YMMV / 3 Idiots

• Catharsis Factor: Despite Virus having a change of heart after witnessing the birth of his grandson, he never got any commeupance for humiliating and causing the suicides of students. It was thus satisfying to see Raju, the one who nearly killed himself because of Virus, be the one to run away with Pia on her wedding day.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: As mentioned in Values Resonance below, Three Idiots is very popular in other Asian countries apart from its homeland India, such as the Philippines and South Korea. This includes countries where it was never officially released in theatres and so it initially spread through unofficial channels and sheer word of mouth. (Years later, it's since been put on legit channels like Netflix.) This is due to the prevalence across the continent of the cutthroat academic culture depicted in the film. Asian communities are also notorious for being tight-lipped about mental illness and suicide, with younger generations campaigning for more discussion of mental health within Asia.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The actors who played Farhan's father and Raju's mother went on to play a married couple in Rajkumar Hirani's next film PK, where PK, a Human Alien is played by Aamir Khan (Rancho) himself. Cue memes about Rancho leaving the Earth because he just witnessed Farhan's dad and Raju's mom hook up.
  • The ragging scene is very different in the book, where the literary counterparts of Raju and Farhan are very out of shape and that of Rancho is very well built, they are forced to strip naked and do poses, and the scene ends with Rancho intimidating the seniors away. The director of the movie, Rajkumar Hirani, had actually included a somewhat similar scene in his directorial debut Munnabhai M.B.B.S (the setting is a medical college instead of an engineering college and Munnabhai, played by Sanjay Dutt, is a well-built goon who poses, showing off his muscles scaring the very out of shape seniors).
• Magnificent Bastard: Ranchodas "Rancho" Shyamaldas Chanchad, later revealed as Phunsukh Wangdu, is a student at the Imperial College of Engineering whose philosophy of learning for interest and fun puts him at odds with the principal Viru Sahastrabuddhe, who believes that students should focus exclusively on scoring well in exams. His methods at rebelling against the college's doctrine include having his classmates find definitions for two made up words to call them out for their Skewed Priorities, and publicly humiliating Chatur by altering words in his Teachers Day speech to show him the dangers of memorization without understanding. He also displays a knack for creativity, re-constructing a senior's final project after Viru rejects it and later using an invention of his design to help Viru's daughter give birth during a power outage. While he is later revealed to have been an impostor, he is still able to make a name for himself in the present day, as a genius inventor and scientist who teaches in his free time and is highly sought after by many companies, including the one Chatur works at.
• Retroactive Recognition: Joy Lobo is played by Ali Fazal, who later appeared on Furious 7 and famously played Guddu on the Amazon Prime web series Mirzapur. And of course, there's Zafar from Fukrey.
• Shocking Moments: The shot of Joy's corpse hanging in his dorm room is a surprisingly dark moment in what is otherwise a light-hearted film, especially as it just came at the heels of a very lively musical number.
• Values Resonance: More than a decade later, the movie's themes of mental health hold up very well. It's specifically in the context of the (Indian) educational system breaking students' spirits to the point of high suicide rates, but it still resonates with all kinds of viewers, especially those from other Asian countries. Even more notable given its release date, as topics of mental health and suicide were nowhere near as heavily discussed in mainstream cinema as they became in the 2010s.

---