History YMMV / TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy

** {{Wiki/Wikipedia}} is REALLY tired of people changing the entire article for Earth to say "Mostly Harmless".

** ''{{Wiki/Wikipedia}}''. "While it has many errors and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it is slightly cheaper."

** 3. Which had a TV show made of it...
** 4. That had a text-based computer game made of it...
** 5. Which, many, many years later, had a movie made of it...
** 6. And we can only assume it will eventually be available in [[FoodPills pill form]] at some point.
** 7. Don't forget, there's already a towel.

* MisBlamed: Many people actually cry TheyChangedItNowItSucks to the various adaptation(s) because they're "not like the book" (which was ''itself'' an adaptation of the radio series). Adams ''wanted'' the various formats to diverge as soon as possible, and succeeded.

* CantUnHearIt: The cast of the radio/television series. This was intentional on the part of Douglas Adams, especially with Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, as Adams specifically wrote the character with Simon in mind. The film cast as well, to a lesser extent.

* CantUnhearIt: The cast of the radio/television series. This was intentional on the part of Douglas Adams, especially with Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, as Adams specifically wrote the character with Simon in mind. The film cast as well, to a lesser extent.

!!The franchise in general

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ImiqaXBMkM This]] pretty much sums it up.

!!The radio series
* AdaptationDisplacement: Few people seem to realize the radio series predates the book.
* AssPull: The Babel Fish's never-before-mentioned ability to save themselves and anyone who happens to be near from certain death at the end of the Quintessential Phase is this done blatant and flagrantly. However, it does help avert the massive DownerEnding of ''Literature/MostlyHarmless''.
* HilariousInHindsight: While the Shoe Event Horizon was funny back then, the rise of the Starbucks coffee chain means the world seems to be heading the same way in Real Life.
--> '''Student:''' Shoe shops have to sell more shoes, so they sell shoes so bad they either hurt the feet or fall apart. So people have to buy more shoes. Which means more shoe shops. Eventually it becomes economically impossible to build anything ''but'' shoe shops; the whole economy overbalances! Famine, collapse, and ruin!
** According to Adams it was heading that way at the time, which was why he wrote it; the name of the Galactic shoe conglomorate, Dolmansaxlil, is a WikiWord formed from thee of the chains owned by the British Shoe Corporation - Dolcis, Manfield, and Saxone, Lilley & Skinner, all of which had shops on Oxford Street and none of which - in Adams's opinion - had any decent shoes.
** Similarly, the joke about how humans are so primitive they think digital watches are neat was a jab at a fad of the time, which as all fads gradually died out (with cellular phones killing watches in particular). Then smart watches came along...
* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: The discotheque scene in the secondary phase - the background music is very obviously "[[{{Music/TheBeeGees}} Stayin' Alive]]" played in reverse.

!!The novels
The novels section has been divided into sections for your comfort and convenience.
* ''YMMV/LifeTheUniverseAndEverything''
* ''YMMV/MostlyHarmless''
* ''YMMV/AndAnotherThing''

!!The TV series:
* RetroactiveRecognition: That's Creator/PeterDavison as The Dish of the Day. He was suggested by his then-wife Sandra Dickinson, who played Trillian.
* SpecialEffectsFailure: JustForFun/{{Egregious}}. The effects compare to some of the worst from ''Series/DoctorWho'', but the show's [[RuleOfFunny so funny]] you stop caring.
** The most JustForFun/{{egregious}} being Zaphod's second head, a mechanical prop which barely functioned and veered right into the UncannyValley. They tried to cover for it by his first head telling the second to "go back to sleep."
** May also qualify as NarmCharm.
* UncannyValley: Zaphod Beeblebrox's second head. Sometimes it talks, but mostly it just sits there on his shoulder, motionless and eerily realistic. It was originally intended to be more animated than it ultimately was, but the prop head [[SpecialEffectsFailure worked only intermittently]], [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Wing-Davey_as_Zaphod_Beeblebrox.jpg leaving it looking more like a shoulder-mounted pinata.]]
* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome:
** The series mostly suffers from terrible special effects, except for the sequences where we see the guide itself. All these shots were actually hand drawn replicas of typical computer graphics of the time, and even today you'd swear they were actually done on a computer.
** Considering it was cobbled together on a shoestring, the series' opening scene of the Earth's last sunrise turned out surprisingly well.
* WTHCastingAgency: Trillian's accent. Seriously, what the Belgium was that all about? Made even stranger by the fact that she could do a perfectly passable English accent, as seen on a few outtakes. Apparently she asked Creator/DouglasAdams if he wanted an English accent, and he was so happy with her casting in the first place that he said no, she should use her normal voice. He came to regret this, in part because he realised it wasn't a particularly flattering thing to say to an actress. Trillian is also described as vaguely Arabic-looking in the book, [[SarcasmMode so the obvious choice to play her is a blonde American woman]].

!!The computer game:
* MemeticMutation: "You have destroyed most of a small galaxy. Please pick your words with greater care."
* SugarWiki/NoProblemWithLicensedGames: The game is generally agreed to be good, though obstinate. Douglas Adams himself was involved in development, and as with versions in other media, he took the game in its own direction rather than have it be a direct adaptation.

!!The movie:
* AndYouThoughtItWouldFail: When it was first announced that Mos Def would play Ford Prefect, there was a lot of complaints towards the fact that he was black while the character was traditionally white. However, most of them [[AbilityOverAppearance subsided by the time the film came out]].
* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN9GCCwuxHQ "Finale"]].
* DeathOfTheAuthor: Many people who are critical of the RomanticPlotTumor are surprised to find that it was in Douglas Adams' pre-mortem draft of the script and that he is not, in fact, rolling in his grave over it. Upon a little more thought, most of them conclude that that doesn't make it any better.
* EnsembleDarkhorse:
** Marvin, due to the wonderfully deadpan way Creator/AlanRickman does the voice.
** Slartibartfast, thanks to Creator/BillNighy's performance.
* GeniusBonus: That's an actual Ford Prefect that Ford tries to shake hands with.
* HilariousInHindsight:
** The team appearing as [[VideoGame/LittleBigPlanet knitted figures]] before achieving normality, seeing as Creator/StephenFry is the guide to both universes...
** José María del Río, a famous Spaniard TV narrator who voiced the Guide in the Spanish dub (see Woolseyism below), would later went to lend his voice to the legendary mystery show ''Series/CuartoMilenio'', which has both ufology and astronautics/space exploration between its many themes.
* InformedWrongness: Moments after meeting, Tricia suggests Arthur go on a trip with her to Madagascar. The film tries to portray Arthur as a stick-in-the-mud for turning her down, but Tricia seriously suggests he quit his job for it, and instead comes off as completely unreasonable.
* MisBlamed: Many things the fans complained about were Adams' intention from when he first outlined this adaptation - fans should remember that he tried to work in new bits into every new ''Hitchhiker's'' adaptation - and much of the script was written by him.
* OlderThanTheyThink: Some people think that the movie ripped off the name "Babel Fish" from the now-defunct translation website, completely forgetting of course, that it is in fact the other way round considering the source material. The name itself, meanwhile, is in turn based on [[Literature/TheBible the biblical story of the "Tower of Babel"]].
* OneSceneWonder: Humma Kavula. Whether you approve of his addition to the story or not, there's no denying that Creator/JohnMalkovich (with the help of the special effects team) makes him a memorable character.
* RomanticPlotTumor: This very movie features a fairly obvious example of this trope, between Arthur and Trillian. The "original" source materials (book, TV and radio series) all handled their past differently, but agreed that Arthur had been briefly interested in Trillian during a single superficial encounter in the past; when he re-encounters her during the story, he displays jealousy at a few points, but not much more than that. By comparison, the movie version features an Arthur who is desperately pining over Trillian, who could have been his one true love had he not been afraid to pursue her, and he spends most of the movie time thinking about, worrying about or focusing on her. This was deliberately inserted by Douglas Adams when drafting the movie, before his death, to increase studio interest and audience acceptance of the movie. (Actually, he tried to work it into the television adaptation, but the chemistry wasn't there between the actors.)
%%* TheyChangedItNowItSucks
* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: Being made in 2005, the filmmakers didn't over-rely on CGI and built a lot of real sets and used PracticalEffects, the stand out being the Vogons designed by the Creator/JimHensonsCreatureShop.
* {{Woolseyism}}: In order to get the same significance for them as Creator/StephenFry had towards the Anglosphere, the Spanish dub of the film had the Guide voiced by José María del Río, who was the official voice for Creator/CarlSagan in ''Series/{{Cosmos}}'', as well as many other science shows and documentaries in Spain.
* WTHCastingAgency: Music/MosDef as Ford Prefect, which is kind of the joke: Ford Prefect's half-arsed attempts to blend in and the total failure of British humanity to notice anything incongruous about him has always been a part of Ford's story (just look at his name) and one the movie merely played up a bit more.