History Film / TheOtherGuys

* BadassDriver: [[IKnowMortalKombat He learned it from]] ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto''.

* IKnowMortalKombat: "Where did you learn to drive like that?" "''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto''!"

** "[[LyricalDissonance While their]] ''Literature/HarryPotter'' [[books were burned...]]"

* BatmanColdOpen: The movie starts with an epic action sequence, showing off their badassary - before it's revealed [[DecoyHero they aren't the main characters of the movie]].

* AmbiguouslyBi: Gamble's ex-wife's husband. Why is he telling Hoitz about shaving his chest?

* AsHimself: Derek Jeter has a cameo in Terry's flashback, where Terry mistakes him for an attacker and shoots him in the leg. [[spoiler: He also shows up at the end of the unrated edition to give Hoitz and Gamble their next case.

* NeverLiveItDown: In-universe, no one is going to let Hoitz forget that he shot Derek Jeter.

* ScaredStraight: Happened to Gamble after he almost [[spoiler:died of a drug overdose]], which frightened him enough to make him step away from his [[spoiler:life of crime.]]

** Random attractive women being into Gamble ([[AvertedTrope Except Terry's girlfriend]]). So far, we had his current wife Sheila, whom Hoitz notes to be "smoking hot" and is smitten by, his ex-wife Christinith who is still [[{{Yandere}} both romantically and psychotically crazy]] for him, The Brazilian Woman and at the end, Gamble says he lost his virginity to ''Creator/HeatherLocklear''.

** Subverted once. Two of the other cops convince Gamble to do a "desk pop", firing your gun in your desk. A dumb thing to do under most circumstances, even more so in a crowded police station. He gets in trouble for it.

** Danson and Highsmith are archetypal [[CowboyCop Cowboy Cops]], to the extent that they are given awards for the [[CarChaseShootOut reckless pursuit]] of some small-time marijuana dealers that results in over $1 million in collateral damage and during which they commandeer a bus still loaded with passengers. (A reporter does call them out on the minuscule value of drugs seized compared to the damage they caused, but is quickly shouted down.)

* ComicallyMissingThePoint: When Hoitz tries to mock Gamble by saying he's a lion and Gamble's a tuna, Gamble goes off on a tangent about how tuna could beat lions in the water, and evolve ways to fight them upstream and on land.

** [[TheDarkChick The Brazilian Woman]] is only credited as The Brazilian Woman.

** Random attractive women being into Gamble ([[AvertedTrope Except Terry's girlfriend]]). So far, we had his current wife Sheila, whom Hoitz notes to be "smoking hot" and is smitten by, his ex-wife Christinith who is still [[{{Yandere}} both romantically and psychotically crazy]] for him, [[TheDarkChick The Brazilian Woman]] and at the end, Gamble says he lost his virginity to ''Creator/HeatherLocklear''.

*** Terry, in a case of StrangeMindsThinkAlike, then performs a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PIT_maneuver PIT manoeuvre]] -- this move is actually required to complete the driving school in ''San Andreas'' which Allen couldn't help but lampshade.

* ADateWithRosiePalms: When Gamble and Hoitz first go to Ershon's office, he's watching {{Hentai}} on his laptop, and has trouble turning it off.

* AsHimself: Derek Jeter!

** Also, when Captain Mauch takes Gamble's gun away from him and replaces it with a wooden one, Gamble removes the magazine but never clears the chamber. Mauch holds Gamble's sidearm with his finger on the trigger, which could easily lead to another desk pop. It's likely intentional, as he's later seen asleep with the barrel of his service revolver against his temple.
** The [[BingeMontage freeze frame bar scene]] indulges in this as well with Gamble and Hoitz discharging Hoitz's service weapon while drunk, crossing into RecklessGunUsage.

* AMFMCharacterization: While on their way to a crime scene near the beginning of the film, the more impulsive and outspoken Terry who is more interested in cop action outside the office, plays some heavy music to get them pumped, but his partner, Allen, who is nerdier and calmer, and happy to stick to less exciting work, switches to something lighter. And when Terry tosses the easy-listening disk out the window, Allen reveals that his car's disk changer is full of nothing but disks of the same band.

''The Other Guys'' focuses on two New York City police detectives Allen Gamble and Terry Hoitz (Creator/WillFerrell and Creator/MarkWahlberg) that have been office pencil pushers for years, while the station's two top cops Highsmith and Danson (Creator/SamuelLJackson and [[Wrestling/DwayneJohnson Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson]]) garner praise from not only the NYPD, but from the entire city for their cowboy, take-no-prisoners antics.

* AmoralAttorney: Subverted. Neither the characters nor the audience are thrilled to discover that the local SEC lawyer assigned to look over the evidence moonlights as Ershon's personal attorney, but he isn’t corrupt, and becomes suicidally distraught after seeing the evidence [[spoiler: and gets murdered for knowing too much]].

'''Allen:''' Okay, first off: a lion? Swimming in the ocean? Lions don't like water. If you'd placed it near a river or some sort of fresh water source, that'd make sense. But you find yourself in the ocean, twenty foot waves, I'm assuming it's off the coast of South Africa, coming up against a full-grown, 800 pound [[note]]The Atlantic bluefin tuna actually weighs nearly ''double'' that at 1,500 lb so he's actually understated their size.[[/note]] tuna with his twenty or thirty friends? You lose that battle. You lose that battle nine times out of ten.

--->'''Allen:''' You just lost at your own game, you're outgunned and outmanned. ''(beat)'' [[LampshadeHanging Did that go the way you thought it was gonna go? Nope]].

** Danson and Highsmith are archetypal [[CowboyCop Cowboy Cops]], to the extent that they are given awards for the [[CarChaseShootOut reckless pursuit]] of some small time marijuana dealers that results in over $1 million in collateral damage and during which they commandeer a bus still loaded with passengers. (A reporter does call them out on the miniscule value of drugs seized compared to the damage they caused, but is quickly shouted down.)

* BavarianFireDrill: Ershon is able to lose Wesley by convincingthe crowd at his financial seminar to mob him with one simple sentence.

* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Danson and Highsmith have this happen to them early in the flick, when one of their death-defying moments of glory goes horribly wrong. They leap off a building with no [[BenevolentArchitecture conveniently placed item to break their fall]].

* ChekhovsGunman: {{Bob|FromAccounting}}. Just Bob. First he gets yelled at by Terry just for asking him to come to a conference; then we see him at [[spoiler:the board meeting, about to invest the police pension fund]]; then finally when Wesley is apprehended, [[spoiler:he's one of the cops with their guns on him.]]

* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Hoitz is a quick-tempered {{Manchild}}, but can identify Australian Special Forces at a glance and defeat several thugs in close combat. It's implied he was originally a skilled cop with a lot of potential, but was sidelined thanks to a case of OnceDoneNeverForgotten.

** Danson and Highsmith cause insane amounts of property damage in the opening scene pursuing suspects over a very small amount of marijuana, something a reporter notes is only a misdemeanour offence. In their (incredibly pitiful) defense the goons were also carrying military-grade machine guns.

* DrivesLikeCrazy: Danson and Highsmith, who plow a car into a double-decker tour bus.

* DrugsAreBad: Subverted. Hoitz keeps thinking that all the crimes/criminals are drug related [[spoiler:when in fact they are white collar financial crimes.]] Also, Danson and Highsmith cause millions of dollars worth of damage chasing after some guys who only have a small amount of marijuana on them.

* GoodPolicingEvilPolicing: Hoitz and Gamble, for all of their bumbling and Hoitz's cavalierness, perform a thorough investigation and try to [[ByTheBookCop stick to the rules]]. In contrast--in terms of morality and competence--the CowboyCop duo of Danson and Highsmith are [[DestructiveSavior reckless in their pursuit of criminals to the point of causing property damage]] and eventually getting themselves killed, while Martin and Fosse dismiss possible leads [[GloryHound to just get a collar ASAP and make the news]]. At one point, [[DaChief Captain Mauch]] even dismisses the late Danson and Highsmith as inefficient idiots not worth remembering, let alone imitating.

* ItAmusedMe: When the bystander bank clerk who asks Wesley whether or not he want the transfer approved, he replies "You mate, I'm gonna kill just for fun.".

** Danson and Highsmith got away with pretty much all their destructive hijinks. But, unfortunately for them, their KarmaHoudiniWarranty came up in the form of a self-inflicted twenty story drop into some bushes--the bushes in this case being the cold, hard concrete sidewalk.

** Martin and Fosse are utter douchebags throughout the move but never suffer any major humiliation or suffering and indeed are implied to be filling in the "Super Cops" role in the eyes of the public.

* OnlySaneMan: The Captain is the only one who knows that no one should imitate Danson and Highhsmith.

** Hoitz's fascination with Sheila that causes him to repeat everything concerning her a few times. During conversation with her husband, nonetheless.

* SeriousBusiness: What does Hoitz do, when he and Gamble are in shock after the the nearby explosion and Gamble shouts that the destruction of the Death Star was all but realistic? Warn him not to bad-mouth ''Franchise/StarWars'', of course.

** The final CarChase has a huge nod to VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto.
*** Hoitz asked Gamble when did he learned to drive like that, the latter namedrops the game.

* SidetrackedByTheAnalogy: Allen does this frequently, most notably Hoitz' rant about how much he hates Allen gets sidetracked into a scenario wherein tuna construct robotic landwalking devices and begin hunting down and eating lions.

* StuffBlowingUp: It starts with a Chevy Nova incinerating the lobby of Trump Tower. And it doesn't stops.

** This is how Danson and Highsmith die early in the movie. Turns out jumping off a building is quite frequently fatal.

** After convincing the Captain to put them back on the case, one of the first things things he tells Hoitz and Gamble is to stop trying to act "badass", saying that just because Highsmith and Danson did it, doesn't mean that's how you should act as a cop, going as far to call the postmortem duo "terrible cops"; case in point, Highsmith and Danson's destructive high-speed chase after the weed dealers, lead to millions of dollars worth of damages in contrast to the amount of weed the dealers had on them, which would've been considered ''legal'' in several other states. Martin and Fosse's attempt the emulate the duo only cements it [[spoiler:as they were so focused on being badass that they didn't bother doing a thorough police investigation and missed evidence that implicated Wesley in Ershon's lawyer's murder.]]

* TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: Zigzagged. In the unrated version, they parody modern art with a coffee table with junk on it (with a sale price of $500,000), then it turns out Hoitz understands the "artsy-fartsy" piece better than his artistically-inclined ex does and still thinks it's crap. Then his genuine tirade is critiqued and cheered on as if it was provocative performance piece. [[invoked]]

* WhiteCollarCrime: The credits detail not only some of the legit (but often greedy or stupid) finances that got us into the credit crunch, but also some of the now blatant criminality of some financial practices, such as a {{Ponzi}} scheme.

** And Highsmith and Danson are, of course, not prepared to live outside a Bad Boys-esque action-thriller as evident by their infamous LeapOfFaith to their deaths.

* {{Jerkass}}: Detective Hoitz.

* AmoralAttorney: Subverted. Neither the characters nor the audience are thrilled to discover that the local SEC lawyer assigned to look over the evidence moonlights as Ershons personal attorney, but he isn’t corrupt, and becomes suicidally distraught after seeing the evidence [[spoiler: and gets murdered for knowing too much]].

* AnAesop: Just because corporations can get away with rampant greed legally doesn't make it okay. Also, being a real cop doesn't mean you get to act like a rogue CowboyCop. The real heros are the ones who do their jobs without expectations of glory.

* AntiHero: The titular duo are alternately crazy, violent and rude, but their goals are noble and sympathetic at least. Cheerfully deconstructed with Danson and Highsmith, whose CowboyCop antics are noted to be disproportionately destructive and whose CowboyCop attitude [[spoiler:doesn't save them from the fact that long falls from a great height with no parachute can be fatal.

** [[FreezeFrameBonus An officer can be seen in the background]] with one of his handcuffs hanging from his belt loop, rather than stored in a dedicated holder. {{Downplayed}} as some RealLife officers choose to store extra pairs of handcuffs without cases in a simile manner, but played straight because only one cuff is secured in the loop while the other hangs freely - a big no-no in police work.

* AttentionDeficitOohShiny: Gamble and Hoitz accepting Ershon's tickets is really closer to this trope.

* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Danson and Highsmith have this happen to them early in the flick, when one of their death defying moments of glory goes horribly wrong. They leap off a building with no [[BenevolentArchitecture conveniently placed item to break their fall]].

* BlackmailIsSuchAnUglyWord: While he never provides a term to replace it, Ershon still gets very defensive about admitting that the stuff he offers Allen and Terry in exchange for leting him go are bribes.

** Random attractive women being into Gamble ([[AvertedTrope Except Terry's girlfriend]]). So far, we had his current wife Sheila, whom Hoitz notes to be "smoking hot" and is smitten by, his ex-wife Christinith who is still [[{{Yandere}} both romantically and psychotically crazy]] for him, [[TheDarkChick The Brazilian Woman]] and at the end, Gamble says he lost his virginity to ''Creator/Heather Locklear''.