History Film / Videodrome

* ArcWords: "Come to Nicki."

* TheTapeKnewYouWouldSayThat: TV prophet Brian O'Blivion communicates solely through videotaped messages, even to participate in an interview early on in the film. Played with when thanks to the Videodrome hallucination, Brian ''directly'' speaks to Max from his recording.

* BedmateReveal: Played for horror. When Max wakes up in his bed late in the film after an extended Videodrome hallucination, he finds someone laying next to him. When he removes the sheets it turns out to be the corpse of Masha, tied up and tortured to death. He calls up a friend to come over and look, [[spoiler:but it turns out he was again hallucinating and his bed is empty.]]

* EroticAsphyxiation: The Videodrome signal Max and Harlan see was an alleged snuff film where a woman has her clothes ripped off by two hooded assailants in a red room. She then has her hands tied to a pole and gets choked to death. Played for horror when it's later discovered that the scene was very genuine.

* SpiritualSequel: ''[[Film/{{EXistenZ}} eXistenZ]]''. This is made particularly clear because it starts with a scene that looks very like the climax to this movie. Not to mention that both films make use of a disturbingly biological handgun.

* CentralTheme: Eyes and perception. It's little wonder that the MegaCorp has a front as an eyeglasses manufacturer whose new Medici line uses the motto "The eyes are the window to the soul".

* HeadacheOfDoom: After watching Videodrome with Nikki Brand, Max Renn appears noticeably tired and headache-ridden the next morning, symptoms that Masha initially mistake for a hangover. After watching a Videodrome tape given to him by Bianca O'Blivion, the trend continues; following a hallucination-filled evening, Max wakes up with a headache - but this time, Bianca reveals the source of the symptoms: [[spoiler: the Videodrome signal induces the growth of brain tumors in anyone watching it. And that's not all it does...]]

-->'''Nicki:''' What's this? "Videodrome"?\\

* TheHeroDies: [[spoiler: The film ends with Max shooting himself to (he believes) be joined with Nicki in Videodrome. Whether or not he's [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness hallucinating there is an open question, however]].]]

* ManInTheMachine: One of Cronenberg's favorite tropes is played out here. Aside from "Max becomes a living VCR", at one point, Convex has Max wear a gigantic recording device over his head, making him look like a man with a robot head.

* NamesToRunAwayFrom: Brian O'Blivion and his daughter Bianca O'Blivion. While their alignment is very hard to make out due to the unreality of the movie [[spoiler:and Brian being a resonant phantom living in the television world]], they are engaging in a counter war against the brain-destroying, people-corrupting Videodrome syndicate by reprogramming the "video word made flesh" (an outside innocent, sleazy TV executive Max Renn) for their own sinister purposes. In his first appearance Brian explains that O'Blivion is just his "television name".

* {{Novelisation}}: A novelization was released by Zebra Books alongside the movie in 1983. Though credited to "Jack Martin", the novel was, in fact, the work of horror novelist Dennis Etchison. Cronenberg reportedly invited Etchison up to Toronto, where they discussed and clarified the story, allowing the novel to remain as close as possible to the actions in the film. There are some differences, however, such as the inclusion of the "bathtub sequence", a scene never filmed in which a television rises from Max Renn's bathtub like a Venus in a conch shell. This was the result of the lead time required to write the book, which left Etchison working with an earlier draft of the script than was used in the film.

* PlaceWorseThanDeath: UsefulNotes/{{Pittsburgh}} is treated this way throughout the film. It is where the Videodrome signal comes from, and "See you in Pittsburgh" is later used in lieu of the regular "SeeYouInHell".

** "Nicki Brand": a masochist who enjoys being cut and burned, i.e., nicked and branded.

* RecordedSplicedConversation: Professor Brian O'Blivion is a pop-culture analyst/ philosopher who believes that television will eventually replace all aspects of everyday life. He frequently appears on talk shows to debate his philosophy, but only if he can telecommute by having his image broadcast into the studio on a TV next to the other participants. Protagonist Max goes to Professor O'Blivion's base of operations at the "Cathode Ray Mission" in order to interview him personally, but discovers that [[spoiler: Professor O'Blivion was murdered and his daughter, Bianca O'Blivion, has been using an archive of thousands of her father's pre-recorded tapes to fake his continued appearances on television.]]

* SesquipedalianLoquaciousness: Masha indulges in this, such as calling the BlackMarket the "subterranean market".

** CIVIC-TV is a play on Citytv (a Toronto-area station that, past midnight, played porn movies at the time that ''Videodrome'' was made.).[[note]]It still does, only now it's not just a "Toronto-area" Station, but has a Citytv Vancouver, Montreal, etc.[[/note]]

* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: The film is shown from the perspective of the protagonist, Max Renn, who has certainly gone batty at some point. Everything up to the first Brian O'Blivion tape he watches can be assumed to be real as he's still only slightly affected by the signal. But when Bianca tells him that his life could become "100% video hallucination", suddenly it looks more and more likely that the bizarre plot twists ([[spoiler:i.e. an evil conspiracy operating out of an opticians', his best friend being part of this conspiracy, murdering people with flesh/metal hybrid weaponry]]) is all part of a massive psychotic break triggered by the Videodrome signal. Maybe.

* StartsWithASuicide: [[spoiler: {{Inverted|Trope}}. The film ends with Max shooting himself to (he believes) be joined with Nicki in Videodrome. Whether or not he's [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness hallucinating there is an open question, however]].]]

* KnightTemplar: [[spoiler:Barry Convex and Harlan want to eliminate people who enjoy watching violence so they can create a "pure" society. To do this, Convex runs a SnuffFilm operation out of Pittsburgh where people are tortured and murdered on his direction. Max points out how hollow Convex's MoralGuardians rant comes across considering that Convex himself murdered Brian O'Blivion, asking him if he enjoyed ''that''.]]

* {{Zeerust}}: [[SocietyMarchesOn To a modern audience,]] the idea that television is the primary medium by which media influences the human mind seems quite antiquated, what with the rise of the Internet and social media. The potential remake of ''Videodrome'' addresses this issue by using the Internet and nano-technology as the means by which society is controlled. Television ''itself'' has also evolved beyond signal broadcasts since the rise of cable. Those adorable Betamax cassettes and [=VCRs=] really sweeten the deal, not to mention the UsefulNotes/Atari2600 Max owns.

* FantasticAesop: Not used by the film itself, but by the bad guys, who figure that if they make a torture porn show that kills the viewer, nobody will watch torture porn anymore.

* {{Zeerust}}: [[SocietyMarchesOn To a modern audience,]] the idea that television is the primary medium by which media influences the human mind seems quite antiquated, what with the rise of the Internet and social media. The potential remake of ''Videodrome'' addresses this issue by using the Internet and nano-technology as the means by which society is controlled. Television ''itself'' has also evolved beyond signal broadcasts since the rise of cable. Those adorable Betamax cassettes and [=VCRs=] really sweeten the deal.

* ArcWords: "Come to Nikki."

* DeconstructorFleet: For late '70s, early '80s "mondo" exploitation movies. Oddly enough, it is now [[WeirdAlEffect much better known]] than films like ''Film/MondoCane'' or the ''Film/FacesOfDeath'' series.

* NamesToRunAwayFrom: Brian O'Blivion and his daughter Bianca O'Blivion. While their alignment is very hard to make out due to the unreality of the movie [[spoiler:and Brian being a resonant phantom living in the television world]], they are engaging in a counter war against the brain-destroying, people-corrupting Videodrome syndicate by reprogramming the "video word made flesh" (an outside innocent, sleazy TV executive Max Renn) for their own sinister purposes.

* {{Zeerust}}: [[SocietyMarchesOn To a modern audience,]] the idea that television is the primary medium by which media influences the human mind seems quite antiquated, what with the rise of the Internet and social media. The potential remake of ''Videodrome'' addresses this issue by using the Internet and nano-technology as the means by which society is controlled. Television ''itself'' has also evolved beyond signal broadcasts since the rise of cable. Those adorable video cassettes and [=VCRs=] really sweeten the deal.

* SnuffFilm: Videodrome is snuff ''television''. Or that's how it appears at first...

* RecordedSplicedConversation: Professor Brian O'Blivion is a pop-culture analyst/ philosopher who believes that television will eventually replace all aspects of everyday life. He frequently appears on talk shows to debate his philosophy, but only if he can telecommute and by having his image broadcast into the studio on a TV next to the other participants. Protagonist Max goes to Professor O'Blivion's base of operations at the "Cathode Ray Mission" in order to interview him personally, but discovers that [[spoiler: Professor O'Blivion was murdered and his daughter, Bianca O'Blivion, has been using an archive of thousands of her father's pre-recorded tapes to fake his continued appearances on television.]]

-->'''[[spoiler:Harlan:]]''' North America's getting soft, patrone. And the rest of the world is getting tough. Very, very tough. We're entering savage new times, and we're going to have to be pure... and direct... and strong... if we're gonna survive them. Now, you and this, uh, cesspool you call a television station... ''(increasingly pissed)'' and, uh, your people who '''''wallow''''' around in it... and, uh, your viewers... who ''watch'' you ''do'' it— you're rotting us away from the inside. We intend to stop that rot.

* TwentyThree:
** The first scene is Max's secretary telling him his schedule for the day, Wednesday the twenty-third. On video tape.
** In a blink and you'll miss it type, when Max first meets Barry Convex in person for the first time at the opticians' store, you can see the number 23 in the background behind Convex in one of the shots.

* AdolfHitlarious: Max has a picture of Hitler in a ballerina skirt with a swastika on it and on stilts in his living room.

* DeconstructorFleet: For late '70s, early '80s "mondo" exploitation movies. Oddly enough, it is now [[WeirdAlEffect much better known]] than films like ''Mondo Cane'' or the ''Film/FacesOfDeath'' series.