YMMV / The Men Who Stare at Goats

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: While it's most likely no coincidence that Ewan McGregor constantly talks about Jedi, the real organization covered actually did use Star Wars references.
• Awesome Music: The use of Boston's "More Than A Feeling" at the end.
• Moral Event Horizon: Hooper is shown to have crossed it when he tested the CIA MK ULTRA experiments on a young new recruit which led to the man's suicide, and then let Bill take the blame.
• Retroactive Recognition: Colonel Quaritch from Avatar.
• Strawman Has a Point: Bill Django searches for a way to "make their gentleness their strength" and learn how to blend peace and non-violence into the military, and minimize the killing and violence of war. Toward this goal, he builds a disorganized, cloistered, mostly ineffective idiosyncratic mess. Then the horrible and nasty Hooper steps in, takes control of the unit away from him, and creates from it a company which... uses psychological research, propaganda techniques, and gadgetry to devise non-violent and peaceful methods to minimize the killing and violence of war. Hooper's work seemed much more promising toward keeping people from being senselessly killed and terrorized, and seemed very close to many of the ideals that had been expressed by Lyn.
  • Except for the Mind Rape torture — and making a soldier kill himself while trying MK-ULTRA brainwashing with LSD.