YMMV / Colors

• Anvilicious: Gang life is horrifying.
  • Gangs are extremely violent! At the time of the film’s release most Americans outside a few large cities believed gangs were still like West Side Story or at worst like The Warriors. This film drove home the point that modern gangs (still relevant today) are disorganized, nihilistic, and extremely well armed.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: A member of Rocket's gang amuses himself by dressing up in oversized baby clothes and dancing around with stuffed animals inside of a department store after hours. However this is important to the plot as this got him sent to County where Frog overhears him telling another Crip about the hit that’s been put out on McGavin. Which leads to Rocket’s gang shooting up the 21st street house party and so on.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: While it was meant to show the ugly reality of gang life and hopefully discourage people from emulating it, the movie had the exact opposite effect on some viewers who were intrigued and fascinated by the gangsters and their unique aesthetic and bravado. See the entry for Real Life Writes the Plot.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Frog comments towards the end of the film, "When I die, It's going to be like that", pointing to a fellow gangbanger who was making out with a beautiful woman. Three months after the film was released, Trinidad Silva was killed by a drunk driver.^note This wasn't his final film, as he was filming UHF at the time.
  • The C.R.A.S.H. unit of the Los Angeles police being (the closest thing the film has to) protagonists, given all of the program's abuses that were brought to light in the 1990s which demonstrated for all sakes and purposes, C.R.A.S.H. was basically operating as a street gang in its own right.
  • All the Police Brutality is seen as just a normal part of the job. Even a righteous cop like Bob mostly just turns a blind eye to what he witnesses due either to acceptance or fear of reprisals from his peers. Bear in mind this movie was released just three years before the Rodney King Beating and the subsequent LA Riots.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Don Cheadle playing a character named Rocket.
  • Tony Todd plays a Vietnam War veteran at the city conference, two years before he played a soldier serving in Vietnam.
• Moral Event Horizon: The 21st Street gang is having a lively house party when the Crips drive by and spray the place with dozens of bullets. At that point, Frog and the other Chicano gangsters know they have to take revenge on the Crips, which means murdering several of them and probably not getting away with it.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • We get to see Damon Wayans showing shades of his future comedy career that would be launched two years later by In Living Color!.
  • This is also one of Don Cheadle's earlier roles.
  • A very young Mario Lopez appears in a non-speaking role as a Chicano gangbanger
• Tear Jerker:
  • Hodges' death. And the scene pans back in a Flyaway Shot making it even more dramatic.
  • The scene of the hysterical man whose wife was killed by stray bullets is gut wrenching. In-Universe, Hodges and McGavin are clearly effected and the unnamed veteran cop trying to comfort him clearly has no idea what to tell him.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The C.R.A.S.H unit of the Los Angeles Police Department was disbanded in 2000.