Clue (film)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Better on DVD: With its 3 endings, which not only heavily encourage re-watching to work out the various solutions, but also make a trip to a theater showing only one ending less satisfying, Clue seems specially designed for DVD viewing. Even though it was made almost a decade before the medium was invented.
    • Of course when it was released on VHS, all three endings were shown back to back like it is available on the DVD. However the DVD has the option to choose a random ending.
    • The way I heard it, the multiple endings were supposed to be spread out over the movie's run, or mixed up and shown randomly... so that if you wanted to see the other two endings, you had to go see the movie again. Twice. At least.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: Both the singing telegram girl and the Jehovah's Witness. Subverted. Both have more importance later.
  • Ear Worm: "I... am... your singing telegram--" *BANG*
    • Also:"...Oh, life could be a dream (sh-boom)...If I could take you up in paradise up above (sh-boom)..."
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Yvette (for obvious reasons) and Wadsworth both count.
  • Fridge Brilliance: How can you win if you are the murderer/ess? Because the premise is figuring out the murderer's identity by way of evidence. If you can find the evidence of your guilt before anyone else does, that means you can destroy it and get away with it.
    • That doesn't explain why the game requires you to repeatedly destroy any possibility of pinning the crime on someone else.
    • If you don't seem to actively look for the murderer the others will be suspicious.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Roger Ebert offered this in his review:

Here's my suggestion: Since this movie is so short anyway (88 minutes), why doesn't the studio abandon the ridiculous multiple-ending scheme and show all three endings at every theater? It would be more fun that way.

  • Magnificent Bastard: Wadsworth, the butler. In all three endings. In the first two endings Wadsworth, actually an FBI agent, set up the entire scheme in order to implicate the killer in a conspiracy and take her down. In the third ending, Wadsworth is actually Mr. Boddy and used the guests to kill off the informants who gave him everything he used to blackmail them; with each of the guests now guilty of murder and his informants all dead, he then plans to extort even more blackmail money from them.
    • Mr. Green in the third. He successfully passes as one of the blackmail victims and passes for a clumsy fool and homosexual. In truth, he IS the FBI agent, shoots Wadsworth when he reveals himself, has all the others arrested, then announces that he is "Going home to sleep with his wife!".
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • "FLAMES on the side of my face"
    • "It was [person] in the [location] with the [weapon]"
  • Moment of Awesome: The third, "real" ending where Mr. Green, who's spent the whole movie playing a bumbling homosexual, swiftly dispatches Wadsworth/Mr. Boddy, then reveals himself to be an FBI plant. ("Please! There are ladies present!") He then opens the front door, letting in his fellow undercover agents to arrest the other guests. The movie ends as he says with a smirk, "Okay chief, take 'em away. I'm gonna go home and sleep with my wife."
  • Nightmare Fuel: One of the children's books of the series ends with Mr. Green being strangled by Mr. Boddy's pet snake. Green begs for help, but Boddy just pulls up a chair and says he wants to watch. Pretty dark for a kids' book based on a board game.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The 2008 "modernized" version of the game, as some fans found that the original version aged just fine and didn't need to be more up-to-date.
  • Vindicated by Cable: As mentioned elsewhere, this was a flop in theaters, but has since gained a significant cult following.