YMMV / Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Mrs. Dennit only has about three minutes of screen time total, but Molly Shannon makes the most of it with her hilarious performance.
• Funny Moments: Thanks to a script once again written by McKay and Ferrell, we get plenty of these.
• Genius Bonus: Girard reading The Stranger while driving is either this or Small Reference Pools, depending on who you ask. Either way, it's definitely a Bilingual Bonus for most American viewers.
  • Invisible fire is a real phenomenon that occurs when methanol burns, and given that it is sometimes used as a fuel for race cars, there have been actual cases of race car drivers being engulfed in completely invisible flames.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Ricky Bobby's downfall and subsequent effort to rebuild his driving reputation, after Kurt Busch went through a two year stretch like this after he got fired from Penske Racing at the end of the 2011 Sprint Cup season for outbursts. As if to lampshade it, Busch drove Ricky Bobby based cars at two Talladega races. He drove Ricky's Cougar paint job in May 2012 for Phoenix Racing in the #51, and a Wonder Bread-sponsored #78 in October 2013 for Furniture Row Racing, before finally finding a top-tier ride with Stewart-Haas Racing in 2014.
  • Ricky and Girard's footrace in the climax would be harkened to in 2009, when Carl Edwards suffered a chaotic accident coming to the finish of the Aaron's 499 race at Talladega. After going airborne and striking the catch fence, Edwards exited his wrecked car and jogged to the finish line on foot, which Mike Joy described as having "shades of Ricky Bobby". When interviewed later, Edwards said, "I'm kind of a Will Ferrell fan. He did that at the end of Talladega Nights."
  • Since the name "Karen" became synonymous with "shrill, aging misanthrope", the scene where Ricky Bobby named a loud, bloodthirsty puma Karen becomes even funnier.
  • People quickly drew parallels to Ricky and Jean’s crash scene when CNN infamously also cut to an Applebee’s commercial in the middle of live coverage of the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine.
  • Jamie Mc Murray, the driver in the movie whom Ricky flipped off after beating in the last leg of a race by going backwards, started using Bobby's number in real life (26) starting the very season that the movie was released, purely coincidental as 26 was a number, while unused during the 2005 season when the movie was filmed, was a number that Jamie's then-new team had used in the past.
• Ho Yay: Ricky and Girard at the end.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Shake and bake!" In fact it has been heard on actual NASCAR drivers' radio communications and also has been used by the TV commentator teams.
  • And, for a while, "the best PlayStation 3 game on the market." ^Explanation Early Playstation 3s were bundled with a Blu-Ray disc of the movie.
  • "Help me, Jesus! Help me, Jewish God! Help me, Allah! Help me, Tom Cruise!"
  • "Don't you put that evil on me, Ricky Bobby!"
  • "If you ain't first, you're last!"
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: The film was a huge hit in middle America, in part because of its jabs against rednecks, NASCAR fans in particular.
• Moment of Awesome: See here.
• Retroactive Recognition: Amy Adams as Susan, Jane Lynch as Lucy Bobby and Jack McBrayer as Glenn Muncie
• Signature Scene: Ricky screaming for religious figures and Tom Cruise to put out non-existent flames on him.
• Squick: The knife scene. Full stop.
  • At one point they try to wedge the knife out... with another knife.
  Lucius: We'll use this knife to pry it out! (drives a second steak knife into Bobby's leg)
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • While it still has a sizeable contingent of fans, NASCAR is nowhere as popular among the general public as it was during the mid-2000s. The rather dismissive attitude towards homosexuals and the French also date it to that period.
  • It is implied that the first part of the movie takes place around 1995-1997. This comes from a number of pieces of evidence:
    • The drivers are wearing Winston Cup patches; Winston sponsored the Cup Series from 1971 until 2003.
    • Chevrolet is racing the Monte Carlo, which was used from 1995 replacing the Lumina that had been raced previously.
    • Ford is racing the Thunderbird, which were raced up until 1997 before being replaced with the Taurus in 1998.
  • Most of the rest of the movie takes place in 2005 due to:
    • Dodge Chargers being present but not Fusions or Monte Carlo SS's, which Ford and Chevrolet respectively switched to in 2006; Dodge introduced the Charger in NASCAR in 2005, a year before the road-going model entered dealerships.
    • The movie being filmed in 2005 even though it was released in 2006, so thus it features cars and drivers from the 2005 Nextel Cup Series season.
  • Carley makes an offhand reference to Ricky looking like a Circuit City in his hospital bed. The last store location closed down in 2009, and the brand became completely defunct in 2012. As the years go on, the reference will probably be less and less understood (in 2018 however the brand came back as an online retailer of electronics, so this may be moot).
  • While thinking he's on fire, Ricky screams out for Tom Cruise to use his witchcraft to help. At the time, Cruise had become particularly outspoken about Scientology and was making headlines with his statements.
• The Woobie: Ricky's father-in-law Chip. Whatever negative karma he earned for fathering Carley does not balance out the crap he endures having Walker and Texas Ranger for grandkids.

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