History Film / TheBourneIdentity

* FamousLastWords: ''Look at what they make you give.''

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: When Bourne shows his passport and enters the American Embassy, there's a brief scene wherein the local police who have been tailing him attempt to follow him inside and are stopped by the US Marine guards, saying that it's US territory and they have no jurisdiction. In reality, they never would have even tried this. Police departments that have embassies within their jurisdictions are thoroughly trained to regard embassies as foreign soil and to ''never'' attempt to enter, no matter what the reason,. It would be a serious diplomatic incident, and in these post-9/11 days of continually heightened security, such an attempt by armed police officers would have resulted in a ''much'' more aggressive response from the Marine guards.

** Notably, the soundtrack is a very different beast, employing techno-ish and poppy background music, a Liman staple. The centerpiece car chase is tracked to trance musician Paul Oakenfold's "Ready, Steady, Go", while Greengrass avoids any licensed movie outside of Moby's "Extreme Ways" over the credits, another holdover from Liman.

* ParanoiaFuel: InUniverse when Maree finds her own picture among the effects of the man who just tried to kill her, taken inside the US Embassy the day before. She's so afraid she won't even risk going to the police when Jason advises it.

** ''Identity'' also has intentional beats of humor; for instance, when Jason tries to buzz into his apartment, Marie quips, "Looks like you're not home." The sequels would eradicate any sense of levity outside of the faintest dash of BlackComedy on occasion.

** Notably, the soundtrack is a very different beast, employing techno-ish and poppy background music.

** The movie also ends [[spoiler: on an unambiguous happy ending for Jason and Marie, something the sequels do not provide the luxury of for Jason, who is back in the shadows at the end of every Greengrass movie.]]

** ''Film/TheBourneSupremacy'' and ''Film/TheBourneUltimatum'' are contiguous to the point that there is no time-cut at all between the last scenes of the second film and the first scenes of the third film (not counting the Bourne-in-New-York-scene, a ''Supremacy'' note which is also tied up in ''Ultimatum''...).

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: ''Identity'' at times feels very different in tone to its sequels. ''Film/TheBourneSupremacy'' and ''Film/TheBourneUltimatum'' are contiguous to the point that there is no time-cut at all between the last scenes of the second film and the first scenes of the third film (not counting the Bourne-in-New-York-scene, a ''Supremacy'' note which is also tied up in ''Ultimatum''...). But when you have recently seen ''Supremacy'' and/or ''Ultimatum'', it can come as a bit of a shock to rewatch ''Identity'' and realise how different it is, though it was setting up all the Bourne tropes the later films played on. Notably, the soundtrack is a very different beast, employing techno-ish and poppy background music. Damon's Bourne is also surprisingly chatty and smiley compared to his later silent stoicism. The editing takes a different approach completely, and the camera work is free of the JitterCam that defined the sequels outside a few select sequences. Most of this change in tone has to do with the first film being made by a different director to its sequels.

* GunsDoNotWorkThatWay: When Castel assaults Bourne through the window of his apartment firing his Galil MAR, they begin to fight and the mag is emptied. After the last round, the hammer continues to reset and fall, producing a rapid "click-click-click-click". Needless to say, gas-operated rifles <b>DO NOT</b> work like that.

* GunsDoNotWorkThatWay: When Castel assaults Bourne through the window of his apartment firing his Galil MAR, they begin to fight and the mag is emptied. After the last round, the hammer continues to reset and fall, producing a rapid "click-click-click-click". Needless to say, gas-operated rifles *do not* work like that.

* GunsDoNotWorkThatWay: When Castel assaults Bourne through the window of his apartment firing his Galil MAR, they begin to fight and the mag is emptied. After the last round, the hammer continues to reset and fall, producing a rapid "click-click-click-click". Needless to say, gas-operated rifles 'do not work' like that.

* SequelHook: Abbott telling the Senate Subcommittee that Treadstone was being replaced with a new project titled ''Blackbriar''. [[spoiler: Unusually, Blackbriar isn't mentioned in the next film but becomes important in the one after.]]

* TookALevelInBadass: When Bourne first sets out to find his identity, he is given ill-fitting, ratty clothes by fishermen, and sticks out in his surroundings not simply due to his ignorance of his identity, but visibly by his outfit. Over the course of the movie, as he investigates his past and comes to better understand his skills, his behavior changes. By the time he duels The Professor, his awkward demeanor has transformed into a more heroic self confidence, symbolized by his new upgraded clothing, complete with an additional [[BadassLongcoat longcoat.]]

* TheBackwardsR: His alias in russian passport is Foma Kiniaev, and in russian it is "Ащьф Лштшфум" (Astch'f Lshtshfum, yes, it is as unpronounceable as it looks). It is just the name "Foma Kiniaev" typed in russian keyboard layout. The proper transliteration would be "Фома Киняев". And, by the way, the proper latin translitiration for "Киняев" is "Kinyaev", not "Kiniaev".

* TomatoInTheMirror: Oh yes. The primary twist of ''Identity'' is that at the climax, Bourne, after spending most of the movie running away from assassins and government agents, finds out that he is, in fact, one of the government assassins himself. He is so horrified by what he did to make a living in his past that he decided to quit being an assassin entirely.