Project Nim contains examples of:
Tropes #-F
- The '70s: The decade of Nim's birth (1973), the language project, and his stays in the IPS and LEMSIP.
- The '80s: Coinciding with the time the Black Beauty Ranch purchased Nim from LEMSIP. Held in solitary, he destroyed two TV sets that were given to him to entertain him. The doc reenacts one of these with the TV showing a speech by Ronald Reagan.
- The '90s: Trully the best years of Nim's life, where he was allowed to just be a chimp at Black Beauty, have a mate and join a troop without serving as a test subject. He died in 2000.
- All Animals Are Domesticated: Naturally averted. Nim exhibits behavior typical of a male chimpanzee from a very young age despite not seeing other chimpanzee since birth, like being hostile to his adoptive "father" and testing his authority as the lead male of the group.
- Animal Testing: Nim is part of a behavioral experiment since birth, and later is sent to a lab testing vaccines for hepatitis.
- Apathetic Citizens: When Nim is sold to LEMSIP, Bob Ingersoll and another student-keeper at the Institute for Primate Studies try to raise awareness and oppose the move, but they meet indifference from the populace and educators alike; only some journalists show interest.
- Armor-Piercing Question: When a student tells a journalist that as an adult, Nim will have the strength of five or six men, the journalist asks what they will do with Nim when the time comes. The student goes silent.
- Berserk Button: The worst of Nim's attacks are against women that "abandon" him. One of the researchers even says that leaving Nim felt like breaking up with an abusive boyfriend.
- Bestiality Is Depraved: The doc touches on the physical relationship between Nim and his first adoptive "mother", Stephanie LaFarge for several minutes but doesn't comment on it. LaFarge admits to breastfeeding Nim (it was part of the plan and she didn't think it was wrong), but also to touch Nim's genitals and to let him "explore" her body as he grew up. When Herbert Terrace learns of this, he immediately takes Nim from Stephanie and moves him to a new home. There Nim is given cats to pet, but when he puts them against his groin, they are taken from him and he is told not to do it.
- Bittersweet Ending: Nim's From Bad to Worse life is cut short when he dies of a heart attack in Black Beauty at the age of 26 (chimps can live almost thrice that in captivity). However, he lived his last years in a more spacious residence, without experimentation, in the company of a chimp troop (three of which were rescued from LEMSIP, counting Nim), had a mate and likely fathered a baby, and was visited regularly by his "friend", Bob Ingersoll. Additionally, while the project was deemed unsuccessful in teaching Nim true language, Nim learned 125 different signs, and LEMSIP was closed in 1995.
- Courtroom Antics: In an attempt to get Nim out of LEMSIP, Henry Herrmann suggests to summon Nim as a witness in his own case and have him make the sign "out" while in a cage in the courtroom. This isn't allowed, but the threat is apparently enough to make LEMSIP sell Nim to the Black Beauty Ranch animal refuge.
- Crapsaccharine World: The Black Beauty Ranch, at least in the beginning. People and animals are received with a corny sign about how their problems have ended, and while orders of magnitude better in comfort than either the IPS or LEMSIP, it is still a refuge originally built for horses and similar animals, to the point that there isn't any other chimpanzee there until many years later. Making things worse, the first manager Cleveland Amory doesn't allow Bob Ingersoll to visit.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: All three times Nim attacks a woman, since he already has the strength of several men even as a subadult. When Nim learns that his second "mother" Laura-Ann Petitto is leaving, he jumps a floor and a half, gets in the room where she is at through a window, and bashes her head against the floor until four men restraint him. He bites another student, Renee Falitz, so hard that the inside of her mouth can be seen from the outside, and Herbert decides to abort the project outright. Finally, he grabs his first "mother" Stephanie by a leg and throws her around like a ragdoll when she enters his cage in Black Beauty.
- Devil in Plain Sight: Dr. James Mahoney is literally called "The Devil" by Ingersoll. A thin, scarred, bald figure in both the 70s and 2011 segments, he is tasked with acquiring chimpanzees for vaccine experimentation at LEMSIP and sees no difference between Nim and other chimpanzees, despite knowing that he was Raised by Humans and knows sign language.
- Did Not Think This Through: The plan is to raise a chimp as a human child and teach him sign language, but virtually anyone who comes in contact with Nim either doesn't know anything about chimpanzees, sign language, child-rearing, or how to conduct a years-long experiment.
- Dung Fu: Implied when the court rejects Henry's proposal to have Nim "testify" at his hearing, saying they don't want a chimp making a "mess of the courtroom". There are no actual references to Nim doing it in the documentary.
- Evilutionary Biologist: One of the first lines in the doc is a voiceover by a 70s researcher saying that a baby chimp is "nothing" and that by making humans raise him they will turn it into something "better".
- From Bad to Worse: Nim is taken from the hands of his mother right after his birth and given to a couple to raise as a human baby, but they make such a (disturbing by implication) mess of it that he is taken from them and sent to another home where he is raised communally by students, then sent back to the primate shelter he was born in without a warning and not knowing of other chimpanzees existence until then, from which he is sent to be a test animal in a lab, then "rescued" by an animal sanctuary that puts him in basically solitary confinement for a few years, until he's given a mate, but she dies of disease...
Tropes G-Z
- Gone Horribly Wrong: The entire project and Nim's life (if there ever was a plan for him beyond the project), particularly while under the LaFarges. It isn't until he is moved to the second house when there is an actual record keeping and planning of the experiment, and he learns most of his signs.
- Hellhole Prison: The IPS and specially the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP), which keep their chimps in small, cramped, humid cages; make them work or serve as lab rats, and control them with cattle prods and tranquilizers.
- Henpecked Husband: Wer LaFarge isn't even told by his wife that they are going to raise a chimp until she brings it through the door. He also fails to make the baby chimp take him any seriously.
- Hippie Parents: Wer is a former hippy according to his wife, and she fits quite some of the stereotypes herself.
- Informed Flaw: Despite deeming it promising for several years, Herbert suddenly declares the project a failure and defends that Nim is not using language but just ponying a few gestures he has learned for his benefit. Yet Nim is shown to know dozens of words in sign language, use them in correct combinations, and even create new ones.
- Ignored Expert:
- The moment Nim is taken from Stephanie, she's banned from having any contact with him or having any imput in the experiment at all, even though she's been his "mother" since birth.
- Bob is ignored and banned from visiting Nim despite being the human closest to him while he's in the IPS.
- Stephanie becomes the ignorer years later when she disregards the owners of the Black Beauty about how the now adult Nim is obviously not happy to see her (despite recognizing her) and insists in entering his cage, where he predictably attacks her.
- It's All About Me: How Stephanie, Herbert, and Cleveland Amory come across at times, despite claiming to care and feel bad about Nim.
- Kick the Dog:
- Stephanie's random bout of "sexual experimentation" with Nim, which she seemingly decided on unilaterally and would have landed her a charge for molestation if he was human.
- Herbert visits Nim after one year in the IPS. Nim recognizes and is visibly happy to see him, likely because he thinks he is going back home. But it is just a photo op for the press, Herbert leaves to never come back, and when Nim is sold to LEMSIP he doesn't lift a finger to stop it. Put together with all the times Herbert moved Nim around without telling him or allowing him to say bye to people and places he interacted with daily, and it either shows that Herbert never treated Nim like a human child, self-defeating the supposed basis of the experiment; or that his very idea of how to raise a human child is disturbing.
- Kill It With Bullets: During the attack on Stephanie, the owners of the Black Beauty think of shooting Nim and go for a revolver, but he stops in time.
- Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: It is suspected but not confirmed that Nim had a baby with his mate at Black Beauty, presumably because chimps aren't monogamous and there was no paternity test.
- Meet Cute: After several years of solitude in Black Beauty, Nim is introduced to a female chimp that becomes his mate and they (possibly) have a baby.
- Named After Somebody Famous: "Nim Chimpsky" is a play on the name of famous MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, who said that apes are incapable of language and that it is an exclusively human feature.
- No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: The experiment goes off the rails soon at the LaFarge home, with nobody involved taking any notes, following early plans, or having a real idea of their individual tasks, and Nim barely learning a word.
- Parental Abandonment: A constant theme. Nim is taken from his mother's arms soon after birth, and later from any women filling for such role without warning or time to make himself to the idea. The times he goes most berserk all have to do with instances of abandonment.
- Pet Baby Wild Animal: A dramatic real-life case.
- Raised by Humans: The claimed chore premise of the experiment, do this to a chimpanzee and see if it will develop language like a human.
- Shock Stick: Used by the keepers in the IPS to handle the chimps.
- The Stoner: After the students at IPS introduce Nim to weed, he signs "stone smoke now" to ask for some.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Herbert had a relationship with both of Nim's "mothers" while they were his students - Stephanie before the project, Laura Ann during it.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The workers at LEMSIP know that Nim knows sign language, but treat him like any other subject. Furthermore, they know that other chimps from the IPS also know signs (which means either Nim taught them or they copied him), but this only spurs them to teach staff a few signs so they can order the chimps better. Nobody seems to give more importance to this, nor does it make anyone think about giving the chimps better living conditions.
- Uplifted Animal: A real-life subversion. Nim undoubtly learns things that most chimpanzees don't (like some sign language and using the toilet) but they aren't out of the scope for a chimp and he doesn't even do either well. Plus, he behaves like a typical chimpanzee when he is allowed to.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Held by the people behind the experiment. Despite the raising of a chimp as a human being one of the claimed aims, they expect said chimp to not mind when they suddenly move him from one location to another and cut off contact with his relations.
