- Award Snub: It received four Academy Award nominations, but it wasn't nominated for Best Picture or Director.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- As mentioned on the main page, the film's plot rather eerily foreshadowed the Three Mile Island incident. There's even a line saying a China Syndrome incident could contaminate "an area the size of Pennsylvania". That's the state where Three Mile Island is located.
- Jack's speech to Kimberly that "We've got a quality control that's only equaled by NASA" becomes painful to hear after the Challenger and Columbia disasters were both found to be due to poor quality control and corporate/bureaucratic greed; the very heart of the problem in this film.
- Inferred Holocaust: One possible interpretation of the ending. When the television feed suddenly cuts out and goes to the SMPTE color bars, then nothing, then the credits with no backing music. Given that the main characters are still on the grounds of the power plant, it could be easily construed as the pump finally failing completely, a total loss of coolant and core meltdown (or, worse, going prompt critical) and the titular China Syndrome occurring, or at least destroying the nearby area in a steam explosion ala. Chernobyl.
- Values Dissonance: Kimberly wants to do hard news stories, but is specifically told by her boss that she's too beautiful and "we didn't hire you for your brains." Try saying that to a subordinate today. We dare you.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/TheChinaSyndrome
FollowingYMMV / The China Syndrome
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