!! [[Literature/NakedLunch The book]]:

* DesignatedVillain: Salvador Hassan O'Leary is the intended villain, despite not being anywhere near as bad as Dr. Benway and only being slightly worse than A.J.
* EnsembleDarkhorse: Dr. Benway, by far the most memorable character in the book, goes on to get small roles in several other Burroughs novels, like ''The Soft Machine'', ''Cities of the Red Night'', and ''The Western Lands'', with brief mentions in several others. In TheFilmOfTheBook, he's a OneSceneWonder (well, two scenes) and is played by Creator/RoyScheider, who is appropriately scene-stealing, even when (during one of the two scenes) as Benway he's pretending to be an ordinary doctor running a clinic.
* HardToAdaptWork: Creator/WilliamSBurroughs considered the book to be this, being deliberately incomprehensible, disturbing, and having nothing in the way of overarching plot. As such, when he allowed Creator/DavidCronenberg to adapt it into ''Film/NakedLunch'', the latter compromised by crafting a new story that incorporates many themes from Burroughs's overall work. While still pretty MindScrew-y, it's much less so than the book.
* HarsherInHindsight: The Divisionists are essentially the prototype of today's aggressive trolls.
* SignatureScene: The story of the talking asshole is probably the most well-known passage of this novel, often quoted out of context.
* {{Squick}}: Some in the minds of individual readers, and some InUniverse:
** The descriptions of the blue movie sets make repeated note of piles of moldy jockstraps and used condoms - and that's far from the last of it!
** A young junkie has an encounter with a man who gets a contact high by oozing all over him like an amoeba: "Most distasteful thing I ever stand still for."
** Old junkies lose all sense of shame when someone starts cooking up a shot: "They gibber and squeal at the sight of it. The spit hangs off their skin, and their stomach rumbles and all their guts grind in peristalsis while they cook up, dissolving the body’s decent skin, you expect any moment a great blob of protoplasm will flop right out and surround the junk. Really disgust you to see it."
* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic: Burroughs wrote in the preface that the hanging scenes were a tract against capital punishment 'in the style of Jonathan Swift'. One would find that easy to believe if he hadn't gone on to write about three more books about hanging, which makes the whole thing dubiously reek of AuthorAppeal.

!! [[Film/NakedLunch The Film]]:

%%* MemeticMutation: BENWAY!
* NarmCharm: Again, William S. Burroughs's legendary voice.
* ParodyDisplacement: Most people know about ''Naked Lunch'' from ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS7E20BartOnTheRoad Bart On The Road]]".
-->'''Nelson''': I can think of at least two things wrong with [[NonIndicativeName that title]].
* SpecialEffectsFailure: Cronenberg admits that he didn't like the way the centipede Cloquet puppet turned out.
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