History YMMV / RockyIII

** Did Apollo train Rocky out of respect and admiration to him, or was it to get back at Clubber Lang, who threatened him before their first fight?

* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: Both Sylvester Stallone and Survivor keyboardist Jim Peterik have admitted that "Eye of te Tiger" was written to sound like Music/{{Queen}}'s "Another One Bites the Dust" (which itself is inspired by "Good Times" by Music/{{Chic}}) because Stallone couldn't get the rights to the Queen song.

*** Maybe because he killed Mickey.

*** Clubber's main difference from Rocky is his hostility. Despite being in a profession that entails punching opponents silly, Rocky doesn't have a malicious bone in his body. Clubber's default setting seems to be anger and hostility towards almost everyone...even Apollo who never did anything to him and was trying to wish him well before the first fight. (Apollo's sin in Clubber's eyes? He lost to Rocky.) Like Damian Anderson from Film/CreedIII over forty years later, Clubber is simply mad at the world and boxing's just his excuse for whaling on it. At least according to WordOfGod (and a part that was scripted for Film/RockyBalboa but never filmed), Clubber moved past all that.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: Sure, Clubber Lang is brash, crude, and hostile. And those are his ''good'' traits. And he's utterly ruthless, damn near animalistic in the ring. But is he ''really'' all that different from Rocky? They're both athletes who came up from a rough upbringing, surviving by sheer grit and determination, and scratched and scraped out of the gutter to ''earn'' a shot a greatness. So why exactly is Clubber the villain here?
** Clubber's main difference from Rocky is his hostility. Despite being in a profession that entails punching opponents silly, Rocky doesn't have a malicious bone in his body. Clubber's default setting seems to be anger and hostility towards almost everyone...even Apollo who never did anything to him and was trying to wish him well before the first fight. (Apollo's sin in Clubber's eyes? He lost to Rocky.) Like Damian Anderson from Film/CreedIII over forty years later, Clubber is simply mad at the world and boxing's just his excuse for whaling on it. At least according to WordOfGod (and a part that was scripted for Film/RockyBalboa but never filmed), Clubber moved past all that.

** Clubber's main difference from Rocky is his hostility. Despite choosing a profession that entails punching opponents silly, Rocky doesn't have a malicious bone in his body. Clubber's default setting seems to be anger and hostility towards almost everyone...even Apollo who never did anything to him and was trying to wish him well before the first fight. (Apollo's sin in Clubber's eyes? He lost to Rocky.) Like Damian Anderson from Film/CreedIII over forty years later, Clubber is simply mad at the world and boxing's just his excuse for whaling on it.

** Many people now would see Clubber Lang as an analogue of Mike Tyson, (trash talking fighter from the streets with devastating punching power, a bad attitude, not a lot of height but a ton of mass, and a tendency to destroy his opponents in the early rounds) but the film came out in 1982, and Creator/MikeTyson didn't first start fighting professionally until 1985. Lang was actually an analog of a young George Foreman, before Foreman found God and reinvented as a [[BigFun jolly fat grandpa]] who would poke fun at himself. (Although Foreman never was much of a trash talker, as a young man he was more prone to intense and furious smoldering.)

* EvilIsCool: Clubber Lang is a well-regarded antagonist. His TrashTalk is quite memorable, and he's the first character to KO Rocky.

* ValuesDissonance: As stated above, Paulie's commentary on the black boxers at Apollo's old gym (dismissing the music played in the gym as "jungle junk", remarking that he, Adrian and Rocky better leave before the boxers in the gym "leave us for dead!", and dismissing Apollo's panache-laden training by remarking that Rocky "ain't a colored fighter!") are so bluntly racist that it can make a modern viewer ''quite'' uncomfortable. For what it's worth, Rocky does (in his typically subtle, nice guy way) [[DudeNotFunny call him on it]]. In general it is clearly shows Paulie is out of line for his racist comments. The bottom quote also shows how he is being a hypocrite:

* ValuesDissonance: As stated above, Paulie's commentary on the black boxers at Apollo's old gym (dismissing the music played in the gym as "jungle junk", remarking that he, Adrian and Rocky better leave before the boxers in the gym "leave us for dead!", and dismissing Apollo's panache-laden training by remarking that Rocky "ain't a colored fighter!") are so bluntly racist that it can make a modern viewer ''quite'' uncomfortable. For what it's worth, Rocky does (in his typically subtle, nice guy way) [[DudeNotFunny call him on it]]. In general it is clearly shows Paulie is out of line for his racist comments. The bottom qoute also shows how he is being a Hypocrite:

* ValuesDissonance: As stated above, Paulie's commentary on the black boxers at Apollo's old gym (dismissing the music played in the gym as "jungle junk", remarking that he, Adrian and Rocky better leave before the boxers in the gym "leave us for dead!", and dismissing Apollo's panache-laden training by remarking that Rocky "ain't a colored fighter!") are so bluntly racist that it can make a modern viewer ''quite'' uncomfortable. For what it's worth, Rocky does (in his typically subtle, nice guy way) [[DudeNotFunny call him on it]]:

** The MAD magazine parody had Rocky commenting that because his opponents had big chests, he wanted his next match to be with Music/DollyParton. Stallone would star alongside Parton two years later in ''Film/{{Rhinestone}}''.

* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: Both Sylvester Stalone and Survivor keyboardist Jim Peterik have admitted that "Eye Of The Tiger" was written to sound like Music/{{Queen}}'s "Another One Bites The Dust" (which itself is inspired by "Good Times" by Music/{{Chic}}) because Stalone couldn't get the rights to the Queen song.