Line #5 YMMV/FightClub


1	* AdaptationDisplacement: While Chuck Palahniuk launched a very successful writing career with the book, it largely came as a result of the massive cult following from the film adaptation.
2	* AlternateAesopInterpretation: Despite his mostly negative opinion of consumerism and corporatism, it could be argued that Tyler Durden's worldview is fundamentally pro-capitalist at heart. It's worth noting that he's depicted as a wish-fulfillment figure for the Narrator because he's a successful manufacturer, salesman and entrepreneur who owns his own business and successfully uses his wealth to bankroll a social cause that he passionately believes in, much like many RealLife [=CEOs=]. The titular club also (partly) celebrates the competitive spirit at the heart of capitalist ideology, and "Project Mayhem" explicitly takes aim at global financial systems that allow traders and investors to amass money that they didn't earn. One ''Website/{{Cracked}}'' [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/ article]] took note of this:
3	-->"Tyler said, ''"You are not your job"'', but he also founded and ran a successful soap company and became the head of an international social and political movement. He was ''totally'' his job."
4	* AlternateSelfShipping: A lot of fans online ship the Narrator and Tyler together due to the chemistry between Creator/EdwardNorton and Creator/BradPitt. It is eventually revealed that Tyler is [[spoiler:the Narrator's SexierAlterEgo]], which has not stopped shippers at all.
5	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Was the Narrator attempting to frame his boss for attacking him? Or did he [[spoiler:hallucinate his boss doing exactly that, the way he hallucinated Tyler and his fights with him]]?
6	* AluminumChristmasTrees:
7	** The "foot cancer" the narrator talks about at one point is real; it's one of the early signs of AIDS.
8	** The "I am Jack's" quotes reference a medical book by J.D. Ratcliff, "I am Joe's Body," and articles published in ''Reader's Digest'' with titles like "I am Joe's Liver" (with "Jane" stepping in for organs like the uterus or ovaries) put out by ''Reader's Digest'' in the 1960s. They can be found [[https://archive.org/stream/IAmJoesBody-J.D.Ratcliffe/joebody_djvu.txt here]].
9	** Fight clubs are real. But they're generally less anarchist cults, more dudes whaling on each other and betting on it.
10	* {{Anvilicious}}: Tyler Durden's message of "Consumerism is BAD!" is so anvilicious that it's often taken as the actual film's message. These viewers tend to forget that Durden is the ''villain'' of the film. Durden has a point, but he's insane [[spoiler:-- in fact, he himself is a symptom of the Narrator's mental illness --]] and his actions are extreme. Ultimately, the story suggests a balance between the narrator's neutered existence and Durden's neo-primitive anarcho-terrorist philosophy.
11	* AwardSnub: The film was nominated for one UsefulNotes/AcademyAward...Best Sound Editing. Over the next decade it has been lauded as one of the greatest films ever made, and had huge cultural impact. This is due to it being disliked by very vocal critics at the time, who didn't quite get it and felt that it was too violent.
12	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic:
13	** "Finding the Bomb" is rather epic, almost dancey, very dark, amazing introduction to the movie and its concepts.
14	** "Stealing Fat", which plays right over the intro.
15	** Music/ThePixies' "Where Is My Mind?" playing over the end credits.
16	** There's a brief moment in the movie where the Zerg Briefing Room theme for ''VideoGame/StarCraftI'' can be heard.
17	* CatharsisFactor: {{Deconstructed}} to Hell and back. While the titular club first allows for the Narrator and others like him to release their emotions and take out their rage at society, as well as their dull lives on each other in brutal brawling, Tyler Durden uses this outpour of emotion to manipulate them, turning the club into a cult-like society called Project Mayhem, where they terrorize the public as a way to "get back at society", [[spoiler:with the objective of complete anarchism, with no order and no government to tell people what to do. It ends up costing a few lives, such as that of Robert "Bob" Paulson, the Narrator's MoralityPet of sorts. And then it's revealed that Tyler Durden is the Narrator's SplitPersonality, created out of his own desire for catharsis, freedom, and jealousy for those who got lucky in life]].
18	* CriticalBacklash: Thanks to being VindicatedByHistory.
19	* CrossesTheLineTwice:
20	** Marla's line, "Oh, God. I haven't been fucked like that since grade school." In the book, her line while in bed with Tyler was, "I want to have your abortion," which studio executives ordered David Fincher to change for the film. However, they only told him he had to ''[[ExactWords change]]'' [[ExactWords the line]] and agreed that he wouldn't have to change it a second time, meaning they couldn't ask him to change the now-worse line back to the slightly less offensive one. On the DVDCommentary, the British Creator/HelenaBonhamCarter explains how taken aback she was when she was informed that [[SeparatedByACommonLanguage grade school did not mean secondary (high) school in America]].
21	** Most of the humor in ''Fight Club'' can be summed up as this; being so overtly macabre and taboo that it goes right back to being funny.
22	* CultClassic: During its original outing in the theaters, the film fell short of the executives' expectations and received polarized reviews from the critics. Its real breakthrough came with its DVD release, where it gathered a devoted cult following, to the point that people started real life Fight Clubs.
23	* DoNotDoThisCoolThing: The story is supposed to show how awful and self-destructive Fight Club, Project Mayhem and basically anything at all to do with Tyler Durden is, but some fans instead think it's glorifying violence and Tyler is living the life they all want to live, to the point where some people are setting up Fight Clubs.
24	** Alternatively, the story is supposed to mock both ways. It's meant to scorn the normal corporate suburban life and how people need to learn to let go a little more, but also show the dangers of living completely like someone like Tyler. Both the book and the movie show that you can and need to find a balance, and not become a person solely focused on their appearance, money, and job, but not become a self-destructive nihilistic nut like Tyler. Project Mayhem was an exaggerated version of the very real [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacophony_Society Cacophony Society]], which the author was a member of. The Cacophony Society was formed out of a group known as the Suicide Club ([[ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything though they did not actually commit suicide]]) and is more or less the {{evil twin}} of Creator/ImprovEverywhere, where they play pranks to make people unhappy rather than happy.
25	* DracoInLeatherPants: Tyler. How many real-life followers do you think he'd have if he were played by someone less handsome than Creator/BradPitt? This is directly Lampshaded when Tyler and the Narrator mock an underwear model in a bus ad.
26	* EpilepticTrees: Several university film departments (and even many admission departments) outright ''refuse'' to accept essays about the movie version because not only are they ubiquitous, but they almost all fall into this trope.
27	* EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory: Being a dark satire of consumerism, hyper-masculinity, anarchism, and mental illness, this movie is filled to the brim with imagery that can be interpreted in many different ways.
28	* {{Fanon}}: Fans commonly refer to the Narrator as "Jack", as a result of some moments where he describes himself as "Jack's X". [[AllThereInTheScript The screenplay explicitly identifies him]] as "Jack" and it's the name used in the licensed video game, but his actual name is never used in the film.
29	* FanonWelding: As far as bizarre theories go, [[https://web.archive.org/web/20120420131348/http://ignatz.brinkster.net/cfightclub.html a popular one]] posits that the Narrator is the adult version of Calvin from ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'', with Marla as Susie Derkins, Tyler as Hobbes, and Bob as Moe (whose bitch-tits are a karmic punishment for bullying Calvin).
30	* FandomEnragingMisconception: Assuming the game inspired the movie instead of the other way around.
31	* FountainOfMemes: Tyler Durden's rhetoric is designed to be catchy and quotable, both in-universe and out.
32	* GeniusBonus: If you know your history, the twist about the titular club evolving into a neo-fascist cult won't be so surprising. A key event in the history of UsefulNotes/{{fascism}} was the foundation of UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini's Italian political organization ''Fasci di Combattimento'' (one of the precursors to the Italian Fascist Party, and the partial namesake of the word "fascism" itself) in 1919. ''Fasci di Combattimento'' literally means "Combat League" or "Fighting Organization". "Fight Club", in other words.
33	* GirlShowGhetto: Inverted. The film has suffered some backlash because it's so popular with young men and for the fact that Marla is [[TheSmurfettePrinciple the only prominent woman in the story]].
34	* HarsherInHindsight:
35	** The narrator laments that men of his generation haven't properly gone through manly RiteOfPassage because none of them ever had the opportunity to [[ARealManIsAKiller fight in a war]]. [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror Wait five years]].
36	** In 2002, disturbed college student [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Helder Luke Helder]] tried a Project Mayhem stunt of his own: bombing mailboxes to [[ConnectTheDeaths create a smiley face]] across the map of the US.
37	** Not to mention the whole concept of terrorists blowing up skyscrapers in major US cities. Especially the destruction of a public sculpture which strongly resembles a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sphere real-life sculpture]] that was damaged in the 9/11 attacks. In the final shot of the film, the last two buildings that blown up is ''exactly'' how the World Trade Center collapsed.
38	** No Great Depression -- wait twelve years!
39	** More than a few see parallels between Tyler's Fight Club and extremist militia groups like the Boogaloo Boys, the Proud Boys, and the Patriot Front. It didn't help that some in the alt-right community have [[MisaimedFandom unironically idolized Tyler Durden]] and formed [[https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3d8qj/robert-rundo-white-supremacist-organizing-fight-clubs-across-the-us "active clubs"]] that fuse combat sports and physical training with white supremacist activism.
40	** Similar to the above, it's also easy to see parallels between Tyler and his Fight Club and Andrew Tate and his organization Hustler's University.
41	* HilariousInHindsight:
42	** When Tyler talks about how the media has led people to believe that they will all be "millionaires, movie gods, and rock stars," he's looking at Creator/JaredLeto's character, Angel Face. Leto would later go on to front the band Music/ThirtySecondsToMars.
43	** In 2009, Super Bowl 43 was interrupted in the Tucson area by Comcast [[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/02/porn-clip-interrupts-supe_n_163076.html "accidentally" inserting a 30 second porn clip]] just after Arizona's Larry Fitzgerald scored a go-ahead touchdown.
44	** The line [[WesternAnimation/{{Bolt}} "When the snooty cat and the courageous dog with celebrity voices meet for the first time in reel three"]].
45	*** Doubly so when Edward Norton later voiced a snooty dog in ''WesternAnimation/IsleOfDogs''.
46	** Marla's line "the condom is the glass slipper of this generation," with Creator/HelenaBonhamCarter's role in ''Film/{{Cinderella\|2015}}''.
47	** "Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man." Five years after the movie, Martha Stewart would be convicted of insider trading, sent to jail, and see her empire torn to shreds.
48	* HypeBacklash: The film is considered one of the greatest, but has the stereotype of being a favorite of young men, particularly on places such as Reddit. As such, it's not uncommon for some to find it vastly overrated and resent its place as number ''ten'' on [=IMDb=]'s top-rated films list over other classics.
49	* IdiosyncraticShipNaming: Fans who ship the Narrator/Tyler love to call them "Soapshipping".
50	* InferredHolocaust: [[spoiler:Tyler claims that Project Mayhem isn't about murder and no one will die because the buildings to be destroyed are empty. However, given the location of a busy city, it's highly likely people will still be up and about during this time; the death toll of people on the street is likely to be at least in the dozens, if not hundreds.]]
51	* ItWasHisSled: Tyler Durden is the narrator's split personality. It's to the point that it, along with "You do not talk about Fight Club", are the two most common things people who've never seen or read Fight Club know about it.
52	* JerkassWoobie: Tyler. He is only a split personality of the narrator and is literally the personified composite of his rage and melancholy; he hates himself, hence his pontificating about self-destruction and hitting bottom. And [[spoiler: the narrator, the very person who created him, kills him at the end of the film.]] However, he ''is'' also a nihilistic sociopath.
53	* MagnificentBastard: "[[SplitPersonality Tyler Durden]]" is the bold personification of the nameless [[TheEveryman Narrator's]] hatred of consumerism. Charming dozens of men into his "Fight Club" and allowing them to take back their natural, primal nature, Tyler has his followers commit acts of vandalism to liberate the world, his charismatic grasp even [[DirtyCop penetrating into the ranks of the police]]. Seeking to erase all records of American debt, even as Tyler is "killed" by the Narrator his scheme succeeds, destroying countless buildings housing credit data.
54	* MemeticMutation:
55	** "The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is, you ''do not'' talk about Fight Club." Much referenced and parodied, it's practically on the way to being a StockShoutOut.
56	** "His name is Robert Paulson. He has bitch tits."
57	** "I am Jack's [X]"
58	** Marla's proclamation that "[[CrossesTheLineTwice I haven't fucked like that since Grade School.]]"
59	** [[{{Bowdlerize}} "Through the clue provided by Tyler, the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding. After the trial, Tyler was sent to lunatic asylum receiving psychological treatment. He was discharged from the hospital in 2012."]] [[labelnote:Explanation]]A RevisedEnding for a Chinese re-release of the film, which stunningly misses the point of the story and was widely mocked for its obvious attempt at censoring the film, leading to fans making up spoof endings for other films. In an ironic twist, this just made the film more faithful to the ''original book'', as it reveals that he was in a mental institution the whole time.[[/labelnote]]
60	** Palahniuk has stated Tyler mocking someone as a "snowflake" in the book is likely the reason the word was adopted as an insult towards someone seen as oversensitive and/or trying too hard to be unique. More controversially, it's also been adopted by members of the alt-right to insult... pretty much anyone who disagrees with them.
61	* MisaimedFandom: One of the most notoriously misunderstood and misinterpreted movies ''ever'':
62	** Yes, Tyler is cool. He's the walking personification of the Narrator's id. [[RefugeInAudacity No one should actually attempt to live that way]]. Tyler is one in a long string of Creator/ChuckPalahniuk characters who are deeply disturbed sociopaths. Going off of this, it's also worth noting that Tyler is often interpreted as a personification of taking masculinity too far (being the manifestation of a relatively average dude's ideal self; "I look like you want to look, fuck like you want to fuck," etc.) intended to demonstrate how dangerous the kind of man that our culture idolizes can actually be. Despite this, ''Fight Club'' is often pointed to as the ultimate Dude Film and has even been described as a celebration of masculinity, sometimes by the exact kind of person it was originally meant to skewer. It's also worth noting that Tyler ''does'' initially start out kinda reasonable, if very rebellious. His increasing fanaticism is presumably indicative of the Narrator's own decaying mental state.
63	** To a lesser degree, there's some people who focus exclusively on the criticism against toxic masculinity and cult of personality, ignoring that the criticism towards consumerism and conformism is still present. The story doesn't just blindly chastise people who feel drawn to dangerous individuals like Tyler, but makes a point to show how failings of society make it possible.
64	** Even if it was not the original intent of the book, Palahniuk does seem to lap up the adulation and attention that the movie has sent his way. In his introduction to the 2004 edition of the novel, he describes encounters with fans who boast about masturbating into restaurant food... amongst other things.
65	** A slightly meta example in how "the first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club" has undergone MemeticMutation. In pop culture, it's often brought up when someone asks about the book/movie, at which point someone recites the first rule of Fight Club and refuses to talk about it further. In the actual material, the first rule of Fight Club pretty much exists to be broken. Members of Fight Club aren't supposed to keep their traps shut about Fight Club; they're meant to go out and tell as many guys as they can about it. Project Mayhem relies on Tyler having amassed an army, which wouldn't be possible if the first rule was supposed to be taken literally.
66	** Something of a misaimed hatedom: Creator/RogerEbert declared this movie "cheerfully fascist" and not only gave it a poor review, but reviewed several movies positively by bashing this movie in comparison to them. Apparently, he didn't catch that all the extreme opinions and ideas are held by a character who's literally a walking symptom of mental illness.
67	** Project Mayhem is supposed to be viewed as destructive and very harmful to society as a whole, if not outright evil, with Tyler being the antagonist by the third act. Some people who have a strong anti-establishment bent instead sympathize with Tyler and his Project Mayhem, cheering him on when [[spoiler:he and his followers blow up a number of office buildings]] and interpreting the BittersweetEnding as a full-on happy ending.
68	** It's become a meme for right-wingers to criticize left-wing "social justice warriors" as "snowflakes", taking inspiration from Tyler's line, "You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake." However, this line was just one of many that Tyler used to brainwash his followers into loyal "space monkeys", so accusing someone of not adhering to Tyler's views on human value isn't exactly an insult.
69	* MoralEventHorizon: Tyler spends the film slowly moseying across it: acts of playful vandalism give way to more violent terrorism, culminating in when he [[spoiler:decides to blow up several entire buildings]] - and just in case you've bought into his philosophy enough to be okay with that, he also [[spoiler:attempts, or at least intends to kill Marla]].
70	* {{Narm}}: After the twist hits, the idea that so many people would be inspired to upend their whole lives and devote themselves to becoming anarchist terrorists just by [[spoiler:the bizarre sight of a guy kicking the crap out of himself]] is utterly ludicrous.
71	* NauseaFuel: Tyler using the fat drained from liposuction patients as the main ingredient for his soap.
72	* ParanoiaFuel:
73	** So there's this enormous anarchist group hiding right under our noses whose members like nothing more than committing acts of violence and putting certain, er, bodily fluids in our food at restaurants...
74	** By the late portions of the [[spoiler:movie pretty much any male in a service/general middle-class job (in the whole ''country'') could very well be a member of Project Mayhem, a waiter, an office worker, a bartender, the detectives who you try to expose the group's terrorist plans to...]]
75	** Also, [[spoiler: having an alternate personality you're not even aware of that comes out when you're "asleep" and is determined to take over your life completely. He knows you well enough to pre-empt any attempts you make to stop him]].
76	* TheProblemWithLicensedGames: The film was adapted as a fairly generic brawling game, which was poorly received and completely misses the point of the story.
77	* RainbowLens: One popular interpretation of the narrator's story is that it's a metaphor for the self-destructive anger that comes from being a closeted homosexual. He feels a certain "emptiness" in his life which he fills by shamelessly pretending to be someone he isn't, in this case going to support group meetings for things that don't apply to him. That catharsis is lost once Marla forces him to acknowledge that he's living a lie and his resulting anger is the catalyst to the introduction/creation of Tyler Durden, who is everything the narrator wishes he could be: attractive, confident and very obviously heterosexual. The ensuing chaos is similar to how self-destructive people who actively deny their true selves can become (maybe not on the level of national terrorism, but definitely short-tempered and reactionary) and Tyler's [[spoiler: "death"]] is the Narrator coming to terms with who he is. It brings an entirely new meaning to the Narrator's confession at the beginning that ultimately, everything he did was somehow all about Marla Singer. Tellingly, all of the sex scenes with Marla are with the Tyler persona, while the Narrator apparently finds her repulsive, and the film ends with them [[spoiler:holding hands rather than kissing]]. It helps that Creator/ChuckPalahniuk himself later confirmed that the story was inspired by his own similar experiences of being in the closet and trying to [[ArmoredClosetGay overcompensate by being overly macho and picking fights with strangers]].
78	* RetroactiveRecognition:
79	** Watching the credits to the video game reveals ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' composer Brad Breeck was the soundtrack's co-producer.
80	** Creator/EionBailey of ''Series/BandOfBrothers'', ''{{Series/ER}}'' and ''Series/OnceUponATime'' fame has a small role as Ricky, the Narrator's co-worker who is participates in the first fight we see following Tyler listing the rules and the first recruit who stands on the porch for days.
81	** Creator/JaredLeto had some recognition for ''Film/TheThinRedLine'' beforehand, but this was right before his acclaimed roles in ''Film/AmericanPsycho'' and ''Film/RequiemForADream''.
82	* ShockingMoments: The moment you learn that [[spoiler:Tyler is actually a separate personality of the narrator's]], you will be prone to yelp, "Oh my god! He's a madman!"
83	* ToughActToFollow:
84	** The book brought Creator/ChuckPalahniuk to national attention and is by far his most successful work. Everything he's written since has been directly compared to it.
85	** For Creator/DavidFincher, the film's CultClassic status has made it his signature work, though ironically he has more critically acclaimed and financially successful films in his oeuvre.
86	* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
87	** The film taps into the zeitgeist of the late 90s and channels it very well: the technology is very much 90s oriented (no one seems to have a cellphone, Project Mayhem plays pranks on stores selling CRT monitors and VHS tapes) and attitudes about airport security (the narrator is surprised and confused when his luggage is held because of a perceived security risk) are pretty clearly dated to before 9/11. Tyler's speech about how his generation has "no great war and no great depression" also firmly places it in a time of relative peace and economic prosperity when white middle-class Americans more or less felt like everything of importance had been accomplished and all that was left was for humanity to run its course until the end of time, a mentality that was all but discredited with a vengeance by UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror and the 2008 Recession, among other things. Most importantly, its themes were in large part an exploration of a popular meme in the nineties, the idea that "traditional" masculinity was in collapse as a result of the ever-growing penetration of technology and the modern world. The film (and the book it was based on) was largely a {{deconstruction}} of those ideas, and of the men's movement that emerged out of them.
88	** Not to mention ''those hairstyles and fashions''! From the narrator's short haircut to Tyler's sunglasses, this film screams "Post-[[Film/TheMatrix Matrix]]''/Pre-9/11." Even the music, with its heavy techno influence, seems firmly rooted in the TurnOfTheMillennium zeitgeist.
89	* ValuesResonance:
90	** Tyler's brand of TestosteronePoisoning and brutally mocking anyone who doesn't conform to his manly ideal has steadily fallen further out of favor since the book and film's release, along with an increased understanding that you're ''not'' supposed to agree with him no matter what the MisaimedFandom says.
91	** The harsh anti-capitalist sentiments of the movie also helped it age well, due to "Reaganomics" falling out of favor, the economic recession of UsefulNotes/The2000s leading to increased calls for corporate regulation and higher taxation for the rich, and the unrestrained growth of companies like Amazon and Disney[[note]]Ironically enough, Disney now owns the film through their purchase of Fox's entertainment assets in 2019.[[/note]] eerily echoing some of the Narrator's sentiments about companies at the beginning of the film.
92	-->'''The Narrator:''' "When deep-space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name everything; the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks."
93	** In a much darker example, the 9/11 attacks made the ending of the film (where Project Mayhem blows several skyscrapers home to a number of credit card companies) much more realistic and believable after the destruction of the World Trade Center.
94	* ViewerNameConfusion: In the movie, the nameless narrator often refers to himself as "I am Jack's [body part/emotion]" and does the same for "Joe" in the book. This is not actually his name and was only decided upon by a series of articles in ''Readers Digest'' (book) or ''Annotated Reader'' (movie). Even those who understand this fact find it a convenient nickname. "Jack" was used as his name in the script and as a frame of reference behind the scenes since they had to call him ''something''.
95	* VindicatedByHistory: Got mixed reviews and didn't make back its budget. Now a CultClassic.
96	* TheWoobie:
97	** Marla, who has contend with her relationship with Tyler, and the narrator by proxy.
98	** Also Bob, a cancer survivor who finds a renewed control of his life and his masculinity in Tyler's fight clubs and Project Mayhem [[spoiler:and ultimately gets killed for it]].
99	** Thomas, an attendee of the cancer support group who tearfully speaks about how his wife left him for another man and how he can never realize his dream of having a family.

Context YMMV / FightClub