- Adaption Displacement: The film is based on a French graphic novel of the same name, La mort de Staline. The film's star power, critical success and effective Lighter and Softer use of satire have made it much better known than the source material.
- Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Is Molotov really a blind Stalinist, or just a very dedicated survivor?
- Does Timaschuk have actual medical training? Is she just a NKVD agent assigned to watch doctors, or is she an actual competent medical doctor victimized by Beria, who can't examine Stalin herself because the Committee would rather have him looked after by bottom of the barrel doctors, so long as they are male?
- Was Maria Yudina's insult letter to Stalin an attempt to commit suicide, or did she assume it wouldn't have any consequence because of its sheer audacity?
- During the Kangaroo Court scene, Beria is angrily protesting the charges he's being accused of, until Khrushchev starts reading out the names of the underaged girls he violated over the years, which reduces Beria to a Stunned Silence. Was it a My God, What Have I Done? reaction to being reminded of his horrifying acts of perversion, or just Beria realizing that, unlike the other, clearly trumped-up charges he was being accused of, they had him dead to rights on this one, and that any slim chance of survival had just gone up in smoke? In Real Life, his sexual assaults were never brought up at his show trial, not that the members didn't know they were getting rid of a serial rapist in the process.
- Are Beria's executioners genuinely horrified by his sex crimes and brutality? Or are they power-hungry cretins who just want to save their hides while being not much better than Beria? Or is it a mix of both?
- After Khrushchev gives Malenkov the charge sheet with the detailed lists of all Beria's sexual assault victims, the latter turns and walks away. Is Malenkov doing this out of disgust at Beria's rapes? Out of disgust at the trial? Or just out of cowardice?
- Aluminium Christmas Trees:
- There was a real Dr. Lidiya Timaschuk who was a KGB informant, acted as the main witness of the Doctor's Plot, and was arrested when the case was abandoned. Everything else is presumably fictional.
- Besides Jason Isaacs' torso not being wide enough to comfortably accommodate all of the real-life Zhukov's decorations, the sheer number of them would have caused uninitiated viewers to see Zhukov more as a General Failure with an unscrupulously-earned Chest of Medals than as the Four-Star Badass he really is.
- Americans Hate Tingle: The Russian Government reacted very negatively to the movie, partially due to a push they were making at the time to improve the image of Stalin and the Soviet government, and banned it. A few theaters screened the film anyway in protest, to extremely mixed reactions from audiences — at worst, they hated the film for making light of a dark time in their nation's history, taking liberties with historical accuracy, and Not Even Bothering with the Accent; at best, they considered it a flawed but somewhat entertaining satire of the Soviet Union's cutthroat politics.
- Awesome Ego: Zhukov exudes a deserved arrogance on account of being the supreme leader for the victorious Red Army during World War II, and knows exactly how far he can push his political invulnerability in social circles when being a general troll and gadfly. His Establishing Character Moment is him throwing open a trenchcoat to reveal a Chest of Medals, demanding a drink and then holding his ground against Beria. In his very next scene he punches Vasily, Stalin's son, in the gut and kicks him while he's down, telling him to "Fucking behave!" and freely admitting what he did to Svetlana, who can't do a thing in response.
- Catharsis Factor: Deconstructed. Being the psycho that he is, Beria unquestionably deserves the pathetic death he receives. However, the lynch mob that does him in consists of similarly-wretched bastards who are also guilty of appalling crimes against humanity that, in any other situation, would have earned them the death penalty as well — something Beria repeatedly points out during his "trial", only to be ignored or shouted down. Beria's rapacious nature does genuinely disgust them, but that's secondary to the fact that him becoming de facto head of the Soviet Union would be problematic for them.
- Complete Monster:
- Josef Stalin himself is the sociopathic, overly paranoid master of the Soviet Union. A cruel despot who trusts and loves none, Stalin is responsible for nightmarish prison camps that hundreds of thousands have been sent to, tortured and eventually murdered. Stalin regularly sends out lists of individuals to be purged, along with their innocent families, and allows the wicked Lavrentiy Beria to operate with impunity. Even his inner circle is not immune, with the completely loyal Molotov set up to be murdered before Stalin's own death after Stalin had long imprisoned his wife.
- Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the NKVD, desires control over Russia, using his position to murder, torture, and rape whomever he wants, regardless of age. After discovering that Stalin's dead, Beria crafts his own enemy list to replace Stalin's, has the NKVD take over city security duties from the Soviet Army, and appoints weak-minded Deputy General Secretary Georgy Malenkov as Premier of Russia to be used as a political puppet. Refusing to allow Stalin's mourners into Moscow for his funeral, once 1,500 of them are slaughtered by his soldiers, he instead blames the mourners for being there against his orders, and refuses to allow his NKVD troops to act as scapegoats for fear that it'll tarnish his reputation.
- Crosses the Line Twice:
- Some of the constant and casual executions end up becoming this, something shocking in a modern society but portrayed as just business as usual in a totalitarian state.Molotov: Stalin would be loving this.
- Molotov is this all the time. He denounces his wife as a traitor when Beria attempts to buy him by releasing her, exclaims that Stalin would love the Committee ganging up on Beria, and takes a piss while Beria is being arrested in the bathroom. Remember Malenkov and Beria's earlier exchange about pissing?
- Some of the constant and casual executions end up becoming this, something shocking in a modern society but portrayed as just business as usual in a totalitarian state.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Everyone is great, but many have singled out Jason Isaacs' scenery-chewing performance as General Zhukov. It helps that Zhukov is probably the least morally ambiguous of the Soviet elite.
- Genius Bonus: After an underage maid was raped by Beria, the girl is returned to her parents with a bouquet of flowers. In real life, Beria gave his rape victims bouquets of flowers after raping them. If they accepted, he took this as a sign that the sex was "consensual" and released them. If not, he made them disappear.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Malenkov telling Khrushchev and his supporters to "kiss [his] Russian ass" becomes this for those who remember another character played by Jeffrey Tambor being tricked into kissing a dog's ass.
- This is not the first time that Olga Kurylenko and Andrea Riseborough have played two women on the opposite sides of a crisis.
- Zhukov beating Vasily become this when considering some Star Wars fans were unhappy Rupert Friend replaced Jason Isaacs as the Grand Inquisitor in Obi-Wan Kenobi.
- All the comparisons made between this film and Dr. Strangelove becomes this when Armando Iannucci was announced to be adapting Dr. Strangelove on stage in 2024.
- Magnificent Bastard:
- Nikita Khrushchev begins as one of Josef Stalin's inner circle, playing a delicate game to survive his insane leader's violent whims. Upon Stalin's death, Khrushchev enters into a power struggle with the monstrous Lavrentiy Beria who usurps his plans to free political prisoners and restore the church. Upon realizing the NKVD has replaced the Red Army, Khrushchev orders the borders reopened so the resulting flood of people trigger the NKVD to violence, killing many people and ruining Beria's public image. Khrushchev then has Beria arrested after allying with Georgy Zhukov of the Red Army and organizes Beria's complete downfall, show trial and execution to eventually take total control of the Soviet Union and reform it.
- Field Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov is the bombastic war-hero head of the Soviet Red Army. First introducing after the NKVD replaces the Red Army in security and announcing "I'm smiling but I am very fucking furious," Zhukov wastes no time in putting the sniveling Vasily Stalin in his place. Upon hearing Nikita Khrushchev's plans, Zhukov takes the chance to tease him before assisting his plot to see the fall of Lavrentiy Beria, gleefully punching out the sadistic rapist before initiating his plot to completely purge the NKVD and see Beria executed.
- Memetic Mutation: Khrushchev's "ruling"/Pre-Mortem One-Liner to Beria has gained popularity with viewers who often change it around to suit dissenters in fandoms or communities."You are accused of treason and anti Soviet behavior. The court finds you guilty and sentences you to be shot."
- Moral Event Horizon: While many of the characters in the movie aren't exactly pillars of virtue, Lavrentiy Beria takes the cake as a Manipulative Bastard who ordered the deaths of many people, with or without Stalin's behest, and molested women and children. As a result, many of the Politburo members found disgust for Beria.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- Since Aleksei Kapler was actually alive in 1953, Beria could have released him (or claim his intention to) as a way to get Svetlana firmly under his grip and use her against Khrushchev. However, the movie's Beria claims that he was Killed Off for Real in 1949, and there is no benefit for him to lie about it, so it must be true within the movie's universe.
- One of the doctors arrested during The Purge noticed that something was weird when the interrogators suddenly and unexpectedly switched from usual "who are your foreign friends?" questions to medical-related questions. As funny as the abduction of the old doctor from the streets is in the movie, such scene would fit the absurdist Black Comedy of the movie to a T.
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic: It’s a little hard to root for Maria in the opening scene. While it is sad that she has lost most of her family and friends to Stalin’s regime, her refusal to play the concerto for Stalin isn’t just rebellious, but is also putting everyone in the building in danger of being executed. Her trolling of the conductor (which leads to him fainting and knocking himself out) comes off as pretty cruel when you remember that literally everyone is terrified of Stalin. The fact that she only relents when offered a lot of money doesn’t make this much better. Assuming the concert even happened (the book that mentions it is not considered a reliable source) in real life Maria didn't do any of this, as she knew that the lives of others was more important than her own integrity; and her note to Stalin was not an insult but a response to his paying her for the performance, saying that she had donated the money to her church and begging him to see the light and change his ways.
- The Woobie: Poor Molotov has to keep bleating about how his wife deserved to be executed and is horrified when he learns that Stalin had him also lined up for death. He insists to Khruschev that he must have done something terrible to Stalin. When Molotov is later chastised by Beria in the Hall of Columns he walks away on the verge of tears.
Comic Book
- Complete Monster: Lavrentiy Beria, chief of the NKVD and Stalin's personal attack dog, quickly moves to try and ensure Stalin's death when the former dictator falls into a coma to consolidate his own power. Beria has countless people tortured and executed in the depths of the nation's gulags, while ruthlessly buying off or otherwise attempting to silence his political opposition, attempting to frame Khruschev to have him bear the brunt of his treason to the nation. Beria is also a disgusting Serial Rapist who treats his violent assaults with a bored, hobbyist mentality, reacting with mild irritation when a phone call interrupts him in the middle of a session while ordering the woman's father arrested right after.
