YMMV / The Fall

For The Band

Band

• Archive Panic: They have released 32 studio albums since 1978. Don't rely on compilations for help either, most of them are rather poorly compiled or only focus on a certain point in the band's career.
  • One possible good compilation is 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong.
  • What many fans and critics claim is the band's definitive release, the 2005 Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004 box set of radio sessions, weighs in at 6 CDs and seven hours.
• Face of the Band: Mark E. Smith.
  • There's a handful of long-running members that are easily recognized by the band's fanbase. Among these are drummer Karl Burns (1977-1979, 1981-1985, 1993-1998), bassist Steve Hanley (1979-1998), guitarist Craig Scanlon (1979-1995), Smith's ex-wife guitarist Brix Smith (1983-1989, 1994-1996) and his other ex-wife, keyboardist Elena Poulou (2002-2016). Together or apart, these members appeared on most of the band's most popular albums. However, even hardcore fans can't keep up with - or can't be bothered to remember - the other members. Despite the band's lineup being stable and with the same personnel for its last decade of existence, none of those members apart from Poulou are especially well known.
  • Fans of the American psychedelic rock band Darker My Love can pick out vocalist/guitarist Tim Presley and bassist/vocalist Robert Barbato (DML's own Face of the Band) as members of the band during the Reformation Post TLC era of the band.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The 2005 BBC documentary The Wonderful and Frightening World of Mark E. Smith features the band's then-current members praising Smith and barely containing their excitement at being members of The Fall. About 18 months after the documentary premiered, most of these same musicians were part of the lineup that quit the band the middle of a summer tour by skipping town and abandoning Smith and keyboardist Elena Poulou at a hotel.
  • The 2017 album New Facts Emerge, contained a song called "Victoria Train Station Massacre", in which "massacre" is used as a hyperbolic expression of Smith's dislike of the reconstruction of Manchester Victoria railway station. After the album was finalised, but about two months before it was released, twenty-two people were killed in a terrorist attack on an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena, right next door to the station, which itself suffered minor damage.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Athlete Cured" is heavily based around a riff taken from "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight": Supposedly the guitarist at the time had been playing the riff as a warm-up, and Mark E. Smith, having never heard the song before, quickly wrote down his own lyrics to go with it.
  • According to one bio of the band, when Brix came up with the bass-line that became the foundation of "Elves", everyone in the band but her immediately recognized it as "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by The Stooges.
  • "Greenway" is based around the same music as "Gameboy" by Greek comedy metal group Anorimoi, with a completely different vocal melody and new, English lyrics: This time it was blatant enough that they credited a member of Anorimoi as a co-writer, so it can also be viewed as a Cover Version / Song Parody.
  • Similarly to the above, "Stout Man" uses the same music as "Cock In My Pocket" by The Stooges - in this case, it's credited entirely to the members of The Stooges despite the lyrics being entirely different.

For The Fanfic

Fanfic

• Ass Pull: The Massacre of Goodsprings, came off as rather out of place and out of the blue, causing a Broken Base.

For The 2006 Film

Film

• Award Snub: Didn't win a single award. Not even for the downright breathtaking cinematography.
• Awesome Music: Beethoven's 7th symphony (second movement).
• Cliché Storm: In-universe and justified. Roy isn't a playwright or a screenwriter, he's just a stuntman improvising a story based on the one movie he's worked in and the feedback of a five year old girl for whom English is a second language. So the Story Within a Story being simplistic, filled with plotholes, and being a bit of a Fantasy Kitchen Sink makes perfect sense.
• Cult Classic: Bombed in theaters, largely ignored by critics, and absolutely adored by the few who've seen it, including Miles Antwiler, Kyle Kallgren, and the late Roger Ebert.
• Designated Hero: Roy is supposed to be a good guy because he lost his girlfriend, he's hurt, and he's nice to Alexandria but we don't know exactly WHY his girlfriend left him, it's heavily implied that he did the stunt that crippled him out of his own accord, not because the studio wanted him to, and he's nice to Alexandria so she can steal drugs for him. This is however, quite intentional.
• Designated Villain: Sinclair is cast as the evil Governor in Alexandria's mind, but we really don't see him do anything wicked in the movie. He supposedly took Roy's girl, but we don't know the context about that situation, and the guy did show up not only to visit a lowly stuntman, he also was humble about his status as a star, nice to Alexandria and even showed up at the showing at the end where he displayed what could be seen as displeasure in Roy's life-risking stunt not making it in the final cut as well as a distaste for the risky stunts used by the movies. Likewise to Roy's designated hero status, this is intentional.
• Fridge Brilliance: The more you look at the fantasy part of the story, the more you realise exactly how perfectly it fits a child's imagination of the story she's being told.
  • When Alexandria appears in the story as the Red Bandit's daughter, he quickly adds that she was "from a previous marriage." The existence of extra-marital sex (or even sex at all) wouldn't exist in the mind of a young child. This could be Alexandria trying to interpret this in a way that corresponds with what she knows about the world so far, or if the mentioning was added by Roy, could be a way to portray Alexandria's character as a non-bastard child or his character in a better way.
  • The scene with Alexandria stealing and eating the communion wafers seems a bit like a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, but it puts a great emphasis on Roy asking Alexandria if she's "...trying to save [his] soul." She has absolutely no idea what the wafers signify and has no idea what he's talking about. But when you think about the fact that both characters are probably Christian and that the flavor of Christianity practiced during this time would most likely believe that people who kill themselves go to Hell. Alexandria eventually helps Roy want to live again, even if she doesn't exactly understand what's going on. According to their time's standards, she does in fact save his soul.
  • When Roy narrates the Indian's backstory, the visuals depict an Indian as in the subcontinent, despite Roy's use of the words "wigwam" and "squaw" clearly referring to Indian as in Native American. However, this makes more sense when one remembers that we are seeing the story as Alexandria imagines in. Having grown up in Europe, she would of course hear the word "Indian" and think of the subcontinent, not the Native American.
  • Roy says that the Blue Bandit and his crew were hanged. Alexandria imagines their bodies as hanging from the ceiling like a chandelier, instead of as hanged with a noose.
• Fridge Horror: A meta and in-universe example. Alexandria will never see Roy again, but will likely remember him. Imagine when she's older and eventually realizes she accidentally aided someone with a suicide attempt.
• Funny Moments: Odious and the sword cane. A Black Comedy example.
  • This exchange between Alexandria and Roy:
    Black Bandit: I WILL DESTROY HIM! And every Spanish thing.
    Alexandria: I thought he was Spanish?
    Roy: [oh, shit tone] Nooooo... He was French!
  • "It says all that on that little locket?"
  • The Overly-Long Gag where we learn how everyone hates Odious because he killed their father, their brother, their wife, their prize butterfly...
• Heartwarming Moments: Meta example: one of the chief reasons this film was created was that the multi-billionare behind it wanted to film at the UNESCO World Heritage sites, giving them both the money from letting him film there, and a broad cut of publicity, showing the world how awesome these places he loved were.
  • The ending, though bittersweet. Roy's most likely permanently crippled, and the stunt that cost him his career didn't even end up in the final cut. But his legacy can never end, at least in Alexandria's mind, since she sees Roy in every stuntman in every movie. "And he's going 'mwah, mwah, mwah! Thank you, thank you, thank you very much...!'"

• Mood Dissonance: When Roy "overdoses on pills" and goes unconscious, Alexandria assumes that he is merely sleeping and starts making silly faces at him. This simply highlights the fact that Alexandria has no idea what's going on and makes it even more heartbreaking.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Stop-motion is the creepiest way to depict a fever dream.
  • Chandelier of hanging human bodies, anyone?
• Reality Subtext: An in-universe example. Roy's treatment of the Red Bandit eventually becomes heavily influenced by Roy's self loathing and his suicidal tendencies.
• Retroactive Recognition: Lee Pace would go on to do The Hobbit films.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Can a film be said to avert this and still be gorgeous? This movie has some of the best Scenery Porn ever, but every single one of those fantastic locations and impossible pieces of architecture is a real place. These scenes have minimal CGI, mostly to remove things like railings or safety wires. The result is one of the most beautiful movies ever.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Reviewers like to compare this film with The Princess Bride, without mentioning the amounts of violence and adult themes that this film had. Not to mention that the narrator of "the delightful fairy tale" wants the little girl to assist him in killing himself.
  • That said... it probably could have been rated PG-13 rather than R, as it's mostly just "dark themes" (depression/suicide, revenge, death) while the violence level isn't excessive, being mainly fantasy violence and more tragic than gorey, and there's little to no sexuality. It even has a happy ending.

For The 2013 Series

Series

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Anything Spector does that seems to be nice or caring. Does he actually care about anyone, or is he solely doing it to maintain a cover?
  • The reason he killed Bailey in the clinic. Most people would point out that he didn't want children to get hurt, which is the motive he needed to kill him since he raped and killed his sister. Others mention that those who abuse/kill children are singled out for the worst treatment while incarcerated. Most would entirely agree that Spector needed to kill Bailey so that he can't call on the guards to stop him from killing himself.
• Les Yay: DSU Gibson and Professor Reed Smith, oh so very much. And as they are Agent Scully and Kalinda there is a very specific demographic that they would appeal to. [1].
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • When Paul Spector is being reprimanded by his boss for not following protocol, the former starts mirroring the latter's gestures and words for a good two minutes.
  • In the first episode of the second series, when Spector is returning to Belfast, he sees himself on the front of a woman's newspaper as a police facial composite (as he appeared 9 years ago), and then flat out asks the woman if she thinks he looks like the man in the composite sketch. When she answers with a "maybe," he takes out a pencil and starts filling in a beard over the composite, and asks again if it looks like him. She answers with "a little bit, yeah."
• The Un-Twist: After Spector wrestles a lock of hair from Katie that she had nicked, the latter asks whose hair it is. You'd think that it was Sarah Kay's, as Spector had clipped hair from each of his victims. Spector claims that it is a lock of his mother's hair, which he washes regularly to keep fresh. By the end of the second series, it turns out... it is his mother's hair.
  • While Spector apparently did have a lock of his mother's hair, that wasn't it. He puts the lock of hair Katie in an envelope, which we later see Katie burn because it's evidence from one of the murders.
• The Scrappy: Katie, for being an unendingly smug Fille Fatale who is willingly helping out a serial killer because she has a crush on him. Granted she doesn't know exactly what he's doing, but the fact she's helping him hide evidence from the police is bad enough.

For The Video Game

Video Game

• Faux Symbolism: The Developer Commentary jokingly delves into this at one point for the conversation about the rat you need to lure with blood to get a gun. The developers start talking about Cold War powers, how the Rat represents Soviet Russia and ARID fell out of the sky like a Bald Eagle... extremely strained metaphors that have nothing to do with anything in the game.
• Fridge Brilliance: ARID shows signs of glitching early in the game. It makes her deposition onto a facility designed for repurposing (or depurposing) make a lot more sense. Interestingly enough, her inability to notice that she's 'empty' is not a glitch or error in and of itself.

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