
S.O.B. contains examples of:
- Black Comedy: The tone is set in the opening scenes, when a neighbor jogging on the beach collapses and dies just yards away from the Farmer mansion. He lies there for a couple of days before anyone notices.
- Brutal Honesty: Tim Culley asks Felix Farmer "Have I ever lied to you?" and Felix replies "No". Tim goes on to say "Well I have, repeatedly. But the fact that I just admitted I have lied to you in the past means you can believe me now".
- Bungled Suicide: Felix makes multiple attempts to kill himself only to have each of them unintentionally thwarted.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Dr. Irving Finegarten.
- Conversation Cut: The conversation about Felix falling through the ceiling and landing on gossip columnist Polly Reed cycles through the whole cast this way, with each character getting a line or two over several conversations.
- Dark Reprise: The movie opens with a musical sequence of the "all-audiences" version of Night Wind. The only scene that we get to see filmed of Felix's soft-core porn version of the film is a copy of that same sequence with the cute animals replaced with Chippendales Dancers, with the whole set painted in red, with a more "sleazy" version of the song that played over (with Sexophone a-plenty) and the "climax" being Sally baring her breasts.
- Dead Artists Are Better: Felix goes from being a Hollywood pariah to having practically the whole town show up for his funeral.
- Dr. Feelgood: Dr. Finegarten doles out prescription drugs like candy. He supplies Sally with the sedatives to relax her enough to do her topless scene.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Coogan, Finegarten, and Culley sit around drinking heavily after Felix's death.
- Due to the Dead: The central characters decide Felix deserves better than a Hollywood funeral full of phonies, so they steal his body from the funeral home and give him a Viking Funeral (put on a burning boat and sent out to sea).
- Fan Disservice: Robert Vaughn's studio exec is briefly seen dressed in...women's lingerie.
- Fanservice: Rosanna Arquette topless. And in-universe, Felix wants Sally to do this in the movie. (It's hardly a spoiler to say that she does.)Sally: I'm gonna show my boobies!
- The "Fun" in "Funeral": The Viking funeral scene at the end.
- Fun with Acronyms: Nope, not what you think. See below.
- Hideous Hangover Cure: Dr. Finegarten has one that he takes intravenously:"Come to think of it, why should I give you a vitamin shot? I'm the one with the hangover. B-12, B-Complex, Crude Liver, and a generous jolt of adrenal cortex. Chased by a Bloody Mary. L'chaim!"
- Horrible Hollywood: The title is an abbreviation of the term one character uses to describe how Hollywood operates: Standard Operational Bullshit.
- Hotter and Sexier:
- Felix's plan is to reboot Night Wind as this, and invoke it with Sally herself. ("We sold them schmaltz! They prefer sadomasochism!")
- The party sequence plays like a raunchier version of the earlier Blake Edwards film The Party.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Julie Andrews is basically playing an Expy of herself. Everything said in the movie about Sally Miles being a former star of family-friendly musicals who was changing her image also applied to Andrews at the time.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: David Blackman is clearly supposed to represent Robert Evans
, who was Blake Edwards' chief adversary at Paramount when Darling Lili flopped.
- No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Felix's Famous Last Words after being shot by the police is that his death will probably give the film some necessary publicity on the news.
- A Party, Also Known as an Orgy: What happens at the beach house, eventually.
- Porn Stache: Dr. Finegarten.
- Porn with Plot: The Show Within a Show is a softcore version. We don't get to see much of the actual sex (since S.O.B. is rated R), but we do (briefly) get to see Julie Andrews' boobiesnote . In-universe, she's doing the show in an attempt to break from her wholesome-girl typecasting; apparently she's basically playing herself.
- Potty Failure: Coogan, while helping to move Felix's corpse, soils himself in the process. And this is in addition to pissing himself.Dr. Irving Finegarten: Ben, do you realize that in a matter of a few hours you have demonstrated most of your excremental bodily functions?
- Show Within a Show: Night Wind, the family-friendly musical that Felix wants to Re-Cut into a sex movie.
- Something Else Also Rises: Felix firing the gun into the air when he climaxes at his blowjob. And the giant jack-in-the-box on the film set, with its pink head, which pops up out of its box as Felix is telling the studio execs about his plan to make Night Wind Hotter and Sexier.
- Suicide by Cop: Felix kidnaps a security guard using a water pistol and forces a movie film he wants to take to be brought out of storage. Confronted by the police, he points the pistol at them, and he is shot and killed.
- There's No "B" in "Movie": What Felix's career seems to have degenerated into, although it is mostly lowbrow comedies rather than campy horror films. His eulogy mentions movies such as Chicken at the Wheel.
- Title Drop: It is explained in the movie that S.O.B. stands for "standard operational bullshit".
- Two Decades Behind: Despite being filmed (and theoretically set) in the early 80's, the movie's depictions of sex, drugs, and the counter-culture feel more like The '60s.note
- Vanity Project: What Night Wind becomes for Felix after he purchases the material of the failed studio project with his own money. The conflict then becomes that Executive Meddling still tries to hamper his vision, even buying the movie back so they can lock him out of the editing process.
- Video Credits: Clips of all the players at the end.
- Viking Funeral: Felix's body is sent out to sea on a burning dinghy.
- Wrong Insult Offence:Polly Reed: You're gonna let that SHYSTER on?Dr. Irving Finegarten: I could sue you for calling me that, Polly! A shyster is a disreputable lawyer. I'M a QUACK!
- You Can Leave Your Hat On: In Night Wind, the Film Within a Film, Sally's character does a bizarre striptease to the tune of "Polly Wolly Doodle".
"...until the next movie!"