Film / ¡Three Amigos!

Lucky Day: Wherever there is injustice, you will find us.
Ned Nederlander: Wherever there is suffering, we'll be there.
Dusty Bottoms: Wherever liberty is threatened, you will find...
Lucky, Ned, Dusty: The Three Amigos!

¡Three Amigos! is a 1986 comedy film directed by John Landis. Dusty Bottoms (Chevy Chase), Lucky Day (Steve Martin, who also co-wrote the script with Lorne Michaels and Randy Newman - yes, that one^note Newman also did the original songs), and Ned Nederlander (Martin Short) are a trio of actors who are hired to protect a small Mexican village from bandits, Magnificent Seven-style — the villagers don't realize they're just actors, and the Amigos don't realize it's for real until it's nearly too late. Hilarity Ensues.

Not to be confused with the Disney film The Three Caballeros. ^note  Ironically, this film's working title was in fact "The Three Caballeros." Distinct from the trope called once known as Three Amigos. Compare with Galaxy Quest, which has the same basic plot as this, but IN SPACE!

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"We are the ¡Trope Amigos!":

• Affably Evil: El Guapo may not be much to look at, but he treats his men as equals for the most part. He's actually a really likable, articulate guy, too, except for the whole pillaging thing (and shooting one of his guys to test a rifle).
• Alliterative Name: Ned Nederlander
• Anaphora: Both the movie itself and the silent films for which the Three Amigos were famous ends with the Amigos announcing, "Wherever there is injustice, you will find us. Wherever there is suffering, we'll be there. Wherever liberty is threatened, you will find...The Three Amigos!"
• And You Thought It Was a Game: The actors playing the Amigos completely misunderstand a desperate plea for help as an offer to make a personal appearance with one of the biggest actors to come out of Mexico.
• Asshole Victim: The womanizing cowpoke who assaults Carmen and Rodrigo is the first to be gunned down when The German shows up at the saloon.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: In-Universe, the title heroes' latest film, "Those Darn Amigos", bombed because it was different from their standard Western fare ("nobody cares about three wealthy Spanish landowners on a weekend in Manhattan!"). The flop would end up killing their Hollywood careers, causing them to eventually move to Mexico to "put on show" for El Guapo for 100,000 pesos. Or so they think...
• "Awkward Silence" Entrance: Happens thrice, at the same Bad Guy Bar. The first time is when Carmen and Rodrigo enter to look for heroes who can protect Santo Poco from El Guapo. The second comes when the German enters the bar, and the third happens once the Amigos do the same just after he leaves. Justified in the last case because they're wearing showy stage outfits and hence are Mistaken for Badass (as the German had told the bartender he'd know his friends on sight).
• Bad Guy Bar: The bandito-filled Mexican bar where the protagonists perform the "My Little Buttercup" number.
• Bad Boss: El Guapo tests a Mauser rifle by shooting one of his henchmen dead with it after having told the guy to hold up his hat. (Either he was trying to shoot the hat and didn't care that he missed, or he faked the guy out and deliberately shot him.) Otherwise, though, he seems to get along pretty well with them.
• Bandito: The villains. Thick Mexican accents, sombreros, ponchos, bandoleers of ammunition, thick mustaches and stubble. El Guapo himself is sort of an Expy of Calvera.
• Bat Deduction: The title characters are in the desert and have no idea where El Guapo's stronghold is. They see a plane fly overhead and Lucky Day says "I'll bet it's going to El Guapo's!" He's right.
• Batman Gambit: Invoked. Carmen knows a desperate plea to noble heroes will send them rushing to her aid immediately, and that they will refuse to accept any money for their heroics. So, she sends a brief telegram begging for their help and offering reward money she doesn't have. Unfortunately, she doesn't realize that the Amigos are actors who interpret her plea as an appearance request with a good payday.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: After capturing Dusty among his men:
  El Guapo: What is happening? Are Amigos falling from the sky?
  (Ned falls from the piñata over the compound)
  Jefe: Sí, El Guapo.
• Becoming the Boast: Ned brags about flying a biplane. When the other Amigos need him to fly them to safety, he admits that it was actually his stunt double who was a pilot. But he flies the plane anyway.
• Becoming the Mask: Three washed up actors must decide to live their lives in obscurity or become their characters for real. Guess which they pick?
• Benevolent Boss:
  • El Guapo - he even loves the sweater that his men get him for his birthday. An example only to his underlings, though. Unless you're Paco...
  • The German also lets his two subordinates fire their guns into the air during the celebration. Although he himself doesn't participate, he's seen smiling at how much fun his men are having.
• Beware the Silly Ones: The German agents dress somewhat like dandies, with straw hats and bowties, but as soon as someone in the Bad Guy Bar calls them sissies, they promptly shoot everyone in the place.
• BFG: Played for laughs during Ned's duel with the German pilot; Jefe lets Ned borrow his gun rather than letting him use his "sissy gun." While it is bigger than Ned's, it's still just a revolver. Ned needs two hands just to lift it, and the recoil knocks him back about 20 feet. Lucky then gets his hands on it and uses it just fine.
• Big "SHUT UP!"
  Lucky Day: Not so fast, El Guapo! Or I'll fill you so full of lead, you'll be using your dick for a pencil.
  El Guapo: What do you mean?
  Lucky Day: I don't know.
  Jefe: I think he means that if you...
  El Guapo: SHUT UP!
• Bilingual Bonus
  • "El Guapo" means "The Handsome One," revealing El Guapo's vain, villainous personality. "Jefe" means "Boss," as he's apparently the overseer of the bandits and second only to El Guapo. The village's name, Santo Poco, means "Little Saint," a riff on the Mexican custom for naming locations after saints, and of course the village's size.
  • There's also a scene where the Three Amigos are hiding from two of El Guapo's guards, who are discussing a recipe in Spanish.
  • Although the German himself speaks English, his men don't. All their dialogue is in unsubtitled German.
• Black Comedy: The Germans present El Guapo with rifles. He takes one of them and decides to try it out. How? He has one of his roof patrolling guards to hold his hat up as a makeshift target. Unfortunately for the guard, El Guapo's aim was off and winds up killing him. Jefe just shrugs.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: The Amigos' revolvers have attractive nickel plating with mother-of-pearl stocks, and their movie costumes are sequin-encrusted mariachi outfits, despite the fact their characters are supposed to be heroes of the common man. In the characters' backstories, they're altruistic nobles.
• Blown Across the Room: Exaggerated when Ned fires his gun in the duel with The German and gets blown backwards until he crashes into a horse.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • The German quick draw artist idolized Ned's gun skills, but then learned about trick photography. Ned denies ever using it...and proves it.
  • The entire village of Santo Poco, who believes the Amigos actually are heroic gunfighters until they fail to drive off El Guapo.
• Bullying a Dragon: Twice in the cantina, when the patrons do this to the German (and his "pretty little gun") and later on, his henchmen (whom they mock as "two little sissies"). In a bit of dark comedy, each of them ends with a half-dozen bar patrons shot dead.
• But Now I Must Go: The Amigos pull this one at the end of the movie because their characters in their Show Within a Show always did it.
• Butt-Monkey: Lucky is the only one of the Amigos who get shot. He gets shot twice: first by Jefe in the Amigos' first confrontation with El Guapo, and in the end by El Guapo himself as he lays dying.
• Captain Obvious: The amigos spend a minute staring at a bush that is singing folk songs. Dusty states, "My guess is that this is the Singing Bush!"
• Chekhov's Gun: As they leave the Cantina, the Amigos see The German flying off in his Tubman 601 biplane and Ned excitedly identifies it saying that he flew one in one of his movies. As the Amigos are fleeing El Guapo's place with Carmen, they find The German's plane and Lucky excitedly points out that Ned knows how to fly it. Ned then sheepishly points out that he meant that his stuntman flew the plane, but he's sure he can manage. Sure enough after a terrifying flight back to Santo Poco he manages a perfect landing.
• Chekhov's Skill: Santo Poco is really good at sewing.
• Comically Missing the Point: While being threatened with death Ned regrets that they are not getting paid for the job.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: After being dangerously incompetent for the first 80% or so of the movie, the amigos suddenly display not only Improbable Aiming Skills, but Improbable Quick Draw Skills and Improbable Knife Outline skills, followed shortly thereafter by Improbable Biplane-Flying Skills. The buildup to the event emphasized their incompetence, making it that much more awesome (and funny). Truth in Television in that stars during the Silent Era often were hired for those skills and actually performed their stunts on camera, which is why Ned is insulted at the assumption he needed trick photography.
• Dead Man's Trigger Finger: Parodied. When El Guapo's men desert him he calls out "Come back, you cowards! You traitors!" His second-in-command Jefe says "I'm still here, El Guapo!" and is shot off his horse. He ends up on his feet, fires one shot in the air, and falls on his face, dead.
• Didn't Think This Through: Lucky turns down an opportunity to salvage the Amigos' career because he demands the trio to be paid with actual money for a change. Unfortunately, he hadn't taken into account that while the trio wasn't getting paid in cash for their work, their cushy lifestyle was entirely financed by the studio's nickel, so when Flugelman cans them he also has them kicked out of the studio mansion and has wardrobe come to take their clothing, since it was furnished to them for their last movie. Atop all this, the aforementioned last film being a colossal bomb meant that Lucky didn't really have much bargaining power with Flugelman to start with.
• Dissimile: Lucky uses one in his Rousing Speech to the villagers of Santo Poco:
  "In a way, each of us has an El Guapo to face. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us, El Guapo is a big, dangerous guy who wants to kill us. But as sure as my name is Lucky Day, the people of Santo Poco can conquer their own personal El Guapo, who also happens to be the actual El Guapo!"
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Amigo Salute concludes with the heroes thrusting their pelvis forward, turning their heads to the side and coughing, like they're getting a hernia exam.
• Don't Explain the Joke: When Ned Nederlander sees a biplane flying overhead he makes a joke about it being a mail (male) plane because of the "little balls hanging down". When his fellow Amigos don't immediately get the joke, he explains it to them at length.
• The Dragon: Jefe, to El Guapo.
• Dressing as the Enemy: While Carmen is held captive in El Guapo's fortress, she knocks an already sleeping guard totally unconscious. Dusty Bottoms then dons the guard's clothing so he can impersonate him.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: El Guapo manages to get in a last shot (literally!), and giggles before dying
  "That was a pretty good trick, too, no?"
• Dying Truce: At the climax, after El Guapo has been mortally wounded he calls Lucky Day over to him, saying he want to tell him something. When Lucky gets close enough, El Guapo shoots him in the foot as a joke.
• Epic Fail: When sneaking into El Guapo's fortress by swinging on the festival lines. Dusty managed to crash into the room Carmen was in, Ned gets his foot stuck on a piñata, but Lucky gets the short (and using the term very loosely) end of the stick as his line was too long that he swung right into the ground, immediately leading to his capture.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: El Guapo's mistress seems to genuinely care about him and gives a sad look when he suddenly rides off to battle.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Played for laughs. El Guapo boasts that he only kills men and not crying women, which evokes a sigh of relief from our wimpy heroes. Likewise, El Guapo refuses to force himself upon Carmen, making a point to Jefe that he prefers her to come to him of her own free will. Granted, he's decided he'll simply kill her if she doesn't, but still...
• Fastest Gun in the West: The German is obsessed with the art of the quickdraw, and demands a shootout with his childhood film idol Ned.
• Feigning Intelligence: Jefe confirms El Guapo's party will have a "plethora of piñatas" but is caught out for not knowing what the word 'plethora' means (although Jefe was more motivated to impress his boss than appear smart). Subverted when Jefe insightfully questions whether El Guapo was projecting his frustrations about Carmen not wanting to sleep with him.
• Firing in the Air a Lot: The Amigos do this while they think they're "putting on a show" with El Guapo.
• First Blood: When Lucky gets shot. The sight of blood is the first indication to the Amigos that something is not right with the "enemy actors".
• Flowery Insults: Lucky's "You dirt-eating piece of slime! You scum-sucking pig! You son of a motherless goat!" He also repeats this when confronting three bandits, but he says "slime-eating dogs" instead of "dirt-eating piece of slime".
• Former Child Star: Ned used to be known as "Little Neddy Knickers".
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In-universe. According to the German, The Three Amigos are very popular in Germany. The German particularly worshipped Ned when he was a kid and was his inspiration to learn the quick-draw. This led to Fan Disillusionment after the German learned about Hollywood trickery and wrongly assumed Ned couldn't really shoot that fast.
• Guns Akimbo: El Guapo, for all of two seconds, but it doesn't help him.
• Have a Gay Old Time: The bandito in the cantina calls the German "Heinie", a common insulting name for a German man at the time (being short for the common German name Heinrich). In modern English, however, it's a childish word for the buttocks. Made even better when he asks the German to come sit on his lap.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: The villagers have no idea just how handy their sewing skills are going to be.
• He's Dead, Jim: When Dusty Bottoms accidentally shoots the Invisible Swordsman, Ned picks up his hand to check his pulse and pronounces him dead. The second Ned takes to check the Swordsman's pulse is not enough to be sure that he's dead.
• Homemade Sweater from Hell: Subverted. El Guapo's banditos give him one as a birthday gift. He likes it so much, he wears it around his neck for the rest of the film.
• Hurt Foot Hop: Lucky jumps around in pain after El Guapo shoots him in the foot.
• Idiot Hero: Most definitely. Even they seem to be aware of it:
  Lucky: Well, we're just gonna have to use our brains!
  *Beat*
  All Three Amigos: ...Dammit.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: El Guapo kidnaps Carmen and it's made abundantly clear what he intends to do with her. However, he rejects Jefe's suggestion of simply forcing her and prefers to wait until she's willing...or he'll kill her. And, yes, this is all played for laughs.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Dusty accidentally shoots and kills the Invisible Swordsman while summoning him.
• If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: The Amigos, feeling heroic, are brought back to earth when a young villager asks Dusty Bottoms if he can have Dusty's watch when he's dead. Played with at the end; Dusty, alive and well, gives the boy his watch anyway.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: El Guapo's men while fighting the Three Amigos in the climax. Justified in that they're confused and scared as the Amigos seem to be teleporting and multiplying, not knowing they're the villagers in disguise.
• Incredibly Long Note: In the theme song.
• Indy Ploy: The Amigos' plan to rescue Carmen.
• Inelegant Blubbering: After the title characters realize that they aren't putting on a show but are facing a real bandit gang, they start crying and whining like babies. Not for long, though.
• Joke and Receive: During the attempt to infiltrate El Guapo's hideout, Ned Nederlander (one of the Amigos) swings on a rope and ends up getting caught on a pinata high above the compound. Later on, after El Guapo captures the other two Amigos, he says "What is happening around here today? Are gringos falling from the skies?" Ned lets go and falls onto a nearby table. Jefe (El Guapo's The Dragon) says "Yes, El Guapo".
• Juggling Loaded Guns: After crossing the Line in the Sand, the Amigos carry out their twirling-gun salutes from the movies to steel themselves up with Heroic Resolve: but Dusty's gun goes off in its holster first.
• Keep the Reward: Invoked in-universe. The Three Amigos always refuse their reward in the films. The villagers count on the trope being used, as they offer a reward they can't afford.
• Kiss of Death: A symbolic example when Jefe kisses Ned on both cheeks just before his duel with The German.
• Last Breath Bullet: El Guapo knows some pretty good tricks too.
• Line in the Sand: Drawn by Ned.
• Lost in a Crowd: The heroes use a trick from one of their movies to distract the bad guys once they learn the townspeople can sew. El Guapo & Co find themselves trying to keep track of dozens of Amigos.
• The Magnificent Seven Samurai: The Amigos must train the villagers to defend their village against the dirty outlaws.
• Manchild: Ned seems to be treated this way by Dusty and Lucky (including singing him to sleep), despite him clearly being in his 30's. Which is pretty amusing, considering that Ned is the one who made the Rousing Speech that they become the Three Amigos for real in the first place.
• Misfit Mobilization Moment: Done by Ned when he decides they should go rescue Carmen and stop El Guapo.
• Mistaken for Special Guest: In the cantina, the German arms dealer warns everyone that some friends of his will be coming by (after he shoots a guy), and that everyone should treat them with respect. The amigos then arrive, and everyone mistakes them for the Germans, even during their song-and-dance routine to try to lighten the mood.
• Mugged for Disguise: While Carmen is held captive in El Guapo's fortress, she knocks an already sleeping guard totally unconscious. Dusty Bottoms then dons the guard's clothing so he can impersonate him.
• Mundane Solution: When the Amigos prepare to sneak into El Guapo's fort, Ned notices a guard. Dusty suggests he throws a rock as a distraction, which Lucky agrees to then started suggesting a good place to throw one. While he was doing that, Dusty throws the rock right at the guard, knocking him out.
• Music Soothes the Savage Beast: The Amigos singing by the campfire attracts all the wildlife to listen in, culminating in a Woodland Creatures shot. It even gets their horses to sing along.
• Neck Lift: When Lucky Day swings down into the yard of El Guapo's fortress, El Guapo grabs him by the neck and lifts him into the air.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The instructions for summoning the Invisible Swordsman specifically state to fire your gun in the air after saying the magic words. Dusty fires his off to the side, accidentally killing the Invisible Swordsman.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Ned, Lucky, and Dusty.
• No Name Given: The German.
• Nobody Here but Us Birds: "Lookuphere, lookuphere, lookuphere!"
• No-Sell: Played with when Lucky is shot. It knocks him off his horse and hurts when it's touched, but otherwise him bleeding from a gun shot wound just seems to confuse and anger him, without even restricting his mobility.
• No Stunt Double: In-Universe, and being truthful to how silent movies tended to operate. All of the Three Amigos were accomplished performers and knew how to ride horses, do trick shooting, knife throwing, quick draw and perform some dangerous stunts. They were not the badass heroes from their films, but they had a foundation to become so later in the film.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Barkeeping: When the German walks into the Bad Guy Bar, the bartender is polishing a glass.
• Oh, Crap!: When Lucky Day gets shot by one of the banditos and it dawns on him that this is Not a Game.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Steve Martin's character gets shot in the arm which doesn't bother him any more after that. In fact, not only does the wound go away after that scene, the bullet hole and blood stain on his jacket goes away too.
• Only Known By His Nickname: We never know Lucky, Ned and Dusty's actual actor names in-universe. Ned Nederlander seems to go by his real name, but his stage name evidently was "Little Neddy Knickers" as a child star. Same goes for El Guapo and Jefe, whose real names are never used but whose nicknames mean "The Handsome One" and "Boss" respectively.
• Overly Long Gag: "We are the Three A-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-MIGOS!"
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Dusty doesn't even bother to cover his face when infiltrating El Guapo's birthday party. It actually works for a while. (It helps El Guapo and his men were already drunk on tequila.)
  El Guapo: Oh-ho, you...
  Dusty: Jose!
  El Guapo: Together, we...
  Dusty: Burned the village!
  El Guapo: Burned the village! And, uh...
  Dusty: (trilling the "r") Rrrrrrrraped de horses!
  El Guapo: And we...
  Dusty: Rode off on the women!
  El Guapo: Rode off on the women! (now a little confused) And uh...
  Dusty: Plundered!
  El Guapo: Plundered! And uh...
  Dusty: Pruned!
  El Guapo: ...pruned the, uh...
  Dusty: Hedges!
  El Guapo: ...the hedges...
  Dusty: Of many small villages!
  El Guapo: Of many small... Villages. WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!
• Pinned to the Wall: When the third German agent tries to draw his gun against Lucky, Dusty flings a knife at him, sticking the sleeve of his coat to a post.
• Pistol-Whipping: Played for Laughs. When Dusty hesitates at knocking out a sleeping guard, Carmen becomes impatient and knocks him out herself.
• Poke the Poodle: The "evil" deeds Dusty tries to tell El Guapo they did as described in Paper-Thin Disguise quickly dwindle down to pruning the hedges in villages they plundered.
• Punny Name: Lucky Day and Dusty Bottoms.
• Put Down Your Gun and Step Away: Dusty Bottoms to El Guapo's entire bandit army. And it works.
• Railing Kill: In the Show Within a Show, a bandito is hit by a bullet and falls over the railing in an overly dramatic fashion.
• Reality Has No Subtitles
  • The German's two henchmen only speak in German, and none of their dialogue is translated for the audience.
  • The Mexican characters (such as El Guapo) sometimes speak in Spanish with the words not being translated, such as "adios" (goodbye) and "caballos" (horses).
• Rearing Horse: The Amigos do this in their movie and then for real at the end.
• Recoiled Across the Room: When Ned Nederlander has his showdown with the German pilot, El Guapo's 2nd in command Jefe replaces his normal revolver with a much larger and more powerful pistol. When Ned fires it he's blown backwards about 10 yards.
• Red Baron: We never learn the real names of either El Guapo or the German. The German himself is also obviously an Expy of the Trope Namer, complete with a red World War I biplane.
• Reverse Cerebus Syndrome: While the film is by no means serious even from the get-go, it still deals with some fairly serious things (shooting up bars left-and-right, the village being ransacked, Carmen being kidnapped, etc.), but once the Amigos decide to actually go after El Guapo, things go from comedic to straight-up cartoonish. They sleep on what is so obviously a soundstage that there's no way it was meant to actually fool anyone, their singing on said soundstage manages to get their animals to start singing along, they come across a Singing Bush that literally just sings old chanteys, and they end up summoning (and immediately killing) an Invisible Swordsman.
• Riding into the Sunset: The title characters, at the end of the movie.
• Ringer Ploy: The title characters dress everyone in the village as themselves to trick and defeat El Guapo.
• Rousing Speech: Lucky Day's "El Guapo" speech.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • When attacked by a horde of Amigos during the battle of Santo Poco, El Guapo's men desert him.
  • Also the Amigos themselves. When they find out it's all real, they quickly jump on their horses and desert the villagers. The look on Carmen's face as her saviours leave her home to its fate is something to behold. See What the Hell, Hero? below.
  • After the second shootout in his bar in a matter of days, the bartender says the town is getting too rough for him.
• Seize Them!: Played for Laughs by Lucky Day. When he's surrounded by the Mooks of the Big Bad El Guapo, all pointing guns at his head, he yells "Seize him!" (referring to El Guapo).
• The Series Has Left Reality: While the Amigos are traveling to El Guapo's lair, they camp at night in the desert. As they go to sleep, they bid goodnight to each other, and a tortoise says "Goodnight, Ned." There is nothing prior to this in the movie that couldn't happen in reality (unlikely, yes, but not impossible). After this many weird things start to happen, such as the appearance of the Singing Bush, the summoning of the Invisible Swordsman, and the impossible landing of the biplane in Santo Poco.
• Shout-Out: When Lucky Day is trying to get the others' attention while sneaking back into the studio, he spends the whole scene in front of a billboard for The Dueling Cavalier, the film Lockwood & Lamont are making in Singin' in the Rain before the transition to sound film forces them to remake it as a musical.
• Show Within a Show: The footage we see of an actual Three Amigos silent film.
• So Once Again, the Day Is Saved: The Amigos themselves give the summation in their films, and feel the need to do it again when they become real life heroes.
• South of the Border: The setting.
• Spiritual Successor: Galaxy Quest, with faded silent movie actors and Mexican villagers replaced by faded TV sci-fi actors and space aliens.
• Stock Money Bag: In the Film Within A Film, the poor Mexican peasants offer the Amigos a reward of a large bag with a "$" on it.
• Strange Salute: In their films, the three amigos sport a synchronized greeting sequence on their horses. First they touch their chests then their hips and then they turn their faces to their right before finishing with a pelvic thrust.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: El Guapo is most definitely not annoyed at having turned 40.
• Tactical Reminiscence: Doubles as Unspoken Plan Guarantee. When the trio runs out of idea how to beat the villain, Lucky makes a reference to a Ringer Ploy from a previous movies of theirs called "Amigos, Amigos, Amigos!" which is immediately recognized by Ned.
• Telegraph Gag STOP: The Amigos receive a telegram from Mexico. The telegraph operator charges by the letter so the villager had to trim the message to the absolute bare essentials, instead of saying "Put on a show of force" it became "Put on a show" and the message becomes very vague. The Amigos themselves confuse a "Stop" in the message for a STOP and think that "the infamous El Guapo" sent the message, as well as think "infamous" means "extremely famous" instead of "famous for doing bad things."
  Telegram: Three Amigos, Hollywood, California. You are very great. One hundred thousand pesos to come to Santo Poco. Put on show. Stop the infamous El Guapo.
• Testosterone Poisoning: MANLY banditos do not like CCs (i.e. sissies, but they pronounce it like "CC") and their CC guns. Never mind that a CC with a CC gun is still lethal — look at what the Germans did at the cantina.
• That Man Is Dead: Invoked by Ned when, after the Amigos are exposed for the village, he intends to go after El Guapo for real instead of returning to Hollywood with his tail between his legs. When Dusty points out "We could get killed," Ned fires back that "Back there, the Three Amigos are already dead."
• Threat Backfire: The Amigos pull this by demanding more money from the studio chief for the next picture, assuming their stardom gives them leverage. In two minutes, they're fired, kicked out of the studio mansion, bankrupt and literally stripped of the clothes on their back.
• Together We Are X: The titular Power Trio goes by their nicknames even when introducing themselves. They finish by refering to themselves as a group as the Three Amigos.
  Lucky Day: I'm Lucky Day.
  Ned Nederlander: I'm Ned Nederlander.
  Dusty Bottoms: I'm Dusty Bottoms, and together we're...
  All: The Three Amigos!
• Training the Peaceful Villagers: The Amigos parlay the villagers exceptional sewing skills into a humiliating defeat for El Guapo.
• Turn Your Head and Cough: The final part of the Amigos' salute involves them turning their heads and coughing, simultaneous with a forward hip thrust.
• Twilight of the Old West: Apparently, life in and around Santo Poco stopped sometime during the Wild West. Although the arrival of the Germans makes it clear that those days are coming to an end.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Towards the end, while trying to come up with a plan to fight El Guapo, Lucky thinks of something from their films, but doesn't explain what specifically it was.
  Lucky: Remember our film "Amigos, Amigos, Amigos!"?
  Ned: Yeah?
  Lucky: Remember what we did in that film?
  (Beat)
  Ned: Gee, do you think it could work?
  Lucky: It's got to work. It's our only hope...
• What Happened to the Mouse?
  • What happened to Goldsmith Pictures and Flugleman after the Amigos were fired? The Three Amigos were apparently their main franchise.
  • Near the end, Dusty Bottoms throws a knife and pins one of the German agents to a pole by the sleeve of his coat. The last we see of him he's still pinned to the pole. We never find out what happened to him.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Lucky chews out Dusty for killing The Invisible Swordsman.
  Dusty: Well, how was I supposed to know he was standing there?
  Lucky: You were supposed to fire up! We both fired up!
  • The villagers, as the Amigo's run away from the fight. It's a mixture of shock, bewilderment and disappointment. Outright terror is strong ingredient as well, as the bandits they thought they were now free from are armed, angry and right there!.
• Wicked Cultured: El Guapo loves using big words and following intellectual pursuits like photography.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Poor Carmen. She assumes the Amigos will refuse the promised (but fictitious) 100,000 peso reward because she believes they are noble heroes. The Amigos, being actors, naturally plan on accepting what they think is an appearance fee. Turns out, once the Amigos finish Becoming the Mask, she's right anyway.

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