History Film / FirstBlood

* CorruptCop: A Sheriff does not have the legal authority to kick anyone out of a town. A town is public property that any citizen is allowed to enter. The only way this could happen is if someone commits a major offense. When asked, Teasle is unable to invoke any specif law against Rambo
-->'''Rambo: ''' Is there a law against eating here?\\
'''Teasle:''' Yes there is! ME!\\
'''Rambo:''' Why are you pushing? I didn't do anything to you.\\
'''Teasle:''' What did you say?? I ask the questions around here! Look, we don't want your type around here, you know, derelicts, bums. Besides you wouldn't like it here anyway. This is a quiet town, some say even boring, and the people in this town pay me to keep it that way.

** Possibly almost all of the cops, especially Galt and Teasle, due to being prejudiced against drifters because of their own rules, and their mistreatment of inmates.

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: Teasle meekly defends himself that if a prisioner is being brutalized by ''his deputies'', the prisioner should come directly to him to present a complaint. Astute viewers may wonder how was Rambo supposed to file a complaint from his cell while being guarded by the very people who are mistreating him, or why would he trust the man who just locked him up for the crime of walking through a town, but Teasle is entirely correct. Resisting arrest and/or escaping detention is a crime even if you're being beaten, mistreated and even tortured by law enforcement.

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: Averted, believe it or not. Rambo and Teasle's exchange is ''factually'' true and everything Teasle does is completely legal. In almost every country on earth, let alone the USA, police can stop and detain you for very little reason and the burden of proof is ridiculously lenient, not to mention actual oversight is basically non existent. Even the actually charge of vagrancy levied agains Rambo (that is to be homeless/unemployed, a law created during segregation, mostly as an excuse to target black people whoses chances of both those things were difficult to come by) it's literally true, irregardles of Teasle's reasons for enforcing them are just being a petty asshole. Also, Teasle is a Sheriff, not a policeman, an important distinction since Sheriffs are elected officials with considerably more autonomy and even less oversight.
-->'''Rambo:''' "Is there some law that says I can't get something to eat here?"
-->'''Teasle:''' "Yeah. ''Me''."
** On another ocasion Teasle meekly defends himself that if a prisioner is being brutalized by ''his deputies'', the prisioner should come directly to him to present a complaint. Astute viewers may wonder how was Rambo supposed to file a complaint from his cell while being guarded by the very people who are mistreating him, or why would he trust the man who just locked him up for the crime of walking through a town, but Teasle is entirely correct. Resisting arrest and/or escaping detention is a crime even if you're being beaten, mistreated and even tortured by law enforcement.

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: This should probably go without saying, but a Sheriff does not have the legal authority to kick anyone out of a town. A town is public property that any citizen is allowed to enter. The only way this could happen is if someone commits a major offense and is found guilty in court. Granted this is [[DirtyCop Teasle]] we're talking about so this is probably the case of an InvokedTrope, as this exchange suggests:

* DarkerAndEdgier: The first film is considerably bleaker in tone than the sequels that followed it (with the exception of [[Film/RamboLastBlood Last Bood]]). Focusing less on action, and more on the grim, psychological aspects.

* BerserkButton: Teasle's always glad to drive drifters to the edge of town closest to their destination, but God help the drifter who dares come back and test his patience.

*** And then completely subverted when Teasle tries to call the chopper back after Galt's death, only to be told by the sheriff station that the pilot refuses to do so.

** Supposedly, the Christmas decorations were already up when they began shooting, and they left them both for the ironic quality and to wordlessly remind the viewer that Rambo is on the lam in a wife beater and jeans during a very cold time of the year.
* DirtyCop: Possibly almost all of the cops, especially Galt and Teasle, due to being prejudiced against drifters because of their own rules, and their mistreatment of inmates.

* DriverFacesPassenger: An Army soldier does this when Rambo steals his truck, prompting Rambo to remind him to look at the road.
* DudeWheresMyRespect: It is implied (and the director's commentary mentions) that part of the reason Teasle is so hateful towards Rambo is because of the Korean War (where he served) being pretty much forgotten by the American people while Rambo (a UsefulNotes/VietnamWar vet) is a symbol of the controversial and easily remembered war. Explicit in the novel.
** Not to mention Rambo himself:
-->'''Rambo:''' "Back there I could fly a gunship, I could a drive a tank, I was in charge of a million dollar equipment; back here, I can't even hold a job PARKING CARS!"

* {{Fauxshadow}}: Teasle asks Trautman if he'd give Rambo a kiss or blow his brains out, foreshadowing the original ending.

* HeWhoFightsMonsters: Teasle serves as a HeroAntagonist to capture fugitive-from-justice Rambo, but internally just to prove that Korean War vets such as Teasle are more badass than Vietnam War vets such as Rambo and to avenge the death of Art Galt, who's a despicable character to begin with, accidentally killed by Rambo. In general, despite doing his hardest to uphold the law and bring in ''his'' brand of justice, it turned him into a viciously prejudiced DirtyCop and RabidCop in order to do so in his view.
* HeroicBreakdown: Rambo has one of these when Trautman confronts him in the sheriff's office and he tearfully laments about how he was one of the best soldiers of his time, and as soon as he returned to the U.S., he gets treated as a HeroWithBadPublicity worse than trash and can't even find a job or a decent meal.

** Teasle plays this role completely straight in the novel to a point he is revealed to be the true hero.
* HollywoodHealing: Averted. Rambo gives each of the deputies an incapacitating, but non-lethal injury. Each are in excruciating pain and are out of action for the rest of the movie.
** Played somewhat straight with Rambo who suffers a multitude of significant injuries throughout the film. However, it is lampshaded by Trautman that he has been trained to ignore pain and fight on.

* IDidWhatIHadToDo: {{Lampshaded}} by Rambo just before his HeroicBreakdown:
-->'''Col. Trautman''': You did everything to make this private war happen. You've done enough damage. This mission is over, Rambo. Do you understand me? This mission is over! Look at them out there! Look at them! If you won't end this now, they will kill you. Is that what you want? It's over Johnny. It's over!\\

--> '''Teasle:''' I did my job, Dave, I booked him for vagrancy and resisting arrest.

* JerkassHasAPoint: While the manhunt is driven by Teasle's dislike of Vietnam vets and Rambo's AccidentalMurder of Galt, he is not wrong that Rambo should not be let off that easy after committing what Teasle thought was first-degree murder (Rambo was also responsible for destruction of property).
--> '''Teasle:''' Now don't give me any of that crap Trautman. Do you think Rambo was the only guy who had a tough time in Vietnam? He killed a police officer for Christ's sake!

** However, there is one fact that can mostly be agreed with Teasle, though in his case he is RightForTheWrongReasons, that Rambo is a dangerous individual who is a threat to public safety.

* MadeOfIron: Averted. While Rambo is able to fight through his many injuries he is shown reacting to pain and the many injuries he suffers do add up throughout the movie. The flashback to the ColdBloodedTorture he endured in Vietnam shows him screaming in agony and still having the scars.
** Completely averted with the cops Rambo injures. They’re in extreme pain as John delivers each blow and are essentially out of service for the rest of the movie.

* MuggingTheMonster: The [[MildlyMilitary National Guardsmen]] (who are just [[PunchClockHero average Joes who never expected to be called into service in their quiet town]]) fire wildly at Rambo's general direction while chasing him down, [[MilesGloriosus hooting and hollering like 19th century cowboys...]] until he returns fire, nearly hitting ''every single one of them'', scaring them into cover. They're so terrified that they refuse to even peek out of cover.

* OnlySaneMan: Mitch Rogers, the young red-haired cop, is the only one to express dismay when Galt starts messing with Rambo. He's the lowest ranking officer, though, so no one listens to him. For his part, he does get off lighter than the rest of the cops, as Rambo disables Mitch by simply stabbing him in a non-vital area (the thigh) that's mostly healed by the next time we see him.

* PetTheDog: Teasle is a police officer after all and these moments makes Teasle human and fallible. In a deleted scene, he shows remorse towards Galt's widow, who's grieving over Galt's corpse, and attempts to apologize to a deputy's wife for her husband's Rambo-induced injuries. He then justified his manhunt by listing out the devastation Rambo caused, ranging from his deputies' incapacitation to Galt's widow's grief. In the bar scene, he has a civil talk with Trautman (even started his talk with him by apologizing for being "out of line") after thinking Rambo was killed by the National Guard, confessing his desire to kill Rambo himself to him. In a deleted part of this scene, at the beginning of the scene, he returned the gesture of being congratulated for Rambo's "death," while at the end of the scene, he then offered Trautman a ride to the airport. During the manhunt, when Orval was wounded, he tends to Orval's wounds and then when Deputy Balford was wounded by a booby trap, he freed Balford. Also, just before his final showdown with Rambo, he alerts the townspeople to get off the streets and hide in their homes to be away from danger when Rambo arrives.
** According to the DVD's Survival Mode easter egg trivia, Teasle's resume in his profile included being a little league coach.
** This is lessened, however, in a deleted scene involving an argument with Kern where Teasle tries to justify his treatment of Rambo, claiming that he "tried to do him a favor" and treated him like "one of (his) neighbor's kids" (likely referring to Teasle's initial civil and jovial welcome to Rambo while trying to escort him out of town and trying to hold back his IrrationalHatred of Rambo being a 'Nam vet while being civil with him, before Rambo pushed his BerserkButton by purposely returning to town that prompts him to arrest and mistreat him out of said irrational hatred):
---> '''Teasle:''' I tried to do him a favor, I treated him like he was one of my neighbor's kids.
** However, the novel's depiction of the character has more PetTheDog moments than the movie's depiction and was more of a JerkWithAHeartOfGold in a way.

* ReusableLighterToss: After knocking over some fuel pumps with his stolen truck, Rambo tosses a lighter on the puddle of gas.

* ShellShockedVeteran: One of the most famous depictions of post-traumatic stress disorder in film. Rambo was a POW in the Vietnam War who endured ColdBloodedTorture at the hands of the NVA, and is the SoleSurvivor of his unit (he learns at the beginning the only other survivor is dead). He ends up abused in police custody, bringing all his memories of the war back, which soon includes a memory of said torture that triggers an extreme fight-or-flight response, setting off the action.

* JustForFun/SurprisinglySimilarCharacters: Downplayed, but this movie have some connections to the ComicBook/{{Batman}} mythos mostly through the film's characters.
** For starters, the BigBad Sheriff Will Teasle shares traits with Detective Harvey Bullock. Both characters are FatBastard {{Jerkass}} {{Dirty Cop}}s who carry a grudge against TheHero of their respective franchises due to their backgrounds. Teasle is basically Bullock as a redneck sheriff of a small town instead of a FatSlob detective of Gotham City.
** TheDragon Art Galt [[DecompositeCharacter also]] shared traits with Bullock for being a FatBastard {{Jerkass}} DirtyCop, however, Galt is more villainous and irredeemable then Teasle and Bullock combined, but being less civilized and having a care-free attitude to his barbaric actions can be akin to that of Bullock being a FatSlob in comics. In a twisted way, Galt mistreating inmates back in the station to him is like [[DonutMessWithACop Bullock's love to scarf down donuts in the precinct]]. Galt is more in line however, with the likes of crooked GCPD officers Arnold Flass (for having a chummy attitude towards his corrupt actions such as beating up someone) [[CompositeCharacter and]] Branden (due to his AxCrazy approach whilst on a manhunt) from ''ComicBook/BatmanYearOne''.
** State Police Captain Dave Kern shares traits with TheCommissionerGordon, both of them are a ReasonableAuthorityFigure who acts as superiors to the FatBastard {{Jerkass}} {{Dirty Cop}}s and unlike them is respectful of the heroes in contrast to Teasle's and Bullock's InspectorJavert. [[HilariousInHindsight Interestingly enough]], Kern's actor Bill [=McKinney=] would later guest star in an [[Recap/TheAdventuresOfBatmanAndRobinE13Showdown episode]] of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' as the voice of ComicBook/JonahHex.
** Trautman [[DecompositeCharacter also]] counts as TheCommissionerGordon due to having the heroes to help them on missions and trying to convince the InspectorJavert characters to stop persecuting the heroes. Trautman also shared traits with Alfred Pennyworth, due to acting as the heroes' MoralityChain and ParentalSubstitute to confide to after suffering a DarkAndTroubledPast. This parallel is more meaningful when Alan Oppenheimer [[TheOtherDarrin stood in]] for Trautman's live-action actor Richard Crenna for the cartoon adaptation ''WesternAnimation/RamboTheForceOfFreedom'' and later on get to voice Pennyworth in ''WesternAnimation/SupermanBatmanPublicEnemies''.
** Rambo himself can have parallels with Batman himself. Both heroes have a DarkAndTroubledPast due the loss of their close ones with Batman losing his parents to be of that of Rambo being the SoleSurvivor of his unit. The losses they faced are what made them who they are. Rambo's initial antagonists to be law enforcement in this movie is similar to how Batman's early opposition in his origins were the GCPD as shown in ''ComicBook/BatmanYearOne'' before he was able to convince the police with Gordon's help that he wasn't their enemy. Also, in this movie, Rambo tries to [[ThouShaltNotKill avoid killing anyone, much like Batman's well-known no-killing rule when taking down criminals]].
** Additionally and ironically, as a note for another Batman connection, one of the National Guardsmen who pursues Rambo was Creator/BruceGreenwood, who would later voice the Caped Crusader himself in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanUnderTheRedHood'', ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'' and the latest ''WesternAnimation/BatmanGothamByGaslight''.
*** Also, Chris Mulkey, who plays Deputy Ward in this film, would later be the voice of super-villain Shriek in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond''.

** It is also part of the lyrics of "It's a Long Road".

* UnbuiltTrope: Thanks to his {{Actionized Sequel}}s, Rambo is shorthand for a badass soldier who [[OneManArmy takes on whole armies and wins]] [[InvincibleHero while suffering only minor setbacks at best]], and when the average person thinks of his films, they think ultra-patriotic war movies in which the enemies of America are destroyed. With this, it's [[SequelDisplacement easy to forget]] that the first film, ''Film/FirstBlood'', was an anti-war film protesting the degree to which veterans of UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar were dehumanized and mistreated. Rambo here is a homeless man unable to keep a job thanks to his now-useless skill set, who is tormented daily by PTSD from the war and the fact that he is the only survivor of his squad (he learns right at the start that the only other survivor he knew of is dead), but keeps his feelings bottled up just to function as a human being. His enemies are not a foreign army, but local small-town policemen who abuse him for no good reason, symbolizing the civilian mistreatment of veterans returning from the war and how veterans felt about it.\\

* CruelMercy: Teasle is spared from Rambo's wrath, but is left badly wounded and most likely a cripple. Also, it's implied things will go dark for him once the reason why Rambo went on a rampage through town in the first place gets out in the open.

* KnightOfCerebus: Way before the inclusion of the far more disturbing and vile Tint in the fourth film, Galt fulfilled this role of sorts due to being more vile and lawless than Teasle through his cruelty towards Rambo and then his attempt to kill him in retribution for assaulting him after Galt tormented him. The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsjiRaVJK3A music]] that plays during his intense scene when he tries to shoot Rambo in cold blood before meeting his death reflects on this trope Galt borders on and can feel like it came straight out of a horror film.

* LighterAndSofter: In the novel, Rambo kills at least a dozen people. In the movie he kills three people at most -- one guy who falls out of a helicopter when Rambo throws a rock at it in self-defense and two cops who he ran off the road (and who quite possibly survived).

* {{Expy}}: The movie's depiction of Teasle has more in common with the Franchise/{{Batman}} comic book character Harvey Bullock than the novel's version of the character. As both Teasle and Bullock are a FatBastard {{Jerkass}} DirtyCop who are willing to antagonize and arrest TheHero due to their backgrounds they loathed (Rambo is a Vietnam vet and a drifter which are both things Teasle despised, while Batman is a costumed vigilante who Bullock views as a freak). However, instead of a FatSlob as Bullock was to a point he is compared to an unmade bed, Teasle was at least [[AdaptationalAttractiveness clean and well-groomed]].
* EvenEvilHasStandards: When Rambo first escapes from the station, Galt was about to open fire until Teasle stops him as Galt would have harmed an InnocentBystander while shooting at Rambo. Then during the initial manhunt, when Teasle hears the gunshots from Galt's attempt to personally execute Rambo out of spite, he tries to radio Galt to remind him that Rambo is to be taken in alive as part of police protocol. Even after Galt was killed and Teasle vows to get his revenge, he still wanted Rambo to be taken in alive, only this time it is a case of TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou as he wants to be the one to deliver the final blow against him. Also see PetTheDog below for more information.

* CoolGuns: Rambo variously uses an M16 assault rifle and an M60 Machine Gun.

* Foreshadowing: in his final breakdown Rambo comments that he can fly a helicopter gunship and drive a tank, something he does in the next Rambo films.

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: A minor example. In his climactic speech, Rambo mentions that, upon returning to the United States, he was met with protesters at the airport who were protesting HIM, even spitting at/on him. While it's ''possible'' that some incidents like this did occur in real life, they had to have been few and far between (soldiers flew home individually on regular commercial flights, so protestors who were willing to go there would have had to wait around the terminal for quite a while to find some soldiers to harass). Most anti-war protesters of the time sympathized with the soldiers sent to fight in Vietnam because they knew the majority of returning soldiers were draftees who had no choice. In fact, many returning soldiers became protesters themselves. There's an entire book, [[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spitting-Image-Memory-Legacy-Vietnam/dp/0814751474 Spitting Image]], by Jerry Lembcke, looking at this specific idea - Lembcke concludes that, as far as he can tell, it ''never'' happened in real life.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The opening of the movie shows Rambo walking down the road, by himself, as a huantingly somber instrumental version of "It's a Long Road" plays in the background, followed immediately by Rambo finding out that the last man from his former special ops unit is dead, to which he simply walks off with barely a word. This tells us everything we need to know about Rambo: he's a lone soldier, on his own without friends, family or purpose now that the war is over.

Thanks to it being based on an anti-war novel from the early '70s and being produced and released during the tail end of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era, ''First Blood'' is notable for [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness being completely different in tone, genre and feel from the rest of the franchise]], being an anti-war psychological thriller that deals with the hefty subject of the dehumanization and mistreatment of Vietnam War veterans, complete with a famous speech on the subject. The OneManArmy Rambo is known as today would not surface until the ActionizedSequel ''Film/RamboFirstBloodPartII'' put him back in the battlefield (thus [[BrokenAesop missing the point of this film]] a considerable amount).

Thanks to it being based on an anti-war novel from the early '70s and being produced and released during the tail end of the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era, ''First Blood'' is notable for [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness being completely different in tone, genre and feel from the rest of the franchise]], being an anti-war psychological thriller that deals with the hefty subject of the dehumanization and mistreatment of Vietnam War veterans, complete with a famous speech on the subject. The OneManArmy Rambo is known as today would not surface until the ActionizedSequel ''Film/RamboFirstBloodPartII'' put him back in the battlefield (and thus [[BrokenAesop rather missing the point of this film]]).