History Film / ApocalypseNow

* AsskickingEqualsAuthority:

%%* JurisdictionFriction

* UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar: The TropeCodifier for the [[SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism cynical take on the war]].

* DecapitationPresentation: [[spoiler: This happens to Chef.]]

** Kurtz throughout his appearances. Brando himself wanted this for aesthetic effect, claiming that it suited the character of Kurtz because he's a person who is flirting with darkness and the primal instinctual fears of humanity. Brando wanted Kurtz to look like a man who is going to be consumed by the darkness, but he has enough mastery over it to (semi)safely dwell in it.

* CoolHat: Colonel Kilgore's cavalry hat serves to enhance his mystique.

*** Willard's justified his action from the hypocrisy of the crew [[ObligatoryWarCrimeScene that did this in the first place]] in his following monologue.

* ObligatoryWarCrimeScene:
%%** The massacre of the family on the river sampan, done because the cast wanted a "My Lai" scene.
** During the raid on the VC compound, three women in civilian clothing run past the LZ guard and throw a previously concealed grenade into a medivac chopper marked with the Red Cross, a violation of both the Hague Convention of 1907 and the Geneva Convention.

* LargeAndInCharge: Kurtz, chieftain of the Montagnards, looks like a juggernaut. [[HitlerCam Angled camera shots]] and some body doubles reinforce this appearance. Brando weighed more than 210 pounds at the moment of filming.

* BaldOfAwesome[=/=]BaldOfEvil: Brando [[DyeingForYourArt shaved his head]] to play Kurtz.

* BreakThemByTalking: When Willard is captured by Kurtz the Colonel asks a simple question, "Are you an assassin?" Willard's response is that he is a soldier. Kurtz mocks Willard by saying the following, "You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to pick up the check."

* BreakThemByTalking: When Willard is captured by Kurtz the Colonel asks a simple question, "Are you an assassin?" Willard's response is that he is a soldier. Kurtz mocks Willard by saying the following, "You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks."

Leading up to its release, Coppola workshopped an extensive number of cuts of the film that ran from 139 minutes to around 3 hours, the latter being its runtime when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, the first-ever instance of the festival showing an unfinished work in competition[[note]]a ballsy move even at the time that was only approved because Coppola's prior film ''Film/TheConversation'' had won high honors at the festival[[/note]] and further awarding one the UsefulNotes/PalmeDOr. While it opened to mixed reviews, ''Apocalypse Now'' [[VindicatedByHistory is now firmly considered one of the all-time greats]]. It's packed to the gills with famous scenes and quotes as well as a common choice for not only the definitive anti-war movie but the definitive cinematic depiction of war not as battle, or even [[WarIsHell as purgatory]], but as an [[SurrealHorror illogical fever dream]].

* ThereAreNoTherapists: The mental state that many of the characters are in is deeply troubling. No mention is ever made of therapists, even in the off-hand, and the movie is filled with gung-ho, traumatized, and arguably sociopathic soldiers that could sorely use one. Upon seeing the unhinged BloodKnight insanity Kilgore lives by, Willard laughs at the notion that Kurtz is any sort of special evil if goons like him are fighting the war on a daily basis. Speaking of Colonel Kurtz, the events of the entire movie could have been avoided had someone sat down with Kurtz and helped him deal with the trauma of the deeply horrific things he had dealt with during the war. Even more troubling is that they send Willard, a recently divorced soldier, and a clearly traumatized veteran, to go out and kill Kurtz. All of these factors should give you an idea of how god forsaken the field of therapy was in professional military settings back in that time period.

** Calling in an airstrike with ''napalm'' to kill some VC hiding in the jungle. A staple of the Vietnam War.

* TheUnfettered: The movie's central concept: exactly how effective a person with no restrictions can be, and how much of a monster. The answer to the latter: a lot.
* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: The men sent to escort Willard to Nha Trang do not appear shocked when they find a 'wetwork' officer naked, hungover and covered in his own blood.

* VisualPun: Invoked by the young hot-blooded Frenchman in the plantation by breaking an egg: "The white leaves, the yellow stays".
* VisualTitleDrop: Textually. The words "OUR MOTTO: APOCALYPSE NOW" can be seen painted on a wall behind the Montagnards in the scene outside Kurtz's temple when Chef tries to convince Willard to leave. Supposedly this was to satisfy copyright requirements, since the movie lacked opening credits.
* VitriolicBestBuds: Chef and Clean. They seem to be pretty close, despite bickering fairly often. Chef is [[ManlyTears extremely distraught]] when Clean is killed.

* WarriorPoet: Or so Kurtz's followers think he is (the Photojournalist calls him "a poet warrior in the classic sense"). The reality is that while he does have some poetic flair to his words and he is a good soldier, he has gone insane and has lost all decent sense of restraint.

** The boat crew are not entirely thrilled with the assignment of escorting Willard up river; the Chief in particular. And when the Chief is dying with a spear through his chest, he tries [[TakingYouWithMe to impale Willard on it]] before finally succumbing.
** Chef is appalled when he learns that the mission the entire time has been to kill an American officer. However they are now so deep in the jungle that they have no choice to stick together until the mission is complete.

** The U.S military is sending their own assassin to kill one of their own Colonels gone rogue. The movie has Americans killing ''each other'' while trying to fight this damned war. It isn't like those resources couldn't be used fighting the Vietnamese enemy, talk about skewed priorities.

* WeHaveBecomeComplacent: Kurtz can be viewed as a rational, if brutal, character; he realizes how the war can be won but his commanders refuse to see things the way he does. His job as a soldier is winning the war, not being nice. Naturally the film leaves plenty of room for other interpretations such as TheUnfettered and KnightTemplar.

-->'''Willard:''' I don't see any "method" at all, Sir.

** In the theatrical, Redux, and Final Cut versions, the photojournalist tells Willard that he's getting out of the compound and that's the last we see of him. In the workprint, [[spoiler:he gets shot to death by Captain Colby, who was largely cut out of both versions. Willard promptly kills him by throwing a knife to his chest]].
* WhatNowEnding: Right after Willard [[spoiler: kills Kurtz]], he has a ThousandYardStare, he makes his way back to the army, and the movie just... ends.
%%* WhyIsntItAttacking: "Why the fuck aren't they attacking?!"

** Kilgore praises a mortally wounded VC soldier who had killed a lot of American allies and declares that he will give him water despite the opposition to his doing so. Played with in that Kilgore gets [[AttentionDeficitOohShiny Distracted by the Surfing]] and forgets to actually give the man any water.

** Colonel Kurtz praises his Vietnamese enemy, saying that due to their unfettered resolve in doing whatever it took to win that they were stronger than the Americans. He goes so far as to say if he had 10 divisions of men like his enemies, expressly the ones that were willing to butcher ''children'' to send a message, then he believes the Vietnam War could be won with alarming speed.

->''"The horror... the horror..."''

* SpiritualSuccessor: Commonly compared to ''Film/AguirreTheWrathOfGod'' of seven years prior, another movie about the journey of white military conquerors in a journey down the RiverOfInsanity and their eventual mental and physical self-destruction, and which, on a meta level, was [[TroubledProduction almost as much of a nightmare to film]] as ''Apocalypse'' was.

* SurrealHorror: The film's iconic depiction of war: not as battle, or even [[WarIsHell as purgatory]], but as a nightmarish, illogical fever dream a la ''Film/AguirreTheWrathOfGod'', where the biggest threat to American soldiers is each other, commanding officers ignore the war they're fighting to [[SkewedPriorities film documentaries and go surfing]], and [[RiverOfInsanity the farther down the river they go]], [[SanitySlippage the crazier everyone gets]]. "The horror" indeed.
* SycophanticServant: Dennis Hopper's photojournalist character. He comes and goes with no rhyme or reason; apparently he was chronicling the Colonel's work for posterity. But even he knows the world won't listen to a burnout like him, and demands that Willard return and tell everyone the truth.
* TakingYouWithMe: Chief's last-gasp attempt to impale Willard on the spear sticking out of his chest.

* TellMeAboutMyFather: Inverted, Kurtz asks Willard to tell the true story to the Colonel's son.
* ThereAreNoTherapists: The mental state many of the characters are in is deeply troubling. No mention is ever made of therapists, even in the off hand, and the movie is filled with gung-ho, traumatized and arguably sociopathic soldiers that could sorely use one. Upon seeing the unhinged BloodKnight insanity Kilgore lives by, Willard laughs at the notion that Kurtz is any sort of special evil if goons like him are fighting the war on a daily basis. Speaking of Colonel Kurtz, the events of the entire movie could have been avoided had someone sat down with Kurtz and helped him deal with the trauma of the deeply horrific things he had dealt with during the war. Even more troubling is that they send Willard, a recently divorced soldier, and a clearly traumatized veteran, to go out and kill Kurtz. All of these factors should give you an idea of how god forsaken the field of therapy was in professional military settings back in that time period.

** The theatrical cut ends with StuffBlowingUp while the credits roll. This was widely interpreted as an air strike called in by Willard.

** The ''Redux'' has no credits, adds almost an hour of footage and alters the order or pace of some scenes. Notably it puts back the French plantation scene, a [[{{Exposition}} contextual encounter]] that Coppola grudgingly had to cut due to problems with the illumination.
** The ''Final Cut'' uses most scenes from the ''Redux'' cut, but is shorter than the ''Redux'' version due to the removal of two ''Redux'' scenes including the outpost scene and the scene where Kurtz read the Vietnam reports on Time Magazine while Willard is imprisoned. This cut was the only modern version of the film to add ending credits.
* TheRemnant: In the alternate cut, Willard and the crew arrive at a plantation run by a large French family who have remained long after France abandoned Vietnam.
* RiverOfInsanity: Which was [[TropeCodifier codified]] by Literature/HeartOfDarkness. The river is also one of time travel, as the soldiers experience the history of Vietnam ''backwards''.
* RuleOfSymbolism: The sacrificial ritual of killing the ox is intercut with Willard killing Kurtz, stressing the ritual nature of the assassination.

** The boat crew pretty much go through this the further they go up the river. Though they all go steadily crazy and traumatized in their own ways. [[spoiler: With the exception of Clean. Who is the first to be killed before he could experience any lasting trauma.]]

** Willard concludes that the Viet Cong will be victorious because "Charlie's idea of great R&R was cold rice and a little rat meat" during a USO show.

* SecretlyDying: The photojournalist hints that this may be Kurtz's case. A nod to the the original source left ambiguous in the film and discussed by Coppola during interviews.
* SendInTheSearchTeam: More like send in the assassination team. The American Command has decided that Colonel Kurtz's continued operations in Laos and Cambodia are a threat to the war effort and want Willard to terminate Kurtz's command by any means necessary.
* ShadowArchetype: Is Willard, in the last analysis, any better than Kurtz? Probably not. Kurtz points this out during his haunting monologue to Willard. Can Willard judge Kurtz when he is basically the same as him?

* ShirtlessScene: Sheen spends a lot of the time shirtless, and is naked in the beginning. Robert Duvall, too, right in the middle of a battle. Vietnam is hot.

** Creator/JohnMilius, [[WordOfGod screenwriter of the film]] and a close friend of Coppola's (and one of the two directors Coppola tapped to finish the movie if he died - the other was Creator/GeorgeLucas), makes a fairly convincing case for the film's plot being based on ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' - the analogy works better for ''Redux'' than for the original cut.

** "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." [...] "Smelled like... victory."

** "The horror... the horror..."
* SkewedPriorities: Colonel Kilgore is annoyed with Charlie (who don't surf) because the VC are occupying a terrific beach that should be used for surfing. His DeathFromAbove air-strikes are meant to clear the zone so he can exercise his hobby, the military importance is not the issue. In fact Kilgore never would have escorted Willard and his crew there if he hadn't gotten word of a nice beach being there alongside Willard's destination.
** Kilgore is hardly the worst example. The US Military thought it was a great idea to send a small patrol boat deep into enemy territory so they could assassinate one of their own officers. This war is so god damn insane that the US military is pitting its own troops against each other, when those allocations of resources could easily be directed towards fighting the Vietnamese enemy.
** Even Kurtz gets in on it when he mocks the policy of what fighter pilots are allowed to put on their airplanes. He points out that the Air Force trains young men to drop fire on people, but they won't allow those same pilots to write the word "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene! One would think that murdering people with bombs is far more "obscene" than a simple curse word, which is probably what Kurtz is getting at.

* MotiveRant: Kurtz's monologue suggests he suffered a breakdown after Vietcong guerrillas came into a native village and hacked off the left arms of South Vietnamese children who had been inoculated against polio by Kurtz's special forces. This epitomized everything that was going wrong (in Kurtz's point of view) with the American war effort: over-reliance on science; cultural ignorance; blundering efforts at "humanitarianism" to win over the Vietnamese, which has the exact opposite effect. Nothing short of total destruction will work.

* NewMeat: Willard comments that the members of the boat are "mostly just kids. Rock 'n' rollers with one foot in their graves"
* NoAnimalsWereHarmed: Averted with the ox. However, in that case it was a RealLife sacrifice that Copolla filmed and took no part in.

** Kurtz's backstory resembles that of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_B._Rheault Colonel Robert B. Rheault]], a Green Beret commander involved in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_GAMMA#Capture.2C_interrogation.2C_and_killing_of_Chu_Van_Thai_Khac the execution of Chu Van Thai Khac]], a Vietnamese informant for the CIA in 1969. Rheault and several of his subordinates were arrested for murder, but the case was ultimately dismissed at the behest of military higher-ups. The phrase "terminate with extreme prejudice" entered the public discourse thanks to press coverage of this incident
** Many incidents, such as Roach killing the Vietnamese soldier caught in the wire, and the general atmosphere of the movie, come from "Dispatches", a book by reporter Michael Herr (a friend of Tim Page) describing his own experiences covering the war.

* NoodleIncident: In his narration, Willard mentioned that he'd killed six different people, and all of them had been "close enough to blow their last breath in my face." No further details are given.
* NothingIsScarier: The story Kurtz tells of the fate of children inoculated by American medics -- having their arms cut off by the Viet Cong -- is scarier and more disturbing than anything actually depicted onscreen.

** The massacre of the family on the river sampan, done because the cast wanted a "My Lai" scene.

* MirrorCharacter: Kurtz and Willard are more than a little similar and both men pick up on it right away. While Willard may not have gone beyond the pale like Kurtz did he does have some of the same big issues like becoming a BloodKnight junkie for combat, being fed up with the military command's bullshit, being deeply affected by the violence they've seen, and realizing that they are both screwed up in the head. Neither Kurtz nor Willard make excuses for what they do and freely admit to their reprehensible actions. This is one of the reasons why Kurtz take special interest in Willard whom he sees as a kindred spirit and the only one who can understand without judgement just what Kurtz is going though.
%%* MoodWhiplash: Somewhat deliberately, especially in the expanded version.

** Kurtz went over by killing four Vietnamese individuals he thought were spies, acting on his own. The military charged him with murder for that and later put a contract out on him.
* MoreDakka: The boat's machine guns exists to spray bullets everywhere.

** A particularly brutal one when Willard shoots the wounded Vietnamese woman... not because she's dying, but because he doesn't want to take her along with them, most likely to prevent interfering with his real, but [still kept] secret, mission.

---->'''Willard:''' We'd cut them in half with a machine gun and give them a band aid.
** By the end of the story, Willard views killing Kurtz as a mercy on his part. Willard realizes that the mission to kill Kurtz is bogus because the Colonel isn't really any more insane than the commanders that want him dead. However, Kurtz is a thorn in the side of the American war machine and they will inevitably send someone else after Kurtz if he doesn't do the deed. Furthermore, Willard feels that Kurtz is very broken up over what the war has [[HeWhoFightsMonsters turned him into]], and that he actually ''wants'' the death that he has been marked for, as he would rather go out like a warrior by the hand of someone who can understand him (Willard being that person) than by some faceless, passionless assassin.

* MightyWhitey: Thoroughly and surgically [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstructed]]. Kurtz was sent to Vietnam to defend it from communism. His experiences have led him to believe that the way to do this is to build a cult of personality around himself and behave like a tyrant king. His superiors have lost all control of him to the point that they order another officer to assassinate him. The American military is depicted as largely ineffectual, with senior officers designating targets not for their strategic value but because they have great surfing potential, while private soldiers spend their time getting high and shooting uselessly into the darkness. (Roach is a rare exception in that he's an incredibly good shot, but he's not exactly a model soldier. He has to be roused from sleep to kill an unseen VC soldier, simply because the guy's continual screams of abuse are annoying everyone.) To a man, the Americans hate and fear the very people that they are ostensibly there to defend, and the one time an American serviceman shows the slightest concern for the well-being of a Vietnamese person, it passes almost instantly.[[note]]Kilgore admires the bravery of the wounded VC soldier, gets all gung-ho with the ARVN soldier who thinks the man should be given dirty water to drink, shouting about how any man brave enough etc. can drink from his own water bottle, but before he even lets the man have the water he gets distracted by the presence of famous surfer dude Lance, forgets all about the VC and walks away, leaving the guy flailing in agony on the ground. The whole incident is the entire movie condensed in microcosm.[[/note]] In the end, the only solution the Americans have to the whole mess they've got themselves into is to bomb the shit out of everything.
%%* MindScrew

---->'''Willard:''' We'd cut them half with a machine gun and give them a band aid.
** By the end of the story Willard views killing Kurtz as a mercy on his part. Willard realizes that the mission to kill Kurtz is bogus because the Colonel isn't really any more insane than the commanders that want him dead. However Kurtz is a thorn in the side of the American war machine and they will inevitably send someone else after Kurtz if he doesn't do the deed. Furthermore Willard feels that Kurtz is very broken up over what the war has [[HeWhoFightsMonsters turned him into]], and that he actually ''wants'' the death that he has been marked for, he would rather go out like a warrior by the hand of someone who can understand him (Willard being that person) then by some faceless, passionless assassin.

* MightyWhitey: Thoroughly and surgically [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstructed]]. Kurtz was sent to Vietnam to defend it from communism. His experiences have led him to believe that the way to do this is to built a cult of personality around himself and behave like a tyrant king. His superiors have lost all control of him to the point that they order another officer to assassinate him. The American military is depicted as largely ineffectual, with senior officers designating targets not for their strategic value but because they have great surfing potential, while private soldiers spend their time getting baked and shooting uselessly into the darkness. (Roach is a rare exception in that he's an incredibly good shot, but he's not exactly a model soldier: he has to be roused from sleep to kill an unseen VC soldier, simply because the guy's continual screams of abuse are annoying everyone.) To a man, the Americans hate and fear the very people that they are ostensibly there to defend, and the one time an American serviceman shows the slightest concern for the well-being of a Vietnamese person, it passes almost instantly.[[note]]Kilgore admires the bravery of the wounded VC soldier, gets all gung-ho with the ARVN soldier who thinks the man should be given dirty water to drink, shouting about how any man brave enough etc. can drink from his own water bottle, but before he even lets the man have the water he gets distracted by the presence of famous surfer dude Lance, forgets all about the VC and walks away, leaving the guy flailing in agony on the ground. The whole incident is the movie in microcosm.[[/note]] In the end, the only solution the Americans have to the whole mess they've got themselves into is to bomb the shit out of everything. Which is what they do.

* MeaningfulName: The entire crew of the PBR have ones, especially when you consider [[DwindlingParty the order they die in]]. [[spoiler: Clean is the most innocent of the crew, and the first to die (right after killing the people on the sampan, no less). Next is Chief, the one who kept order, and finally Chef, the one who made their food.]] It might be seen as a metaphor for aspects of civilization slowly chipping away during their journey up the RiverOfInsanity. [[spoiler: And the only one who survives, to be led back into the world after the climactic meeting with Kurtz, is called Lance.]]

** Also, the scenes in the <i>Redux</i> version that take place on the French Plantation. None of the French dialogue is subtitled.

* BilingualBonus: Apparently Cambodian street kids ask foreign soldiers for money [[AsLongAsItSoundsForeign in Filipino]].

** Willard's prowess is shown early on in ''Redux'' when he beats some sense into a military orderly who is red-taping fuel supplies.

* BrokenAce: Kurtz was groomed to become a top military officer but something in him snapped after his first tour of 'Nam. Willard discovers by reading Kurtz' dossier that the Broken aspect was intentionally self inflicted by Kurtz. Kurtz was going to be a high ranking General in the "corporation" one day, but he was dissatisfied with being a desk jockey and decided to join the Special Forces. As a Lieutenant Colonel at the time Kurtz could have been anything he wanted, but being a Special Forces operative would put a nail in his career's coffin so deep that he would never go above Colonel. Willard is astonished that such a gifted officer would screw his own career over like that.

* CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys[=/=]VestigialEmpire: In ''Redux'', the declining might of the French Empire is discussed by the French plantation owner, who is ready to defy the defeat streak with a LastStand at his home, if it comes to that.

** Both Lt. Colonel Kilgore, and Colonel Kurtz. Probably can be considered a TropeCodifier. Kilgore loses some badassery in ''Redux''; He's pitiful when Willard steals his surfboard and his attempts to retrieve it are mocked.

* EarnYourHappyEnding: The ''Redux'' has an interesting implication of a possible "new life" for Willard, with the French girl at the colony. They have a melodramatic romance scene, and for all Willard's concerns about how he's got nothing to "settle down" to in the beginning, the fact that he has the option open of living with the woman in question gives the ''Redux'' an air of hope that the original doesn't have.

** In the ''Redux'' too, at the French plantation, Roxanne appears naked. Same as for the Playmates, it's weird, and tending slightly towards...

* FightingForAHomeland: It's why the Vietnamese are disciplined and committed while the American forces are falling apart. It's really hammered home in the Redux when Willard arrives at a vestigial French plantation who view their situation as this, because they arrived in Vietnam and set up a rubber plantation with the Vietnamese as labor, which they held for generations. As a result, they consider Indochina as their true home, as opposed to France.

** It's discussed in ''Redux'' that the Americans are following the same path of the French, despite their superior might.

* KickTheDog: Kurts gets one of these moments when he [[spoiler:has Chef, arguably the most likable, relatable character in the film, ruthlessly decapitated to prevent him from radioing for help.]] Surely there were [[DisproportionateRetribution other methods]] that would have sufficed.

* KlingonPromotion: Willard predicts he'll be fast-tracked to Major for offing the renegade Kurtz. For a brief moment, he sits at Kurtz' desk, contemplating the opportunity to take the Colonel's place as a new god-king. The throng of natives lay down their weapons and bow as he leaves the compound.

** The ''Final Cut'' uses most scenes from the ''Redux'' cut, but is shorter than the ''Redux'' version due to the removal of two ''Redux'' scenes including the outpost scene and the scene where Kurtz read the Vietnam reports on Time Magazine while Willard was imprisoned. This cut was the only modern version of the film to add ending credits.

* VisualTitleDrop: Textually. The words "OUR MOTTO: APOCALYPSE NOW" can be seen painted on a wall behind the Montagnards in the scene outside Kurtz' temple when Chef tries to convince Willard to leave. Supposedly this was to satisfy copyright requirements, since the movie lacked opening credits.

* WarriorPoet: Or so Kurtz' followers think he is (the Photojournalist calls him "a poet warrior in the classic sense"). The reality is that while he does have some poetic flair to his words and he is a good soldier, he has gone insane and has lost all decent sense of restraint.

** In both the theatrical and Redux versions, the Photojournalist tells Willard that he's getting out of the compound and that's the last we see of him. In the workprint, [[spoiler:he gets shot to death by Captain Colby, who was largely cut out of both versions. Willard promptly kills him by throwing a knife to his chest]].

** Colonel Kurtz goes out of his way to call the Commanders running the Vietnam War this. He detests how they refuse to do what is necessary to win and then lie to everyone about how everything they are doing is adequate, multiple points in the movie have Willard reading excerpts from Kurtz' dossier where it was recorded he had criticized the way the war was being run. Willard eventually comes to agree with Kurtz and wonders why the hell he is even meant to kill this man. This comes to a head in the ending where it is shown that Kurtz' records his philosophy on war as a sort of auto-biography where he famously states this:
--->'''Colonel Kurtz:''' We train young men to drop fire on people... and yet their commanders won't let them write, "Fuck!", on their airplanes because it's obscene!
*** Becomes a subversion as Colonel Kurtz abandoning all restraint has left him with no real loyalty to his country or ability to wage the war effectively. Not that his superiors were right, mind you, but Kurtz wasn't either.

* IWarnedYou: Chief decides to stop and investigate a Vietnamese boat even though Willard asks him not to. Everything goes south and an entire family ends up dead except for the mother, who's gravely wounded. Chief wants to take her to a doctor but Willard, not wanting his mission delayed, shoots her in the head before reminding Chief that he (Willard) had asked him not to stop the boat in the first place.
* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: [[spoiler: Chief gets impaled by a native spear as they near Kurtz's lair. He tries to kill Willard with it, but expires before he can do so.]]

** Similarly, Dennis Hopper was allowed to forget the script (in the odd case he had learnt it) because his quirky character worked better that way.

* GeneralRipper: Deconstructed with Colonel Kurtz, a highly decorated officer (one scene has Captain Willard going over his dossier and marveling at Kurtz's accomplishments) who one day just snapped and went native, becoming as much a cult leader as a soldier, taking his orders from only the jungle as Willard says. However, Kurtz is a unique example, being quite aware that he is in fact a General Ripper. He thinks that if America wants to win the Vietnam War, it cannot afford to "play fair" - it needs "Rippers" to do the dirty work and is acting hypocritically by pretending that the war can be won "cleanly" with nothing but a technological advantage over the enemy (and history tells us he was right, too). He basically gives his superiors two choices: either get the hell out of 'Nam, or to embrace their savagery like he has. His final actions indicate that he prefers they choose the first option, or at least doesn't believe they can afford to choose the second.

* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Kurtz refers to it as "a diamond bullet right through [his] forehead", his epiphany that rules and morality had no place in war, and indeed, the fewer the better. Once he realized his special forces were no match for the VC killer instinct, he abandoned his principles and cobbled together his own, unique "unit" out of the worst of the worst.

* HiddenDepths: Deconstructed with the playmates. Beneath the first impression of being a couple of pretty, braindead bimbos, one of them shows true enthusiasm for ornithology and the other has a deeply complicated and troubled personality... None of which the soldiers care about, as they're so tired, desperate and horny they'd much rather let the playmates babble about their lives while they dispassionately have sex with them.

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: Discussed in the plantation. The French patriarch accuses the Americans of creating the Viet Minh to undermine French imperialism, and now its offshoot is giving the Americans hell.
** Happens metaphorically with Col. Kilgore. After firebombing a village, which resulted in a furious fight in which several Americans and countless Vietnamese were killed and a helicopter was lost, all for the sake of clearing up a beach to surf on (and after poetically professing his love for the naplam used to do so!), Kilgore discovers that the naplam fires have heated up the air so that the waves have died out... [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Of course, being himself, he's mostly pissed about not getting to surf.]]
* HolidayInCambodia: South East Asia is portrayed as a war torn badland, savage and wild. Justified in that its set during the height of the Vietnam War; ''of course'' it would be a war torn badland.
** One of Kurtz's criticisms in his dossier is that the American soldiers behave like tourists. They are given short tours of duty and receive luxuries that only remind them more of what they're missing at home. They cannot hope to win against a Vietnamese enemy who can tolerate all amounts of hardship. This is demonstrated by Kilgore and his unit, who have little strategy and behave like a rampaging beach party. Kurtz's suggestion is that most of the Americans should be sent home, and replaced by a much smaller force with proper training and motivation.

* DeadlyPrank: The only time Chief's PBR comes across two other US patrol boats, the opposing crews taunt them... first by mooning and whipping up wake, but then by throwing an activated flare into the command deck, which could have easily burned someone badly on Chief's PBR. [[ScrewTheWarWerePartying Not that those other jerks cared.]]

* DownerEnding: Similar to the vast majority of American soldiers who survived the Vietnam War, Willard leaves even more deeply disturbed that when we saw him, having seen three of his allies die and the only remaining one lose his sanity.
* DramaticallyMissingThePoint: The French plantation owner poignantly accuses the Americans of this; he believes that North Vietnam is not fighting for Communism but for national independence, and the Vietnamese hate the Russians and the Chinese ''more'' than they hate the Americans:

* TheDreaded: Our first glimpses of "Walt" Kurtz come from second-hand accounts, grainy photographs, and [[ApocalypticLog a rambling, stream-of-consciousness cassette tape of Kurtz trying to document his delirium.]] When Willard is finally hauled off to see the Colonel, he's dragged into a blackened room, where the frame centers on a majestic, glowing doorway through which Kurtz is expected to pass through. --But Kurtz [[StealthHiBye is already in the room with Willard]], seated on the floor and rinsing his face, almost like a fellow prisoner.

* EliteArmy: Colonel Kurtz points out in his dossier that an Elite American Army could win the Vietnam War easily if the Commanders were willing to put in the resources to train them. He scoffs at the idea that the drug addicts and the party animals, and the soldiers that just plain don't want to be there, are going to help attain an American victory. Kurtz recommends that the American military downsize to approximately 200,000 or 300,000 highly trained soldiers and turn them loose on the Vietnamese enemy, that they could win with quality over quantity.

* EruditeStoner: Appropriately for Dennis Hopper's character; a half-crazed, stoned, hyperactive ex-hippie. He can quote Creator/RudyardKipling and Creator/TSEliot, but his riff on dialectics (and most everything else) is pure gibberish.

** Kurtz throughout his appearances. Brando himself wanted this for aesthetic effect, claiming that it suited the character of Kurtz because he's a person who is flirting with darkness and the primal instinctual fears of humanity -- Brando wanted Kurtz to look like a man who is going to be consumed by the darkness, but he has enough mastery over it to (semi) safely dwell in it.