YMMV / Splash

• Best Known for the Fanservice: To some, the movie is best remembered for Madison the Mermaid's nudity.
• Enforced Method Acting: Young Madison's tears following her brief encounter with Young Allen were genuine. Actress Shayla MacKarvich was uncomfortable about appearing topless in the movie (despite nothing of consequence being shown or even present as she was only seven at the time of filming).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Dr. Kornbluth, the Large Ham Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, easily steals every scene he's in.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Even though it’s sweet that Allen gets to be with his beloved Madison, in the long run, his love for her may not be enough to survive in her underwater world. He can’t ever leave her side, otherwise he’ll drown (Madison explains to Allen that he felt safe under the water as a young boy because she was present). Also, Allen will probably have to give up his human speech and instead learn to speak in high-pitched dolphin squeaks. To make matters worse, he can’t ever go back to his life on land or visit his brother Freddie above, so Allen will be forced to cope with the downsides of undersea life, like his loss of humanity and chronic sexual frustration.
• Germans Love David Hassel Hoff: The film was successful in France. It was well received in Spain as well. Also Japan. It was also popular in Canada, to the point that it's often shown on TV and streaming services in Canada.
• Harsher in Hindsight: While playing racketball with Alan, Freddie at one point states in agony that his heart is “beating like a rabbit!” 10 years later, John Candy died of a heart failure.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Line-of-Sight Name joke, where the mermaid chooses the very unusual name of Madison, now doesn't work due to the film's own popularity. It inspired Madison to become one of the most common female names in the United States.
  • Allen sings the Disney song “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” to indicate how elated he is after getting so much nookie from Madison. Five years after the film’s release, the Disneyland log flume “Zip-a-Dee River Run” was renamed Splash Mountain, after then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner suggested that the attraction be used to help market the film Splash. ^note Eisner even went as far as suggesting that an animatronic of the mermaid appear on the ride, but the Imagineers refused as they felt it would disrupt the tone of the ride.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Stan the Tour Guide, in a way. After what happened with Madison, how does he tell future tour groups that it was a one-time fluke and that they shouldn't expect to see that happen again?
  • Kornbluth is an egotistical jerk, but he's endured enormous hardship and disrespect throughout his life, and admits he has no friends.
• Memetic Mutation: A Tumblr GIF of Allen saying to Madison at the pier of the East River “I love you! Let’s get married!”, only to then have Madison reject his marriage proposal by diving back into the water.
• Moral Event Horizon: Dr. Kornbluth calls out the other scientists, particularly the leader Dr. Ross, for planning to dissect Madison. But they merely insult him for “not being a real scientist”, expressing how Kornbluth would always be a disgrace in his eyes and the eyes of the scientific community no matter if he is considered crazy or not, thus making all his efforts to earn his respect amongst fellow scientists for naught. This helps lead to his Heel–Face Turn afterward, and also makes Ross look like an idiot and a more deplorable Mad Scientist than Kornbluth, since he could have gotten into the history books as the one who established contact with a new race if he wasn't such a cold-hearted “sadistic pig”.
• One-Scene Wonder: Kornbluth's mentor Dr. Zidell.
• Signature Scene: Madison at the Statue of Liberty.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • While the effects in the actual movie are decent enough for the time, the same can't be said about Disney's attempts at censoring Madison's bare backside in the Disney+ print predating the 2022 remaster. They tried to do so by extending Madison's hair down to the top of her legs; unfortunately, the digitally-added hair didn't always connect with Daryl Hannah's own hair, which at points made it look as though she has an absurdly hairy butt. This came from the “new hair” being cloned from a small, random section, so it all moved along with that small section, not the hair next to it.
  • When Madison is grabbed by one of the military scuba divers and hits him with her tail, some fingers can be seen positioning the tail prop against the divers.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The scene in the prologue where ten-year-old Freddie drops coins on the ground in order to look up women’s skirts is played for laughs. It gets worse when you see Freddie doing the same thing, this time as an adult. In fact, when Allen lifts Freddie up and tells him how embarrassing it was back when he was ten, Freddie justifies his inappropriate behavior by saying to Allen, “Look, if something works for me, I stick with it”. Nowadays, Freddie’s behavior (known as “upskirting”) would be seen as a sex crime in the state of New York (where the movie takes place).
  • Freddie's father slaps the back of Freddie’s head in public after his mother catches him looking up skirts. It's treated as normal parenting in the 1960s when the flashback takes place. With the growing awareness of long-term psychological effects that kind of discipline has on children, Freddie's parents would likely be confronted over it in today's society. It's even worse upon seeing that Freddie still does it when he's fully grown.
  • Freddie announcing to everyone at work that Penthouse magazine printed his letter titled “A Lesbian No More” would not fly today, given how lesbophobic the title of the letter sounds (and the fact that doing something like that nowadays would constitute as sexual harassment in the workplace).
  • Allen telling Madison that they need to take a blood test before they get married. Although certainly not a common practice anymore, back then, it was meant to ensure that the couple wasn’t carrying any sexually transmitted diseases or genetic disorders.
  • The saleslady at Bloomingdales saying to Madison, as she escorts Madison to the dressing room, that her daughter is “lucky” to be anorexic because at least her daughter can fit into a red dress would definitely not fly today, considering the public’s greater awareness of eating disorders and how deadly anorexia nervosa can be. ^note That said, the movie does seem to play the remark for Black Comedy, acknowledging it as a rather messed-up thing to say.
  • Some feminists have criticized Madison’s characterization as being the “classic heterosexual male fantasy” (that is, she’s beautiful, silent, childlike, naïve, horny, and submissive to her man). The October 1984 issue of Mad Magazine lampshaded this feminist criticism a few times in their parody of Splash titled “Splashdance”.
    • Even Jonathan McIntosh of Pop Culture Detective included Madison as being an example of the “Born Sexy Yesterday” trope, in that Madison has the body of a mature, sexualized woman, but has the mind of a naïve, yet highly skilled, child.
• Values Resonance: In spite of some the film’s problematic, dated elements (see Values Dissonance above), there are some things in Splash that are pretty progressive even four decades later:
  • Usually, in romantic comedies, the protagonist tends to be a woman who is obsessed with finding a man, getting married, and having a kid, but in the case of Splash, the protagonist is a MAN whose goal is to find a woman, get married, and have kids (which is certainly a rarity for a romantic comedy).
    • Speaking of other rarities in romantic comedies, instead of the woman sacrificing everything to be with her male lover at the end of the film, it’s the male protagonist (Allen) who gives up his family, his friends, his home, his produce business, and even his own species in order to be with the woman he loves (Madison the mermaid) at the end of the film. It should be noted that had Madison not been exposed as a mermaid she would have been the one to give up her home to be with Allen, as she says she couldn't go back to her home if she married him, but eventually agrees.
  • Madison is not a Damsel in Distress nor is she waiting for her “prince” to come^note since her “prince” cannot swim to save his own life. If anything, Allen is the “damsel in distress” who has to be constantly rescued by Madison from drowning, and Madison is the one who pursues her man even if she has to swim all the way from Cape Cod to Manhattan in order to be with him.
    • Madison also is in charge of her sexuality and the film doesn’t slut-shame her for it. She has sex because she enjoys it on her own terms, as opposed to having it within the confines of marriage.
  • When Madison rejects Allen’s marriage proposal, Allen assures Madison that whatever “dark secret” she has, he would still marry her, whether it’s her dying of a terminal illness or that she was “once a man”, most likely saying it as a throwaway joke. Madison is not transgender, but Allen saying that he would accept her if she were is pretty progressive for a movie released in 1984.
  • In the last few years, and especially since the release of Blackfish, the suffering aquatic creatures endure in captivity has gained more and more prominence in the public eye. The mistreatment Madison endures at the hands of Dr. Ross, before he plans to dissect her, mind you, rightfully makes him irredeemable, while Kornbluth's guilt and self-loathing over it makes him redeemable.

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