YMMV / Five Easy Pieces

• Award Snub: Went 0 for 4 at the Oscars (Best Picture, Jack Nicholson for Best Actor, Karen Black for Best Supporting Actress, and Bob Rafelson and Carole Eastman—credited as Adrien Joyce—for Best Original Screenplay).
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: An early scene has four characters sitting in a living room and singing. The song is interrupted for a brief monologue by one of the characters about dimples and God. When she's done, nobody offers any reaction or even acknowledgment of her little speech and everyone continues singing as if nothing happened. Possibly symbolic.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: The diner scene where Robert upbraids the waitress is supposed to show how difficult he is and how much trouble he has functioning in normal social situations. Instead it's largely seen as a Moment of Awesome for getting violent at a woman just trying to do her job.^note It's worth noting that the screenplay was written by a woman, Carole Eastman
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Palm's dialogue about a car that runs on steam is reminiscent of Steven Hyde's monologue about "government having a car that runs on water".
• Jerkass Woobie: Robert is a prime example. You really do understand his callousness and feel sympathy for him after you see how screwed-up the Dupea family is.
• Memetic Mutation: "I'd like an omelette..."
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Sally Struthers' first credited role is as Betty.
  • Toni Basil (of 1980s "Oh Mickey" fame) plays one of the hitchhikers in the famous diner scene.
• Signature Scene: To the extent that a lot of people only know it as "That movie where Nicholson gets in an argument over a chicken salad sandwich." People who Watch It for the Meme might be surprised to learn that it's actually a fairly minor incident in the middle of the film that's not particularly important outside of defining one aspect of Robert's personality.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: As mentioned above, in the diner scene, we're supposed to be on the waitress's side because she's only doing her job while trying to deal with Robert being difficult and giving her a hard time. However, Robert actually comes off as fairly reasonable in that scene, where he makes a perfectly reasonable request for an omelette and toast. Granted, there was no justification in him making a mess everywhere in the end by pushing the drinks off the table, but before that, he wasn't doing anything wrong.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The waitress, on the other hand, even though the audience is supposed to see her as someone only trying to do her job while dealing with Robert supposedly giving her a hard time, instead comes off as an obnoxious, passive-aggressive jobsworth who is unnecessarily inflexible and refuses to provide Robert basic customer service, and even when Robert tries to reason with her in order to get him what he wants, the waitress is still very rude, difficult and dismissive towards him.

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