The Green Mile/YMMV

• Alternate Character Interpretation: The look of absolute horror on Percy's face after Coffey pushes the "disease" into his mouth, and the tear that rolls down his face just before he shoots Wharton could theoretically indicate that, rather than John forcing him to shoot Wharton, Coffey used the contact to show Percy everything Wharton had done. Percy, a small, sniveling, vicious, cowardly man was so broken by seeing true evil that he not only had to seek immediate retribution on Wharton, but spent the rest of his life catatonic from sorrow at just how evil the real bad guys could be.
• Complete Monster: William "Wild Bill" Wharton and Percy.
  • Yes, they're equal. "Wild Bill" raped and killed two little girls after threatening them into going along with the rape, and Percy finagled a job at the prison simply because he "wants to experience one right up close where he can smell the guy's nuts cooking." And then he purposefully botches Delacroix's execution. A guard and a prisoner, in this case, are Not So Different.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Elaine Connelly's intervention when attendant Brad Dolan tries to break Paul's wrist and she happens to walk in.

Dolan: Just who do you think you are?
Elaine: I think that I am the grandmother of the man who is currently the Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives. A man who loves his relatives, Mr. Dolan. Especially his older relatives.

• • Paul laughed when she said that, at the dichotomy; All the times that Percy used his connections against him, and now someone was using their connections for him.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory
• Ho Yay: Wharton doesn't like just little girls... he also likes annoying jerkasses like Percy Wetmore.
  • Although it is ambiguous whether Wharton enjoys a real screw, or just a Mind Screw: his goal was not to have sex, but to watch Percy panic, and he's successful - Percy pisses himself in fear, much to Delacroix's amusement. Given one of the many nicknames for sadistic prison guards, one could say that Wharton enjoyed screwing with the screws.
• Moral Event Horizon: Percy's sabotage of the first execution he's put in charge of to cause the condemned man to die a horrible agonizing death earned him his Complete Monster status.
  • What Wild Bill did to the two girls, physically and emotionally ("If you make noise, it's your sister I kill, not you.").
• Nightmare Fuel: Coffey stating he can still hear "pieces" of convicts screaming in Old Sparky's chamber, long after they've been executed.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Gary Sinise is only in one scene, but the obvious connections with Tom Hanks put him in the trailer.
  • And while Harry Dean Stanton does show up for some other scenes, he only has any real lines in one scene, which ends up being a major Crowning Moment of Funny.
• Tear Jerker (Book): The bus crash.
  • The whole Deadly Distant Finale leading up to the bus crash will probably make you require tissues.
  • When Coffey tells how Wharton kidnapped the girls:

Paul: Why didn't they scream, John ? He hurt them enough to make them bleed, their parents were right upstairs, so why didn't they scream?
Coffey: He say to the one, 'If you make noise, it's your sister I kill, not you'. He say that same to the other. You see? He kill them with they love, they love for each other. You see how it was? That's how it is every day, all over the world'.

• • Del's reaction when Percy stomps on Mr. Jingles.
• Tear Jerker (Film): Admit it, you cried when Coffey was executed.
  • Also, Delacroix and Bitterbuck before they are executed. Both are deeply sorry for what they've done, and it's obvious that everyone involved wishes that it didn't have to happen.
  • When Bitterbuck and Paul are discussing heaven before Bitterbuck's execution, and how Bitterbuck believes that you're sent back to the best time is your life, only you get to live there forever, and he reveals his best time: The summer he was eighteen, spending time with his wife in the mountains. It's sweet and incredibly sad all at once.
  • This dialogue before Coffey's execution.

Paul: On the day of my judgment, when I stand before God and He asks me why did I kill one of his true miracles, what am I gonna say? That it was my job? My job?
John: You tell God the Father it was a kindness you done. I know you hurtin' and worryin', I can feel it on you, but you oughtta quit on it now. Because I want it over and done. I do. I'm tired, boss. Tired of bein' on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain. Tired of not ever having me a buddy to be with, or tell me where we's coming from or going to, or why. Mostly, I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world everyday. There's too much of it. It's like pieces of glass in my head all the time. Can you understand?
Paul: Yes, John. I think I can.

• What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic
• The Woobie: Coffey.
  • Rather subverted with Delacroix, as, after all, there was a reason he was sentenced to the chair. But no doubt he regretted what he did, and how he died was...unnecessary.
  • Paul, once the full impact of the epilogue kicks in, also qualifies.
  • Dean, getting strangled and everything. Then four months after the story takes place, he gets stabbed to death. He also has two kids who are going to spend the rest of their adolescence without a father.
  • Warden Hal Moores and his terminally ill wife.