City of God/YMMV

• Award Snub: Brazilians revolted when it wasn't even nominated for Best Foreign Film by the Academy. Not even four nominations in main Oscar awards the following year fixed it.
  • The same with its Best Director nomination. Only Fernando Meirelles got credited despite the film having two directors (Katia Lund being the other). As a result, this prevented 2004 being the first year where two female directors got a Best Director nomination.
• Complete Monster: Zé Pequeno. He is easily one of the most evil and despicable examples in modern cinema. His Disproportionate Retribution, for one, because a girl rejected his advances at a party - he forces her boyfriend Mané Galinha (Knockout Ned) to strip naked publicly, then he rapes the girl, then finally surrounds Ned's house with his gang, opening fire and killing Ned's family.
• Director Displacement: Fernando Meirelles tends to get all of the credit for the film despite the fact he co-directed with Katia Lund.
• Memetic Mutation: In Brazil, the Cluster F-Bomb phrase "Dadinho é o caralho, meu nome agora é Zé Pequeno, porra!" (translated as "The fuck I'm Dadinho! My fucking name is Zé Pequeno now!")
• Moral Event Horizon: If you don't hate Lil' Zé when he massacres an entire whorehouse or even when he gleefully kills Buscapé's brother, you'll DEFINITELY hate him when he deals with the street kids.
  • Blacky (Neguinho) begins to cross it when his girlfriend cheats on him, and he beats her to death so brutally that she looks like a car crash victim. He finally crosses it when Bené saves his life from Lil' Zé, and he answers later by killing Benny.
• Retroactive Recognition: Seu Jorge (Knockout Ned) is a singer and later appeared in The Life Aquatic. Also, Alice Braga (Angélica), who went to Hollywood for films such as I Am Legend and Predators.