12 TV Moments Made Unintentionally Depressing By Real Life Events
When life unfortunately imitates art.
Dated TV is a difficult pill to swallow: if a show is packed with dated topical references, or uses a style that became so well-worn that it lost all of its appeal, rewatching it becomes incredibly jarring. Occasionally, though, some shows are difficult to revisit for one simple reason: they unfortunately eerily predict real life events (usually tragic), adding an oddly sinister undertone to once favourite shows.
These are the weirdly prophetic storylines that make you cringe when running through the DVD box set years later. A character might make a joke about a terrorist attack in an episode airing shortly before 9/11, or maybe they'll make some affectionate comment for a public figure later revealed to be a sex offender/killer/the devil incarnate.
In the worst examples, what happens to a character can creepily mirror the actor's real life death, and watching in hindsight becomes like actually watching them die on screen.
Nobody blinked an eye when these 12 moments originally aired, but they're all physically painful to watch in 2015, and you just want to reach into the television and warn the actors and the audience of what's to come. If only that were possible. Here are 12 ordinary TV scenes that become really depressing in hindsight...
12. Family Guy: Osama Bin Laden At The Airport (A Year Before 9/11)
In the original broadcast of Family Guy's Season 2 episode Road To Rhode Island, there’s a shocking gag where Stewie sings show tunes in order to get past airport security and then Osama Bin Laden does the same thing, singing "I Hope I Get it" to distract the TSA from the weapons in his bag.
Making a joke of Bin Laden trying to orchestrate a terrorist attack at an airport wasn't just these writers being intentionally offensive, though. This episode actually aired in May 2000, long before anybody knew this would be an actual threat.
In retrospect, the scene goes from mildly amusing to extremely dark, and because of that, Fox ended up removing the joke from future broadcasts and from the DVD release. It was later restored on The Freakin' Sweet Collection.
To make matters odder, creator and voice of Stewie Seth MacFarlane was originally supposed to be on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center on September 11th, but he missed the flight after oversleeping. If he was on the plane, this would have been a scene where MacFarlane unknowingly makes a joke about a terrorist attack that he himself would be killed in.
Now that's creepy.