YMMV / Inherit the Wind

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• Accidental Aesop: Although the original purpose of the play was a condemnation of McCarthyism, many interpret the play to be primarily about the value of human reason over religious faith.
  Drummond: "In a child's power to master the multiplication table, there is more sanctity than in all your shouted "amens" and "holy holies" and "hosannas." An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man's knowledge is a greater miracle than all the sticks turned to snakes or the parting of the waters."
• Cry for the Devil: Brady's death is easily the saddest part of the film. He dies on the back of his latest failure, sobbing his eyes out, and stewing in regret over his failed ambitions. It's difficult to watch, even if you didn't like him up to that point.
• Fridge Horror: Reverend Brown, according to Cates, said a recently-dead eleven-year-old boy was going to hell because he wasn't baptized yet. Knowing how uber-religious the town is, his parents were probably in the crowd.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One of the actors who starred in the first ever production of the play was named Edward Cullen.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Implicitly invoked when after he dies in the courtroom, Brady is hailed as a "prophet" by a lady in the crowd based on Drummond's drippingly sarcastic naming of him as such.
  • The play/film itself has this going, with most modern audiences taking the Evolution debate aspect at face-value and completely ignoring the larger theme of a community tearing itself apart over matters of belief (and the associated McCarthyism analogy). In response, Jerome Lawrence insisted, "We used the teaching of evolution as a parable, a metaphor for any kind of thought control. It's not about science versus religion. It's about the right to think."
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Hey, it's Darrin Stevens as Cates! Not that one, the real one!
  • Harry Morgan as the judge, before he was Bill Gannon on the 1960s Dragnet or, more famously, Col. Potter on M*A*S*H.
  • Norman Fell, still a decade and a half away from his most famous role as Mr. Roper on Three's Company, shows up on the final day of the trial as a radio technician.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: The film spends an awful lot of time on Rachel, despite the fact that she's by far the most boring character.
• Values Resonance: The evolution/creationist conflicts of the earlier part of the century have been revived in recent years, owing to the increasing political power of the Creationist movement, giving the film's subject matter far more relevance today that it would have had in the 1960s. The play's stance against censorship resonates with the prevailing view today about the importance of free speech. And post-9/11 national security administration has drawn parallels to McCarthyism that gives the film's original message renewed relevance.

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