"I'm going to make you proud, daddy."
— Gord, moments before yelling at a pedestrian to "get the fuck out of the way"
Freddy Got Fingered is a strange and deranged 2001 black comedy film written, directed by and starring Tom Green, then fresh off his success on The Tom Green Show, which had just wrapped its fourth season.
The film follows Gordon "Gord" Brody (Green), an upstart cartoonist who heads to Los Angeles to obtain a contract for a television series. But when the producer tells him, quite rightly, that his ideas don't make any sense, he is forced to go back home to Portland, to the chagrin of his father Jim (Rip Torn). Hilarity Ensues.
Sucked into Gord's world of madness are his mother Julie (Julie Hagerty), his younger brother (and the titular) Freddy (Eddie Kaye Thomas), his best friend Darren (Harland Williams), girlfriend Betty Menger (Marisa Coughlan), and prospective producer Dave Davidson (Anthony Michael Hall).
One thing that nearly everyone who has seen this movie agrees on is that it is, to some extent, a Stealth Parody of the lowbrow "dude-bro" comedies that were popular around the time of its release. How much of the movie is a parody as opposed to just showing Green losing his marbles on camera — and whether that parody works — was, is and likely forever will be a source of debate.
Daddy, would you like a trope list? Daddy, would you like a list—of—tropes?
- Abusive Parents: Jim gets angry with Gord easily and almost attempts to hurt him. Jim even goes as far as attacking Gord's friend Darren by kicking his injured leg, and attacking Mr. Davidson and his secretary. It's almost a good thing that Jim's wife Julie leaves him.
- All Women Are Lustful: Betty repeatedly insists on sucking Gord off, and he is often hesitant to accept.
- Amusing Injuries: Horribly, horribly fucked with. Andy Malloy suffers the kind of horribly over-the-top violence that would normally be brushed off in a cartoonish fashion, except that the movie goes out of its way to highlight how horrifically painful and traumatic each new injury is and lingers on the consequences.
- Anti-Humor: Tom Green specialized in this type of humor.Gord: What do you call a guy with cheese on his face? The cheese face!
- Basement-Dweller: Gord begins the movie as such, and his reversion to being this when he quits his sandwich job is what touches off the conflict between him and his dad.
- Bestiality Is Depraved: Gord does it twice. One of the five Golden Raspberry Awards the film received was for "Worst Onscreen Couple: Tom Green and any animal he abuses."
- Big Brother Bully: Gord Brody torments his brother Freddy.
- Black Comedy Rape: The titular (fabricated) assault, which doesn't actually have that much bearing on the plot.
- Blatant Lies:
- At first, Jim believes Gord's implausible claim to have landed a job in high finance. He finds out otherwise during an unfortunate encounter in a fancy restaurant.
- Gord's later accusation that Jim molests Freddy goes unchallenged by everyone else.
- Bloody Hilarious:
- The scene where Gord delivers a baby, for a woman he's never met, after ignoring her pleas to get a real doctor. The incredibly NSFW result becomes what Allmovie.com referred to as "one of the bloodiest births ever put on film."
- Also, Andy's injuries, which get progressively more violent and horrible until it culminates in him being shredded to pieces by an airplane propeller. Don't worry, he's okay.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Near the end of the film, Gord and his father reconcile in Pakistan, only to be kidnapped just when it seems like the film is wrapping up. When that plotline gets resolved and they return to America by plane, a huge crowd welcomes them home on the runway, with one person holding up a sign which reads "When the Fuck Is This Movie Going to End?"
- Brick Joke: Gord advises Julie to leave Jim, whose behavior is getting increasingly erratic day by day, and fulfill "her sexual desires and have sex with basketball players and Greek men". Later, we see her in bed with Shaquille O'Neal.
- Butt-Monkey: Andy Malloy, a young neighbor of the Brodys who suffers horrific facial injuries every time he appears.
- By Wall That Is Holey: During the Pakistan scene, Gord survives being crushed by the cut-off section of his house via going under a window. This might actually be a Shout-Out to Buster Keaton and his iconic trope-making stunt from Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928).
- Call-Back: Gord masturbates an elephant to orgasm and sprays his dad with the ejaculate at the end of the film.
- The Cameo:
- Tom Green's then-fiancée Drew Barrymore has a few appearances as Dave Davidson's secretary.
- Also, Shaquille O'Neal is Gord's mom's new boyfriend.
- Cassandra Truth: After Gord makes the titular accusation against his dad, his (adult) brother Freddy is immediately taken away by Child Protective Services and sent to live in a group home for abused children, despite his repeated attempts to explain that Gord's accusations are untrue.
- Censor Decoy: The scene of the little boy getting obliterated into a small pile of meat that nothing could possibly have survived by airplane propellers got the film initially slapped with an NC-17 by the studio. Green responded by removing nothing from the scene and adding an obviously dubbed-in clip of him cheering "I'm okay, Daddy!", even though he (for obvious reasons) never appears in the rest of the film, and sent it to the ratings board. The MPAA accepted the scene with no further complaints.
- Cloud Cuckoolander:
- Gord could be the Logical Extreme of this trope, to the point that some viewers suspect he has some sort of mental illness.
- Jim dad also qualifies, although he's not quite as strange as Gord is.
- Cluster F-Bomb: The end of the Zebras in America cartoon features a voiceover of Gord repeatedly yelling "FUCKER!"
- Comically Missing the Point: Gord and Darren work on a skateboard ramp at 3 a.m. one night. Darren points out that Gord's hammering will wake his parents — and Gord suggests using an electric drill, which turns out to be even louder, instead.
- Cool Car: Jim gives Gord a Chrysler LeBaron, which by 2001 was a classic luxury sedan no less, and they then gush over it.
- Deconstructive Parody: In the Review episode on the film, Mike Stoklasa argued that the film is secretly a parody of gross-out comedies.
- Deranged Animation: Gord's attempts at cartoons.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Gord uncomfortably turns down Betty's numerous attempts to give him a blowjob, only acquiescing when she's already taking his pants off. He rather prefers that they take it slow and go on proper dates. It's only after he earns a million dollars and uses part of it to give Betty jewels where he's okay with her sucking his cock.
- Establishing Character Moment: Gord gets his right after his parents buy him a Chrysler LeBaron. When his younger brother asks why Gord gets such a nice car, Gord says "It's because they love me more than they love you," establishing him as a childishly obnoxious jackass who's rude to everyone immediately and for no reason whatsoever.
- Establishing Series Moment: About five minutes into the movie, Gord spots a horse at a nearby farm, leaps out of his car, jumps the fence, and starts jerking off the horse, screaming "Look, daddy, I'm a farmer!", for absolutely no reason. After that, it's off to the races.
- Everyone Has Standards: Downplayed given the nature of this film, but when Jim repeatedly insults Betty over being in a wheelchair, Gord lashes out at him physically.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Subverted. The title is a reference to Gord's false accusation that his father had molested his younger brother, Freddy, which never actually happened.
- Fan Disservice: The entire movie, pretty much. Rip Torn's ass in particular.
- Flat "What": When Gord makes the initial accusation of molestation, Jim comes back with a disbelieving "…say what."
- Flushing Toilet, Screaming Shower: Subverted. Gord's dad flushes the toilet while Gord is in the shower on purpose to try and get him with this. Gord turns out to be showering in full scuba gear.
- Food Slap: A frustrated Gord throws various toppings at a customer at the sub shop. When he snarks at the guy for him asking what he's supposed to do with all the trash food, the customer then hurls it back at him and walks out.
- A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: Gord squanders his million-dollar advance for his cartoon series pitch by renting a helicopter to fly a bag of jewels to Betty, then cutting off part of his father's house and shipping it to Pakistan.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Gord is the foolish one, a zany Manchild who's terribly unqualified for a professional job (he briefly works in a cheese sandwich factory and later at a fast-food restaurant apparently specializing in grilled cheese sandwiches). Freddy is the responsible one, working at a bank and having managed to move out of home.
- Genius Ditz: Betty may be an amateur rocket engineer, but she's not very bright in other areas. It doesn't occur to her that Gord is clearly not a stockbroker until Jim points it out to her.
- Gorn: The roadkill scene, the fracture, the birthing scene, Andy's injuries — really, this film has more blood and gore than some horror movies.
- Gory Discretion Shot: The little boy being chopped to pieces by an airplane propeller is only shown via a shot of the blood splattering across a crowd of people watching.
- Grossout Show: A Deconstructive Parody of the genre, which was at the height of its popularity in the late 90s and early 2000s. Many, many scenes in the movie transition instantly from deliberately
overly mawkish sentimentality to pointless vulgarity and incredibly gruesome violence for seemingly no reason whatsoever except to make it as unpleasant for the audience as possible. - Half-Human Hybrid: The titular family of Zebras in America are only half zebra. Their human halves are representations of Gord's family. The introduction indicates that the show is mainly about their experience of Half-Breed Discrimination.
- Hero Antagonist: Gord's dad.
- Hypocrite: Gord falsely accuses his father of molesting his brother, but he's done the same thing to both a horse and an elephant.
- I'm Okay!: Andy, after getting chopped to pieces by propellers. The line was very obviously dubbed in, apparently to avoid an NC-17 rating, despite never seeing Andy on screen again.
- Improbable Infant Survival: Parodied when Andy gets chopped up in the airplane propellers but somehow shouts "I'm okay, daddy!"
- Insult Backfire: From a deleted scene:Jim: Nale, you suck!Nale: What?Jim: You suck cock!Nale: Well, yeah!
- Iron Butt Monkey: For all the injuries Andy suffers, up to getting sliced up by a plane rotor, he comes out of all of them no worse for wear.
- Jabba Table Manners: Gord eats this way on his way home from L.A. to Portland, Oregon. He also does this in a Chez Restaurant with his girlfriend.
- Jerkass:
- Gord, though it's debatable whether or not he knows any better. He can be a Nice Guy, however.
- Gord's dad. Especially when he states that handicapped people are probably just lazy or even mentally disabled.
- Karma Houdini: Gord is never punished for causing any of the property damage, nor the psychological and physical torture he wreaks, nor even for quitting his job after one day.
- Kid-Appeal Character: Horrifically parodied. Andy Malloy, the son of Gord's next-door neighbor, is constantly following Gord around and trying to get involved with his wacky shenanigans, but every attempt ends in him receiving incredibly painful and bloody injuries that get worse every time.
- Large Ham: Those familiar with Tom Green's style of comedy won't be surprised by this one.[Sticks out a giant sausage from his crotch and walks around on the conveyor belts, showing it off as blatantly as humanly possible]Gord: YOU CAN'T HURT ME! YOU CAN'T HURT ME! NOT WITH MY … CHEESE HELMET! NOT WITH MY … CHEESE HELMET![Drives across the room on a mobility unit][Jumps on top of a table and screams][Grabs a giant jar of mustard][Chugs mustard down][Starts crawling on the conveyor belts again][Everyone leaves]Gord: Wait, why are you all leaving? Don't you like the Cheese Face?
- Like Father, Unlike Son: Irascible but hard-working Jim and happy-go-lucky slacker Gord. Very different in work ethic but similar in how irrational they both can be.
- Lima Syndrome: Gord and Jim initially have a fun time partying and gambling with the Pakistani terrorists. It's implied that after Gord accidentally shoots his revolver in the air, he and Jim go back to being treated like dirt.
- Literal-Minded: Gord. His response to a Hollywood executive's suggestion that he should "get inside the animal" to better his writing is to wear the carcass of deer and act like an animal.
- Mad Artist: Again, Gord. He's more mad than an artist as it took his father interrupting his second pitch to get his cartoon greenlit.
- Made of Iron:
- Gord inexplicably survives being struck by a tractor-trailer and having a house fall on him with no injuries.
- Andy incurs one horrific injury after another, then gets chopped up by a plane propeller and somehow lives.
- Makes Just as Much Sense in Context: A good chunk of Gord's actions are best explained as this, such as him jerking off a male horse in the middle of his trip to Hollywood.
- Manchild: Gord, for incredibly obvious reasons.
- Match Cut: Freddy and the child abuse survivors watch The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) while Gord watches Leave It to Beaver.
- Mistaken for Pedophile: Gord accuses Jim of molesting his brother Freddy, whom everyone outside the family assumes is underage.
- Mood Dissonance: Intentionally invoked in one of the final scenes, where Gord and his dad have a heartfelt reconciliation immediately after his father has been ejaculated on by an elephant and is still covered in jizz.
- Mood Whiplash: Played for Laughs, in a (theorized) parody of the "gross out, drama, gross out" format that contemporaneous comedy films often followed.
- Just before Gord softly gives a newborn baby to their mother, he screws around with the delivery process by biting the umbilical cord off and swinging the baby around by the cord to make them breathe.
- Gord finally having a heartfelt moment with his father Jim comes right after spraying him with gallons of elephant semen.
- Narrating the Obvious: The narrator in the PG-rated version tends to do this at times.[Gord is doing his "Backwards Man" act]Narrator: Then Gord tried on one of Daddy's fancy suits. Do you notice anything strange about Gord? He's got the suit on backwards and he's walking backwards! Gord thinks he's the Backwards Man!Gord: I'm the Backwards Man, the Backwards Man…
- Never Trust a Title: Freddy never got fingered, not during this movie nor even before. It's really a False Rape Accusation made by Gord to deflect Jim's criticisms of him during a family therapy session.
- Nice Girl: Betty is unusually tolerant of Gord's crude and loud behavior. She even bails him out of jail after he embarrasses her and himself in front of everyone by acting like a jackass.
- No OSHA Compliance: Gord repeatedly violates even the simplest of rules when working in the service industry, starting with never wearing gloves to handle the customers' food.
- Not What It Looks Like: Jim, while intoxicated, destroys Gord's drawings out of anger and Gord retorts with a simple "fuck you, Dad". Jim then proceeds to bear his ass to Gord (much to dismay of the viewers) and mocks him, telling him "come over here and fuck me". Enter Julie, who thinks Jim is asking Gord to molest him, prompting her to leave.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Tom Green’s Canadian accent shows up in spades when he asks for $100,000 at the bank after he successfully sells Zebras in America.
- Older Than They Look: The only reason Freddy is mistaken for an underage boy (he's 25), besides the people thinking so holding the Idiot Ball.
- Only Sane Man: Freddy of the Brody family, who is responsible and mature Nice Guy. Gord is a Psychopathic Manchild, Jim is an abusive Jerkass, and Julie enables of much of Gord's behavior, even to the point of believing him when he claims purely out of spite that their father molests Freddy.
- Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: The airplane propeller scene. Seriously, how much blood can one ten-year-old child possibly contain?
- Overly Long Gag:Gord: I'm gonna make you so proud.Jim: Make your daddy proud.Gord: You're gonna be so proouud.Jim: Prooouuud?Gord: Prooooouuuuud.
- Pædo Hunt:Gord: He's a molester! HE'S A CHIIIIIIIIILD MOLESTER!!!
- Percussive Therapy: Jim tows Gord's skateboard ramp into the street, plows through it with his pickup, and upon seeing the ramp in ruins whoops and says, "I'm feelin' better already."
- The Power of Cheese: Gord's cheese helmet.
- Psychopathic Man Child: Gord could very well make the page image, though he leans more toward the "Manchild" part.
- Random Events Plot: Much of what happens in the film has tangential relevance at best to Gord's goal of creating his animated show.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Gord deflects Jim's criticisms of him by saying, "Well, at least I don't touch Freddy," which a therapist, his mother, and the authorities fully buy.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gord gives one to an undeserving Nale in a deleted scene:Gord: Cheese sucks! Cheese sandwich factories suck, and only stupid idiots work in cheese sandwich factories! And I'm not a stupid idiot, so you can take this job and shove it in your ass!
- Re-Cut: The DVD and VHS releases include a "Rated PG Version." It lasts just over three minutes.
- Refuge in Audacity: Gord runs entirely on this. The best example is him accusing Jim of sexually abusing his brother Freddy and convincing a family therapist and the authorities that Freddy is an underage boy when he is clearly a fully grown adult.
- Running Gag: Andy getting injured, either by Gord or by his own ineptitude.
- Sarcasm Mode: After Gord asks not to eat roast beef the night he comes home, Jim comes back with a riposte that is made of this. (He also uses the Four Terms Fallacy in the process, but Gord doesn't notice. To be fair, Gord set Jim up for it.)Gord: I'm a 28-year-old man; I should be able to eat a chicken sandwich if I want.
Jim: He's 28 years old and he can eat a chicken sandwich. Very impressive. - Satellite Love Interest: Played for Laughs. Despite being a wheelchair-using rocket scientist, Betty seemingly has no interests besides performing sex acts on Gord and in almost every one of her scenes she begs to suck his cock.
- Secondary Character Title: Tom Green plays Gord, the older brother of the eponymous Freddy, but not the latter.
- Self-Deprecation:
- The credits feature Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady", wherein Eminem calls Tom Green out by name in highlighting the double standard in him being censored on TV at a time when Green got up to considerably more crass behavior and became an MTV star for it.
- Near the end, a man holds up a sign that says, "When the fuck is this movie going to end?!"
- Show Within a Show: Zebras in America.
- Something Else Also Rises: When Betty goes down on Gord, there is a picture in the background depicting the Eiffel Tower being erected.
- So Proud of You: Gord and Betty both express this for the other; he when he watches the news report of her completing her rocket-powered wheelchair, and she when she learns that he sold his cartoon.
- Stealth Parody: Some say that Tom Green made this film as an over-the-top version of some of the comedies that came out at the time, dialing the "gross-out" and "serious drama" moments present alike in those films up to eleven. Compare Freddy Got Fingered to the gross-out comedies that came out on either side of it, and it's easy to see the connection, though some think that's giving this movie too much credit.
- Stealth Pun: Remarkably, there is at least one joke so subtle that it's easy to miss it completely, even on a second watching. In the Movers and Shakers restaurant that Gord barges into, there's at least one extra who has a cast on his broken middle finger, which naturally happens to be pointed at the camera. In other words, the cast is flipping off the audience.
- Stylistic Suck: Knowing that Tom Green's comedy stylings mostly consisted of annoying and irritating others for his own amusement, some have theorized that with this film, Green was trying to create the most unpleasant and detestable comedy possible while, as mentioned above, parodying the gross-out early-2000s comedies like those made by Adam Sandler and the Wayans brothers.
- Surreal Humor: Any humor that isn't gross is still pretty weird, especially pertaining to Gord's cartoons.
- Tagline: The very appropriate "This time you can't change the channel."
- This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: When after Freddy is taken away and the therapist gives Jim an angry staredown, he snaps, "What are you looking at, bitch?"
- Time-Passage Beard: Gord and Jim grow their hair and beards out during their time as hostages by Pakistani terrorists. Freddy also grows his hair and beard out while staying with abused children during the same period.
- Title Drop: Averted, though the title is what Gord accuses his father of doing (Freddy being Gord's younger brother).
- Toilet Humor: Most of the movie.
- Troll: The Movie. Some even declare it's, quite possibly, the greatest "troll movie" ever made.
- The Unfavorite: Implied with Gord's younger brother, Freddy (Eddie Kaye Thomas) as their dad, Jim, got Gord a LeBaron convertible with a license plate that says "#1 SON". Plus, Jim starts warming up to Freddy only after Gord moves back in. (The “#1 SON” license plate could just refer to birth order, as we learn that Gord is 28 and Freddy is 25.)
- Unreliable Narrator: The "Daddy, Would You Like Some Sausages?" scene as depicted in the PG-rated version.Narrator: Did Daddy like Gord's song? [Gord's father pulls the sausages down and steps on Gord's keyboard] He sure did!
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Gord. Any and all physical harm the movie dishes out at him is almost welcomed.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: None of Gord's fellow sandwich assembly line workers pays the slightest bit of attention to his playing around with a sausage and yelling obnoxiously. When they do eventually leave, it's only because of the siren signalling their lunch break.
- Vertigo Effect
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Gord, to the point that he and his dad recite the trope nearly word for word at the end.
- World of Jerkass: Gord is a Psychopathic Manchild with an abusive father; the other characters are selfish maniacs with an unhealthy addiction to sex and violence.
