< Fight Club (film)

Fight Club (film)/YMMV


  • Anvilicious: Consumerism is BAD! Think For YOURSELF!
  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Does the narrator actually kill Tyler at the end, or is it his main personality that dies while Tyler takes over for good? Once the Space Monkeys arrive with Marla, he starts bossing them around like Tyler would. He asks them to leave Marla with him. And although he is kind and gentle with her as she tends to his bullet wound and they watch the buildings blow up, perhaps he is trying to get her to drop her guard so he can kill her (because Tyler considers her to be a threat to Project Mayhem).
  • Crosses the Line Twice: Many of Marla's lines.

Marla Singer: Oh, God. I haven't been fucked like that since grade school.

    • In the book, her line while in bed with Tyler was "I want to have your abortion", which studio executives ordered David Fincher to change for the film. When they heard what he had come up with instead, they begged to have it changed back.
    • Helena Bonham Carter (who is British) didn't know what "grade school" meant, and assumed it meant high school. She was surprised when she found out. She discusses this on the DVD commentary.
  • Critical Backlash: Naturally due to the Vindicated by History happening
  • Cult Classic: To the point that people started Fight Clubs and turned into Hipsters.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: How many real-life followers do you think he'd have if he were played by someone less handsome than Brad Pitt? This is directly Lampshaded when Tyler and the Narrator mock an underwear model in a bus ad.
  • Epileptic Trees:
    • Several university film departments (and even many admission departments) outright refuse to accept essays about the movie version because not only are they ubiquitous, but they almost all fall into this trope.
    • As far as theories go, a popular one posits that the narrator is the adult version of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, with Marla as Susie Derkins and Tyler as Hobbes.
  • Fan Disservice: Shirtless men being horribly injured, and Bob's bitch tits. Not to mention copious Ho Yay (which Fincher confirmed to be put there to make audiences uncomfortable).
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • The narrator laments that men of his generation haven't properly gone through manly Rite of Passage because none of them ever had the opportunity to fight in a war. Wait 5 years.
    • In 2004, distrubed college student Luke Helder tried a Project Mayhem stunt of his own: bombing mailboxes to create a smiley face across the map of the US.
    • Not to mention the whole concept of terrorists blowing up skyscrapers in major US cities.
    • No Great Depression, wait 9 years!
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: When Tyler talks about how the media has led people to believe that they will all be "millionaires, movie gods, and rock stars," he's looking at Angel Face. Said character is played by Jerad Leto, who would later go on to front the band 30 Seconds to Mars.
  • I Am Not Shazam: In the movie, the nameless narrator often refers to himself as "I am Jack's [body part/emotion]" and does the same for "Joe" in the book. This is not actually his name and was only decided upon by a series of articles in Readers Digest (book) or Annotated Reader (movie). Even those who understand this fact find it a convenient nickname. "Jack" was used as his name in the script and as a frame of reference behind the scenes since they had to call him something.
    • When the film is shown on TV, closed captions sometimes indicate his name as "Rupert" (this is one of the fake names he gives at the support groups).
  • It Was His Sled: Tyler Durden is the narrator's split personality.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Tyler. He is only a split personality of the narrator and is literally the personified composite of his rage and melancholy; he hates himself, hence his pontificating about self-destruction and hitting bottom. And the narrator, the very person who created him, kills him at the end of the film. However, he is also a nihilistic sociopath.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Tyler Durden.
  • Misaimed Fandom:
    • Yes, Tyler is cool. He's the walking personification of the Narrator's id. No one should actually attempt to live that way. Tyler is one in a long string of Chuck Palahniuk's characters who are deeply disturbed sociopaths.
    • It's also worth noting that Tyler does initially start out kinda reasonable, if very rebellious. His increasing fanaticism is presumably indicative of the Narrator's own decaying mental state.
    • "The people you are after are the people you depend on. DO NOT fuck with us." Taken out of context, this has given an inflated sense of purpose and self-worth to waiters and office clerks everywhere.
    • Even if it was not the original intent of the book, Palahniuk does seem to lap up the adulation and attention that the movie has sent his way. In his introduction to the 2004 edition of the novel, he describes encounters with fans who boast about masturbating into restaurant food... amongst other things.
  • Paranoia Fuel: So there's this enormous anarchist group hiding right under our noses whose members like nothing more than committing acts of violence and putting certain, er, bodily fluids in our food at restaurants...
  • Rewatch Bonus: The second time you watch the film, you begin to notice all the subtle hints that Tyler is not real, that you may have handwaved as coincidences the first time round, such as Tyler and the protagonist owning the same type of suitcase, the fact that Tyler never answers his phone, etc.
  • Tough Act to Follow: For both David Fincher and Chuck Palahniuk. Practically every book Palahniuk has written since has been directly compared to this one, while Fincher has only just escaped the shadow of the film with 2010's The Social Network.
  • Vindicated by History: Was mixed reviewed and didn't make back it's budget. Now a Cult Classic.
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