The Day After/YMMV

• Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: In a time when people were all too willing to have a nuclear war, this needed to show that it was a crappy idea to do so.
  • This is summed up by the disclaimer that states that the effects of a real nuclear war would be far worse than what was in the film.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The President whose speech is broadcast near the end of the movie was originally intended to be George H.W. Bush, but the producers cast a Reagan impersonator instead. The flak they received by this caused them to edit the film, replacing the Reagan soundalike with a "stereotypical Presidential voice" - a voice that sounds remarkably like that of Joe Biden, elected Vice-President 25 years later.
• Unfortunate Implications: Years after the movie was released, the writer and director themselves admitted that they'd fallen into this trap by making the white and Asian male characters (on average) calmer, more rational, braver, and more steadfast than the black and female characters. The writer was most disturbed by his treatment of McCoy the black airman, who panics, disobeys orders, deserts his post, and is reduced at the end to a quivering, irrational, screaming madman. He is the only major black character, but every minor black character but one is seen panicking or terrified, while whites around them act calmly and rationally even when the circumstances would call for panic.