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  • Accidental Innuendo: Black has a lot, since he pretty much is able to say 'wanker' whenever he wants. 'Wanker' being a British slur for someone who masturbates.
  • Anvilicious: Like the story it's based on, the film seemingly hand-waved the ideal that killing is wrong regardless of how justified within the first half, but later on when Superman pretends to adopt the take-no-prisoners approach, everyone's initial reaction was "This isn't right." The true anvil was that society does not always know what's best for it and that they need guidance, not the threat of punishment to progress.
  • Awesome Music:
  • Complete Monster: Atomic Skull, a psychopath with a grudge against Superman, starts to murder civilians to lure Superman out. Atomic Skull is about to kill 2 women and a baby when Superman attacks him. Superman defeats Atomic Skull and he is arrested, later escaping and starting to kill more civilians. Superman and the Elite team up to defeat the Atomic Skull, but not before he kills Professor Baxter, a prominent Superman supporter. Atomic Skull is so vile, that he helps the Elite gain support for their brutal tactics from the public.
  • Creepy Awesome: While he's faking it, Superman when he pretends to be like the Elite makes for one of the most terrifying depictions of the character. Just look at the all the entries on the Nightmare Fuel page related to him, but even if it's to exemplify how Superman shouldn't act, it still can't help but be badass.
  • Faux Symbolism: More subtle than most with the Superman-as-Christ symbolism, but Clark tells Lois that someone has to show them that killing and violence is not the right answer at any cost. Lois responds that it means dying for them to understand.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Superman's disapproval of the Elite's means in light of Injustice: Gods Among Us which has an alternate Superman using similar methods after a Face–Heel Turn after The Joker tricked him into killing Lois Lane and their unborn child, which in turn led to Metropolis being nuked. The fact that George Newbern reprised the role again in the game adds to the harshness. Not only that, but Newbern did it in the voice of one of the most well-known examples of Fallen Hero ever: Sephiroth.
  • Inferred Holocaust: By killing the dictators of Bialya and Pokolistan, the Elite could have created a power vacuum similar to that of Iraq after Saddam Hussein was executed. Now, there could be several would-be dictators ready to begin their conquest and potentially create a war worse than the previous one, turning the two countries into a living example of the flaws in the Elite's approach.
  • Like You Would Really Do It: You may assume that Supes is faking it as Status Quo Is God, but thanks to the acting and writing, you really do believe Superman's snapped.
  • Misaimed Fandom: There are people who genuinely think the part where Superman fakes dropping his moral code to scare the shit out of the Elite and the rest of the world is downright the most badass thing Superman has ever done, despite the point of the scene being that you do not want a Superman that acts like that normally.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • You can sympathize with the Elite's motivation during the whole movie, due to Strawman Has a Point. Even after they try to kill Superman, you can, to an extent, feel sorry for them due to how Superman apparently reacts. However, Black does cross it when he explicitly states his intention to obliterate the city in order to escape Superman's wrath.
    • Menagerie crosses it in her very first scene by having her parasitic monsters eat an innocent dog alive (offscreen) simply for barking at her.
    • This is also what Superman believes he would cross over if he behaved like the Elite do. And judging by Injustice: Gods Among Us, he's right.
  • One-Scene Wonder:
    • Adult Vera. She only appears briefly to hand secret info to Lois.
    • Pa Kent only shows up briefly to give Clark advice but makes an impression thanks to Paul Eiding’s warm performance. It’s also the first time Jonathan Kent had any lines in a DCUOM film.
    • Troy Evans delivering a spot-on Rush Limbaugh impersonation.
  • Rooting for the Empire: Manchester Black thanks to some unintentionally valid critiques of Superman's Thou Shall Not Kill ways.
  • Squick:
    • Menagerie's urges towards promiscuity combined with the nature of her superpowers.
    • Superman defeats Menagerie by shooting her with a poison dart.... causing all the alien creatures inside her body to claw violently out of her, stopping her heart from the shock.
  • Strawman Has a Point:
    • Manchester Black may be a Well-Intentioned Extremist lambasted by Superman for his unethical and amoral methods, but it's also shown that some of his questionable actions have prevented worse harm in the future.
      Manchester Black: People don't want babysitters in spandex to spank them when they're bad. They want surgeons to cut out the cancers that fester in us and make sure they never come back.
    • He also points out that despite Superman's disapproval of lethal force, he still supports a system that has no such qualms.
      Superman: You can't murder people and call yourselves heroes!
      Manchester Black: Why not? Your government does it all the time.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A lot of fans dislike the change of Superman actually depowering the Elite (he only had them imprisoned in the comic), as they felt it kind-of went against his point, to say nothing of begging the question of why something similar wasn't done to Atomic Skull.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Superman doesn't exactly do his Thou Shalt Not Kill code any favours. He refused to kill Atomic Skull, even when it was clear the villain was an unrepentant psychopath who couldn't be imprisoned solely because he didn't want to get his hands dirty. This is pretty out of character for him, as it's been shown in previous stories that Superman would in fact kill under these specific circumstances (Doomsday is a prime example). Later on, he sidesteps his no-kill policy with Manchester Black by lobotomising him against his will, which in Superman: Red Son was shown as a sign that Superman was on a slippery slope to becoming a tyrantnote . On the other hand, it is worth noting that his 'lobotomy' was removing a benign tumour that gave Manchester his powers but otherwise left him unchanged, unlike the Red Son version of Superman, whose lobotomies stripped the recipients of their free will.

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