YMMV / Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The "Find the Fish" scene. If you think that can't happen in a Monty Python sketch film, watch the scene and think again. Justified in that, according to Terry Gilliam, it's supposed to represent weird dreams in general.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Live Organ Transplants, Mr. Creosote, "Every Sperm is Sacred," etc...
  • The reveal at the end that almost every character is in Heaven, with the Downer Ending averted by the choice to make Heaven look like a swanky hotel where it's always Christmas.
• Fridge Brilliance: In "The Miracle of Birth", Mr. Moore asks to enter the delivery room and see his wife only for one of the doctors to brush him off with, "I'm sorry, but only people involved may enter here." Perhaps one of the doctors is the father of the baby.
• Genius Bonus: The middle-aged couple conversing about philosophers seems like it's going to touch upon the meaning of life, but the conversation stalls at the mention of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Schopenhauer's philosophy was that the world had no meaning beyond its face value. Nietzsche's philosophy was that life had no meaning at all.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The aforementioned American business executives claim that the meaning of life is dictated by the fact that "Matter is Energy" and "People are not wearing enough hats." And so, inevitably...
  • So there were a lot of Men Without Hats.
  • The fish in the film strongly resemble the Dreamcast's Seaman.
  • The mention of Mormonism as one of the religions that will "spill theirs just anywhere" in "Every Sperm Is Sacred" was ironically funny to those in the know at the time, since the publicly expressed attitudes of senior church leaders towards birth control were almost identical to the Catholic view (for different theological reasons, though). In recent years, however, the LDS Church has clarified its birth control position, stating that couples aren't restricted from using contraception, thus making them (slightly) more lax on the topic than Roman Catholicism.
  • Graham Chapman's character in "Find the Fish" is dressed very much like Lady Gaga.
  • The scene where Mr. Brown has his organs forcibly "donated" (effectively "repossessed") while fully conscious brings to mind Repo! The Genetic Opera.
  • Only Jaws 1, 2 and 3?
  • When asked the seemingly simple question of whether the baby in the "birth" segment was a boy or a girl, one of the doctors responds by dodging the question and claiming it's "a little early to start imposing roles on it." This might have seemed like a humorously strange response at the time. However, fast forward thirty years as the concept of gender identity becomes more widely accepted, and it becomes more commonly understood that people don't always identify with the gender they were born as. Suddenly that line actually feels a lot more relevant.
• Memetic Mutation
  • "LEARNIN' THE PIANO!??"
  • "It's a Mr. Death or something, he's come about the reaping?"
• Narm: The Pythons' American accents are all pretty bad, though they might fall into Narm Charm for some fans.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • Mr. Creosote serves as this both within and without the film. With the bath tubs of dairy-based vomit FX going off by day three or so of shooting, he even began to affect the filmmakers themselves... In fact, if you look closely after he explodes, you can see several extras throwing up as they leave. It should say something that Quentin Tarantino cited this as the only movie scene he found too disturbing to get through.
  • Mr. Brown having his liver "donated".
• Protection from Editors: The Crimson Permanent Assurance was filmed as if it were a completely separate project. Terry Gilliam got his own soundstage, crew and cast. This segment continued to expand because, according to Gilliam, nobody told him to stop.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Harder to notice, but Jane Leeves is a dancer in the "Christmas in Heaven" and "Every Sperm is Sacred" numbers.
  • Matt Frewer as a Corrupt Corporate Executive, before he became Max Headroom and Panic.
  • One of the dinner guests who get taken away by Death is Simon Jones. This is especially uncanny given that the afterlife appears to be some kind of restaurant. And humourously, he plays the husband of Terry Jones.
  • One of the elderly accountants in the "Crimson Permanent Assurance" is none other than the Supreme Dalek himself, under his human alias John Scott Martin.
  • The headmaster's wife, with whom he gives the sex education demonstration, is Patricia Quinn, who played Magenta in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
• Unintentional Period Piece: "Every Sperm Is Sacred" presents opposition to contraception as a uniquely Catholic position, contrasting them with Protestants who were more lenient on the issue. In the years since the film released, a large number of Protestants, chiefly those of evangelical denominations, would come to agree with Catholics in their anti-contraception stance.

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