells Smithers to "use the amnesia ray" to make the town forget that he admitted the power plant accidentally created mutants. Smithers reveals that the amnesia ray is a handgun. Fast forward to X-Men Origins: Wolverine and one bullet to the brain makes the titular main character forget his past (he lives because of his Healing Factor and super hard bones).
  • In "The Squirt and the Whale", there is a parody trailer for a film called "Tic–Tac–Toe: X v. O", which was suppose to be a parody of movie licensing. Considering that there are going to be films based off the games Battleship and Ouija, we can't be far off the Tic-Tac-Toe film.
  • In "Itchy and Scratchy Land", Homer and Marge go to a 70s nostalgia bar, where Marge points out how the bartender looks like John Travolta. The bartender, who is indeed Travolta, mutters "Yeah, 'looks like'.". Right around the time the episode originally aired, Travolta made his comeback with Pulp Fiction.
  • In "myPods and Boomsticks", Bart says that his family shouldn't fear his new friend's family; one of the reasons being their last name is Bin Laden. Similar to the South Park and Family Guy examples down the list, this becomes much funnier after the acts of Seal Team 6.
    • Also, in "The Otto Show", one of the goods being sold is a Spinal Tap shirt with the band kicking Mommar Gaddaffi in the butt. Much like the Family Guy and Looney Tunes examples, Gaddaffi was hated by the Egyptian people and thus made his departure and death more satisfying.
  • "Holidays Of Future Passed" had the fictional assumption of Michigan being under sharia law. It really is now.
  • "Homer To The Max" mentions "Badge Patrol," wherein police officers have badges that shoot lasers. In Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger/ Power Rangers SPD, the morpher is a badge that traps criminals inside two-dimensional prisons upon judging them for their crimes.
  • In "Homer's Night Out", Marge kicks Homer out of the house because a picture of him surfaced dancing with a stripper. In the next episode, Marge herself is nearly tempted into leaving homer.
  • In "Bart Star," Homer is depressed over Bart leaving the football team. He asks for beer with Skittles in it from Apu, who tells him that such a product only exists in his dreams. Fast forward 15 years, and there is now Skittles-flavored vodka available.
  • In "Blame It On Lisa", Barts says that the family going to Brazil means that they've been on every continent until Lisa reminds him that there's still Antarctica. Ten seasons later, they actually go there.
  • “The Computer Wore Menace Shoes” evolves around Homer creating a gossip website, which the episode aired in 2000. Thanks to the rise of social media sites like Facebook and blog hosting services, the idea seems more comical now depending on whom one asks.

South Park

  • A season two episode of South Park had Stan complaining that independent movies were all about "Gay cowboys eating pudding." Less than a decade later, Brokeback Mountain proved to have two thirds of these criteria. When Parker and Stone heard about it, one of them said, "If there's any pudding eating in it, maybe we'll sue."
  • In "The Passion of the Jew", Mel Gibson is portrayed as an insane lunatic that loves torture. The tapes to his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva makes this exaggeration even funnier.
  • A guy in the "Cartoon Wars" episode mentioned he likes Family Guy because "it doesn't get all preachy and up its own ass with messages" (referring to South Park at the time). Family Guy fans who don't view this as a Funny Aneurysm Moment will agree this statement applies to most of Family Guy's episodes as of late.
    • In said episode, the main issue was Family Guy planned to show Mohammed uncensored in the face of Islamic death threats and everyone in town burying their heads in the sand rather than deal with the problem. Years after that episode, South Park gained notoriety when the episode "201" was heavily censored after its premiere airing to remove all scenes of Mohammed in a bear costume and several lines which have been censored for rather arbitrary reasons.
  • In "The Coon," while Mysterion is fighting Professor Chaos, there is a moment where he gets knocked down for a few moments, and the crowd of people watching think he's dead. Fast forward to the episode "Mysterion Rises," where we find out that Mysterion is Kenny, and has been cursed with immortality.
  • The episode "Make Love, not Warcraft", wherein Butters said he prefers playing "Hello Kitty Island Adventure". About that...
  • In "Whale Whores" (which aired on October 28, 2009), Cartman does a cover of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" on Rock Band, which is odd, given that "Poker Face" (both the original and Cartman's cover) did not appear in the game until nearly five months later, when it became a downloadable song. It was because of this episode that it was added.
  • The two episodes in which Osama bin Laden gets shot in the head by a U.S. soldier ("Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants" and "It's a Jersey Thing") became a lot funnier now that that has become a reality. Normally this would be Harsher in Hindsight, but, much like the Hitler example in "Tortoise Wins By A Hare," it's okay since the target was a Complete Monster. To further add much deserved insult to injury, Comedy Central ran an Osama mini-marathon before the May 4th episode.


Family Guy

  • One Cutaway Gag from Family Guy was used as a Take That against The Simpsons and their endorsement deals (referring to them as "selling out"). Later, Peter Griffin would be advertising for Subway. Talk about hypocrisy...
    • Also, the Windows 7 shilling in 2009...HypocriticalHumor indeed.
    • And now, Stewie and Brian are advertising for Wheat Thins.
  • Another Family Guy example; A line by Stewie in the cold open of "A Picture is Worth 1,000 Bucks" ended with "As soon as my movie deal kicks in I am such a ghost!" Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story was released years later And Stewie ends up getting killed by his past self.
  • In "Peterotica", one of Peter's many erotic stories is, in the tradition of porn parodies, "Harry Potter and the Half-Black Chick". Three years later, the film version of Half-Blood Prince featured a scene not from the book in which Harry flirts with a light-skinned African girl.
  • The first banned episode "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein" (the episode where Peter takes in a Jewish man who helps him manage the family's money, and Peter taking Chris to Vegas to get a quickie bar mitzvah) becomes funnier now that "Family Goy" revealed that Lois's mom was Jewish, not Protestant, and had to hide her true religion so Carter can join a country club that doesn't allow Jewish people.
  • "Not All Dogs Go To Heaven", despite it's hate for its Family-Unfriendly Aesop about religion and atheism, becomes funnier when you realize that twelve episodes later, Brian gets called out on pushing his atheism on others -- among other faults -- by Quagmire in "Jerome is the New Black"
  • In the third installment of the Star Wars parodies "It's A Trap!", you see Osama bin Laden pop out from behind a sand dune on Tatooine and shout "Still Alive!". Sure ya are.
    • In a similar vein, "Meet The Quagmires" had Peter and Brian living in an alternate reality where Lois and Quagmire are married to each other. Lois mentions that America finally found Osama bin Laden in the cast of Mad TV (which Quagmire adds is, "...the one place no one thought to look"). What used to be a Take That on Mad TV being an unpopular, hardly-recognized Expy of Saturday Night Live becomes funnier (in a dark way) now that both Mad TV and Osama bin Laden are dead (Mad TV got canceled in 2009, while Osama bin Laden was found and killed in Pakistan by Navy SEALS in 2011).
  • "Screwed The Pooch" takes a ton of Take Thats toward Ted Turner and depicts him as being Too Dumb to Live and having sex with a dog. Guess who founded the network that saved the show from cancellation.
  • Meg's interaction with the package of hot dogs in Stewie Kills Lois would be a lot different these days following Linsanity.
  • Part of the episode "Thanksgiving" is devoted to criticizing the Iraq War, which officially ended a month after it aired.


DCAU

  • In Batman the Animated Series, in the end of the episode The Gray Ghost, the Show Within a Show of the same name is given a rerelease as a result of the main plot. The cases look almost identical to modern Blu-Ray cases: a wrap around with the logo/image/etc. of the series with a bright blue bar above and a flat bottom with the same color. In the 90's. The only things missing are the rounded edges and a Sony logo.
    • Alfred's "Are we developing an interest in rock and roll, sir?" from On Leather Wings, after Atop the Fourth Wall's review of Batman: Fortunate Son began the Running Gag about Batman hating rock & roll.
    • In the episode "Legends of the Dark Knight", the Silver Age style segment features a Robin voiced by Brianne Sidall, known for, among other roles, Mithos Yggdrasill. Years later, Teen Titans would have Robin be voiced by Scott Menville, best known as Lloyd Irving. They are the respective villain and hero of Tales of Symphonia.
  • Batman Beyond had a scene in which Terry tried to remember all of the U.S. presidents. He recites them up until Clinton (the current president at the time of the show's production), and then draws a blank. All he can remember is that the president after Clinton was "the boring one". Clinton was "the fun one".
  • In Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Terry is asking Bruce about the Joker's background and Bruce, irritated, tells him to "just shut up and drive". Didn't know Batman was a Rihanna fan.
  • An episode of Justice League begins with Wonder Woman walking into the cosmetics section of a department store, and berating a woman for wanting to cover up her "natural beauty" with makeup. Now, MAC cosmetics has a Wonder Woman collection, complete with large promotional displays of Wonder Woman fighting "Medusa's drab rays".
  • Batman singing "Am I Blue" in the Justice League Unlimited episode "This Little Piggy" is cute and funny as it is, but it's funnier when you realise the song has appeared in the DCAU before: as a 90s dance remix playing on the radio in Barbara Gordon's dorm room, in Batman and Mister Freeze Sub Zero.


Looney Tunes Multiverse

  • A 1943 Looney Tunes short features the news headline "Adolf Hitler Commits Suicide". Now, generally something like this would be a Funny Aneurysm Moment, but...it's Hitler...
  • The 1946 Looney Tunes short "Hair Raising Hare" features Bugs Bunny being lured by a mechanical rabbit. When he calls it "baby" and kisses it, it ends up falling to pieces. Gee, it might have been a possible Berserk Button reaction, considering that the short came out fifty years before Space Jam's Lola Bunny appeared!
  • The 1949 Looney Tunes short Rabbit of Seville has a sequence where Bugs gleefully forces Elmer Fudd to have a violent shave, all the while singing a cheerful tune with a rather cheerfully sadistic expression on his face. A few decades later and another psychotic barber would have his own musical on Broadway...
  • One of the subplots in the Tiny Toon Adventures direct to video movie, "How We Spent Our Summer Vacation", involved a trip to a parody of the Disney Theme Parks. One of the rides Plucky and Hampton see during their tour is something called "The Happy Centerfuge". Mission: Space debuted in EPCOT 12 years later...
    • In the "Return of Batduck" episode, in which Plucky Duck tries to get a role in Batman Returns, one gag has Tim Burton explaining to Dracula that he likes him a lot, but he's already doing movies about "a bat guy". The Count says "I'll go with Coppola" before departing, a reference to Bram Stoker's Dracula which arrived later in 1992. Coppola's Dracula was played by Gary Oldman, who found his own way into the Batman universe by playing Jim Gordon in the Dark Knight Trilogy years later.
    • The "Samurai Film Critic" skit from "Weekday Afternoon Live", featuring Dizzy Devil as the aforementioned samurai, has a bit where Dizzy gets sick of the dated references in the sketch and starts slashing the screen to ribbons, yelling "WHO CARES ABOUT KIEFER SUTHERLAND?!" at the top of his lungs. Now that Sutherland's had a massive popularity kick thanks to 24, the scene is that much funnier.
  • In the 1943 short "Porky Pig's Feat", Daffy and Porky get stuck in a prison cell, and Porky wonders aloud what Bugs Bunny would do in a situation like this. Daffy eagerly chimes in, "Yeah, Bugs Bunny--my hero!" Later on, Daffy would be flanderized into being jealous of Bugs's success, so YMMV on whether this is funnier in hindsight or Harsher in Hindsight.
  • In "Rabbit Hood", when Bugs is trying to trick the sheriff into thinking the king is approaching, he hollers "O'er yon Chevy Chase!" At the time, it refered to a city in Maryland that had this name, but if you're a fan of the original Saturday Night Live cast, then it's funnier.
  • The Looney Tunes Show episode "Jailbird and Jailbunny" has Daffy predicting that a man will land on the moon, which Bugs replies already happened. Daffy then asks himself "Am I...a wizard?" Here's your answer, Daffy.
  • In Looney Tunes: Back in Action, after the water tower floods the Warner Bros. studios, Bugs is seen fishing and catches an orange fish, exclaiming "I found Nemo!!". Guess which movie beat this one for the Annie Award for best animated feature.


Transformers Multiverse

  • In Transformers Animated Bumblebee dressed as a vampire and said he "want[s] to drink your motor oil". Oil is later shown to be the Transformer equivalent of alcohol. That means he's suppose to be Dracula and he said, "I want some beer".
    • Maybe he's a vampire, but not Dracula...
    • "Till All Are One": In Transformers Animated, Elita-1 has the power to download every Cybertronian's special ability, indeed.
    • In a later episode, the oil-guzzling Constructicons actually do ingest a bit of Bumblebee's motor oil after they find a trail made by his leaking tank. Apparently he tastes even better than their usual fare, so it's possible that Bumblebee just settled on the first blood-analogue he could find for his dramatic statement.
    • It also serves as a sort of retroactive Reverse Funny Aneurysm moment when you consider two things:

1. Before this episode, Beast Wars introduced Tarantulas, who at least once tried to drain the mech fluids of a Maximal in a vampiric manner.
and 2. During that same time, a cartoon called Van-Pires aired, about - you guessed it - mechanoid vampire cars that drained the motor oil from helpless vehicles.

    • Another Transformers example comes from Beast Wars. During the episode "Call of the Wild", the Maximals have been taken over by the primal instinct of their beast modes, and the Predacons are hunting them down. Now look at the following quote and try to not think about Sarah Palin. (However, not all will find this as amusing, given that it involves poaching animals.)

Terrorsaur: Hunting from the air with automatic weapons! Now that's a sport!

    • Also from Beast Wars, Blackarachnia once made an annoyed off-handed remark that almost seems to foreshadow a certain infamous director.

Blackarachnia: What is it with guys and high explosives?


Other Works

  • The sketch from Robot Chicken about what Season 8 of Buffy would've been like, with evil Cabbage Patch Dolls attacking people. What was a kind of funny take on What Could Have Been gets better when the actual Season Eight comics showcased evil little plushies called Vampy Cats.
    • In one sketch, the announcer says something along the lines of "Remember that hit show The PJs? Me neither!". This became funnier when The PJs started airing on Adult Swim.
  • Consider the lyrics of "The Presidents Song" from Animaniacs, the version on the Variety Pack album:

"Now in Washington, D.C.
There's Democrats and the GOP
"But the one in charge is plain to see
It's Clinton, first name Hillary!"

    • These lyrics were revised from the version of the song used in the show; as clearly audible (and visible) here, the lyrics are "But the ones in charge are plain to see/The Clintons, Bill and Hillary!" It still works, more or less.

"Clinstones! Meet the Clinstones!
They're America's First Family!
From the town of Li'l Rock -
And the one in charge is Hillary!"

    • Also, in the episode "One Flew Over The Cuckoo Clock" where Slappy goes insane, she says "Is it time for Montel and Phil on the Oprah channel?" Come 2011, where Oprah now has her own channel, with Dr. Phil.
  • Consider Rock and Rule, a Canadian animated film released in the early, early 1980s. Its main villain is a fellow named Mok. Mok is an aging rock star hoping to make his big comeback with the help of dark magic. Now, unless the animators were psychic, he very likely wasn't designed to resemble what Mick Jagger looks like today but...
    • The character's full name is "Mok Swagger", so the resemblance to ol' Mick is surely intentional.
  • On the last episode of Clerks the Animated Series, the main characters find the writers of the show; one of them is holding a book labeled "How to Write Cartoons by Seth MacFarlane" and suggesting that they do a Gilligan's Island spoof with gay jokes. On a later episode of Family Guy, Peter and his pals get stranded on a deserted island and have a gay orgy (albeit the joke of the scene was that they were bored the whole time they did it).
    • And much later, the show started airing on Adult Swim... right before Family Guy.
  • In The Jetsons, Mr. Spacely had his Google World of High Finance. (Now where are the flying cars, already?)
  • The otherwise forgettable Star Wars: Ewoks featured this quote decades before Internet blogs came about.
  • Kim Possible: part Hilarious in Hindsight, part in-joke: While Kim and Ron were watching "Agony County" (an Expy of The OC), Ron asked why the lead couple didn't get past their UST, and Kim answered, "If they did that it would end the show!" The show's first finale (before the Post Script Season) ended with Kim and Ron getting together as a couple.
    • Also, in the episode where Kim Possible learns how to drive, she is recruited by several Animate Inanimate Objects (or, more accurately, normal appliances/a car modified to contain an autonomous AI) to save their master (an AI developer) from Dr. Drakken. This becomes especially hilarious when Christie Carlson Romano, the voice actress who plays Kim Possible, ends up playing Belle in the Beauty and the Beast broadway stage performance, who has to do something similar for the servants (who are transformed into actual Animate Inanimate Objects).
  • In The Fairly OddParents, at the end of an episode, a button is pressed that would blow up the planet. It ends up blowing up Pluto, but it's okay because "no one cares about Pluto."
  • Darkwing Duck had a nightmare where he was killed by Megavolt who, instead of going to jail, became famous and got a book deal. Whoever heard of a killer publishing a book about his murder?
  • The Grand Finale for Avatar: The Last Airbender premiered a day after The Dark Knight. In The Dark Knight, Alfred tells Bruce "Some men just want to watch the world burn." (though this line featured prominently in a teaser trailer a year prior). The very next day audiences got to see Fire Lord Ozai trying to burn the entire Earth Kingdom to the ground. It was like they knew the movie would be premiering on the same weekend!

Zuko: That wasn't a good play.
Sokka: But the effects were decent!

"I hope you bring lots of spaghetti".

  • The looks, voice and mannerisms of Princess Eilonwy from Disney's The Black Cauldron peculiarly resemble those of Evanna Lynch, who was born six years after the film came out.
  • In the "Paperback Writer" episode of The Beatles, the Fab Four write various, conflicting recollections of how they first met. Paul McCartney's story starts off as, "The day I was knighted by the Queen for discovering the cure for malaria...". Thirty years later, Paul actually was knighted, though not for curing malaria.
  • During the last few years of the now-defunct Toon Disney channel's existence, a frequent source of series material came in the form of shows based on Marvel Comics superheroes (likely coinciding with the film releases of several of the characters). The humor comes in the form of Disney's recent purchase of Marvel.
  • The Brave Little Toaster's song "Cutting Edge" (sung by, among other things, a Tandy-style computer) was a satire of consumerism featuring modern technology singing their own praises. But to a modern audience, it's hilarious when you consider that nearly every single one of those cutting-edge appliances is now severely obsolete.
    • Mr. Tandy, meet Mr. iMac!
      • Mrs. Phone, meet Mr. Blackberry!
  • In one episode of Sheep in The Big City, General Specific rants, when hearing of "X Agent", that X is always the mysterious letter. He goes on to ask why he can't be some other letter like K or L. Along came Death Note.
  • In the 2003 incarnation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, one of its spinoffs, Back to the Sewers, had the Turtles fight three Shredders in the first episode. Cut to Turtles Forever, where three Shredders do appear.
    • Another for Turtles Forever: In one of Laird's interviews, he mentions he didn't expect The Shredder to become the "Darth Vader" of the TMNT universe. The movie hit pretty close to the mark, in which Shredder quotes Vader's master, Palpatine.

Utrom Shredder: "Only now, at the end, do you truly understand."

  • In the American Dad episode "Daddy Queerest", a drunken Stan mistakes Nelson Mandela for Morgan Freeman. While it is somewhat funny due to Mandela's and Freeman's similarities in appearance, it becomes Hilarious in Hindsight thanks to the movie Invictus and Freeman's role as Nelson Mandela.
    • In the pilot episode, Roger insists that "we can't all be like those anorexic aliens in the James Cameron movies!" Nearly half a decade later, the then-secretive Avatar was released, featuring a race of creatures who were both extremely thin and, unlike his previous aliens, specifically designed to inspire Perverse Sexual Lust in humans.
    • And in the episode "Stan Knows Best", Stan shows off wigs based off the hairstyles of Republican First Ladies, including Barbara Bush, Nancy Reagan, and Maria Shriver, to which he said "stay tuned". Something tells me that what Stan's implying WONT be happening anytime soon.
      • Technically she is the First Lady of Callifornia.
  • In the Futurama pilot, the suicide booth Fry uses is promoted as "America's favorite suicide booth since 2008". At first it was just a silly side comment, but now it's funny (in a dark kinda way) since 2008 was the year the suicide machine was invented, and the year the American economy tanked, which would be reason enough for anyone to be Driven to Suicide.
    • Season 1's "When Aliens Attack," Fry accidentally spills soda on a TV switchboard and scrambles an airing of the Ally McBeal Expy Single Female Lawyer. Cut to Omicron Persei 8, where Single Female Lawyer gets cut off due to technical difficulties and an announcer says, "We now bring you eight animated shows in a row" (which would be impossible, if the signal from Earth's FOX station is out), causing an alien to get frustrated and shoot his television. Now that it's over a decade later and FOX now has a Sunday night line-up called "Animation Domination" (with consists of The Simpsons and three Seth MacFarlane cartoons), this joke still plays quite well today.
    • In "The 30% Iron Chef", Bender walks out of the office upon realising that the crew think he's a Lethal Chef, throws his chef's hat on the sidewalk. Several rats then escape from said hat. Five years later...
  • In the Donkey Kong episodes of Saturday Supercade, Pauline is identified as Mario's niece. First, consider Mario's brother. Now picture him, with his current portrayal, having children.
  • Speaking of Donkey Kong, the first episode of Captain N: The Game Master had the N Team climbing a volcano to escape the big ape. Kevin remarks that he has played Donkey Kong enough to know what he's doing. Since the actual NES game had no volcano level, Simon is understandably not trusting of this. In a piece of irony, Donkey Kong 94, the Game Boy remake of Donkey Kong released five years later does have a volcano level.
  • Consider a quote from The Incredibles:

Dash: So the bad guy wants to ruin Mom and Dad's...marriage...?

    • And a few years later, One More Day comes out. Guess what the devil wants to do with Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson's marriage.
  • In the Baby Blues episode "Teddy Cam", Daryl's co-worker, Kenny (voiced by Diedrich Bader), starts making Batman jokes. Six years later, he is Batman (although he'd already been in Batman Beyond three years before).
  • One episode of The Proud Family had an American Idol-esque competition, and one of the contestants was a homely girl with a fantastic singing voice. She eventually won the competition, and presumably became quite famous. Years later, Susan Boyle appears on Britain's Got Talent and goes on to be famous.
  • One episode of Star Street had the Milky Way spring a leak of chocolate milk all over the titular place. Chocolate Rain, anyone?
  • The Real Ghostbusters, with one of their ways to Fail Nuclear Physics Forever. Many years later, we got Apocalyptic crossing the streams resurrected in "Large Herd-on Collider" campaign.
  • A 1997 King of the Hill episode has Hank seeing his mother and her boyfriend having sex, and being so disturbed by the image (who wouldn't be?) that he loses his vision. He later laments that his plight is like something out of a Woody Allen movie. Not five years later, Woody Allen made the movie Hollywood Ending.
    • King of the Hill also has Cotton and Peggy, who, these days, could be seen as caricatures of John McCain and Sarah Palin.
  • In the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "The Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past From The Future", at one point, Shake mentions, "Have you seen that the interest rates for mortgages are really low right now?" This was in 2002, years before "Credit Default Swap" became a household name.
  • In Disney's Hercules, Hades's lackeys are tasked with killing Herc as a baby, but they fail. Many years later, when Hades hears that Hercules is still alive, the lackeys try to convince him that Hercules is a really popular name nowadays, and one of them adds: "Remember how just a few years ago, all the boys were named Jason, and all the girls were called Britney?" Would have been even better had he said a slightly different J name, but nonetheless funny seeing how this movie came out just a year before Ms. Spears's big break.
    • Actually, Britney did marry someone named Jason - it infamously lasted 50+ hours.
    • Another episode was actually about Hades complaining about why they changed his name to Pluto. Guess what happened in 2006!
  • In the 1989 animated X-Men pilot, "Pryde of the X-Men", Wolverine speaks with a very thick Australian accent despite being Canadian in the comics. Fast forward to the year 2000, and we find out that Australian actor Hugh Jackman was cast as Wolverine in the live-action X-Men film.
  • A 2002 Powerpuff Girls episode involved chalk drawings coming to life. E.G. Daily, who did the voice of Buttercup on the show, was the voice of a little boy on a 2002 Nicktoon very similar to the story.
  • Beavis and Butthead would often make fun of 1980s rock groups. On King of the Hill, several of these groups mocked by the duo would end up being played on John Redcorn's car radio.
  • A Sonic Sez segment of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog has Coconuts knocking over chemicals, saying "Oops, I did it again!"
    • The episode "Grounder the Genius" has the villains launched into the air by an explosion triggered by a lightning bolt. Sounds familiar...
    • And that wasn't the only image with hindsight reference to Pokémon. In one episode, Dr. Robotnik is wearing a sweater identical to Team Rocket's uniform - look [dead link].
    • The most infamous Sonic Sez tells kids that being touched in a way or place that makes you feel uncomfortable is no good. In the Sonic games, Amy Rose does just that (or at least tries) to Sonic. Makes you wonder why he doesn't take his own advice and tell a police officer.
  • One episode of Phineas and Ferb has a moment where the boys teleport Buford's teddy bear, who was tied to the grill of a truck, back to him. I saw this after I watched Toy Story 3, and considering the same thing happened to Lotso, another teddy bear, that just made it funnier.
    • In "Perry lays an egg", the B plot revolves around Doofenshmirtz making fun of whales because It's Personal. Perry actually left, not even bothering to thwart him, it was that stupid. Cue "whale whores", which aired several months later after that episode.
  • An episode of The Backyardigans had Uniqua as a flower seller who turned into a pink-clad superheroine with flower-themed powers. Later, Heartcatch Pretty Cure comes along with a protagonist who had those exact traits.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars aired in spring 2009 an episode which consisted of african-sounding, blue humanoid aliens from the planet Pantora that wanted to remove a group of aliens that was threatening them. Anybody remember Avatar?
  • In Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas, The villain's sidekick, a piccolo named "Fife", pleads, "I'd do anything for a solo!" Fife was voiced by Paul Reubens, who did do anything for a...solo, and was arrested for it to boot.
  • The Tex Avery short "Outfoxed" features a very well educated, and somewhat upper-class fox. He's so educated that he reads the newspapers. And what newspaper does he read ? Fox News.
  • In Muppet Babies, this Spider-Man-Muppets crossover is more funny with both trademarks' now owned by same company...
    • Though at the time, the show was a coproduction of Henson and Marvel Productions...
  • In ReBoot, video games are represented by large purple cubes known as GameCubes. Then the Nintendo Game Cube came out a few years later, with purple as the default color. Makes you wonder if the designers watched the show.
  • The Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers episode "A Chorus Crime" had a flock of penguins tap-dancing on the ice as a major plot element. Yes, 17 years before Happy Feet.
    • From the first episode, after Chip warns Dale about working with pirates, this bit occurs (minus the Canned Laughter).
  • Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs: "Jiminy Crickets!" especially since Pinocchio was the next film to come in the Disney Animated Canon.
  • The Red Lobster restaurant was actually named after the Coachman's tavern from Pinocchio.
  • In an early second season episode of Thundercats, Lynx-O tells Lion-O that his voice sounds just like his father's. Fast-forward to Thundercats 2011, and Larry Kenny, Lion-O's original voice actor, is now the VA for Lion-O's father.
  • In one episode of Sabrina the Animated Series Sabrina incorrectly mentions that there are eight Planets instead of nine, causing her class to break out in laughter. A few years later and there really are eight Planets now.
  • In the cartoon short Gertie the Dinosaur, a four-winged dragon briefly flies by. Many years later, a four-winged dinosaur called Microraptor was discovered in China.
  • The 1993 episode The Inspector's Most Wanted from The Pink Panther series (1993-1995 Continuity Reboot) is particularly hilarious in hindsight. It features a reality TV show called "Cop Patrol". A year before the episode aired... Police, Camera, Action! was aired on ITV 1 (despite the episode being made in 1993).
  • Ice Age gives us the infamous saber-toothed squirrel Scrat. Then 9 years later some scientists discovered that a saber-toothed squirrel actually existed.
  • An episode of My Dad the Rock Star has a Take That against a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of The Osbournes, with Gene Simmons-Expy Rock Zilla's attempts to get a family reality show of his own shown as being misguided and stupid. A few years later, we get Gene Simmons Family Jewels.
  • In the year 2002, Nickelodeon aired, during the Kids Choice Awards, a commercial where some of Nicktoon's biggest stars at the time would duke it out against each other anime-style. Five years later, a show called Avatar: The Last Airbender came along. And five more years later, this happens.
  • In 1970, Hanna-Barbera made an anti-drug PSA. The opening featured a guy smoking marijuana, as his form swirled around, leaving a multicolored trail behind him. A few years later, Hanna-Barbera would feature as its logo a star, swirling around with a multicolored trail behind it.
  • Near the end of Der Fuehrer's Face, Donald Duck gets crazy and start seeing projectiles with faces and arms before waking up from his nightmare.
  • At the start of Pluto's nightmare in Pluto's Judgement Day, a demonic cat dressed as a policeman arrests Pluto in his sleep, and takes him to Hell to be put on trial. The police cat takes Pluto out of Mickey's house and through a volcanic landscape full of evil trees shaped like sinister cats, and the entrance to Hell resembles a cave shaped like a cat head. Before the trial starts, several chains leap out of nowhere and pin Pluto to the ground to prevent him from escaping. When the demon cats finally declare Pluto guilty, they start cheering as the poor dog gets dropped into a fire, causing him to wake up from his nightmare. Pluto Is Expendable indeed.
  • At the very beginning of Thru the Mirror, an Alice in Wonderland novel can be seen on Mickey Mouse's nightstand. When Mickey climbs out of the mirror and enters the mirror world for the first time, among the objects he encounters is a footstool who acted like a dog.
  • The Fleischer Studios cartoons used to feature an Inkblot Cartoon Style character named "Bimbo", and Betty Boop was created as his girlfriend. This was back when the term "Bimbo" referred to a stupid male, before it referred to...well, girls like Betty Boop.
  • The Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy episode "It's Way Ed, in which the Eds try to come up with some wacky fashion trends with random everyday objects might make some think of Lady Gaga's reputation for a similar surreal fashion sense.
  • A truly epic example happened on October 9, 2010. An episode of The Penguins of Madagascar had Private be offended that Kilwolski would mock his favorite show about unicorns. It was meant to be a joke that Private was weird in the fact he liked something for girls. ONE DAY LATER, My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic happened...and well...
  • A quote from this article dating back to 1999 about celebrity voice acting:

"If they were casting some of the classics of my youth for the first time today, they'd get Joe Pesci to play Bugs Bunny, Dan Ackroyd for Yogi Bear, and Whoopi Goldberg for Felix the Cat."

    • The quote was made anonymous, but whoever said it, he got at least one of those things right.
  • On the MAD skit That's What Superfriends are For Jason Marsden ,one of the show's regulars, provided the voice of Kid Flash (Bart Allen). Several months later, when Allen appeared on Young Justice, guess who voiced him?
  • In the Pinky and The Brain song "A Meticulous Analysis of History" Brain lists several conquerors and their fatal mistakes, to which Pinky replies "don't forget the former governor of Arkansas" while showing a picture of Bill Clinton with no pants. This debuted in 1996 and referred to the then ongoing lawsuit Clinton v. Jones where he was accused of exposing himself in front of Paula Jones. It wasn't till 1999 the Monica Lewinsky scandal was uncovered and Juanita Broaddrick made her claim that he raped her.
    • Another episode has Brain get Hillary Clinton agree to provide him with several tons of nuclear fuel, clearly aware it could be turned into nuclear weapons. Both the sale of Uranium One to Russian interests and her role in the Iran Deal would make this funnier on their own, but combined the scene becomes absolutely hilarious.
    • The series features plenty of scenes with the then current President and first lady, most of them showing Bill as pathetic, stupid and easily controlled by his wife.
  1. ↑ And, just for extra laughs, both Green Lantern and Raiden were announced as playable characters at the same time.
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