Hilarious in Hindsight/Web Original

• This Cracked.com article where the first item declared that the San Francisco Giants have a curse to never win the World Series. Oops.
  • Another article "The 2007 Lineup: 35 Soon to Be Canceled Shows" is this. Although most of the shows did get canceled soon after they premiered (and the joke is that every show of the 2007 season is represented), a few didn't, such as Chuck (which lasted five years), The Singing Bee (in its 7th season as of 2014), Pushing Daisies (2 seasons and critical acclaim), and most notably The Big Bang Theory.
  • One entry for the Photoplasty contest 15 Ways They Could Get People to Actually Watch TV Again was a new season of Arrested Development. A few years later...
  • This entry in a Photoplasty contest became hilarious after Rock Band 3 introduced pro mode, which can be used with a 108-button guitar controller.
• All Ghost stuff in Red vs. Blue.
• From YouTube Poop:
  • In The LOL King, one of the first jokes involves Simba falling off of Pride Rock as Rafiki holds him up. And then, the official blooper reel on the Diamond Edition DVD came.
  • In The Ganonator, the titular Implacable Man tells a punk to "Give me your face. Now!" In light of a certain Pre-Mortem One-Liner from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen...
• A series of Naruto flash video parodies on YouTube called "Fun With Akatsuki" featured the masked Tobi as a hapless, good-natured Butt Monkey with the catchphrase, "But Tobi is a good boy!" The fact that Tobi turns out to be the Big Bad of the series makes this even funnier.
  • Two words... Blind Itachi, since Kakashi mentions during the fight with the Itachi clone early in Shippuden that Itachi's eyesight deteriorates every time he uses the Mangekyo Sharingan. This later becomes a plot point, as Itachi's on the verge of losing his vision during his fight with Sasuke, and Sasuke later taxes his Mangekyo Sharingan almost to the point of blindness before using Itachi's eyes.
• In a similar vein to the Ganonator example, when The Nostalgia Critic did his review of the Super Mario Bros Super Show, he put his face on Indiana Joe, when he does he says "GIVE ME A FACE YOU BUNGHOLES!", not the exact quoting, but still.
  • More fun with the NC: in his Batman and Robin review, he woefully comments how the money used in special effects could be better used to feed starving children. The same concept was elevated to a Big Lipped Starving Children Moment in his Tank Girl review - one year later.
  • During his review of The Room, other Channel Awesome contributors warned him not to review it because of how bad it is. These cries become a lot funnier when the site was hit with a Frivolous Lawsuit from Tommy Wiseau and the video was taken down for "copyright infringement".
  • During the NC review of Pokémon the First Movie, he makes a comment about all the good shows he had in his day like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Alvin and The Chipmunks, and Care Bears. Over the next year or two, he has reviewed both Care Bear movies and complained about how awful they were.
  • Another, minor example from his Super Show review was his comment on Carland. It's a little more developed than that, but still...
  • Following the removal of The Room episode, Doug did "The Tommy Wiseau Show", a sketch with Tommy Wiseau doing his own show and talking to "John from TheRoomMovie.com". One year later, this was released. Right down to the same pun used.
  • In the review of The Pebble and the Penguin when noting a character named Rocko, he states that his modern life is no longer in reruns. Not long after that same year, Nickelodeon debuted the The 90s Are All That block, which features reruns of many Nicktoons, including Rocko's Modern Life.
• This parody of Transformers using chibi-fied versions of G1 characters actually came out before a toyline that did the exact same thing.
• When The Liam Smith Show flashed forward to New Years Eve 2999, Dick Clark promoted UPN: "For One Thousand Years, the Solar System's Number One Network."
• In 2006, The Angry Video Game Nerd made a video about confusing video game and movie sequel titles and mentioned how in the early 90's there were two Mega Man series, the originals and the X series. He then said, "Now if only they made a Mega Man 9, it would come full circle."
  • Even better, Capcom has announced a Mega Man 10. And much better, said game probably gave a nod to this "coincidence", seeing as Mega Man 10 is practically a tribute yet still doesn't connect to the X series, with a virus outbreak, Proto Man as a playable character (LOADS of funny references to Zero in that one alone) and its box art, in which Proto Man channels Zero yet again by wielding a Laser Blade and shield (not the solid one Proto's usually associated with).
  • There's also his rant about the movie Rocky Balboa breaking the Rocky series' numbering tradition, and compares it to the then-upcoming new Rambo film being titled "John Rambo." That did indeed become the movie's working title for a while (and actual release title in some countries), causing him to comment "I feel kind of bad, like I picked on a retarded kid."
  • In the Silver Surfer review, the nerd mocked how weak Silver Surfer was, comparing it to hypothetically showing Bruce Lee tripping over his shoelaces. A few years later (though it's not Bruce Lee), we have Super Smash Bros Brawl, in which several bounty hunters, futuristic agents, Solid Snake, and Sonic the Hedgehog trip over themselves once every few minutes (randomly), with absolutely no way to stop it or turn it off.
• This line in Chester A. Bum review of Up turns out to be more hilarious when Pixar did a short closely like that five months and 23 days later after the review.

"That what all people should do! We should send all the old people in the sky!"

• The original Zero Punctuation review of Duke Nukem Forever. Yahtzee's "review" was recently voted the best he'd ever done by members of The Escapist - mere days afterward, Gearbox announced that DNF was actually finished, and a demo was playable at PAX. Now that's timing.
  • Listen to the start of his Bad Company 2 review, and look how Duke Nukem Forever turned out.
• Retsupurae's "Cornshaq Baby Please" had Slowbeef uttering, "Mr. O'Neil, the answer to this multiplication problem is 12, but also Mario 2 is the greatest game ever." A year later, a famous rapper said something in a similar fashion that caused a Memetic Mutation.
  • Watch Slowbeef's Retsuparae of a savestate-laden Let's Play of Kaizo Mario World a few times. Then try to read On Liberty.
• The Gaming in The Clinton Years series is already bizarre and surreal, but it does achieve one of these at the end of their Final Fantasy VIII review. The narrator exclaims "If Square doesn't add voice-overs to Final Fantasy IX, I'm committing suicide! I hate text!" Final Fantasy IX was released in the USA November 2000, when Bill Clinton's second term ended. No wonder there's no "Gaming in the Dubya Years". Though it crosses over into Funny Aneurysm Moment when you learn George Wood really is dead (luckily 6 years after FFIX came out).
  • Circles back around now that he's proven to be alive.
• There was a story arch in I'm Marvel and I'm DC about Tony Stark feeling jealous of Batman's new movie taking his spotlight. So, Batman trained Iron Man in being a detective. Guess who is playing Sherlock Holmes in the 2009 movie?
• What is the Internet for? That question was answered two years after that essay was published.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series episode 27, Tristan states that "In the future, card games will be played on motorbikes." A few months later, Frank Frankson was revealed to be Yusei Fudo's voice actor.
  • The Second Anniversary Spectacularthon had a few teasing shots at a couple VAs. I mean, no way Vic Mignogna would've watched it, recommended by a few of his Rangers, right? Wrong. Thankfully, he took it well and the two have met a few times since.
    • Another one with LK and Vic—for their first Kamicon promo, Martin calls him Yuri Lowenthal. Vic voiced an Uchiha later in Shippuden.
  • Also, a good two years before the Abridged Series came out and made these types of jokes, the dub had a military captain in the Doma filler arc (who played the whole situation straight in the original) say that "as strange as it sounds, the fate of the world now depends on a card game."

Joey: Be careful, Yug. This guy means business. He wasn't even remotely intimidated by my Brooklyn Rage.
Yami: Joey, stop trying to turn 'Brooklyn Rage' into a catchphrase. It's never going to work.

• • • Take a wild guess on what Wayne Grayson's favorite line is?
  • Episode 50 Joey Wheeler Ace Attorney had Joey up against the guy that banned the series twice already. The judge said that third time's the charm .. and a few weeks later, Little Kuriboh was temporarily suspended on YouTube for the third time.
  • Episode 25 featured a short sequence of Yami and Tea singing a duet, and the end stinger said 'that's the closest you're gonna get to yu-gi-oh: the abridged musical'. Several years and a lot of cover songs later...
• From G Gundam Abridged Episode 2, Chibodee Crocket, voiced by Takahata101 using a Southern accent, tells a rambling story starting with the phrase "I ever tell you that story 'bout my best friend?" Later, Taka would play Ellis in Team Four Star's Left 4 Dead 2 Let's Play.
  • In Episode 4, Taka voices the commissioner using the same voice he would later use for Dartz on Yugioh Abridged.
• Due to the lead times involved, the fact that there were going to be goofy twin autobots in Revenge of the Fallen was known over six months before the movie was released. However, their look and a certain level of Fanon lead to the assumption they'd be bumbling hillbilly-type characters. So, Internet Personality Vangelus put forth the idea in his review of Skids that the autobot was really a rap star (named MC Paddington) with a dark past. This, plus the voice he assigned him, eerily anticipated the actual Skids, only much funnier.
• While it was made in 2007, this recut trailer of Aliens proved to be eerily prophetic.
• In an early episode, Ask That Guy gives an answer that amounts to people just watching him because he's soft porn. Come December 2009 and you have... giving a blowjob to a pipe, testing eggnog-as-lube with sex noises off-screen, getting dominated by Bennett The Sage, making a long series of orgasm faces and him saying he's willing to go down on anyone and anything.
• The "Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video features a line that says "Our Economy's based on LeBron James". Now that he's left, presumably there's no economy at all.
• My Immortal gives us this little bit from the Author's Notes of Chapter 42:

omg da new book iz kumming out rlly soon I kant wait!!!1111. I fink dat snap will be really the same person as Volximort koz dey are both haff-blood so dat will explain y he kild dumblydore and he hated hairy!!!!!1111 nd den hairy wil have 2 kommit suicide so voldimort will die koz he will rilly be a horcrox!!!!!111 omg I hope draco nd harry get 2getha dat will be so shmexxy, wont it?? If dey don’t den JKR is hamophobic!!!!!111111 fangz 4 da help wiv facts, medusa u rok!!!111

• In an episode of There Will Be Brawl, Luigi sees Ness and Lucas playing, and is inspired by their childish innocence to keep working to save the Mushroom Kingdom. This was considered a small Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, and some fans suggested they'd be the "token innocent children who get held ransom by the bad guys". Eventually the final episode rolls around, and it turns out they're the Butcher(s). Like the example at the top of the page, the contrast makes it hilarious to watch again.
• A throw-away gag in Berserk Abridged has two Strawman Political parodies arguing, which devolves into childish taunting, including the liberal one of the two calling the conservative parody a teabagger...this was made at the end of 2007, cue a certain political movement that appeared a year later.
• Early on, The Nostalgia Chick mocked the idea of Belligerent Sexual Tension with "Ah, animosity. It must be love!". Have a guess what her most teased (het) pairing consists of and who it's with?
  • Her desperation to see robots in Xanadu takes on a different, even more amusing meaning when she was made a Sex Slave robot who has to cater to her every whim.
  • A video she made in high school about STDs contains a giant stuffed bear with AIDS having an affair with a 14 year old girl. Pedobear.
• The Agony Booth review of Dean Koontz's Mr. Murder:

You know you're in for some quality entertainment when the guy who played 'Lowell' on the sitcom Wings is supposed to be the heavy.

• • Indeed.
• In the ending of episode 2 part 2 of Four Swords Misadventures, Green explains that the scene of his Japanese counterpart having sex (or the implication that he was having sex) with Zelda in the ending won't happen for them because "they are in the censored english version", to which Red says starkly "The censors always ruin the fun." A few months later, any attempts at doing the episode on youtube ended up blocked thanks to that scene, thus forcing Haidoukendude (or hitthefloor729, as he is known on Youtube) to do a special Youtube edition of the episode where he not only had to put a bulletin on the scene in question with big letters to explain that what the Japanese versions of what Link and Zelda were saying, despite appearances, did NOT translate to anything suggestive, but also went as far as to post a link to the actual translation, thus spoiling the joke, meaning that the joke was ruined for everyone due to censorship.
• Improv Everywhere once had fun splitting pedestrian traffic into a fast lane and slow lane on a street in Manhattan. As it turns out, some in London have taken that idea seriously.
• In November 2009, Barepolitical made their first parody of LadyGaga featuring original character Lord Gaga. In the 2nd part of the song, both characters start competing for who is the weirder of the two, with Gaga saying that she likes to "wear a bathing suits made out of raw meat". Guess what the real Lady Gaga decided to wear on the controversial cover of Vogue several months later of said parody?
• A YouTube video in 2010 featured the Pokémon anime being Darker and Edgier in which Giovanni plays a more active role and Jessie, James, and Meowth become actively evil and wear black uniforms. In Pokémon Best Wishes, they really DO!
• Before the second "season" of Marble Hornets started up (or was even hinted at), somebody made this poster as a joke. The tagline was completely accurate.
• In the epic Dragonball Evolution review on That Guy With The Glasses, Y Ruler of Time and Rollo T try and guess which movie Hope Within Chaos was referring to as "so horrible that even the The Nostalgia Critic won't review it". Their guesses? Ultraviolet (later reviewed by Film Brain) and Dungeons and Dragons (later actually reviewed by the Critic).
• In honor of The Nostalgia Critic doing Nickolodeon Month in January 2009, CR of Familiar Faces fame drew an image of Doug Walker in the art style of Doug Funnie doing his "drink from a skull and fire wildly" routine, which would eventually become one of the most recognizable images on the Familiar Faces poster. One day later, the Nicktoons review proved that the Nostalgia Critic does fire his gun wildly when compared to Doug.
• ScrewAttack
  • Twice, they decided to make videos predicting the top news of the upcoming year. In the 2010 one, one of the items that Duke Nukem Forever would get a release date, Nintendo would try out 3D again, there would be a new Kid Icarus game anounced (Albeit, for the Wii, not the DS), and the 360 would be slimmed down. Scary isn't it?
  • They predicted Milo would become Skynet, and in a weird coincidence...
  • For 2011, they speculated on a new Nintendo console aiming on hardcore games. And whadya know.
• In the 7th episode of Super Mario Bros Z, the Seven Koopalings and Bowser Jr. appear together, the first time in any Mario related things this has happened. Almost a year later, New Super Mario Bros. Wii comes out which has the first canonical game involving Bowser Jr. and the seven Koopalings being together...
• The Irate Gamer did an episode about Kool-Aid Man video games. The parody Third Rate Gamer followed up with a "review" of Cool Spot, mocking the episode. Months later, IG reviewed Cool Spot.
• In his Worst Hit Songs of 1987, Todd in the Shadows proclaims that he likes "Tonight" and "Tonight, Tonight", but the Genesis song "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" is one 'Tonight' too many. Since then, he has expressed his extreme hatred for both Enrique Iglesias's "Tonight..." and Hot Chelle Rae's "Tonight, Tonight" in the same year.
• In the Moshi Monsters Lady Goo Goo song "The Moshi Dance" one of the lines is "Lady Goo Goo's here to stay!"
• On April Fools' of 2011, Boubouille of World of Warcraft news site MMO-Champion posted this joke article about the upcoming expansion pack being centered around the Pandaren race and introducing them as playable for both factions. Well... The next expansion is centered around the Pandaren race and introduces them as playable for both factions.
  • Made even better when you know that the moderation team speculated and planned a few elaborate satirical jokes which were then denied for risk of causing bad press by forumgoers taking it seriously. The pandaren joke on the other hand was deemed obvious and cringeworthy enough for everyone to understand it was just a joke. Which they did. Since it was. At the time.
• This video from 2010 is about using a laptop and stationary bike to allow Google Maps to used, before the Tour-De-France-Centennial went on the market a year later. Tour-De-France-Centennial is an exercise bike with Google Maps.
• This YouTube video was posted taking about VH1 awhile after the airing of iLove the New Millennium as a joke, according to the person behind the video. She listed 10 Things on what was missing including the infamous fight between Tiffany Pollard and Brooke Thompson. Fast forward to 2014 when VH1 aired, iLove the 2000s, which included… what else: Flavor of Love.

Web Comics

• This Wulffmorgenthaler strip will never be the same again after Rebecca Black's Friday.
• Penny Arcade: compare this strip and this actual news article.

"We can categorically state that we [the British military] did not release man-eating badgers into the local area."

• • And this infamous strip, whose mockery of the bogus release date for Duke Nukem Forever was funny in 1999 when the game was a year and a half late, but only grew more so as the game grew two years, four years, eight years, nine years, only to loop back around to Hilarious in Hindsight when a demo of the game, now out of development hell, was released at PAX.
  • This strip became a lot funnier when a few years later Tycho actually did miss a portion of PAX due to the birth of his child.
  • This strip gets funnier when you realize how the reaction was for the Metroid game shown at E3 after it was released.
  • This strip, considering Serious Sam HD and its Super Happy Funtime mode (also see the second FoxTrot example in Comic Books for more information) .
• Ozy and Millie: the punchline to this strip. Now reflect on who else has said that. Let the Wild Mass Guessing begin!
• The first Shirt Guy Dom Filler for Megatokyo promises there will never be another one again. Compare with this list.
• When the characters from Real Life Comics go to the future, Greg Dean from 2001 asks Greg Dean from 2006 what the most important thing to happen in the following five years. Funny in 2001 because his response, that he'll hit his shin on an open drawer, is ridiculous. Gets funnier in 2003, when he does hit his shin on the drawer. Becomes hilarious in 2005 when he gets married...
  • An additional instance of this happens far more recently, when Walt Disney is described as Fanfic writer. The date of that comic: August 12, 2009. Less than a month later, guess who's announced their plans to purchase half of the comic book industry...
• Irregular Webcomic mentions a crystal skull in an early "Cliffhangers" (an Indiana Jones spoof) strip.
  • Another strip parodied the "progression" from Darth Maul's double-bladed lightsaber in Episode I and Anakin's dual wielding of lightsabers in Episode II with having characters draw quadruple, quintuple and septuple lightsabers...

David Morgan-Mar: This comic was published over 2 years before Episode III was released in May, 2005. Need I say anything more than "General Grievous"? I'm ready for those royalties, George.

• In the first Decline [of video gaming] (a flash series that theorized what video games be like in the future), one game "featured" was Metal Gear Solid 5, where Solid Snake was an old wheel chair bound man. In real life Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots features an old (but not wheel chair bound) Snake.
• Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi preceded Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z. Better yet, because the former is Filipino-made Manga-esque instead of actual Japanese anime, it is 100% Macekre-proof. (I'll say it again--She's a Man In Japan does not work when the anime in question has an American source material!)
• Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures features an arc involving the Pokémon craze. No biggie, but the arc ends with the death of the fad. Figures it would be the one late-'90s fad to NOT die within a year.
  • A minor one, but the comic is currently (Oct 2010) on a Tue-Fri-Sun update schedule. Amber posted a comic with the tagline, "It's like a Friday cliffhanger, but on a Tuesday!" Then she got sick and couldn't update on Friday, so it was a Friday cliffhanger.
• Three Panel Soul gives us Bernanke's description of the state of the economy circa September 2008 (inspired by a New York Times article).
  • Even more hilarious is how the comic's fictional Bernanke is in such contrast to his real life counterpart.
• In a 1998 User Friendly cartoon where Irwin ended up in the computer system of the space station Mir, he said at one point "I can barely believe this thing stays up." Two years later, the station was decommissioned, deorbited and burned up in the atmosphere. Now, if anybody had been onboard at the time, this would be a Funny Aneurysm Moment, but as nobody was...
  • In this 2009 Sunday strip, a Star Trek crossword has as #6 down, "Brain connection with fingers to face". The actual answer is Vulcan mind meld, but considering what Captain Picard is now famous for...
• An Awkward Zombie animated short features the crew of the MythBusters attempting to build a cannon out of duct tape in order to fire a pig. While the "cannon made out of duct tape" sounds like a Flanderized "silly Mythbusters build," the Mythbusters did a "duct tape" special much later. And guess what they actually built?
  • Another Awkward Zombie comic has someone using a dog whistle that only Link can hear because he has huge ears; this was made before Twilight Princess.
  • "Edgeworth is such a closet Steel Samurai Fan". A full two years later, Ace Attorney Investigations comes out and that turns out to be precisely the case.
• The Order of the Stick: Haley can't remember whether Sabine, a succubus, is a demon or a devil. This was before 4th edition.
  • An early viewer mail strip in which Belkar insults a class that he would later take a level in.
• Cass Toons as a whole is that much more hilarious now that a DC character has actually attempted to kill Dan DiDio.
• This Sluggy Freelance comic is parodying Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it only gets funnier when you take Twilight into account.
  • And this 2001 strip wherein Torg and Riff need leiderhosen and pliers to party with Charlie Sheen, but Sasha tells them he's been sober for months, so they try to find Robert Downey Jr., a belt sander, and a Portuguese man-of-war. Over the next decade, guess which got his career back on track and which became a walking punchline?
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: "The hammer is my penis." It just didn't turn out so well the first time.
• Metroid: Third Derivative had a number of sequences involving hordes of Zoomers walking around with a constant shout of "HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT HUT". Since then, a Metroid game has been codeveloped by Tecmo, the company responsible for Tecmo Bowl.
  • An earlier comic featuring Samus playing Tetris was made before her appearance in Tetris DS was announced.
• Cuanta Vida has BLU Engineer getting a new hand. Then the Engineer Update reveals the Gunslinger weeks later...
• El Goonish Shive and "I kissed a squirrel (and I liked it)". Or vice versa, really.
• Something*Positive: "You don't give yourself enough credit. I bet you're a lot sweeter than you admit. You're a nice person, and I bet, someday, you're going to be a caring husband and father." Davan's reaction is to laugh his head off, but two years later, we meet Rory - not his son, but when you see them together...
• In this Virtual Shackles comic, one of the 'problems' the Kinect can't fix is the boy's ethnic friends. A month later, Gamespot reported ^{[dead link]} that Kinect's facial recognition software has trouble with dark-skinned people.
• One issue of Axe Cop has Axe Cop burn Telescope Gun Cop's lab down with lemon grenades.
• In this Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff update, a typo renders "hot dog" as "hot god". This takes on a new meaning in Homestuck, when Jade reaches God Tier, fusing with Jadesprite and gaining dog ears in the process, to which fans have called "Dog Tier".
  • Equius... took an arrow to the knee.
• Somewhere in December, FPS Russia releases a video showing him wrecking havoc with an L85A2 rifle. A couple days later, Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand is released. Guess what is the name of the Assignment needed to unlock the L85A2?
• Depending on your opinion, this may also qualify as a Funny Aneurysm Moment too: the endless promotion for a then-unknown Ke$ha on Key 103 Manchester, a British radio station's web site. Bizarrely, she was listed on the regular presenters' list too... although not now!
• Sonichu mentioned that he had a dream of seeing his creator with long hair in the mirror in one issue. Needless to say, this ended up coming true.
• This xkcd is pretty funny ever since the release of Guitar Hero: Metallica.
• Exploitation Now here. While adressing a Mad Scientist (female and unmarried, anyway) "Little Miss Girl Genius" is perfectly legit on its own, two years later, well... Giving her a strip club with fake metahuman (see the previous page) dancers for a next-door neighbour is an icing on the cake.

Web Animation

• One of the most remembered gags from the flash animation $00pah NiN10Doh! is Lucas and Dawn (and Nintendo) realizing that after having Arceus the PokéGod in their game, they can't go any higher for the fifth generation. The official announcement of the fifth generation in late January 2010 wouldn't have been hilarious in itself... except that it happened only one week before Kirbopher, the creator of the animation, started voicing a character on the actual show.
• In episode 4 of the series Beebo, when Beebo's master goes to Heaven and sees Kobe Bryant and pleads "Please don't rape me!". Guess what trial Kobe Bryant got into less than a year later.

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