Film / Sorry to Bother You

Stick to the script.

Detroit: This is morally emaciating. I can't ride with you.

Cash: I’m doing this and I’m really good at it.

Sorry to Bother You is a 2018 absurdist sci-fi black comedy film written and directed by rapper Boots Riley (lead vocalist of The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club) in his directorial debut. The film stars Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson, with Omari Hardwick, Jermaine Fowler, Steven Yeun, Armie Hammer, Terry Crews, Lily James, Forest Whitaker, and Rosario Dawson in supporting or minor roles.

Cassius "Cash" Green (Stanfield) is a down-on-his-luck Oaklander who wins a job as a telemarketer at a company called RegalView. He doesn't do very well in the position until an older coworker (Danny Glover) tells him he can earn a higher commission from clients by using his "White voice" (provided by David Cross) while on the phone with them.

When Cash starts to follow that strategy, his career at RegalView takes off in a big way, and he's promoted to the position of "Power Caller" by Mr. _______ (Hardwick), an elusive senior member of the company who's also a Black man using a "White voice" (provided by Patton Oswalt). Despite Cash's lofty new status, it puts a strain on his relationships with his girlfriend Detroit (Thompson) and their friends and fellow co-workers (Fowler and Yeun).

Riley based the film's story on his own experiences working in telemarketing and needing to use a different voice to find success. He finished the screenplay in 2012, but as he had no means of producing it at the time, he opted to turn it into the basis of an album of the same name with his band The Coup. The screenplay would later be published in full in 2014.

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Sorry to Bother You provides examples of:

• Actor Allusion: At the club, when Cash asks Langston why he doesn't dance, he replies, "I'm too old for that shit."
• Actor IS the Title Character: Played with in the character posters. Instead of introducing each actor as their role, they follow the structure of "[Actor] IS Sorry to Bother You." Armie Hammer, conversely, is notably "Not Sorry to Bother You."
• The Alleged Car: The jalopy Cash drives in the first half of the film. He gets a much better car — a Maserati Quattroporto — once he becomes a Power Caller.
• Ambiguous Ending: The film ends with an equisapien Cash leading a mob of fellow equisapiens on a storming of Lift's house. We see one break open the door to the room Lift is in before the film cuts to black and ends, leaving us to wonder exactly how the equisapiens exacted their revenge.
• Ambition Is Evil: As befitting a film decrying the dangers of capitalism. WorryFree and RegalView are entirely amoral in their pursuit of money. Cassius' Fatal Flaw, his ambition, leads him to abandon his friends, girlfriend, morals, and culture.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: When Cash is told that humans are turned into equisapiens using a gene-modifying powder that looks oddly similar to the cocaine Lift had him snort just prior, he reasonably has a Freak Out moment. Lift assures Cash that he just gave him coke, and wouldn't be evil enough to give him the mutation catalyst without his knowledge. The payoff of this moment isn't revealed until the very end, where everything seems to be back to normal ... but now Cash has horrifically mutated nostrils, signifying the start of his equisapien transformation. However, it isn't all bad; once Cash finishes his transformation, he teams up with a group of fellow equisapiens to exact revenge on Lift.
• Animal Motifs: Horses, as a symbol of how rich capitalists treat their laborers.
• Animorphism: It's revealed that WorryFree has been turning humans into half-horse hominids called "equisapiens" for cheap labor.
• Arc Words: "Stick to the script."
• Asshole Victim: Few, if any, will feel sorry for Lift once his house gets stormed by equisapiens unwillingly mutated at his hand at the very end.
• Author Tract: The film was primarily made to critique capitalism and American consumer culture, though Boots Riley is a little subtler about it than other creators might be.
• Bad "Bad Acting": When Cash tries to rap and fails miserably. In real life, Lakeith Stanfield is a rapper when he is not acting.
• Bad to the Last Drop: Squeeze says the coffee dispensed by the machine in RegalView's break room "tastes like shit."
• Beard of Evil: The amoral boss Steve Lift sports a coiffed beard.
• Berate and Switch: The film opens with Cash at an interview for a job at RegalView. From the Employee of the Month plaque and the massive moot-court championship trophy Cash brings, he seems incredibly qualified—at least, until the interviewer reveals that Cash lied on his résumé, claiming to have worked at a place for the same two years that the interviewer did, while never seeing him once. Furthermore, his friend Sal happened to apply for the same job, another of Cash's putative employers has Sal's cell as the contact number, and the interviewer gets Cash to admit to forging both the plaque and trophy. However, the interviewer bluntly states that he has rock-bottom standards for a good telemarketer, and Cash walks out with the job.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: The equisapiens are all literally hung like horses, and the camera is not afraid to show it. Lift even tries to argue having "a horse cock" is great incentive for Cash turning himself into an equisapien.
• Bittersweet Ending: Cash ends up friends again with Squeeze and Salvador and back with Detroit, but just before the credits roll, his nose horrifically contorts into horse nostrils, meaning Lift did mutate him with the coke he snorted in his office. The Stinger shows Equisapien!Cash leading others like himself into Lift's home, presumably to exact their revenge on him.
• Bland-Name Product: The brand Soda Cola is mentioned.
• Body Horror: While the film doesn't display a full transformation from human to equisapien—we only see the result and one of the starting stages—it's portrayed as truly horrific. By extension, the final image of Cash with horse nostrils is at the very least disquieting.
• Body Wipe: At one point, Mr. _______ walks into the camera and Detroit out the other side.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Cash's discovery of the equisapiens is accidental, spurred by him needing to pee and entering the wrong room. After he exits the room and Lift finds him, he asks if Cash still needs to pee. He doesn't, because he already wet his pants.
• Butt-Monkey: Cash has to become one on the game show I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me! so his video proof of the equisapiens can get aired.
• The Cameo: Several, all voice-only cameos:
  • Among the "White voices" are David Cross as Cash, Patton Oswalt as Mr. _______, and Lily James as Detroit.
  • Rosario Dawson is the voice of the Power Caller elevator.
  • Forest Whitaker is Demarius, the first equisapien.
• Can't Stop the Signal: Cash tries to expose WorryFree's crimes, first to the press, then on a popular TV show. Subverted in that it doesn't work; politicians rally around WorryFree, the company's stock price skyrockets, and literal cults start worshiping Steve Lift.
• Capitalism Is Bad: The whole film is about how capitalism neglects, exploits, and literally dehumanizes workers.
• Carrying the Antidote: As part of Lift's proposal to hire Cash as a false leader for the equisapiens, Lift promises he only has to live for five years as an equisapien, after which he can simply use an antidote to change him back. Cash doesn't believe he has an antidote at all, though.
• Category Traitor: Cash's Black friends frown upon his use of a White voice and the success coming with it.
• Coitus Uninterruptus: One of the people Cash calls in his failed first telemarketing attempts is a woman in the middle of sex, with her partner completely undeterred by the call.
• Corporate Conspiracy: WorryFree, the Amazon Expy for which the main character works as a telemarketer, is plotting to turn its workers into horses because it increases their productivity. When it's revealed, the general public applaud them.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Steve Lift is the CEO of WorryFree, and he's clearly not up to any good.
• Crapsack World: This version of the United States seems to be a lot worse off than our own in several ways; poverty is sky-high, with most jobs being literal slave labor at MegaCorps like WorryFree, and the most popular show in America is a Sadistic Game Show dedicated to torturing and humiliating random people just to elicit depraved laughter. Things are so bad that after the Big Bad's plan to replace his own labor force with mutant horse people is leaked to the world, the company's stock doubles.
• Creepy Changing Painting: Not really creepy, but Cassius has a photograph of a man posed in front of a lowrider on his nightstand and keeps a photocopy of it at work. The man's mood and appearance changes throughout the movie depending on what has happened in the story.
• Cringe Comedy: Cash's attempts to rap for the otherwise almost entirely White party at Steve Lift's penthouse despite being completely incapable of rapping. After a couple of abortive attempts at freestyling that draw awkward stares from the audience, he gives up and just starts yelling the N- and S-words repeatedly, causing the entire crowd to chant along.
• Cruel Twist Ending: Played with. In the midst of what seems to be a happy conclusion, with everything back to normal, Cash's nostrils suddenly mutate into that of a horse—or rather, an equisapien. However, this gives him the physical power to fight back, and he leads a mob of equisapiens to storm Lift's home.
• Cut Himself Shaving: Detroit asks Cash about his head bandage and he responds with this line. Very convincing.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Steve Lift insists that lifetime contracts with WorryFree where people cannot leave the company's factories are absolutely not slavery, since workers were not forced to sign them under duress.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: When Cash starts moving up, he gets his own lavish apartment. The aesthetic of such is best described as extremely white.
• Don't Call Me "Sir":
  • After one of Cash's first Power Calls, Mr. _______ suggests he simply call him "_______."
  • Likewise, when Cash meets Lift in person, the latter pulls this. Cash tries to put him on a First-Name Basis, but Lift says he didn't explicitly authorize that. Then Cash tries "sir." After a moment, Lift says Cash is free to call him whatever he wants, as long as he keeps up his Power-Calling prowess.
• Double-Meaning Title: The meaning of the film's title goes two ways. On a surface level, it refers to the phrase commonly used by telemarketers, but it carries a deeper meaning of it being used when telling someone something they likely don't want to hear, like the film's anti-capitalist sentiments.
• Double Standard: Cash is pilloried as a class traitor for breaking the picket line, whereas the anti-capitalist who threw a (full) soda can at him sold out all her principles the second the cola company offered her a cheque, with seemingly no repercussions. To contrast ... a White woman who has incontrovertibly committed a violent assault is rewarded, while a Black man gets hated and humiliated just for going to work.
• Escapist Character: In-universe. Langston explains to Cash that a "White voice" is basically this to the (mostly White) customers he has to call: it's projecting the semblance of a financially secure person who doesn't need to come across as desperate. "It's how they think they're supposed to sound like."
• Evil, Inc.: WorryFree is introduced as being this, but we only learn their exact goals close to the end. They are turning people into "equisapiens" for cheap labor.
• Evil Uncle: Downplayed and subverted by Sergio, who has not only let Cassius live in his garage but also let him slide four months behind on his rent. Early in the film, Cash gives him "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how he's just a latter-day landlord hogging property for his family — and is promptly reminded of their relationship.
• Eyepatch of Power: Mr. _______ wears one.
• Fan Disservice:
  • See Male Frontal Nudity.
  • The Power Caller elevator mixes graphic descriptions of sex with business buzzwords spoken in a robotic female voice.
  • As part of her art exhibit, Detroit at one point stands naked with hand models covering her breasts and crotch...while also getting pelted with garbage and sheep's blood and spouting artistic-sounding nonsense in her White voice. It Makes Just as Much Sense in Context.
• Faux Affably Evil: Steve Lift initially seems to be Affably Evil when his intentions are revealed, but the leaked video clip from Cash's phone proves otherwise.
• Foreshadowing:
  • During Cash's opening RegalView job interview, the interviewer remarks that telemarketing is not a task he sees as requiring extensive qualification like mapping the human genome. Considering humans mutate into equisapiens through a powder that modifies one's genes, it seems like that might have been a lie.
  • Steve Lift is riding a horse in the cover photo on his book. And right before The Reveal, he has Cash snort coke off a plate showing the horse "Mr. Bobo."
  • Mr. _______ dabs the blood off Cassius' face, and keeps the napkin for genetic information purposes.
  • The morning after Cash snorts Lift's "coke", he has Detroit check several of his body parts to see if they've gotten bigger. One of them is his nostrils, which Detroit notes do look bigger until he breaks down crying, making her change her mind to make him feel better. At the end of the film, the first sign of Cash's equisapien transformation is the mutation of his nostrils—so maybe he should have listened.
  • While covering the strike at RegalView, the news reporter says "The cavalry has arrived" in response to more SWAT officers showing up to the scene. Later, those same SWAT officers are routed by the newly freed equisapiens, who are literal horsemen.
• Funny Background Event: On Cash’s first day, the copier in the side room malfunctions, never in focus, but emitting progressively more paper every time the camera cuts back to the view.
• Gag Penis: The equisapiens are all literally hung like horses, and the camera is not afraid to show it. Lift even tries to argue having "a horse cock" is great incentive for Cash turning himself into an equisapien.
• Get a Room!: Early in the movie, Cash and Detroit are kissing and they begin disrobing — only for the door to their room (read: Sergio's garage door) to fly open, exposing them to the whole neighborhood. As Cash hurriedly closes the door, someone shouts "Get a room!", to which he responds, "I already got one, motherfucker!"
• Gory Discretion Shot: See Ambiguous Ending above.
• Hand-or-Object Underwear: Indeed, hand-object underwear. In her art performance, Detroit wears only hand models over her breasts and crotch, the last of which has its middle digit extended.
• Happiness in Slavery: WorryFree ads tout their food, clothes, living quarters, and work conditions as great, but they all come at the expense of what little freedom the workers formerly enjoyed — notwithstanding that, no, they aren't that well-off anyway.
• The Hedonist: Steve Lift spends all his free time doing coke and hosting orgies at his penthouse.
• Hidden Depths: Squeeze twirls one of Detroit's signs almost as athletically as she does. He credits his experience helping organize sign twirlers in Los Angeles as the cause of this.
• Hookers and Blow: What Steve Lift does with his free time.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • The angry anti-capitalist protester of "Have a Cola and Smile, Bitch" fame immediately cashes in on her viral fame and starts endorsing the brand of cola she used to bean Cassius in the head with.
  • Detroit rags on Cassius for selling out and using a "White voice" to talk to customers, but it turns out she also uses a White voice to sell her art.
• I Always Wanted to Say That: After telling Cash "Let's do this, mu-tha-fuck-ah", Diana DeBauchery notes that she has always wanted to say that.
• I Am One of Those, Too: In his résumé, Cash claims to have worked from 2014 to 2016 as a teller at the Bank of Oakland. At his interview, the hiring manager, Mr. Anderson, reveals that he was the branch manager of that bank at the time and he never saw Cash work there. Busted.
• Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!: Cash becomes famous from a viral video of a protester beaning him in the forehead with a full can of soda.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: One of RegalView's principles is knowing when to "bag 'em" (hang up a call).
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The first time Cash's friend Salvador hears his White voice, he notes that it sounds overdubbed.
• Love Triangle: It's implied that Cash and Detroit are in one with Squeeze, who shares a brief flirtation with her at one point, and is seen disappointed when they reunite after breaking up.
• Magic Realism: Hints of it. Notably, Cash and Mr. _______'s "White voices" seem to be borderline supernatural in their ability to attract customers, and sound nothing like the actors' real voices (being provided by the exceptionally White comedians David Cross and Patton Oswalt instead).
• Male Frontal Nudity: Weirdly played with. Equisapiens are mutated from humans, and they're naked by default. We end up seeing the penis of the first one we see in the film, and in a word, Lift's emphasis on "horse cock" in selling the idea to Cash was not completely baseless.
• Martial Arts Headband: Cash's bloody bandage seems to evoke this. After he gets clocked in the head with the Soda Cola, he wears this for the entire middle act of the film. In an inversion, the moment he finally rolls up his sleeves to do something important that he believes in is when the bandage comes off.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The protagonist's name is Cassius Green, a pun on "Cash is green", symbolizing his greedy nature. Doubles as Wealth's in a Name.
  • Played with Mr. _______'s lack of name, symbolizing his loss of identity. It's also a reference to the identically named "Mr. _______" from The Color Purple.
  • Many Black artists and a lot of Black culture come from Detroit. Birthplace of the American auto industry, associated with streamlining assembly-line production. Birthplace of Motown. Modern-day economic decline is its contemporary claim to infamy. Detroit Red was also the nickname of Malcolm X prior to his activism.
  • In line with that, Cassius could also be a nod to Cassius Clay, the birth name of world champion boxer and activist Muhammad Ali (who was close friends with Malcolm X around the time of his rise to prominence). Ali was similarly decried as both a sellout and a troublemaker at different points in his life.
  • If you think of calling for more benefits as doing such to a company, "Squeeze" is indeed trying to squeeze RegalView for more.
• Messianic Archetype: Lift explains he wants to give the equisapiens a false one: Cash. He even name-drops Martin Luther King Jr. However, he ends up fulfilling this role of his own volition when he frees the equisapiens and brings down WorryFree, even more so when he fully transforms into one himself and leads them in a raid on Lift's home.
• Modern Minstrelsy: The rap scene. The only time Cash's employers tell him to drop the White voice in a work-related setting is when he's pressured to act like a stereotypical Black guy and pander to a crowd of rich White people.
• Moment Killer: The downsides of Cash and Detroit using their garage space as a bedroom are shown when the garage door suddenly opens as they're about to have sex, putting them in full view of the neighborhood.
• Monochrome Casting: Most of the primary cast consists of Black actors, save for Steven Yeun and Armie Hammer.
• Mood Whiplash: One of the people Cash talks to during his first telemarketing attempts is an old woman who rejects Cash's offers. Her rationale for turning Cash down shifts the scene's tone dramatically: she has no money due to her husband having stage 4 cancer.
• National Geographic Nudity: The bare breasts of the prehistoric female in the promo video for WorryFree's Equisapiens.
• National Stereotypes: Lift deploys two Black stereotypes on Cash in close proximity at his party. First, Lift asks Cash to tell stories of his "gangster life", to which Cash admits that he's never experienced anything of the sort. Lift then tries cajoling him into a rap—at which he wrongly thinks Cash is naturally talented.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The trailers were cut in a way that made the movie look more comedic than it actually was.
• New Weird: It's a movie predominantly about union agitation with socialist and racial themes and features a few elements from Cyberpunk and Post-Cyberpunk, overdubbed "White voices" that are never explained, and horse mutants. Its Genre-Busting, transgressive nature places it along an afrofuturist axis of the New Weird.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • Steve Lift appears to be a parody of SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, with possibly some John McAfee added for flavor.
  • Detroit's performance art exhibition is strongly reminiscent of Marina Abramovic's various projects.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • See Police Brutality below.
  • The last scene of the movie has one implied, delivered by Cash and other equisapiens to Steve.
• No Name Given: Mr. _______'s surname is bleeped out and the speaker's lips are blurred whenever it's spoken; writer-director Boots Riley says it's meant to be typed as seven underscores.
• N-Word Privileges: See Piss-Take Rap below.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Cassius Green is mentioned on the news playing on TV in his doctor's office, and a nurse says his name in unison with the newscaster.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Mr. _______ drops his White Voice only once, to inform Cash that Steve Lift wants to meet with him.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • Cash and the weird assistant manager at RegalView high-fiving after Cash starts making sales.
  • Diana DeBauchery typing in the passcode number in the Power Caller elevator.
• Painful Transformation: The start of Cash's transformation into an equisapien is portrayed this way.
• A Party, Also Known as an Orgy: The party at Steve Lift's penthouse ultimately degenerates into various coked-up partygoers screwing on every piece of furniture.
• People Farms: Steve Lift plans to turn WorryFree into one of these, eventually, with the horse transformation serum.
• Performance Artist: Detroit identifies as such, and one scene is devoted to one of her demonstrations.
• Pet the Dog: After Cash is promoted to Power Caller and makes his $10-million-plus first sale, he asks for a cash advance. He gets it, and what he gets is at least enough to pay off Sergio's house.
• Piss-Take Rap: When Cash is told to rap at Lift's party (they assume he's naturally skilled at it because he's Black), he struggles at first, mumbling poor rhymes, and then settles for just yelling "Nigga-shit, nigga-shit, nigga-nigga-nigga-shit!" The guests, nearly all White, then start chanting along.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: Cassius' managers at RegalView. Diana DeBauchery does little more than babble random buzzwords while Johnny gives similarly unhelpful advice. All care more about profits than their workers.
• Police Brutality: The cops, who are on WorryFree's payroll, resort to brutal violence when the telemarketers' union goes on strike.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Lift is casually racist to his Black subordinates. When he invites Cash to his penthouse, he assumes that Cash must be good at rapping just because he's Black and basically commands him to rap for his White friends, leading to one of the biggest moments of Cringe Comedy in the movie.
• Poverty Food: Squeeze during his rally speech:
  "We want enough money to not eat Cup O' Noodles every night."
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: "Sorry to bother you" is Title Dropped once more just before Cash sics a mob of equisapiens on Lift.
• Produce Pelting: Invoked by Detroit who asks the audience to throw expended bullet casings, old cell phones, and sheep's blood at her during her on-stage performance. After all, True Art Is Incomprehensible.
• Promotion, Not Punishment: After Cash participates in a workplace-wide protest against RegalView, we see his bosses calling him in. Given Squeeze's prior note that some involved in the protest would be singled out, we automatically assume something bad will happen. It turns out that the bosses are barely deterred by the protest and instead wanted to promote Cash to Power Caller.
• Pronouncing My Name for You: Diana DeBauchery insists her name is pronounced "Dee-Bo-Cherry."
• Rags to Riches: Cash goes from being an anonymous desk jockey living in his uncle's garage and driving The Alleged Car to a Power Caller with his own penthouse suite and sports car thanks to the power of his White Voice.
• La Résistance:
  • The Left Eye Faction, a radical anti-WorryFree group that specializes in protests and vandalism of WorryFree ads by means of spray paint.
  • The telemarketer union that develops among Cash's coworkers (notably led by Squeeze and Sal) also counts.
• Resistance as Planned: This is WorryFree's secret plan for Cash: To have him organize and run the equisapien resistance, so that he can report on it right back to WorryFree.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Cash goes through a Humiliation Conga after becoming a Power Caller and betraying the strike by going to work. His higher-ranking job requires him to use only his White voice, except at a party where the White crowd pressures him into doing a minstrel rap act, and he eventually turns into a horse-man.
• Running Gag:
  • Detroit’s unique custom-made earrings.
  • Various people making or wearing the "Have a Cola and Smile, Bitch!" costume, and Cash's mix of outrage and confusion at it.
• Sadistic Game Show: I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me! is a game show that solely revolves around people being violently beaten and otherwise humiliated (we hear mentions of drinking hyena urine and both hear about and see someone being submerged in a "shit tank"). It doesn't have a small, niche audience of twisted folk — it's the most popular show in America, with 150 million viewers per episode (nearly half as many people as live in the USA and more than even the Super Bowl has ever attracted in America).
  Langston: It makes me feel warm inside.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!:
  • Detroit leaves Cash because she can't stand the way he's getting rich.
  • After Cash learns the full truth behind how he's getting rich, he declines Lift's offer of an extremely well-compensated personal assignment, becoming the equisapiens' leader who is secretly WorryFree's Mole in Charge.
    "There's no fuckin' amount of money that will make me do that shit."
• Second-Act Breakup: Cash and Detroit split up in the second act once Cash's scaling up the job ladder and simultaneously leaving his friends' union in the dirt strains their relationship. They reunite by the end.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Cash debuts his White voice by saying, "To my esteemed RegalView associates, whom I revere with great fervor — and to my alluring and phenomenally talented fiancée — I'd like to dedicate this imbibing of intoxicating elixirs. Here's to becoming a Power Caller!"
• Shout-Out: The WorryFree video The New Miracle, animated via stop-motion claymation In the Style of Michel Gondry, is credited to "Michel Dongry." Doubles as a Stealth Pun.
• Show Within a Show: The most popular show on TV is a game show called I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me!, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Silent Offer: Twice. First, Cash is shown his salary as a Power Caller, which is clearly impressive, though we don't see the exact amount. The second time, Lift hands Cash a note with his offer to become an Equisapian leader. Cash then opens the note, which says "I'm offering you $100,000,000" and has a smiley face drawn at the bottom.
• Smash to Black: Towards the end when a SWAT member hits Cash in the head, there is a five-second cut to a black screen.
• Soapbox Sadie: Cash's coworker friends are all activist-types, but Squeeze especially is a highly sympathetic male version of this trope. It's stated that his "thing" is joining different work environments and helping to organize their workers (making him a "salt" in labor-organizing parlance).
• Stating the Simple Solution: Detroit tells Cash that he could have just asked her to look at his nostrils to see if he was in the process of transforming into an equisapien rather than seeing a doctor.
• The Stinger: In the mid-credits scene, Cash is standing in front of Lift's house with a bunch of equisapiens that he's leading into the house to kick Lift's keister.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Briefly used by Detroit when she starts vandalizing a WorryFree ad while wearing a fake beard (she's a Left Eye member).
• Tech Bro: Steve Lift is CEO of a company called WorryFree, which claims to be able to solve most of the world's social ills (poverty, unemployment, hunger, etc.) He's a handsome young man who's charismatic and quirky, but also keen on control — and, of course, has a dark secret in that he's involuntarily transforming his employees to make them more exploitable.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!:
  • Sal's voice mail recording is "It's Sal, bitches!"
  • As Detroit runs away from the cops who interrupted her vandalism of a WorryFree mural, she yells, "Left Eye, bitches!"
  • The internet meme turned advertising campaign 'Have a Cola and smile, bitch!'
• Title Drop: Multiple times during Cash's first attempts at telemarketing. Come the end of the film, a now-fully-equisapien Cash turns it into a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner before he sics an equisapien mob on Lift.
• Toilet Humor:
  • Cash calls a prominent Japanese businessman while the latter is on the crapper.
  • In order to promote his video, Cash must fall into a pile of poop.
• Transformation Horror: Averted for much of the movie, as we never actually see the transformation. Up until the final shot of the film, that is, when we see it just as it begins.
• Translation by Volume: After a group of equisapiens easily overpowers riot police, Cash tries expressing his gratitude by talking loudly and slowly, at which point one of the equisapiens responds in a normal human voice, telling him it was unnecessary.
• True Art Is Incomprehensible:
  • In her artistic performance, Detroit recites lines from The Last Dragon mostly nude while being pelted with cellphones, sheep's blood and bullets. Cash can't understand why she would subject herself to it.
  • Also inverted: when Detroit tries to help Cash spread the truth by building a sculpture of Lift, a horse, and a sign reading "WorryFree Is Literally Turning Workers into Horses", passersby say they don't understand the message and grasp at straws for a metaphorical interpretation. A nearby Detroit says, "Maybe the artist is being literal."
• Uncanny Valley: The "white voices" don't quite match their actors' lip movements or appearances, causing them to feel disconcerting and unnatural. Justified, as the "White voices" are meant to convey a sense of artificiality, loss of identity and corporate sterility.
• Undisclosed Funds: When Cash is shown his Power Caller salary, he looks extremely impressed. Later, when Lift hands Cash a note with his offer to become an Equisapien and "lead" their resistance, the audience actually sees the offer: the handwritten note "I'm offering you $100,000,000" and a smiley face.
• Vertigo Effect: The background behind Cash zooms out when he looks in awe at the Power Caller elevator's golden door.
• Very Fake Résumé: Cassius applies for a job at RegalView with fake trophies and a reference that's actually a friend's cell phone number. The interviewer calls his bluff immediately, but also says he admires the can-do attitude, and the hiring standards are low enough anyway, so Cassius gets the job.
• Visual Pun: The protest at the end is saved by the timely arrival of the equisapiens, almost literally The Cavalry.
• Wham Shot:
  • One that illustrates the film's true nature in a big way: when Cash gets lost trying to find the door to the bathroom in Lift's house, he stumbles into a room with stalls and opens one of the doors to find a naked horse-human hybrid spilling out, screaming for help.
  • The very final shot before the credits. Everything's back to normal, and Cash lifts his garage door to show Detroit the renovations to their room; when he closes the door, he cries out in pain. Did he, perhaps, hit his face on the door by accident? Nope. He now has horse nostrils.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Sal, Squeeze, and Detroit all tell Cash off quite harshly for leaving the unionization effort behind to become a Power Caller.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: The "White voice" sounds vaguely like the Trans-Atlantic accent used in old movies and radio shows from the 1930s and '40s, which may be why it attracts White people.
• White Like Me: Cash is a down-on-his-luck Black telemarketer who finds success by calling clients using his "White voice".
• The Whitest Black Guy: Discussed. Cash doesn't see himself as very White-acting, but his Black friends unanimously agree that he's the "Whitest" one among them.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Detroit. She says, "My parents wanted me to have an American name."
• Workplace Horror: Certainly qualifies, given the unethical and bizarre things going on in the workplace.
• You Have to Believe Me!: Cash's initial attempts to spread the word about the equisapiens in the media.

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