History Film / TheAlamo2004

-->'''Bowie''': Don't worry about it. Most of my men didn't even understand the words you were usin'.
-->'''Travis''': It's important that you and I agree. For me, though we are poorly supplied, surrender is not an option. I submit that we engage and delay until reinforcements arrive.
-->'''Bowie''': Sometimes it's just the way you say things, Travis. I swear to God.

** Crockett's raccoon-skin hat that he admits to Bowie he only started to wear it after the actors in heavily dramatized plays about Crockett's life made it an iconic part of his look. Crockett also wears his IconicOutfit, a buckskin coat along with the coonskin hat, only when he arrives at the Alamo. But earlier he is watching such a play about himself and the actor portraying him wears the full outfit.

** Bowie and Travis are the most apparent. Both are military men with marriage trouble who love to bring the other's trouble to antagonize them. Travis is a career uncompromising military man and is very unpopular, very much an HonorBeforeReason kind of person, whereas Bowie is much more pragmatic and more well-liked by the general populace. Travis only earns Bowie's respect when he picks up a still-smoking cannonball (that could explode at any moment), carries it back to a cannon, and has it fired right back at the Mexicans, and after that, they start to get along much better.

** While Crockett ''was'' a violinist and he would fiddle to drown out Degüello after he tired of hearing it, the tune he plays his violin at the party before the siege, "Listen to the Mockingbird", was not written until 1855, 19 years after the war had ended.

* BlingOfWar: Davy Crockett lampshades this aspect of Santa Anna at one point, calling him a peacock. Notably, William Travis ''also'' quite likes his gaudy uniform. His EstablishingCharacterMoment is ordering a showy uniform from a tailor, with gold bouillon buttons.

* MrViceGuy: Bowie and Travis both have some ''serious'' issues even if you look past how they own slaves. Bowie is a drunk, hotheaded, and according to Travis, he married a woman to try and inherit her father's money. Travis, meanwhile, gambles, is sexually promiscuous, and abandoned his wife and son to pursue his military career. All of these issues are serious {{Berserk Button}}s for both men, and they are not afraid to push them.

** In contrast Bowie just shrugs and accepts it, and he and Crockett discuss the "Sandbar Fight" which made him and his namesake knife famous.

* NeverBringAGunToAKnifeFight: Discussed in Bowie's backstory, as he got into a gunfight/brawl and survived despite being seriously wounded (including getting shot several times and stabbed in the ''chest'' with a SwordCane), and killed his attacker with his knife. The movie actually downplays this a bit, leaving out that it was a ''group'' brawl of several men so Bowie had faced multiple opponents.

* GreyAndGrayMorality: The Mexicans get a lot more sympathy and a scene where their motives are explained, and one [[ChildSoldier very young Mexican private]] is one of the recurring {{Everyman}} characters who witness the action. Jim Bowie and William Travis are also accurately depicted as slaveowners, with Bowie even spitefully denying Sam his manumission papers on his deathbed.[[note]]Though the specifics of this incident may be fictional - a man named Sam was owned by Bowie at one point, but his presence at the Alamo is a matter of tradition, not history, and the real man's fate is unknown.[[/note]]

* MrViceGuy: Bowie and Travis both have some ''serious'' issues. Bowie is a drunk, hotheaded, and according to Travis, he married a woman to try and inherit her father's money. Travis, meanwhile, gambles, is sexually promiscuous, and abandoned his wife and son to pursue his military career. All of these issues are serious {{Berserk Button}}s for both men, and they are not afraid to push them.