These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
Fair for Its Day: Asimov wrote his stories with Susan Calvin at a time when nearly all women were captured by the villain, or love interests. Still, he stuck mostly 50's gender roles in most of his stories. The short story "Liar!", which shows more of Calvin's personality, was rewritten a couple of times after Asimov realized his first version was terrible.
Harsher in Hindsight: In "Evidence", Stephen Byerley, a liberal public prosecutor who really is doing things to stop crime and redeem criminals, is a candidate for mayor of NYC who is accused of being a robot, which would disqualify him from the election. Quinn, the political boss who propagates the rumor, is a conservative Sleazy Politician who admittedly couldn’t care less for the civil rights of his people, and so are his subordinates. The premise seems kind of silly and it's hard to believe that so many people would believe that Byerley is a robot based on such flimsy evidence. Fast forward to 2008, when people are arguing that President Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States (and the principal promoter of that idea was Donald Trump), and it seems much more plausible.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Yes, "Aw, Hell no." did appear in one of Asimov's robot stories.
Nightmare Fuel: Escape! is a story that unites all the characters that appeared before(Susan Calvin, Lanning, Powell and Donovan), in which The Brain is given the problem of creating a hyperspatial drive. A solution is found, but long story short, the crew of the ship has to die temporarily for it to perform the hyperspace jump. And that conclusion comes only after we are told what happens with someone who dies temporarily (Donovan, in short, has visions of his own funeral and then goes briefly to Hell).
It gets even better than that. The scene is a reference to one of Asimov's short stories, in which a robot designed to dream imagines himself standing on a hill and shouting "Let my people go!"
Mis-blamed: People who didn't like the movie tend to complain that VIKI's Zeroth Law Rebellion is totally contrary to Asimov's writing. Actually, one of the short stories in the original I, Robot ("The Evitable Conflict") dealt with exactly that. When one actually reads that particular story, however, the Fan Dumb's argument becomes partially justified- The machines in The Evitable Conflict were passively manipulating humanity — a factory shutdown here, an employee transfer there — for our own good, being careful to avoid letting humanity find out that it was no longer fully in charge. VIKI, on the other hand, was doing so via Killer Robot Takeover, which was precisely the sort of cliche Asimov wanted to get away from.
The Scrappy: Farber. If you removed him from the film, would anyone notice? What purpose does he serve the plot again?
