History YMMV / SoylentGreen

* OnceOriginalNowCommon: The environmental and overpopulation movement was still quite nascent when the movie came out in the early 1970s. The GreenAesop comes across and sensationalist nowadays but was relatively new for the time.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny:
** With its biggest plot twist being known for years, this has resulted in the rest of the movie losing its impact to new viewers despite its effective imagery.
** The environmental and overpopulation movement was still quite nascent when the movie came out in the early 1970s. The GreenAesop comes across and sensationalist nowadays but was relatively new for the time.

* ItWasHisSled: "Soylent Green is people!" A contender with "[[Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes it was Earth all along]]" and "[[Franchise/StarWars Darth Vader is Luke's father]]" for possibly the world's most poorly-guarded secret and has been parodied almost universally in Sci-Fi comedies and plenty of other places, too. It has gone to the point where people today are more familiar with the phrase "Soylent Green is people" than they are with the actual work.

* ItWasHisSled: "Soylent Green is people!" Like "[[Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes it]] was EarthAllAlong", it's now possibly the world's most poorly guarded secret and has been parodied almost universally in Sci-Fi comedies and plenty of other places, too. It has gone to the point where people today are more familiar with the phrase "Soylent Green is people" than they are with the actual work.

* CareerResurrection: a very odd example for Edward G Robinson. It’s well documented that this was his final film role, [[spoiler: in fact he died just a few days after his very memorable death scene.]] But sadly due to being blacklisted after being investigated by the HUAC in the 1950s he had a hard time landing notable film roles. He was an icon of the golden age of Hollywood, but for this movie, and the younger viewers for which it appealed, he was largely seen as a relic of a bygone era. So for many people today this is the only film role they really know him for.

** Thanks to major technological breakthroughs, such as genetically modified crops during the 1970s and beyond, we now overproduce and overconsume food. And improved education and medicine, as well as access to abortion and contraception, means that family planning is much more manageable. However, this could have been possible due to access to fossil fuels.

* ItWasHisSled: Soylent Green is people. Like "[[Franchise/PlanetOfTheApes it]] was EarthAllAlong", it's now possibly the world's most poorly guarded secret and has been parodied almost universally in Sci-Fi comedies and plenty of other places, too. It has gone to the point where people today are more familiar with the phrase "Soylent Green is people" than they are with the actual work.
* MemeticMutation: "Soylent Green is people!" So much so that people only familiar with the iconic WhamLine are often surprised to learn that this ''isn't'' the main focus of the plot, and only turns up in the movie's final minutes.

** Thorn revealing the secret of Soylent Green.

** With it’s biggest plot twist being known for years, this has resulted in the rest of the movie losing its impact to new viewers despite its effective imagery.

** In real 2022, the world's population sits at just under 8 billion rather than 40 billion, and New York proper has a population at just under 9 million rather than 40 million[[note]]even the expanded metro area has a population just above 20 million[[/note]]. Population growth is steady at about 1% annually, and many nations have seen their birth rates fall to below replacement levels. Contrary to the film, many countries are now fearing that declining birth rates could cause a future economic crisis as their populations grow to an older median age and retire. Many nations such as Russia and Japan have seen their populations outright decline over recent decades.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: Soylent Corporation. Corrupt corporation or doing what's necessary to keep civilization afloat? The fact that one of the executives is willing to take the secret to the grave and is thus pretty nonchalant about his own murder implies that it may be the latter.

* {{Squick}}: Depending on your squeamishness. The processed human flesh really doesn't resemble meat anymore, it's just a wafer of protein. At that stage, it's pretty academic.

** The nature of Soylent Green is certainly ghoulish, but it is ''literally'' the only resource left; the populace has a SadisticChoice of either cannibalism or mass starvation. Well, you know what they say; "Any option is preferable to extinction." Of course, one can also interpret that Charlton Heston's character was horrified by the realization of that horror in his famous "Soylent Green is people".
** It is understandable that Soylent Green might become necessary, but Thorn dreads that governments could escalate farming people like cattle. If governments are perfectly happy with using the dead for food, outright massacring the poor for Soylent Green doesn't seem like too much of a stretch: [[ColdEquation it cuts down on the population and makes more food]].

* StrawmanHasAPoint: The nature of Soylent Green is certainly ghoulish, but it is ''literally'' the only resource left; the populace has a SadisticChoice of either cannibalism or mass starvation. Well, you know what they say; "Any option is preferable to extinction." Of course, one can also interpret that Charlton Heston's character was horrified by the realization of that horror in his famous "Soylent Green is people".

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: With it’s biggest plot twist being known for years, this has resulted in the rest of the movie losing its impact to new viewers despite its effective imagery.