Full Metal Jacket/YMMV


 * Adaptation Displacement: No-one seems to remember the book it was based on.
 * Complete Monster: The Door Gunner, a horrific One-Scene Wonder.
 * Ear Worm: Any of the marching songs ("I don't want no teenage queen, I just want my M14!").
 * "Surfin' Bird"
 * "M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E"
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Ask the average person about this movie, and pretty much the only character they'll talk about is Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. Not bad for someone who doesn't even survive the first half of the movie.
 * Pvt. Pyle to some.
 * First Installment Wins: Plenty of people completely forget the second half of the film, the consensus being that the movie was better before it got to Vietnam.
 * Funny Moments: Basically the reason why everyone remembers the boot camp half of the movie so well.
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff It seems to be popular in Japan.
 * Just Here for Godzilla: Nine times out of ten, people who haven't seen the movie yet but want to are going to be surprised when the film isn't exclusively about Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.
 * Memetic Mutation: "What is your major malfunction?" (you know the rest)
 * Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in general, thanks to the epic performance by R. Lee Ermey.
 * Misaimed Fandom: Plenty of actual Navy, Army, and Marine personnel that he's met seem to actually love Hartman... when he's meant to be completely unlikeable, even to the military. (That may be the point, however.)
 * In-universe, Hartman gloats about the Marine-taught shooting prowess of Austin sniper Charles Whitman and Lee Harvey Oswald. Doubly obnoxious because Whitman's massacre would have been barely a year old by the time the movie was set.
 * Hartman is being as hard on the recruits as he's allowed to be, and that's much more forgiving than combat in Vietnam was. The second half of the movie adequately demonstrates this. the misaimed fandom for this movie is anyone who thinks its either pro- or anti-war; it's just an exploration of war as a phenomenon. Hartman is a part of that phenomenon.
 * Moral Event Horizon: The Door Gunner. When asked, "How can you shoot women and children?", the Door Gunner responds, "Easy, ya just don't lead them so much! [laughing] Ain't war hell?!"
 * Joker arguably crosses his when he shoots the sniper at the end. Before this, He didn't see much combat and viewed it all as a joke, even bragging about his own sociopathic tendencies in an interview. That scene was him seeing what War and being tough were all about. Wheter he learns from it is up for debate but his final monologue seems to imply he is now ready to kill.
 * Nightmare Fuel:
 * Pvt. Pyle's treatment by Gunny Hartman and the other privates in general. As well as his breakdown.
 * "Shoot... me... shoot... me...". Not to mention
 * The Mass Grave, especially the fucking creepy music and the bodies. The white powder on their face...shudders.
 * Squick:
 * Unfortunate Implications: The Vietnamese hooker who (in)famously says "Me Love You Long Time" and another hooker in a later scene are the only Vietnamese characters with any dialogue in the film.
 * Values Dissonance: In the 1960s it was acceptable for Drill Sergeants to strike recruits, but no longer.
 * Same goes for the infamous "This is my rifle, this is my gun. This is for fighting, this is for fun."
 * This one also applies to the "Eskimo pussy is mighty cold" cadence that the recruits chant while running. In general, this was a lot more common before women were integrated into the US military in the 1970's. The military was allowed to get away with chanting cadences that had more sexual references or sex related humor in them.
 * Weird Al Effect: Mention the name, "Gomer Pyle" to someone. A younger person will probably think of "the fat Marine recruit from Full Metal Jacket who " instead of "the gas station worker from The Andy Griffith Show who got a spin off sitcom where he was in the Marines" (Which is where the name came from and why Gunny Hartman gives it to him).
 * The Woobie: Poor, poor private Pyle. Though he was fat and dumb, he didn't deserve this fate.
 * Pvt. Joker also counts, particularly by the end of the movie. The sniper as well, whose death is part of what propels Joker to Woobie-dom.
 * Pvt. Joker also counts, particularly by the end of the movie. The sniper as well, whose death is part of what propels Joker to Woobie-dom.