YMMV / Everything Everywhere All at Once

• Adorkable: The main universe's Waymond is awkward, bumbling, and above all else, lovable. One can see traits of characters he has played as long ago as early childhood.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Gong Gong's Character Development in the Return Home universe. Was he spurred on by Evelyn calling him out for his treatment of her, realizing how much he had hurt his daughter and deciding to take steps to better himself by accepting his granddaughter's sexuality and girlfriend? Or was he actually always going to accept Becky anyways, considering all the fears of a bad reaction were ultimately assumptions that Evelyn made based on his reaction to her marriage to Waymond?
  • When Jobu Tupaki finds Evelyn in the Return Home Verse, she tells Becky to go help Waymond and thus away from them. Did she do this out of genuine affection, or just so she wouldn't have to deal with the inconvenience of someone getting in the way of her rant?
• Americans Hate Tingle: The film wasn't received nearly as well outside of the United States. As it was sweeping awards shows within the US, it underperformed on wins elsewhere, even in countries with perceived similar cultures such as the UK and Australia (where it won only one and zero awards from the BAFTA and AACTA, respectively). Europe didn't think much of it, with Poland in particular detesting it, and online reviews became scathing as it opened in more non-English-speaking countries. Reasons cited mainly include the sense of humor being seen as gross or inappropriate outside of America, the plot being deemed incomprehensible and contrived, as well as the emotional beats not nearly being as resonant.
• Award Snub: Jamie Lee Curtis getting — and subsequently winning — Best Supporting Actress nominations over Stephanie Hsu (as well as over Angela Bassett for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Kerry Condon for The Banshees of Inisherin) at both the Golden Globes and the Las Vegas Film Critics Society in December 2022 riled up a lot of fans who saw Hsu's role and performance as more significant and challenging. At the very least, the Oscars nominated both of them for the award, although this reaction was renewed when Curtis won the Oscar. Somewhat downplayed in that most would agree that Curtis's performance was rather good, just that Hsu's role was deeper and more complex than Curtis's role.
• Broken Base: The third act. Some find it to be a great and unique conclusion to the story that wraps everything up in a neat bow, while others found it to be an overly-long, bloated, and exhausting ending.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • The "Sorry, it's a girl" line when Evelyn is being born goes the full circle from hilarious, to abusive, and back to hilarious.
  • Big Nose bringing her pet dog into battle as a weapon, treating it like it isn't even alive, would be absolutely barbaric if it wasn't done so absolutely hilariously (and if it wasn't so obvious that it was a stuffed animal). It's made even worse by Evelyn defending herself with superhuman cooking skills.
    Big Nose: Does my baby wanna go for a walk? (starts swinging her dog by the leash like it's a flail)
  • Jobu Tupaki beating an officer unconscious with a pair of giant dildos.
  • The fight over the giant butt plug trophy, which is necessary for two of the fighters to unlock their powers. Not only does one of them do a jumping pile drive onto it pantsless (with pixelated censorship), the previous fighter finds a random trophy to stick up his ass in turn. And the fight continues.
• Ending Fatigue: One of the few common criticisms that stand out from the otherwise universal praise is that the third act is long, due to wrapping up parallel plot threads from about a dozen different universes, cutting between them as the various versions of Evelyn all go through their own moments of realization about their shortcomings, all on top of the main plot of Jobu Tupaki and the "main" version of Evelyn. The fact that a large amount of that plays out in slow-motion can add to the feeling that movie is taking forever to get where it's going. And this was after large parts of it were cut for time!
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Racacoonie; the character is entirely written in to be a goofy Running Gag which makes them memorable for that same reason. Racacoonie cosplay is very common due to the very simple design of being a chef with a raccoon on his head.
• Evil Is Cool: Jobu Tupaki. Picture the playful reality bending of Bill Cipher or Discord and the single-minded stoicness and implacability of Agent Smith in the body of a teenage girl, and you have one hell of an entertaining and complex villain.
• Fanfic Fuel: The basic concept of how dimension-hopping works in this film is an easy avenue for Alternate Universe or crossover fics where a character gains the experiences and skills of another version of themselves, or of a character from another work played by the same actor.
• Friendly Fandoms: With The Whale, specifically because of the friendship between Brendan Fraser and Ke Huy Quan that began when the two worked on Encino Man. The two actors had both won Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor respectively at the 2023 Academy Awards for their major comeback roles after years of career limbo and fans have been nothing but happy for the two's renewed successes. It helps that both movies are released by A24.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Ke Huy Quan was one of the most well-known child stars of The '80s, starring in popular films like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies. However, when he was hired for this film, he had not acted in nearly two decades, having mostly given it up due to the lack of non-stereotypical roles for Asian-American actors. His performance here doesn't show a hint of rust, with him fully embodying three very different characters (bumbling main Waymond, hyper-competent Alpha Waymond, and wistfully romantic CEO Waymond) that allow him to demonstrate his talents in drama, comedy, and martial arts action. His performance led to a well-deserved Oscar win for Best Supporting Actor.
  • Stephanie Hsu nails the depressed nature of Joy early on in the film and the playful, god-like, and melancholic nature of Jobu Tupaki.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Who would have thought that the other multiverse movie to come out in 2022, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, also would have hopping between/possessing alternate-universe selves and motherhood as major plot points?
  • 2023 saw the release of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which also featured a universe-hopping antagonist who is strongly connected to a bagel. That movie even included a Shout-Out to this one with a billboard reading "All Of It, Always, All Over The Place".
• Hype Backlash: A relatively limited early release coupled with rave reviews early on created a great deal of hype from incredibly devoted fans of the movie. As such, later reactions to the movie included more muted responses, either not finding the movie as incredible as it was hyped up to be or by potential audiences being put off by how much fans of the movie were into it. It also didn't help that it was compared to other multiverse content, specifically Rick and Morty as well as several films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's 5th phase, turning many people off who've gotten sick of the multiverse concept. Things became even more pronounced during awards season, where a large group of critics and audiences deemed other movies such as The Banshees of Inisherin as more deserving.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "The TRUE multiverse of madness" ^Explanation Plenty of viewers, even MCU fans, who were disappointed with the relatively sparse exploration of the multiverse in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness have gravitated towards this film for better fulfilling the former film’s title and concept, as it explores a greater amount of universes, thereby better living up to the 'multiverse' bit, as well as being far more bonkers and and off-the-wall, and thereby better living up to the 'madness'.
  • "In Another Life...." ^Explanation CEO Waymond's optimistic speech has been edited to be about one's desires and wishes, like "Being a talented gamer" or "a famous movie director." People have also started applying the full line about laundry and taxes to pairs of characters in other media, such as Batman and The Riddler, for laughs.
  • Googly Eyes/"Is that you, Waymond?" ^Explanation A meme that originated in the movie's unofficial subreddit. Basically finding anything online that had googly eyes on random objects and crossposting it to the subreddit. Usually with the caption/title of "Waymond?" as a reference to the character's love of putting googly eyes on objects.
  • Rocks made me cry. ^Explanation  The scene and numerous shots of Evelyn and Jobu as rocks has been noted by viewers to be very emotional.
• Out of the Ghetto: Broke out of the Sci Fi Ghetto, the Minority Show Ghetto, and the Comedy Ghetto when it earned 11 Oscar nominations, more than any other movie of the year, including major "above the line" categories like Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Director, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress (getting in the lattermost category twice). It won all 6 of the above-the-line races it was nominated in (plus Editing), more than any film in the history of the ceremony. In the process, it became the first science fiction film to win Best Picture, and Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win Best Actress. According to IGN, it has surpassed Return of the King as the most awarded film in history.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Several characters get soul-swapped with their alternate-universe counterparts with no recollection of what happens afterwards. At least some die onscreen having never been returned to control of their bodies!
  • Evelyn's experiences when Waymond first introduces her to the universe-hopping could easily be the start of someone having a schizophrenic breakdown. She is forced to use violence against people she's been in conversations with a moment prior, and even gets told to kill her own daughter, at a point where she can barely process what is happening.
• Quirky Work: This is a film built on multiversal madness where it's borderline impossible to guess what will happen in the next scene, with relevant plot points including a Ratatouille parody with a talking raccoon, sentient rocks, people having hot dogs for fingers, a bagel that threatens the multiverse, and awards shaped like butt plugs. Both Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis admitted they barely understood the script at first given how crazy it gets.
• Signature Scene: The scene where Waymond beats up a room full of security guards with a fanny pack, the first proper showcase of the film's multiverse premise. It's the most iconic and talked-about scenes in the film for reasons including the tight choreography of the fighting (with Ke Huy Quan doing almost all of his own stunts). If audiences know only one thing about the movie, it's the scene where Data (or possibly Short Round) kicks ass with a fanny pack.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • A cheerfully surreal multiversal adventure about an Asian woman who can access all the memories and skills of her alternate selves? With Everywhere in the title? Sounds rather like a Jenny Everywhere movie. (Plus, Evelyn isn't that similar to Jenny Everywhere, but Jobu Topaki has considerable similarities with common takes on her arch-foe Jenny Nowhere, both of them being women who have gained the ability to exist "everywhere, all at once" across the multiverse, and were turned into nihilistic villains by the experience even as it empowered them, making their newfound abilities a danger to the rest of reality.)
  • The film is often compared to Rick and Morty due to its heavy use of the multiverse, scatological humor, extreme violence, and existential angst. DANIELS even admitted that they felt really insecure about making this movie when they saw that Rick And Morty had already done a lot of their ideas, and was airing new episodes while the film was in production.
• Special Effect Failure: When Big Nose appears under Jobu Tupaki's control, using her pet dog as a flail, her dog is very obviously swapped out for a plush toy for most of the scene. This works out in the movie's favor, since the alternative would have probably been too distressing to be funny.
• Squick:
  • Watching Waymond give himself papercuts between each of his fingers is incredibly unpleasant. The final one splatters blood on the camera.
  • Evelyn wiping snot from Gong Gong’s nose and sticking her finger in his mouth afterwards. Joy and Waymond appropriately react with disgust.
  • Affection in the hot dog finger universe involves sticking one's fingers into one's lover's mouth as ketchup and mustard somehow start squirting out of somewhere, with every permutation being disturbing one way or another. Evelyn herself is visibly disgusted by this when she sees it play out in a movie on her laundromat's TV screen.
• Tainted by the Preview: Despite the draft for the film's script being written in 2016 and the movie's concept being developed as far back as 2010, quite a few viewers who saw the trailers and promotional material groaned at the fact that this was another multiverse movie due to the increasing amount of movies and TV shows being centered on it such as Loki (which funnily enough, Ke Huy Quan ended up joining in Season 2), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Rick and Morty, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Flash (2014), etc. Because of this, some assumed it was simply hopping on the multiverse trend and therefore refused to see it due to being sick of the concept.
• Woolseyism: The Taiwanese subs are full of this, to the point people have been making memes over it.

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