Here’s one that I thought was morbidly wonderful at the time:
The A&E show Biography did not do living people for the first several years that it was in production, but soon they ran out of big names to do and they were a bigger hit than expected so they decided to do living people. The first one that they chose was actor Vincent Price, picked because it was the Halloween episode. His Biography special aired on October 26, 1993; Price died the day before, meaning that their first show about a living subject wasn’t. (River Phoenix died on that Halloween, incidentally, but that’s off topic.)
A few months later a similar thing happened with John Candy, who died between his Biography episode’s taping and airing.
The character of Timmy died on Passions the same day the actor (something Evans) died in real life. This was the guy that had some form of dwarfism, so his character was that of a doll that had been brought to life by a witch (or something like that – it’s been awhile).
The way I remember it, the actor had been having some sort of complications, so it was decided to have the character die to give him time off, but then come back as an angel or spirit or something like that. A few of those scenes had been filmed, so they were aired.
What a coincidence though, to have his on screen death air the same day he died. I only watched the show sporadically, but was just moved by that.
In the late 90’s, I was watching Hollywood Squares with my mom one day after school and Flo-Jo was one of the contestants. I asked her who she was, since I’d never heard of her. During one of the commercial breaks, it was announced she was dead.
Action Comics 309 featured a story where everyone was showing up to pay tribute to Superman, and he had no one to impersonate Clark Kent (Lois was snooping and would have detected a robot, and Pete Ross knew the identity, but at the time Superman didn’t know he knew).
The twist was that Superman got JFK to impersonate Kent, figuring that the president could keep a secret.
The problem was that the issue was dated February 1964. I seem to recall that, comic book dating being what it was, it was on the newsstands in November of 1963.
There were letter complaining about the tastelessness of using Kennedy, though, of course, the comic was written long before the assassination. Later, they had a special story which showed Superman going on a series of missions for Kennedy in the months before he was assassinated.
And, of course, Superman’s first case was to solve the murder of Jack Kennedy.
Of course, I have to mention Seinfeld’s Elaine suggesting her boyfriend Joel Rifkin (the name of an NY serial killer) changing his name to OJ…six months before the murders.
Ann Rule, who had only written articles for detective magazines, got her first contract to write a book about the disappearances and murders of several young women in Seattle. Crimes that were unsolved and at the time the police no “person of interest” in mind. Rule was friends with Ted Bundy, the person eventually charged with, convicted, and executed for the crimes.
As she wrote in her book The Stranger Beside Me a writer could not have written that scenario and made it sound real.
In 2001, TV Land was airing episodes of WKRP on weekdays, and I was furiously taping them every day to preserve them for posterity. I even looked up the episodes online ahead of time, so I’d know which shows I was getting.
Unfortunately I didn’t get to record the hilarious two-parter in which bad guys blew up the transmitter (“It’s the phone cops!”), because it had been scheduled to air on the Monday after 9/11, and what do you know, I guess the network decided that it might be a wee bit inappropriate to show that one just then.
Just remembered - in the week following the 9/11 attacks, A&E aired “The Secret Garden of Stanley Sweetgrass”.
The eponymous young man’s first apartment in New York was immediately across the street from a brand new construction: The World Trade Center. In the film, it was just the first floor or so, and the jobsite looked eerily the same as the site looked after the towers fell.
I think it was coincidental, and already scheduled. Very poor taste, if not.
He was already there as Batman, and would be on camera when Superman met Clark.
Though, of course, Superman could have gotten JFK to impersonate Batman without telling him Batman’s identity and have Bruce be Clark. JFK might not have known which person Batman was impersonating.
