YMMV / Gridiron Heights

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The Raiders rap from Season 1 in which they emerge onto the scene as contenders. Not only did the actual team's success not last beyond that season (and even the season was largely lost after Derek Carr broke his leg in Week 16), many of the players featured in the rap were traded to other teams during the Raiders' ensuing rebuild.
  • In the end tagline for the 1917 parody, one of the rules of Matt Rhule listed "Trust Joe Brady". A year later, Brady would be fired after the Panthers collapsed due to horrific quarterback play from a regressed Sam Darnold, PJ Walker, and Cam Newton. Furthermore, less than two years after the short aired, Rhule himself was fired after a woeful 1-4 start.
  • In the Taken parody in Season 3, which ran concurrent with the 2018 NFL season, Andrew Luck references skills he's acquired over "almost half a career". The following offseason, Luck's career came to an end when he abruptly retired from the NFL, saying that all the injuries he'd sustained had killed his desire to continue playing.
  • The Hardwood Hills episode of Gridiron Heights portrays Deshaun Watson as a sympathetic character for the mess that is the Texans situation. It was later revealed that Watson was named in multiple sexual harassment complaints brought forth by Houston area masseuses. As a result, Watson was all but written out of the show for the 2021 season, with a cackling Brownie the Elf ("That Creep on the Browns") serving as a placeholder character for him in 2022.
  • In the 2019 Wild Card episode, the Houston Texans' table has a sign reading "reserved every year for Texans". Following that season, the seemingly up-and-coming Texans would end up unraveling completely, and it would be four years before they got their next shot at the postseason.
  • In the "Far From Home" episode, Mahomes says that he bets Garoppolo "never hurts his knee and misses games". While it was originally meant as a joke in reference to the pair's past injury history — specifically, Garoppolo's 2018 season-ending ACL tear vs. Mahomes's 2019 patella injury which only cost him two games — it turned out to have resonance with future events as well, as Garoppolo would turn out to be notoriously injury-prone, and his career was largely derailed due to his inability to stay on the field.
  • The Season 6 premiere has Kanye West suggest to the players fighting over the burn book "Maybe we should all just get along" before he’s chased off by Jerry Jones and Roger Goodell. A year later, Kanye would come under fire for repeated and escalated instances of antisemitic behavior (including but not limited to befriending white supremacist Nick Fuentes and praising Adolf Hitler).
  • In a case of particularly unfortunate timing, Episode 3 of Season 6 ends with Jon Gruden being revealed as "The Taunter", then flying off into the night before being struck by lightning. Later that week, emails leaked that revealed Gruden regularly used racist, misogynist, and homophobic language when communicating with his colleagues, forcing him to resign from coaching a few days later.
  • In the 2022 Draft Day special post-credit scene, Tom Brady is shown speeding back to Gridiron Heights yelling "I choose you over my children, Gridiron Heights!" Just a few months later, Brady divorced Gisele Bündchen.
  • The Season 7 quarter-season carnival episode depicted Lamar Jackson as being put upon and disrespected, as he's being denied a "prize" — an obvious metaphor for a contract — because he supposedly hasn't done enough to earn one, despite the fact that other people who've done less are already getting them. It later came out that the Ravens had offered Jackson a lucrative contract, but Jackson had refused to take it in favor of holding out for something even better, painting a rather different picture of the dispute than the one the episode suggests. (Also crosses into Hilarious in Hindsight territory as one of the things Jackson cites is the reward given to the "creep on the Browns"; Deshaun Watson's Browns contract was stated to be one of the major sticking points in Jackson's negotiations.)
  • The The Hangover parody episode makes a point to highlight that Matthew Stafford doesn’t know what Allen Robinson looks like, even confusing Cooper Kupp for him. Less than a year later, a report out of training camp revealed Stafford had difficulty connecting to the younger players on the Rams, to the point where he requested a picture book so he could identify each of his teammates.
  • In a case of a particularly remarkable coincidence, the Season 8 premiere includes Patrick Mahomes making a comment about something being wrong with Travis Kelce's knee during a skirmish with the Lions. While it was seemingly intended as a reference to Lions coach Dan Campbell's famous "biting kneecaps" remark, Kelce would end up minorly injuring his knee in practice two days before the season opener — the same day the episode aired.^note Technically, the news of Kelce's injury actually broke a couple of hours before the episode officially aired, but given that Bleacher Report pre-schedules their releases, the episode would have had to have been completed long before that.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In Season 4's "Wentz Helps Foles Get His 'Big Nick Energy' Back", Andy Dalton appears at the end behind Nick Foles and Cam Newton saying "yeah, we're all gonna start again". Intended as bleak humor based on Dalton's dire straits on the Bengals at the time, the next four seasons would actually see Dalton getting numerous starting opportunities with the Cowboys, Bears and Saints (ironically passing Foles himself on the depth chart in Chicago).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The first line in the very first episode has Roger Goodell tell Ezekiel Elliott "God, I can't wait to suspend you." The next season, Elliott would be suspended by the NFL in a long, controversial affair.
  • In the Season 1 Halloween episode, Tom Brady tells Carson Wentz (and Dak Prescott, but Wentz is the relevant one here) that the ring pops he's giving out are "the only ring you'll get while I'm still in the league." In the 2017 season, Wentz got a Super Bowl ring when his Eagles defeated Brady's Patriots in Super Bowl LII (though he wasn't able to actually play in the big game due to injury, he still got a ring as a key member of the team).
  • In Episode 19 of the first season, no one knows who Travis Kelce is when he enters the Offseason Lounge. Just a few years later, Kelce would go on to become one of the league's biggest stars, setting tight end receiving records as a target of Patrick Mahomes.
  • In 2017's episode, "Tom Brady is an American Psycho", Brady proclaims that "Gisele was wrong: one day I will throw and catch the ball." In 2020 Week 11's MNF matchup against the Rams, Brady did indeed both throw and catch his own deflected ball, and then threw it again for a completion to WR Mike Evans. Even better, because the Rams declined the penalty for multiple forward passes, the second attempt and completion stood.
    • Before that, this became Hilarious in Hindsight for the opposite reason, as during Super Bowl LII a few months later, the team tried a trick play that involved throwing the ball to Brady only for it to fail when Brady had the ball go through his hands, leading a lot of people to refer back to the original Gisele quote in order to point out the irony.
  • The "Ask That Backup" segment (the Eagles' pre-Super Bowl hype video) includes a line of the Eagles defenders saying, "Brady, after you snap, we rush through the slot; you'll fumbley-wumbley, drop, drop it like it's hot". In Super Bowl LII, the Eagles defense would in fact rush Brady and force a fumble late in the fourth quarter to help secure the victory.
  • Two examples In 2019's Avengers: Infinity War parody:
    • Tom Brady-as-Thanos says "I don't even know who you are" when Jared Goff confronts him; this line would be used verbatim and with a similar cadence by the actual Thanos against Scarlet Witch in Avengers: Endgame, which was released nearly three months later.
    • After the referee explains the overtime rules (Tom gets to punch, if he misses, Patrick gets to punch.) Mahomes exclaims, "Wait I might not get to play!?", a reference to the Patriots winning the game on a touchdown in the first possession of overtime. In the 2022 AFC Divisional game between the Bills and Chiefs, the roles were reversed, with Mahomes driving the Chiefs down the field and throwing a game winning touchdown to Travis Kelce on the first possession in overtime.
  • The "America's Team" episode ends with the Titans becoming America's team after beating the Browns. While meant in jest at the time, the Titans would go on to be America's darlings in the postseason after taking down the Patriots dynasty as well as the top-seeded Ravens.
  • In season 2, one episode was a parody of John Wick, with Aaron Rodgers playing Wick. Fast forward to 2021, Rodgers dressed as John Wick for Halloween.
  • Zac Taylor is introduced in the The Mandalorian parody as simply "Bengals Coach", with the implication that he was going to be a joke Remember the New Guy? character due to the team's then-futility. Two years later, Taylor turned the Bengals around thanks to the performance of the Bengals offense led by Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase, leading them to a Super Bowl, and took on a more prominent role in the series as a result.
  • In the last episode of Season 4, Kyle Shanahan gets enraged when the narrator says Gridiron Heights will come back because, in Super Bowl LIV, his 49ers blew a 10-point lead against the Chiefs in the 4th quarter. Four years later, when Kyle Shanahan's 49ers faced the Chiefs again in Super Bowl LVIII, they would blow another 10-point lead to ultimately lose in overtime.
  • The 2020 Draft Special had the hacker hacking the Dolphins to make them take Justin Herbert over Tua Tagovailoa. While Tagovailoa isn't a bad quarterback by any means (although he's been somewhat held back due to injuries), Herbert's meteoric rise left many a Dolphins fan wishing that their team had taken Herbert in that spot, although the Dolphins have performed better with him than the Chargers have with Herbert.
  • In the Snowpiercer parody episode, Stafford tells the Vikings not to bother trying to free him because "I'm stuck here". Just months later, Stafford would be traded to the LA Rams.
  • In "Baker is Trapped in the Same 2020 Nightmare", Baker Mayfield is trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop in which the Browns have to miss the playoffs to break the loop. A few days after the episode was released, the Browns did in fact make the playoffs, clinching their spot in a game played on... January 3, 2021. It ends up suggesting that all that had to be done to break the loop was for the Browns to not officially make the playoffs within the calendar year 2020, and potentially even some Loophole Abuse on Baker's part to set up the scenario in just such a way that he could break the loop and his team could still get into the playoffs.
  • In the Season 5 carnival episode, Jalen Hurts and Jordan Love greet each other with "Love —" "Hurts!" In 2022, these same two QBs would be the subject of a viral jersey juxtaposition photo involving the same phrase.
  • The 2021 Draft Special sees a recently created rookie quarterback named Brock (in this case, Moxie) take out Jimmy Garoppolo as part of an attempt to replace all starting quarterbacks. Over a year later, the real Garoppolo would be injured and replaced as 49ers starter with a rookie quarterback also named Brock (this time, Purdy).
  • Also in the 2021 Draft Special, the defeated Brock Moxie grabs hold of Andy Dalton saying "Must...start...quarterback...controversy." Dalton would end up at the center of a QB controversy that season when the Bears traded up to draft Justin Fields.
  • The opening clips of Gridiron Heights Live show that Dan Campbell brought an actual lion to his press conference. Two years later, Campbell revealed that he had requested having an actual lion on the sidelines, and that Lions ownership had approved it before the NFL put the kibosh on it.
  • In the 2021 Delaware Clams episode, Lamar Jackson offhandedly mentions that the Ravens’ injury woes forced them to use the Baltimore Orioles baseball team as replacement players, followed by a cutaway of Orioles outfielder Cedric Mullins pleading that they “can barely play baseball”. Meant as a potshot at the team’s perennial futility at the time, the Orioles followed up with a surprisingly strong 2022 season, finishing third in the AL East with an 83-79 record, a 31 win improvement thanks to the likes of young homegrown talent including Mullins and rookie star catcher Adley Rutschman. They followed that up by finishing with the best record in the American League at 101-61 in 2023.
  • In the Bengals Wild West episode, the post-credit scene highlights the fact that previous team-specific cartoons for the Bears in 2018, Bills in 2019, and Bears in 2020 all resulted in early playoff exits with the expectation that the Bengals would meet the same fate. Not only did that not happen, but they made it all the way to the Super Bowl, although they did lose to the Rams.
  • The Washington Commanders name-reveal episode features a helmet wearing military hog mascot known as Commander Hog. Ten months later, the Commanders would unveil their new mascot, a helmet wearing military hog known as Major Tuddy. The similarities did not go unnoticed by series creator Dennis Flynn, who tweeted that he predicted the mascot correctly.
  • Two different Russell Wilson and Aaron Rodgers related jokes in the "Secret Scoopster" episode:
    • Aaron Rodgers tells Wilson to back off approaching John Elway as the Broncos are "his team to lead on" Elway drunkenly pushes him away for a mop that he calls a "tall drink of water". Rodgers resignedly says, "I can't believe it makes sense to stay". The Broncos would trade for Wilson at the start of the 2021-22 offseason. On a lesser note, Rodgers would end up staying one additional year with the Packers before being traded to the Jets.
    • Wilson flirts with Mike Tomlin by "Waiving" his no-trade clause, symbolized by a paper fan.. Tomlin brushes him off by telling him that the Steelers are going to suck for another year. Two years after the episode aired, the Denver Broncos would release Wilson, allowing him to sign a one year deal with Steelers while eating his massive contract that he signed with them, Also of note, Tomlin would continue his streak of the Steelers finishing above .500 for those two seasons despite substandard QB play from the likes of Kenny Pickett, Mitch Trubisky, and Mason Rudolph.
  • The Hype House episode has Stephen A. Smith mentioning that the first mistake Josh Allen and Justin Herbert made was hyping up an NFC East Team. Obviously meant as a jab at the division’s relative weakness in recent years, the joke aged poorly when the Philadelphia Eagles, New York Giants, and Dallas Cowboys all made the playoffs with the Washington Commanders not being eliminated until late December. Furthermore, all three teams won at least one postseason game, with the Eagles making it all the way to the Super Bowl.
  • The stinger for the The Bear (2022) parody has Justin Fields complaining about the episode not being about the Bears despite the obvious name similarity plus the fact of the source material being set in Chicago. For the Chicago Bears' 2023 schedule release, they parodied the show with Fields playing the head chef.
  • The Shark Tank parody has the Tennessee Titans decline an offer of a 2022 playoff spot by way of winning the AFC South. At the time, they were 7-3 with a sizable lead ahead of the rest of the AFC South that all but guaranteed them a division title and a playoff berth. However, the Titans proceeded to finish the season on a 7 game losing streak and miss the playoffs. As a bonus, one of the strengths of the Titans offer is "Two Remaining Games against the Jags", as the Jacksonville Jaguars had been the NFL's worst team for the past two years and were sitting at 3-7 at the time; however, the Jaguars would experience a second-half resurgence which included beating the Titans in both of those games en route to claiming the division title.
  • Several examples are found in the Season 7 finale:
    • Aaron Rodgers briefly transforms into Brett Favre while saying "Guess I'll die on the Jets in my Wrangler Jeans". A month after the episode aired, Rodgers announced that he and the Packers had decided to part ways and that he expected his next stop to be with the New York Jets (who had been actively courting him through much of the offseason). Days before the NFL Draft (and after several weeks of intense trade negotiations between the Packers and Jets), Rodgers was officially traded to New York. Doubles as a Harsher in Hindsight when taking into account that Rodgers' 2023 season lasted exactly four plays before he ruptured his Achilles, effectively tanking the Jets' playoff hopes.
    • Roger Goodell panickedly asks "What if the Lions are good?" when he finds that the scripts for the upcoming season are deleted. The Lions would end up winning the NFC North in 2023 season, winning two playoff games, and coming within three points of making it to their first Super Bowl in franchise history.
    • The basic premise of finale involves NFL players fighting against recycled season scripts, with a significant example involving Kansas City winning Super Bowl 57 after they had already won Super Bowl 54 against San Francisco. The next season, Super Bowl 58 ended up being a rematch of Super Bowl 54, and it ended with the Chiefs winning yet again. (In fact, if you really look at it, there's even more similarities than that — both Super Bowls involved the 49ers taking a 10-point lead over the Chiefs only for the Chiefs to come back and defeat them.)
  • In the 2023 Draft Spectacular stinger, four NFL players — Joe Flacco, Matt Ryan, Carson Wentz, and Ezekiel Elliot — are sent to the retirement warehouse, with their insistence that they're not retired and teams will come looking for them being brushed off as wishful thinking. By the end of the 2023 season, all but Ryan would end up signing with new NFL teams; Elliot landed with the Patriots ahead of the season, Wentz got picked up midseason by the Rams as a backup for Matthew Stafford, and, of particular note, Flacco not only signed with the Cleveland Browns off the couch when Deshaun Watson and Dorian Thompson-Robinson went down due to injury, but had a true career revival, taking the Browns to the playoffs for only the third time in the 21st century.
  • During the 2023 Quarter-Season Carnival, Jared Goff scoffs at the Tunnel of Jordan Love, saying he thought it was supposed to be scary, a reference to the fact that Goff and the Lions had easily beaten the supposedly formidable Packers in Week 4. In a Thanksgiving rematch, the Packers proved to be "scary" after all as they soundly defeated the Lions, including forcing multiple Jared Goff fumbles.
    • The Stinger in the same episode has a PA operator ask for Jonathan Taylor to report to the Colts, to which he responds “nope” (at the time, Taylor was holding out for a better deal and had signaled a desire be traded). Within days of its airing, he went ahead and signed with the Colts anyway.
  • The Saw knockoff in season 8 episode 7 sees Bijan Robinson choosing to shave the mustache of his head coach Arthur Smith instead of cutting off his own hand. Two weeks later, Smith would end up actually shaving his mustache.
  • A couple examples in the "Gridiron Heights Untalented Show" Episode:
    • Josh McDaniels losing his arm after attempting to karate chop blocks of wood to demonstrate "The Patriot Way". Hours after the short aired, he would be fired by the Raiders.
    • Derrick Henry begging to be traded only for Mike Vrabel to yell he was staying on the Titans forever makes more sense in the context of rumors that Titans ownership vetoed a trade that would send Henry to the Ravens, although Henry did depart in free agency in the subsequent offseason.
  • In the NFL DreadZone episode, Kyle Shanahan asks Christian McCaffery if he wants to go "all the way", to which CMC replies, "Don't be silly, we have to stop at the NFC Championship game like always." A few weeks later, the 49ers won the NFC Championship game to advance to the Super Bowl.
  • In the Season 8 finale, when players are in the free agency line:
    • Mike Evans is assigned to go to the Steelers, but laments his 1000 yard receiving streak will be in jeopardy. Evans would end up signing an extension with the Buccaneers.
    • Saquon Barkley is once again franchise tagged, which causes him to panic. As it would turn out the Giants would not franchise tag him and he would sign a three year contract with the Eagles. Funny enough, Higgins, who is behind him, would receive a franchise tag from the Bengals.
    • On the flip side, Derrick Henry, who starts off the line, is assigned to the Baltimore Ravens. Henry would actually sign with the Ravens in the offseason.^note It's probably worth noting here that there had been rumors of mutual interest between Henry and the Ravens pretty much since the trade deadline — when Baltimore allegedly tried unsuccessfully to trade for him — so the move was relatively predictable.
• Memetic Mutation: "Hey guys! There's been another Antonio Brown thing!"^ExplanationSaid by Patrick Mahomes at the start of Season Four, referring to Antonio Brown's off-field drama at the time. That has commonly been used as GIFs for Twitter posts on the topic, especially UrinatingTree's
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Fan reception to "Gridiron Heights Live" was mixed to say the least, with commenters expressing their distaste for the segment replacing half of Season 5's episodes (even if the remaining episodes were doubled in length). Regardless, the show's creators insisted that it would continue, even answering one fan's question which basically was a criticism of the segment and making light of the fact that the fans hate GH live in the follow-up episode with Kyler Murray. Ultimately the creators abandoned the idea, announcing it during the Odell Beckham GH Live segment two weeks later.

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