A 2010 film written and directed by Sion Sono, Cold Fish tells the story of a quiet fishmonger named Nobuyuki who once again gets into trouble because his daughter gets caught stealing in a shop. The cheerful and charismatic Yukio, who also happens to be a fishmonger, bails him out. Yukio suggests that Nobuyuki’s daughter may work at his shop (which is significantly larger than Nobuyuki’s) and that he and Nobuyuki can work together as business partners on top of that. Nobuyuki agrees, not yet knowing that the man he made a deal with is actually a psychopathic Serial Killer who has murdered well over 50 people. Soon Nobuyuki is blackmailed into assisting Yukio in what he calls making his victims "disappear". This is the beginning of a nightmare of Gorn and humiliation.
Cold Fish contains examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Nobuyuki in the last act of the story, after he kills Yukio. He knocks out his daughter (twice) and rapes his wife.
- Alas, Poor Villain: A disturbing example. It’s especially disturbing because of Yukio‘s reaction to the unexpected brutality of Nobuyuki - he seems to have a flashback to when his father raped him as a child.
- All Women Are Lustful: Yukio’s wife is a very straight example of a lustful woman, but even Nobuyuki’s wife falls into this trope. The sex scene with Yukio showing this is particularly embarrassing to watch and seems very Out of Character compared to the rest of the film.
- Beneath the Mask: Yukio may seem friendly at first with his extroverted behaviour. It takes some time until it gets clear that he is a psychopath and Serial Killer.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Nobuyuki seems like he couldn’t even harm a fly, but the appearance is disturbingly deceiving.
- Call-Back: The very last thing you see before the credits is a picture of planet Earth. This is a call back to earlier dialogue between Yukio and Nobuyuki: Yukio makes fun of Nobuyuki being fascinated with astronomy because for him, planet Earth is not a beautiful blue planet but just a cold rock in space. With this last picture, the movie raises the question to the viewer if Nobuyuki, after all the terrible things that happened throughout the movie, is still able to see Earth as a beautiful planet.
- The Climax: The fairly long scene that results in Nobuyuki stabbing Yukio down.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Homicidal tendencies aside, Yukio has a clownish facade and likes to spontaneously break out dancing to motivate his friends and workers.
- Crapsack World: More or less the point of the whole thing; Yukio wants to make Nobuyuki (a man who loves the world) see the world as a crapsack world. He succeeds, with Nobuyuki committing suicide at the end of the movie.
- Downer Ending: Sure the Muratas are dead, but Nobuyuki turns into a violent beast who ultimately kills himself, and his daughter doesn't mourn him when he dies.
- Freudian Excuse: Yukio was sexually abused by his father as a child.
- Genre Shift: The story begins as a harmless family drama, even though some conflicts are present even then (like the daughter stealing). The first scene to imply where the story is going is the grotesque sex scene between Yukio and Nobuyuki's wife. Once the first murder occurs, the movie has turned to a psycho thriller and there is no turning back, diving deep into Gorn territory.
- Gorn: Scenes of this getting more and more frequent as the plot evolves.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Nobuyuki's stresses, exacerbated by the Muratas, cause him to snap and turn into an even nastier psycho than Yukio.
- Hit Me, Dammit!: Also earlier in the movie, when Taeko demands that Yukio hit her more during their tryst.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Two cases of this.
- Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: Yukio provokes Nobuyuki to strike him down. Noboyuki doesn’t seem to stand a chance against him though. Until he has the Freak Out and the tables turn.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Even though the movie itself states that the story it tells is true in the opening scene, the actual correspondence with true events is very thin.
