Harsher In Hindsight / Community

• In one episode, Pierce's cellphone puts his mother on speaker as she says she heard his father's ghost. In "Advanced Gay," Pierce reveals his father is alive and that his mother liked to pretend that Cornelius Hawthorne was dead because he's such an awful person. Then Jeff accidentally kills Cornelius with a "The Reason You Suck" Speech on Pierce's behalf.
• The Running Gag about Greendale being a Sucky School with a generally inept faculty who repeatedly run completely idiotic classes (such as an analysis of who the titular boss was in Who's the Boss?) becomes this after "Repilot" showed the ramifications of attending such a school.
• All the jokes about Pierce dying (especially the ones about him Dying Alone) can become this after Season 5 when it's revealed that Pierce masturbated himself to death - presumably in a room by himself.
• Chang punching Duncan in the face with a roll of quarters in his hand in Season 2 is a hilarious bit of physical comedy. Then the Ass Crack Bandit in Season 5 came up with a much more sinister use for quarters, which Duncan would also be subjected to.
• The "Troy and Abed" singing gags in The Stinger become this in Season 4, where Evil Abed and Troy sing the last Stinger one as part of their radio show. They both reluctantly accept the status quo where Chang is a dictator in their timeline and reaffirm that no matter what happens, the two are friends. You can tell it feels like the End of an Era before the next season premiere. Season 5 has Troy and Abed singing it mid-show during the Pierce interrogation episode as "Troy and Abed are in mourning", foreshadowing that Troy is leaving for good and Abed isn't ready to say farewell.
• In the episode "Aerodynamics of Gender", the world is seen as a Robo Cam through Abed's eyes. When the Robo Cam is on the screen, you can see a list of memos Abed has for himself. When Abed is playing back something Shirley said to him, one of the memos is "Confirm mom for Xmas". This is a lot worse in hindsight when you realize "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" is just a few episodes later.
• "Intro To Documentary Filmmaking" has Jeff literally beating up Pierce for saying his father was coming to visit, because it was another of Pierce's Mind Screw pranks, and that this is why Pierce has no friends. Jeff does actually meet his father in Season 4, and the only positive Jeff gets out of it is learning he has a Big Brother Instinct for his half-brother; his Calling the Old Man Out isn't even that different from what he told Pierce.
• In the episode "Modern Warfare", the Glee Club shown in the first game of Paintball Assassin ends up dying in a bus crash next season caused by their own crazy teacher, Mr. Rad.
• In the episode "Paradigms of Human Memory," there is a flashback to "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas"; however, it is seen through the eyes of the other characters. Puts a much darker light on the former (with the other characters lampshading that it wasn't nearly as fun as Jeff and Britta seemed to be remembering), and really makes you think about snowman Chang's bottom button...
• In Season 3's "Remedial Chaos Theory", Troy's absence leading to the darkest timeline seems harsher after Donald Glover left the show in the fifth season, which became the last season after NBC cancelled the show. You could say Troy leaving the group really did lead to the darkest timeline. This was later subverted when it was announced that Yahoo! Screen would produce at least one more season with virtually the same budget as the NBC seasons.
  • Relatedly, a consequence of the darkest timeline being Pierce's death becomes a lot more uncomfortable given not only Chevy Chase's already "eclectic" relationship with the show deteriorating to the point that he would outright quit in Season 4, but that his own character (Pierce) would be killed off less than a season after that in Season 5.
  • Similarly, Troy and Pierce's interactions with each other in Timeline 6 where the former gives the latter a vicious "The Reason You Suck" Speech take a much darker turn once Glover revealed years after the show ended that he and Chevy Chase did not get along since Chase had made racist jokes to him (i.e., telling Glover that, "People think you're funnier because you're black").
• It's noted on the commentary track for "Advanced Introduction to Finality" that the final line of the cold open, Troy commenting "One for all, and all for one guy we can leave behind!" was originally just a joke about Pierce's age, but the line took a greater subtext when Chevy Chase quit the show. The joke was originally Hilarious in Hindsight, but became Harsher in Hindsight when Pierce was revealed to have died in "Basic Intergluteal Numismatics".
• The two-season arc of Shirley reconciling with her husband becomes this when they divorce again during the Time Skip. Even worse, Andre and Shirley renewed their vows promising to accept that they both have changed and would commit to their relationship with Shirley opening a sandwich shop to support their family. The sandwich business fails and as a result, Andre takes the kids, leaving Shirley alone.
• Professor Kane quitting due to the guilt of Starburns' death becomes this when you find out he faked it, meaning Kane had a guilt ridden breakdown over a death that never even happened.
• The final two lines of the (surprisingly dark) theme song, which are "I can't count the reasons I should stay, one by one they all just fade away", turn out to be prophetic, as in the final two seasons, a third of the cast members left one by one, which became a point of contention for a big portion of the fans.
• Season 3 opens with a big musical number where all the characters sing about how they're gonna "finally be fine", which is then revealed as Jeff's Imagine Spot in regards to a year without Pierce. In the series finale, when Jeff learns that both Annie and Abed are leaving while he is still stuck at Greendale, Annie tells him "you're gonna be fine, you know," to which Jeff bitterly replies, "I don't wanna be fine."
• Some of the Hilarious Outtakes that imply or act out sexual misconduct between the cast and/or crew come off as tasteless after the rise of the #metoo movement. It's also pretty clear that Gillian and Yvette don't really want to participate in these type of jokes but occasionally get pushed into playing along with the rest of the cast.
• Various other pieces of information to come out after the show finished also make Harmon look like a complete asshole in his dealings with Chevy Chase, who was pilloried for his 'poor behavior' like leaving the set early, refusing to film scenes and his "use of a racial slur" that was apparently the "final straw" forcing him off the show. Those refusals were usually caused by Harmon not having done his job properly and leaving the scripts unfinished, causing the cast and crew to sit around doing nothing well after midnight, and where the racial slur was said in the context of Harmon pushing Pierce's character into an irredeemably awful racist, something Chevy didn't like happening.
• Abed either has a breakdown or invites Evil Abed inadvertently into the timeline in Season 3 when it seems Troy has to leave forever to join the AC Repair school. It gets worse in Season 5 when Troy leaves for real to fulfill a requirement to earn Pierce's inheritance: sail around the world for a year. Abed has another breakdown that Britta has to fix, and spends the rest of the season trying to find a Replacement Goldfish for his best friend. To make matters worse, a Freeze-Frame Bonus reveals Troy and Levar Burton were captured by pirates. Abed may never see his best friend again.
• Throughout "Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care", the majority of Britta's screentime is spent being judged for declining to reconnect with her parents and acting very bratty and childish. In addition to this, her reasoning isn't properly explained and the examples of the bad parenting she gives are certainly terrible, but undercut the reality by a mile. The biggest reason that Britta hates her parents is because she was sexually assaulted by a man in a dinosaur costume as a child and her parents did not believe her. With the accusations of sexual harassment against Dan Harmon that would be made public just a few years later^note Though he was smart enough to genuinely own up to his faults and eventually gave what was described as a sincere apology to the woman who accused him of said harassment on his Harmontown podcast, the decision to make Britta come off as childish and petty for harboring resentment toward her parents for not having supported her after being raped can't help but feel considerably more sinister and ill-intentioned.