History YMMV / Duel

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: The freight trains in this movie bear the Southern Pacific logos and markings on their locomotives. The Southern Pacific was folded into the Union Pacific Railroad in 1996. Though some locomotives still had Southern Pacific colors and markings, increasingly during the late 1990s and early 2000s newer Union Pacific logos and road numbers were patched onto them. By 2020, almost all such examples had either been fully repainted or sold off / retired.

* SpecialEffectsFailure: Since the entire film was shot with practical effects, this only happens once: as the truck is running off the cliff, the drivers side door is clearly open (the driver had leapt from the cab when the truck reached a certain point, but the door failed to latch as he closed it, and obviously they couldn't do the shot over).

* ValuesDissonance: The radio program making fun of the idea of a male homemaker. Not as strong as you might expect, since many people in the 2010s look down on homemakers in general, but the idea that a man was worthy of ridicule because he married a hard-working career woman seems far more out of place now than when the film was first made.

* MoralEventHorizon: The truck is just tormenting Mann... until it tries to run him down in the phone booth and destroys the cages and property at the gas station. At this point it is okay that the truck is destroyed at the end.

* WhatAnIdiot: Possibly the worst time to fall into this trope is the SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome. The Duel could've kept going with a true one-vs-one AllOrNothing, if Jennifer had known who the members of Music/TheRollingStones were. Jennifer put her chips on Music/KeithRichards, Charlie Watts... and Robert Plant[[note]]Hint: he ''[[Music/LedZeppelin wasn't]]'' a member of the Stones[[/note]]. Gabriel put his chip on the other Rolling Stone: Music/MickJagger[[spoiler:, which won him half a million dollars.]]

* FridgeBrilliance: [[spoiler: David's car]] was given a nice splattering of gasoline on the hood when the gas attendant got sloppy with the hose. This is what caught on fire, not the car itself.
* FridgeHorror:
** [[spoiler:Looking closely at the truck's front, you see license plates, which could be innocent... and ''notches carved into the headlights''. This is your first {{foreshadowing}} that the driver is a SerialKiller, something made explicit by WordOfGod.]]
** [[spoiler: Just before the truck goes over the cliff and crashes in the end, the door to driver's seat is open and the driver is missing... which, combined with the darkness of the fluid in the subsequent GoryDiscretionShot, could mean the driver survived and escaped to continue his actions.]] [[note]]As detailed on the Triva subpage, the truck door being open was basically a mistake that was left in the movie because the director thought it added to the film, which undermines this FridgeHorror -- the original intent was that the driver died in the movie as explicitly as possible given the release date and rating.]]

* SpecialEffectsFailure: Since the entire film was shot with practical effects, this only happens once: as the truck is running off the cliff, the drivers side door is clearly open (the driver had leapt from the cab once the truck reached a certain point, but the door failed to latch as he closed it, and obviously they couldn't do the shot over).

** Just before the truck goes over the cliff and crashes in the end, the door to driver's seat is open and the driver is missing... [[spoiler: Still, he's nowhere to be found and there's a nice blood stain on his steering wheel.]]
*** Worse. [[spoiler: it's not blood, it's oil from the truck. That means that the truck driver could have survived and is still out there, stalking someone else.]]
** Look at the truck's front, with [[spoiler: ''all the license plates and notches carved in the headlights''..]]

%% Do not add the truck driver as a CompleteMonster; he was voted cut.

* HilariousInHindsight: Steven Spielberg directs a movie with a four letter long title, about an ordinary guy terrorized by a monstrous beast. He's said that these similarities are actually what got him interested in directing ''Film/{{Jaws}}''.

* WhatAnIdiot: Possibly the worst time to fall into this trope is the SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome. The Duel could've kept going with a true one-vs-one AllOrNothing, if Jennifer had known who the members of Music/TheRollingStones were. Jennifer put her chips on Keith Richards, Charlie Watts... and Robert Plant[[note]]Hint: he ''[[Music/LedZeppelin wasn't]]'' a member of the Stones[[/note]]. Gabriel put his chip on the other Rolling Stone: Mick Jagger[[spoiler:, which won him half a million dollars.]]

* WhatAnIdiot: Possibly the worst time to fall into this trope is the SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome. The Duel could've kept going with a true one-vs-one AllOrNothing, if Jennifer had known who the members of Music/TheRollingStones were. Jennifer put her chips on Keith Richards, Charlie Watts... and Robert Plant[[note]]Hint: he ''wasn't'' a member of the Stones[[/note]]. Gabriel put his chip on the other Rolling Stone: Mick Jagger[[spoiler:, which won him half a million dollars.]]

* MomentOfAwesome: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFrOycBLnuE The first $500,000 winner of the U.S. version in Season 2]], Gabriel, surprised everyone by winning with a 3-to-1 chip disadvantage on a question with all of the answers split. Greenberg even called him a [[AWolfInSheepsClothing wolf in sheep's clothing]], when in reality he's more of a BadassNormal due to his unemployed status. The look on the loser's face makes it priceless.

* WhatAnIdiot: Possibly the worst time to fall into this trope is on the aforementioned MomentOfAwesome. The Duel could've kept going with a true one-vs-one AllOrNothing, if Jennifer had known who the members of Music/TheRollingStones were. Jennifer put her chips on Keith Richards, Charlie Watts... and Robert Plant[[note]]Hint: he ''wasn't'' a member of the Stones[[/note]]. Gabriel put his chip on the other Rolling Stone: Mick Jagger[[spoiler:, which won him half a million dollars.]]

** Not really; that was on the trunk lid that got the petrol, and it was the engine that caught fire first.
* FridgeHorror: Just before the truck goes over the cliff and crashes in the end, the door to driver's seat is open and the driver is missing... [[spoiler: Still, he's nowhere to be found and there's a nice blood stain on his steering wheel.]]

* {{Narm}}: Dennis Weaver's readings of Mann's {{Inner Monologue}}s arguably fall into this.
** NarmCharm: But still, they're not ''too'' bad, considering the strain his character is meant to be under.
*** That said, the 90 minute version (Or is it just the dvd version?) is lacking a LOT of these; some are even in different places. (ie, in the DVD version "where's the summit" [which is spoken sooner in the earlier version] replaces "I'm burning up!")