* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The movie's rock music songs mostly by Desmond Child basically has EvilIsCool tattooed in each one, especially Pinker's {{Villain Song}}s.
* CompleteMonster: [[AxCrazy Horace Pinker]] is a psychotic murderer in a near-constant violent frenzy who butchers families for fun. Pinker kills main character Jonathan Parker's mother, brother, and sister after his police detective father gets on Pinker's trail; kills a handful of cops who try to capture him in his lair; and murders Jonathan's girlfriend in her bathroom. Pinker mutilates two prison guards with his teeth as he's being led to the electric chair, where he reveals that Jonathan is in fact his own son and tried to stop him as [[ArchnemesisDad Pinker]] murdered Jonathan's real mother when he was still a little kid. Pinker makes a DealWithTheDevil to become an [[ResurrectedMurderer undead being]] of [[PsychoElectro electricity]]. Pinker proceeds to possess person after person to continue trying to kill Jonathan, draining their life force completely before discarding his hosts, including a little girl. Pinker possesses people close to Jon so he will be forced to kill his loved ones.
* EvilIsCool: Invoked by Creator/WesCraven in regards to Horace Pinker, who is a copycat of another Craven villain who is also this trope, [[Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet Freddy Krueger]]. Whether it worked is another matter, given that Pinker is an even bigger {{Jerkass}} than Krueger without much humor to offset it.
* HilariousInHindsight:
** Years later, the video game ''VideoGame/Persona4'' featured a SerialKiller obsessed with the TV.
** Actors Creator/MitchPileggi and Creator/MichaelMurphy would later both act in ComicBook/{{Batman}} media adaptations. Pileggi would guest star in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'' and voice TheCommissionerGordon in ''WesternAnimation/TheBatman'', while Murphy would play the mayor of Gotham City in ''Film/BatmanReturns'', sequel to ''Film/Batman1989'' which was released the same year as this movie.
* HamAndCheese: Pinker takes EvilIsHammy and LaughablyEvil and runs with it as much as he can. And this makes his actor's performance all the more [[LoveToHate enjoyable]].
* RetroactiveRecognition:
** Mitch Pileggi (Pinker) would later go on to play Walter Skinner in ''Series/TheXFiles''.
** Jonathan was played by future film director Creator/PeterBerg.
* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: Pinker is unable to possess Jonathan's friend Rhino because, according to him, [[ThePowerOfFriendship said friend liked Jonathan too much to let him in]]. Later in the movie, [[spoiler:he manages to possess Jonathan's ''father'' with no trouble at all]], suggesting that [[spoiler:his father apparently cares less about his son than his son's best friend did ([[AlternateCharacterInterpretation though it could be Pinker]] [[ManipulativeBastard may be messing with Jonathan]] just to KickTheDog to make him more emotionally isolated then he already is by making him turn against his only family.]]