History YMMV / Fahrenheit451

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: What had been a startling new revelation of how people are likely to lose power over their lives is now a frequent subject brought up in various political discussions, especially for those who aim to demonize cell phones and other recently introduced forms of technology and entertainment.

* SoBadItsGood: The film struggled to have anything to do with the book, instead focusing on a romance that didn't have much to do with the rest of the plot, which alone would have made it just sort of bad, or even possibly okay. Add in the special effects, though, particularly the amazing jetpack river crossing scene towards the end, and it suddenly becomes hilarious.

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* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Clarisse enjoyed a similar fate to Franchise/SherlockHolmes', as her popularity among readers and their interest in her ambiguous fate in the novel prompted Bradbury to follow the film's example and [[spoiler:reveal she's still alive]] at the end of the stage play (and the video game sequel).

** [[spoiler: Mildred sees her reflection just before she dies--"and it was such a wildly empty face"--and has only a split second to realize what a shell of a woman she is and that she'll never get a chance to redeem herself.]]

* DeathOfTheAuthor: Everyone knows how ''Fahrenheit 451'' is about the dangers of government censorship... except Ray Bradbury. He vehemently denies this when the subject comes up; according to him the story he wrote has nothing to do with censorship and everything to do with the dangers of AntiIntellectualism. To be specific, he was actually writing about how the TV boom has resulted in more people watching TV over reading books, hence the book burning.

** Others believe the book is about government censorship. It's true that the government in the story is a big part of it with regulating firemen to burn books and outlawing any material that encourages free thinking and discourse. However, Bradbury himself said that this is not what the book is about in an interview of the LA Times in 2007. Moreover, the government is only one factor of the society Montag lives; its the ''people themselves'' who willingly reject literature and anything that might make them uncomfortable.
* NightmareFuel: [[spoiler:Beatty's]] Death in the novel is particularly graphic. [[spoiler:After having raided Montag's house of all his books, Beatty makes Montag do the book burning as a cruel punishment. He then turns the flamethrower on Beatty and burns him alive, as Beatty dies screaming in agony while slowly burning to death.]] Compared to the rest of the novel, which is relatively tame with its violence, this moment comes across as rather jarring with how brutal it is, and is considered a standout moment for many.
** Then there's the scene in which [[spoiler:Montag (after having evaded the police) watches the TV as the police frame his crimes on a random civilian taking a walk that same night, and murder him on live TV]]. The idea that you could be blamed for someone else's actions by the police and be punished for it, with absolutely no say in the matter, is fairly nightmarish itself.
** Besides the FamilyUnfriendlyDeath, there's also the scene in the novel in which [[spoiler:Millie gets her stomach pumped after an apparent suicide attempt]].
* TheProblemWithLicensedGames: Bradbury green-lit (and helped write) a text-adventure "sequel" to the book of dubious canonical status. It was VERY unwieldy to play, as a lot of plot advancement involved having to type literary quotations verbatim...with a [[YouCantGetYeFlask mediocre parser system]]. It [[TheManyDeathsOfYou had a lot of pointless ways to die]] for something as simple as ''crossing the street'' during certain times of day, and ended with Montag [[spoiler: and Clarisse]] as {{Doomed Moral Victor}}s if you managed to ''win.''

* SpecialEffectFailure: The "jetpacks" in the film are very shoddy. Apparently they couldn't afford real helicopters.

* TearJerker: Montag's reaction when he realizes that [[spoiler:bombs have killed Mildred. He imagines her dying oblivious to the danger, only for the screens to shatter and reflect her face. Suddenly he remembers what he couldn't recall earlier: they first met in Chicago. Montag really did love her, at one time]].

* ValuesResonance: This novel predicted [=iPods=], giant flatscreen [=TVs=], the decline of quality in public schools, prescription drug abuse, people abandoning old media for new, societal emphasis on convenient, mindless entertainment, shortening social attention spans, sensationalist television coverage of police chases, and everyone living in fear over war, but not really taking action. The Choose Your Own Adventure television shows are awfully similar to video games too, and became even more uncanny after shows like ''Series/BlackMirror'' actually started experimenting with CYOA-style interactive episodes. Replace the telescreens with smartphones and you have the phenomenon known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phubbing phubbing]]. The fact that one reason why books fell out of favor was because of increasingly vitriolic distaste towards ValuesDissonance in older literature is also increasingly relevant, with political correctness and the limits of it having become a contentious issue over the past decades.

* DeathOfTheAuthor: Everyone knows how ''Fahrenheit 451'' is about the dangers of government censorship... except Ray Bradbury. He vehemently denies this when the subject comes up; according to him the story he wrote has nothing to do with censorship and everything to do with the dangers of AntiIntellectualism.

** Others believe the book is about government censorship. It's true that the government in the story is a big part of it with regulating firemen to burn books and outlawing any material that encourages free thinking and discourse. However, Bradbury himself said that this is not what the book is about in an interview of the LA Times in 2007. Moreover, the government is only one factor of the society Montag lives; its the ''people themselves'' who willing reject literature and anything that might make them uncomfortable.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The 1966 film is scored by no other than Music/BernardHerrmann, and it is one of his finest scores, ethereally beautiful and at times intensely moving. [[www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgZwUznchu8 The first track]] sets the tone excellently.

* DeathOfTheAuthor: Everyone knows how ''Literature/{{Fahrenheit 451}}'' is about the dangers of government censorship...except Ray Bradbury. He vehemently denies this when the subject comes up; according to him the story he wrote has nothing to do with censorship and everything to do with the dangers of AntiIntellectualism.

* NightmareFuel: [[spoiler:Beatty’s]] Death in the novel is particularly graphic. [[spoiler:After having raided Montag’s house of all his books, Beatty makes Montag do the book burning as a cruel punishment. He then turns the flamethrower on Beatty and burns him alive, as Beatty dies screaming in agony while slowly burning to death.]] Compared to the rest of the novel, which is relatively tame with its violence, this moment comes across as rather jarring with how brutal it is, and is considered a standout moment for many.
** Then there’s the scene in which, [[spoiler:after having evaded the police Montag watches the tv as the police frame his crimes on a random civilian taking a walk that same night, and murder him on live tv.]] The idea that you could be blamed for someone else’s actions by the police and be punished for it, with absolutely no say in the matter, is fairly nightmarish itself.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Was Beatty right when he pointed to political correctness as the cause of the current anti-intellectual world? It's possible he could have been misinformed or he could be lying to Montag about it being a major reason why people abandoned books. We only have his word for it, and many of his actions through the book show him to be an [[UnreliableNarrator untrustworthy source]] on a largely unknown period of this world's history.

** Did Mildred really overdose on pills because she was secretly unhappy with her life and couldn't express it in a healthy way, or has the illiterate society made people so stupid that they've forgotten that overdosing on pills is dangerous? For Mildred, it seems like it's both, especially when she locks herself in the bathroom to take her pills after Montag asks her when and where they first met and again when Montag upsets her friends by reading poetry.
* DeathOfTheAuthor: Everyone knows how ''Literature/{{Fahrenheit 451}}'' is about the dangers of government censorship and PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad...except Ray Bradbury. He vehemently denies this when the subject comes up; according to him the story he wrote has nothing to do with censorship and everything to do with the dangers of AntiIntellectualism and relying too much on visual media.

** Others believe the book is about government censorship. It's true that the government in the story is a big part of it with regulating firemen to burn books and outlawing any material that encourages free thinking and discourse. However, Bradbury himself said that this is not what the book is about in an interview of the LA Times in 2007. Moreover, the government is only one factor of the society Montag lives in as advocates that demanded less offensive media also wanted literature to be edited and eventually banned.

* {{Squick}}: Besides the FamilyUnfriendlyDeath, there's also the scene in the novel in which [[spoiler:Millie gets her stomach pumped after an apparent suicide attempt]]. This one is specifically ''called'' disgusting by the narrator.

** Did Mildred really overdose on pills because she was secretly unhappy with her life and couldn't express it, or has the illiterate society made people so stupid that they don't know the dangers of overdosing on prescription pills?
* DeathOfTheAuthor: Everyone knows how ''Literature/{{Fahrenheit 451}}'' is about the dangers of government censorship... except Ray Bradbury. He vehemently denies this when the subject comes up; according to him the story he wrote has nothing to do with censorship and everything to do with the dangers of AntiIntellectualism.

** Some people have interpreted the novel as saying that television is always garbage. Not only is this not what Bradbury was trying to say, one character directly stamps on the idea. Faber flat out says that the Parlor Families could easily have the same magic that books did, and that the magic of books wasn't unique to books, or even guaranteed to be found in them. He then says that what Montag is looking for is the infinite detail and awareness that were once in books and could, in theory, be found in everything from radio plays, to movies, to old friends. It doesn't help that Bradbury later claimed in a 2007 interview with the LA Times that the book is about "television destroy[ing] interest in reading literature" and has condemned radio, television, and the internet.

* ValuesResonance: This novel predicted [=iPods=], giant flatscreen [=TVs=], the decline of quality in public schools, prescription drug abuse, people abandoning old media for new, societal emphasis on convenient, mindless entertainment, shortening social attention spans, sensationalist television coverage of police chases, and everyone living in fear over war, but not really taking action. The Choose Your Own Adventure television shows are awfully similar to video-games too. Replace the telescreens with smartphones and you have the phenomenon known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phubbing phubbing]]. The fact that one reason why books feel out of favor was because of increasingly vitriolic distaste towards ValuesDissonance in older literature is also increasingly relevant, with political correctness and the limits of it having become a contentious issue over the past decades.

* TearJerker: Montag's reaction when he realizes that [[spoiler:bombs have killed Mildred. He imagines her dying oblivious to the danger, only for the screens to shatter and reflect her face. Suddenly he remember: they met in Chicago! Montag really did love her, at one time]].