YMMV / Vegas Vacation

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: While most of the games seen when Clark first arrives at the casino would never be allowed in a real casino (this appears to be a deliberate effort by the writers to invoke Rule of Funny), the card game War is actually allowed in certain casinos.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The Griswold kids complain that there's nothing to do in Vegas, and Ellen worries that Vegas is not a good place for children. This is right around the time Vegas went through a major re-branding campaign as a family vacation place with tons of safe things for families and kids.
• Memetic Mutation: "I won the money! The money is mine!"
• One-Scene Wonder: Sid Caesar as Mr. Ellis.
• Periphery Demographic: The film is actually quite popular with college males, thanks to the wish fulfillment subplot of a not-yet-gambling-age Rusty sneaking into casinos as "Nick Papagiorgio" and striking it big.
• Squick: Rusty admiring his sister's legs. Also, Eddie telling Vicki to show everyone the stripper move that he taught her.
• Tear Jerker: The fate of Mr. Ellis, the Keno guy. He's spent his entire life playing, has never won once and has no family. Right after he finally wins, he ends up dying. His last act on earth is letting the Griswolds have his ticket, in repayment for letting them be his family for the night.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The film is a time capsule of that regrettable time in the history of Las Vegas when, in an attempt to keep up with competition from Atlantic City on the East Coast and Native American casinos across the country, the city attempted to rebrand itself as a family vacation destination, with a wide variety of new resorts bearing theme-park style rides and theming (the MGM Grand had an entire short-lived Amusement Park). The year after the film came out in 1997 and parodied the "new" Vegas, the opening of the more adult-oriented, high-class Bellagio resort heralded the start of a backlash that saw most of these casinos de-themed and oriented back towards their bread-and-butter industry of gambling.

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