Line #4 YMMV/ThePlagueDogs


1	* AccidentalInnuendo:
2	--> '''The Tod:''' Keep tight ahold of your meat and good luck go with you.
3	* AluminiumChristmasTrees: Experiments depicted in the book are based on experiments that happened in real life. [[NightmareFuel All of them.]]
4	* AngstAversion: Though the book was no walk in the park, the AnimatedAdaptation is widely considered one of the most depressing animated movies ever made. It's not uncommon for those who have seen the movie to warn others that the film's bleakness may make it too unbearable to sit through.
5	* CriticalDissonance: Currently has a 57% critic rating on Website/RottenTomatoes in contrast to the 90% audience rating. Though admittedly, the critic score was based on only seven reviews, whereas the audience score was based on over ''2000'' reviews.
6	* MisaimedMarketing: The film's [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/Plaguedogsposter.jpg cover]] features the tagline [[CoversAlwaysLie "Escape to A Different World... And Share The Adventure Of A Lifetime!"]] and ''"[[WrongGenreSavvy A SPECIAL KIND OF MOVIE MAGIC from the CREATORS OF WATERSHIP DOWN!]]"'' Of course, anyone who had actually seen ''WesternAnimation/WatershipDown'' might have had an idea of ''exactly'' what sort of 'movie magic' they were in for... and still been shocked by just how much bleaker ''The Plague Dogs'' manages to be. It's also considered to be ''Anime/GraveOfTheFireflies'' with dogs.
7	* NauseaFuel: When the hunter gets shot in the face a TON of blood drips out of his face and you get a very good glimpse of it on his hand. (And if you look closely you can see it got on Snitter as well.)
8	* NightmareFuel: Both the novel and the movie are rife with it, but the movie's deleted scene with the mangled and eaten corpse of the BountyHunter is probably the worst.
9	* OnlyTheAuthorCanSaveThemNow:
10	** More explicitly than most -- the book seems about to end with the dogs drowning at sea. The Reader protests and cries out for the Author to spare them, claiming that RealLife would end badly but this isn't Real Life. One DeusExMachina later, the dogs are saved.
11	** The animation, in a feat of {{Grimmification}}, decides just to stick the realistically bleak ending, and ends with the dogs [[DownerEnding about to drown]] but [[HopeSpringsEternal with a shot of an island nearby during the credits.]] It helps that the director only had his hands on the original draft of the story before Richard Adams was asked to change it.
12	* RetroactiveRecognition:
13	** Creator/PatrickStewart voices the army major in charge of hunting down the dogs.
14	** Creator/BradBird served as one of the film's animators.
15	* SignatureScene: The scene in which a hunter is killed via an accidental gunshot to the face.
16	* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids: The film, like ''WesternAnimation/WatershipDown'' before it -- which is actually tame and kid-friendly in comparison to ''The Plague Dogs'' -- this is mistaken for a kid's movie with shocking frequency (not helped by the case of MisaimedMarketing). The film deals with bleak, mature themes such as animal experimentation, the psychological ramifications of such on the protagonists, and features plentiful amounts of graphic violence, swearing, and a depressing DownerEnding -- which the book doesn't feature anymore -- to top it off. A children's film this is not.
17	* TheWoobie: Rowf and Snitter go through more mental torture than most characters ever have to. In the end, they're just dogs who just want a home and someone to take care of them.

Context YMMV / ThePlagueDogs