While the duet with Lee and Carter singing "The Closer I Get To You" was funny, Lee actually sings the song well. It helps that Jackie Chan is also a singer.
Critical Dissonance: The second film was a big box office hit, but was met with mixed reception by critics (52% on Rotten Tomatoes). Roger Ebert in particular hated the film, giving it only 1 1/2 stars, saying that Chris Tucker was unfunny and dominated every scene, calling out the "accuse the dealer of being racist" scene as particularly cringeworthy.
In Canada, the movie aired on TV a few years after its initial release. The next morning after its airing, a little Chinese girl was kidnapped in Toronto. Unlike the movie, there was no happy ending.
In the third movie, Carter poses as a costume designer to enter a women's dressing room and trick them into taking their clothes off. In 2016, Donald Trump came under fire for boasting about using his position to peek in on women who were participating in his beauty pageants.
The costume designer scene, along with Bloopers in Rush Hour 3 featuring Jackie Chan repeating various lines fed to him by Brett Ratner referencing increasingly vulgar pornographic jokes would fall here in 2017, after Ratner was accused of sexual harassment by several women, including one incident where he followed a woman into the women's bathroom without invitation. This caused Warner Bros. to sever ties with him.
Carter's Cowboy Cop antics look a lot less amusing with how much attention is now being paid towards police brutality in the U.S.
Speaking of, one of the first things Carter does with Lee is show him the footprints, handprints, and signature of John Wayne which, as any fan of the Shanghai Noon movies will tell you, is “a terrible name for a cowboy!”
Zhang Ziyi and Youki Kudoh both play Dark Action Girls in the sequels, as both actresses have appeared together in Memoirs of a Geisha. Ironically, Kudoh's character being less popular then Ziyi's character in the said film reflects on how the third film (which had featured Kudoh) was less well-received then the first and second films (which the second had featured Ziyi).
Ken Leung and Mark Rolston, who both appeared in the first film, would later be part of the Saw franchise. Leung played the character of Steven Sing (whose last name is worded similarly to Leung's Rush Hour character Sang, just with the second letter of "a" replaced with "i") in the first 2004 film, while Rolston would later play Dan Erickson in the fifth and sixth films.
In 3 when Carter tells Lee that he can't be black because there's a height requirement. Yeah, right.
Memetic Mutation: "DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH?!"
Moral Event Horizon: Sang definitely crosses it when he terrifyingly kidnaps Soo Yung, killing her drivers as well.
Spiritual Successor: To the 1997 film Drive, starring Mark Dacascos, a woefully underrated (and relatively unknown) action film from The '90s. Brett Ratner even admitted that the only reason Rush Hour got made without legal complications is that almost no one knows it exists. Fans of Rush Hour and action films in general should definitely check it out, but only the Director's Cut. Long story.
Tear Jerker: Near the end of Rush Hour 3, Kenji willingly lets himself go from Lee's grip and falls off from the Eiffel Tower to his death in order to let Lee save himself from meeting the same fate, all while Lee emits a Big "NO!" upon seeing Kenji's sacrifice.
Unintentional Period Piece: The first movie explicitly takes place shortly after the end of British rule in Hong Kong, pretty firmly tying the film to the late 1990s.
Rush Hour (TV Series)
Complete Monster: "Knock, Knock ... House Creeping!": Thomas "Tommy" Shea is a failed actor and secretly a violent psychopath who became a brutal Serial Killer. Kidnapping, torturing, and killing at least 7 young women—some only teenagers—at an exclusive hotel in Los Angeles, police attempted to arrest him, at which point Shea opened heavy fire on them and wounded an officer before sadistically killing Captain Cole's lover. Next, to avoid arrest, Shea set his hotel room on fire to fake his death, gloating about how no one's gonna miss his victims, let alone find them. After 12 years, Shea resurfaces after kidnapping another young woman named Destiny Lamb. However, it's revealed he already killed several other young women in the last five years, burning their remains until only bone was left. When he is found to still be alive, Shea attempts to kill Cole, Lee, Carter, and Destiny when they find her, beating Lee to the ground and attempting to shoot Cole before the latter shoots him.
Growing the Beard: The first episode was a poorly condensed version of the original movie's plot, but the other episodes after that have improved.
Heartwarming in Hindsight: Considering how another CBS show, "We Are Men", got cancelled after only two episodes, it's satisfying that the show got to air its last episodes and that the show ended with all subplots resolved, with no cliffhangers.
Questionable Casting: Many people don't like Jon Foo as Lee, mainly due to his accent for the character. Also, many people miss Tucker and Chan. On the plus side, people like how more competent Carter is.
Squick: A thug gets impaled by a firepoker in one episode.
in the movies, as composed by the legendary Lalo Schifrin.