The Trope Codifier (though not the first use of the song in this context) is played by Adrian Cronauer, as portrayed by Robin Williams, on his radio show in Good Morning, Vietnam the song runs over a montage of troops fighting in the field, officers at base looking reflective (and for once content with his music choice), a village being carpet bombed, a group of suspected Viet Cong arrested and summarily executed in an alley, and antiwar protesters clashing with police forces in the streets of Saigon.In addition, the film also uses Joey Ramone's version, from his solo album Don't Worry About Me, over the credits. Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine plays the original recording in a sequence that portrays the dictatorships the US government installed or backed during the Cold War and ends with perfectly synchronized video of the attacks on the World Trade Center.It was the definite CMOA of the music video contest. At Otakon 1995, someone combined this song with Fist of the North Star for comic effect.The Fan Vid " Satchmo's Lie " combined "What a Wonderful World" and Neon Genesis Evangelion.I see trees of brown, and skies of black, and I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
What a Wonderful World, indeed, but at what cost? Because Emporio is the only one who lived and still has memories of the old universe, he's absolutely heartbroken when nobody remembers him anymore. The caveat is that he killed all of the main protagonists (with the exception of Emporio), resulting in either them being reincarnated into new people without their former memories, or because Pucci created them, they straight-up no longer exist. The final chapter of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean is called "What a Wonderful World", one of the select few instances where the many, many music references is used exclusively as a chapter title, and features the main antagonist, Enrico Pucci, using his fully-evolved Stand of Made in Heaven to speed up time until the universe collapses and resets, until he ends up getting killed and having the universe stabilize into a new reality.
saved all the DNA of all the species of the world, including mankind, sadly, the A.I. Subverted at the very end of said manhwa when machines who were made by humans came from space and despite the loss of the DNA from them, they saw that the A.I.
And an A.I sat around for millions of years, trying to preserve against nigh-impossible odds the stores of non-human DNA that it was tasked with protecting, as it waited for the humans to come back. The manhwa Hotel: Since 2079 and its one-shot manga spinoff used this song multiple times.Turns out, it really is A Wonderful World. Then they subvert Soundtrack Dissonance by playing it completely straight at the end of the episode. The Whole Episode Flashback exploring Meia's tragic Backstory in the first season of Vandread featured this song extensively. An Ad Council PSA uses Willie Nelson's version of this song to promote recycling.Apparently, no-one told Renault, who a few years later put an upbeat version as the theme of one of their ads. A long-running Irish road safety ad had this as its theme.