History Film / JohnnyMnemonic

* OffWithHisHead:
** {{Invoked}}. Every villain is pursuing Johnny with the intent to cut off his head, as it contains a neural implant with important information in it.
** [[spoiler: How Shinji meets his demise when he's [[HoistByHisOwnPetard Hoisted By His Own Petard]].]]

* FutureSocietyPresentValues: J-Bone explains the [=LoTeks'=] tactics as hijacking television signals from "their 500-channel universe," and generally suggests that television is the dominant brain-rotting, tool of oppression used by TheMan. Apparently, William Gibson never accounted for [[JustForFun/TVTropesWillRuinYourLife the brain-rotting potential of the Internet]].

** [[spoiler: Even if RidiculousFutureInflation were in play in regards to [=PharmaKom's=] prices, in less than a year's time, the accumulated cost for a typical medication taken once or twice daily would be roughly cost as much as the extremely expensive restoration "procedure" Johnny hoped to get done on his brain implant. These costs are so insanely high, privatized and nationalized insurance pools couldn't possibly cover the expenses for so many sick people.]]

* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: [[spoiler: The evil MegaCorp [=PharmaKom=] intends to suppress the cure for a fatal disease that has infected one half of the entire global population, their logic being that "treating the disease would be more profitable than curing it." However, their treatment medicines are said to cost as much as a grossly exaggerated "two grand per clinical unit" or more, which would be far more than most people could be expected to afford (though RidiculousFutureInflation may be at work regarding those figures). All told, their goal of getting billions of patients around the world to pay for their treatment indefinitely would be unattainable when only an ultra-wealthy few could conceivably afford to pay for it indefinitely, and yet even the most privileged, like Takahashi's daughter, are not helped by the treatments and continue to die off, anyway. By comparison, the working and clinically tested cure which [=PharmaKom=] aims to suppress could stand to be a much more profitable product because it could be made cheaper and more affordable to significantly more patients, would have a greater public demand, and would help a global population remain healthy, thrive, and build an even more prosperous and sustainable world economy in the long term.]]

* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: The techno-metal opera singer at the night club has blue hair.

* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: [[spoiler: The evil MegaCorp [=PharmaKom=] intends to suppress the cure for a fatal disease that has infected one half of the entire global population, their logic being that "treating the disease would be more profitable than curing it." However, their treatment medicines are said to cost as much as a grossly exaggerated "two grand per clinical unit" or more, which would be far more than most people could be expected to afford. All told, their goal of getting billions of patients around the world to pay for their treatment indefinitely would be unattainable when only an ultra-wealthy few could conceivably afford to pay for it indefinitely, and yet even the most privileged, like Takahashi's daughter, are not helped by the treatments and continue to die off, anyway. By comparison, the working and clinically tested cure which [=PharmaKom=] aims to suppress could stand to be a much more profitable product because it could be made cheaper and more affordable to significantly more patients, would have a greater public demand, and would help a global population remain healthy, thrive, and build an even more prosperous and sustainable world economy in the long term.]]

** Jane. While her counterpart Molly Millions in the original short story is a far more legitimately badass, cybernetically enhanced "razorgirl" who actively protects Johnny, Jane suffers from a neurodegenerative disease, and her own cybernetic enhancements are of no consequence to anything she does, despite [[InformedAttribute her own insistence that they make her a great, adept bodyguard and fighter]]. At one point during the film's action climax, Jane is somehow incapacitated and restrained off-screen by Shinji's {{Mooks}} and held up by one of them as a HumanShield! Johnny is also made tougher in the film than in the original story, requiring less protection from Jane.

:The narrative's most central and primary [=MacGuffin=] would be the three-image download code, which winds up separated into three parts and needs to be completed in order to retrieve...:

* OffWithHisHead: Everyone wants to cut off Johnny's head, as it contains a neural implant with important information on it.

* SoldHisSoulForADonut: {{Implied|Trope}}. At one time, Johnny would have ''willingly'' given up his longterm memories (and the human growth and emotionality that would come with them) in exchange for [[CyberneticsEatYourSoul a brain implant]] that obviously tethers him to nigh permanent employment as a lowly {{Courier}} working in the BlackMarket. People like Johnny would be stuck in their jobs and with their minds/humanity diminished for their entire lives, unless they could somehow amass enough cash to afford reversal "procedure," but the high, continually increasing cost would obviously be intended as a means of deterrence for couriers who would consider leaving their employers. The monetary cost of the "procedure" would essentially amount to one paying their way out of their line of work at the expense of leaving themselves flat broke. It's a real missed opportunity that this theme couldn't explored in more detail, as [[spoiler: Johnny's longterm memories [[PlotHole miraculously]] return to him via completion of the download code and completely cheapening the gravity of his initially outlined quest]].

* SoldHisSoulForADonut: {{Implied|Trope}}. At one time, Johnny would have ''willingly'' given up his longterm memories (and the human growth and emotionality that would come with them) in exchange for [[[[CyberneticsEatYourSoul a brain implant]] that obviously tethers him to nigh permanent employment as a lowly {{Courier}} working in the BlackMarket. People like Johnny would be stuck in their jobs and with their minds/humanity diminished for their entire lives, unless they could somehow amass enough cash to afford reversal "procedure," but the high, continually increasing cost would obviously be intended as a means of deterrence for couriers who would consider leaving their employers. The monetary cost of the "procedure" would essentially amount to one paying their way out of their line of work at the expense of leaving themselves flat broke. It's a real missed opportunity that this theme couldn't explored in more detail, as [[spoiler: Johnny's longterm memories [[PlotHole miraculously]] return to him via completion of the download code and completely cheapening the gravity of his initially outlined quest]].

* RageBreakingPoint: Johnny snaps after two bumbling [=LoTeks=] nearly drop an exploding car on top of him and Jane, triggering an infamous monologue rant.

---> '''Jane:''' Man owes me fifty thou and he’s scamming my phone card!\\

* HumanShield: Unlike most examples of this trope, where a villain resorting to this would typically appear to be already beaten, at a point during the movie's action climax when Shinji already has the upper hand and an unarmed Johnny at bay, one of his {{Mooks}} carries out Jane, now a hostage, held at gunpoint. Humorously, this situation ends with Jane elbowing her captor in the abdomen, who folds up like an umbrella--without also reflexively tensing up his trigger finger and subsequently blowing Jane's head off and despite wearing a full upper body bullet-proof vest, which is designed, after all, to absorb and distribute kinetic energy.

* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: [[spoiler: The evil MegaCorp [=PharmaKom=] intends to suppress the cure for a fatal disease that has infected one half of the entire global population, their logic being that "treating the disease would be more profitable than curing it." However, their treatment medicines are said to cost as much as a grossly exaggerated "two grand per clinical unit" or more, which would be far more than most people could be expected to afford. All told, their goal of getting billions of patients around the world to pay for their treatment indefinitely would be unattainable when only an ultra-wealthy few could conceivably afford to pay for it indefinitely, and yet even the most privileged, like Takahashi's daughter, are not helped by the treatments and continue to die off, anyway.]]

* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: [[spoiler: The evil MegaCorp [=PharmaKom=] intends to suppress the cure for a fatal disease that has infected one half of the entire global population, their logic being that "treating the disease would be more profitable than curing it." However, their treatment medicines are said to cost as much as a grossly exaggerated "two grand per clinical unit" or more, which would be far more than most people could likely afford. All told, their goal of getting vast amounts of patients around the world paying for their treatment indefinitely would only work if those patients could afford to pay for it indefinitely]].

* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: [[spoiler: The evil MegaCorp [=PharmaKom=] intends to suppress the cure for a fatal disease that has infected one half of the entire global population, their logic being that "treating the disease would be more profitable than curing it." However, their treatment medicines are said to cost as much as a grossly exaggerated "two grand per clinical unit" or more, which would be far more than most people in the world suffering from the disease could likely ever hope to afford, especially when the medicine is needed on a regular, never-ending cycle (A typical medication taken once-or-twice-daily at these set prices would cost a single patient in excess of $730,000-per-year or ''double'', and family households of four or larger would, statistically, stand to have, at least, two people afflicted with the disease). These prices would most definitely yield diminishing returns for a company very quickly, as the vast majority of sick people living on low and middle-class incomes would struggle to pay the company's exorbitantly high prices (especially on top of having to weigh the financial burden other basic living priorities, including food, housing, and basic utilities) and would be left to gradually die off amidst the global pandemic (and do even more damage to entire economies when both the size of healthy workforces and the numbers of consumers in other business sectors are drastically reduced). Moreover, the massive accumulated cost for care and and prescription drugs for such a significant number of sick people would make both privatized and nationalized insurance pools outright unsustainable, assuming they'd want to bother to provide ''any'' coverage for such outrageously expensive healthcare, without millions of people somehow affording to funnel even ''larger'' quantities of money into these systems. Even if it ''could'' be possible for someone to be wealthy or privileged enough to pay for the best possible access to [=PharmaKom's=] available treatments completely "out of pocket" for years or decades, the treatments are ''still'' shown to not be enough to prevent anyone from dying[[note]]A small line of exposition heard faintly on a television in the "Japanese Edit" even suggests that [=PharmaKom=]'s same highly expensive treatments are outright "toxic" and already causing fatalities amongst NAS patients.[[/note]] or even help significantly extend a patient's lifespan after contracting the disease, anyway, as Takahashi's young daughter succumbed to NAS, in spite of her father's ranking administrative status with the company. In these same circumstances, by comparison, the working and clinically tested cure which [=PharmaKom=] aims to suppress could plausibly be an even more profitable product because it could be made cheaper and more affordable to a significantly larger consumer base (especially if the sick would only require a much more finite dose or prescription), would have a greater public demand (especially when such a desired product is depicted as something people would go as far as to start ''riots'' over), and would help a global population remain healthy, thrive, and build an even more prosperous and sustainable world economy in the long term.]]

->''"I can carry nearly eighty gigs of data in my head."''[[note]]This might not sound [[TechnologyMarchesOn all that impressive nowadays]], but at the time of the film's release the average hard drive was around 700 megabytes, with high end ones being 1.5 gigabytes, and transport data devices being, at most, 64 megabytes. And the short story the film was based on was released in 1981, when the largest portable computer data storage device was 5 megabytes.[[/note]]

* LaserBlade: Shinji's glowing [[SharpenedToASingleAtom molecuwire whip]]. The orange, golden glow is because an invisible wire whip wouldn't be interesting to look at, but it also implies it's high-energy.

* SharpenedToASingleAtom: Shinji's molecuwire whip concealed in a prosthetic thumb tip; it sports an orange, golden glow on screen because an invisible wire whip wouldn't be interesting to look at.

* NoAnchovies: As if it wouldn't be obviously bitingly sarcastic enough for Johnny to walk into a room with loaded guns and hold up his briefcase as if he were delivering a pizza, Johnny also pretends the imaginary pizza he's delivering is topped with anchovies.

* {{Novelization}}: By Terry Bisson, along with an audiobook version read by Jack Noseworthy.

* {{Yubitsume}}: {{Invoked|Trope}}. When we first meet Takahashi, he tells Shinji, "I see you turned your shame into an asset," implying that Shinji had to cut off the tip of his thumb to atone for [[NoodleIncident a past dishonor]] before he replaced it with his [[RazorFloss molecuwire whip]].

* RazorFloss: Shinji's [[EnergyBlade molecuwire whip]], which is shown to be able to slice through flesh and bone and solid stone with minimal effort, yet, at one point, [[WeaksauceWeakness is somehow impeded by a thin, rusty chainlink gate that it can't cut through]].

* SharpenedToASingleAtom: Shinji's molecuwire whip is a monomolecular wire concealed in a prosthetic thumb tip. The movie makes it glow because an invisible wire whip wouldn't be interesting to look at.

* RazorFloss: Shinji's molecuwire whip, which is shown to be able to slice through flesh and bone and solid stone with minimal effort, yet, at one point, [[WeaksauceWeakness is somehow impeded by a thin, rusty chainlink gate that it can't cut through]].