The Devil to Pay in the Backlands/YMMV
- Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: After a huge Narm (see below) - "I only have God, Joca Ramiro... and you, Riobaldo".
- Fanon Discontinuity: Movie, what movie?
- High Octane Nightmare Fuel: When the jacunços were so tired and hungry that they shoot a monkey and ate it. Later, they discovered it was a crazy guy running naked, because his mother told them!
- The horses' massacre. All that blood, and the cries...
- How about Madeiro Vaz shooting the leprous man in the head? So damn hideous.
- All the war. War Is Hell, indeed.
- It Was His Sled: Well, all these spoiler tags are nonsensical to Brazilians, but maybe if you are a foreign reader you won't know that Diadorim was a woman, after all, and how she tragically dies.
- Narm: Before the big battle, in a scene that is pure Unresolved Sexual Tension, Riobaldo asks Diadorim if he doesn't have any sister.
- Romantic Plot Tumor: There's a FREAKING WAR going on, but mostly people just remember the gay love thing, wich is written amazingly, by the way.
- Stoic Woobie: Riobaldo, near the end for sure, and Diadorim, all the time.
- Tear Jerker: Thirty pages before the end, go there and cry.
- Too Cool to Live: Madeiro Vaz and Diadorim.