The movies from 1990 and 2020 have their own pages.
- Alternative Character Interpretation: The witch who exclaims, "We can't possibly wipe out all of [the children]!", due to Ambiguous Syntax. Was she expressing moral reservations about conducting a mass slaughter of every child in England, or was she just worried that doing such a thing would be impossible?
- Anti-Climax Boss: Despite being described as a nigh-undetectable race capable of horrible deeds, yet never getting caught, it was apparently easy to turn all of the Witches in England into mice without the possibility of them using magic to reverse the transformation. Somewhat justified, in that the witches of the piece mainly employ potions to destroy children. The only act of magic we actually see in the book or movie is the Grand High Witch "frying" one of her subordinates. With no sign of defensive magic, turning their own potion on them makes a degree of sense.
- Complete Monster: The Grand High Witch is the ruler of the child-hating witches, and the most malevolent of them all. A vicious demon with a propensity for abusing and murdering her own underlings, the Grand High Witch has spent decades teaching her followers ways to dispose of as many children as possible. Unsatisfied with her followers' progress, the Grand High Witch schemes to wipe out every child in England by utilizing a potion to transform them into mice, then watch as they are killed by their own oblivious parents and teachers. Demonstrating this on one hapless boy, the Grand High Witch follows this up by kidnapping the main character and inflicting upon him the same fate. With a cruelty unmatched by her underlings, the Grand High Witch instills terror in everyone who knows of her, friend and foe alike.
- Esoteric Happy Ending: The book infamously ends with the boy permanently stuck as a mouse, since there's no cure for the potion. This is still portrayed as a happy ending, since this way, the boy won't outlive his grandmother, and they'll use the years they have left to track down and destroy all the other witches in the world. The two also ponder Bruno's fate. One states that his mouse-hating mother probably drowned him in a bucket, but nobody seems very disturbed by this possibility. The 1990 movie has an unabashed happy ending where the last witch, who had undergone a Heel–Face Turn, undoes the mouse spell on the protagonist and is implied to do the same to Bruno. While many were appreciative of this happier ending, Roald Dahl was infamously not.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- The story features a rodent running around in a kitchen.
- The plot is also noticeably similar to that of They Live!, except with a cartoonishly murderous Mage Species in place of greedy alien invaders. This book was published five years before They Live came out.
- When Bruno and the Narrator are sneaking around the hotel and trying to find the Narrator's grandmother after being turned into mice, they encounter the Narrator's pet mice William and Mary. Bruno asks the Narrator if they were children turned into mice, but the Narrator says no. Come an adaptation 30 years later and this is indeed the case (at least for Mary since William is Adapted Out).
- Paranoia Fuel: Any woman you encounter could be a witch, as the opening chapter emphasizes that witches look like regular people with ordinary careers. A witch could be someone you happen to encounter in a public space, your neighbor, or even the teacher reading the book itself to a class full of children.I am not, of course, telling you for one second that your teacher actually is a witch. All I am saying is that she might be one. It is most unlikely. But — and here comes the big "but" — it is not impossible.
- Signature Scene: The meeting of the witches is often considered to be the story's most iconic scene, since it's at this point where we finally see the Grand High Witch and her subordinates in their fullest forms.
- Unintentional Period Piece: The tells for witches include them hiding their clawed hands with Conspicuous Gloves, hiding their bald heads with wigs (and having sores from wearing them directly on their scalps) and squared-off feet without toes that they cram into pointed shoes anyways. While the Conspicuous Gloves would still be strange, they might play bare hands off as long acrylic nails which are fashionable in the 2020s (and were before in Black and Latino communities). They wouldn't be obligated to wear wigs to maintain hair and could just write off their hairlessness as a byproduct of chemo or other causes for hair loss that they could state aren't anyone's business—and wig technology has advanced if they did want to, with wig caps and other liners. As for pointed shoes and high heels, many shoes past the 80s for women have been practical and squared off at the end anyways. Can't do anything about the blue saliva, though. Just have to eat a lot of mouth-staining candies.
