Film / Barbie (2023)

If you love Barbie, this movie is for you.
If you hate Barbie... this movie is for you.

"Thanks to Barbie, all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved. At least, that's what the Barbies think. After all, they're living in Barbieland. Who am I to burst their bubble?"

— The Narrator

Barbie is a 2023 fantasy comedy film based on the iconic line of fashion dolls from Mattel. Greta Gerwig directs and co-writes with Noah Baumbach, while Margot Robbie produces and stars as the titular character herself. Also producing is David Heyman.

The premise follows a Barbie (Robbie), living in a literal Barbie world called Barbieland, who finds herself pondering the nature of her existence after a number of unusual incidents in her otherwise perfect life. This leads her to leave Barbieland for the Real World alongside her friend Ken (Ryan Gosling). Will Barbie's trip to reality be able to sort out her newfound existential crisis, or will Mattel themselves catch up to her and put her back in her box before then?

Other actors portraying Barbies include Emma Mackey, Issa Rae, Hari Nef, Dua Lipa, Alexandra Shipp, Ana Cruz Kayne, Nicola Coughlan, Kate McKinnon, Ritu Arya and Sharon Rooney. Other actors portraying Kens include Simu Liu, Ncuti Gatwa, John Cena, Scott Evans, Kingsley Ben-Adir and Rob Brydon. Also in the film are Michael Cera (as Ken's buddy Allan) and Emerald Fennell (as Barbie's friend Midge). Human characters include Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a teenage girl; Gloria (America Ferrera), her mother; Aaron Dinkins (Connor Swindells), an intern at Mattel; the CEO of Mattel (Will Ferrell), and Helen Mirren as the film's narrator.

The film was released on July 21, 2023 and to home media (DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K) on October 17, 2023.

Previews: Teaser Trailer, Teaser Trailer 2, Main Trailer, Kicking off Summer with Barbie and Ken

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It's Barbie tropes if you're still in doubt:

A-L

• Actor Allusion:
  • The first time we see Will Ferrell as the Mattel CEO, he is holding a pair of drumsticks. Thankfully for him, Dale isn't there to give him any guff this time.
  • It's also not the first time we see Will Ferrell as the suit-wearing Big Bad of a Warner Bros. film based off of a toyline. Or at least, we're led to assume he's the Big Bad. He turns out to actually be Good All Along, and the real (misguided) antagonist is Ken.
  • Gloria's husband (who's trying to learn Spanish) says "Sí, se puede" to Barbie, a phrase that's prominently used in Gotta Kick It Up!, another film starring Gloria's actress America Ferrera.
  • Allan opening a whole can of whoopass on the Kens brings Michael Cera's previous role as Scott Pilgrim to mind.
• Adaptational Romance Downgrade:
  • Allan and Midge are not stated to be in a romantic relationship here, despite them originally being marketed as a couple when they were first released (and even married and having children). This actually follows updated Barbie canon wherein Midge has no connection to Allan as of the early 2010s.
  • Barbie and Ken were created to be a couple, but it becomes clear early in the film that she has no romantic interest in him. In most traditional Barbie canon, they're unambiguously together. This may be because they are a Barbie and a Ken, not the literal characters the dolls are meant to represent.
• Adapted Out: Several characters from the loose canon of the toy line or Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse (such as Barbie's dog Taffy; her friends Teresa, Nikki, and Grace; or her arch nemesis Raquelle and Raquelle's twin brother Ryan) are omitted or not named at all.
  • Out of Barbie's three current sisters (Skipper, Stacie, and Chelsea), Skipper is the only one who makes a physical appearance. Chelsea's treehouse appears and the drawings inside have her name written on them (visible when Will Ferrell walks out of the treehouse). A behind-the-scenes video even showed the "Chelsea" logo in front of the treehouse, so Chelsea does seem to exist in the movie's universe, but she never shows up.
• Advertised Extra: In a fairly literal sense. Lucy Boynton is credited with all the other Barbie variants as "Proust Barbie" despite her only scene having her out of focus in the background.^note She's the Barbie in a white dress standing behind America Ferrera in Weird Barbie's house.
• Allegorical Character: Word of God is that the Mattel CEO is a generic parody of "corporate America" and not based on a real CEO.
• All of the Other Reindeer: All of the other Barbies shun Weird Barbie and call her "Weird Barbie" behind her back and also to her face. True to the trope, Weird Barbie's insight and organizational skills play a large role in saving Barbieland from the patriarchy, and the other Barbies apologize for the way they treated her and invite her to join their community once more.
• Allohistorical Allusion: When the Mattel CEO gets lost in his own argument about how neither he nor his company are sexist, he finishes by saying that some of his best friends are Jews. Mattel's current CEO, Ynon Kreiz, is Israeli.
• And Starring: Will Ferrell gets the "and" at the end of the cast listing in the second trailer.
• Another Story for Another Time: During the climax, when the ghost of Ruth Handler brings up the trouble with the IRS that led to her downfall, she gets back on track by saying that that is a whole other movie in and of itself.
• Artistic License: The Mattel board is depicted as being entirely composed of men. In real life however, Mattel's executive board is 43% female and 57% male; not fully equal, but still much better than the film shows.
• Artistic License – Geography: Since Barbieland is basically a scaled-up, more detailed version of a 6-year-old's playtime, the map of the world shown in the movie has a lot of details wrong, like the United States taking up all of North America and Europe consisting only of England, complete with a crown motif. In addition, Weird Barbie refers to Stereotypical Barbie emerging near the "State of Los Angeles" in the "Country of California" at the end of her journey to the Real World.
• Artistic License – History: A pretty minor one, but Ruth Handler pled guilty to the SEC for fraud,^note Specifically, she was accused of sending falsified documents to the SEC during a buyout of another company, to make Mattel's financial situation look better. Handler claimed that her Vice President had masterminded the scheme and she simply failed to notice due to her declining health, but many suspect she was fully complicit while the movie says it was tax evasion and the IRS. This was probably to keep things simple for the audience, as the issue isn't all that relevant to the film.
• Ass Kicking Pose: During the battle with "I'm Just Ken", Beach Ken takes a "ready to fight" pose when facing Rival Ken, flanked by Basketball Ken and Tourist Ken.
• Attentive Shade Lowering: In Barbie's first appearance, she shows up in the wasteland, slowly lowers her shades, and beckons to the girls with a very loud wink.
• Author Tract: Weaponized. Any time Gloria goes into an impassioned and nearly fourth-wall-breaking speech about how exhausting and frustrating it is to be a woman in modern society, it snaps any Barbie brainwashed by the Ken Patriarchy out of their programming and/or Ken-induced depression. This first works with Stereotypical Barbie and helps lead to the plan to subvert the Kens and take back Barbieland.
• Award-Bait Song: "What Was I Made For?" by Billie Eilish.
• Badbutt: The "violence" in the beach battle of Kens with (mostly) unharmful beach toys as well as Beach Ken's showy "tough alpha guy" attitude in that battle yet him never going to full physical blows against Rival Ken (instead turning their rivalry into a dance number) all give an extremely kid-friendly vibe on purpose (Barbie has never been a war/violence-oriented toy brand, after all). Mattel's CEO even mentions the absence of real weapons.
• Baffled by Own Biology: The movie hinges on Stereotypical Barbie going through an existential crisis, and one of the first signs her life isn't all it's cracked up to be is when her heels touch the ground for the first time. She's shocked that she's not standing on her tiptoes (as it's a trait for all the dolls), and all the other Barbies freak out at the sight of this.
• Bait-and-Switch: Gloria and Sasha drive Barbie to a building and give her words of encouragement, telling her they are proud of her. It looks like she’s going to a job interview, her first task as a real woman. Then the receptionist asks her what she wants to do, and she confidently responds, “I’m here to see a gynecologist.”
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: None of the Barbies and Kens possess genitals. This is even explicitly said in the movie; when Barbie is catcalled by a group of construction workers, she susses them out and bluntly states that neither her nor Ken have genitals, specifically referring to her lacking a vagina and Ken lacking a penis. (Ken then insistently claims, "I have all the genitals!")
  • In spite of this, Barbies and Kens seemingly still have the capacity to sexualize their genital areas, as evidenced by Weird Barbie saying of Ken, "I'd like to see what kind of nude blob he's packing under those jeans."
  • One doll, Midge, is pregnant, but this is not explained at all.
  • Subverted at the end when the main Barbie becomes a real woman, because the first and only thing we see her do in the real world is going to her (first) gynecologist appointment.
• Bathroom Search Excuse: Barbie escapes custody at Mattel by claiming to be needing to go to the bathroom.
• Batman Gambit: The girls correctly predict that by making the Kens jealous it would cause them to fight each other and forget about Voting Day.
• Become a Real Boy: Near the end of the film, Stereotypical Barbie realizes that she wants to become human. Ruth Handler, the inventor of Barbie, reveals to her that she can choose to become human. She does so, and enters the real world.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: According to Allan, all the members of the band *NSYNC are escaped Allans.
  Allan: Yes, even him.
• Big Bad: The Mattel CEO is presented this way at first. But he's actually not. He's a Good All Along Well-Intentioned Extremist who loves the Barbie brand and the ideas behind it and is only trying to put Stereotypical Barbie back into her box to prevent "weird stuff" from happening in the real world. The true Big Bad is Beach Ken; after he discovers patriarchy in the real world and decides to bring it back to Barbieland, his "knowledge" allows him to brainwash all the Barbies into being the Kens' virtual servants and transform Barbieland into a Testosterone Poisoning, Ken-dominated parody of itself.
• The Big Board: Weird Barbie has a board with a miniaturized replica of Barbieland in her house that the girls use to plan their big coup to overthrow the Kens.
• Big "NO!": Allan lets out one when Ken runs into the surf and crashes against a solid wave.
• Bishie Sparkle: When Simu Liu's Rival Ken pulls off impressive moves, he generates sparkles with every flourish. During his and Stereotypical/Beach Ken's proper Beach Off in the third act, they both generate sparkles, culminating in a globe between them so dazzling that it stuns every Ken nearby.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: While the Barbies of Barbieland are extremely nice and friendly to each other, they do possess a streak of being less pleasant to those they consider "outsiders". The Kens aren't outright mistreated, but they are shown Condescending Compassion and generally viewed as second-class citizens. Weird Barbie is gossiped about and treated as a freak for her strange appearance and knowledge of the outside world. While Allan and Midge are allowed to be part of society, they're largely ignored and not really considered part of the core groups of Barbies or Kens. At the end of the movie, following the Kens' attempt at flipping their discrimination by taking over Barbieland's government and their subsequent overthrowing, President Barbie acknowledges that these attitudes need to change. She invites Weird Barbie to be part of the government, and allows the Kens to take positions in the lower courts.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor:
  • Overzealous fans demanding the release of Zack Snyder's Justice League, a Warner Bros. film, are mentioned as part of a Take That!.
  • Mattel is presented as a soulless corporation, with its top brass being all men, its workers in grey cubicles, and an elevator with a button that literally goes all the way up.
  • Ruth Handler's white-collar criminal record^note The film cites that she committed tax evasion and was prosecuted by the IRS, but in reality she was convicted by the SEC for fraud. is also cheekily acknowledged.
• Bowdlerise: Earring Magic Ken makes a cameo, but the ring pendant and vest decoration are replaced with a Barbie logo (though the doll does appear in the end credits with his infamous ring).
• Brainless Beauty: The Kens are all handsome men but on the whole not very smart. Beach Ken transforms Barbieland into a Testosterone Poisoning society due to a childish understanding of the patriarchy while the rest blindly follow him. Allan points out that a group of construction worker Kens is building a wall straight up, and have not yet worked out how to make it longer instead of just higher.
• Brainwashed: In the middle part of the film, when Beach Ken brings the ideology of patriarchy to Barbieland, the Barbies have no natural defenses to prevent the Kens from taking over; they quickly become brainwashed into subservience to the Kens to fulfill their role in the patriarchy. Weird Barbie then leads the protagonists and the rest of Barbieland's outcasts into working to deprogram the Barbies. The only Barbie immune to the brainwashing is Stereotypical Barbie, due to her exposure to the real world.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: The reprise of the spelling-out of "Pink" now includes mental trauma and...
  P! Panic!
  I! I'm scared...
  N! Nauseous...
  K! ~DEATH~!
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • Near the end of the movie when Barbie is going through a funk about not being able to live up to the unrealistic beauty standards that she represents anymore, the narrator chimes in and notes that casting Margot Robbie for this role undercuts the message of the scene.
  • Ruth Handler's ghost mentions that her troubles with the IRS are a matter for a different movie.
• Breast Expansion: One of the denizens of Barbieland is Growing Up Skipper, a doll who was designed so her breasts would inflate^note and she grew taller when her arm was rotated. The film is quick to note this was a real product.
• Brick Joke:
  • Upon reaching the human world, Barbie tells a bunch of ogling construction workers that she has no vagina (and that Ken has no penis). The final line of the movie is Barbie (now going by Barbara after becoming a human) going to see a gynecologist for the first time.
  • Barbie "drinks" milk at breakfast by miming it, as a real Barbie just using plastic toys would do. When she's offered a glass of water at Mattel, she ends up pouring it all over herself, as she's not used to actual liquid being in the cup.
• Broken Aesop: It's Played for Laughs, but for all the movie's discourse about the harms of patriarchy and hierarchy to people of any gender, Barbieland ultimately "advances" to a "reformed matriarchy" where Kens are no longer fully excluded from politics, but they still only have it about as good as women do in the real world. The narrator's tone when she describes it makes it clear she's well aware this trope is in play.
• But Thou Must!: When Weird Barbie tells Barbie that she must go to the real world, she offers the choice between taking a high heel and continuing on with her life and forgetting the bad that had happened or taking a brown Birkenstock sandal to learn more about the real world's universe. Barbie promptly chooses the former, but Weird Barbie tells her that she has to want to know and makes her choose again. When she keeps trying to choose the high heel, Weird Barbie tells her that she just gave her the choice to give the illusion of control and she has no other option than to go to the Real World to straighten herself out.
• Call-Back:
  • Early in the film, Weird Barbie makes Stereotypical Barbie choose between staying ignorant of what is happening or finding things out. Stereotypical Barbie prefers the former, but Weird Barbie tries to force her to pick the latter. Later on, Ruth asks Barbie if she wants to remain as an idea or be a human being.
  • Additionally, Weird Barbie represents the choice between staying in Barbie Land and going to the real world with a high heel and a Birkenstock. When Stereotypical Barbie becomes a human and moves to the real world, she wears pink Birkenstocks.
  • When Ken undergoes his patriarchic epiphany in the Real World, the background music is Eumir Deodato's upbeat, jazz version of Also Sprach Zarathustra, riffing off of the orchestral version by which the little girls come to their realization in the film's opening.
• Camp Straight: The Kens are flamboyant and theatrical, at the same time that they love the Barbies.
• Casting Gag:
  • Emma Mackey was cast in part because of her memetic resemblance to star Margot Robbie. In addition, Mackey's Barbie is repeatedly paired with Ncuti Gatwa's Ken, referencing Mackey and Gatwa being two of the leads of Sex Education.
  • Japanese dub:
    • This is not the first time Shunsuke Takeuchi (Beach Ken) has voiced a character who loves to be on the beach.
    • Romi Park (Weird Barbie) previously voiced a character trying to help a doll to return to normal, except that last time, it was his brother's soul living inside an animated armor.
    • Miyuki Sawashiro (Writer Barbie) previously voiced Eliza Masters, an American blonde woman as beautiful as Barbie is, and married with a man named Ken.
    • In a more meta-example, many of the voice actors of the dub^note Mainly Shunsuke Takeuchi, Miyuki Sawashiro, Jun'ichi Suwabe, Daisuke Ono, Romi Park and Mitsuki Saiga. has previously worked in a beat'em up franchise featuring a character named Ken, who some of their characters had fought against.^note As an additional note, the Barbie and the Street Fighter franchises are related in a very warped way. Originally, the Street Fighter's Ken only had a single name, without a surname and Capcom didn't had plans to add one. However, when Hasbro released Street Fighter action figures under the G.I. Joe banner, both Capcom and Hasbro had to add the "Masters" surname in order to avoid a lawsuit from Mattel.
    • Naoya Uchida (The Mattel CEO) has previously voiced the CEO of a powerful company before.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, José Antonio Macías (Beach Ken) previously voiced James, another Dogged Nice Guy hanging around with another pretty girl, except this time, both characters are the heroes of the story, rather than the villains, at least at first for Ken for a while.
• Celebrity Paradox: Zack Snyder's Justice League, and thus the DCEU as a whole, exists in this universe. Barbie is played by Harley Quinn herself.
• Cock Fight: The rivalry between Beach Ken and Rival Ken for Stereotypical Barbie's affection.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: At the beginning of the movie, Stereotypical Barbie's outfits are in traditional Barbie pink, symbolizing that being Barbie is her whole identity. As she begins to malfunction, she wears blue, representing her growing sadness, until she presents herself to Weird Barbie, at which she's dressed entirely in navy blue. When she sets off for the real world, she's back in pink, as she feels optimistic of things returning to normal. Upon returning to Barbieland and witnessing the "Kendom" that Beach Ken had established, her clothes have patterns of blue and pink, representing her inner conflict. Finally, when she decides to leave Barbieland for the real world, she wears various outfits in yellow, a color that does not appear elsewhere in Barbieland, signifying that she's no longer truly a Barbie.
• Come with Me If You Want to Live: When Barbie exits the Mattel building with a horde of executives on her tail, Gloria pulls over with her car and shouts "Get in!"
• Commitment Issues: Parodied. In the male-dominated Kendom, the Kens refer to the Barbies as their "long-term low-commitment distance girlfriends", referencing toxic masculine men who don't want to commit to their devoted partners.
• Company Cameo: Shots of the Mattel main office showcase the buildings for Warner Bros. Discovery and General Motors in the background.
• Company Cross References: Another Mattel product, Uno, can be seen while a girl kicks a mangled Barbie doll in a short sequence when Weird Barbie is introduced.
• Construction Catcalls: Stereotypical Barbie, who comes from a matriarchal society where all jobs of import, including the construction workers, are friendly women, naively approaches a construction site in Los Angeles seeking "feminine energy". She's quickly disabused of this notion when she finds men working who start catcalling her.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Largely averted with the CEO of Mattel. Although he's hopelessly ignorant of how much he and his all-male executive staff have benefited from the ideals of patriarchy and how he's unconsciously promoting them, he genuinely believes in the feminist idea of Barbie. When the CEO finds out that the altered "Kendom" line of dolls is selling just as well as the Barbie line, he doesn't care about the sales because it isn't Barbie, and personally goes to Barbieland with his executives and Aaron to try to return things to how they were.
• Crapsaccharine World: Downplayed for everyone who is not a Barbie doll that sold well. Barbies and other dolls like Midge and Weird Barbie, who respectively didn't sell well or no longer conform to Barbie beauty standards, are marginalized. Kens only exist to fawn after Barbies and (until the end) are denied any meaningful role in Barbieland society. And Allan is overlooked entirely. Yet, everyone — including those marginalized — is convinced that Barbieland is a wonderful utopia. After the Kens take over and remake it into the Kendom, it still remains like this, only with the Kens reversing the roles by enforcing the patriarchy and brainwashing the Barbies into fawning over them and being seen as eye candy.
• Create Your Own Villain: Stereotypical Barbie starts off the movie unintentionally ignoring Beach Ken's advances. But in leaving Barbieland, bringing Beach Ken along, him learning about toxic masculinity and the patriarchy and then going back alone while she has her existential crisis, he gets put in a position to take over Barbieland and remake it into the Kendom.
• Creative Closing Credits: For the first segment of the credits, there are animated dolls and marketing of the characters appearing in the film. After that, instead of the typical white-text-on-black-background you get with standard credits, the credits for the movie are in pink text.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Allan spends most of the film being a superfluous hanger-on with no real purpose or identity. When the Kens try to stop Gloria and Sasha from leaving Barbieland, however, he comes out swinging and singlehandedly defeats an entire construction crew to secure their escape.
• Cultural Translation: In the Russian-language dub, Barbies use non-standard feminitives, characteristic of post-Soviet feminist lingo - for example referring to the President Barbie as prezidentka, something like "presidentess"^note In standard Russian, most words used for professions only have feminine forms if a profession is traditionally associated with femininity - for example, a female cleaner will be referred to as uborschitsha rather than the masculine uborschik, but a female doctor will simple be a doktor, or, if her gender needs to be emphasised, a zhenschina-doktor ("woman-doctor"). Many post-Soviet feminists see this division as demeaning (since most "feminine" professions are menial or otherwise degrading), and therefore invent feminine forms for all professions based on existing patterns. For example, a female doctor might be called a doktorka by analogy with the existing studentka, meaning "female student". This of course resonates fairly well with Barbie's themes. Notably, only Barbies use feminitives, while people in the Real World do not.
• Cutaway Gag: After Barbie hits her Heroic BSoD, we abruptly cut to a mock commercial for a new doll in the Barbie lineup, Depression Barbie.
• Dance-Off: The beach war between the two Ken factions is envisioned as a dance battle between the two groups.
• Darker and Edgier: This is the first Barbie film that isn't exclusively tailored for kids. It's a mature deconstruction of the franchise and its cultural impact, and deals with very adult topics like existential dread, toxic masculinity, and the struggles of womanhood.
• Dark Reprise: Played for Laughs. Barbie is introduced cheerily going about her morning while "Pink" by Lizzo plays, the lyrics talking about how perfect and happy Barbie and her life are. The next morning, after Barbie's existential crisis has begun, the same upbeat song plays with new lyrics about her "irrepressible thoughts of death".
  (Barbie falls off her house)
  Lizzo: Ooh, girl, you okay?
• Dead All Along: The Mattel CEO casually mentions that Ruth Handler is a ghost renting space at their headquarters. Nobody acknowledges anything odd about this.
• Decomposite Character: Played with. Although there are a few minor characters with their own distinct identities (namely Midge, Skipper and Allan), the various Barbies and Kens in Barbieland all share the same name despite having unique appearances and personalities. This has some basis in actual Barbie canon; while there have been various dolls that are entirely separate from Barbie herself, (e.g. Christie and Nikki, who are both black), there have also been instances wherein Mattel released dolls that don't resemble the prototypical original but been given the Barbie name, such as the 1980 black Barbie.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Ken, and the other Kens to a lesser extent, do this with Satellite Character and Satellite Love Interest. Ken only exists to be with Barbie, and her lack of interest brings up a host of insecurities and resentments. Meanwhile, he and the rest of the Kens are all stuck on the beach, doing nothing but hanging around while the Barbies do everything else. Once Ken comes back from the real world with a very basic understanding of patriarchy, he spreads it to everyone inverting the power dynamics, effectively taking over Barbieland.
• Deconstructive Parody: The movie deconstructs and/or parodies multiple things throughout its runtime. These include, but aren't limited to:
  • Barbie and Ken lacking in certain body parts.
  • The Barbie franchise's controversial role in inspiring girls to be what they want to be, but presenting it with unrealistic body standards, and people finding concepts such as "pregnant Barbie" to be weird. This is somewhat represented by Gloria, who found Barbie inspiring and fun to play with, and Sasha, who is angry with Barbie for being too idealistic and therefore setting up people to fail. But they eventually show that both have experienced both sides of the debate.
  • Trying to make a point about how Barbie no longer lives up to her beauty standards (set by others, but internalized by her) and then to have the Lemony Narrator lampshade that Margot Robbie isn't the right person to cast for this purpose.
• Defector from Decadence:
  • Weird Barbie partially secludes herself from the other Barbies, because she's considered weird enough that they treat her as a scary, ugly freak, and she initially wants none of it (the other Barbies excluding her from typical Barbie activities helps, though). It's also implied the other strange dolls who are seen at her house are in the same situation and they live together.
  • It's revealed when the Kens overthrow Barbieland that there are at least two Kens there as well, who left for similar reasons as Weird Barbie did. In their case, though, one—Earring Magic Ken—is coded as gay and the other—Sugar's Daddy Ken—is coded as older, which adds dimension to the Kens being made up of picture-perfect heterosexual-implied dudes under 30.
  • Allan completely rejects the Kendom and actively tries to escape it, and eventually joins forces with the Barbies to overthrow it.
• Defenestrate and Berate: Ken throws Barbie's clothes from the first floor of her house onto the street and screams Get Out! to make it clear that the house now belongs to him.
• Delayed Reaction: One of the Barbies doesn't start freaking out with the rest of the Barbies upon witnessing Stereotypical Barbie's flat feet until she touches it.
• Department of Redundancy Department: After taking over Barbieland and renaming it the "Kendom", Beach Ken renames Stereotypical Barbie's dreamhouse "Ken's Mojo Dojo Casa House". Sasha points out that "Dojo", "Casa" and "House" all mean the same thing.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: By the end of the movie—changed by their time in the real world— both Stereotypical Barbie and Beach Ken have fallen into this. Ken realizes that his entire life has revolved around Barbie (whether either of them like it or not) and resolves to find his own meaning for existing. Barbie realizes that she has no real point in life other than being a beauty icon; she is literally "Stereotypical Barbie" compared to the others that (in Barbieland) are Nobel Prize winners, politicians, etc. She chooses to shed her status as simply an idea and chooses to become a true human at the end, to try to find what her purpose in life is.
• Deus ex Machina: Lampshaded. Once in the real world, Stereotypical Barbie believes she knows exactly where to find her "girl" by meditating really hard. Not only is it also played sombrely by showing the "girl" as outgrowing her dolls and rejecting her mom, it also doesn't lead her to her actual owner, just to the "girl" in her visions... who now hates her and everything she stands for.
• Divide and Conquer: Barbie and her allies tricked the Ken rebels into infighting, giving the legitimate government of Barbieland an opening to retake power.
• Dodge by Braking: During the Car Chase, Gloria escapes The Men in Black by stepping on the brakes and taking a turn.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Beach Ken is absolutely obsessed with Stereotypical Barbie and constantly tries to win her over with absolutely no success, mainly due to Barbie not loving him the same way. In the end, after the dust has settled on the Ken Rebellion, the two actually DON’T get together, though Barbie does at least acknowledge her own faults in his courtship of her and the hand it had in his mental breakdown while advising Ken to find his own individual identity before leaving Barbieland for good.
• Double Standard: An example of how the matriarchy oppresses Kens, when Barbie reveals her flat feet, Dr. Barbie and the other surrounding Barbies have a Freak Out complete with "vomiting" at the sight of them, but when Basketball Ken starts throwing up from afar, the Barbies tell him to knock it off.
• Dream Ballet: A brief dreamy emotional dance sequence, described by the filmmakers as a dream ballet explicitly, commences when the warring rival Kens meet face-to-face and have a sparkle-off and the film enters an emotional plane where the Kens enter an expressive dance sequence.
• Eiffel Tower Effect: Mattel's worldwide headquarters are in El Segundo, California (next to the LAX airport), and would definitely not have a view of the Hollywood sign nor the Warner Bros. Discovery offices. But how else would we know Barbie's in the "Country of California"?
• Endless Corridor: At one point during her escape down the Mattel building, Barbie ends up in a corridor with no visible end.
• Ends with a Smile: The final shot is of Stereotypical Barbie (now gifted with human attributes) telling a receptionist that she's here to see her gynecologist and beaming proudly.
• Establishing Character Moment: Barbie and Ken both get one.
  • Stereotypical Barbie is introduced in a dreamlike Good-Times Montage that opens the film, where everything in her life goes completely perfectly. This establishes her as the stereotypical Barbie who lives a life of perfection, which also sets up her major arc.
  • Beach Ken is introduced hanging out on the beach and desperately vying for Stereotypical Barbie's attention. He tries to impress her by surfing, but fails, setting up both his Butt-Monkey nature and anxiety over finding a place in life.
• Even the Guys Want Him: When Stereotypical Barbie and Beach Ken first arrive on Venice beach, Barbie immediately notes how she is being ogled by all the men. Ken points out that he can feel the same thing, right before an obviously Camp Gay tennis player is shown saying "Ooh, love that!" in his direction.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • While the construction workers catcall and make sexist remarks at Barbie, once she told them that both her and Ken don't have genitals, they were surprised but otherwise became respectful toward both of them without judging.
  • The CEO, while perhaps a bit insensitive and doesn’t realize he’s in an unfair position compared to women, isn't power-hungry or that money-obsessed. Even when the Ken toys are selling just as much or even more than Barbie, the CEO focuses on what's best for their company image and the ideals behind them.
• Fantasy Landmark Equivalent: At the beginning of the film, there's a cutaway gag where Stereotypical Barbie drives through an equivalent of Mount Rushmore in Barbieland that depicts the very first Barbie, Christie, Kira, and Teresa dolls. When Beach Ken brings the patriarchy ideology to Barbieland, the dolls' faces are replaced by that of horses, due to Beach Ken thinking horses are a defining symbol of masculinity.
• Faux Horrific: Part of Barbie losing the charm in her life is her heels suddenly resting on the ground, as the other girls freak out about her "flat feet".
• Fisher King: An odd instance in that it's a place's state that affects something else. When Ken turns Barbieland into the Kendom, the Barbie brand suddenly becomes highly Ken oriented, with the production facilities already making Mojo Dojo Casa Houses, Ken t-shirts, mugs and tattoos, and even a a Ken movie is in production. While this causes a spike in the brand's profits, the Mattel CEO refuses to let this fly since it drains Barbie of what it meant to young girls.
• Fish out of Water: Barbie and Ken experience this when they enter the real world for the first time. Subverted for Barbie in the end when she decides to become a real woman.
• Flat Character: Inherently, Beach Ken has only two traits: Beach, making him an odd amalgam of surfer and lifeguard, and Ken, which in and of itself is not much more than Barbie's boyfriend. Averted in practice as he's aware of and insecure about it and later founds the Kendom in an attempt to find some satisfaction in his life. Barbie tells him that he should find his identity beyond his designated persona, since that's the actual core of his problems.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Ken asks to stay the night at Barbie's, she rebuffs him by saying "It's Barbie's Dreamhouse, not Ken's". Ken laughs it off sarcastically and says "Right as always", while looking annoyed. Turns out that Ken is really insecure about his place in the world without Barbie and having his life revolve around her impacts him in such a negative way that he leads a rebellion after returning from the real world and learning about men being in charge. He even throws these lines back at her just to show how much it really hurts.
  • When Barbie and Ken show up in the real world, they have wildly different reactions. Barbie is afraid, anxious, and harassed over her appearance, while Ken is uplifted, admired, and full of confidence. This turns out to be the crux of the film, with Ken becoming the main antagonist after learning that the real Western world is mostly run as a patriarchy.
  • When Barbie tries to think of memories from the girl who played with her, one of the memories depicts the girl running into the arms of her mom. Said mom is drawing Barbie designs, which just so happens to be the same thing that the secretary at Mattel is doing. Said designs are also of Stereotypical Barbie, further hinting at their connection.
  • When Barbie sees an old woman for the first time, she's fascinated by this new type of beauty.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Weird Barbie explains how they're all toys that get played with by kids, a brief montage is shown of a young child cutting a Barbie's hair, splitting her legs apart and then dropkicking the doll into a bin. Look at the nearby pillar apparently holding the "tent" in the room up — Scrabble tiles reading "GLORIA" are visible on it, implying this was Gloria as a kid.
• Full-Circle Revolution: Ken and his supporters overthrew the matriarchal society of Barbieland, replacing it with their patriarchy that saw the Barbies brainwashed and subservient to them.
• Furry Reminder: Barbieland and its residents are filled with small details reminding the audience that everything in it is plastic and fake. Besides the showers that pour no water, the solid pool and ocean water, and the mirrors with no glass, the otherwise human-seeming dolls float down perfectly from their homes to the ground instead of walking down the steps^note The movie points this out by saying that the girls who would be playing with Barbie would likely do this themselves, hence it happening in Barbieland. and much drama is made around the idea of a Barbie having flat feet instead naturally being on her toes.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: Exploited. As a distraction for the deprogramming of the Barbies, a liberated Barbie distracts a Ken working on a car by wearing glasses, which he removes in an attempt to make her "more beautiful".
• Gossip Evolution: Subverted. Aaron passes the message that Barbie is in the real world to the CEO through a whisper circle. One expects the message to be comically altered by the time it reaches the CEO. Which makes it punch harder when the message passes unchanged and the CEO instantly faints.
• Hands-On Approach: Parodied and exploited. Because they're all now hypermasculine, the Kens cannot resist a Barbie who's ignorant about sports, so the Barbies plan to use this as a distraction — Barbies who have freed from their Kendom indoctrination ask for help with sports so the Kens will cuddle up to them to demonstrate, and only for another Barbie to be taken and deprogrammed while the Kens aren't looking. We then get a montage of this happening with different Ken/Barbie pairs for different activities, culminating in a crowd shot of the Kens dressed for various sports proudly proclaiming "Let us show you".
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Kendom, which is Barbieland under the Ken regime, has a penchant for using leather as part of its decor.
• The Hero's Journey: Barbie's quest into the Real World to recover her place in Barbieland - and then save Barbieland from Ken's misguided understandings of "Patriarchy" - hit all the checkpoints of the Journey. Including meeting her own Creator Ruth Handler and gaining heartwarming insight from her.
• High Heel Hurt: The Barbies naturally stand on tiptoes, making it easy for them to wear heels. Stereotypical Barbie's feet flatten as part of her humanization, and she complains that heels are too painful and cumbersome for regular feet.
• Hollywood Beauty Standards: In-Universe, the residents of Barbieland are all fashionable and played by good-looking actors. Upon arriving in the real world, Barbie assumes a billboard advertising Miss Universe is depicting the Supreme Court, because she's used to beautiful women in positions of power.
• Hollywood Homely: invokedLampshaded and mocked, twice.
  • The first time it comes with a dose of Breaking the Fourth Wall to boot: during Stereotypical Barbie's bout of depression and while she's in tears, she cries that she's not pretty anymore, and the narrator notes that Margot Robbie really isn't the person to cast if you want to get that point across.
  • The second time is during Barbie's plan to free the other Barbies from the Kens: one of the tricks to get their attention is to simply wear glasses and say that they don't feel beautiful, so that Ken can take the glasses off and "discover" their beauty.
• I'm Okay!: After Barbie falls to the ground while trying to float down from the roof of her house after her existential crisis begins, she bounces back up after a beat and says, "I'm fine! A-okay!"
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: When the Mattel men chase Barble, they're blocked by a bar gate that they could easily climb over or duck under.
• Interactive Narrator: Downplayed. The narrator only interacts directly with a character once; when she points out Allan is the only Allan he confirms, tiredly adding he doesn't get why. More memorably, the narrator cuts off and has some back and forth with Lizzo during both versions of "PINK".
• Internal Deconstruction: It's approached in a largely tongue-in-cheek and comedic way, but the film gets a lot of mileage out of picking apart the eternally glamorous, toyetic nature of Barbie within her own fiction, and also takes a step further to deconstruct its self-purported place within real-world culture as a doll line made to simultaneously appeal to, empower, and direct young girls. One particular observation made is that in the desire for Barbie to represent as many modern ideals of feminine strength as possible, Barbieland is a place where women in power overwhelmingly dominate the male population, which is treated as second-class at best, and everyone ultimately lacks real agency as they're ultimately built on the whims of what consumers in the "real world" expect from the brand. Barbie (the film) pulls no punches when it comes to portraying Barbie (the character) experiencing an identity crisis over her place amidst complicated real-world dynamics from patriarchy to capitalism, and much of the plot is built on her and Ken figuring out where they ultimately "belong" within their strange, metafictional existence.
• Ironic Echo: Barbie declines Ken's invitation to join her in her house, saying it's girls' night and that it's "Barbie's Dreamhouse" and not "Ken's Dreamhouse". After taking over Barbieland AND her house, Ken throws the lines back in her face, even asking how it feels to be on the receiving end.
• Jump Scare: Played for Laughs: when Weird Barbie arrives to rescue a now-depressed Stereotypical Barbie and her humans, her slightly-off smile as she looks down on Stereotypical Barbie is accompanied by a rapid Jump Cut to her doll form with a loud Scare Chord.
• Lady Land: Apart from when the Kens take over, Barbieland is ruled by Barbies, with Kens and other male dolls essentially being their living accessories.
• Lampshade Hanging: The scene in the Mattel office when the CEO learns of Barbie's escape into the real world.

  Aaron: Is Barbieland like an alternate reality or is it like a place where your imagination…
  Mattel Workers: Yes.

• Lingering Social Tensions: In the conclusion, the Barbies agree to try to integrate the Kens properly into their society, but concede it will take years of slow work to achieve.
• Little Stowaway:
  • Ken hides in the backseat of the car so he can join Barbie on her journey to the real world.
  • Later, Allan does the same when hiding in the backseat to join Gloria and Sasha on their way back. His plan backfires, though.
• Logo Joke: Naturally for a Barbie movie, the Warner Bros. shield is a bright pink.
• Loving a Shadow: Stereotypical Barbie and Beach Ken are together because they're literally made for each other, but it's clear that she does not love him romantically, and he, in turn, obsessively pines for her despite it being clear she doesn't see him as anything else but a friend, to the point that he is partially motivated to overthrow Barbieland out of a misguided attempt to get her to notice and respect him. At the end of the movie, Stereotypical Barbie leaves for the Real World to leave Barbieland (and him) behind, but not before helping Beach Ken to start his own journey of self-discovery and catalyse his search to find out who he is beyond their relationship.

M-Z

• Madonna-Whore Complex: Discussed by Gloria once Barbie speaks to her. Part of Gloria's speech is about how it's "literally impossible" to be a woman because of all of the double standards involved with it, as imposed by patriarchy. While sex isn't mentioned, being pretty and having children both are, and the inherent problems involved with the kind of mentality that women are all supposed to have get addressed.
  Gloria: You're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.
• Magic Realism: Both the upper brass at Mattel and the FBI are aware of the existence of Barbieland and the possibility of Barbies crossing over, random office buildings have large screens that do nothing but play videos glorifying patriarchy, Mattel offices are a maze of endless grey cubicles, and the ghost of Ruth Handler has an office on the 17th floor. And the real world and Barbieland both seem to directly affect each other. Gloria's Barbie drawings "decide" what clothes Barbie is wearing, even upon reaching the real world, while conversely Ken introducing ideas of the Patriarchy to Barbieland, turning it into Kendom affects the toys that are being created in the real world.
• Manchild: The Kens, like the Barbies, all have the maturity and intelligence of children. When Beach Ken introduces the idea of the patriarchy to Barbieland, the result is the Kens plastering a child's idea of masculinity all across the land, full of horses, brewski beers and cowboy outfits.
• Marilyn Maneuver: Barbie's dress lifts up in this manner when she first floats down from the roof of her house.
• Massage of Love: After Barbieland is converted into the Kendom, the formerly powerful Barbies give the Kens foot massages as part of their subservient Stepford wife brainwashing.
• Match Cut: After Barbie's dance party, the round white disco ball fades into the round white full moon.
• Mathematician's Answer:
  • In the "Kicking off Summer" ad, a human asks whether they'll shrink to toy-size in Barbieland, or if Barbies are human-sized.
    Barbie: Yes.
  • In the actual movie, the Mattel executives give the same answer when another employee asks if Barbieland is another world or the product of imagination.
• Matriarchy: Barbieland operates like this: the Barbies live in mansions and hold every position of power, while the Kens, including Beach Ken, exist only to love them and have unimportant roles like "Beach", making them more disadvantaged than people in the real world. No one questions this until Ken discovers patriarchy in the real world and brings it to Barbieland, where the Barbies are brainwashed into subservience to the Kens until Barbie is able to break the spell. In the end, the matriarchy is reinstated, though the narrator explains that the Kens will be given proper rights in the future.
• Men Act, Women Are: This is gender-inverted with the Barbies and Kens as a joke on their roles in the toy line. The Barbies have amazing talents and professions, while the Kens roles are nothing but "just" Ken. When Kens take over Barbieland after learning about patriarchy from the real world and turn it to Kendom, the trope is played straight as Barbies become nothing more than pretty window dressing while the Kens party around. When the Barbies are deprogrammed, they take the initiative of stopping the Barbie constitution from being changed by tricking the Kens into having a rather meaningless battle instead of voting. In the end, the trope is gender-inverted again, but this time the Kens are encouraged to have their own agency, with the narrator saying that someday they will have it as good as women do in the real world.
• Men Can't Keep House: When the Barbies take back their houses, President Barbie mentions that they had to seriously disinfect them.
• The Men in Black: The agents from Mattel coming to get Barbie are dressed in black suits, white shirts, black ties and sinister shades.
• AM/FM Characterization: "Push" by Matchbox Twenty is the subject of an extended bit: the Kens play it for the Barbies, intentionally evoking the trope of overconfident men who think playing guitar makes them hot shit.
• Mighty Whitey: Parodied towards the end when Sasha calls Barbie their "White Savior Barbie", a title Barbie is quick to refute by pointing out that Gloria did all the saving.
• Misaimed Fandom: An In-Universe example. At one point after the Kens take over Barbieland, they perform Matchbox Twenty's "Push" in a long loop to the Barbies as a statement of their newfound power. The song's writer, Rob Thomas, has repeatedly stated that the male narrator is actually the victim suffering at the hands of a female abuser. The song is appropriate for their situation, but not in the way they believe.
• Mock Hollywood Sign: Barbieland's hills bear a pink "BARBIELAND" sign in the style of the Hollywood sign. The latter is seen when the setting moves to Los Angeles.
• Mouthscreen: After Stereotypical Barbie becomes human, her mouth is the only thing that can be seen aside from the background. She then lets out a breath.
• Mugshot Montage: Barbie and Ken repeatedly get their mugshots taken at the police station in the real world for various transgressions.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • As it turns out, technically, the rise of the Kendom and its really bad macho patriarchy brainwashing the Barbies and putting the Kens in charge is Stereotypical Barbie's fault by leading Beach Ken to the real world and not paying him any attention, especially when he begins learning what the Patriarchy is. Barbie promptly sinks to her lowest point in tears... figuratively and literally.
  • Later, she goes to Beach Ken to personally amend her wrongs. Ken, for his part, repeatedly slaps himself when he misinterprets several things from Barbie as an admission of love.
• Mythology Gag: Has its own page.
• Narrator: Helen Mirren narrates the film.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The trailers have a heavy focus on Mattel's attempts to find Barbie once they learn she's in the Real World and to contain her, making them appear to be the film's big threat. In reality, it's Beach Ken who is, thanks to a mild case of Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal.
  • In the trailer, when Barbie lists all the strange things that have happened to her lately, she ends with demonstrating her "flat feet" to her friends. In the movie proper, Barbie's feet being flat is the first thing she demonstrates to her friends, and the other events are listed after that.
  • In the trailer, when Ken offers to come with Barbie to the real world, Barbie immediately says "Okay". In the movie proper, Barbie is much more reluctant and initially refuses; she only agrees to take Ken along after he points out the real world might have a "beach" (his specialty) and after he confirms he's brought roller skates with him.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Apparently, Skipper once went to the real world to babysit some kids and tried to teach a baby how to surf. There's no further elaboration about what happened.
  • Allan claims all the other Allans escaped into the real world and nobody really cared to bring them back; apparently, *NSYNC are in fact all escaped Allans.
  • Mattel apparently once made a Proust Barbie. It didn't sell well.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: The various bizarre, short-lived Barbies and Kens that appear in Weird Barbie's house border on unbelievable, but the end credits make sure to show all their real-life counterparts.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: To take Barbieland back, the un-brainwashed Barbies and their allies take their brainwashed sisters away from the Kens and deprogram them. To distract the Kens, the Barbies pretend to be confused about simple concepts like Photoshop and financial diversification so the Kens can mansplain to them.
• Obliviously Evil: The movie portrays the Mattel CEO as reinforcing patriarchy, but not as malicious or greedy. He honestly and truly believes that his company is making little girls' dreams come true by selling them Barbie dolls, and when Ken dolls start selling just as well as Barbie dolls after the Kens take over Barbieland, the Mattel CEO is against this, because he wants to make little girls happy, and thinks that means putting things back the way they were.
• Odd Name Out: Everybody in Barbieland is named either Barbie or Ken, save for the single copies of other Barbie franchise dolls—Midge, Skipper, and Allan.
• Once More, with Clarity: When trying to envision the girl who plays with her, Stereotypical Barbie initially sees a little girl who has now grown up and rejected Barbie's conventional femininity, as well as her parent's affection, and concludes that she has to reach out to the girl. When she does meet Sasha and her mother Gloria, Barbie realizes that it was Gloria who was playing with her as part of a minor midlife crisis, and the flashbacks are shown again but this time focusing on Gloria, who was previously out of frame.
• Once Original, Now Common: This trope is lampshaded In-Universe as applying to Barbie herself. In a parody of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film reminds audiences of how revolutionary the original Barbie doll was when it came out in 1959, as most popular brands of toy dolls at the time were babies with little girls serving as their mothers.^note While several dolls did exist as fashion dolls most did not have mature faces, instead having the baby-like faces of most other dolls, or were extensions of baby-doll lines. Barbie was one of the first stand alone doll brands focused outside of the domestic to be successful. Barbie, in contrast, was a fully grown independent young woman who could be anything the girl wanted her to be, which was considered empowering at the time and helped advance the cause of feminism. This helps set up the later scene when Sasha gives real-life Barbie a "The Reason You Suck" Speech for being a tool of the patriarchy, bringing the trope's lampshade hanging full circle.
• One-Steve Limit: With exceptions like Skipper, Midge, and Allan, everyone in Barbieland is either "Barbie" or "Ken". They sometimes differentiate from each other with extra titles, such as "President Barbie", "Weird Barbie" and "Stereotypical Barbie".
• Onrushing Army: The two opposing fractions of Kens on the beach attack by simply rushing at each other.
• On Second Thought: When given the choice to stay in Barbieland or to venture into the real world, Barbie initially chooses to stay until she gets reminded of the cellulite issue at which point she changes her mind and votes for the trip.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: The film's penultimate scene features Stereotypical Barbie wondering who she really is and whether she should remain in Barbieland or become a real person. As she begins to shed tears, Margot Robbie's Australian accent begins presenting itself. You could be forgiven for thinking the intent is to show the "character" Barbie becoming the "real person" Margot Robbie—and that idea may indeed be the intent within the scene—but Barbie's American accent returns in the final scene.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • The scene of everyone greeting everyone at the beach of Barbieland goes on for almost 30 seconds.
  • The freakout over Stereotypical Barbie developing flat feet gets drawn out by Basketball Ken gagging, who has to be told to stop.
  • Stereotypical Barbie's literally sinking to her lowest point when she discovers she accidentally catalyzed Ken's takeover of Barbieland is drawn out by interrupting her sobbing with trying to assume the stiff Barbie poses, before she gives up and lies face-down on the ground. She's still face down when she's taken to Weird Barbie's home.
• Persecution Flip: Barbieland is a pink, saccharine world where the Barbies hold all the important positions and live in giant houses, while the Kens are second-class citizens that live solely to fawn over the Barbies and are implied to be homeless. When Stereotypical Barbie and Ken travel to the Real World, they discover a male-dominated society instead, albeit one where women still have more rights than the Kens in Barbieland do. Small wonder that the Kens decide to rebel after discovering this.
• Pink Means Feminine: Barbie, a brand for the archetypal Girly Girl, is strongly associated with pink. Barbieland is predominantly pink, featuring everything from pink houses to a pink sand beach, and is even introduced with a song by Lizzo about the color pink. Stereotypical Barbie also wears plenty of pink. Even the CEO of Mattel wears a bright pink tie and light pink shirt to honor this association, something that, notably enough, none of the other people at Mattel do.
• Planet of Steves: Most of the Barbieland residents are named either Barbie or Ken. This is illustrated by a series of Actor IS the Title Character posters of the main cast, with the main distinction being a caption clarifying they have different jobs (and that there's also a Midge and an Allan). Lampshaded by the captions for the Kens:
  Gosling's poster: He's just Ken.
  Ben-Adir's poster: He's Ken too.
  Liu's poster: He's another Ken.
  Gatwa's poster: Ken again!
  Evans' poster: You guessed it. He's a Ken.
• Police Are Useless:
  • Local police promptly arrest Barbie and Ken every time they do something illegal in the real world, but then let them go almost immediately. They even allow Barbie and Ken to keep the cowboy outfits they stole.
  • The FBI are shown to be the first people to become aware of Barbie’s trip to the Real World, but other than notifying Mattel, they don’t raise a finger to do anything about the situation.
  • Whatever security forces Barbieland possess are powerless against Ken's coup d'état.
• Political Overcorrectness: Sasha gives such statements occasionally, such as calling Barbie a "nutjob" before correcting herself to "reality-challenged". When Barbie first meets her, Sasha tears into her for being a representation of capitalism and sexism and caps it off by calling her a fascist. Barbie is reduced to tears and confusion about how she could possibly be a fascist, as she doesn't do things like "control the flow of commerce". Later, her bumbling dad's attempt to speak Spanish only results in her complaining he just appropriated a political slogan.
• Postmodernism: Previous Barbie works, especially adaptations like Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse, have been quite self-aware, but this film is easily the most deconstructive, even political self-reflection of Barbie as a real-world phenomenon (though it's still a wholeheartedly affectionate one). The film approaches Barbie, Ken, and so-on as being aware enough of their simple, campy world of plastic that they question their place in both the world itself and the vastly more complicated real world, where Barbie is viewed not merely as a toy, but an icon made to ostensibly enrich and empower the lives of young girls, a product made with the purpose of marketability amidst fickle, ever-evolving standards of beauty and femininity, the subject of questions regarding historical gender roles and divides, etc. Rather than limiting these to mere subtext, Barbie and Ken end up facing these issues head-on, resulting in a film that's just as much about the real-world cultural impact of Barbie as it is about Barbie herself.
• Precision F-Strike: While it's censored, President Barbie calls the Kens "motherfuckers" as Barbieland is about to be reclaimed.
• Product Placement:
  • Many of the clothes in Stereotypical Barbie's wardrobe are made by Chanel and prominently feature the double-C logo. Margot Robbie was a brand ambassador for Chanel for several years (although her contract ended while the movie was in post production).
  • The existential truth about the universe is represented by a Birkenstock sandal. Barbie is seen wearing pink Birkenstocks at the end of the movie after becoming a real human being.
  • There's a Cutaway Gag to Gloria's husband practicing Spanish with Duolingo.
  • Ken's Mojo Dojo Casa House features a Mortal Kombat II cabinet (Warner Bros. owns the series).
  • Many of the vehicles seen in the film are manufactured by General Motors, who owns Chevrolet and GMC. Examples include Stereotypical Barbie's pink Chevrolet Corvette, Gloria's Chevrolet Blazer crossover (complete with several shots of the vehicle's exterior and interior), the Mattel company's Chevrolet Suburban SUVs, and the GMC Hummer EV that Ken takes home from the real world.
  • While most of the items in Stereotypical Barbie's dreamhouse are generic, the toaster in her kitchen is visibly branded with the SMEG logo.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Barbie sees Sasha and her friends at the lunch table and introduces herself to them, Sasha tears into Barbie for being responsible for consumerism and making girls feel less confident about themselves.
• Record Needle Scratch: All the music at Barbie's upbeat disco party grinds to a complete halt complete with needle scratch when she perkily asks if anyone ever thinks about dying, due to how atypical such a thought is for Barbieland.
• Red Pill, Blue Pill: Parodied when Weird Barbie offers Stereotypical Barbie the option between a pink high heel to return to her normal life or a brown sandal to go to the real world and find out the truth. Barbie repeatedly attempts to choose the high heel, at which Weird Barbie admits that she was giving her the illusion of agency and that she has to go to the real world.
  • When Barbie becomes a human in the real world, she is wearing pink sandals, indicating that she has ultimately chosen a balance between the two.
• Refreshingly Normal Life-Choice: One of the first things that makes Beach Ken feel good about the real world is someone asking him what time it is. This basic acknowledgement of Beach Ken's potential value as an sapient being is so shocking he immediately warms up to the real world.
• Refugee from TV Land: Played with. Barbieland and the real world interact with each other in a sort of cosmic manner that has significant implications when someone interacts with the opposite side. Barbie's issues arise from her going through the same thoughts Gloria has, and Weird Barbie is the way she is because the girl who played with her in the real world essentially defaced her. While Barbie finds her real-world family, Ken discovers the concept of the patriarchy and brings it back to Barbieland, influencing the success of Ken Mojo Dojo Houses and a Ken film in the real world.
• Refusal of the Call: Stereotypical Barbie visits Weird Barbie for advice on the sudden imperfections in her life. Weird Barbie offers her two choices represented by two shoes - a pink high-heel to represent going back to her regular life or a brown sandal to represent going to the Real World to find the truth of her existence.
  Weird Barbie: The choice is now yours.
  Barbie: (Not even hesitating) The first one. The high-heel.
  Weird Barbie: …You have to want to know. Okay? Do it again.
• Repeated for Emphasis: Played for Laughs; the Mattel CEO's gaggle of executives will occasionally repeat things he says in chorus for emphasis and humor.
  CEO: Imagine a town in Sweden.
  Executives: Sweden!
• Repetitive Name: Gloria and Sasha note that "Mojo Dojo Casa House" is entirely just different ways of saying "House." Ken retorts that it's fun to say and as such it doesn't matter.
• Retraux: The logo for the film is based on the version used for the doll in the 1970s and 80s.
• Rocky Roll Call: Parodied since everyone in the roll call has the same name: Barbie's day starts with all the Barbies sequentially greeting each other with perky "Hi, Barbie!"s.
• Roger Rabbit Effect: Both times that Barbie's Corvette lands after flipping in the sky, it is accompanied by pink 2D animated dust.
• Rule of Symbolism: When Barbie meets with Mattel's executive office, she's offered a quick way back to Barbieland by way of being placed into a life-sized box package. While at first tempted by the nostalgia of being back in it, Barbie ultimately refuses to be put back in a box.
• Running Gagged: The Overly Long Gag of the "FLAT FEET!" freakout and the resulting Vomit Chain Reaction grinds to a halt after Basketball Ken joins in and has to be told to stop.
• Rushmore Refacement: Barbieland’s version is the previous face molds of Barbie. After the Kens take over, the Barbies are replaced by horse heads.
• Secret Path: Ruth Handler shows Barbie a secret way out of the Mattel building.
• Self-Deprecation: At one point, during Barbie's breakdown when she's lamenting she's not "Stereotypical Barbie pretty" anymore, the Narrator chimes in and makes a snarky note to the filmmakers that Margot Robbie is the wrong person to cast to make this point. The writer who wrote that line just so happens to be Greta Gerwig, who is also the director (and if that specific line wasn't from her, it would have been from co-writer Noah Baumbach, who happens to be Gerwig's husband). Also, Robbie is a producer on the film.
• Sentimental Shabbiness: Weird Barbie has her hair messily cut short, scribbles on her face in different colors, mismatched and ill-fitting clothing, and "is always in the splits." Her appearance is in reference to real-life Barbie dolls lovingly defaced and worn out in the same manner by children. Fittingly, she's the one who tells Stereotypical Barbie to venture into the Real World for answers.
• Serenade Your Lover: Parodied. As a display of machoness Beach Ken serenades Stereotypical Barbie by playing "Push"...for four hours. And then the camera pans out to show that all the Kens have brought the Barbies to the beach and are playing them the same song.
• Serious Business:
  • Stereotypical Barbie developing flat feet is met with a comical Freak Out from the other Barbies, with a Ken (Basketball Ken) even being as freaked out.
  • Mere moments after Barbie and Ken arrive in the real world, the FBI contacts Mattel, who take the incursion into reality deathly seriously. Apparently, ten years ago, Skipper found herself in the real world and got a gig babysitting human children. It… did not go well.
• Sexiness Score: The opening line of the chorus of "I'm Just Ken":
  I'm just Ken; anywhere else, I'd be a ten.
• Shoehorned Acronym: Both versions of the song "PINK" try to match the letters P, I, N, and K to Barbie's mood... unsuccessfully.
  • The first version:
    P, pretty
    I, intelligent
    N, never sad
    K, kool!
  • The Dark Reprise:
    P, panic
    I, I'm scared
    N, nauseous
    K, DEATH!
• Single-Palette Town: Everything in Barbie's hometown in Barbieland is predominantly pink-colored, much like the dollhouses associated with the character. The production used so much pink paint for the Barbieland set that it actually caused a GLOBAL SHORTAGE of that particular shade.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Beach Ken (played by Ryan Gosling) has an ongoing rivalry with another Ken who's fittingly named Rival Ken (played by Simu Liu). Rival Ken gets more attention and kudos from Stereotypical Barbie, which irritates Beach Ken to no end, and unwittingly and later, consciously kicks off Beach Ken's run at Patriarchy.
• Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: In Barbieland, all major jobs, government functions, and economics are run by the Barbies, with the Kens being cheerleaders, "beach" men, and boyfriends. Once Beach Ken returns from the real world after learning about patriarchy, he reverses the situation. The Barbies take it back, but encourage the Kens to become their own people and even offer them a circuit court position (they weren't allowed to be on the Supreme Court) with the possibility of more in the future. The Narrator also states that one day, Kens will enjoy the same rights that women in the real world do.
• Soapbox Sadie: Sasha has a well-deserved reputation around her school for being quite the angry political advocate, and when Stereotypical Barbie winds up meeting her, she calls Barbie out for ruining feminism and being a fascist (which Barbie protests, because she doesn't make the trains run on time^note an old aphorism in regards to fascist rule in WW2 Italy). Later, she (rightfully) complains her dad's attempt to speak Spanish only resulted in him appropriating a political phrase.
• Some of My Best Friends Are X: Parodied. When Barbie calls attention to the lack of female representation in Mattel, the CEO desperately pleads with her that Mattel had two female CEOs in the past (one in The '90s, another in a different time) before rambling about the women he knows personally — namely, his family members. He then randomly throws in that some of his best friends are Jewish, even though Judaism hasn't been mentioned once before in the conversation.
• Split-Screen Phone Call: Aaron takes a phone call from an FBI agent in his square gray cubicle. The screen is then split, with half of the screen being the FBI agent talking on the phone in his own square cubicle. Great pains are taken to enforce the parallel, even matching a background FBI agent walking past the divide on one side with a background Mattel employee on the other.
• Stepford Smiler:
  • Barbie begins to adopt this when her perfect life begins to clash with her mounting existential anxieties, having to hide them with a smile when around others in Barbieland.
  • "Dance the Night", Dua Lipa's song for the movie which plays during Stereotypical Barbie's party, is a disco number about how the singer could dance all night without anyone knowing there's anything wrong because it'll never show on her face — any tears that flow will just sparkle like diamonds under the lights.
    Watch me dance, dance the night away / My heart could be burnin', but you won't see it on my face
• Stepford Suburbia:
  • Barbie grows increasingly uncomfortable with how she's no longer fitting in with her town's saccharine, pastel perfection, and nearly ruins a perfectly planned dance party with an admission that she's starting to question their mortality. It turns out that this is because Gloria has been playing with Barbie while remembering how she used to do so with Sasha before their estrangement. This feeling of bleakness and nostalgia, coupled with a midlife crisis, has caused her to unintentionally transfer similar feelings into Barbie while holding her.
  • When the Kens take over Barbieland and turn it into the Kendom, the Barbies start acting like Stepford wives in all but name.
• Stepping Out to React: When Barbie asks Ken if she can be his long-term girlfriend, he excuses himself to leave and yells "SUBLIME!" off-screen before returning to say yes. Word of God says that this was an Ad Lib by Ryan Gosling.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: When Barbie brings Gloria and Sasha back to Barbieland with her, she finds that Ken has already brought the patriarchy to the feminist utopia, with the Kens remodeling it in their image and the Barbies brainwashed into subservience.
• Straw Misogynist: What the Kens become with the introduction of patriarchy. The "straw" part comes when they have no idea how misogyny works, making this almost a Deconstructed Trope, as the only concept of misogyny they have is the Straw Misogynist trope, demonstrating how unrealistic it is in practice.
• Stylish Sunhats: Barbie loves wearing pink, and while driving her car out of Barbieland, wears a bright pink sunhat. In-universe, she's a famed model and a party girl (and Ken has a god-like view of her).
• Sugar Bowl: Barbieland is a beautiful town filled with friendly Barbies and Kens. The sun is always shining, the fashions are always on point, and the parties are always perfect.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: Gloria explains her driving skills with the words "There was this boy..." Her daughter interjects, asking whether she's talking about her father. Gloria's confirmation sounds less than convincing.
• Take Our Word for It: The CEO of Mattel states that Barbie’s presence in the real world could have catastrophic effects. He never elaborates on this, saying that such effects could be unimaginable. The closest we ever see is Ken’s altered dream house being manufactured when he takes over Barbieland, though it is mentioned that a Skipper doll once escaped to the Real World and got a job babysitting with disastrous results when she tried to teach the babies to surf.
• Take That!:
  • Several are done to how power inequality uses pinkwashing to hide its nature, such as when a man answers to Ken's accusation of not applying the patriarchy properly (since he had told him that being a man is almost more of a disadvantage when applying) that they actually apply it pretty well, but just hide it better; and the Mattel CEO trying to defend how feminist and progressive his corporation is, but only being able to think of two women CEOs total and no other woman in a position of power in the whole company or important in his life beyond being a family member. The movie also shows that the CEO sincerely cares about making girls happy, showing that you don't have to actively promote the patriarchy to end up applying or reinforcing it.
  • A more affectionate one: a commercial for Depression Barbie has her watching the BBC's Pride and Prejudice (1995) seven times.^note This particular adaptation has the stigma of being both a chick flick (or miniseries) and well-loved by fandom geeks, who are likely to be doing what Depression Barbie is: wearing sweatpants, neglecting hygiene, binge-eating candy, scrolling social media, and regretfully moping over their life.
  • Matchbox Twenty's "Push" is depicted as a "dudebro who thinks he's going to get girls by playing a guitar competently" anthem, in the vein of the "anyway, here's 'Wonderwall'" meme, as the Kens subject increasingly uncomfortable Barbies to hours-long performances of it.
  • Similarly, The Godfather is depicted as a magnet for the type of filmbro who obsessively mansplains extremely obvious details to women.
  • A Barbie soon after being un-brainwashed states that—for some reason—she was extremely obsessed with the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League.^note WB's falling out with Zack Snyder over the critically-trashed final version of Justice League, plus megafans of Zack Snyder/the DCEU often being associated with misogyny and sexist tropes even before the controversy over the "Snyder cut" that only increased in the lead-up to the recut's release, make for a great target.
  • While admitting that enforcing the patriarchy in Barbieland didn't make him happy, Beach Ken goes on a tangent about how impractical mini-fridges are.
  • After spending all movie making sure the the audience understands that the Kens have gotten a raw deal in Barbieland society and that they shouldn't be treated as second-class citizens, they get a happy ending: just as much gender equality as women have in the real world! And if that's unsatisfying, well, the movie doesn't ask you why you're upset on behalf of fictional Kens but not real women. Not out loud, anyway.
• Testosterone Poisoning: The "Kendom" is full of stereotypical male things like minifridges, giant trucks, horses, leather, beer, shirtlessness, and random workouts, exaggerated to ridiculous levels. Justified as it was based on Ken's limited research on "the patriarchy" rather than actual traditional masculinity. He even notes that when he realized that "the patriarchy" had basically nothing to do with horses, he lost interest. Ironically, horses are matriarchal creatures. Later, when Beach Ken gives up his overthrow and accepts he doesn't need a patriarchy or Barbie to fulfill himself, his coat is thrown to another Ken, who promptly starts speaking in a bassy macho voice.
• The Theme Park Version: When Ken finally learns of patriarchy and decides to bring it to Barbieland, his lack of understanding causes his recreation of it in Barbieland to be a rather simplified and immature understanding of masculinity in the real world.
• Title: The Adaptation: Though promotional material for the film itself just calls it Barbie, the Mattel tie-in line and other pieces of merchandise call it Barbie: The Movie. The tie-in soundtrack album is called Barbie: The Album in a similar fashion.
• Toilet Humor: In a Freeze-Frame Bonus from the Mattel warehouse, the boxes for the highly popular Mojo Dojo Casa House playset promote a battery-operated toy couch with the gimmick "It Farts!"
• Toy Time: Barbieland is portrayed as a life-sized version of the toys. Everyone lives in giant dollhouses, they "eat" by miming eating with plastic food and "drink" from empty cups, the clothes look like they're made of the same plastic and fabric as the dolls' accessories, and the vehicles have stickers for headlights and their details molded on. Even parts of the environment, like the sand and ocean (which basically looks frozen in time, complete with static waves and no ebb or flow to the tide) are clearly just molded plastic lookalikes, essentially indicating that this part of the world may as well be one giant playset.
• Travel Montage: Parodied. Anyone going to and from Barbieland has to rollerblade, ride a boat, ride a tandem bike through a Land of Tulips and Windmills ("beautiful countryside"), use a camper van, ride a rocket, and drive a sports car, and this is always shown as characters switching between the different modes of transportation as the camera pans sideways.
• Unusual Euphemism: The FBI agent tells Aaron Dinkins from Mattel, "I don't give a flying squirrel who you are" in order to make the film PG.
• Urban Fantasy: Besides Barbieland, a vaguely defined dimension where all Barbies, Kens and other dolls of the brand reside, Ruth Handler's ghost has an office in the 17th floor of Mattel's office building that is entirely a dark void besides the very back, which looks just like her kitchen. The CEO doesn't really find any of it odd.
• Verbal Backspace: In the middle of Barbie's disco party, she happily asks if anyone ever thinks about dying, to which the music grinds to a halt and everyone stares at her shocked. She then nervously says, "I'm just dying...to dance!", and the music and dancing immediately start back up again.
• Vertical Kidnapping: When the girls kidnap the Barbies to undo the brainwashing, one Barbie is pulled up from above.
• Villain Has a Point: It's acknowledged that the Kens being largely ignored and forced to only work menial jobs while all Barbies had important roles is hosed up. When the Kendom begins, Beach Ken's Motive Rant to Barbie is framed as having an element of truth to it - all the Kens, especially Beach Ken, want respect and autonomy instead of getting passed over and having no real power or opportunity, but are going about it in a completely vile manner by instead oppressing their oppressors. This convinces the Barbies, after the defeat of the Kens, to start treating the Kens more equally, beginning with allowing a Ken to join a lower court and opening the door for more representation down the line.
• Villain of Another Story: Ruth lampshades that her story of evading the IRS during her tenure as Mattel's CEO is a story for another movie to talk about.
• Virile Stallion: The Testosterone Poisoning Kendom is horse-themed, complete with the Barbie-themed Rushmore Refacement being replaced by horses, everything being covered in leather, and Beach Ken wearing a cowboy outfit. Ironically, the Kens of course have Barbie Doll Anatomy, unlike horses.
• Vomit Chain Reaction: Parodied. The Barbies and one Ken Stress Vomit in reaction to Stereotype Barbie having "flat feet" (i.e. no longer having her feet locked in tip-toes for high heels), but since everything in Barbieland is pretend, including the food, they all just make gagging sounds.
• Wakeup Makeup: The opening scene of Barbie waking up in her bed and looking impeccable. Justified as this is Barbieland where everything is perfect.
• Wham Line: The plot kicks off when Stereotypical Barbie inexplicably and casually asks the following question during a big dance number:
  Do you guys ever think about dying?
• What Would X Do?: When Barbie enters the real world and thinks of a way how to find the girl, she wonders what a smart Barbie would do in this case.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Gloria gives Barbie this speech when the latter is at her lowest, reminding her that she is beautiful, smart and that she shouldn't think that she is not good enough.

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"You understand that humans only have one ending. Ideas live forever."

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