YMMV / Top Secret!

• Awesome Music: For a movie that spoofs musical comedies of The '60s, they did a damn good job mimicking The Beach Boys and Elvis Presley.
  • In-universe, as Nick Rivers' songs "Skeet Surfin" "Skeet U.S.A." and "Skeet City" hit the top three spots on Billboard's charts the same week. With the Nick Rivers / Tammy Wynette duet "Your Skeetin' Heart" rounding out the fourth spot.
  • Nick's cover of Are You Lonesome Tonight.
• Genius Bonus:
  • "Sunday? That's Simchas Torah!"
  • Shortly before an execution Nick is visited by a priest. He seems to read a prayer in Latin, but it's actually a mishmash of Latin phrases, like "Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est" — the (misquoted) opening line from Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War common in school textbooks, or "veni vidi vici".
  • The reverse-filmed sequence with Peter Cushing as the Swedish bookseller is based on the linguistic theory that to people who don't speak the language English sounds like Swedish when played backwards (and vice versa). If you watch the scene played forward it's clear the actors are actually speaking English.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The 1980's East German Female Athletes joke comes across as far less amusing since the real women were interviewed, and the steroids that East German athletes were given for international competition, including the Olympics, ruined their health.
  • The Nick Rivers marquee at the beginning listing "Time permitting: Frank Sinatra". The Grammys 10 years afterward had the same idea, cutting into Ol' Blue Eyes's Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech for a commercial break. (Granted, he didn't precisely have a speech prepared and only went on as long as he did due to being overwhelmed by the ovation when he walked out, and it ended on a good note, but for those watching it was still jarring.)
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The actor playing Déjà Vu shares the same name as the man whose presidency Hillary's uncle escaped from.
  • Val Kilmer and Michael Gough work together for the first time. More than a decade later they would be Batman and Alfred respectively in Batman Forever.
  • This wouldn't be the only time Val Kilmer played a character based on Elvis; he also played one in True Romance.
  • In the song, How Silly Can You Get?, Val Kilmer sings about a night in Paris, described as "gay Parie." In Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, he plays a character named Gay Perry.
  • Hillary's name meaning: "It means 'she whose bosoms defy gravity'." So here's Hillary Rodham Clinton about thirty-six years later...
  • Billy J. Mitchell (Martin, Nick's agent) plays a character who dies with a big smile on his face. Eleven years later, he'd play another one who does the same thing.
  • The "Skeet Surfin'" montage and Nick's other songs hit even funnier in the light of modern Gun Culture.
    • And years later, none other than "Weird Al" Yankovic would record "Trigger Happy," another song about guns that is also a style parody of The Beach Boys and Jan & Dean.
• Parody Displacement: People who watch this movie today do not realize that Hilary's "backstory" is actually a send-up of the 1980 film adaptation of The Blue Lagoon, a movie that was popular in its day but is only recalled today by hardcore fans of Brooke Shields.
• Retroactive Recognition: A German soldier is played by Mac McDonald, who would later be best known for playing Captain Hollister in Red Dwarf.
• Values Dissonance: Chocolate Mousse's name. A character having "chocolate" in his name as a direct reference to him being black would be frowned upon today.

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