History YMMV / BladeRunner

** Taffy Lewis, as played by the hammy Hy Pyke.

** The entirety of Roy Barry’s soliloquy is iconic, but especially the line “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain”.

* CommonKnowledge: Common Knowledge says the Voight-Kampff test measures how much empathy a person has. Actually, it doesn't. In the future, animals have been driven to the brink of extinction, causing humanity to fetishize them to the point they have more cultural value than actual artificial people, the replicants.[[note]] ''The book is more explicit about the cultural symbolism behind animals in 21 century [=LA=], whereas it's mostly just for flavor in the film.''[[/note]] The Voight-Kampff test measures how well a person has been indoctrinated with the animal-deification ideology that dominates the future society. A person is only deemed human if they have the appropriate cultural response to animal cruelty. In keeping with the book's more explicit Nazi allegory, half the name is literally taken from Adolf Hitler's manifesto, who--as we all know--loved animals but accused the subhumans of trying to infiltrate and destroy German civilization.

** Why does Roy Batty save Deckard at the end? Is it empathy, recognizing that Deckard's plight is NotSoDifferent from his own? Or is it a (very understandable) fear of DyingAlone, even if the person about to witness your final moments was your bitter enemy mere minutes ago?

** The Replicants can't have their lives extended, and Roy dies of old age at the end. Given the fact that one of the most quoted scenes in the movie and what is often considered one of the greatest soliloquies in cinema history also happens to be his FamousLastWords, it's understandable.

* MagnificentBastard: Roy Batty is a replicant and former soldier model who is driven to gain more life for himself and his partners from his "father", Eldon Tyrell. Stealing to Earth while eluding all pursuers, Roy has his lover Pris seduce the engineer Sebastian to provide access to Tyrell, whereupon Roy learns his wish is impossible. Killing Tyrell and Sebastian, Roy engages the Blade Runner cop Deckard in a battle, but ends up saving and sparing Deckard, using his last moments to impart a few of his memories to Deckard, ensuring he will not be forgotten even as he notes his own memories shall be gone "like tears in the rain", proving himself one of the most complex, charismatic and dynamic antagonists in sci-fi cinema.

** The entirety of Roy Barry’s soliloquy is iconic, but especially the line “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain”.

* SongAssociation: In Argentina, Torneos y Competencias used the film's main title for their programs, especially the early years of ''Fútbol de Primera'', so it became synonymous with UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball programs there.

** The LAPD's treatment of the replicants, where they regularly refer to them by a slur and hunt them down in cold blood, now that police brutality against ethnic minorities has become a major political issue in the United States via the Black Lives Matter movement. Even before then, this trope started popping up within a decade of the film's release as the LAPD specifically got embroiled in the Rodney King and C.R.A.S.H controversies.

* AwardSnub: Yes, it got nominated for Visual Effects and Production design. No, Creator/RidleyScott didn't get nominated for Best Director, Creator/RutgerHauer didn't get up for Best Supporting Actor, and Music/{{Vangelis}} didn't get nominated for Best Score.

** A camp considers the "Deckard is a Replicant" theory to be an AssPull that is not even properly foreshadowed beyond the unicorn dream/origami. They often point out that, as the film establishes, the Replicants of the Nexus-7 differ from humans by being stronger and more durable than them, just the opposite of Deckard, who clearly doesn't match the Replicants in skills and only wins any fight scene by scrapping by, receiving external help or fighting dirty. Moreover, if Deckard is an older Replicant model or a later up-to-date model, it makes no sense why he should be designated for a job that involves fighting down models far more advanced than he is, or what corporate interest could have an experiment based on pitting an unaware, weaker Replicant against stronger and better trained ones. Then again, "more human than human" is Tyrell's goal, and his ultimate goal is to create artificial humans, not soldiers -- and not knowing they're artificial.

* StrangledByTheRedString: Deckard's love story with Rachel comes off as highly stiff and unconvincing. It's meant to evoke a classic FilmNoir doomed romance but the chemistry between the two leads doesn't work, and the genre it's meant to evoke has several examples that merely show how it falls short. The fact that, at the very least, ''one'' of them is definitely a Replicant either explains or {{Lampshades}} this for some, but undercuts it for others[[note]]since it makes a love story with a replicant unconvincing in a movie that advocates for their individuality[[/note]]. Rachel is likewise a SatelliteLoveInterest and among the Replicants far less interesting than Roy, Priss, Zhora, and ultimately the Replicant who truly triggers Deckard's CharacterDevelopment is Roy Batty.

* MagnificentBastard: Roy Batty is a replicant and former soldier model who is driven to gain more life for himself and his partners from his "father", Elden Tyrell. Stealing to Earth while eluding all pursuers, Roy has his lover Pris seduce the engineer Sebastian to provide access to Tyrell, whereupon Roy learns his wish is impossible. Killing Tyrell and Sebastian, Roy engages the Blade Runner cop Deckard in a battle, but ends up saving and sparing Deckard, using his last moments to impart a few of his memories to Deckard, ensuring he will not be forgotten even as he notes his own memories shall be gone "like tears in the rain", proving himself one of the most complex, charismatic and dynamic antagonists in sci-fi cinema.

* JerkassWoobie: All of the Replicants. They’re escaped slaves who want to live in piece, but Roy and Leon are ruthless killers, and Pris is a callous manipulator. How sympathetic they are varies from scene to scene.

** The whole Deckard and Rachel relationship becomes this come the sequel. [[spoiler: The BigBad all but states outright that Tyrell [[PerfectlyArrangedMarriage set the whole thing up]] just to test his theory that Replicants could reproduce. Given Tyrell's resources, Rachel being a Replicant, Deckard ''possibly'' being a Replicant, and the plans for Replicant offspring...]]

* DesignatedHero: Rick Deckard in all versions is a low-rent cop who hunts down and murders humanoid robots for a living. He (arguably)forces himself on Rachael, and his killing of Replicants is often quite dishonorable (shooting Zhora in the back) and others when they are injured and weak. Likewise the end of the film has [[spoiler:Roy Batty saving his life, not because he respects Deckard but precisely because he has contempt for him and his kind, and his act of rescue is meant to spite Deckard and taunt him about his lack of worth]].

* EvilIsSexy: Most of the antagonists are depicted as almost flawless beings, superior in both mind and body to normal humans (who for the most part are portrayed as grizzled and beaten down). This is especially true of Roy, who as the {{Ubermensch}} is built like a Greek god. Both of the female replicants are also quite easy on the eyes and none of them are above using sexual persuasion as a tool to get what they want (both Priss and Roy come onto Sebastian in an attempt to persuade him to help them, and Zhora is designed for political assassinations which probably involve the promise of sex as a way of getting closer to the target and she shamelessly uses her own nude body as a distraction when Deckard comes for her).

* DesignatedHero: Rick Deckard in all versions is a low-rent cop who hunts down and murders humanoid robots for a living. He forces himself on Rachel, and his killing of Replicants is often quite dishonorable (shooting Zhora in the back) and others when they are injured and weak. Likewise the end of the film has [[spoiler:Roy Batty saving his life, not because he respects Deckard but precisely because he has contempt for him and his kind, and his act of rescue is meant to spite Deckard and taunt him about his lack of worth]].

* {{Adorkable}}: Joi is a beautiful, idealized artificial woman, but also a slightly ''goofy'' artificial woman lacking in some of the more precise social skills, she giggles adorably like a child when experiencing rain for the first time, and she has a [[RunningGag bad habit]] of constantly interrupting K when he's having important conversations with [[ClingyJealousGirl other women.]]

** The skies above Batty when he releases the dove were supposed to be grimly grey, causing an unintended CueTheSun moment. This was changed in the 2007 "Final Cut." Crew members stated in a behind-the-scenes documentary that this error occurred because they couldn't get the dove to fly in the rain. The water soaked the bird's feathers and made it too heavy to take off, so they eventually had to resort to filming the scene without the rain.
** During the chase scene between Deckard and Zhora includes shots where an obvious stunt double can be seen in place of Joanna Cassidy. This too was fixed in the Final Cut, with Cassidy's head superimposed onto the stunt double's body. A documentary on the five-disc 2007 set called "All Our Variant Futures" shows the making of the re-shot sequence.

** Discussed by Creator/RedLetterMedia. After watching Hy Pike's...'''''memorable''''' turn in ''Film/HackOLantern'', they wrote him off as a kooky local actor who makes one movie and then disappears forever. They're then astonished when they research him and find out he has a bit part as Taffy Lewis in this, one of the most influential sci-fi movies ever.

* OlderThanTheyThink: The title originated from the 1974 novel by Alan E. Nourse called ''The Bladerunner'' which was given a screenplay treatment by William S. Burroughs himself. The screenwriters adapted the title Blade Runner for their film because Ridley Scott wanted a new take on science fiction lore (hence renaming androids as replicants). In the original context, blade runner meant a black market guy who sold drugs in a futuristic dystopia where medical care had become expensive, and was entirely different from cop who retires replicants.

* RetroactiveRecognition: Wondering what happened to J.F. Sebastian? He [[Series/{{Newhart}} moved to rural Vermont]] to run a cafe and do "Anything For a Buck".

* WikiMagic: ''Film/BladeRunner2049'' brought renewed and much welcome attention to the first film all over the Internet, including on this very wiki.

* ItWasHisSled: [[spoiler: Roy Batty dies]] at the end of the movie. Given the fact that one of the most quoted scenes in the movie and what is often considered one of the greatest soliloquies in cinema history also happens to be [[spoiler: his FamousLastWords]], it's understandable.