Casino/YMMV

""All right, I'm gonna give you a choice. You can either have the money and the hammer or you can walk out of here. You can't have both. What do you want?" "I just wanna get outta here." And don't forget to tell your friends what happens if they fuck up around here. You understand?""
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: Ace and his security guards using a cattle prod, a circular saw, and a hammer to break up a blackjack cheating team.


 * Crowning Moment of Funny: Ace putting his pants on in his office before a meeting with the County Commissioner.
 * Nicky escorting a gorgeous showgirl out to his car to get a blowjob from her while, all the time, droning on about the veal he stocks in the kitchens of the restaurant he owns.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: House Of The Rising Sun
 * Ending Fatigue: A common complaint about the film.
 * Good Bad Bugs: Rothstein is saved from a car bomb due to a balancing problem in his Cadillac that had necessitated a heavy steel plate being installed under the driver's seat.
 * High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Eye Scream The vise scene and bat scene. One because of Nicky,
 * Scorsese reportedly said the vise scene was his "sacrificial" scene, which he would consent to take out if he was threatened with an NC-17 rating. They complained about some other scenes, but not that one, so it stayed in.
 * Not to mention getting beaten to near death by baseball bats, and then getting buried. Alive.
 * As well as the rest of the executions to tie up all loose ends.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: Sam makes a very big deal about Nicky being put in the "Black Book" and sees it as evidence that Nicky is out of control. In 1988, Frank Rosenthal, Sam's real life counterpart, was put in the Black Book as well.
 * This is possibly alluded to in the film, in a subtle way -- notice how in the final scene of the movie, set in what is presumably the present day (or at least a few years after the events of the movie), an older Sam Rothstein is now based in San Diego rather than his beloved Las Vegas.
 * It's the Same, Now It Sucks: One of the points of criticism was that the film treads the same ground as Goodfellas.
 * Memetic Mutation: Much of Nicky's dialogue appears on Joe Pesci soundboards and creates for some hilarious results on prank calls posted on YouTube.
 * Moral Event Horizon: Nicky cares less and less about how he's affecting Ace; Ginger puts a hit out on Ace and leaves after tying her daughter to her bed.
 * Narm: The moment where dour old Ace suddenly falls in love with Ginger (though his stony-faced expression belies this), the film freeze frames then goes into slow motion as the rather cheesy "Love is Strange" by Mickey & Sylvia plays.
 * Amusement can be also be derived from some of squeaky New Yoiker Joe Pesci's sweary bits ("You muddafucker, you!", "Peek-a-boo, you fucks, you!"), some of De Niro's trademark repetition ("Was I at that dinner? Was I at that dinner?"), one bit of classic James Woods shouting ("Why don't you do it yourself, ya chickenshit cocksucker!") and even some of the violence, particularly whenever Pesci hits people with phones ("What are you staring at, you bald headed Jew prick?")
 * Special Effects Failure: In the first scene, Robert De Niro conspicuously transforms into a mannequin wearing the same suit right before his car explodes.
 * Vindicated by Cable: Casino was too similar to Goodfellas during its theatrical release and was dismissed as a lazy attempt by Scorsese. It has grown in stature as time as passed, and some consider it even better than Goodfellas.
 * Mostly because Robert De Niro's Sam is kind of a better protagonist/narrator than Ray Liotta's Henry Hill (though YMMV, obviously).
 * What an Idiot!: One wonders why Ace didn't put Ward in a place disconnected from the casino floor, like the restaurant.
 * Ace was freaking out over the blueberries in the muffins. His perfectionism about everything combined with Ward's overarching idiocy is just too incompatible to work at any level. Pat Webb even asks if Ward could have a job "further down the trough" and Ace immediately shoots it down, citing Ward as just too untrustworthy.
 * In fact, Ward's uncle even asks about a job in the food service area of the casino. Ace pauses for a moment, and the look on his face is practically a Call Back to his perfectionism as displayed by the blueberry incident before he says that no, that's not possible.
 * Woobie: Billy Sherbert (played by Don Rickles). There's very little indication that he has much involvement with the criminal activities beyond working as the apparent manager of the casino and generally doesn't do anything bad. Nevertheless, he still has to take abuse from Nicky and get sucked into the insanity of the Ace/Ginger/Nicky situation.
 * It could be a case of Crouching Tiger Hidden Badass, because it's obvious he knows how to properly handle a shotgun. And even if he's not actually a crook, despite getting a minor smackdown from Nicky (and let's be fair to the guy, it's not like Nicky either can't handle himself in a fight or isn't prone to outbursts of violence) the guy is otherwise very clearly one tough old bastard.
 * When Ginger has her Villainous Breakdown towards the end and has a very loud public freak-out on the steps of the house, Amy is watching from a neighbor's house as the whole street looks upon the self-destruction of her mom. And the night before, her mom tied her to the bed just so she could go out to the Leaning Tower and have a drink. That poor kid is going to make a psychiatrist rich.