Hairspray/YMMV

• Adaptation Displacement: Does anyone really remember the original 1988 film these days?
• Adaptation Distillation: The musical takes what worked in the original John Waters film, removes alot of unnecessary aspects, and generally alters the story in a positive way, making characters like Tracy, Edna, Link, and even the Von Tussles more likable.
• Non Sequitur Scene: In the original, when running from the police Tracy, Penny, Link and Seaweed run into a couple of beatnicks who invite them to get naked and smoke weed, and offer to iron the girls' hair. Our clean cut heroes naturally are freaked out and run away.
  • However, Tracy and Penny using a clothing iron to straighten their hair becomes a Running Gag.
• Costume Porn
• Crossing the Line Twice
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Some might say the entire thing, but the stand out number is clearly "You Can't Stop the Beat".
• Ear Worm: Velma might be a racist, conniving Rich Bitch, but her solo will get in your head. "Front step, cha-cha-cha..."
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Tracy & Seaweed, particularly due to the 2007 film, where Link's role of actually helping Tracy is cut and it's generally felt he did nothing to earn Tracy in the end other than feel sorry about his actions.
  • Also, the almost Belligerent Sexual Tension of Corny Collins and Amber competing in hogging cameratime has made Corny/Amber surprisingly popular.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: "I get Julius Caesar, I just don't get the Ideas of March. How can a month have an idea?"
  • Seaweed's song repeating the line "Run and tell that."
    • And then later he climbs in Penny's window to steal her...
  • Christopher Walken woud follow in John Travolta's footsteps when he accepted the award for Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Club's "Man of the Year"... in drag.
  • Amanda Bynes, who played Penny in the 2007 version, admitting her preference for black men.
• Hollywood Homely: The driving point of the movie, considering that Tracy is still a very attractive young woman who just so happens to be fat (her weight seems to be treated "as is" by everyone but the villains; this has been lauded by a number of people, stating that Hairspray has one of the most positive depictions of fat girls in any form of media.)
• Hollywood Pudgy: Averted, especially in the 2007 version.
  • According to the casting director of the 2007 version, they strongly emphasized that they were looking for a girl that was fat and beautiful, they made sure to let it be known that they were not hiring any girl that was "just chubby" or slim.
• Kick the Dog: Almost every scene Velma appears in, though racism lends itself easily to this trope.
• Moral Event Horizon: Crossed by Prudy in every incarnation, and always with the "permanently punished" scene. The original film has her impose a Cool and Unusual Punishment on Penny (force her to wear a giant letter P on her blouse every day), but the 2007 film makes her worse.
• Newer Than They Think: In the earliest classroom scene of the musical film, the chalkboard shows the height of Mount Everest as 29035 feet. This figure has only been attested since a 1999 GPS measurement of the summit. Before this, the common measurement (and still the official measurement accepted by Nepal and the People's Republic of China) is 8848 meters (approximately 29029 feet).
• Role Association: When it comes to Corny Collins, comicbook fans will always hear Cyclops singing 60's doo-wop in the second movie. It's a little disturbing.
  • So in the 60's, Prince Edward was a TV show host?
  • And Prudy Pingleton is a hilariously over-the-top Allison Janney - aka C.J. Cregg.
  • Max Shreck and Catwoman reunite, though this time only Catwoman remains a villain.
  • Behold Vincent Vega in a dress.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: It's easy to feel sorry for Amber in the 2007 movie's finale. She falls off the set hard enough to hurt her ankle (you can see her limping a little afterwards), loses her boyfriend and award, and her mother's televised fall from grace happens right after Amber accepts defeat with unexpected maturity.
  • Of course, Amber doesn't seem to really care much about her mother's situtation, since really, nobody's going to think any less of her for something only her mother did. She just goes off and dances with a black guy, alluding to a Heel Face Turn (something which she, along with Velma, unambigiously underwent in the stage show.)
• Values Dissonance: Parodied. When Tracy and Edna are on their way to the clothing store, they pass a bar where a group of visibly pregnant women are smoking and making a toast "to the future."