Dogma / YMMV - TV Tropes

Anti-Climax Boss:
- The Golgothian, Hell's top assassin is taken out with a can of deodorant. Possibly justified by Rule of Funny.
- In the original script the Golgothan shows up at the hospital to stop Bob and Bethany. Bob's spray is expended and he has to fight the Golgothan himself so Bethany can slip past. Also, one of the Stygian Triplets turns out to be Not Quite Dead and gives Bethany some trouble.
Awesome Music: "Still" by God Herself, played over the end credits. Of course, Howard Shore's music is no slouch either.
Complete Monster: Azrael is a former muse turned demon, who was banished to Hell eons ago for refusing to participate in the war between Lucifer and God. He is the mastermind behind Bartleby and Loki's plan to get back into Heaven. He gave them the idea by sending them a newspaper article of the church's absolution ceremony; he also had his cronies beat God—who was taking a mortal form as an old man—into a coma so God couldn't interfere. When his plans don't work, Azrael traps the heroes in a bar on their way to the ceremony and reveals his plan: he's counting on the angels getting absolution and re-entering Heaven, which would overrule God's word and negate all of existence. His motivation is that he would rather not exist than live in Hell, and if all of existence has to go down with him, then so be it.
Crosses the Line Twice: Jay and Silent Bob (possibly just Jay and Bob was going along with it) decided to go to an abortion clinic to try and pick up women, since in Jay's words, "Why else would they be here if they didn't like to fuck?"
Ensemble Dark Horse: The Metatron steals the show in the few scenes that he's in thanks to Alan Rickman's performance and getting some of the best lines in the movie.
Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Azrael's deleted rant how humans turned Hell from exile by God into a realm of eternal punishment and torment. This scene gives him more compelling character and motivation, plus it's Jason Lee's best scene in the movie.
Genius Bonus: Brazilian writer and "jazz musician" Luis Fernando Verissimo once wrote a essay in which he claimed that the Walrus and the Carpenter from Alice in Wonderland were metaphors for Buddha and Jesus (one being fat, and the other, a carpenter), and the oysters they brainwashed represented the followers of both religions. Sound familiar?
Harsher in Hindsight:
- In the scene where Azrael holds the gang hostage at the bar, Jay can occasionally be seen sleeping in the background. This was not a gag, as Jason Mewes had lied to Kevin Smith about having kicked his heroin addiction, a side effect of which was frequent bouts of drowsiness (this despite Smith congratulating Mewes by writing "See? Sober living paid off" in the credits). This resulted in the two briefly falling out and Mewes having to go to rehab twice between 2002 and 2010 before he actually became sober for good.
- Bethany and Rufus beg Reverend Glick to cancel the ceremony, saying that going through with it would be a "big mistake." Glick is offended and says the Catholic Church doesn't make mistakes, and when Bethany and Rufus cite a couple (the Church's tacit approval of slavery and its non-involvement stance on the Holocaust), he insists that that the new incarnation of the Church should not be held responsible for the mistakes of the old. This is, of course, just before the "mistake" the Catholic Church would be known for in the Turn of the Millennium and The New '10s would become public: a decades-long cover up of child abuse by the clergy.
He Really Can Act:
- Ben Affleck is legit terrifying when Bartleby goes off the rails, especially the car park scene.
- Rufus is still a funny character, but Chris Rock really steps up his game here when handling sincere scenes, such as Rufus describing fondly what Jesus was like.
It Was His Sled: God being a woman, played by Alanis Morissette.
Memetic Mutation:
- The infamous "Buddy Christ" statue has been used to death on forums, and has had a countless amount of captions attached, even by people who've never seen the movie.
- Rufus's confused expression is often used as a reaction GIF.
Moral Event Horizon: Bartleby orbits it for at least a third of the movie, but unequivocally crosses it when he taunts Bethany and sticks a shiv in Loki, not only killing his friend but doing the deed without Loki entering the church, knowingly condemning him to Hell.
Nightmare Fuel: Azrael's deleted monologue of how human-kind's Guilt Complex transformed hell, once merely the absence of God, into the fire-and-brimstone pit of suffering it now is, accompanied by the occasional hellish wail and his own voice becoming distorted into a demonic-bellow as he gets angrier. He then proceeds to put a hand over Bethany's eyes and show her ten seconds worth of what the script describes as "some of the most fucked up and disturbing imagery that can be crammed into 240 frames of film." Whatever it is causes Bethany to collapse and start convulsing!
Spiritual Adaptation: In his Research Riff on the film, Mister X of Geek Juice considers this to be a Vertigo comic book as a film, comparing it to the likes of Preacher and The Sandman (1989), particuarly the parking lot scene, which he compared to Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis.
Squick:
- The Golgothan, the demon made of... human excrement. If you ever plan to eat again, just skip it.
- A second appearance of the demon was deleted.
The Woobie:
- Bartleby, also Jerkass Woobie:
  - He was the one most sympathetic to and fond of Humanity, a viewpoint he held from Biblical times up until that night on the Jersey-bound train.
  - Bartleby breaks down in tears when he sees God again for the first time in several millenia. That's when you realize that he is essentially a child who has been abandoned by his mother.
- Metatron:
  - He feels this way about Jesus, after he told him how his life would turn out: "He begged me to 'make it all not true'... If I had the power, I would have."
  - Metatron is something of a Stoic Woobie: He's had to deliver some truly awful messages to humanity over the course of history, and now people are drenching him with the contents of hand-held fire hydrants. He complains just once, and yet it's still hard not to feel sorry for him.
- Loki. His job aside, he was one of the nicer angels; he even hung out with Jay and Bob before knowing they are prophets. When he finds out Bartleby is more focused on war on God than going home, he becomes more sympathetic, even cutting off his own wings and trying to stop his former friend. It doesn't end well.

YMMV / Dogma

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