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By God was he right about that.
Fight Club is a movie, originally based on a book by Chuck Palahniuk. The movie is a lot more famous, though, and even the author said it was an improvement. It spawned two notable memes. One revolves around the famous line, "The first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club" (which means that this web site is in so much trouble.) The second is the oft-repeated claim that mixing gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate makes anything but the world's third-worst screwdriver.
This, incidentally, is exactly why you shouldn't talk about Fight Club.
The story itself is about a man discontent with his life that seems only to revolve around his dreary corporate job, support groups for diseases he doesn't have, and his endless consumerism. He meets a charismatic free spirit named Tyler Durden and together they start a "support group" where unhappy, unfulfilled men like themselves can get together and beat the shit out of each other. This eventually escalates as Tyler turns from the narrator's best friend into a Sensei For Scoundrels and eventually, into an Evilutionary Biologist.
Contains examples of:
- And Some Other Stuff: As noted above. It should be noted that in the book the recipes are accurate, but had to be changed for the movie.
- Antihero: Tyler.
- Ass Kicking Pose
- Bad Guy Bar: Lou's Bar.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Subverted hard and then Lampshaded.
- Better Living Through Evil: Tyler helping the narrator.
- Bullet Time: The narrator's dream of sleeping with Marla.
- Cluster F Bomb
Narrator: God dammit! Fuck you. Fuck Fight Club, fuck Marla, I am sick of all your shit.
- Crosses The Line Twice: Many of Marla's lines.
Marla Singer: 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. When they heard what he had come up with instead, they begged to have it changed back.
- Helena Bonham Carter (who is British) didn't know what "grade school" meant, and assumed it meant high school. She was surprised when she found out. She discusses this on the DVD commentary.
- Crowning Moment Of Funny: It would be impossible to list them all. Honorable mention go to Tyler playing with nunchucks in the background in one scene or crashing a bike in the basement in another, or his reaction to being punched in the ear by the Narrator. ("Why the ear?" See Enforced Method Acting.)
- Crowning Moment Of Heart Warming: The narrator holding hands with his love interest while watching a few corporate buildings blow up to The Pixies' "Where Is My Mind". It's a friggin' date.
- Crowning Music Of Awesome: The above mentioned "Where is my Mind?" scene.
- Cut Himself Shaving
Tyler: He fell down some stairs.
- Department Of Redundancy Department: "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!"
- The first rule of Project Mayhem is you do not ask questions. The second rule of Project Mayhem is you do not ask questions.
- Dissonant Serenity: When Lou brutally beats up Tyler Durden when they first meet, smashing open his mouth and nose, Tyler is...laughing his ass off.
- Enforced Method Acting: When Tyler asks the narrator he wants to be hit as hard as he could, the narrator winds up and...hits him in the ear. Brad Pitt was told Ed Norton would hit him in the shoulder. "OW! Motherfucker! Why the ear, man?!" is a legit reaction.
- Apparently Norton and Pitt also got drunk before shooting the scene in which Tyler and the narrator drunkenly fling golf balls at the paper factory opposite Tyler's house. Pitt's amused giggle certainly sounds quite realistic. It was early in the morning and they were aiming the golf balls at the catering truck.
- Epileptic Trees
- Everything's Better with Space Monkeys
- Everythings Better With Penguins: Slide!
- Evil Feels Good
- Evilutionary Biologist / Nietzsche Wannabe: Tyler Durden, though The Ubermensch is really more appropriate.
- Fan Disservice: Lots of half-naked, sweaty, bloodied men.
- Fan Service: Lots of half-naked, sweaty, bloodied men. One of whom is Brad Pitt.
- Fight Clubbing: The Trope Namer.
- Foreshadowing: Moreso in the book than in the movie. Especially obvious with lines such as, "I know this because Tyler knows this", "If you could wake up in a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?" and the scene in which the narrator is beating himself up and claims it reminds him of his first fight with Tyler.
- Especially obvious on the second runthrough with the narrator's scenes with Marla, namely the "What are you getting out of this?" scene.
- Gag Boobs: Bob is a rare male example.
- Groin Attack: "Anyone interferes with Project Mayhem, we gotta get his balls."
- Happy Place: The cave.
- Hit Me Dammit
- Ho Yay: Much of the movie, especially the bath scene, which ends with Tyler saying, "I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need."
- Somewhat subverted by the fact that (Tyler Durden and Edward Norton's character are actually the same person).
- I Am Not Shazam: In the movie, the 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).
- Lampshaded three times in the movie when the narrator tells his boss, "I am Jack's complete lack of surprise", Marla asks him if any of the names he gives at support groups are real and when Big Bob yells "Cornelius!" (one of his fake names from support groups) at him.
- I Ate What?: The movie has several references to people urinating or worse into food.
- I Surrender Suckers: Tyler's fight with Lou.
- Imaginary Friend
- Interface Screw: Fincher gets in another meta-gag with the Blu-Ray release. When you initially boot it up, the menu for Never Been Kissed comes up for a few seconds.
- It Was His Sled: Tyler Durden is the narrator's split personality. This is even written on the image for the It Was His Sled page.
- Jekyll And Hyde: The big twist of the movie.
- Leaning On The Fourth Wall: Done enough times to make the camera a supporting character. In at least one montage the narrator directly addresses the camera to tell us about Tyler.
- Looks Like Cesare: Marla Singer.
- Maniacal Laugh: Tyler Durden's, several times but especially, and most disturbingly, during his fight with Lou.
- This laughter is also used at the beginning of the DVD menu.
- Manipulative Bastard: Tyler. Very much so.
- Masquerade: If you're not allowed to talk about Fight Club, you might never know who is in on it and who isn't. This is especially true for the book, in which the narrator mentions that nobody knows whether a prank pulled in public was pulled by Project Mayhem or not because the first rule is you do not ask questions.
- Lampshaded in both the book and movie when police officers the narrator is counting on to save him from castration appear to be part of Project Mayhem.
- Marshmallow Hell: This is Bob.
 ◊ Bob had bitch tits.
- Meaningful Echo: A lot of them, to show how the Narrator is constructing Tyler from the influences in his daily life.
- Memetic Mutation: The much referenced and parodied "The first rule of fight club..." line, as well as "You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake..."
- Played darkly with " His name is Robert Paulsen", when the Narrator first realizes that no matter how much he tries, any members of Project Mayhem not present at the birth of a rule, and then some, will just become the Misaimed Fandom of the mutated meaning.
- Misaimed Fandom: Yes, Tyler is cool. He's the walking personification of the Narrator's id. No one should actually attempt to live that way.
- 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.
- Nietzsche Wannabe:
Tyler Durden: Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else.
- Nightmare Fuel: Tons and tons, but the particular one for this troper is the scene where The Narrator gets the scar on the back of his hand. That would be why this film is Rated M For Manly.
- Not to mention the beating of "Angel Face" until he looks like an unrecognizable mass of flesh and bone.
- No Communities Were Harmed: The Narrator's hometown is never given, but clues suggest that it is Wilmington, Delaware. Other cities are mentioned by name as locations of satellite Fight Clubs.
- A review of the book claimed that the core story was set in New York, despite this never being explicitly stated in the novel. Palahniuk was perhaps making a statement on the increasingly generic nature of modern American society, or something.
- No Holds Barred Beatdown: Lou beating the shit out of Tyler, who refuses to defend himself until Lou turns his back.
- And the Narrator vs. Angel Face.
- No Name Given: Ed Norton's character.
- Only A Flesh Wound: Near the end of the movie, the Narrator shoots himself through the cheek/jaw in order to prove his willingness to be free of Tyler's influence. It's actually a pretty bloody, ugly wound but the apparent years of taking vicious injuries on a regular basis allow him to more or less shrug it off.
- Painting The Fourth Wall: Many scenes, especially the "Let me tell you about Tyler Durden" scene.
- Pay Phone: The Narrator calls Tyler on a payphone after his apartment is blown up. Tyler doesn't answer, but calls the payphone back to talk to him. One of the many hints about his true nature. In the DVD commentary, David Fincher says that the narrator's descent into insanity was cemented when he chose to call his imaginary friend (Tyler) instead of his real one (Marla).
- Pimped Out Dress: Marla compares a bridesmaid's dress to a rape victim. She's that kind of weird.
- The Problem With Licensed Games: The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about the video game adaptation of Fight Club.
- Product Placement: Subverted. Many, many products are shown but they are held up as what is wrong with society. One notable scene involves Ed Norton's apartment morphing into the IKEA catalog page that he ordered everything from.
- Rated M For Manly: So very much.
- Revised Ending: In the book, The protagonist tries to destroy one building, but fails when Tyler botches the explosive mixture. The narrator ends up in a place he thinks is heaven but is really a mental institution. In the movie, 11 buildings are destroyed and we see nothing after this.
- Second Person Narration: The "You wake up at SeaTac" scene.
- Secret Other Family: The narrator's father.
"Fucker's setting up franchises."
- Sensei For Scoundrels: The trope was originally titled The Tyler Durden, which still exists as a redirect.
- Shirtless Scene: Many. The sixth rule of Fight Club: No shirts, no shoes.
- Big Bob is allowed to flout the "no shirts" part of this rule. Guess why?◊
- Shoo Out The Clowns: Bob, the testicular cancer survivor. Look, our comical friend Bob joins Fight Club, and he's awesome! Look, Bob gets shot in the head! The remainder of the film is much more somber.
- Subliminal Seduction: Tyler inserts single frames of pornography into children's films, and later threatens to reveal this to the public unless the boss of the projectionists' union pays him off (in a Painting The Fourth Wall moment, a few frames of an erect penis flash onscreen just before the credits roll).
- Additionally, before he introduces himself to the narrator Tyler appears in four or five single frames scattered throughout the first half hour or so - for example, when the narrator asks a doctor about his insomnia, Tyler can be seen tapping the doctor on the shoulder, grinning evilly.
- Throw It In: Tyler and the Narrator's scene in Lou's Bar was mostly ad-libbed. The scene, as it is in the film, was cut together from the 38 takes Fincher shot.
- Tomato In The Mirror: A classic example.
- Truffaut Was Right: 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.
- Actually, they have a point. 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 it 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 nilihistic nut like Tyler.
- Project Mayhem was an exaggerated version of the very real Cacophony Society, which the author was a member of. The Cacophony Society was formed out of a group known as the Suicide Club (though they did not actually commit suicide) and is more or less the evil twin of Improv Everywhere, where they play pranks to make people unhappy rather than happy.
- Yes, he is mocking both these prankers and those who are pranked. I think the author would probably laugh at the Suicide Club's infiltration of the American Nazi party, but disapprove of some of their other pranks. He would not have portrayed Tyler's philosophy as so compelling to many people unless he could see there was a slight point to it in moderation.
- Ubermensch: Tyler Durden perfects the trope.
- Tyler Durden accomplishes the near-impossible task of perfecting both the Ubermensch and Nietzsche Wannabe tropes at the same time.
- However, some people would argue that Tyler himself doesn't fit the Nietzsche Wannabe trope, only his followers do in their imperfect understanding of Tyler's teachings. He seems on occasion to use this to his advantage in reaching more followers who only believe in the broken version of his philosophy.
- The Unfettered: Tyler Durden
- Unreliable Narrator: More like insane narrator.
- Vindicated By Cable: The movie's theatrical run was unimpressive, but it built an enormous cult when released on video and DVD.
- We Are Everywhere
- Wire Dilemma: "Oh, heavens, no, not the green one, anything but the green one." (After the green wire is cut) "I asked you not to DO THAT!"
- Writer Revolt
- You Are Too Late
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