- Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Did Bernie kill that woman out of sheer desperation of her dominating him and spreading her money around out of the goodness of his heart, or did he kill her in cold blood for her money and was so generous with her money to further ingratiate himself to the local population, and thus the local jury pool if and when he was caught? The fact that he didn't spend the money on himself supports this interpretation.
- Also, he could have been trying to overcompensate because of his guilty conscience.
- That Bernie is playing con man Harold Hill in the theater's production of The Music Man is maybe the film's best acknowledgement that Bernie could be pulling the wool over Carthage's eyes.
- If you squint, there's a glimmer of indication that Marjorie's marriage was extremely unhappy and controlling and that her relatives only care about her because they want her fortune. It's also vaguely implied that part of the reason Carthage dislikes her is because she suffered under the reputation of her tightfisted banker husband, who was notorious for rejecting loans. Bernie seems to be the only person who was ever genuinely kind to her. After a lifetime of loneliness and mistrust, she may have been so unfamiliar with true friendship and so desperate for company that she resorted to emotional manipulation to ensure that she would never be lonely again.
- Did Bernie kill that woman out of sheer desperation of her dominating him and spreading her money around out of the goodness of his heart, or did he kill her in cold blood for her money and was so generous with her money to further ingratiate himself to the local population, and thus the local jury pool if and when he was caught? The fact that he didn't spend the money on himself supports this interpretation.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: That guy in the green shirt in the diner. The one who explains that Texas is really five states (then proceeds to list seven of them) and who says of the people of San Augustine, "I wouldn't let those people work on my car."
- So much so that Richard Linklater used him in some anti-Ted Cruz commercials.
- Fridge Brilliance: If you know the plot of the musical it's maybe a bit too perfect that Bernie and his theater group are putting on a production of The Music Man.note
- Harsher in Hindsight: It was discovered in 2014 that the real-life Bernie had been sexually abused as a child and it's been claimed that his murder of Marjorie was brought on by a dissociative episode triggered by her abuse. This puts the already dark relationship in an even more uncomfortable light.
- He Really Can Act: Jack Black as Bernie Tiede certainly turned a lot of critics' heads. While it's in the same wheelhouse of Black's usual Large Ham goofiness, Bernie is a noticeably darker and more controlled portrayal.
- Moral Event Horizon: It appears the final straw for Bernie was when Marjorie verbally abused him for defending the black gardener she just fired apparently on a purely racist assumption and then physically prevented Bernie from leaving by closing the property gates on him. Then she made him shoot a harmless armadillo!
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