r/TopCharacterTropes • • 3d ago

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) False advertising

  1. The marketing makes it seem like the movie is about Austin (the unbreakable boy) who is autistic, but rather it's about his prick of a father who caused a drunk driving accident
  2. The talking kangaroo was included in all of the trailers and the main poster but was only a hallucination and was seen for like 30 seconds (Kangaroo Jack)
5.9k Upvotes

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3.3k

u/Wrong-Mouse-6499 3d ago

FUN FACT: Kangaroo Jack used to be a 18+ film called Down and Under, and test audiences HATED it. So they had to scramble to attract audiences, and they realized they had wacky kangaroos in that dream sequence, so after a lot of editing and false advertising we got Kangaroo Jack

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u/RoadsidePicnik 3d ago edited 3d ago

The stuff they left in while maintaining a PG rating is kind of fucked up. Binge drinking, boobie-grabbing, jokes about epilepsy and getting whacked, Michael Shannon growling "You pansy-ass (r-slur)s are dead!"

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u/LilMissy1246 3d ago

Wasn’t “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?“ also PG? The baby character was pretty crude (cigars, upskirting women, the middle finger) and then there’s Jessica and her introduction.

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u/Oh_hi_doggi3 3d ago

Wasn't that before PG 13 was a big thing? I could be 100% wrong.

I remember watching Back to the Future at like 8 because it was "PG" and there's a near rape scene in the film. That ain't PG, in my opinion

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u/eyesparks 3d ago

PG-13 came around in 1984, Roger Rabbit was 1988.

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u/Organic_Rip1980 3d ago

Yep, my understanding is that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was a major inspiration for the PG-13 rating.

That movie is PG even though a guy gets his heart ripped out in a torture scene. And don’t they also eat a monkey’s brain? Neat.

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u/eyesparks 3d ago

Temple of Doom and Gremlins were the big ones I think. Lot of parents complained about Gremlins being too scary for young kids.

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u/ironicthesameplaceim 3d ago

Could understand that. It’s a Christmas movie and Gizmo is cute.

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u/Organic_Rip1980 3d ago

This really checks out for me.

When I heard about Temple of Doom being one I was like “oh that explains why my parents just gave up on ratings in the 80s,” because I think I saw Gremlins as well!

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u/saikopasu_neko28 3d ago

The issue my parents had with it is that scene where the girl says how she found out Santa isn't real. Not just the death of her father but the spoiling of the holiday to young kids haha, still let me my brother and cousins watch it though.

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u/lanceturley 3d ago

Temple of Doom and Gremlins both came out in 84, and both got a lot of flack for being PG movies that were probably too scary for young kids. Spielberg was executive producer on Gremlins and directed Temple of Doom, so he had to deal with the backlash and suggested there should be a rating between PG and R.

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u/Organic_Rip1980 3d ago

Of course! I knew there was something else but I forgot about Gremlins

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u/Oh_hi_doggi3 3d ago

Ahh I was close

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u/Mr_Blue_Sky2007 3d ago

Red Dawn should've been rated R.

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u/BindingOfZeph 3d ago

Monty Python and the Holy Grail is also rated PG

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u/Oh_hi_doggi3 3d ago

Yeah but I think that was the 1970s. I know sometime in the 80s the MPAA added PG13

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u/BindingOfZeph 3d ago

You are correct! It came out in 1975

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u/The_Real_Kuji 3d ago

I mean, there's some old movies that are rated G that would be at least PG-13 if not R now.

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u/PromiseThomas 3d ago

You watch enough PG 80s movies and you start to realize that they had a very different idea of what was appropriate for kids lol.

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u/Distantstallion 3d ago

Epilepsy jokes had me shaking

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u/SpermBankVCR 3d ago

I once heard an epileptic refer to her seizers as “exclusive dance parties”

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u/Inevitable_Salad933 3d ago

The really squeezed an entirely different, much more unhinged movie into a kids’ comedy ❤️🥲😂

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u/TarrWasTaken 3d ago

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u/ribblefizz 2d ago

Why do y'all suspect that particular comment of being a bot?

1

u/TarrWasTaken 2d ago

It generally seems like a ChatGPT comment. 

1

u/ribblefizz 1d ago

Huh. Every day I see people saying things that I would say and people calling them AI. I'm starting to question my own humanity!

-9

u/bot-sleuth-bot 3d ago

Analyzing user profile...

Account made less than 1 week ago.

Suspicion Quotient: 0.10

This account exhibits one or two minor traits commonly found in karma farming bots. While it's possible that u/Inevitable_Salad933 is a bot, it's very unlikely.

I am a bot. This action was performed automatically. Check my profile for more information.

10

u/Turtle-Bug 3d ago

You might be bad at this sleuth thing.

1

u/wonderhell336 3d ago

It is a terrible bot. It hasn't detected a single bot, check their replies.

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u/Shaydu 3d ago

MICHAEL SHANNON IS IN KANGAROO JACK!?? Boardwalk Empire Michael Shannon?

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u/RoadsidePicnik 3d ago

The very same. Sadly, we only get his trademark forehead snarl when he says the unfortunate line I mentioned.

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u/Prasiatko 3d ago

Was r slur considered a slur back then? 

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u/MidTario 3d ago

A rude word, but not on the solitary level of f- or n-

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

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u/roses-are-lead 3d ago

Our idiot president uses it. That alone has cured me of everything speaking it again. The 90s wasn't Avery thoughtful time, we were all too damned busy being edgy

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u/FlyOrdinary1104 3d ago

As a small kid at the time I probably would’ve been punished for saying it in front of my parents. That said people were very casual about that word and faggot, it’s a bit startling how common I hear my peers still say it when they feel safe.

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u/Bamzooki1 3d ago

It’s made a resurgence, and Elon Musk and Donald Trump are a big part of why.

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u/AsherFischell 3d ago

I like how you went out of your way not to say the very slur we're talking about, only to openly say a slur that's arguably just as frowned upon, if not more so.

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u/FlyOrdinary1104 3d ago

Typed it because it was shorter than saying the gay f-word.

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u/ribblefizz 2d ago

"f----t" would also have been an option.

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u/ShiningStar5022 3d ago

It was considered an insult back then, but not a slur IIRC.

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u/clone9786 3d ago

I don’t mean to sound any kind of way about it, but no, it wasn’t.

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u/genflugan 3d ago

Yes it was. A lot of people just revel in being assholes though so they never have and never will consider it a slur.

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u/Prasiatko 3d ago

Yeah but would it have got censored in a kids film back then?

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u/NeebCreeb 3d ago

>people cared about the r-word in 2005

zoomer spotted

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u/genflugan 3d ago

Nice try but I’m in my 30’s. Even saw Kangaroo Jack when it was in theaters.

It was definitely a slur at the time, but again, there are a lot of assholes out there who get off on being assholes and obviously don’t care about the r-word.

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u/Bamzooki1 3d ago

I was around back then. The reason I noticed and you didn’t is because I’m disabled and had to deal with it being used to belittle my kind.

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u/NeebCreeb 3d ago

"my kind"

bro you're disabled, not a lizard-man

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u/Bamzooki1 3d ago

I’m not, but it’s hard for it to not feel that way sometimes. When ableism is as common as it is, it can often feel like the world wants us to fail. It’s not just in active name calling and assaults, but also in systemic ways, like how I’m completely unable to cope with traditional corporate settings with no adjustments made, how my OCD makes it impossible to work in places like fast food restaurants or grocery stores, or how I have to ham up my disability to an excessive level just so that the government actually believes I’m autistic instead of going “Looks pretty normal to me, better take away their PIP, because we all know disabilities aren’t lifelong things and just go away after a few years”

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u/NeebCreeb 3d ago

I'm gonna be honest bro, you sound like an exhausting person

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u/Bamzooki1 3d ago

I don’t care if I come off as exhausting to you. This thread is about if the slur affected people, and I’m not gonna sugarcoat it to save your feelings.

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u/ribblefizz 2d ago

And you sound shallow, unkind, and uninteresting. So?

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u/Bamzooki1 3d ago

Yes. It’s just nobody gives a shit about the disabled. I had to endure it, and so has basically everyone else with a disability.

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u/Minute987 3d ago

It isn't now.

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u/Bamzooki1 3d ago

Not to mention the funniest gag in the movie that left me unable to breathe, even having to be hospitalised with some kind of derangement:

”You guys have a Denny’s?!”

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/rikashiku 3d ago

This is the movie where we had Michael Shannon, Christopher Walken, and Marton Csokas, all sharing scenes with one or the other playing Gangsters, and they're the best parts of the movie that instead stars Jerry O'Connell and Anthony Anderson, who really should be the bad guys considering the douchy things they do.

At leas the Gangsters know that they're bad guys, but O'Connell and Anderson try to act like good guys, doing bad things.

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u/Goem 3d ago

Retard?

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u/U_L_Uus 3d ago

Also having a couple of twits pay for their own execution by an Australian cartel (or whatever the fuck they were)

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u/notsure500 3d ago

Release the R rated cut!

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u/RedDoeHost 2d ago

To be fair it was a different time

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u/wikingwarrior 3d ago

I mean... Audiences hated Kangaroo Jack too.

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u/Lord_Parbr 3d ago

Well, yeah. It’s not a different movie. They just advertised it differently

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u/aNascentOptimist 3d ago

I hated that movie as a kid. It made me realize trailers are a good way to lie and not for the audience to understand the movie, but to just sell tickets no matter what.

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u/spunk_wizard 3d ago

Snow dogs....

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u/NolanCrush 3d ago

oh yeah, I recently watched Aggressively Average cover that movie 

story is absolutely wild. The people who made it lie about literally everything; he’s barely even called Kangaroo Jack