Harsher In Hindsight / Professional Wrestling

• Any segment featuring the late Owen Hart as the Blue Blazer and his death at the Over the Edge PPV in 1999:
  • On a 1989 episode of Saturday Night's Main Event, he said he would "jump from the rafters" if he needed to, to defeat Ted DiBiase.
  • The ability to jump off SmackDown! fist (and King of the Ring 2001's chair and Rebellion 2001's scaffolds) in WWE SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth, along with the Spider-Man-style custom entrance, may also give shades of Owen Hart's fall to some players.
  • One of the paid advertisements that the New World Order ran on WCW Monday 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.
• Look up a Mick Foley match and you'll get the commentary team making several jokes about how many concussions Foley had gotten and how many brain cells of his are dead. Now that Foley has talked about his memory issues due to his career, it's hard to laugh.
• The opening graphics for the 1998 SummerSlam event that took place in New York City, which had many buildings, including the Twin Towers, being knocked over, became this after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
• Any instance of The Undertaker locking his opponent in a casket or burying them can become uncomfortable viewing after that opponent dies. Examples include Ultimate Warrior in 1991, and Yokozuna in 1994.
• Speaking of Warrior, he last appeared on April 7, 2014 (The night after WrestleMania XXX, and one day before his death) talking about how one's spirit can become immortal. Just a day later, he passed away.
• 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.
• Even back in 1999, Hiroshi Tanahashi wasn't on board with Katsuyori Shibata's extreme dedication to "strong style" wrestling. While Shibata would stall on the independent circuit (Big Mouth Loud), fail in kick-boxing (K-1), and only find middling success in mixed martial arts promotions (DREAM, DEEP, IGF, etc.), Tanahashi would return from CMLL a new man whose charisma was so strong it forced "The King Of Strong Style" himself to undergo a similar makeover and stress his own charisma. Still, Shibata stuck his course, eventually got booked by New Japan again, and eventually got pushed by New Japan again in spite of Tanahashi's disapproval always being just beneath the surface at best. Then Shibata paralyzed half of his own body headbutting Kazuchika Okada, making Tanahashi sound right.
• In 2005 Muhammad Hassan was carried off by masked men as though he were a suicide bomber, after a beatdown on The Undertaker. The footage was taped a few days before July 7, but it wound up airing on 7/7 — the day of suicide bombings on public transport in London. This certainly shortened Hassan's career with WWE.
• in 2011, CM Punk gave the blistering "Pipebomb" promo, wherein he lambasted WWE, saying that the WWE Creative was wasting very skilled talent like himself, The Rock being in the main event vs. John Cena (despite the former not being an active wrestler), and that he was leaving over it. This promo actually got him a push and he stayed in WWE for a few more years... until the night after the 2014 Royal Rumble. The reasons he gave for leaving? The WWE was wasting very skilled talent (in this case Daniel Bryan), and that The Rock was pushed into the main event at WrestleMania vs Cena despite not being an active wrestler... again.
• At the first ECW One Night Stand in 2005, Mike Awesome wrestled Masato Tanaka, and Joey Styles took the opportunity to basically bury Awesome for abruptly signing up with WCW in 2000 while still ECW World Champion.^note This actually caused ECW to ask WWE (whom they were on somewhat friendly terms with despite being competition) to briefly bring Tazz back so that Awesome could drop the title to him so, in turn, Tazz could later drop it a few days later, resulting in the odd situation of a WCW-contracted wrestler losing an ECW title to a WWE-contracted wrestler. When Awesome does a Suicide Dive onto Tanaka, 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 and then committed suicide.
  • What makes this so bad is that the WWE tried to avert this (they aborted a storyline about Vince McMahon "dying" when his limo exploded), but the very attempt itself caused it to be played straight. Talk about a no-win situation... This led to the clumsy Author's Saving Throw of Vince supposedly having an "illegitimate son", who was revealed to be... Hornswoggle.^note It was supposed to be Mr. Kennedy, but a wellness policy suspension scrapped that idea.
  • 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 few years prior, a Smart Mark website published an "interview with a mark," as a way of helping their readers understand the mindset of a casual fan. The one thing the "mark" said that the Smart Mark interviewer approved of was that Chris Benoit was the one guy in WWE whom he legitimately would not want to meet in a dark alley.
  • When he was in WCW, Benoit had a feud with Kevin Sullivan over Woman...the future Nancy Benoit. At Clash of the Champions XXXIV in 1997, Dusty Rhodes referred to it as a "domestic dispute". Ouch...
  • In a promo cut by Arn Anderson during the Benoit/Sullivan feud, Arn ends by calmly asking Benoit, "Is this obsession with destroying every aspect of Kevin Sullivan's life worth losing your soul? Well, is it?". Cue the chills up the spine ...
  • The end of WrestleMania XX is extremely difficult to take for some considering the murders/suicide of Chris Benoit and the untimely death and later exploitation of Eddie Guerrero.
  • For that matter try watching any Benoit match where commentary talks about him being a future Hall of Famer or how respected Benoit is.
• Just like Madden NFL has its Madden Curse, WWE has its 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, which ended 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, "If you insist on making this mistake, your grieving family will have no one to blame but you when the inevitable occurs." Brrrr.
  • Not only that, the lyrics of one of the menu songs in SmackDown vs. Raw 2007, "Forgive Me", is about suicide. Go figure.
  • A milder variant happens with SmackDown vs. Raw 2008; Undertaker happened to feud with Jeff Hardy, who suffered a house fire (which killed his dog Jack) and Wellness Policy violation in the same month (March 2008). In addition, WWE also exploited his demons to write him out of a Survivor Series title match that year.
  • WWE 2K14 had a mode dedicated to beating Undertaker's WrestleMania streak in a prototype version of the WrestleMania XXX arena. The streak would end at the actual PPV.
• 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.
• During the Kane vs Matt Hardy "'Til Death Do Us Part" match for Lita at SummerSlam 2004, a sign can be seen in the crowd reading "Lita is a Dirty Slut." Less than a year later, the scandal in which Amy "Lita" Dumas cheated on real-life boyfriend Hardy with married man Adam "Edge" Copeland would break out, resulting in Lita becoming one of the most-hated Divas in the WWE and resulting in her leaving the company in disgrace in November 2006. ^note  Though things ended up working out well for her, as she eventually returned to the company, got inducted into the Hall of Fame, and the previous animosity towards her by the fans is gone
• In TNA, Taylor Wilde defeated Awesome Kong to win the Knockouts Championship and $25,000 in Kayfabe. Emphasis on the last word. It would later come out that Taylor had been seriously underpaid by TNA and was discovered working a minimum wage job at Sunglass Hut while she was Knockouts Champion.
• Early 2012, the writers started a storyline where Cena kisses Eve Torres, who Cena's "friend" Zack Ryder was in love with. The storyline was quickly aborted with Eve being rejected by Cena but The Rock (who was feuding with Cena) pointed out that Cena was a married man kissing another woman. Several months later, Cena got divorced and former WWE wrestler Kenny Dykstra (of the Spirit Squad infamy) claimed that not only was he fired from WWE because Cena stole his fiancée Mickie James but that WWE then proceeded to fire James several months later because Cena was engaged at the time and James supposedly gave him the ultimatum to chose between women. It should be noted, however, that this story was later debunked by Cena, the company, and James herself, who maintains the two of them are still friends.^note James states that, like John Morrison, she decided to pursue other interests rather than resign, and once she was ready, WWE's women's division was underappreciated and underserved, thus she decided to go to TNA. Also, Dykstra has been very vocal and vindictive toward the company, sniping at everyone from the McMahons to Randy Orton to Triple H to even James herself.
  • In addition, the Eve angle came after Cena and his wife had filed for divorce, which apparently had been coming for some time. The kicker? Despite his on-air state, the strife and divorce was reportedly making Cena quite miserable. And the company knew it but went on with it. And then, after Cena lost his match to The Rock, Cena was portrayed in-storyline as undergoing several setbacks due to loss, basically bringing his real-life misery into the storyline.
• On Colt Cabana's Art of Wrestling podcast (and his own documentary), Nigel McGuinness tragically predicts that the current generation of wrestlers will become "zombies" with post-concussion syndrome/CTE. Then Daffney was forced out of the ring due to concussions, and in September 2021, she tragically committed suicide. She specifically requested as part of her suicide note that her brain be donated to science to help provide insight into CTE.
• Ric Flair's son Reid tweeted "Even better times ahead". It was his last tweet. He died the next day. Excuse me.
• After Jerry Lawler suffered a thankfully non-lethal heart attack, it makes some of his jokes about José Lothario (Shawn Michaels's mentor) a bit hard to listen to, especially the one about Lothorio's heart being clogged with a jalapeño in the aorta. Lothario isn't the only one, either: other subjects of the King's heart attack/heart problem jokes over the years include Brother Love (Bruce Prichard) and even Lawler himself. Even after recovering from his own heart attack, he continues doing it, which may mitigate this somewhat but bears to wonder how.
• The Undertaker's entrance at WrestleMania XXX featured caskets with the names of every opponent he's defeated at past WrestleManias, plus one more for his potential victim at the event (Brock Lesnar). His undefeated streak actually ended in the same event, making the extra coffin for the streak itself instead.
• Daniel Bryan getting screwed out of his titles as many times as he did, being told that he wasn't physically able to be a WWE champion, and the kayfabe injury all seem to look that much harsher when his title reign was cut short by a legit neck injury.
  • Although, on the positive side, he DID have his WrestleMania moment, which can never be taken away from him.
  • Update: he's still as popular as ever, but fans are reacting extremely negatively to Roman Reigns being pushed as the would-be slayer of the Beast Incarnate instead of him. Roman Reigns is also tall, handsome, and part of a prestigious Wrestling Family...like Randy Orton, who was The Authority's pet champion. The uncomfortable Reality Subtext might play a part in the hatred for this particular booking decision, among other things.
• During Cody Rhodes's run as "Stardust" and his feud with half-brother Goldust, their legendary father Dusty Rhodes made a special guest appearance on the February 16, 2015 episode of WWE RAW to try and get the brothers back on the same page. It doesn't go well, with Stardust ending his rant by saying "Cody Rhodes is dead and so is my father!" As it turns out, this would be Dusty's very last appearance on Raw before passing away for real almost four months later.
• In a 2003 interview, Roddy Piper mentioned that, due to his health issues, he wasn't expecting to live 65 years. He ended up suffering a fatal heart attack at the age of 61.
• Braun Strowman, on a 2017 episode of WWE Raw, claiming that the next time he and Roman Reigns met in the ring, "It will be Roman Reigns's funeral." ^note (Background: Strowman and Reigns had started feuding shortly after WrestleMania 33, and a week before Strowman made those remarks, he brutally attacked Reigns several times throughout the evening, eventually rendering him so badly injured he needed to be taken to the hospital. As the ambulance was taking him to the hospital, however, Strowman blocked the ambulance and pushed it over using his bare strength. Strowman's later remarks, then, implied that Reigns was weak and that a future meeting between the two would result in injuries so severe Reigns would at least be permanently injured.) On the same night those remarks were made, Reigns's real-life brother, Rosey (Matt Anoa'i) was found dead of an apparent heart attack (similar to how Roman's uncle Eddie (Rosey's 3-Minute Warning buddy Jamal, later repackaged as Umaga) died eight years prior) ... and in real life, Reigns was helping to plan a funeral.
• Impact Wrestling's "KM" being depicted as a bully in general when you are aware that Kevin Matthews can be very volatile towards people he doesn't like on social media. This includes fans, promoters, and other wrestlers.
• Retired Australian wrestler Les Roberts used the name Dingo the Sundowner, the kind of name that looks much worse today due to scientific advances.
• As cruelly amusing as it is to watch the Ultimate Warrior splatter Triple H all over the mat in 90 seconds at WrestleMania XII, given that it made HHH realize he'd need to do everything possible to protect his spot if he ever got high enough on the card that he actually had a spot to protect, it looks more and more like a bad idea.
• The pilot episode of WWE SmackDown featured not only the Blue Blazer but also a match between D'Lo Brown and Droz, which led to Droz's career-ending injury during their rematch several months later on a SmackDown taping.
• On the Raw fallout show to Hell in a Cell 2018, Strowman and Roman Reigns were discussing Reigns's Universal Championship until Baron Corbin announced that a triple-threat match between Strowman, Reigns, and Brock Lesnar would take place at a newly announced event known as Crown Jewel. Strowman, then a heel, dismissed the show, the city, the title, and his opponents, saying all of them suck. Considering the outcome of Crown Jewel itself, which won the 2018 Gooker Award from WrestleCrap by quite the landslide and not without reason, Strowman's words take a new, accidentally prophetic, meaning.
• CHIKARA titling its July 22, 2006 event The Crushing Weight of Mainstream Ignorance became this after the storyline of Princess Kimberlee as CHIKARA Grand Champion, which the promotion billed as the first female wrestler to hold the top title of a not-exclusively-female promotion, never received the mainstream attention the promotion expected.
• Sunny was the Bizarro Miss Elizabeth, since, no matter how popular Liz was, she never overshadowed Randy Savage. While it would have taken an epidemic of blindness for Sunny not to get over, she totally overshadowed the majority of her charges, accidentally laying the groundwork for Sable to eclipse Marc Mero, leading to both of their careers collapsing. The fact that she was given such lame teams during a terrible time for tag team wrestling in WWE didn't help either. The only ones she didn't overshadow were LOD 2000, since they'd been a team for 15 years at that point. So, while she may have been a great Diva, she was not a great manager.
• WCW wrestler Renegade was initially billed as "The man who will bring Hulkamania into the 21st Century." Not only did his push fall apart long before the 21st century, but the man behind the gimmick, Richard Wilson, would never live to see the 21st century; he committed suicide at 33 in 1999, shortly after being fired by WCW.
  • During his burial and after a humiliating loss, Jimmy Hart, in-ring, wiped the face paint from Renegade's face and yelled at him "You’re nothing! You’re not a Renegade! You’re just plain old Rick! A nobody!" Those words become very uncomfortable given the mindset of a suicidal person.
• Hana Kimura's theme music in World Wonder Ring ST★RDOM was Knife Party's "Internet Friends", which includes the line "You blocked me on Facebook, and now you're going to die." In 2020, she committed suicide due to cyberbullying.
• Not long after their debut The Shield became one of the most popular stables in WWE history. Fast forward several years later, and two members of the stable have gone on to be two of the most hated men in pro wrestling, both on-screen & off. ^note  Though more of the latter case for Rollins, smarks hate Reigns for a variety of reasons even his improved heel character can't fix. Oh, and the third member, Dean Ambrose? Left for AEW in 2019.
• At WWE SummerSlam 1989, Demolition (Ax and Smash) and "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan defeated The Twin Towers (The Big Bossman and Akeem) and André the Giant. Before the match began, cameras showed a young audience member holding up a posterboard sign reading "DEMOLITION WILL TOPPLE THE TWIN TOWERS," illustrated with a drawing of two leaning skyscrapers.
  • There is also an old promo where Mean Gene refers to the Twin Towers acts as "continuing their terroristic attacks" and likewise on the same show there is a promo where Hogan and Savage talk about "demolishing the Twin Towers" and making sure "they collapse"
• Part of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's Face–Heel Turn in 2001 included him mistreating his wife and manager, Debra. This happened a little more than a year before Stone Cold was arrested for domestically abusing her.
• CM Punk's IWA M-S "feud" with Matt Sydal and Delirious at one point involved Punk screaming Sydal's maybe girlfriend and Delirious's Translator Buddy Daizee Haze needed a "sammich". While this would lead to Haze getting some humorous retribution on Punk, her entire involvement is less funny when one knows anorexia eventually forced Haze into retirement.
• In 2019, WWE had a Raw Reunion show in which John Cena made light of The Usos' DUI arrest. That same week on Thursday, Jimmy Uso was arrested for DUI.
• It came out in the last episode of the Undertaker: The Last Ride documentary series that the very day before WWE filmed Taker's Boneyard Match against AJ Styles for WrestleMania 36 (a Buried Alive match done in a cinematic style), Mark Callaway's real-life older brother Timothy had passed away (and it happened on Mark's 55th birthday, too!).
  • Long before that in a 1997 backstage segment, the Undertaker visits his kayfabe parents' graves to talk to them; Mark Calaway's real life father died in 2003.
• When MSK (Nash Carter & Wes Lee) the former Rascalz, won their first NXT Tag Team titles it was due to the titles being vacated.^note  As then-champion Danny Burch suffered a shoulder injury that made him unable to defend the belts. Their second reign ended for the same reason.^note  Since Carter had been let go due to "multiple allegations" against him.
• For the Gooker Award induction for "NXT 2.0," Art O'Donnell, while discussing WWE's new policy of only hiring female talent 25 years or younger, notes how Mandy Rose is an exception since she's attractive, which WWE cares about more than age. Mandy would be released from the company the following year due to selling explicit material via a website. ^note  Though to be fair, it's likely WWE knew about this and didn't see it as a problem and only gave her the axe as Mattel essentially intimidated them into it.