YMMV / Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Modern viewers might believe Builder's Emporium (where the group gets parts for the Good Robot Usses) is a Brand X of Home Depot or Lowe's. But it really was a chain of home improvement stores in the Southwest United States that would eventually close down in 1993.
• Anti-Climax Boss: As soon as Evil Robot Bill and Ted see the Good Robot Bill and Ted charging at them, they decide that they've clearly met their match and don't resist having their heads punched off, giving Bill and Ted a cheerful goodbye.
• Awesome Music: "God Gave Rock 'N' Roll To You II" by KISS, which is played by Wyld Stallyns at the climactic concert. Also, Primus' performance of "Tommy the Cat" (though shown briefly; see the music video).
• Contested Sequel: While the film is the worst-reviewed of the three films, a vocal minority holds it as the best of the three for expanding the premise of the original film and for its inventive quirkiness.
• Crazy Is Cool: The actual makeup of the band:
  • Lead singers/guitarists are time traveling rock and roll messiahs.
  • Bass player is Death. Literally.
  • Bongos played by the most intelligent being in the universe, which happens to be two (sometimes) Martians.
  • Drummer and Keyboardist are medieval princesses.
  • Backup dancers are super-strong robot versions of the leads, built by the bongo player(s).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: William Sadler as Death, constantly struggling to hold on to the remains of his shattered dignity. The later half of the film even manages to add some depth to the character, showing Death as a deeply insecure, lonely person who for the first time in his existence has friends.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: De Nomolos is a Knight of Cerebus who is taken seriously. But it's difficult to take him seriously when he's got a outfit that includes a cape, a giant collar around his neck with built-in dramatic lighting, and giant floppy moon boots. However, Fridge Brilliance kicks in— aside from coloration, it's very similar to the futuristic attire not only seen on his soldiers, but Rufus and his students. Considering that the construction of two robotic simulacrums of Bill and Ted would've been likely to cost a lot of money (if they even used it in the future), it's possible that he simply stole clothes and spraypainted them black for lack of any other options.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: How ironic that Jim Martin of Faith No More, "founder of the Faith No More Spiritual and Theological Center", quit Faith No More only two years after his appearance in Bogus Journey.
• Nightmare Fuel: Being the somewhat Darker and Edgier sequel, involving the concept of being murdered and prominently featuring Hell, this was inevitable.
  • The Evil Bill and Ted revealing their robotic faces by peeling it off to reveal robotic skulls with exposed eyes and lifelike gums with teeth.
  • The Evil Bill and Ted murdering the original Bill and Ted by tossing them off a cliff.
  • The now deceased Bill and Ted being banished to hell by Missy, slowly falling for seemingly an eternity with completely blackness surrounding them.
  • Hell itself, which is a red tinted cavern where sinners stand on levitating rocks connected to chains leading to a draconic headed machine controlled by Satan himself, who looks like a draconic humanoid.
  • Bill and Ted being sent to three potential personal hells including the military officer that Ted would've been sent to demanding a set of exercises, a twisted parody of Bill's grandmother, and an Easter Bunny who looks both demented in its expression and disturbingly human like at the same time.
• Sophomore Slump: The film is the worst-reviewed of the trilogy, holding a mediocre 54% "rotten" rating compared to the 78% "fresh" rating of the original and 82% that its sequel got.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The grayscale makeup on Bill and Ted when they are ghosts is evident when they're in direct light.
  • When Station is loading the robot parts into the back of the van, you can clearly see the rather wide seam between the costumes' removable faceplates and the rest of the suit. In other angles, this seam is concealed by fur.
  • The Bad Robot Usses playing basketball with Bad Robot Bill's head uses a very unconvincing prop head in wide shots.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The prominent Product Placement of Pepsi cans with their old design. Ironically, the Miller Lite can that Ted drinks has become current again now that Miller went back to their retro design.
  • A scene takes place at Builder's Emporium, which went out of business two years after the film was released.
  • The boys drive by a Geo car dealership. The brand was discontinued in 1997 (though some models were integrated into sibling Chevrolet's lineup and lingered on until 2004). They also pass a Sav-On Drugs store, which was sold to CVS/Pharmacy in 2006 and only survives in the form of in-store pharmacies at Albertson's and Acme Markets stores (and even then, the name is on the way out).
  • Jim Martin quit Faith No More a few years after the film's release.
  • Even moreso than in the first film, the style of metal Bill and Ted love had already begun to be supplanted by Grunge music by the time the film came out.
• Values Dissonance: As with the first installment, the gay slur, "fag" is thrown around as an insult a few times. Which is why the next work cut it entirely.
• Vindicated by History: The film got significantly worse reviews than Excellent Adventure but over time was seen as a fairly good movie and sequel in its own right through creative uses of Kirk's Rock and homaging such films as The Seventh Seal, with the guys' interactions with William Sadler's Death being hilarious.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The effects used for Hell, Station and the robotic Bill and Ted duplicates (both good and evil) still hold up well by today's standards.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: While the first movie is a lighthearted, family-friendly Totally Radical comedy with only one dramatic moment (when Ted appears to be killed), the sequel adds scary scenes (including the heroes being banished to hell, a nightmarish depiction of Hell and three Ironic Hell scenarios involving a unnaturally human like Easter Bunny and a warped parody of a grandmother), gross-out humor, a Disney Death that sticks for the majority of the film done in cold blooded murder, alcohol, more profanity, and more sexual dialogue and incest references. As a result, the target audience of the sequel skews older than the first. Perhaps the filmmakers anticipated that fans of the original film would have aged two years since the previous film came out.

---