History Film / ThePrincessBride

* AdaptedOut: Buttercup's parents and Count Rugen's wife make appearances at the beginning of the novel but were left out of the film. The novel also included a lengthy flashback that explained how Fezzik's parents forced him to become a wrestler but this too was omitted.

* BeardOfEvil: Count Rugen, whose sadistic study of pain surpasses the other villains in sheer evilness, sports a natty salt-and-pepper mustache and goatee combo.

* BoulderBludgeon: Vizzini (the brains of the bad guy trio) is the one who insists that the giant Fezzik should smash the Man in Black's head in with a huge rock — but Fezzik actually prefers a fairer fight. When the Man in Black does show up, Fezzik deliberately misses with the first rock, [[IfIWantedYouDead just to prove that he could have killed him]], then challenges the Man in Black to a fight without weapons.
-->'''Vizzini:''' Finish him. Finish him, your way.\\
'''Fezzik:''' Oh good, my way. Thank you, Vizzini... What's my way?\\
'''Vizzini:''' Pick up one of those rocks, get behind a boulder, in a few minutes the Man in Black will come running around the bend. The minute his ''head'' is in view, HIT IT WITH THE ROCK!\\
'''Fezzik:''' My way's not very sportsmanlike.

* CrazyPrepared: Sure was lucky The Man in Black was carrying that iocane powder with him. However, it's not too outlandish, given his line of work as a pirate, to be carrying around a deadly toxin. [[spoiler:He needs it [[AcquiredPoisonImmunity to build up an immunity to it]].]]

* HeelFaceTurn: Inigo and Fezzik, technically. They were never more than [[PunchClockVillain Punch-Clock Villains]] in the first place, and after their boss dies, Inigo continues pursuing his revenge in the best way he knows how, and Fezzik helps him because they're friends. This leads them to ally with the heroes, without a change in their own motivations.
* HellIsThatNoise: Westley's scream at being put through The Machine.
* HenpeckedHusband: Miracle Max, is nagged and needled by his wife.
-->'''Valerie:''' Liar! Liar! LIIIAAAAAR!
* HeroicSafeMode: Inigo during his final duel with Count Rugen. He shrugs off a thrown knife to the gut after only a minute or so.

* IgnoringBySinging: Miracle Max's response when his wife provokes his BerserkButton by reminding him of his treatment by Prince Humperdinck.
* TheIgor: The Albino, servant to the scientifically evil Rugen. He even speaks with the [[EvilSoundsRaspy typical raspy "Igor voice"]]... for one line, then he clears his throat and speaks in a normal deeper voice.

* MyNameIsInigoMontoya: This movie named the trope, with Inigo declaring his name to the man who killed his father, and that Inigo intends to take his life in return.

* NoisyNature: ''Shrieking eels.''

* RagsToRoyalty: Buttercup, as a landholding farmer, may not wear rags, but she's a commoner whom Humperdinck ennobles so that he can marry her.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Buttercup to Humperdinck after she realizes [[spoiler:he never sent his four fastest ships to look for Westley]].

* SeparateSceneStorytelling: As the grandfather reads to the child, the action shifts to the story.

* SincerityMode: When Count Rugen invites Prince Humperdinck to his initial demonstration of his new torture device, Humperdinck respectfully declines on the grounds that he's got a lot of dirty work of his own.
-->'''Humperdinck''' Tyrone, you know how much I love watching you work. But I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it — I'm ''swamped''.\\
'''Count Rugen:''' Get some rest. If you haven't got your health, then you haven't got anything.

-->'''Buttercup:''' You mocked me once, never do it again! I DIED THAT DAY! You can die too for all I care! ''(pushes Dreaded Pirate Roberts down the hill)''

* TrueCompanions: Fezzik and Inigo. They rhyme together, encourage each other to be careful, and work as a team. Fezzik rescues a drunken Inigo from the Brute Squad, sobers him up, and helps him come up with a new plan to obtain his revenge.

* YouFightLikeACow: The famous Inigo/Westley duel, but with compliments instead of insults. (In most DVD editions, that chapter is titled "The Chatty Duelists".)

* AdaptationalNiceGuy: A subtle example. Fezzik is a relatively sympathetic character in both the book and film, pushed into a life of crime by circumstance, but in the film when they first kidnap Buttercup, he is clearly against killing her, telling Vizzini, "I just don't think it's right, killing an innocent girl." In the book, his first protest against Vizzini is that they should kill her ''sooner'' than Vizzini has planned, and later he adds, "I don't like killing a girl. He never mentions right or wrong.

The movie uses a FramingDevice of a grandfather (Creator/PeterFalk of ''Series/{{Columbo}}'') reading the story to his sick grandson (Creator/FredSavage of ''Series/TheWonderYears'' fame) with the boy complaining about the story at various points. ([[GenreSavvy "They're kissing again."]])

* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: All of one person other than the main characters seems to notice the eerie, overlapping scream that's loud enough to be heard all over Florin. And he just turns his head slightly before walking on, all of the other peasants blithely ignoring it. Of course, Inigo has to tell Fezzik to stop and listen before the giant acknowledges it, so it might simply not be as loud to the characters as it is to [[RuleOfPerception the viewers]]. Or worse, this sort of thing is so ''common'' that they barely notice any more.

* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: All of one person other than the main characters seems to notice the eerie, overlapping scream that's loud enough to be heard all over Florin. And he just turns his head slightly before walking on, all of the other peasants blithely ignoring it. Of course, Inigo has to tell Fezzik to stop and listen before the giant acknowledges it, so it might simply not be as loud to the characters as it is to [[RuleOfPerception the viewers]].

* ToThePain: When Westley confronts Humperdinck, he challenges him to a duel and describes in detail what he's going to do to him when he wins. [[spoiler:It's a bluff; he can barely stand, much less carry it out.]]

* RecruitedFromTheGutter: Vizzini recruited both Inigo and Fezzik this way, as he reminds them when they question his orders:

* PrinceCharmless: Prince Humperdinck is the main villain, and a real asshole. He wants Buttercup because she's a beautiful woman, and that's it.

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

* CuffsOffRubWrists: Buttercup, after being untied, rubs her wrists because they were quite rough and she was dragged up a cliff while tied up.

** Vizzini's favorite word is "Inconceivable!" He uses it with growing alarm in response to several increasingly conceivable outcomes that threaten to foil his plans. Inigo eventually calls him out on it, with a line that has gone equally memetic, if not used in the film other than here.
--->'''Inigo:''' YouKeepUsingThatWord. I do not think it means what you think it means.

** Vizzini dying while laughing, his face frozen into a grin. [[ComicBook/TheJoker Where have we seen this before?]]

* ScarilyCompetentTracker: Prince Humperdinck is pointed out to be so, and demonstrates it. His skill is even more notable later after the revelation that the kidnapping had ''not'' gone as he planned it to go, so even he is being surprised by what he is discovering — but he still tracks them.

* HeterosexualLifePartners: Fezzik and Inigo are established to be friends in their first scene (and neither of them is friends with Vizzini, which is established instantly, as well). They express concern over one another being in danger multiple times. When they reunite, Fezzik nurses Inigo back to health... or rather, sobriety. Even the movie's soundtrack seems to think they are a couple — listen to the music when Fezzik finds the drunk Inigo. For a second, the music used sounds like it belongs in a "lovers reunited" scene.

* HollywoodTorches: The Pit of Despair, where Count Rugen tortures Westley, is brightly lit with torches on the walls that ought not to illuminate the middle of the chamber.

An [[TheRoleplayingGame official roleplaying game]], ''TabletopGame/ThePrincessBrideRoleplayingGame'' was [[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toyvaultinc/the-princess-bride-roleplaying-game fully funded on Kickstarter in 2018.]] and released by Toy Vault, Inc. using the TabletopGame/{{FUDGE}} system.

* KansasCityShuffle: The Battle of Wits. Vizzini switches the cups while the Man in Black is distracted so he won't realize that he's really drinking from the poisoned chalice once Vizzini makes his selection. Except the Man in Black lied about the whole premise of the game. [[spoiler:Both cups were poisoned, so it never mattered which cup Vizzini chose]].

* KansasCityShuffle: The Battle of Wits. There is poison in one of two chalices, and Vizzini's supposed to puzzle out which chalice is in. After a long line of increasingly complex lines of thinking, he concludes that it must be in the goblet closest to him, so he pulls a PoisonedChaliceSwitcheroo, and once not distracted, they both drink. But he was wrong. ''Both'' goblets were poisoned, and the Man in Black had AcquiredPoisonImmunity. Amusingly enough, he did stumble across the answer a couple of times, but passed over it because he was so sure the poison was only in one goblet. As the page quote for KansasCityShuffle states, "The con is in getting you to accept that the basic premise of the game is still being followed..."
* KarmicInjury: When Inigo finally catches up with Count Rugen, before the coup de grâce, Inigo slashes Rugen's cheeks the same way Rugen did to him as a child. Before that, Rugen gets a couple of nonlethal stabs in from Inigo deflecting his sword, and Inigo retaliates and stabs Rugen in the same places less than a minute later.

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Inigo and Fezzik are looking for Westley, their only lead is incapacitated, and they're running out of time. In desperation, Inigo invokes his father's spirit and attempts to use his sword as a dousing rod. When he runs into a tree, he slumps over in despair, but it just so happens that he slumps onto the hidden switch that opens the secret passageway leading to whom they're looking for. It may be dumb luck, but the tree is covered in knots and Count Rugen, who uses the passage on a regular basis, had some trouble in finding it.

* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast:
** Playfully averted with all the successors to the Roberts legacy, who are given deliberately nonthreatening names.
--->'''Westley:''' ...he said, "My real name is Ryan. The man I inherited it from was not the real Dread Pirate Roberts either — his name was ''Cummerbund''."
** And lampshaded with "No one would surrender to 'the Dread Pirate Westley.'"

* PersonWithTheClothing: The Man in Black. (No, not [[Music/JohnnyCash that one.]])

* PlotHole: When Count Rugen first uses the machine on Westley, he moves the switch to "1", and we see a block of wood raise about an inch, and water trickle under it. If the block had been raised up all the way, the water would continue to trickle at the same rate, so setting it to 50, as the prince does later, would be no different. [[FanWank Though maybe the flow of water just turns the machine on and off and the "throttle" is controlled by some other unseen mechanism.]]

* ArtisticLicencePharmacology: The Dread Pirate Roberts has this in his [[spoiler:immunity to iocane powder]]. The closest you can get in reality is arsenic, and according to the information covered in this [[https://youtu.be/kWUJqwuwlh8 Because Science video]], the best you could do is build up a tolerance, not really an immunity.

* AnachronismStew: The story seems to be set in the late Renaissance, and yet there is talk of the penal colony UsefulNotes/{{Australia}}; Australia was only discovered in 1606, and only used as a penal colony from 1780 onward. However, considering the framing device, it could be deliberate.

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Buttercup jumps ship and tries to swim away to safety when Vizzini and his men's backs are turned. Unfortunately, she nearly meets a fatal encounter with shreicking eels.

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Buttercup jumps ship and tries to swim away to safety when Vizzini and his men's backs are turned. Unfortunately, she nearly meets a fatal encounter with shreicking eels.
* ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules: When Inigo has finally gained the upper hand against Rugen, he asks for a bribe, but only because he wants to toy with the bastard.