History Film / VForVendetta

* CastingGag: Creator/JohnHurt as Sutler, the Leader, considering his role in ''[[Film/NineteenEightyFour 1984]]''.

* AGlassInTheHand: Sutler does this with his glass of warm milk after watching Gordon's unscripted show thoroughly mocking him. Humorously, one of the things it mocks him for is drinking a glass of warm milk.

* AdaptationalVillainy: The Norsefire Party are a totalitarian regime in the movie just like in the comic, however in the latter, certain members had sympathetic traits including the ''BigBad'' of all people, though not enough to be considered redeemable. The movie does away with them entirely.

* TheTrickster: V.

* VikingFuneral: [[spoiler:V gets a modern take on one-laid to rest on the train that delivers his bomb to Parliament]].

* WeAllLiveInAmerica: Mostly averted (like V saying "lift" instead of "elevator") but not always -- several uses of "cop" which is generally an Americanism (Brits prefer "copper"), Finch pronouncing lever as leh-ver instead of lee-ver. Additionally, Lewis Prothero was based more on American television pundits (like Creator/BillOReilly) rather than anything off British TV. The colors of the national postal carrier are based on USPS rather than Royal Mail. In the freight yard a bell is heard from a moving locomotive, not a UK requirement.

* WorldHalfFull: At the end, Sutler is finally brought down, the Norsefire dictatorship has been toppled, [[spoiler:the military refuse to shoot at the demonstration [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure proving that they aren't so evil]]... and [[PairTheSpares Evey finally meets Finch]]]].

** The rapist policeman, one of whom shot said little girl later.

* AluminumChristmasTrees:
** Some contemporary reviewers find the idea of "concentration camps" for homosexuals, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28 eradicate homosexuality even as an abstract concept]], etc. to be sort of an invocation of GodwinsLaw by comparing Thatcher's Britain to Nazi Germany. However, in the early 1980s one of UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher's advisors did indeed make the suggestion, as a public health policy, that all gay men should be put into quarantine in closed institutions as a strategy to stop the spread of HIV infections. Alan Moore's {{Word of God}} says this aspect of the dystopia was a direct commentary on the implications of such proposals. The real life idea never took off.
** Although Moore wasn't referencing it, gay concentration camps [[http://babalublog.com/2013/05/02/cubas-dictatorship-extolls-virtues-of-gay-concentration-camps/ really did exist]] for a time in communist Cuba.
** It's also important to mention that gay men, like Jews, were not safe from persecution in the Third Reich and were, in fact, [[https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005261/ sent to concentration camps.]] Norsefire being explicitly fascist, this isn't such a stretch. What was worse, once the Allies had liberated the camps, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_homosexuals_in_Nazi_Germany many gay men were kept in prison.]]

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The film was made in 2005 and is set in the year 2020.

* YouAreAlreadyDead: In V's final conversation with Delia Surridge, he reveals he's already given her a lethal injection.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome:
** When people begin to support V's anarchism, some people, like the convenience store robber, use it as a cover to commit crimes.
** Gordon, who is a closeted gay man, appreciator of many banned items, and who secretly loathes the government, does a skit on his show that makes an ass out of Sutler, portrays V in a positive, if humorous, light, and is overall a huge middle finger to the government and everything it stands for. Gordon believes he'll get away with it, only getting fined and forced to make an apology, because he's too famous to get disappeared. [[spoiler: He is ''so'' wrong; the totalitarian government's goons end up beating and arresting him in his own home and later have him executed for his collection of illegal materials, no doubt found when they searched his house]].
** The Fingerman that just shot a girl is being approached by a angry group of people. He holds his gun up and flashes his badge to get them to back off. At this point, he only have as much authority as they're willing to give him.
** [[spoiler: A BulletproofVest made of metal can protect you from a few handpistol shots, but not a hundred shots from high-calibre automated weapons.]]
* SyntheticPlague: The St. Mary's Virus is created by Norsefire because only they have the cure to it.
* ThanatosGambit: As his final stroke, V convinces Creedy to turn on Sutler, and in exchange V will give himself up. V does this because he could never get to Sutler otherwise, and Creedy wouldn't turn on Sutler for anything less. [[spoiler:When the time comes, Creedy delivers, but V wears a BulletproofVest so he'll live long enough to kill Creedy in turn.]]

* MeaningfulEcho: Evey's rebirth is meant to echo V's "birth"; the movie makes this abundantly clear by using the footage of V at Larkhill merged into Evey on the roof.

* HappyEnding: {{Lampshaded}} for ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo'', as V and Evy watch the 1934 adaptation together in V's hideout.

* DyingMomentOfAwesome: [[spoiler:V [[MadeOfIron shrugs off over a hundred bullets]] from ten men, and then kills them ''all'' with his knives before they have the chance to reload. He even boasts that he's going to do just that before the act. And ''then'' he kills Creedy via NeckSnap, walks back to Evey, uses his last effort to confess his love to her, and then gets cremated in a VikingFuneral ''a la'' a train packed with enough C4 to erase Parliament, to the tune of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture all everyone in London watches.]]

* HeroicWillpower: V manages to hold off on any penalty to attack or agility for what looks like several minutes after [[spoiler:being pumped full of bullets that penetrated a metal chestplate in at least two dozen places]]. Since the entire scene is in slow-motion, it's probably only about thirty seconds, but that's still more than most people would be likely to manage. Ten Fingermen, all armed with Beretta Inoxes with 15 round magazines, and Creedy with his magnum, empty their magazines into him... he takes ''at least'' [[UpToEleven a hundred-fifty]] bullets and still manages to kill them all. However, after that... [[HeroicRROD he's spent]].

* KnifeNut: V. He keeps six on his belt in case [[ThrowingYourSwordAlwaysWorks he needs to throw them]].

* DirtyCop: Most cops we see are abusing their positions without the government dooing anything about it. The Fingermen that catches Evey tries to rape her and the Ears that are monitoring the Bishop jokingly says "Children's Hour at the Abbey", ''knowing'' and finding the ''humour'' in that the Bishop is a SerialRapist.

* AdaptationDistillation: The original comic book was a dark and cynical political drama where [[BlackAndGreyMorality neither side came out looking especially good]] - Norsefire was undeniably evil, but V himself was an ''extremely'' flawed and ruthless character willing to stoop to some very serious extremes in pursuit of his goals, and many of the high-ranking members of the Norsefire regime were [[AntiVillain very flawed and sympathetic characters.]] Rather than aiming to copy the moral ambiguity and political complexity of the comic, the film [[PragmaticAdaptation removes most subplots not strictly related to V's fight against the government]], changes the setting from a post-nuclear wasteland to a [[CrapsaccharineWorld logistically functional but morally rotten]] Britain and cuts down the Norsefire characters to the bare minimum. The result is a less realistic and more operatic, highly theatrical tone more akin to ''Theater/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' or ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo'' (which Evey and V watch at one point) than a gritty political thriller.

** [[spoiler: A BulletproofVest made of metal can protect you from a few handpistol shots, but not a hundred shots from high-calibre automated weapons..]]

** [[spoiler: A BulletproofVest wouldn't be enough to protect you from all those shots.]]

** It's also important to mention that gay men, like Jews, were not safe from persecution in the Third Reich and were, in fact, [[https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005261/ sent to concentration camps.]] Norsefire being explicitly fascist, this isn't such a stretch. What was worse, once the Allies had liberated the camps, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_homosexuals_in_Nazi_Germany many gay men were kept in prison]].
* AntiHero: V. The movie softens him to a [[PragmaticHero Pragmatic Anti-Hero]].

* IllegalReligion: Islam has apparently been outlawed by the Norsefire regime, since Gordon is shot just for possessing a Quran (even when he's not Muslim). Presumably all Muslims have been killed or imprisoned by them.

* SchoolgirlLesbians: Valerie's first girlfriend. Valerie turns out to be the real deal.
-->'''Valerie:''' I passed my eleven plus, and went to a girl's grammar. It was at school that I met my first girlfriend. Her name was Sarah. It was her wrists -- they were beautiful. I thought we would love each other forever.\\
I remember our teacher telling us that it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew.\\
Sarah did.\\
I didn't.