Harsher in Hindsight/Professional Wrestling

• One of the paid advertisements that the New World Order ran on Nitro saw Sting's entrance parodied by having someone cut the wire and having an action figure fall into a toy ring. As the video ended, the Sting doll was placed into a casket. The video aired in late 1997 to build towards the Starrcade main event with Sting and Hulk Hogan. However, this uncomfortably mirrored the Owen Hart tragedy that took place about a year and a half later.
• One such example deals with Muhammad Hassan being carried off by several masked men as though he were a suicide bomber after a beatdown on The Undertaker. The footage was taped a few days before 7/7, but it wound up airing on 7/7.
  • For reference to those who don't know, July 7th 2005 was the day of the London subway suicide bombings.
• At the first One Night Stand, Mike Awesome does a Suicide Dive onto Tanaka, and Joey Styles said "It's a damn shame he didn't really take his own life!" A few years later, Awesome killed himself.
• When Chris Benoit and his family were found dead the morning of a scheduled 3-hour episode of Raw, the show was scrapped and replaced with a special episode dedicated to his past wrestling career. It was found out very soon after the episode aired that he was likely to have murdered his own family, then committed suicide.
  • What makes this so bad is that the WWE tried to avert this but the very attempt itself caused it to be played straight. Talk about a no-win situation...
  • Every shot to the head and every diving headbutt during Benoit's career is harder to watch since brain damage is thought to have contributed to the murders/suicide.
• A promo for Wrestlemania 19 had a voice-over talking about what wrestlers go through to make their mark on history and become immortals, and when it says "Someday, we will die", it focuses on Eddie Guerrero. It's rather uncomfortable to watch these days, because of his death two years later.
  • During their match at No Way Out 2004, Brock Lesnar tells Eddie to "just die". It is extremely uncomfortable to hear to say the least.
  • An issue of RAW Magazine with an open letter from "Good Ol' JR" Jim Ross, about Wrestlemania 21, tells how proud every wrestler should be of the work they accomplished getting to the event. He also advises all of them to enjoy it because "none of us are guaranteed to make it to Wrestlemania 22." Whether he was talking about employment or not, the words sting knowing that this was Eddie Guerrero's final Wrestlemania.
• Just like Madden NFL has it's Madden Curse, WWE has it's Undertaker curse, where, in the Smackdown VS RAW series, the wrestler feuding with the Undertaker ends up dying in real life. It first happened with Eddie Guerrero in Smackdown VS RAW 2006, in which it ends in a Casket Match. Guerrero died 2 days later. It got worse in the following year in a feud with Chris Benoit. The creepiest part? Undertaker says to him, "While your family mourns over your dead carcass, your family will have no one to blame but you." Brrrr.
• The in-ring segment where Kharma breaks down in front of the Divas and then announces her pregnancy next week looks even more disturbing now with the news that she actually lost the baby and there was no successful birth.
• A strictly kayfabe example on both ends. R-Truth pouring the contents of a trash can CM Punk had filled with cigarettes, whiskey, and prescription medication in protest of these things over Punk's head on November 20, 2009 suddenly looks less humorous when analyzing Punk's WWE career following the revelations given in his early 2012 feud with Chris Jericho.
• The day before his death on Raw after Wrestlemania, Ultimate Warrior spoke to the audience on how his spirit will live on as an immortal.
  • In fact, back in 1991, he was locked up in a casket. You can even hear Roddy Piper demanding the crew to get the Warrior out of the casket.