History Film / Nobody

** Hutch quickly realized that the people robbing his home only had an old gun that hadn't been fired in ages that was ''unloaded'', so even though he wanted a bit of the old ultraviolence, he couldn't do it. After all, it was just a couple of bucks.

* AssassinOutclassin: [[spoiler:David]] is given a vague warning that he may be in danger. When two thugs come to execute him, he guns them both down with a concealed shotgun.

-->'''Friend on the Radio:''' Well, now I know why you didn't do what you didn't do.

** In the end, despite being caught by the police [[spoiler:amid mass carnage]], Hutch made it all the way to the interrogation room without being frisked, since he still has a tin of tuna, a can opener and a ''live cat'' in his pockets while sitting there.

** Yulian's hacker receives Hutch's massively redacted military records and is so freaked out that she instantly packs up her gear, throws the records and Yulian and tells him that she is quitting and does not want to be paid for the job.

* CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot: The last straw for Hutch is when he finds out that the burglars who invaded his house also stole his daughter's bracelet, which leads to him hunting them down, which starts a chain of events that leads to tragedy and destruction. Eventually, long after these events have happened, he realizes that his daughter actually just dropped her bracelet under the couch.

Hutch Mansell (Odenkirk) is an underestimated and overlooked family man, husband and father of two. When a pair of thieves breaks into his suburban home one night, Hutch declines to defend himself or his family, hoping to avoid violence. This decision is met with disappointment from his son Blake (Gage Munroe) and estrangement from his wife Becca (Creator/ConnieNielsen).

* ArtisticLicenseChemistry: 1500 degrees F will not automatically make bones just disappear into ashes since cremation alone is insufficient for fully destroying skeletal bones. The process needs special grinding machine, which would raise more suspicion trying to use.

* AssholeVictim: Technically, Teddy hadn't actually ''done'' anything yet to earn the brutal beating that left him brain dead. Despite this, it's made clear that Teddy was an asshole who not even Yulian really liked all that much and it is heavily implied the girl on the bus would have been raped.
* AwesomenessByAnalysis: The reason why Hutch let the robbers go in the beginning of the movie was because he noticed that their revolver had no bullets and hadn't been fired for a while, so he was never in any real danger. Later, he's also able to track down the robbers by spotting one of their tattoos and asking around the tattoo parlors.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Sure Hutch has disposed of a Russian gangster and his mooks looking for revenge, but in the process he also burnt down TheMafiya's collective nest egg, which the other gangsters certainly would not be happy about. And not to mention that having exposed his secret identity, Hutch's family life would never be the same again. The film's ending implied that Hutch pulled some strings in the government to get out of the murder charges, but as repayment he's apparently back in "the game". Though in the latter case, its implied that such an outcome works in Hutch's favor since the events of the movie revitalized his interest.]]
* BlackComedy: Plays a lot with action movie tropes, especially surrounding ''Film/JohnWick'', but ramps up the violence and DissonantSerenity. In one example, Hutch politely dismisses the driver of a bus before fighting a bunch of drunk hooligans; both sides end up bleeding really bad, but Hutch is knocked out the window. As the guys on the bus are slow to get back up, Hutch shakes himself awake, hobbles over to the door and goes back inside for round two.

** The home invasion really shows us Hutch's pragmatism -- turning out all the lights in his home so the assault team would have to navigate in the dark, ambushing them one by one, using a baseball bat to knock them down and then break it so it becomes a pair of deadly stakes, taking a kitchen knife to quietly kill two more, using the mercenaries' firearms against them, and throwing scalding hot water from a tea kettle into one poor mook's face.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Very early, a montage is used to establish how mundane and repetitive Hutch's daily routine is. [[spoiler: The only slightly odd part is that each morning, he spends the time waiting for the bus doing pull-ups on the side of the bus stop. This makes a lot more sense once it's shown that that he's actually an incredibly capable hitman, and is presumably keeping himself in fighting condition out of habit.]]

* {{Homage}}: Hutch recounts a story of working as a government assassin and says he was carrying a Walther PPK before correcting himself and saying that it was a H&K USP. The Walther PPK is the signature gun of that other government assassin, Franchise/JamesBond.

** The five hooligans on the bus when they see Hutch, who had just been thrown out the window and already suffered a lot of damage, climbs back into the bus and looks fully prepared to continue kicking their asses.

** After Hutch's destructive battle in his home, he gets knocked out and kidnapped, frees himself, makes his way back home, showers and changes, and sends his family away. Neither his neighbors nor the cops respond in any way during all that time.

** While Hutch is looking for the robbers from a specific tattoo, he encountered a veteran who recognizes Hutch’s own tattoo. The veteran proceeds to be cordial as he hastily locks himself behind a steel wall with multiple latches.

* SoldiersAtTheRear: When his son talks of needing to interview a veteran it's shown that Hutch’s family thinks he was an actual auditor in the Army, and it's considered a point against his manliness. Becca even remarks that her brother Charlie was a “real soldier,” although Hutch mentions he was never in combat. Obviously Hutch was no POG, but it’s subverted beyond that when it turns out Charlie is a ridiculous macho manchild who can’t work his way around a gun.

** To ''Film/AHistoryOfViolence'' - a father with a MysteriousPast of sorts leaves it to start a family, but is brought back into the criminal underworld upon leaving a trail of bodies. While ''A History of Violence'' is a serious look at the psychological toll of violence, this film is a comedic look at what happens when inherently violent people try to live normal lives.

*** On the other hand, the tight spot also helped Hutch a lot in fighting, with him being out of shape after so long. He has a really hard time fighting the bad guys who aren't able to attack him all at once. Considering the difficulty with which he fought them having these advantages, if he didn't have them, he most likely would have died.

** The two burglars that break into Hutch's home wear three hole ski masks. Though they aren't quite as violent and ruthless as they appear since the gun they use is unloaded. Later in the movie, it's somewhat subverted after Hutch tracks them down as they are shown to be more SympatheticCriminal than ruthless thugs as they are a struggling couple who have a baby that Hutch finds in a crib wearing a breathing mask attached to an oxygen tank. This causes him to leave the home rather than make any further attempt to get revenge.
** The hit squad sent by the Russian Mob later in the movie wear the mouthless variety of ski masks. And, unlike the couple, they play the trope fully straight as they are a ruthless group of mercenaries for hire who have no qualms with killing Hutch in his home with fully automatic weapons.

* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: After beating up some goons on a bus Hutch comes home and exchanges some words with Becca in the dark, when she asks him to come closer he steps into the light with a bloodied face and clothing. Her reaction is not of shock but indicating this has happened before. Later conversations imply she knows at least some details of Hutch's past.

* WhatTheHellHero: Hutch's family, friends, and coworkers call him out for not fighting off the burglars that broke into his home. This encourages him to get back to basics.

* SoundtrackDissonance: Instances of beautiful music paired with dark or brutal imagery abound.

** Hutch is shown having settled deeply into the routine of the seemingly normal, quiet life of a nondescript family man, but his expressions imply something is ''deeply'' irritating him. His routine is shattered by a burglary, but when he has a chance to beat one of the burglars into a bloody pulp, he stops himself despite clearly being able to. Turns out, he's a former ruthless killer, [[HitmanWithAHeart but one with a heart]], who is growing tired of the "normal" life he retired into and is practically chomping at the bit to get back into action, even if initially refuses to admit it to himself.

* ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections: [[spoiler:At the end, despite the mountainous body count he accrued, Hutch is let go with two simple phone calls. That said, it's not a GetOutOfJailFreeCard, as the SequelHook has him contacted by what's implied to be those who got him off the hook for another kill mission]].

* SequelHook: The film ends Hutch receiving a phone call from [[spoiler:what's implied to be his old taskmasters giving him a new assassination job]]. A mid-credits scene also reveals [[spoiler:Harry and David driving to an unknown location with a storeroom's worth of guns and ammunition in their van.]]

** The hacker who digs up Hutch's past at Yulian's orders takes one look at his files and ''immediately'' packs up her stuff to leave, only stopping long enough to literally ''throw'' the files at Yulian's feet and saying he doesn't need to pay her. For Yulian's part, he looks at the files scattered at his feet and just utters, "[[ThisIsGonnaSuck Fuck me.]]"

* DreadfulMusician: Yulian loves to sing and dance in front of his adoring nightclub patrons. However, he's awful at both and people cheer and clap because he could kill anyone who doesn't.

* HowWeGotHere: The movie opens with Hutch in a police interrogation room, bloodied and bruised, retrieving a kitten from his jacket and feeding it tuna before the interrogators can start asking questions about who he is. It then jumps back to the past and works its way through until that moment becomes the chronological present at the end of the film.

* ArtisticLicenseGunSafety: Charlie violates gun safety rules by jokingly pointing a handgun at Hutch which Charlie rationalizes by stating that the safety is on. This is an early hint that Charlie is mere wearing a tough-guy mask.

* ArtisticLicenseChemistry: 1500 degrees F will not automatically make bones just disappear into ashes since cremation alone is insufficient for fully destroying skeletal bones. The process needs special grinding machine, which would raise more suspicion.

* ArtisticLicenseChemistry: 1500 degrees F will not automatically make bones just disappear into ashes since cremation alone is insufficient for fully destroying skeletal bones. The process needs special grinding machine.

* ShotgunsAreJustBetter: David Mansell keeps a double-barrel handy when he's expecting to be ambushed in his sleep, and makes a mess of two assassins.