Most of the stuff surrounding Michael Jackson becomes this by way of either the allegations or the circumstances of his passing.
- In 1997, Michael Jackson released the song "Morphine" on the album Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix. The song was a chilling description of drug abuse, with lines like "A heart attack, baby" and "Trust in me / Just in me / Put all your trust in me", the latter line referring to dependence on the titular drug. The bridge is even worse: the angry singing turns into a soft, melancholy melody describing a person's slide into addiction, specifically to the painkiller Demerol, while the sounds of a respirator, an ECG machine, and presumably a doctor talking are heard in the background. Between 2003 and 2005, Jackson allegedly became dependent on Demerol. Then, on June 25, 2009, Jackson died of cardiac arrest, eventually deemed to have been a homicide caused by a lethal combination of drugs, primarily the anesthetic propofol, administered by his personal doctor (who was convicted of manslaughter in 2011 and sentenced to four years in prison).
- On top of the obvious points listed above, there is also a chilling pattern present on the album as a whole. The album, primarily a remix album, included five original songs, "Morphine" being the second. The first song, "Blood on the Dance Floor", sang about an attempted murder (albeit with a knife), while the final two original songs ("Ghosts" and "Is It Scary") both dealt with ghostly imagery straight out of a horror movie. Combining "Morphine" with a song about homicide and two songs about ghosts is even more chillingly prophetic than the song alone.
- "Breaking News", one of the unfinished-in-his-lifetime songs on the posthumously-assembled Michael, starts with fake news reports on Jackson, including the line "The plot begins to destroy Michael Jackson," in keeping with the overall "scumbag media" theme of the song. This line takes on a more sinister interpretation when one realizes that "Breaking News" was an extremely controversial song, as it was widely believed - with strong evidence behind it - to be another singer imitating Jackson's voice on a song he recorded no vocals for in his lifetime.
- HIStory's "They Don't Care About Us" includes the line "I'm a victim of police brutality." In 2003, after being arrested and booked on child molestation charges, Jackson claimed he had been injured and mistreated by the police.
- As a kid, he sang a version of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" together with his brothers. Knowing now how abusive father Joe Jackson was, Michael's declaration of "...and I'm gonna tell my daddy!" becomes more uncomfortable than cute, especially when his brothers jump in to try and talk him out of it. There's also the fact Joseph cheated on Katherine and fathered at least one child, making the song even more awkward.
- The line "I'm not like other boys..." in the prologue of the "Thriller" video.
- "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)" was never looked at same way again after the child molestation allegations. "Human Nature" to a lesser extent amongst those who are unfamiliar with its true subject matter and the fact that Jackson didn't write it.note
- Or "The Girl Is Mine", his Thriller duet with Paul McCartney. Michael Jackson says: "You know, Paul, I'm a lover, not a fighter..." When Linda McCartney was alive, all of Paul's love songs were for her. That perspective makes "The Girl Is Mine" painful for Paul's fans.
- Similarly, his concert series scheduled to start July 2009 was called This Is It. It doesn't help that the very last public interview he gave was announcing the tour to his fans, in which he repeatedly said, in reference to the concert title, "this is it, this is really it! This will be my last concert ever, I mean it! This is it!"
- The handful of narrative sequences in Moonwalker get uncomfortable due to the three kids who follow Michael around, including the part where he essentially turns into a giant toy and then comes back to lead them to a dark, creepy backstage area to watch him perform. Shout out to the "Speed Demon" sequence where the director has a frustrated breakdown over Michael Jackson being cast as a villain. In context, it's supposed to be a gag on the song (he's the guy who did "Bad", so he's literally the Bad guy), but the backlash against the later child abuse allegations put that whole thing in a different light.
- The title of Off the Wall qualifies too. If there was anyone (other than Elvis Presley before him and Kurt Cobain later) who needed less craziness and more 9-5 everyday normality in his life, it was Michael Jackson.
- Back during the days of Bad, "Leave Me Alone" was written in response to some allegations made against Michael, but these allegations bordered on crackpot theories, such as sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to slow his aging, and at the time, the song was a lighthearted jab at these rather baseless rumors. ...Come his child molestation allegations in 1993, and it's not surprising that the theming behind "Leave Me Alone" would be repurposed for HIStory; only this time, Darker and Edgier.
- Whitney Houston paid tribute to Jackson during her Nothing But Love world tour, even singing excerpts of "The Way You Make Me Feel" and "Wanna Be Starting Somethin'", two years before her own drug-induced death.
- There are t-shirts originally printed for his upcoming tour featuring "Thriller" zombie Jackson with the words "This is It" (the name of the tour) emblazoned across them. They didn't go on sale until after his death.
- In 2009, Q magazine published an article questioning whether or not his fragile health could take the strain of another tour (he had suffered some minor injuries from falling out of his shower a few months prior, something he himself admitted was the result of his frail build). Turns out it did.
- "Billie Jean" (in which Michael's character is dogged by rumors that he had children out of wedlock) became a lot more ironic once Michael had children and was dogged by rumors that they weren't his.
- The song “Who Is It?” is about Michael trying to figure out who stole his girlfriend from him. At one point he asks, “Is it my brother?” Michael’s brother Jermaine actually married their brother Randy’s long-time girlfriend soon after the two had broken up.
- In Jackson's 1988 autobiography Moonwalk he recounts being warned by others that if he kept living in seclusion then he might die the same way Elvis Presley did. Jackson is fascinated by how Elvis destroyed his life but brushes off the idea of any possible parallels between Elvis and himself. In 2009, Jackson died from a cardiac arrest caused by an overdose of prescription drugs, just like Elvis did. What's more crazy is that Jackson was even married to Elvis's daughter, Lisa Marie Presley. She believes that one of the reasons she was attracted to him was that Jackson reminded her of her father. During their marriage, Jackson frequently asked her questions about how her father died and began to fear for his life as his drug addiction worsened.
- Back in the 80s, between the releases of Thriller and Bad, a magazine made a speculative guess on what certain then-current stars would be like in the future. Their one on
◊ Michael Jackson shows him looking like an older version of his young adult self and with the line "In number, his fans will have grown tenfold by the year 2000". - During the "Private Home Movies" special, one segment talks about touring and Michael bluntly states that he doesn't like having to do it citing that the different time zones combined with post-concert adrenaline makes it hard to sleep. His insomnia following rehearsals for "This Is It" led him to abusing a drug that essentially forced him to sleep and would end up killing him.
- Even the music video of the "prison" version of "They Don't Care About Us" is sometimes pretty uncomfortable look at, following the child molestation allegations from 2005 and other rumors.
