This movie contains examples of:
- Awesome Music: The use of music from Bizet's opera, Carmen.
- The second film graduates to the end of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture as a theme during its climactic game. The film's theme song, "Lookin' Good" by Craig Safan, also uses the notes of said climax.
- Crosses the Line Twice: Tanner and his rather... colorful vocabulary. It would have been far less funny, even at the time, if it hadn't all been coming from a 10-year-old.
- Fair for Its Day: Even if it wasn't rated PG originally, it's still very coarse, even for its own time. Certainly, they would never be permitted to have a 10-year-old kid spout off racial epithets as often as Tanner did if the film was re-made today. Of course, as noted below, they exchanged the casual racism with more lewd behavior in the remake.
- First Installment Wins: The original is still the best-remembered of the bunch. Most casual viewers might be surprised to learn that Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal's characters are, in fact, not in any of the sequels.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: Cleveland's observation about class-action lawsuits could be this or Harsher depending on your point of view.Cleveland: Goddamn class action lawsuits are gonna be the ruin of this country.
- Ho Yay: Lupus and Tanner, especially in the second movie.
- Moral Event Horizon: Roy hitting his son, Joey, while on the mound after he tried to bean Engelberg is treated as this. He was already the Big Bad of the movie, since he was the head coach of the rival team. But even with the points made in Jerkass Has a Point, smacking Joey on the mound was definitely a bridge too far for many of the characters in that scene.
- Retroactive Recognition: Is that Rorschach riding that motorcycle?
- Sequelitis: Bad News Bears in Breaking Training is a serviceable sequel, but it's also a big step down thanks to the departures of Coach Buttermaker and Amanda. Bad News Bears Go to Japan, on the other hand, loses nearly every other memorable character, and comes by its 0% Rotten Tomatoes score honestly. Jackie Earle Haley considers it the worst movie he's ever worked on.
- Tear Jerker: Buttermaker rejecting Amanda's efforts to help patch things up between him and her mother. She walks off in tears to be so cruelly rebuffed by the closest thing she's ever had to a father, while he also starts to cry because it immediately hits him that he just cruelly rebuffed the closest thing he's ever had to a daughter.
- Unintentional Period Piece: The film is so very mid-'70s, and a fine example of what a PG-rated film could get away with before the PG-13 rating came along. Just listen to 11-year-olds toss out four-letter words, racial epithets and ethnic slurs like there's no tomorrow and try to keep your head from exploding. Also watch as the kids douse each other in beer and see a then 14-year-old Jackie Earle Haley smoke like a chimney. In fact, some would argue that this movie would just barely avoid—or even get—an R rating if it was released today. To put a couple cherries on top, you have themes of the growing litigious society (Cleveland's attitude toward the formation of the Bears), and the souring of public opinion toward parental corporal punishment (the aftermath of Roy smacking his son for nearly beaning Engelberg).
- What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Despite the cussing—especially the racial epithets (the N-word was uttered three times)—and the other adult themes, the film was rated PG in the United States.
The 2005 remake contains examples of:
- Hilarious in Hindsight: The Bears end up being sponsored by a local strip club and one of the contingencies of the sponsorship is wearing the club's logo on their uniforms. In 2012, an LA-area little league team actually WAS sponsored by a local strip club, though this only consisted of the club initially making an anonymous donation before revealing who they were at the insistance of the team's owner who wished to thank the mystery donor.
- What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Despite being a Lighter and Softer remake, the movie is not kid friendly, featuring a lot of swearing, crass and lewd stuff (including the implication that Buttermaker got a stripper joint to sponsor their little league game), and Buttermaker also being implied to have slept with one of his softball teammate's moms.
