- Americans Hate Tingle: The film failed at the U.S. box-office, grossing only $7.2 million. However, in Europe, it did exceptionally well, contributing to its overall worldwide gross of over $77 million.
- Anvilicious: Jorge's reason for hiding the book is because it promotes comedy, which might cause monks to disrespect scripture.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Adso's vision, although it delivers a hint.
- Complete Monster:
- 1986 film: Inquisitor Bernardo Gui is the sadistic fanatic whose savagery forced William of Baskerville to leave the Inquisitors. Roaming the countryside, Gui takes those he believes might be "heretics" or witches and tortures them into confessions before burning them alive. Arriving at the abbey, Gui tortures the hunchback Salvatore into a confession, accusing him, an innocent peasant girl, and another man of witchcraft to burn them while also jumping at the chance to declare William the murderer and kill him as well.
- 2019 miniseries: Bernard Gui is far more vicious than his literary counterpart. A smug, ruthless, misogynistic fanatic, Gui is a notorious inquisitor, known for burning heretics at the stake. Having been involved in putting down the Dulcinian uprising years previously, Gui violated the law by personally igniting co-leader Marghererita's pyre. Dispatched by Pope John XXII to be his representative at the theological debate held at the Benedictine monastery. En route upon encountering two suspected Dulcinians, a man and woman, he has the man's throat slit, then drags the woman naked to Pietranera. Suspecting heretics amongst the town's population, Gui ordered his solders to "kill them all, God will recognize his own", massacring everyone, including the children, climaxing with him burning the woman upon the stake. At the monastery and tasked to investigate the murders, Gui fixed his attention on Remigio of Varagine, having his men torture him into confessing to be a former Dulcinian. Upon discovering an Occitan war refugee, Gui accused the poor girl of being a witch and ordered her to be burned, despite knowing she was innocent.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- William uses "Merlin's beard!" long before Harry Potter.
- Christian Slater being cast as a virginal monk is Questionable Casting in hindsight, as this was just a few years before his breakout as an 80s bad boy heartthrob in Heathers, etc.
- Magnificent Bastard (film): Jorge De Burgos is a blind, elder monk wholly convinced that mankind's salvation lies in complete obedience to God. Abhorring the ancient literature contained in the labyrinth beneath the abbey for what he perceives as its blasphemous humor, Jorge uses a book with a poisoned page to kill several monks who had knowledge of the secret library, which prompts the Abbey to call for the Franciscan William of Baskerville to investigate the mysterious deaths. When William eventually discovers the library, Jorge tries to trick William into touching the poisoned book, and when this fails, eats the poisoned pages himself and sets fire to the library, ensuring that Christianity's hold over Western society would continue and only start to loosen in almost 200 years.
- Nightmare Fuel: The scene where the two monks and the unnamed peasant girl are sentenced to death by burning after being unfairly condemned as witches. It is slow enough to allow the viewers to feel their despair at the inevitability of their fate. Probably not all that different from what eventually happened in the book where it all took place off-screen.
- Questionable Casting: Sean Connery plays a professional celibate. According to the movie director, he initially turned down Connery for this exact reason, until Sean Connery forced himself into his office, and demanded to read just one line. And then he accepted.
- Slow-Paced Beginning: The first hundred pages of the book go at a mindbogglingly easygoing and unhurried pace (at least compared to other murder mystery novels), with lots of obscure references and other diversions unconnected to any part of the whodunnit itself. Umberto Eco wrote a Word of God postscript in part to clarify that the hard-to-get-into beginning was a deliberate choice, in which he gave a Take That, Audience!.Eco: Those first hundred pages are like a penance or initiation, and if someone does not like them, so much the worse for him. He can stay at the foot of the mountain.
- The Woobie: The unnamed peasant girl. A poor, nameless wretch who is sexually exploited by Salvatore and Remigio in exchange for scraps, before being arrested as a witch to face torture and execution, despite, as Adso says, being the only true innocent in the whole affair.
