History Film / BlowOut

* LoserProtagonist: Jack, [[spoiler:the only thing he could achieve was finding the the scream recorded from the death of Sally for a SlasherMovie, while TheBadGuyWins]].

* FailureHero: Poor Jack, [[spoiler:at the end he achieves nothing]].

* TheBadGuyWins: At the end of the film, [[spoiler:Jack has survived; however Sally has been killed and the villains have recovered the original tape which proved that the accident Jack taped at the beginning of the film was, in fact, an assassination]]. He's left with only the dark BrickJoke of finally getting the scream his producer wanted for the movie.

* ConspiracyTheorist: Everyone (except Donahue, the TV reporter) dismisses Jack as this; even Sally, when she of all people has reason to believe him.

** Manny Karp, who got Sally into the whole mess, doesn't seem too broken up about risking her life and has no apparent remorse for [=McRyan=]'s death, is also left alone by Burke specifically because these slimy traits keep him from posing any further threat to the plan.

* RiddleForTheAges: It's never revealed who hired Burke to discredit/kill [=McRyan=]; The rival candidate's party candidate, or someone else after the nomination within [=McRyan=]'s own party.

* SheepInSheepsClothing: Well-dressed, popular talk-show Host Frank Donahue approaches Jack, tells him that he believes his claims, and offers to assist him in publicizing his evidence. In most stories, Donahue would either be TheMole for TheConspiracy, or out to steal Jack's thunder by hogging the credit for himself, but here, he's neither, with his plot relevance coming from Burke deciding to impersonate him to get closer to Sally.

* ThwartedCoupDeGrace: Subverted. It looks like Jack is right on time to prevent the ice pick murder of Sally but it turns out she had already been killed.

* RiddleForTheAges: It's never revealed who hired Burke to discredit/kill [=McRyan=]; The rival party's candidate, or someone else after the nomination within [=McRyan=]'s own party.

* RiddleForTheAges: It's never revealed who hired Burke to discredit/kill McRyan; The rival party's candidate, or someone else after the nomination within McRyan's own party.

** Manny Karp, who got Sally into the whole mess, doesn't seem too broken up about risking her life and has no apparent remorse for McRyan's death, is also left alone by Burke specifically because these slimy traits keep him from posing any further threat to the plan.

* AsYouKnow: Early on, Jack's director asks him how long they have been working together and then Jack lists all their movies for the audience to learn that they have a history together in making slasher movies.

* BrickJoke: A pretty dark one. At the beginning of the film, Jack is trying to record a good scream for the film-within-a-film. [[spoiler: He ends up using Sally's dying scream.]]

* EvenEvilHasStandards: The conspiracy that hired Burke wants absolutely nothing more to do with him after he kills [=McRyan=], partially because his job is done, partially because they got sick with his psychotic tactics and ''they'' only wanted to {{Blackmail}} [=McRyan=]. Even then, Burke decides to clean up loose ends...

* HeroicBSOD: Jack [[spoiler:is going to be haunted by Sally's screams forever. And no one else will know...]]

* TroubledBackstoryFlashback: Jack used to work for the police department, until he wired an undercover cop whose cover was blown - the cop was sweating so much it shorted the wire, and he was found out - and the cop was killed as a result. We see the story play out as he tells it to Sally.

* KarmaHoudini: The people who hired Burke are never captured or even suspected. On ''their'' (feeble) defense, they invoke EvenEvilHasStandards on Burke and cut him loose early in the film.

* RewindReplayRepeat: Jack does this in his studio so he can sync the audio he recorded of the crash [[spoiler:with Karp's photos of the same]].

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/blow_out_2396.jpg]]

** Doubled down on[[spoiler:when Jack kills Burke at the film's climax, only to find out Sally has herself already been killed. This is taken as her killing the serial killer Burke has been making his killings appear to have been done by throughout the movie]], meaning that a bad guy ''who wasn't even in the movie'' has also gotten away, at least for now.

* ExactWords: Burke's EstablishingCharacterMoment is him contacting the people who hired him after he's killed [=McRyan=]. They are foaming at the mouth for such an action and he tells them back that he was hired to "take ([=McRyan=]) out of the race", and ''killing him'' was "[[ExactWords within the parameters of the order]]".

* ExactWords: Burke's EstablishingCharacterMoment is him contacting the people who hired him after he's killed [=McRyan=]. They are foaming at the mouth for such an action and he tells them back that he was hired to "take ([=McRyan=]) out of the race", and ''killing him'' was "[[WithinParameters within the parameters of the order]]".

Creator/QuentinTarantino, no less, has called this De Palma's best film.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The plot takes elements of several real-life political scandals, including Chappaquiddick, [[UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy JFK]]'s assassination and Watergate.

* DisposableSexWorker: Among the women who resemble Sally that Burke kills [[SerialKillingsSingleTarget to make his eventual attempt on her life less suspicious]] is a prostitute in a subway station.

* DisposableSexWorker: [[spoiler:Burke kills call girls who look like Sally, herself a call girl, so her eventual murder won't look suspicious.]]

* SerialKiller: Played with; Burke [[SerialKillingsSpecificTarget pretends to be one so his eventual murder of Sally won't be as suspicious]], but he is heavily implied to be sociopathic anyway.

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: Jack manages to kill the assassin, but Sally is also killed. Ironically, as a result, the cover-up is a success.]]