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• Big Lipped Alligator Moment: The rave scene from Reloaded. Rumor has it that, originally, it and Revolutions were planned out as just one long movie, hence the needless filler.
• Complete Monster: Agent Smith.
• Contested Sequel: Probably the second greatest example after the Star Wars prequels. These movies got weird after the first installment.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: "He is the One."
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The ending credits song "Navras", an extended version of "Neodammerung" (the song that plays as Neo fights the final form of Agent Smith in Revolutions) can be described thusly: Don Davis and Ben Watkins confront the Balrog deep within the Mines of Moria and battle their enemy up and down the slopes of mount Khazad Dum. Just as it seems they might be struck down, Juno Reactor leaps in with a roar of "YOU HAVE MY SWORD!" and confronts the demon in a combat too fast and too beautiful for the mortal eye to see. And then, when it seems that Juno Reactor would tire and falter, the duo of earlier rally their strength and leap upon the beast's back, plunging their discordant piano blades deep within its essence and slaying the creature once and for all.
• Designated Hero: For their willingness to kill civilians, the heroes often are accused of being this.
• Did Not Do the Research / Artistic License - Biology: In the first movie, Smith insists that humans and viruses are the only organisms on Earth that unbalance and destroy ecosystems. (Technically, his exact words are that only non-mammals do this, but the implication is still there.) But between pests, weeds, and invasive species, such behavior is, in fact, alarmingly common in the natural world.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: From a certain point of view... See the Headscratchers page for more of this.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: "We do not know who was the first fan to decode the symbolism in the first movie..."
• Fan Dumb: Many fans believed the movies were 100% original. In actuality, these movies borrowed from many different sources.
• Fetish Retardant: The rave/sex scene.
• First Installment Wins: The first film is a classic of its kind. The sequels (especially the third film) tend to land in Fanon Discontinuity...and that's being generous.
• Freud Was Right: Seriously, watch this movie with an eye toward sexual imagery and you'll find it everywhere, and in the most awful ways. The most graphic stuff is found in the first film, but it's still very much there in the last two. Makes you wonder just what was on the Wachowskis' minds the whole time they were writing this.
• God Mode Sue:
  • Neo in the sequels. Most of the drama comes from him not being around to save the day. The Watchowskis did try to avert this ("Only human" is basically Neo's enemies' catchphrase), but he's still very, very powerful.
  • Eventually becomes Blessed with Suck when he realizes what the real purpose of the "One" was. His destiny is to perpetuate the thing he wants to destroy. That may be the definition of meta-suckage.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Jada Pinkett Smith playing a key role in the sequels after her husband turned down the role of Neo.
  • The Wachowskis adding a character named "Mifune" to the series just a few years before going on to direct Speed Racer.
• Hype Backlash: The first one was so beloved that everyone got pumped up for the sequels, everything was hyped to hell and back... and when Reloaded came up, it made loads of cash but left many disappointed. (so much that Revolutions couldn't even match the first film's box office!)
• I Am Not Shazam: Viewers tend to refer to Smith as "Agent Smith" throughout all three movies; he's not an Agent in the sequels, he's just "Smith."
• Large Ham: Smith, at points, and particularly towards the end of the trilogy. "THIS IS MY WORLD, MY WORLD!
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Agent Smith.
  • Subverted with the Merovengian, who would like to be this trope very, very much but finds himself outmatched in the end.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • In July 2002, a woman by the name of Tonda Lynn Ansley shot her landlady in the face. She proceeded to go for the Insanity Plea by claiming that she believed she was in a computer simulation, saying: "They commit a lot of crimes in The Matrix." The really weird part? This actually worked. A year later, a San Fransisco man named Vadim Mieseges used the same defense, for the same crime, even. This has led to "The Matrix Defense" being adopted as a real legal strategy.
  • This previously came up during the Columbine shooting, when some journalists speculated that Harris and Klebold might have been inspired by a certain amount of misaimed Matrix fandom. Apparently, the journalist Did Not Do the Research since the movie came out right after the shooting.
  • Believing that reality is somehow unreal is a common delusion, the Matrix just happens to fit a feeling that some people have always had. Like a paranoid believing that the government is bugging their house.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • "I'm not so bad once you get to know me..."
  • "Cookies need love like everything does" was even more pants-shittingly evil.
  Oracle: You are a bastard.
  Smith: You would know, mom.
• Narm:
  • "What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer-generated dreamworld, built to keep us under control. In order to change a human being into this." Cue a close-up of Morpheus' face, after which he holds up a Duracell battery."
  • "TRINITY! HELP!"
  • Pretty much any time you're supposed to take Neo's dialogue seriously due to Keanu's surfer accent. The moment he tells the bullets "no" in the first one especially.
  • The ridiculous way that the Sentinels spin around rapidly to throw bombs doesn't quite invoke the same reaction as their other methods of attack.
  • When Tank kills Cypher, he "spits" at him, but "spitting" consists of him simply angrily saying the phrase "ptoo!"
  • The Architect's often mocked Hannibal Lecture due to his hilariously forced Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness.
  • The stilted manner in which Trinity says "God damn you, Cypher!".
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Maybe you're in the Matrix right now! How would you know?
    • For one thing, the food would be better.
  • There are actually serious theories on how there's a better chance our reality ''is'' simulated then isn't.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Leigh Wannell, who wrote and co-starred in Saw the following year, as one of the operators of the Vigilant in Reloaded who dies in the bridge accident before they can alert the ship of the impending Sentinel bomb attack.
  • Also Link, who went on to play Michael on Lost. Guess he has a thing for ontological mysteries.
• Rewatch Bonus: Several, but most notably the Oracle's dialogue during her first meeting with Neo.
• Seinfeld Is Unfunny
• Sequelitis
• Special Effect Failure: In Reloaded during the freeway chase, a car flips over in slow-motion and the interior stunt-rigging and roll cage are clearly visible◊ through the door as it flies open.
• The Scrappy: Take your pick: Mouse, Link, the Merovingian, the Architect...
• Strangled by the Red String: Many critics point out that Neo and Trinity provide no chemistry or even hint at being attracted to one another before she professes her love for him.
• Unfortunate Implications:
  • As Morpheus explains, as long as humans are plugged into the Matrix, they are potential enemies who can be taken over at any moment by an Agent. Nevertheless, the sheer casual indifference with which every hero slaughters their way through what are, at best, Punch Clock Villains... and often enough simple bystanders who got too close to a given battle... can still raise some eyebrows.
  • It's very possible that Morpheus sees everyone still connected to the Matrix as prisoners as well. Every person killed in the Matrix is a person freed from their imprisonment, like euthanizing a comatose relative. No more dicey, but definitely less villainous.
  • Their justification that anyone who isn't actively supporting them is the enemy is, in essence, the philosophy of every terrorist organization.
  • As a result of the previously mentioned Matrix/Columbine association, kids who wear black trenchcoats sometimes are suspected of planning to blow up their school, even if they have zero intention to do so.
• What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: The Animatrix short "Matriculated." It should tell you something that it was directed by Æon Flux's Peter Chung.