History Film / RealGenius

The movie starts out about Mitch Taylor, a 15 year old boy who designs a cutting edge laser for his high school science fair. This gains him the attention of professor and educational TV show (think ''Series/CosmosAPersonalVoyage'' with Creator/CarlSagan) host Jerry Hathaway, who offers to enter the wunderkind at [[FictionalCounterpart Pacific Tech]] as an accelerated student. There, Mitch takes classes taught by tape recorder and meets the irreverent Chris Knight; who tries to teach the younger Mitch that he can't take everything in life so seriously, particularly when Mitch ends up as the ButtMonkey of the school's {{Jerkass}}, Kent.

--> ''(Through his talk, Chris' grin has slowly faded and he's stopped chewing his gum as the others all share looks of stunned understanding.)''

* JailBaitWait: Sherry Nugil attempts to seduce Mitch upon his sixteenth birthday. Her advances repulse him, however, because he's much more interested in Jordan.

* HeroicBSOD: Chris has one once he learns the laser's true purpose.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Decker. A completely amoral CIA agent who orchistrates the creation of a KillSat without any oversight from the President, the DOD, or any other responsible agency. When an underling disagrees with him, he casually orders the man's murder. Don warns Hathaway that Decker is "dangerous" implying that they moth might be killed if they don't finish the laser.

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: Kent [[spoiler: sabotaging the laser after finals]] is responsible for Chris making [[spoiler: an even more powerful laser]].

** We never do find out much about Lazlo's big project in TheSeventies, aside from Chris mentioning that it hurt people and drove Lazlo into a HeroicBSOD.

* PracticeTargetOverkill: Some college students discover a way to raise the power output of a lab laser, and secretly modify it for a test firing. These wonderballs calculated a beam in the megawatt range; the beam produced was in the terawatt range, which burned a hole completely through a concrete safety shield, then the lab's cinder block walls, then a bronze statue of the college's founder, and on into space.

-->'''Chris Knight''': "Relax. That's just the fuses at the substation, they'll have it back on in a minute. Maybe I shouldn't have shorted across the building transformer. But more important: did we get a charge?"

** Mitch's mother is one. The movie subtlety implies that [[LikeParentLikeSpouse this is one reason why Mitch is attracted to Jordan]].

* MotorMouth: Jordan tends to talk in long strings of sentences, with just barely enough of a pause to catch her breath when necessary.

* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: Pacific Tech seems to run on this, but it's most egregious in one scene when a student walks down the hall, right past Chris and co. wearing gas masks while gassing Kent's room, and merely says "hi."

* OutofControlPopcorn: Invoked. The heroes hijack the test of the giant space laser, redirecting it to Dr. Hathaway's house, which they had previously filled with unpopped popcorn kernels. The popcorn all pops and explodes out of the house.

* Main/OutofControlPopcorn: Invoked. The heroes hijack the test of the giant space laser, redirecting it to Dr. Hathaway's house, which they had previously filled with unpopped popcorn kernels. The popcorn all pops and explodes out of the house.

* PositiveDiscrimination: The only member of the shadowy government agency that objects to the assassination laser plan is also the sole black guy. And then they "[[BlackDudeDiesFirst Liberate]]" him. Or is that "[[NeverSayDie Liquidate]]"?

* FictionalCounterpart: Pacific Tech for [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Institute_of_Technology Caltech]]. What's really cool about it is that at first, Caltech was eager to help make the movie... at least until they learned it was critical of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative Strategic Defense Initiative]] in general and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller Edward Teller]] in particular; as Caltech operates and manages NASA's neighboring Jet Propulsion Laboratory, they couldn't afford to critique the man, let alone be involved in a movie which cast Creator/WilliamAtherton as his counterpart. But it all turned out perfectly anyway, as a Caltech alumnus came out of the woodwork to provide assistance - and [[http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~erich/real_genius_refs.html load the film]] with {{Easter Egg}}s.

* LaserGuidedKarma: ...Pun intended? [[spoiler;Hathaway is completely and utterly FUBAR ''specifically because'' he acted like a dickless weasel. He embezzled project funds to renovate his house, instead blackmailing his students to do all the development on the laser. His abuse led to them sabotaging it, which means the project is kaput and he'll be caught in the ensuing audit. Given that Knight's popcorn prank destroyed his renovated house, he can't even sell it in a half-assed attempt to replace the funds. Hell, his career is a very public failure, so all his connections will abandon him, meaning whatever measures he took to flunk Chris out of college/ruin his career are going to fall by the wayside. Oh, and he exposed to scrutiny the kind of black ops sociopaths who asked for an assassination laser in the first place, which is not good for one's life expectancy..]].

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Downplayed, but when Mitch (as the voice of Jesus) points out just what Hathaway has built and how Kent unknowingly helped him, Kent is visibly and audibly upset to learn that he's built a weapon.

* TheCastShowoff: WordOfGod says that Val Kilmer insisted his trick walking coins along the backs of his knuckles make it into the film at some point. It's shown in the first montage.

* AppliedPhlebotinum: Some of the college pranks, like Ick's "ice", toe the line because nobody bothers to explain exactly what it is. On the other hand, the laser technology in general is real, but Chris's breakthrough on the five megawatt laser is pure {{Technobabble}}. WordOfGod is that they used real cutting-edge research into high-energy lasers, but purposefully screwed it up a little so anyone with the resources to re-create it couldn't hurt themselves.