History Film / StrangersOnATrain

** Barbara becomes this by association, being a BespectacledCutie whom Bruno mentally conflates with Miriam.

* SparedByTheAdaptation: Guy actually kills Bruno's father in the book. In the film, he doesn't go through with it.

* AdaptationalHeroism: In the original book, Guy tragically succumbed to Bruno's pressure to murder his father.

* {{Meganekko}}: Ann's younger sister, Barbara "Babs" Morton (played by Hitchcock's daughter Patricia).

->'''Bruno:''' It's so simple, too. Two fellows meet accidentally, like you and me. No connection between them at all. Never saw each other before. Each one has somebody that he'd like to get rid of. So... they ''swap'' murders.\\
'''Guy:''' Swap murders?\\
'''Bruno:''' Each fellow does the other fellow's murder. Then there's nothing to connect them. Each one has murdered a total stranger. Like, you do my murder; I do yours.\\
'''Guy:''' We're coming into my station.\\
'''Bruno:''' For example: your wife, my father. Criss-cross.

* AdultFear: Concerned mothers are seen helplessly watching their children trapped in the dangerously spinning carousel.

* AmbiguouslyGay: Both lead characters. Bruno, the SissyVillain, is almost overt about it; Guy (whose actor was openly bisexual) is more of a "sexually ambiguous" ingenue. The film, with an up-and-coming man with a future in politics who gets involved with another man who acts in a flirtatious manner, has been read as commentary on the anti-homosexual hysteria of the 1950s, when the [[RedScare HUAC]] was on a witch hunt for "sex perverts" and other subversives in the government (and in [[UsefulNotes/TheHollywoodBlacklist Hollywood]]).

* AmbiguouslyGay: Both lead characters. Bruno, the SissyVillain, is almost overt about it; Guy (whose actor was openly bisexual) is more of a "sexually ambiguous" ingenue. The film, with an up-and-coming man with a future in politics who gets involved with another man who acts in a flirtatious manner, has been read as commentary on the anti-homosexual hysteria of the 1950s, when the [[RedScare HUAC]] was on a witch hunt for "sex perverts" and other subversives in the government.

* WeAreNotGoingThroughThatAgain: At the end, Guy finds himself in a train carriage with a stranger who recognises him and tries to strike up a conversation. Having just gone through a hell of an ordeal resulting from someone else on a train recognising him and striking up a conversation, Guy gets up and goes to another compartment without saying a word.

* BadassBystander: The random CoolOldGuy who volunteers to stop the speeding carousel...by crawling underneath it to get to the mechanism at the center.

The film, [[TheFilmOfTheBook based on]] a novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith (of ''Literature/{{Ripliad}}'' fame), had a screenplay originally written by Creator/RaymondChandler (before he was fired and replaced). The book and film together are the {{Trope Namer|s}}, {{Trope Maker|s}}, and TropeCodifier for StrangersOnATrainPlotMurder, although there's a lot more to the plot than [[AllThereIsToKnowAboutTheCryingGame just that one trope]].

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: The depiction of Miriam as someone who ReallyGetsAround is surprisingly frank for a 1951 film. Her reactions to Bruno as he stalks her at the amusement park are just dripping with innuendo. Check out [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything the way she eats her ice cream cone]].

* AlmostDeadGuy: Bruno, under the carousel, is able to deliver some final incriminating words against Guy before dying.

* PoliceAreUseless: The Metcalf police department might be the most incompetent cops in the Hitchcock canon (which is saying ''a lot''). They assume the Tunnel of Love operator is leading them to Guy when he's really incriminating Bruno, then they open fire on an unarmed man on a crowded merry-go-round.

* SoundtrackDissonance: [[spoiler:Miriam's murder]] is accompanied by jaunty carousel music in the background (which actually goes [[NumerologicalMotif twice as fast]] as it does in the rest of the amusement park scenes).

The film, [[TheFilmOfTheBook based on]] a novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith (of ''Literature/{{Ripliad}}'' fame), had a screenplay originally written by Creator/RaymondChandler (before he was fired and replaced). The book and film together are the {{Trope Namer|s}}, {{Trope Maker|s}}, and TropeCodifier for StrangersOnATrainPlotMurder, although there's a lot more to the plot than [[AllThereIsToKnowAboutTheCryingGame just that one trope]]. The story was loosely [[TheRemake remade]] in 1969 as the film ''Once You Kiss a Stranger'', with the Bruno character {{Gender Flip}}ped into a woman, who wants the protagonist (now a golf pro) to murder her psychiatrist in exchange for her killing a rival player for him. The 1987 comedy ''Film/ThrowMommaFromTheTrain'' is part remake, part {{Homage}}, and part AffectionateParody of this film.

In 2015, yet another prospective remake was announced, to be directed by Creator/DavidFincher, written by Creator/GillianFlynn, and starring Creator/BenAffleck. However, this film -- simply titled ''Strangers'' -- has gotten stuck in DevelopmentHell due to the schedules of those three people.

* {{Undercrank}}: The climax on the spinning carousel -- alongside the prior shot of Guy fainting after [[spoiler:nearly strangling Mrs. Cunningham]] -- was achieved this way. It hasn't [[SpecialEffectsFailure aged particularly well, however.]]

* SpiritualSuccessor: Once again, Farley Granger plays a nervous man who gets wrapped up in a psychopath's murder scheme [[Theatre/{{Rope}} in a Hitchcock film]] loaded with HomoeroticSubtext.

* AssholeVictim: Miriam Haines.

* BitchInSheepsClothing: She's a rather pretty and proper-looking woman, but she's an extremely selfish adulteress who cheats on Guy and uses the resulting pregnancy to keep a justifiably-pissed Guy from leaving her. Downplayed in that anyone who knows Guy knows about Miriam's dalliances.

* ArtisticLicenseGunSafety: The cops chasing the clearly unarmed Guy through a carnival break every police firearm procedure thereby firing at him as he runs through a crowd of children. One of the shots hits and apparently kills an innocent bystander, who happened to be operating a merry-go-round, causing it to careen out of control.

* TheDitz: Bruno's mother. Anne had to bluntly spell it out for her that her baby boy killed a woman, for his mother to ask if ''Bruno'' told her any of this and if not, that isn't true.

* WouldHurtAChild: [[spoiler:In the climax, after the carousel has accelerated to dangerous speeds, Guy throws a little boy off his horse. He gets ''very'' close to the edge before Guy saves him at the last minute and gets him out of harm's way]].

** JerkassWoobie: In the book. She still refuses Guy a divorce and tries to join him in Palm Beach, where Guy is supposed to be remodelling a country club, as a way of cutting in on his earnings and/or convincing his co-workers that he's the father of her baby, thereby forcing him to support the child. However, Miriam suffers a fall in her own home and miscarries, which leaves Guy perfectly free to aggressively pursue a divorce and means that Bruno had absolutely no reason at all to kill Miriam.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Much like in ''Film/ShadowOfADoubt'', there is a pre-occupation with strangulation in this film, Bruno strangles Miriam and Guy expresses a desire to strangle Miriam. Their desire may very well be a response to subconscious sexual urges, namely that of erotic asphyxiation.
** It's also important to note that Miriam, declared a tramp and adulteress by numerous characters before and after her murder, is double teamed by two men in the tunnel of love and goes to the secluded island, which is referred to as a hot spot for 'smoochers', with them. For comparison, in the book at least one of her companions is noted to be her brother.

* InformedAttribute: Bruno claims his father is a horrible person, but we have only the word of a madman to go on. Indeed, the one time we see him he appears genuinely concerned for his son's well-being.
** Moreso in the novel, where the aforementioned scene never takes place and the reader knows nothing about Bruno's father right up until [[spoiler: Guy kills him]], at which point a private detective in Bruno's father's employ tells Bruno that if he honestly thinks his father didn't love him then he really didn't know him at all.

* NumerologicalMotif: The number two and the concepts of doubles and doppelgangers are both important in this movie.