Given that RWBY V7C1 was originally meant to be the final episode of Volume 6, I'm absolutely convinced that the comment that Ironwood "looks tired" when they see him on the propaganda billboard was very, very deliberate foreshadowing.
If they'd had the budget to put The Greatest Kingdom in its original intended place, that line would've been in the same volume as Alone in the Woods, where it's repeatedly used as a warning that everyone present is falling prey to the Apathy, and they're about to give into despair. The Apathy arc would've been fresh in the minds of everyone, and it would've been very apparent that Ironwood was on the brink of breaking, giving us the entire V6-7 hiatus to stew on that between all the fanfics and... photoshopping Yang's head on farm animals.
Six months of "Ironwood's running a police state and he's got the vibes of someone about to crack" could certainly have shifted the perspective on him a bit, compared to the way things actually went, where our last impression of him was V4, where he seemed to be the only sensible man in the room.
This isn't the only case of this either, I think Clover's perception was also heavily altered by not having the whole summer to stew in him arresting the heroes for doing their jobs, and there are a glut of 'fans' of this show that missed the forest for the trees, and would still have done so even with the episode in its right place, but it's interesting to think about how dramatically the perspective on these characters was impacted by the budget bumping V6's intended finale to V7.
(Sidenote, I know V6 came out just before Gen:LOCK, and I know that part of Gray's mismanagement involved him embezzling money from RT's other shows to prop up his baby, but was RWBY involved in that? Did The Greatest Kingdom get bumped to V7 because of Gray's Gen:LOCK chicanery?)
