Donnie Darko/YMMV

• Adaptation Displacement: Not the movie itself, but the song "Mad World", which is played over the credits. That version is sung by Gary Jules, doing a cover, causing many people not born in The Eighties to think he is the original artist, rather than Tears for Fears.
• Non Sequitur Scene: Most of Cherita's scenes. They're not even that crazy in terms of event, they just stick out as odd interludes and barely affect the plot at all.
• Broken Base: Theatrical or director's cut...?
• Epileptic Trees: Where do we START?!
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Go to any fan forum and ask "what was the film about". The number of interpretations given will be greater than or equal to number of members of the forum.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Does it count if you're going to die either way? Well, we're all going to die eventually; Donnie just had an exact date and time. But then there's accepting/choosing an even more unpleasant death in order to save everyone else... if Spock's sacrifice counts, so does Donnie's.
• Memetic Mutation: "Sometimes, I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!" (Middle-school dance troupes are Serious Business.) Popular with those making fun of Twilight's sparkling vampires.
• Memetic Outfit: Donnie's skeleton outfit.
• Misaimed Fandom: The film is frequently labeled, for better and worse, by emos and emo-haters, as one of the most emo films of all time. It's actually a massive Deconstruction, especially the Director's Cut.
  • You can blame IMDb's forums for the labeling.
• Narm: A little from some of the minor characters.
• Sequelitis: The sequel/spinoff S. Darko.
• Tear Jerker: Many moments.
  • This exchange:

Donnie: How does it feel to have a wacko for a son?
Rose: It feels wonderful.

• • The ending is this completely. The worst part is when they show Frank at the end of the "Mad World" montage just sitting there. Implying that, seeing as the other people in said montage remembered Donnie in some way, he's going to skip Halloween to remember someone he never even knew. To top it off, he tried to warn that person and failed. Now imagine how you would feel in his shoes.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The Director's Cut gets a lot of flak for replacing the opening song The Killing Moon with Never Tear Us Apart. Nevermind the fact that the only reason the theatrical cut didn't open with the latter was that Kelly couldn't secure the rights for the song at the time. Furthermore, The Killing Moon was not actually removed from the Director's Cut - the song is played in its originally intended sequence towards the end of the film, where it arguably packs an even greater punch.
• True Art Is Incomprehensible
• What the Hell Casting Agency: Patrick Swayze as a motivational speaker who's also a closet pedophile.
  • An even worse case was narrowly averted; the studio's ideas about the casting of Donnie included Mark Wahlberg (who was already thirty) and Vince Vaughn (who was already thirty, and didn't look eighteen when he was eighteen).
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Donnie. Subverted.