History Film / HiddenFigures

* PowerWalk: Dorothy leading her black computers across the campus to the IBM lab, backed by triumphant music.

* IronicEcho: Dorothy tries again and again to be promoted to supervisor, as she's doing the work for none of the pay, but her white counterpart tells her there's nothing she can do. When Dorothy finally gets moved up to being in charge of the IBM computing department, she's asked if the white computers can also join. Dorothy says that's the sort of decision a supervisor would make.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Stafford. He's brusque, arrogant, and stuck on bureaucratic rules. But it also becomes clear that his antipathy toward Katherine isn't about race, or even gender. It's more about the fact that he doesn't like his working being checked by ''anyone'', since he's convinced he's done it right to start with. When Katherine's skill becomes obvious, he feels threatened by her. In the end, though, he comes to recognize her value and begins to give her the credit she deserves.
* LosingAShoeInTheStruggle: During a test of the model Mercury orbiter's heat shield, it starts when Mary is still inside the test tunnel. When one of her high heels is caught in a vent, Mary struggles to get it free before the test starts, but can't get it loose and ends up ditching her shoes.

* MovingTheGoalposts: Mary intends to become an engineer, earning dual bachelor's degrees in math and physics, but the requirements are changed partway through her application to require graduate ones as well. Upon hearing thus, she bitterly muses: "Every time we get a chance to get ahead, they move the finish line. Every time."

* ReentryScare: Used for drama in the climax, as the seconds tick by and they wait to see if John Glenn has survived reentry with his perhaps-malfunctioning heat shield.
* RetiredBadass: For a somewhat younger Jim is a Korean War hero, but one whose combat days are behind him and who isn't directly involved in what's happening at NASA.

* ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem: A positive example. After Katherine [[RageBreakingPoint defiantly explains how she has to go half a mile to use the colored bathrooms]], Harrison responds by personally destroying the “Colored Women’s Bathroom” sign in front of a mass of onlookers and desegregating the NASA bathrooms.

** Mary also [[InvokedTrope invokes]] this trope while appealing to a judge for permission to take graduate-level night school classes to become an engineer. She points out that he's the only person that can possibly make it happen, and reminds him that someone has to be the first to break precedent and create new rules. [[spoiler: He's moved by the argument and interprets the law to allow her to join the courses.]]

* SingleWomanSeeksGoodMan: Katherine and Jim Johnson. She's a widow with three young girls, he's a National Guardsman. [[spoiler:They got married and have been together (as of 2016) for 56 years.]]

* RealityEnsues: PlayedForDrama and subverted. During the movie's climax, when Katherine has just performed the math to calculate John Glenn's return trajectory, she rushes with the Mission Control rep to bring the figures to the group... and before she can enter, the door is slammed in her face. The soundtrack goes dead as Katherine stands alone in the hallway, stunned. [[spoiler: It's a massive relief when the scientists open the door for her and allow her to come inside.]]

!!''Hidden Figures'' contains examples of:

* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: Jim Johnson is shown wearing a dress uniform that has practically no markings when it should have had unit patches on the shoulders, a name plate on the right breast, and a ribbon rack on the left breast along with an assortment of badges and qualifications.
* AsYouKnow: The vectors with unknown values (speed, distance, deceleration, etc.) that are required to get John Glenn's capsule landed back on Earth safety are asked by Katherine and confirmed by Paul during Paul's briefing on the subject to all of the mathematicians. Justified, as this is an actual rocket science problem being discussed, and it clues the audience in on the level of work needed and the stakes involved.
** Paul Stafford explaining to his team how Glenn would go into an elliptical orbit around the earth and a parabolic orbit for landing. These are day-one rocket science concepts being introduced for the viewer - it's not the type of talk that would happen at NASA in reality, even that early in the space race.

--->'''Mary:''' I have the right to see "fine" in every color.

* WhiteMansBurden: Katherine is transferred to a new building, where there are no bathrooms for black women. So every time she needs to relieve herself, she has to run across the campus to a building with a "Colored" bathroom. Her white boss Harrison discovers this only when Johnson returns to her desk from a bathroom break, drenched after running for half an hour in the rain. He is aghast, apparently having been unaware racism was taking place under his nose. So he picks up a crowbar, heads to the bathroom, and smashes the Colored Ladies Room sign. Then, as a crowd of black women look on, he delivers a powerful, funny rejection of Jim Crow segregation: "No more colored restrooms. No more white restrooms... Here at NASA, we all pee the same color."[[note]]The scene was spoofed in a [[https://youtu.be/T_RTnuJvg6U?t=195 fake movie trailer]] at ''Series/LateNight with Creator/SethMeyers''.[[/note]]

* WhiteMansBurden: Katherine is transferred to a new building, where there are no bathrooms for black women. So every time she needs to relieve herself, she has to run across the campus to a building with a "Colored" bathroom. Her white boss Harrison discovers this only when Johnson returns to her desk from a bathroom break, drenched after running for half an hour in the rain. He is aghast, apparently having been unaware racism was taking place under his nose. So he picks up a crowbar, heads to the bathroom, and smashes the Colored Ladies Room sign. Then, as a crowd of black women look on, he delivers a powerful, funny rejection of Jim Crow segregation: "No more colored restrooms. No more white restrooms... Here at NASA, we all pee the same color."

''Hidden Figures'' is a 2016 biographical [[{{Dramedy}} comedy-drama]] film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder, based on the nonfiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly. The film stars Creator/TarajiPHenson as Katherine Johnson, the African-American mathematician who calculated flight trajectories for Project Mercury and the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon. The film also features Creator/OctaviaSpencer, Music/JanelleMonae, Creator/KevinCostner, Creator/KirstenDunst, Creator/JimParsons, Creator/GlenPowell and Creator/MahershalaAli.

The film recounts the story of the African-American mathematician Katherine Johnson and her two colleagues, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, who, while working in the segregated West Area Computers division of Langley Research Center, helped NASA catch up in the Space Race. Using their calculations, John Glenn became the first American astronaut to make a complete orbit of the Earth.

%% Commented out examples need more to them than just names. They need actual descriptions that explain how the work is using the trope. Deleted the "%" only after correcting the entry/entries.

* AMinorKidroduction: The movie opens to a six-year-old Katherine showing her talent for math.

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Stafford. He's brusque, arrogant, and stuck on bureaucratic rules. But it also becomes clear that his antipathy toward Katherine isn't about race, or even gender. It's more about the fact that he doesn't like his working being checked by ''anyone'', since he's convinced he's done it right to start with.
when Katherine's skill becomes obvious, he feels threatened by her. In the end, though, he comes to recognize her value and begins to give her the credit she deserves.

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Stafford. He's not going to let a little thing like Jim Crow get in the way of ''beating the Russians,'' and he's very loyal to his group, including Katherine. It should be noted in the interest of historical accuracy that none of the four different men upon whom the fictionalized Paul Stafford is based ever really had a problem with Katherine being ''black''. Their problem was primarily that she was a ''woman'' and at the time there just were no women in engineering to speak of (Mary Jackson was not only one of the first women of color to work at NASA as an engineer, she was one of the first women '''''period''''' to do so). And in the case of one of the men Stafford is based on, aeronautical engineer Ted Skopinski, his problem was that ''he'' was an engineer and ''she'' was merely a mathematician, and therefore he felt she had no business checking his work for mistakes. He soon learned to get over himself as Katherine proved invaluable to the Space Tasks Group.

** Al Harrison. He just wants to get the mathematical work done as quickly as possible by the smartest possible people. If it means throwing out the "colored" coffee pot or taking a crowbar to the colored bathroom sign, so be it.
** To a lesser extent, the judge that Mary Jackson petitions to allow her to attend classes at a segregated white school. Despite the dubious looks of the spectators in court and his support of segregation in schools, he hears her out [[spoiler:and allows her to take night courses.]]

* BlackGalOnWhiteGuyDrama: {{Downplayed|Trope}} example. Mary Jackson is clearly [[EatingTheEyeCandy enjoying the view]] when the astronauts (all white men) come to visit their facility, which makes Katherine chastise her for "ogling [those] white boys." Mary brushes it off.
--->'''Mary:''' I have the right to appreciate "fine" in every color.

** Similarly, Vivian does seem to ''like'' Dorothy, given her line about having "Nothing against y'all" (with "y'all" referring to African-Americans in general). As Dorothy's response indicates -- "I know... that you believe that" -- the bigotry is more systemic and therefore "innocent" than blatant, which arguably makes it worse.

* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: Jim Johnson is shown wearing a dress uniform that has practically no markings when it should have had unit patches on the shoulders, a name plate on the right breast, and a ribbon rack on the left breast.

* WhereDaWhiteWomenAt: Inverted. When the astronauts are shaking the hands of the staff and crew, Mary remarks on how attractive John Glenn is, and when Katherine and Dorothy rib her for this, Mary immediately states that beauty is color-blind.

* ArtisticLicenceMilitary: Jim Johnson is shown wearing a dress uniform that has practically no markings when it should have had unit patches on the shoulders, a name plate on the right breast, and a ribbon rack on the left breast.