YMMV / Splash

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• Applicability: According to autistic YouTuber Anna Moomin, Madison’s behavior in Splash is analogous to people on the autism spectrum: Madison is non-verbal^note although she eventually learns to speak English by watching TV for six hours at “Bloomingdales”, and even repeats phrases that she heard on TV, which is reminiscent of autistic individuals exhibiting “echolalia”. ; is aversive to wearing clothes (see the scene where she walks to the “Statue of Liberty” buck naked) or at least doesn’t wear clothes that are deemed “socially acceptable” (such as her wearing Allen’s suit and boxer shorts when she goes to Bloomingdales); lacks an awareness of real danger (Madison leaves Allen’s apartment all by herself without understanding how the world works or knowing anybody; runs into a busy street, which causes some cars to collide with each other, but leaves her unharmed; and takes a blind, homeless man’s mug of pencils without understanding that she shouldn’t steal things from homeless people); takes things literally (Madison thinks the blue Tiffany’s box is the actual present); can’t comprehend sarcasm (When Madison says to Allen at the ice rink that ”his voice sounds funny”, Allen tells her that it was because he was being sarcastic. He then proceeds to insult Madison by saying “What? They don’t have that where you come from either?”); struggles to “pass” as a human being (much like how autistic people struggle to “mask” themselves as “neurotypical”); and feels the need to keep her “mermaid” identity a secret from Allen (much like how autistic women may feel the need to keep their autism a secret from their neurotypical partner in order to avoid hostility and rejection).
  • Ironically, Daryl Hannah herself is autistic, so it’s possible that she took the role of Madison because she could very much relate to the character.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: To some, the movie is best remembered for Madison the Mermaid's nudity.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Dr. Kornbluth, the Large Ham Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, easily steals every scene he's in.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Even though it’s sweet that Allen gets to be with his beloved Madison, in the long run, his love for her may not be enough to survive in her underwater world. He also can’t ever leave her side, otherwise he’ll drown (Madison explains to Allen that he felt safe under the water as a young boy because she was present). Lastly, Allen will probably have to give up his human speech and instead learn to speak in high pitched dolphin squeaks. To make matters worse, he can’t ever go back to his life on land or visit his brother Freddie above, so Allen will be forced to cope with the downsides of undersea life, like his loss of humanity.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:

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  • The Line-of-Sight Name joke, where the mermaid chooses the very unusual name of Madison, now doesn't work due to the film's own popularity. It inspired Madison to become one of the most common female names in the United States.
  • A scientist trying to prove supernatural creatures exists. Sound familiar?^note Butch Hartman states that Eugene Levy's character in this film was the inspiration for Crocker.
  • The boat Tom Hanks is riding in randomly loses power halfway between the mainland and an island. The pilot generously attributes the problem to him intentionally rocking the boat, but that's because this was decades before the world learned never to travel with Tom Hanks.
  • In order to impress a former Green Beret who wants to turn Bauer Produce into a food chain, Freddie makes up a story about his younger brother Allen getting injured in the head while serving in Vietnam. Ten years after Splash, Tom Hanks would star in Forrest Gump, where his character Forrest Gump would get injured while serving in Vietnam.

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  • In the film, Tom Hanks sings the Disney song “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” to indicate how elated he is after getting so much nookie from Madison. Five years after the film’s release, the Disneyland log flume “Zip-a-Dee River Run” was renamed Splash Mountain, after then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner suggested that the attraction be used to help market the film Splash. ^note Eisner even went as far as suggesting that an animatronic of the mermaid appear on the ride, but the Imagineers refused as they felt it would disrupt the tone of the ride.
  • One of the many studios that producer Brian Grazer pitched his film Splash was 20th Century Fox, which Disney would eventually buy in 2019.
    • According to the book Storming the Magic Kingdom by John Taylor, the script was rejected by the studio’s senior vice-president of worldwide production Richard Berger due to concerns that the “extensive underwater scenes” would have made the film “prohibitively expensive”. ^note What’s even more ironic is that Richard Berger would later get fired from 20th Century Fox and go work at Disney instead, in which he became president of Disney’s Touchstone Pictures division. When Disney CEO and founder of Touchstone Pictures Ron Miller handed the screenplay of ''Splash'' to Richard in order to see if he would like it, Berger told Ron that he had already read it back at 20th Century Fox; however once Richard read the script, he ended up liking it, thanks to a rewrite done by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, which had significantly fewer underwater scenes than the original script written by Bruce Jay Friedman.

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• Jerkass Woobie: Stan the Tour Guide, in a way. After what happened with Madison, how does he tell future tour groups that it was a one-time fluke and that they shouldn't expect to see that happen again?
• Memetic Mutation: A Tumblr GIF of Allen saying to Madison at the pier of the East River “I love you! Let’s get married!”, only to then have Madison reject his marriage proposal by diving back into the water.
• Moral Event Horizon: Dr. Kornbluth calls out the other scientists, particularly the leader Dr. Ross, for planning to dissect Madison. But they merely insult him for "not being a real scientist", expressing how Kornbluth would always be a disgrace in his eyes and the eyes of the scientific community no matter if he is considered crazy or not, thus making all his efforts to earn his respect amongst fellow scientists for naught. This helps lead to his Heel–Face Turn afterwards, and also makes Ross look like an idiot and a more deplorable Mad Scientist then Kornbluth, since he could have gotten into the history books as the one who established contact with a new race if he wasn't such a cold-hearted "sadistic pig".
• MST3K Mantra: Don't try to figure out how Madison is able to read a map despite having had no previous contact with the English language.
• One-Scene Wonder: Kornbluth's mentor.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: The film is now likely best known for the Disney+ release being digitally altered to cover a shot of Daryl Hannah's bare rear end, launching a vitriolic debate over "censoring" the movie (even though the original version was still available several other ways). Things got even worse when a couple months later X-Men: Days of Future Past was released on the service with its shot of Hugh Jackman's bare ass intact, leading to many calls of a Double Standard.
• Signature Scene: Madison at the Statue of Liberty.
• Special Effect Failure: While the effects in the actual movie are decent enough for the time, the same can't be said about Disney's attempts at censoring Madison's bare backside in the Disney+ print. They tried to do so by extending Madison's hair down to the top of her legs; unfortunately, the digitally-added hair doesn't always connect with Daryl Hannah's own hair, which at points makes it look as though she has an absurdly hairy butt.This comes from the "new hair" being cloned from a small, random section, so it all moves along with that small section, not the hair next to it.
  • When Madison is grabbed by one of the military scuba divers and hits him with her tail, some fingers can be seen positioning the tail prop against the divers.
• Values Dissonance: The scene in the prologue where ten-year-old Freddie drops coins on the ground in order to look up women’s skirts is played for laughs. It gets worse when you see Freddie doing the same thing, this time as an adult. In fact, when Allen lifts Freddie up and tells him how embarrassing it was back when he was ten, Freddie justifies his inappropriate behavior by saying to Allen, “Look, if something works for me, I stick with it”. Nowadays, Freddie’s behavior (known as “upskirting”) would be seen as a sex crime in the state of New York (where the movie takes place).
  • Freddie announcing to everyone at work that Penthouse magazine printed his letter titled “A Lesbian No More” would not fly today, given how lesbophobic the title of the letter sounds (and the fact that doing something like that nowadays would constitute as sexual harassment in the workplace).
  • Allen telling Madison that they need to take a blood test before they get married. Although certainly not a common practice anymore, back then, it was meant to ensure that the couple wasn’t carrying any sexually transmitted diseases or genetic disorders.
  • The saleslady at Bloomingdales saying to Madison, as she escorts Madison to the dressing room, that her daughter is “lucky” to be anorexic because at least she can fit into a red dress would definitely not fly today, considering the public’s greater awareness of eating disorders and how deadly anorexia nervosa can be. ^note It gets worse when you learn that singer Karen Carpenter died of anorexia nervosa one year before “Splash” was released (and even one month prior to shooting the film).
  • Some feminists have criticized Madison’s characterization as being the “classic heterosexual male fantasy” (that is, she’s beautiful, silent, childlike, naïve, horny, and submissive to her man). The October 1984 issue of Mad Magazine lampshaded this feminist criticism a few times in their parody of Splash titled “Splashdance”.
    • Even Jonathan McIntosh of Pop Culture Detective included Madison as being an example of the “Born Sexy Yesterday” trope, in that Madison has the body of a mature, sexualized woman, but has the mind of a naïve, yet highly skilled, child.
• Values Resonance: In spite of some the film’s problematic, dated elements (see Values Dissonance above), there are some things in Splash that are pretty progressive even thirty years later:
  • Usually, in romantic comedies, the protagonist tends to be a woman who is obsessed with finding a man, getting married, and having a kid, but in the case of Splash, the protagonist is a MAN who is obsessed with finding a woman, getting married, and having kids (which is certainly a rarity for a romantic comedy).
    • Speaking of other rarities in romantic comedies, instead of the woman sacrificing everything to be with her male lover at the end of the film, it’s the male protagonist (Allen) who gives up his family, his friends, his home, his produce business, and even his own species in order to be with the woman he loves (Madison the mermaid) at the end of the film.
  • Madison is not a Damsel in Distress nor is she waiting for her “prince” to come^note since her “prince” cannot swim to save his own life. If anything, Allen is the “damsel in distress” who has to be constantly rescued by Madison from drowning, and Madison is the one who pursues her man even if she has to swim all the way from Cape Cod to Manhattan in order to be with him.
    • Madison also is in charge of her sexuality and the film doesn’t slut-shame her for it. She has sex because she enjoys it on her own terms, as opposed to having it within the confines of marriage.
  • When Madison rejects Allen’s marriage proposal, Allen assures Madison that whatever “dark secret” she has, he would still love her, whether it’s her dying of a terminal illness or that she was “once a man”. Even though Madison is not actually transgender, the fact that Allen would accept Madison if she were is pretty progressive for a movie released in 1984.

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