History YMMV / Contact

* HarsherInHindsight: Ellie starts doing her research from the Arecibo Observatory, the home of what was the largest reflector radio telescope in the world (at least until 2016, when it was surpassed in 2016 by the facility in Guizhou, China). Sadly, the telescope is ''no more''. It sustained structural damage from Hurricane Maria in 2017 and earthquakes in 2019 and 2020. Later, it ended up collapsing on December 1st, 2020, shortly after the announcement that it would be dismantled.

* MisaimedMarketing: Atlus marketed this game as a quasi-''VideoGame/{{EarthBound|1994}}''ish title due to the "quirky" {{Retraux}} art style and humor, and although the tone is indeed quirky, it's not quite ''[=EarthBound=]''-y.

* MisaimedMarketing: Atlus marketed this game as a quasi-''VideoGame/EarthBound''ish title due to the "quirky" {{Retraux}} art style and humor, and although the tone is indeed quirky, it's not quite Earthbound-y.

* OvershadowedByControversy: Most people recognize the film due to its high-profile TroubledProduction as well as the negative publicity surrounding then-president UsefulNotes/BillClinton making an unauthorized cameo as well as those of real-life Creator/{{CNN}} personalities.

* {{Anvilicious}}: When the international committee is interviewing Drumlin and Ellie in order to decide which one goes through the machine, the question of religion comes up. Ellie honestly says she is an atheist, while Drumlin portrays himself as deeply religious. Afterwards Ellie confronts Drumlin in private as she knows him enough to know he's not religious. Drumlin flat out says he told the committee members what they wanted to hear. [[spoiler:Aaand then Joseph the fundie sneaks into the Machine -- with Drumlin too much of a coward to test it himself, and too much of a glory hound to be paying attention to his lackeys -- and blows him up. He got into bed with religion to win at all costs, and religion killed him via suicide bomber - so either the dangers of fundamentalism itself or the dangers of trying to ''use'' such elements for personal gain]]. Subtle Zemeckis is ''not.''
* BrokenAesop: [[spoiler:The movie ends with Ellie being interrogated by Congress after the device seemingly fails with nothing other than her faith to assure her that what she experienced in the alleged 18 hours she travelled through space and time was not a hallucination. (And it later turns out she was right)]]. While this would normally be an Aesop on how sometimes you can't always rely on empirical evidence to find truth, the fact is Ellie had nothing BUT faith that the aliens had nothing but benevolent intentions and defended her assertation with the same zeal as a religious zealot. There's also the fact that the previous two hours was the audience being beaten over the head that people who base their worldview on faith are either morons, hypocrites, or violent extremists.

* {{Narm}}: When Drumlin says Ellie won't be taken seriously as a scientist with her SETI work, she shouts back "So what?! It's my life!", a line that makes her sound more like a petulant teenager than a grown-up scientist.

* HarsherInHindsight: Ellie starts doing her research from the Arecibo Observatory, the home of what was the largest reflector radio telescope in the world (at least until 2016, when it was surpassed in 2016 by the facility in Guizhou, China). Sadly, the telescope is ''no more''. It sustained structural damage from Hurricane Maria in 2017 and earthquakes in 2019 and 2020. Later, it ended up collapsing in December 1st, 2020, shortly after the announcement that it would be dismantled.

** During the opening trip through the solar system, the chorus from the {{disco}} standard "Boogie Oogie Oogie" is played at the exact same time we see the planet Mars. This is somewhat funnier after ''Literature/TheMartian'', with the running gag that the only music left with Mark Watney on Mars is disco.

* GoodBadBugs: A double-edged one -- your StatGrinding is supposed to have diminishing returns as you outlevel the enemies, but the Anti-Slash stat erroneously scales this to the Slash stat instead of to itself. So [[GuideDangIt if you knew this in advance]] you could max out Anti-Slash against the crabs on the first island, by making sure not to hold a blade until then. If you ''didn't'' know this, you might find this one defensive trait inescapably locked at a pitifully low level and never know why.

%%* TearJerker: TheStinger at the end might do this for you.

** If the film is really taking place around the time it was made, Hadden's trip to ''Mir'' oddly predicted [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Tito Dennis Tito]]'s visit to the ''ISS'' 3 years ahead.

** During the backstory, while Ellie talks with her dad about making contact with faraway places, she asks if they can contact her deceased mother. Her dad solemnly says that even the most powerful radio in the world can't reach that far. After her dad's funeral, the flashback ends with her desperately trying to contact her dad in vain.

** Earlier in the film, while Ellie talks about making contact with faraway places with her dad, she asks if they can contact her deceased mother. Her dad says even the most powerful radio in the world can't reach that far. After her dad's funeral, the flashback ends with her desperately trying to contact her dad in vain.

* NightmareFuel: The Hitler speech video. The noise from the message is in sync with the hanting "Seig Heil! Seig Heil! Seig Heil..."

** During a debate on whether the aliens sending the signal might be hostile, Ellie opines that sending this signal to harm the people of Earth would be "like killing an amoeba on an anthill in Africa." Drumlin calmly counters, rightly, that the argument swings both ways: "And how guilty would ''you'' feel about killing an amoeba on an anthill in Africa?"

* NightmareFuel: The Hitler speech video. The noise from the message is in sync with chanting "Seig Heil! Seig Heil! Seig Heil..."

* HarsherInHindsight: The scenes of Ellie being upset about losing her position at the Arecibo Observatory became this after it was revealed in November 2020 that [[https://www.space.com/arecibo-observatory-radio-telescope-to-be-destroyed Arecibo was on the verge of collapse due to two of its support cables failing, one of which leaving a huge gash in the dish itself.]] It was deemed too dangerous to repair and slated to be decommissioned, [[https://www.npr.org/2020/12/01/940767001/arecibo-observatory-telescope-collapses-ending-an-era-of-world-class-research and then it collapsed on December 1st, 2020.]]