History YMMV / ETTheExtraterrestrial

* {{Narm}}: The government agents and scientists invading Elliot's home in full NASA spacesuits. Presumably done so the audience knows to associate the scientists with NASA, but it doesn't change how needlessly [[{{Anvilicious}} over-the-top sinister it makes them seem]].

* DesignatedVillain: It's no crime for the Secret Service to investigate a possible alien invader who could be dangerous to humanity. While E.T. is entirely a peaceful creature, they had no way of knowing that from the beginning. What also further muddies the waters is how they're depicted in the first and final halves of the movie. Keys and his army of searchers, scientists and doctors are depicted in a menacing light, but when they finally see E.T. for themselves, they instantly pull a 180 and try to save his life.

** Elliott screaming over and over when he sees E.T. in the cornfield. The fact that each scream is shown from a ''different camera angle'' adds to the effect.

** Many of the effects in the 20th anniversary edition don't really hold up outside of the enhanced ship shots (especially during the bike chase, where the similarly awkward flying bikes were replaced with CGI doubles), but no one was fooled with the digital editing used on the shotguns even when it was released.

** Elliott's "penis breath", besides being a bit vulgar for a child to say, is also basically homophobic, since he's insulting his brother by implying that he partakes in sexual acts with another boy, but homophobia was the cultural norm at the time.

* DesignatedVillain: It's no crime for the Secret Service to investigate a possible alien invader who could be dangerous to humanity. While E.T. is entirely a peaceful creature, they had no way of knowing that from the beginning.

** In 1982, no one would bat an eye at Mary leaving Gertie home alone for a few minutes while she went to school to pick up Elliott. Today it may warrant a call to Child Protective Services.
** Elliott's "penis breath" remark comes off as homophobic now, given he was using the implication of his brother partaking in sexual acts with another boy as an insult.

* UglyCute: E.T. himself. Any description of him sounds hideous, but he's obviously not without his charm.

** Creator/DrewBarrymore is Elliott's little sister. She had the exact same face then as she did as an adult.

* CatharsisFactor: Elliott and E.T.'s goodbye at the end is one of the most emotionally cathartic moments in cinema.

* MisBlamed: The game is often mis-attributed as the sole cause of UsefulNotes/TheGreatVideoGameCrashOf1983 and subsequent closing of Creator/{{Atari}} Inc. While the game's failure certainly did contribute to both, the Crash was mostly the result of a bloated market of far more hackneyed games licensed from [[MoneyDearBoy every conceivable copyrighted property]], while Creator/{{Atari}}'s eventual closure was caused by a number of factors.

** Spielberg was so touched by Attenborough’s praise and humility that he cast his as John Hammond in ''Film/JurassicPark'' ten years later.

* SeparatedAtBirthCasting: Michael and Gertie (Robert Macnaughton and Drew Barrymore)

* NarmCharm: Elliott's "I love you" speech right before [[spoiler: E.T. gets better]] may fall into TastesLikeDiabetes, but it's still guaranteed to get the audience crying.

* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: With the exception of the light rail example, the special effects still hold up nicely over thirty years later.

** Spielberg was so touched by Attenborough’s praise and humility that he cast his as John Hammond in Film/JurassicPark ten years later.

* SignatureScene: The scene where Elliott and E.T. fly on a bicycle in front of the full moon, which literally became Spielberg's signature in the form of the logo for Amblin Entertainment.

** When the script called for the use of M&Ms, Mars flat out rejected the use of their candy-coated chocolates, stating that they did not want their product to be associated with what they perceived as a grotesque creature. Hershey offered their newer product, Reese's Pieces, in place of M&Ms. The result: a 65% profit increase after their candies were prominently featured in a movie which even today is universally acclaimed.

* AndYouThoughtItWouldFail: This was going to be just a forgettable kids' movie about a lost alien, until preview audiences got a grip on its true magnificence and spread the word. It soon out-grossed ''Film/ANewHope'' and became the top worldwide moneymaker until ''Film/JurassicPark''.

** On a more lighthearted note, the film came out when ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' was still a relatively new creation, and thus it hadn't picked up the reputation of being a game for geeky losers. (Compare it to ''Series/StrangerThings'', a show heavily influenced by ''E.T.'' that was made decades later, where the main child characters who play ''D&D'' are the school's nerds.) Try to find another instance in media where the game's portrayed being played by rowdy, popular jocks (although in the 2010s onward, [[SocietyMarchesOn the game's public reputation has started doing a 180]], so maybe the movie was actually ahead of its time).

* AwardSnub: It was nominated for the Best Picture and Director Oscars, but lost both to Richard Attenborough's ''{{Film/Gandhi}}''. Attenborough even stated in his acceptance speech that he believed ''E.T.'' should have won, since it was truly the better film. This was at least partly due to a rather sleazy Oscar campaign by Columbia Pictures, where they more or less stated that a vote against the film was a vote against Gandhi himself.

** Today, Elliott would likely have been in a lot of trouble for kissing the girl in class, possibly even with the police. Schools have become extremely strict about student interactions, going overboard in the minds of some.

** On a more lighthearted note, the film came out when ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' was still a new creation, and thus it hadn't picked up the reputation of being a game for geeky losers. (Compare it to ''Series/StrangerThings'', a show heavily influenced by ''E.T.'' that was made decades later, where the main child characters who play ''D&D'' are the school's nerds.) Try to find another instance in media where the game's portrayed being played by rowdy, popular jocks (although in the late 2010s, [[SocietyMarchesOn the game's public reputation has started doing a 180]], so maybe the movie was actually ahead of its time).

* DoNotDoThisCoolThing: Since the way the government agents menace Elliot and his family in this movie casts the federal government of the USA in a rather less-than-flattering light, this movie generally passed muster with censors in the Soviet bloc and was approved for importation. Common reactions among the audiences in these Communist countries that actually got to see it, however, tended to be "So... it's NotSoDifferent from how our government treats us ''here'', then?" and "Wow, that's a ''nice'' house and car they've got there; are all those capitalist Americans so rich that even a divorced mother of three can afford such luxuries?"

* CommonKnowledge: That common story about how Atari produced more copies of the game than there were consoles in existence? Believe it or not, it's not completely true. While it is definitely the case that Atari over-produced the game, the install base was actually estimated to be about 20 million when the game came out, decently above even the largest estimates of produced copies of the game which pinpoint about 6 million even in the worst cases. There is some merit to it though -- while the install base was estimated to be that large, it's not far off to assume there were much fewer active users by that point in time, and though it is not verifiable, it's completely possible that there really were more copies produced than that number, and no matter which way you slice it, Atari still produced far more copies than they could realistically ever hope to sell. The game that Atari produced more copies of than consoles on the market was actually their PortingDisaster version of ''VideoGame/PacMan''.

* FandomEnragingMisconception: The number of fans are limited because of the game's [[TheProblemWithLicensedGames poor reputation]] and infamy--[[VindicatedByHistory though there are more nowadays than there were in the 1980s]]--but among not only fans but gamers as a whole, do ''not'' say with a straight face that this game single-handedly caused UsefulNotes/TheGreatVideoGameCrashOf1983. This was the accepted opinion in [[TheEighties the 1980s]] after many gamers lost trust in Creator/{{Atari}} over their [[ChristmasRushed handling of the game]], but it has since been widely recognized that ''E.T.'' was the nadir of already-existing problems that culminated in the crash, not the cause. The real factors were console saturation on the market, heavy competition from [[UsefulNotes/IBMPersonalComputer personal computers]], and lack of quality control on consoles resulting in many poor-quality games, some of which being pornography disguised as "games" like ''Custer's Revenge''. [[OlderThanTheyThink All of these factors existed before]] ''[[OlderThanTheyThink E.T.]]'' [[OlderThanTheyThink was released.]]

* OvershadowedByControversy: The game is still mostly known for its reputation as "Worst Game Ever" (which has been called into question since the 2000's) and being the final nail in the coffin that lead to the 1983 Video Game Crash.

* VindicatedByHistory: In recent times, there are a number of people who feel that, considering the pathetically-tiny development time, it's not that bad once you know what you're doing. Hell, [[https://youtu.be/WUsQmYRfynw?t=5m34s this sums up the Angry Video Game Nerd's final opinion on it]].