Hilarious In Hindsight / Star Wars Legends

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Comic Books

• Dark Empire:
  • One of the fan complaints about Dark Empire has been it being a Reset Button compared to the Timothy Zahn trilogy that shortly preceded it (which, to be fair, it was in several ways—because it was originally written as its own independent sequel to Return of the Jedi, and was partially rewritten and shoehorned in after the Zahn books in the timeline due to Executive Meddling). Much later, the Disney sequels were released, and ended up as basically a Soft Reboot of the original films that erased all of their heroes' achievements in a stroke, taking this up to eleven.
  • Similarly, the Galaxy Gun, which was never a fan favorite, ended up being a more restrained version of Disney's Starkiller Base.
  • The Eclipse was originally intended to be 17 kilometers long, in an era where the Executor was officially claimed to be eight. Some considered this an attempt on the writer's part to one-up the films... then the Executor's length was corrected to 19 kilometers, finally bowing to years of fan scaling, and making the Eclipse a bit shorter (if much beefier) than its film counterpart.
  • Thirteen years before Palpatine uttered "I AM the Senate," and it soared to memetic heights, he goes higher, proclaiming himself to be the Dark Side personified. Twenty eight years later he would proclaim himself to be ALL of the Sith in The Rise of Skywalker.
  • Palpatine in younger form is shown to have red hair. The Phantom Menace also showed him having it before he went gray (both may have been based on actor Ian McDiarmid's natural hair color).
  • The reborn Palpatine, on beating Luke in a lightsaber duel, mocked him by asking whether his Force abilities revealed how many other "so-called" Jedi Masters tried to kill him. In Revenge of the Sith, we see Palpatine took down three easily, match wits with Yoda and win and was only beaten by Mace Windu (which is implied to be a ploy) so Anakin would side with him.
  • The Emperor being brought back from the dead has always been a contentious issue within the Star Wars fandom. On April 12th, 2019, the trailer for Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker was released, and Palpatine is heard laughing at the end of the trailer. This was followed by confirmation that Ian McDiarmid would be returning to his role as Palpatine in the film. And the film proper confirms that his plan involved cloning and spiritual transfer, with the novelization confirming Palpatine to be a clone. The writer of Dark Empire himself, Tom Veitch, has taken these comparisons in good humor, joking that he feels glad to have (paraphrasing) "basically created the plot of a future billion-dollar movie."
• Star Wars (Marvel 1977):
  • Between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, there's a multi-issue plot about a new Imperial superweapon called the Tarkin. The briefing on it includes someone saying "It answers a lot of questions we've been asking ourselves lately. Like for instance, why hasn't the Empire constructed a second battle station like the Death Star that almost destroyed our base on Yavin?"
  • A lot of letters to the editor come off rather funny now that the films are complete. One in particular is from #24 where a complaint is that "Luke and Leia act more like older brother and sister than sweethearts."
  • Han as an adventurer archaeologist, years before Indiana Jones.
  • In Annual 3, the authors have Vader recruiting a young man named Flint who has just found his mother's dead body. (Vader didn't kill her, not directly, and the guy blames the Alliance for bringing the bombing down on them.) And Vader muses aloud that he was once in the same position. It's meant to appear that Vader is lying just to get the guy on his side. But in a twist Marvel had no way of knowing, we now know that he was, in fact, telling the truth. Villains never lie, indeed.
  • This series was the first time Star Wars was adapted to the comic book medium. When the series ended, the rights to publish Star Wars comics transferred to Dark Horse, who would later reprint Marvel Star Wars. Come 2015, the rights have transferred back to Marvel...who is not only reprinting this series again, but is also reprinting Dark Horse's own Star Wars material.
  • Issue 18 of the series was titled "The Empire Strikes." Yeah....
  • The cover of issue 5 shows the Death Star, visible in the sky, firing lasers on the planet's surface without destroying it. This was shown to be possible in Rogue One.
  • Issue 49 is titled The Last Jedi. Mark Hamill even joked on his Twitter account that the comic contained spoilers for the movie.
  • Jaxxon was so disliked by the Star Wars community that a variant cover of the first issue of the new series shows the main cast keeping him from coming through a door. He has been recanonized, thanks to Star Wars Adventures.
  • Speaking of Jaxxon, the idea of an anthropomorphic rodent who pals around with an interstellar criminal was only a few decades away from being popular if Rocket Raccoon is any indication.
  • After Return of the Jedi, the Rebels organize themselves into a government called the "Alliance of Free Planets". Anime fans may do a double-take at the name and wonder if this was a reference to Legend of the Galactic Heroes, given the other anime shout-outs in the comic. But no, it predates that series.^note Later the Alliance of Free Planets was retconned as a provisional one that became the more familiar New Republic.
• Purge: In The Tyrant's Fist, the setting is on a world that still reveres Jedi and holds some ancient history with the group, the capital city is heavily-populated and varied, is home to a rebel cell, and happens to take place when the Empire's focus on the world is at its peak, with end results that include the destruction of property that has to do with the Jedi. Sounds like Jedha from Rogue One.
• Tales of the Jedi: A former Jedi cut off from the force goes to a remote world to spend the rest of his days there for his mistakes; he's found by a very powerful force sensitive girl who wants him to train her. He tries to make her leave him alone but she keeps insisting until he concedes and agrees to train her. Eventually the Jedi dies and become a Force Ghost. You may be thinking in The Last Jedi, but Redemption, the last arc of the comic, did such plot first with Vima Sunrider and Ulic.

Film

• Ewok Adventures:
  • Several critics had complained about the rather straightforward magical powers seen in both movies, which resembled more stereotypical fantasy magic rather than the mystical nature of the Force seen in the main movies. Now, Star Wars Legends has such things as Sith Alchemy and Sith Sorcery...
  • The plot of the second film (an orphan girl going to live with a bearded, long-haired old Jerk with a Heart of Gold hermit) bears a rather hilarious resemblance to the plot of The Last Jedi.
  • Cindel's brother, Mace, was probably named after a certain Jedi master.
• The Holiday Special:
  • Itchy's "Holographic Wow" features a "proton pack". Yep, you might say "bustin' makes him feel good."
  • Han's infamous stretched face in the animated segment became even funnier when, in the Sequel Trilogy, his son was played by the long-faced Adam Driver whom many have described as looking like the animated version.
  • Ackmena's refusals toward Krelman's advances and the shot of him offering the flowers to her can be a bit funnier now that in canon, she's been stated to have a wife, precluding her from being interested in him both by relationship status and likely her orientation as well. We never see how she reacts to this last attempt at wooing her, but it can now be assumed it didn't go well for Krelman.
  • Solo's second trailer featured a shot of Chewie giving a Headbutt of Love to a (presumably) female Wookiee just like he does with Malla at the end of the special. Cue jokesters around the internet questioning whether this means that Malla (and presumably, the rest of his family) is now canon.
  • Some aspects of Boba in the animated segment and even the concept of Life Day were either referenced or made canon in the Disney+ Show The Mandalorian much to the bemusement of most fans.
  • Speaking of The Mandalorian: the scene in the Holiday Special where C-3PO laments that he and R2-D2 aren't actually "alive" can feel a bit tasteless considering their clear humanity and depth of character in the films — but it does oddly foreshadow a scene in the Mandalorian episode "Redemption", where IG-11 acknowledging that he is "not a living thing" results in a much more heartwarming scene.
• In A New Hope, Legends had Keyan Farlander be the character who survived in the Y-Wing during the Battle of Yavin. Disney Canon had Evaan Verlaine be the canonical Gold Squadron survivor around 2016. Just before that in 2015, Disney introduced a variant of the Y-Wing that was a two-seater meaning both stories could be Canon. Star Wars: Battlefront II also had the Y-Wing as a two-seater.

Infinities

• The Star Wars:
  • "The Force of Others" name in this canon became less distinct from the main canon in this What If? story when the quote was directly referenced as an ode to old Star Wars lore in the canon film Rogue One.
  • Same with the use of the Jedi-Bendu name, now that Star Wars Rebels has introduced a Force-sensitive being named the Bendu.
  • Likewise, the name of the Knights of Sith can't help but make one draw parallels to the Knights of Ren, and Prince Valorum to Kylo Ren. And to say nothing about how the Starkiller name was reused for the First Order's Starkiller Base (though both the Base and this story were nowhere near the first entries in the vast Star Wars multiverse of stories to use the name).
• Tag and Bink:
  • Buzz Lightyear's and the Finding Nemo cast's Lawyer-Friendly Cameos in "Revenge of the Clone Menace" comes off as a lot less legally risky now that Disney bought Lucasfilm.
  • When the disguised Tag and Bink find out Darth Vader has a son, they wonder "What kinda crazy chick would hook up with that guy?". In the prequel, it turns out they coached Anakin on wooing Padmé on Naboo.

Literature

• Allegiance: Leia prepares herself by "taking deep, steadying breaths the way her father had taught her." Of course she means Bail, but you can't hear of Leia's father and breathing in the same sentence without Vader Breath coming to mind.
• Black Fleet Crisis: The Yevetha, with their intense xenophobia and love of pain and bloody deaths, have their similarities to the Yuuzhan Vong. Later the Yuuzhan Vong exterminate them in an unseen invasion in exchange for one group of planets the Yevetha threatened during the war capitulating without a fight.
• The Callista Trilogy: The title Planet of Twilight for an obvious vampire-novel pastiche.
• The Courtship of Princess Leia: Teneniel Djo and Isolder are attracted to Luke and Leia respectively. In later books, they had a daughter named Tenel Ka, who fell in love with Leia's son Jacen. She had a daughter with him as well.
• Dark Lord—The Rise of Darth Vader:
  • A minor character asks Shryne what will happen to the Force now that the Jedi are extinct. Shryne says he's not sure, but perhaps it will go into hibernation. This calls to mind the Disney canon The Force Awakens, although as a Legends book written years before the Sequel Trilogy was even greenlit, this has no connection to that film.
  • A plot point through the book is Bail Organa and Mon Mothma disagreeing over how to act, with Bail advising the long game while Mon wants to fight now. Flash-forward to Disney's Star Wars productions, where Mon Mothma is far more conservative and cautious in her approach, and gets frequently criticized for it by various characters.
• Darth Bane: There's a fan theory about the end of Dynasty of Evil that Darth Bane's attempt to pull a Grand Theft Me on Darth Zannah at the end of their duel succeeded,^note Drew Karpyshyn wrote on his blog that Bane failed, but the final result was taken as more of an Ambiguous Situation than he meant. n light of part of The Rise of Skywalker: Undead Sewer Zombie Palpatine tells Rey flat-out that if/when she strikes him down in anger, he'll pull a Grand Theft Me on her.
• Darth Plagueis:
  • In 2011, Jake Lloyd claimed there was originally a six hour rough cut of The Phantom Menace which was supposedly excellent. Many have disputed this claim, among other reasons because the basic story of the film simply doesn't seem able to justify a trilogy worth of screentime. However, this became suddenly funny after the release of Darth Plagueis and the revelation that its author obtained permission to expand the novel's events into the story of The Phantom Menace.
  • The fact that Palpatine refuses to go by his first name is much more amusing in light of the bemused reactions many fans had to learning that his Canon first name is Sheev.
• Death Troopers: The Death Troopers introduced in Rogue One are explained in a visual guide as more or less the successors to the ones here, who are simply mentioned as part of a secret imperial project. The reference would eventually come full-circle in the Season 1 finale of Ahsoka, which not only featured undead Stormtroopers reanimated by Nightsister magic, but also undead versions of the canon Death Troopers.
• The Glove of Darth Vader:
  • Ken and Han briefly talk about a famous Corellian pilot named Snoke Loroan who apparently mysteriously "died" during the Battle of Endor... where Palpatine died and left the Empire leaderless. Looks like we finally discovered Snoke's backstory!
  • One of the big reveals is that Ken is Emperor Palpatine's grandson, and is the reason the books fell into Canon Discontinuity. In The Rise of Skywalker, it's canon that Rey is Palpatine's granddaughter.
• Hand of Thrawn:
  • As is mentioned elsewhere, the image on Vision of the Future's cover can't be Thrawn, because his species' eyes are monochromatic red. Fast-forward to the new design for Chiss eyes in Rebels◊.
  • At several points through the books (and later on in Survivor's Quest), Imperial (or ex-Imps) talk about how the Empire at least brought about order and stability. The prequel movies were a ways off when they came out, but in hindsight it makes the characters look even more foolish given their beloved Emperor caused all the damn instability in the first place. Even more so now with canon movies and shows like Rogue One, Andor and The Mandalorian showing the Empire as a dysfunctional, sadistic fascist regime.
  • Similarly, Leia mentions early on that Bail Organa got tipped off that Palpatine was up to no good when the Camaas Incident occurred. As opposed to the gradual erosion of civil liberties, killing all the Jedi or, say, declaring himself the kriffin' emperor, all of which the prequel trilogy shows Bail was a witness to, and were probably a much bigger tip-off.
• The Han Solo Adventures:
  • Han Solo at Star's End features the following exchange, which was reasonably snappy when the book was first released back in 1979, but after the 1997 Special Edition's release and a certain edit to the Greedo and Han confrontation...
    Rekkon: "Kindly put your weapons up, Captain. That is Torm, one of my group. Even if it weren't, would it not have been wiser to find out what was happening before preparing to shoot?"
    Han: "I happen to like to shoot first, Rekkon. As opposed to shooting second."
  • In Han Solo and the Lost Legacy, "Trooper" Badure mentions that Gallandro fought against an Assassins Guild years before Discworld and the Marvel Comics introduced more prominent groups with that name.
• Jedi Apprentice:
  • Siri Tachi's name became a bit funny after Apple named the iPhone's personal assistant program "Siri". And with Microsoft calling their Windows Phone's personal assistant program "Cortana", we now have two talking smartphone applications named after science-fiction characters.
  • The entire series begins with Qui-Gon Jinn being reluctant to take on Obi-Wan as his padawan due to his failure with his previous padawan Xanatos, similar to how in The Last Jedi Luke was reluctant to train Rey due to his failure with Kylo Ren.
• In the book The Jedi Path, Yoda's handwriting looks like the Disney type-face.
• Junior Jedi Knights:
  • Anakin Solo and Tahiri are mentored by Ikrit, a Jedi Master who resembles a small four-legged long-eared cat-like creature that they initially mistake for an injured animal before he reveals himself to Anakin. The first book came out in 1995; Puella Magi Madoka Magica wouldn't come out for another 17 years. And Ikrit later reveals he nearly turned to the dark side, too!
  • Tahiri introduces herself while complaining about how rough and uncomfortable sand is, seven years before Anakin Skywalker’s infamous rant about sand in Attack of the Clones.
• Legacy of the Force: When she "left" Del Rey (rumors are that she was actually let go because of her being difficult to work with, as Troy Denning and Aaron Allston have mentioned), Karen Traviss claimed that if she came back, she'd reboot the universe in order to undo The Clone Wars interpretation of the Mandalorians, as if she actually would have had the authority to do so. Several years later, Disney officially rebooted the EU, and The Clone Wars along with its interpretation of the Mandalorians was one of the only things that stayed canon.
• Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor:
  • Luke tells Geptun that he's not into Aeona because "redheads aren't my type." While this was Dramatic Irony at the time (Mara Jade, Luke's future wife, is very much an abrasive redhead, as is his son), it becomes even more so when Luke's great-grandchildren are introduced. And sure enough, Kol Skywalker is a fiery redhead. Here's the actual line:
    Luke: And then there's Aeona Cantor. She's not my love interest. She's Nick's girlfriend, and that's the whole story. Anyway, she's not my type. Too abrasive. And I don't like redheads.
  • The plot of "Revenge of the Jedi" sounds an awful lot like that of Darths & Droids.
• New Jedi Order: In the second book, Corran manages to end a fight with an Elite Mook by activating his lightsaber in such a way it goes through the guy's eye, just as Kylo Ren would in The Last Jedi.
• The New Rebellion: At one point when being held prisoner, C-3PO tells his captors he's never had a memory wipe before. The ending of Revenge of the Sith however, shows that that's not true at all. Of course, 3PO likely wouldn't remember it.
• Republic Commando Series: At one point, Kal notes that Uthan's dyed hair wouldn't last in combat and implies he looks down on it for being un-Mandalorian, since fashion and self-aesthetic isn't a focus in Mandalorian culture. Come Sabine, and no Mandalorians have any problem with her.
  • However, this is entirely in keeping with the canon Mandalorian habit of fighting one another over their interpretation of what's "truly" Mandalorian.
  • Imperial Commando: 501st describes the new armor that the Imperial clone commandos are issued as being entirely different than their old Katarn class kit, meanwhile the cover shows them wearing armor that’s largely the same but with a more rounded visor like what the regular clones had towards the end of the war. Come Star Wars: The Bad Batch debut in 2021 and Crosshair is shown clad in armor that is vastly different from the old Katarn class after the rise of the Empire. Incidentally, Hunter’s armor actually looks more like the image on the cover of the book.
• Revenge of the Sith: Obi-Wan and Yoda sneak towards the Jedi Temple by having Obi-Wan pretend to be a weird homeless man and Yoda a "Jedi baby," 14 years before The Mandalorian introduced an infant of Yoda's species.
• Rogue Planet:
  • At one point, Obi-Wan's internal monologue makes the odd statement that he likes space travel, since prior to this the films had made no solid position on how he felt on the matter. This was two years before Attack of the Clones establishes that Obi-Wan actually hates it.
  • The agent of the defunct Trade Federation sent to investigate Zonama Sekot is named Captain Kett. Not the last time that name will be associated with a story involving aliens from another galaxy.
• Shadows of the Empire
  • At one point, Vader compares getting enough evidence to act against Prince Xizor to getting enough grains of sand to bury him. This was of course well before it was established he hates sand.
• Splinter of the Mind's Eye:
  • At one point, Vader's lightsaber is described as blue.
  • Han and Chewie are absent from this book, as Harrison Ford was not guaranteed to return for a sequel (the novel was written to be adapted into a low-budget sequel). 40 years later Solo would feature only Han and Chewie—and no other characters from the original film—on Mimban. For added irony, neither one is played by the same actor as in A New Hope.
  • This book was written very shortly after A New Hope and naturally Allan Dean Foster didn't know what was to come, so his Luke and Leia are intensely into each other, with a constant Will They or Won't They?. Foster wouldn't commit to them actually hooking up, thankfully, so instead there keep being moments.
  The Princess caught him with a hand, her weight halting his slide. Now Luke rolled clear, came to a panting stop on her chest. For a long moment they lay like that, suspended in time. Then their eyes met with a gaze that could have penetrated light-years.
  • Vader also hadn't come to be regarded as quite so intimidating as he was later. In the final confrontation at the end of the book, he's not stopped by the twins managing to cut off his arm. No, he's stopped when he trips on his own severed arm and falls into a pit.
• Tales from Jabba's Palace: As of June 2020 it has been confirmed that Temuera Morrison will be portraying Boba Fett in Season 2 of The Mandalorian; it looks like Legends continuity had at least that element (Fett's survival and escape from the Sarlacc) correct.
• Tales of the Bounty Hunters: While Attack of the Clones may have retconned most of Boba Fett's backstory as given in "The Last One Standing," it does end up proving one minor throwaway line correct: At one point, Fett mentions not falling for the trick Han Solo used on the Imperial Navy by hiding amongst their garbage because he'd "been fooled by the trick before, once." Attack of the Clones has Fett and his father being fooled by Obi-Wan Kenobi performing a similar trick to the one Han pulled.
• The Thrawn Trilogy:
  • Offical artwork of Jorus C'Baoth (especially this one) ended up looking like Old Luke.
  • Luuke being an insane clone of Luke Skywalker becomes especially ironic when one remembers that Luke Skywalker's film actor, Mark Hamill, ends up voicing The Joker, who is an incredibly insane supervillain.
  • Han musing that Thrawn might try and build another Death Star if he can get the resources together becomes this in Hand of Thrawn, where Zahn through just about every character expresses complete distaste for Awesome, but Impractical superweapons, and states that Thrawn never had any interest in them, nor did he need them... Thrawn himself was the superweapon. It also continues in the Disney Canon with Star Wars Rebels and Thrawn: Treason with Thrawn himself opposing the development of the Death Star, instead preferring his own TIE defenders and butting heads with Krennic in the process
  • Mara's utter horror upon learning that Thrawn is using clones in his Imperial military, and her resolution that he has to be stopped from unleashing a new round of Clone Wars on the galaxy, is a bit less horrific and a bit more amusing now that we know her respected and beloved Emperor Palpatine was entirely and pretty much solely responsible for the first round of Clone Wars.
  • Before the invention of Internet memes, there were two points in this trilogy where Admiral Ackbar brings up traps. In the first book, when told that smugglers suspect that alliance with the New Republic is a trap, he says "Because of me, no doubt." Later he says "It appears to be a trap."
• X-Wing Series:
  • Ton Phanan is a bitter, disabled medic with a misanthropic attitude. Face is a charming, attractive young man who happens to be Phanan's best friend since he's the only one that can tolerate his behavior and overlook his fault. Essentially, Phanan and Face are House In Space.
  • And years before Ric Olié's "Coruscant. The whole planet is one big city", newbie Tatooine pilot Gavin Darklighter has a Narm Charm moment.
    "It's just a city, the whole thing, one big, huge, really big city. It's all city."
• Young Jedi Knights: Jacen's status as the comic relief may be Harsher in Hindsight given his ultimate fate but his fondness for garbage puns becomes even funnier when Darth Vader himself made one. Seems evil isn't the only thing In the Blood for the Skywalker family.
• The Diplomatic Corps Entrance Exam quiz book has a lot of multiple choice questions about the movies and early books. One question asks who Luke’s true love was. The book’s correct answer was Callista, whose arc was ongoing when the book came out. But another answer choice on the list is the eventual correct answer, Mara Jade.

Miscellaneous

• Darth Millennial, originally just another Sith name, became hilarious with the birth of the term "millennials" (and the associated stereotypes and jokes) for the generation reaching young adulthood in the turn of the millennium. Even funnier with the release of the sequel movies and their 30ish-year-old Darth Vader Expy.

Radio

• Radio Dramas:
  • The entry under Fantastic Racism is made this in light of Episode 3's Call-Forward, where Chewie fought alongside a Jedi Master. Of course, Luke didn't know that at the time, not that said master would be his instructor in Empire.
  • In a scene only hinted at in the original Star Wars film, the radio drama actually depicts Darth Vader's attempt to convince Leia to give up the location of the Rebel base. His first tactic is to use a combination of drugs and the Force to try to confuse her into thinking she's supposed to give him the information, and as part of this persuasion, he tells her, "Your father orders you to tell us [where the base is]." Well, he's not exactly wrong...^note The A New Hope radio drama was released two years before Return of the Jedi premiered, so it's almost certainly completely unintentional, which just makes it funnier.
  • When John Lithgow was a guest on Graham Norton's show, he told the story of how he ended up being cast as Yoda for the the adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back; Frank Oz was the producers' first choice for the role, but Oz declined, saying he did not want to perform Yoda's voice without performing the puppet as well. Two decades later, Oz ended up doing exactly that after the decision was made to have Yoda be a CG character for Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

Ride

• Star Tours:
  • Disney would go on to own the Star Wars franchise in its entirety upon their acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012.
  • Before the Retool replaced him with C-3PO, Clone Wars fans no doubt got a lot of laughs out of the meek, inexperienced droid pilot being named Captain Rex.
    • Also, after the Retool, Captain Rex can be seen during the Queue with a "Defective" tag attached to him.
  • The Hoth segment has the Starspeeder come to a screeching halt on the edge of an icy cliff, almost exactly the same way in which the Millennium Falcon would land on Starkiller Base.
  • C-3PO wonders in the original ride's queue why he can't go on the Endor tour, claiming he would be of great assistance as an interpreter. In The Adventure Continues, C-3PO ends up on the tour... as the horribly unlucky pilot. Like Rex, he ends up completely overshooting Endor and running into a new Death Star, although instead of being caught in an ice comet, the ship lands in the oceans of Kef Bir — with the remains of an old Death Star.
  • Book of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian feature numerous cameos of RX-series droids similar to Captain Rex. Many of them are working for a passenger starline.

Video Games

• Battlefront II:
  • Darth Maul appeared as a Hero for the Separatists despite dying in The Phantom Menace, over a decade before the Clone Wars even began. However, it was later revealed that he survived in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, albeit as an enemy to both sides of the war.
  • One of Han Solo's lines after he falls in battle is "I'm getting too old for this". Not only did this game come out just a few years before Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but in The Force Awakens set thirty years later, he's a Cool Old Guy who can still handle himself in a fight despite his age.
  • Clone troopers sometimes refer to General Grievous as "Major Malevolent". In Star Wars: The Clone Wars' first season, Grievous commands a battleship named Malevolence.
• Battlefront: Elite Squadron has gameplay elements where you win by not only capturing command posts on the ground, but also by boarding the enemy's capital ship and destroying it from the inside. In other words, it was basically Capital Supremacy a full decade before Capital Supremacy was a thing.
• Dark Forces Saga:
  • The very first level of 1995's Dark Forces (stealing the Death Star plans) is this due to Rogue One almost being a Spiritual Adaptation of that level. The difference of course is that Kyle Katarn makes it out alive and triumphant while Jyn Erso...doesn't.
  • Kyle Katarn was considered the biggest badass in Star Wars lore. Then Revan came along. Both would be voiced by Rino Romano and then Jeff Bennett.
  • In Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II (1997), we are introduced to Maw, a Dark Jedi who survived being cut in half using his hate. In The Phantom Menace (1999), we are introduced to (the somewhat similarly-named) Darth Maul, who supposedly died from getting cut in half. However, The Clone Wars Season 4 (2012) reveals that Darth Maul survived his bisection for the very same reasons Maw survived his, though unlike Maw (who had his legs replaced with a sort of floating chair) Maul had prosthetics.
  • Jerec's plan to utilize power from the spirits of dead Jedi is remarkably similar to Palpatine's claim that he has all the power of the Sith in The Rise of Skywalker. And Rey ends up using the combined powers of all the Jedi to defeat him.
  • At the end of Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Jan Ors mentions that Lando Calrissian owes her some credits over a bet. Over a decade later, Vanessa Marshall (Jan's voice actress from that game) voices Hera Syndulla in Star Wars Rebels, said character meets Lando late in the first season and their first meeting ends with Lando owing Hera money.
  • A major character played by an Asian woman. Many forget that Jan Ors beat The Last Jedi to the punch by a full two decades.
  • The name "Jan Ors" is quite similar to the name "Jyn Erso".
  • Kyle's signature Bryar Pistol would show up in Andor as the title character's preferred weapon.
• Demolition: The game is set in the original trilogy era but featured Darth Maul as a secret character, likely to promote Episode 1. And then Star Wars Rebels revealed that Maul survived, and lasted well into the age of the Empire.
• Empire at War: One of the few original planets introduced in that game is an ice planet called Polus. Over a decade later, Among Us would feature a level on an ice planet with the exact same name.
• The Force Unleashed:
  • One of the DLC packs that came with the second game was a "Maulkiller" skin. Around two years later, Sam Witwer is voicing a Not Quite Dead Darth Maul in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The "Animated Starkiller" skin from the first game can count as well, putting him in the style of the Clone Wars series
  • In the Imperial Raxus Prime level in the first game, where Starkiller fights PROXY as Maul. He's fighting himself, from a certain point of view.
  • As his final act in the series, Darth Maul gets his take on the Rogue One hallway scene. But instead of his lightsaber, he opts for - in true Starkiller fashion - ripping panels off the walls and launching them at the soldiers in his way, or holding them and pulling them into environmental hazards.
  • The release of the first game was delayed to where it was sandwiched between the premiere of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars feature film and the premiere of Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series on Cartoon Network. Both TFU and TCW have apprentices to Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader who wield lightsabers with the reverse-grip. This also happened with the second game: Starkiller (or rather, a clone of him) uses two lightsabers in the second game, while Ahsoka Tano also wields dual sabers (though the second one is shorter) as of the Season 3 episode "Heroes On Both Sides", which premiered a month after the release of TFU II.
  • With the release of Rogue One, both the main and Legends canon now have a man named Galen who was a critical part of the Rebel Alliance, and ended up dying for the cause.
  • Rahm Kota spends a lot of the second game trying to convince Galen that you can't clone a Jedi. His only appearance outside of the Force Unleashed series was in Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron, in which the main character and the main villain are both clones of a Jedi. He never bothers to argue the point with them.
  • Juno, who's named after a Roman goddess, is an Ace Pilot who files a starship named Rogue Shadow, is very active during the early days of the Rebellion, and falls in love with a force user who's a survivor of Palpatine's Great Jedi Purge who dies in a Heroic Sacrifice to allow his allies to escape. Fast-forward to Star Wars Rebels, and we have Hera, who's named after a goddess who's Juno's Greek counterpart, is also an Ace Pilot who flies a starship named Ghost which has a similar Theme Naming to the Rogue Shadow, is also very active during the early days of the Rebellion, and also falls in love with a force user who's a survivor of Palpatine's Great Jedi Purge who dies in a Heroic Sacrifice to allow his allies to escape. For bonus points, both works contain a major character who's a Jedi who goes blind fighting a dark force user: Rahm Kota and Kanan Jarrus and featuring Sam Witwer voicing major characters.
• Galactic Battlegrounds: The Wookiees are a playable faction, and this game was made before 2005.
• Kinect Star Wars and Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike had a Death Star disco ball. Five years later, it's become a real thing.
• Knights of the Old Republic:
  • Regarding Carth Onasi:
    • Considering how much of Carth's dialogue boils down to "You are picking the Light Side option here, right?!", the casting of his actor as Jiminy Cricket is an unintentional joke.
    • Carth's implied Force sensitivity turns into this when you realize his successor (in terms of party mechanics and voice actor) is Kaiden Alenko, whose psionics are very overt.
    • Speaking of Mass Effect, him being the love interest for the female character and Bastila being the love interest for the male one can be quite amusing when you realize that their respective voice actors, Raphael Sbarge and Jennifer Hale, later on played Kaiden and female Commander Shepard who can be love interests to each other.
  • If you're playing this after you played Star Wars: The Old Republic, then there's the added voice casting gag of Jolee and Bastila's voice actors playing Amicable Exes Jace Malcolm and Satele Shan.
  • Mission's stalwart sticking up for the Player Character after The Reveal and willful blindness to a Dark Side player's actions are a little darkly funny, given that her Expy in the sequel ends up as a companion and possible love interest to the Sith Warrior.
  • There's some points where Canderous can bring up his low opinion of Echani weapons and techniques, considering them too delicate and light to be effective. Come the sequel and the Handmaiden? He's probably going to eat those words.
  • Darth Malak dies as a villain but can have a moment of repentance in his last moments depending on the PC's dialogue choices. This was also done with Kylo Ren in Colin Trevorrow's unproduced story treatment for Episode IX, Duel of the Fates.
  • After watching Avatar: The Last Airbender, Darth Malak resembles an older and evil version of Aang (with no jaw of course).
  • The fact that one of Jolee's acquaintances from his backstory is named Andor Vex.
• Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords:
  • At one point in the game, the player must assign three party members to investigate a nearby Sith temple, while he/she gets involved in a civil war on another nearby planet. Both missions take place at the same time, and yet both teams have access to a shared inventory, meaning if you deselect one of the weapons your second party in the Sith Temple is using, your Player Character can use it on the other planet. In the context of the game, this is Gameplay and Story Segregation... until you watch The Rise of Skywalker and see objects transferred across literal lightyears through Rey and Kylo Ren’s Force Dyad. This literally includes a lightsaber after the latter’s Heel–Face Turn when he has to fight the Knights of Ren.
  • The Y’Toub System is frequently mentioned throughout this game... which was released in 2004. One year after this, YouTube launched and has become a global phenomenon ever since, dramatically impacting media and culture on a scale that arguably no other website has. This inevitably means that references to Y’Toub in this game sound funny to anyone playing it after the year that it came out, since it sounds like Star Wars blatantly ripped off a popular website even though the website didn’t exist yet.
  • One of the available companions is the ruling Mandalore of the day, who wears silver armor and helmet that the player can’t remove, and his identity is treated as a big reveal, though it’s a Captain Obvious Reveal to anyone who played the first game. Come The Mandalorian, and we have a protagonist who’s clad head to toe in pure beskar armor, which has a shiny silver look, he doesn’t often remove his helmet, his real name was a major reveal at the end of the first season, and by the end of season two he’s won the Darksaber, which has the same cultural significance as Mandalore’s mask back in the day, in ritual combat, making him the new Mandalore.
• Masters of Teräs Käsi:
  • One of Leia's outfits in this game gives her brown clothing, her hair tied up, and a staff that she uses as a weapon, which makes her look remarkably similar to Rey. Her haircut actually looks even more similar to Qi'ra, who is a confirmed practitioner of Teräs Käsi and even namedrops it during the movie.
  • Word of God confirms that Tekken was one of the main influences behind the game. Eleven years later, Darth Vader, Yoda, and Starkiller would all appear in Tekken's sister franchise, Soulcalibur.
• Episode I: Obi-Wan's Adventure, based on The Phantom Menace, allowed you to use a blaster as Obi-Wan. This Game Boy Color game was released in 2000, 5 years before we saw Obi-Wan using a blaster to defeat General Grievous in Revenge of the Sith.
• The Old Republic:
  • During the Black Talon flashpoint, Grand Moff Kilran essentially uses the Imperial player character(s) to do his dirty work. At the end, you have the option to say that there won't be a next time. This turns out to be true and they never see him again, as he is the final boss of the Maelstrom Prison flashpoint on the Republic side and is defeated once and for all there.
  • The Trooper storyline briefly features a dark-skinned private named Finn.
  • In the Smuggler storyline, Syreena says that Skavak could "charm the armor off a Mandalorian". It is possible for the Smuggler to do exactly that if he is male and romances his Mandalorian companion, Akaavi Spar.
    Akaavi Spar: "You will be the first outsider to be this close to me without my armor."
  • Syreena's line is even funnier after the release of The Mandalorian. Skavak must be really, really charming.
  • In the Inquisitor storyline, the Inquisitor can demand gifts from a group of cultists, specifically saying that they want to "wear robes of solid gold."
  • Similar to the Darth Malak example above, the entire Zakuul Royal Family evokes pretty much the Fire Nation Royal Family. You have a royal prince with a scarred face who starts out a villain but eventually pulls a Heel–Face Turn and joins the heroes (Arcann/Zuko), his evilier Manipulative Bitch sister who's also a Tragic Villain thanks to her upbringing (Vaylin/Azula), their abusive Evil Overlord father who aspires to conquer over everything (Ozai/Valkorion), and their absent mother (Senya/Ursa).
  • The Outlander gets a lightsaber through the gut from Arcann in an early chapter of Knights of the Fallen Empire, and Koth comments when they make it back to the Gravestone that he's never heard of anyone surviving such a thing before. This became hilarious when the Disney+ series showed several characters bouncing back from such an injury.
• Shadows of the Empire
  • A working title for The Force Awakens was Shadow of the Empire, but it was changed to avoid confusion with the preceding works.
  • Nintendo's Star Fox series, which takes much inspiration from Star Wars, received its fourth installment, Star Fox Assault in 2005, 9 years after Shadows of the Empire. Similar to Shadows, the game features both flight and on-foot gameplay. Also like Shadows, the latter was criticized for having sloppy control and generally considered to be a Scrappy Mechanic in contrast to the more traditional Arwing gameplay.
• Star Wars Chess:
  • Yoda defeats the Emperor by catching and throwing his lightning back at him.
  • In a demonstration of "size matters not", Yoda soundly dispatches an AT-ST much as he did to numerous Separatist vehicles.
  • This game included Yoda fighting Palpatine long before we got to see them fight on the big screen in 2005, however the game didn't have them using lightsabers as this was years before we saw either for them using one.
  • Additionally in said capture animation for the Alliance, Yoda defeats the Emperor by redirecting his Sith lightning back at him. While her method didn't involve Force telekinesis, redirecting Palpy's lightning back at him is how Rey ends up finishing him off.
  • Boba Fett also uses his jetpack as a flamethrower in this game. This was before we saw his father use a flamethrower in Attack of the Clones.
• Super Star Wars:
  • The Sarlacc Pit Monster more or less resembles its appearance in Return of the Jedi: Special Edition.
  • Luke's Double Jump/Spin Attack resembles Yoda's iconic Combat Parkour from Attack of the Clones-onward. Bonus points for Luke's Lightsaber being green in the third game.
  • Palpatine's agility during his boss battle would later be featured in Revenge of the Sith, most notably with the Sheev Spin.
  • Palpatine's face appears during the credits of Return of the Jedi. Rise of Skywalker would show that Palpatine indeed cheated death on the second Death Star.
  • The Mandalorian depicts an actual assault on a Jawa sandcrawler not unlike one of the earlier levels in the first game.
• TIE Fighter:
  • The seventh campaign culminates with Stele and Vader having to save an abducted Emperor Palpatine. Revenge of the Sith begins with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker (the future Vader) having to save the abducted Chancellor (eventually Emperor) Palpatine, so you can imagine Vader thinking "Not again..." during the last mission.
  • In the expansion, the traitor admiral equips his standard TIE fighters with shields. In the sequel trilogy, guess what the First Order's TIEs carry as standard?
  • Supplementary material mentions that the player character of that game was given a code phrase to use whenever he wanted to speak in private with a specific superior officer. That phrase was "There's a fog over Celadon City," years before Pokémon Red and Blue existed.

Web Animation

• In the LEGO Star Wars short "Bombad Bounty", Boba Fett is burped out by the Sarlacc in a comedic manner after being thrown into the Sarlacc Pit during the events of Return of the Jedi. Turns out he did indeed escape from the Sarlacc.

Western Animation

• Clone Wars:
  • The natives of Nelvaan are blue, cat-like tribal aliens, similar to the aliens found in a popular movie released in 2009.
  • Considering how the internet has turned Shaggy Rogers into a Memetic Badass with every powerup ever, seeing General Grievous (a former Memetic Badass now later a Memetic Loser himself) kill his Jedi expy Sha'a Gi without even trying can warrant a huge laugh.
• Droids:
  • Boba Fett is already the galaxy's most feared Bounty Hunter and sounds like an adult, despite the fact that he's no more than sixteen. Mind you, he was already quite good at his job in The Clone Wars, when he'd be even younger....
  • Going by the same movie, R2-D2's fear of heights seems rather ridiculous after the revelation that he can fly.
  • One of the show's villains is named Kybo Ren. This is mysteriously close to Kylo Ren, one of the villains from The Force Awakens. Bonus points for having TIE fighters with red and black colour schemes.
  • ABC didn't like Lucasfilm's original pitch for the show, claiming that it was too Star-Wars-y. Cut to present day, when both Lucasfilm and ABC are owned by the Walt Disney Corporation, resulting in the first episodes of the very Star Wars-y Star Wars Rebels and The Mandalorian airing on ABC in primetime, as special promotions!
• Ewoks: This is also not the last time where someone, a member of the Galactic Empire is faced with treason. And one comic that Endor has an underwater kingdom which is later reveals that there is a moon that has ocean waves and Death Star Ruins.
• LEGO Star Wars: Droid Tales: The series begins with the reveal that R2-D2 has a backup of C-3PO's memories. Turns out it's actually canon.

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