TRON/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Accidental Aesop: Do not keep ALL your work in one file with no backups.
    • Or "make damn sure you delete your incriminating files, lest you be blackmailed with them."
  • Accidental Innuendo: The resulting dialogue when Tron, Flynn and Ram find a pure source.

Flynn: What's that?
Ram: That is just what I need right now...

    • Ram seems to be more prone to these.

Ram: My friends, my fellow conscripts, we have scored. I feel so much better.

  • Award Snub. The Academy said TRON "cheated" by using computers. Then Young Sherlock Holmes was nominated three years later, and The Abyss won six years later, both for computer digital effects. Now, the only winner of Best Visual Effects are CGI effects.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: The Grid Bugs appear briefly on-screen with Yori explaining that "if [they] get us, we've had it". However, they never appear or get mentioned in the rest of the movie.
    • There was supposedly a scene in the original script where the heroes did battle with the bugs, but it was cut.
  • Cult Classic: Despite a disappointing box-office turnover, the movie didn't fade from memory and developed a devoted cult following. Its cult status is one of the reasons why it got a $170 million sequel 28 years later.
  • Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory:
    • Much is made of the "Users" being godlike to the programs, and Flynn himself seems to parallel the life and accomplishments of Jesus (especially at the end of the film, which is the Harrowing of Hell in all but name). A lot of scenes also seem to be reminiscent of Ben Hur and other big Christian epics of the 50s.
    • Sark is red, has devil horns, and keeps hammering on the enslaved programs that users don't exist, like those Dirty Communists.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Ram gets a lot of fanfic and fanart, to the point where his User (credited only as "Popcorn Guy") was given a name and substantial role in the Flynn Lives ARG.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment that mixes it with Gone Horribly Right: Flynn is communicating with his hacking program, Clu. Knowing what Clu 2.0 turns into...

Flynn: I wrote you. I taught you everything I know about the system...Now, you're the best program that's ever been written. You're dogged and relentless..."

    • The other ones come from the tie-in games. Intellivision got an early draft of the script to work from, so Tron: Deadly Disks depicts the title character as an orange figure cutting down blue colored "enemies." Simple color goof in 1982, but considering what happens later...
    • The other one was Maze-A-Tron, again from Intellivision. Playing Flynn, you're alone and trapped in a circuitry maze. There is no way to win this game, just keep playing until an enemy recognizer or other obstacle does you in. Again, consider the sequel...
  • Harsher in Hindsight: After watching the sequel, watching the first film can be painful. That cheerful smartass protagonist ends up a broken, ruined man; widowed before age 35, goes half-crazy from the stress, is betrayed by his creation, and spends the rest of his days (the equivalent of 1000 years) in a Hopeless War or exile. The title character? There are fates worse than de-rez and he pretty much gets handed them all. Sark's taunt about how Tron should have joined him? "Rinzler" ends up serving the same function for Clu 2.0 as Sark did for Master Control. The last scene where the three human protagonists have a Group Hug and walk off into the sunset? Well, no matter what timeline you use (2.0 or Tron: Legacy), that Power Trio breaks up, with Alan left to carry on alone. It's actually nicer in the Legacy timeline as Lora's Put on a Bus instead of Stuffed Into the Fridge.
  • Ho Yay: Tron and Flynn. You saw it.
    • Ram and Flynn. Seriously.
  • Memetic Mutation: "End of line."
    • "Greetings Programs"
    • "I Fight for the Users" (To the point where the Electronic Frontier Foundation has cheerfully appropriated it)
  • Narm Charm: Aspects of this film's visuals, acting, and dialogue have not aged well. But many find this cheesy camp to be a great reason to watch the movie, while others don't find anything cheesy about it.
  • Nightmare Fuel: CLU's death at the beginning of the film is pretty damn scary, broken down bit by bit while screaming in horror.
  • The Problem with Licensed Games: Averted with both the 1982 arcade game (which earned more than the film's original release!) and Tron 2.0. The Intellivision games, especially Deadly Disks, were also solid sellers for Mattel.
  • Put on a Bus: Alan and Lora, after Flynn is sucked into the computer. They don't show up again until the ending, although Tron learns how to defeat the MCP by contacting Alan from Dumont's I/O tower.
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: TRON is a manifestation of the power of CGI... and a testimony to how quickly the effects become dated.
    • Ironically, much of it has held up surprisingly well, in part because a lot of practical effects were used to achieve the Tron Lines and green-screen environments; the CG rotoscoping and vehicles look great. But the fully-CG environments used in a couple scenes to "show off" ironically look their age.
  • Spiritual Licensee: ReBoot
  • True Art Is Incomprehensible: At least at the time; see Award Snub above.
  • Video Game Movies Suck. Flopped on release, though acknowledged to be a classic now. It made it on to G4's Movies That Don't Suck!
    • An inversion since the arcade game came out just shortly before the movie did.
  • Vindicated by History. It may have been a flop at first, but now it's considered a classic revolutionary pioneering effort in film science fiction and visuals. John Lasseter, in an interview which is part of The Making Of Tron, stated that "without Tron there would have been no Toy Story."
  • Tear Jerker: Ram's death. Even Flynn looks ready to cry.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The special effects are revolutionary for their time, and are still impressive, especially if you consider the fact that they were made on computers slower than your cell phone.
    • Not only that, but this was one of the first major uses of outsourcing with a certain Taiwanese animation company behind the familiar Tron lines (and did most of the other coloring as well).
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