The Green Hornet/YMMV

General

• Adaptation Displacement: For baby boomers, the 60s television adaptation pretty much completely displaced the original radio series and movie serials in their consciousness. Later generations are familiar with the property primarily through the NOW Comics and Dynamite Entertainment comics series, and have little (if any) familiarity with either the radio series/movie serials or the TV series.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Thrown all across the board with Kato throughout the franchise. He began as a simple sidekick but over the years, he grew into popularity. Most modern versions have Kato as the muscle while Green Hornet was the central figure. In the movie, everything is taken to the next level. Kato was basically responsible for everything that the team did, from the gadgets to being the muscle. While Britt is still the main character and the one calling the shots. The movie does involve them clashing with each other over who was in charge. Most people agreed that Kato was the best part of the movie, so it's likely they intended the movie to be like this.

Comic Series

• Shipping: Britt Reid and Casey Case. Hinted at in the radio series (in at least one episode Sentinel reporter Ed Lowery banters with Miss Case about her harboring a crush on Reid). Subtly made part of the subtext in the television adaptation in at least two episodes ("The Frog is a Deadly Weapon" and "Invasion from Outer Space"), in spite of firm insistence by creator George W. Trendle that the relationship between Case and Reid be kept strictly professional. Made "canon" in NOW Comics's "Hornetverse", where Britt Reid II marries Casey Case after his retirement (Trendle having died in 1972, the subsequent rightsholders apparently discarded any objections to a Reid-Case romantic relationship).

Film

• Crazy Awesome: Britt's description of Kato basically boils down to this.

"You're like a human Swiss Army Knife!... it's a thing that you keep pulling things out of, every time you think you're done pulling out things, another cool thing pops right out and that's you!"

• Ear Worm: WA SHIYONG SHUANGJIEGUN HUU HUU HAA HEI!!
• Fridge Brilliance: When Britt was a child his father told him there was no point in trying if you fail, resulting in Britt never attempting to make anything of himself. Kato, in contrast, has tried multiple careers (as shown in the comic book prequel) which have all, humorously, failed, and by the time of the movie has resigned himself to being a newspaper mogul's engineer and coffee boy.
  • Britt mentions that his father's statue looking over everyone only reinforced his Jerkass image, citing that as the reason to decapitate it. At the end of the movie, the statue is fixed, only the head is now crooked downward, because for the first time in his life, Britt can look his father in the eye.
  • The more lighthearted tone of the film itself...the serials, tv programs, and comics play the story out very straight (compare and contrast the Adam West Batman to the Green Hornet featuring Bruce Lee).
  • Britt being an inexperienced fighter who relies on Kato when facing multiple opponents. In the TV series this is why Britt had Kato in the first place, to watch his back.
  • How could Britt, a Rich Idiot With No Day Job always get people much more intelligent than him to do his bidding? Then you realize that Britt had a Missing Mom and he could never confront his father as a child. He has been training in Passive-Aggressive Kombat just to survive since his childhood. Now he is a Manipulative Bastard at the price of being an Adult Child.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In a twisted form of Product Placement, Crystal Clear (played by James Franco) names the designer labels his henchmen are wearing; one episode of MTV's Spider-Man series, based off the movies James Franco is involved in, starts with Peter Parker referring to a shady guy and his henchman as "Dolce and Gabbana".
  • A lot of Jay Chou's Concept Videos could possibly act as Kato's entire backstory.
• One-Scene Wonder: James Franco as Crystal Clear.

TV Series

• Ear Worm: The theme song.