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  • Badass Decay: Bryce Lynch goes from a pubescent Mengele in the film to a Steve Urkel in the series. However the very last episode seems to indicate that the producers were interested in exploring the unethical aspects of Bryce's personality. He's on the verge of going back to working for Grossberg, out of sheer boredom, before Edison appears and literally drags him by the ear back to Network 23. (The same episode also contains one of the most hilarious lines of the series, which explains what happened to Bryce's computer-generated parrot)
  • Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Raking is described as a Bloodsport and horrifying gladiator competition but it seems really fun. It seems like you could have a lot of fun with it (and the original form was fun according to Max) with a bit more in the way of rules as well as safety equipment.
  • Fridge Logic: ZikZak invents the Neurostim bracelet, which will drive people to do nothing but "buy, buy, and buy, forever." We see multiple instances of people using the bracelet and falling into a trance. The "special" one given to Carter takes it up a notch. But if people are too entranced to do anything but buy ZikZak products, how will they do the jobs to earn the money to spend there?
  • Overshadowed by Controversy: Of a sort. One of the things the series gets remembered for was the incident where independent Chicago TV station WGN, and later on (perhaps more notably, due to it running uninterrupted and with audio) Chicago PBS station WTTW, got hijacked by an unidentified man wearing a Headroom mask. Despite being unofficial, having no lasting impact on the series when it aired, and not actually related to any of the creators of Max Headroom (at least, that we know), you'll often see direct quotes from the incident in comments of Max Headroom related videos.
  • Parody Displacement: Modern audiences, especially those into True Crime, may be more familiar with the infamous unsolved highjacking using the character's likeness.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Yes, that is a young Jeffrey Tambor as Murray, the harried head of the newsroom.
  • Unintentional Period Piece: The series is set an unknown number of years into the future but based upon buildings and technology shown, most likely no earlier than the turn of the 21st century. While some aspects of the future are accurately predicted (a multi-channel TV universe, the move by some away from permanent physical media like printed books), other aspects betray the show's 1980s origins, from the depiction of Max himself to the lack of personal computer devices. The TVs are even shown to be analog 4:3 rather than the widescreen versions in standard use by the 2000s. Viewed in retrospect, these aspects cast a "period piece" feel on the series.
    • In the TV movie, Bryce's birthday is October 7, 1988, and he's almost 18, setting the story around 2005.
  • Values Resonance:
    • The series' exploration of media narratives is more relevant than ever in the era where "fake news" has become a serious topic of discussion.
    • As discussed on the main page, people are only more scared that corporate greed will destroy the environment, culture, history, and basic human liberty these days, with corporations having more power than we were even able to conceive during the series' run.
  • Watch It for the Meme: Some people just watch the series because this is what the Max Headroom Incident TV hijack was referencing, or what Eminem was referencing in "Rap God".


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