The Rocky Horror Picture Show/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Adaptation Displacement: In America at least, where hardly anyone has heard of The Rocky Horror Show stage production. However, it's pretty popular in its native UK.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Depending on which fanfic you read, Dr. Frank N Furter is either A.) an abusive, psychotic, heartless jerk who only manipulates and hurts (both physically and emotionally) other people for his own personal amusement or B.) a misunderstood person who only acts the way he does due to some mysterious past tragedy.
    • It's also easy to make a case for Frank being a trans woman, based on their verse in "Rose Tint My World", whose dysphoria caused them to act in such a way instead of some past tragedy.
    • Likewise, are Riff Raff and Magenta an evil brother/sister duo plotting Frank's downfall, or are they merely the victims of Frank's abuse and their actions are completely justified? Fanfics will vary greatly on the answer.
    • There are also plenty of fics where Columbia's personality ranges from bubbly and full of energy all the time, to always in tears and constantly depressed. Fan fic writers can't seem to make their minds up.
  • Best Known for the Fanservice: Sing along, now, everybody: "I'm just a sweet transvestite..."
  • Crosses the Line Twice:
    • It's not often that a pansexual transvestite murdering a 1950's motorcyclist is hilarious.
    • One of the Audience Participation gags which evolves with the times: when Riff-Raff shows Brad and Janet the skeleton near the start of the film, it's customary to shout out "SHOW US" and the name of whatever celebrity has most recently died. Bonus points if it's someone people really liked, especially if they had an early or especially tragic death.
  • Cult Classic: Typically cited by reviewers as the definitive example of a cult film.
  • Designated Hero: Brad, literally, in the opening credits.
  • Designated Protagonist Syndrome: Despite being the main characters of the film, and despite having a decent fanbase, Brad and Janet are nowhere near as popular as Frank, Riff Raff, Columbia or Magenta.
  • Director Displacement: The movie is more often associated with creator and writer Richard O'Brien rather than director Jim Sharman.
  • Do Not Do This Cool Thing
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Frank-N-Furter, Riff Raff and Magenta in particular tend to fall victim to this within the fandom.
    • This is debatable, since this trope usually refers to characters that were not originally intended to be viewed sexually. All the villains in this film are pretty heavily sexualized.
    • The refrain from "Eddie" tries to paint the titular character in this light.

"When Eddie said he didn't like his Teddie you knew he was a no good kid / but when he threatened your life with a switchblade knife!"
Frank: What a guy!
Janet: Makes you cry!
Dr. Scott: Unt I did!
AP#1: What the fuck's an "Unt"?!
AP#2: Three fourths of a Cunt![1]

  • Ear Worm: Half of the songs featured fall under this trope, but perhaps most famously, Time Warp, which was ranked and voted 338 out of 2006 songs featured in the Triple M Essential 2006 Countdown.
  • Epileptic Trees: A common fan guess is that Janet's pregnant at the end, thanks to Frank's line "I've laid the seed/It should be all you need" in "You Better Wise Up, Janet Weiss". This supposedly would've been confirmed outright in the never-made sequel Revenge of the Old Queen.
  • Everyone Is Satan in Hell: Isaac Weishaupt wrote a book called It's Just a Jump to the Left: The Unauthorized Guide to Occult Symbolism in the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
  • Evil Is Sexy:
    • Frank is sexy. This can be attested to by pretty much every fan of this movie.
    • It's not just the movie version either: Rob Morton Fowler's portrayal of Frank in the recent European tour starts at sexy and goes straight into bishonen-beautiful.
    • Riff-Raff and Magenta both have large fan bases, and not without reason.
  • Foe Yay: Riff Raff/Frank-N-Furter slash fanfics exist.
  • Hype Backlash: This movie is one acquired taste.
  • I Am Not Shazam: Rocky is only called "Rocky Horror" in the credits and the comic book. The movie just calls him "Rocky" (the narrator refers to him as "Rocky Horror" during "The Sword of Damocles" in the stageshow; his part was cut out for the movie version).
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Frank, of course. (Incredibly Lame Pun, Stealth Pun, and Historical In-Joke rolled into one. I slay me with my cleverness.)
    • Actually, Frank, Magenta, Columbia and Riff Raff (and very often Janet as well) are ALL very common ship launchers! Just take a few moments to look through the many Fan Fics!
  • Les Yay: Magenta and Columbia.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Brad! Just kidding. It's Frank... mostly when he's manipulating others for his own amusement. He's able to get away with his actions too, until Riff Raff turns on him.
  • Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales:
    • A lot of British people like the film due to most of the cast being British actors. Also, performances of the original stage show (The Rocky Horror Show) are more common to find in the UK than the United States, where showings of the movie with shadowcasts are more common than the stage show.
    • Despite some of the more dated depictions of queer people, it remains one of the most popular films in queer cinema to this day.
  • Narm Charm: The movie is ridiculously camp and that's why people love it.
  • Non Sequitur Scene:
    • The only thing that could keep "Hot Patootie - Bless My Soul" from being a Non Sequitur Scene is the fact that the dinner scene calls back to it. With little or no warning, Meat Loaf rides out of a walk-in freezer on a motorcycle, sings a song, and gets murdered. That's about as much of a non-sequitur as it can get.
    • In the original play, Eddie is mentioned by Columbia before Riff and Magenta (and the Phantoms) tells them to keep quiet... Which foreshadows Eddie's inevitable appearance, musical number and death. However, this foreshadowing (for some reason) was cut from the film causing Eddie's appearance and musical number to be totally out-of-nowhere. It's a a bizarre case of the character's scene being a Non Sequitur Scene, yet having the character being important to the plot.
  • One-Scene Wonder: Meat Loaf's role as Eddie in Rocky Horror. He bursts out of a freezer (on a motorcycle, of course), sings a song, and is not seen or heard from again.
  • The Problem with Licensed Games: Generally hated by gamers and Rocky Horror fans alike.
  • Relationship Sue: There are, believe it or not (though, seriously, it's true) several Rocky Horror Picture Show fanfics that involve Dr. Frank N Furter finding his true love... often a female Mary Sue. Yes, that Dr. Frank N Furter.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Among the principal musicians who performed the music for the film is the keyboardist Rabbit, who would later become the touring keyboardist for The Who.
  • Signature Song: "Time Warp" is the most well known song even among people who haven't seen the movie, with "Sweet Transvestite" coming in second.
  • Superfluous Solo: Brad's song "Once in a While" was added because he was the only major character who didn't get a solo. It was then cut from the movie for being weak, compared to the other songs.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song: The Audience Participation made note of how the beginning of "Over At The Frankenstein Place" sounded a lot like the middle section of The Beatles' "A Day In The Life" ("Woke up/Fell outta bet/Dragged a comb across ma head...").
  • Sympathetic Sue: Seriously, at least 73% of all Rocky Horror fanfics try to make Riff Raff and Magenta far more pitiful than they are in the film. Yes, the same Riff Raff and Magenta who kill Rocky, Frank, and Columbia out of pure spite.
    • In the play, Frank was the only one killed out of spite. Columbia dove in front of the first shot, while Rocky attempted to attack Riff in his grief. And in the film, Columbia is more killed by accident than out of spite like Frank and Rocky are.
    • Likewise, there are quite a few fanfics that portray Frank in the same way. Um, since when are we supposed to feel sorry for the guy who tricked two innocent people into having sex with him, brutally murdered a guy from whom he removed half a brain (said half-of-brain was used to make Rocky, by the way) and then tricked said people he had sex with into eating the remains of the guy he murdered? The only aspect of Frank that anyone should feel sympathy towards is the fact that he's batshit insane.
      • It's likely due to the fact that Frank's final song "I'm Going Home" is a very desperate attempt to get people to feel sorry for him. The fact that it doesn't work and he gets killed anyway speaks volumes about the character.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: How most fans felt about the TV adaptation.
  • Too Cool to Live: Eddie, literally, in Frank's book.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: O'Brien said that Eddie's Teddy was added to the play to stop viewers feeling sorry for Eddie, but they still do anyway.
  • Vindicated by History: A rare example where one could actually see its evolution from a flop B-Movie into a pop-culture behemoth, as the now-famous Audience Participation which has kept it alive all these years started just as the film was finishing its original theatrical run.
  • The Woobie: Poor Rocky, who appears to be only slightly smarter than your average house pet, goes through a lot of grief in one night without having any idea why. Most fans sympathize very strongly with Columbia, who really gets treated like dirt. Her only friend appears to be Magenta, who later betrays her by turning her into a statue.
  1. ↑ ...and that's more than you'll ever see!
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