And You Thought It Would Fail: Development of this film was turned-down by other Hollywood movie studios due to its contentious, controversial and sensitive subject matter involving vigilantism, gang rape, and crime.
Awesome Music: The soundtracks for 2 and 3. It is to be expected when you have Jimmy Page being the composer.
Critical Dissonance: Save for the first film, the series on the whole was largely trounced by critics. But action fans enjoyed them, and their support allowed the franchise to last well into the nineties.
Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans prefer to view the first movie as a standalone work, given how the other films are less grounded and realistic and put the few returning characters through too much angst and misery.
First Installment Wins: From a critical and filmmaking point of view, the first Death Wish was the best received film of the series.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The movies are very popular in Mexico, to the point that the Spanish title of the movie, El Vengador Anonimo (The Anonymous Avenger) is synonymous of a cop who fights crime outside the law.
Harsher in Hindsight: About ten years after the movie came out, Bernie Goetz would gun down four muggers in the New York subway in a similar manner to what Paul Kersey does.
Iron Woobie: The only woman who survived being related to Paul Kersey is the one who abandoned him. Being a friend of Paul is no guarantee of survival, either. But Paul Kersey only grieves for a short while...and then gets even. With interests.
Moral Event Horizon: The three unnamed thugs from the first movie rape Kersey's wife and daughter, killing the former.
The final mugger at the park, who injures Paul and is confronted by him in a western manner after a chase, before surviving due to luck.
The uncredited man at the police station wanting information about his stolen dog, which he claims is a "vital source of income" due to painting with its paws.
Alma Lee Brown and Andrew McCabe, the citizens being interviewed who cite Paul's actions as inspiring are both pretty memorable.
Joanna and Carol's three sadistic attackers, one played by a young Jeff Goldblum in his film debut.
The pragmatic District Attorney who doesn't want to make a martyr out of the vigilante.
For some, the patrolman who finds Paul's gun and who seems to have a grasp about the complicated feeling about the vigilante case, played by Christopher Guest.
Sonia Manzano, just a couple years into her long tenure as Maria on Sesame Street, appears as a grocery store cashier.
Sequelitis: The film started as a grounded, down-to-earth crime drama where Paul Kersey brought about a cynical analysis of the attitudes of Americans regarding the crime waves of the 1970s, and stood out as unique in the action genre at the time. Its four sequels however became progressively less grounded in reality and increasingly over the top, with Kersey resorting to excessive means in dispatching one typical action movie villain after another and dropping the social commentary that magnified the first film's impact.
Unintentional Period Piece: This film was made back before things like metal detectors and X-raying all bags due to hijackings were universal, but the gun, in a presentation case, was actually put into the bag that Kersey was checking, not into his carry on bag.
Kersey's poor daughter just could not catch a break, and it's painfully obvious how scarred she is by it.
Erica and Olivia as well, given that both also end up dead after a lot of trauma (losing a child, and being subjected to Facial Horror in an earlier attack respectively).
would gun down four muggers in the New York subway in a similar manner to what Paul Kersey does.