Total Recall/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Adaptation Displacement: See Adaptation Expansion.
  • Awesome Music: Jerry Goldsmith's score.
  • Best Known for the Fanservice
  • Complete Monster: Cohaagen and Richter.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: The human shield scene. A poor bystander getting caught in the line of fire and shot by Richter's men when they're trying to kill Quaid is horrible. Quaid grabbing his corpse, using it to protect himself from several more rounds of gunfire, and then throwing his now completely bloodied up body onto his pursuers on the other hand? Hilarious.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Lori, played by the ever-so-lovely Sharon Stone.
  • Fetish Fuel Station Attendant: Lori.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • YOU BLUU MAI CUVAH!!!
    • GET YOAH AHSS TO MAHS!
    • GEEVE DEESE PEEPLE AYAH!
    • DIE BENNY!!!
    • SHIT! SHIT!
    • SCCCREEEEEEWWWWWW YYYOOOOUUUUUU!!!!!
    • BUT I KILLED DEM!!!
    • Start the reactor Quaid... Free Mars...
    • CONSIDER DAT A DIVOAHCE.
    • SEE YOU AT DE PAHTY, RICHTAH!!!!
    • Hey man, I got five kids to feed!
    • Get ready for a surprise!
    • TWO WEEKS!
    • Open your mind!
  • Moral Event Horizon: Cohagen crosses it when he leaves all the people in the dome to suffocate.
  • One-Scene Wonder:
    • Dr. Edgemar, the bald guy who offer Doug the red pill.
    • Priscilla Allen's performance as the "Two Weeks" woman.
    • The unforgettable three-breasted hooker.
  • Signature Scene: Most previews and retrospectives use the scene where the "Two weeks" lady's head opens, revealing Quaid underneath.
  • Uncanny Valley:
    • Justified. The Johnny Cab robot is a Howdy Doody parody with a deliberately phony, chipper personality.
    • The scenes when Quaid takes the tracker out of his nose and when he takes off his fat lady mask. In both scenes, it's pretty easy to tell that Quaid's face is being rendered in stop-motion.
    • The characters when their eyes bulge out of their heads when getting decompressed by Mars' atmosphere, which for some either can come off as Narm or Nightmare Fuel.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The film has well-made models and prosthetics, and the only brief CGI, in the X-ray scanner, looks simple but holds up.