Award Snub: The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won 7 of them; the iconic score by Jerry Goldsmith didn't win.
Can't Un-Hear It: The roaring, gravelly George C. Scott's legendary performance as the title general completely belies the real-life George S. Patton's weak, thin voice, which served to make the general somewhat unfond of oration.
Hilarious in Hindsight: The "WTF" on the jeep in the beginning stands for Western Task Force, not the Internet expression of "What the Fuck?". Don't worry, though - that generation would probably get a chuckle over our interpretation too - after all they gave us "FUBAR"note Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition and "SNAFU"note Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.
Years later, George C. Scott would play a character who reacts to the invasion with a lot less buoyancy as the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini.
Patton crosses it during the Sicily campaign. Upset that Monty is trying to claim all the glory, Patton ignores orders and follows his own way to Palermo, leaving Bradley's Army to suffer heavy losses against dug-in German defenders. Enraged that a mule-cart is blocking a bridge, he shoots the mule in front of the horrified Sicilian farmer. And topping it all is when Patton discovers a victim of shell-shock at a field hospital and goes berserk, slapping the soldier. Patton wins Sicily, but the slapping incident nearly destroys his career.
Your mileage may indeed vary in many of these cases, as nearly all of them are justified (in at least Patton's mind). To Patton, the Germans in Palermo would have had to have been dealt with sooner or later, and his high-cost tactics averted heavier casualties later on. The mule on the bridge was holding up a column and exposing thousands of his men to air attack; Patton had personally witnessed several American soldiers killed and wounded by strafing Germans just moments before. Only the last is truly an unprovoked Jerkass moment, as Patton famously disdained the concept of battle fatigue, and slapped the soldier out of pique. Also, in Patton's mind the soldier was a coward, hiding in a hospital while real men who had given everything were there. To Patton, a field hospital was a place of honor, and someone who was not physically wounded did not deserve to be there. As a young man, Patton fought in World War I, which from an infantryman's perspective was even more brutal than World War II. The fact that he withstood it colored his opinion of those who weren't as mentally sound. Rather ironically, Patton himself was suffering a severe case of battle fatigue at the time and was likely not in the right state of mind. The private, unknown at the time, had malaria. After learning of this, Patton made a genuine apology to him.
Your mileage may vary on his decision to march into Palermo. The decision is clearly motivated by the promise of glory and ambition towards taking Messina before Montgomery gets there more than any strategic reason. It's possible that he made the right decision anyway, even though his motives were questionable. In general, the movie intentionally tries to be ambiguous about the Moral Event Horizon, giving Patton's supporters and opponents both reason to believe the movie backs their point of view.
However, Patton returns without question to the Moral Event Horizon at the end of the movie, after the Nazis are finished and the war is over. Eager to keep fighting, Patton itches to take on the Russian Army, ranting and yelling at his handler from Eisenhower's office that in ten days he could start a war with the Soviets, and make it look like their fault. The second the handler hangs up the phone in disgust, Patton realizes he's just killed his career.
Nightmare Fuel: "When you put your hand in a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend's face... you'll know what to do."
