< Caligula

Caligula/YMMV


  • Non Sequitur Scene: Early in the film, there's a scene where Tiberius and Caligula are, despite the copious amounts of sex acts taking place in the background, having a serious discussion about how the political system works in Rome. All of a sudden, Tiberius calls for "more conviction," which leads to a three minute long orgy scene with various reaction shots of Caligula and Tiberius interspersed. After said orgy is over and done with, Tiberius and Caligula carry on with their previous discussion as if nothing had happened.
    • At the end of the film, Caligula runs up to the guards who are waiting to kill him, gives them a salute and says, for no apparent reason, "Scrotum".
      • This is actual Truth in Television: the guard in question, Cassius Chaerea, was frequently taunted by Caligula due to an injury to his groin he suffered in battle. Caligula would often use degrading passwords such as "eunuch" or "scrotum" when Cassius was on duty just to humiliate him. As you can guess, Cassius was probably very happy to be the man who got to kill the emperor.
  • Complete Monster: Tiberius and, once he crosses the Moral Event Horizon, Caligula.
  • Moral Event Horizon: See The Woobie.
  • Special Effects Failure: The death of Julia Drusilla. It's pretty obvious that they used a really stiff doll.
  • The Woobie: Proculus. For the simple "crime" of already being engaged to a woman that Caligula likes the look of, he gets to watch her get brutally raped by Caligula, and then gets Caligula's fist up his own anus. And following this humiliation, Caligula decides that he's a traitor because he's too honest—and therefore a bad Roman—and has him castrated, killed, and urinated upon by two prostitutes. In that order.
    • Some versions of the film take this all the way to Shoot the Shaggy Dog territory. The original introduction scene for Proculus had Caligula ordering him thrown into the path of the decapitation machine mentioned above, and he successfully climbed to the top of it and stopped the machine, earning him the adulation of the crowd, but also pissing off Caligula into later raping his wife and fisting him on his wedding day.
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