Moments pages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.
- Mannix visiting DeeAnna Moran on the set of Neptune's Daughter, where she complains about having to wear a "fish ass", and petulantly yanks off her crown and throws it while the cameras are rolling.
- Mr. Laurentz exasperating himself trying to get Hobie to say "Would that it were so simple" in a British/Mid-Atlantic accent, which he can't pull off with his natural Southern accent. After all that trouble, in the version that makes the rough cut, he just says "It's complicated." Then it turns out part of the problem was Hobie having a speech impediment, thanks to wearing dentures.
- Laurentz corrects Hobie that his name is pronounced La-RENTS, not "Lawrence." Later during this conversation, when Hobie does correctly call him "Mr. Laurentz," Laurentz corrects him, "Lawrence." (He means that Hobie should call him by his first name, which is Laurence, confusing poor Hobie even further.)
- Hobie's Lazy Ol' Moon movie premiere, in which his guitar playing and singing is totally upstaged by the comic relief character's antics.
- Mannix's slapfests to the actress churning butter and to Whitlock.
- The film editor almost choking herself by getting her scarf caught in the projector."Reverse! Reverse!"
- The director of Hail, Caesar shouting "SQUINT! SQUINT AT THE GRANDEUR!" offscreen when filming the scene with Christ, while Whitlock pinches up his face like he's looking at a difficult math problem. Watching the dailies, the scene of Whitlock's character gazing in terrible awe at the divine wonder of Christ is followed by a placeholder card reading "DIVINE PRESENCE TO BE SHOT". The end credits feature this gem: "This motion picture contains no depiction of the Godhead."
- The entirety of the "No Dames"
number, with the blatantly homoerotic dancing and the sailors messing with the bartender. - The scene where Eddie Mannix gets three Christian clerics (one Catholic, one Protestant, one Eastern Orthodox) and one rabbi to make sure his film's depiction of Christ isn't offensive. They spend more time arguing with each other about their religions' different views on the true nature of God and Jesus than they do about the film. And then, after all that trouble, their only actual complaints about the film itself are concerned not with historical accuracy or the moral lessons imparted by cinema, but stuff like the implausibility of jumping from one chariot to another at top speed (à la Ben-Hur). When the Christian clerics argue about the nature of Jesus, the rabbi, who's the only one who doesn't believe in the Trinity, uses that to show that he clearly regards himself as the Only Sane Man.
- Near the end of the film, Mannix is re-visiting the confessional in which we saw him in the first scene. As the screen slides open and Eddie says, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," the priest thumps his head against the back of the confessional booth as if to say, "Oh come on, not you again..."
- Mannix introduces DeeAnna to one Joseph Silverman, a fixer who is, in the words of Sid, the kind of person the studio uses when they need someone who fits the legal standard of "personhood" to serve as a fall guy for misconduct.
- Silverman insisting that he's "bonded".
