YMMV / Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

• Accidental Aesop: With how often the titular duo's pot smoking gets them in trouble throughout the series, you'd swear this movie was actually anti-marijuana propaganda.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Harold's dream after getting knocked unconscious while riding the cheetah.
  • Kumar's Imagine Spot of dating, having sex with, marrying, and abusing a bag of weed.
  • Also, the weird scene where Kumar goes off into the woods to pee, gets approached by a weird guy coming from the opposite direction who decides to pee on the same bush, and who gets very angry when Kumar asks him why he picked that particular bush when there are so many other ones available
• Crazy Is Cool: Neil Patrick Harris' drugged-out/sex-crazed version of himself was so memorable that he had to return for the sequels.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Goldstein's description of Katie Holmes's topless scene from The Gift (2000) ("You know The Holocaust? [...] Picture the exact opposite of that.") would be absolutely tasteless if he and Rosenberg weren't Jewish themselves.
• Cult Classic: Especially among the weed crowd.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Some would say Neil Patrick Harris' role here helped resurrect his career.
  • Despite the extremely exaggerated and Squicky nature of his character, Freakshow proved to be rather popular within the fandom.
  • Rosenberg and Goldstein, the Jewish counterparts to Harold and Kumar who go on a parallel journey without the mishaps.
• First Installment Wins: The first film is a classic. The sequels aren't as well-appreciated.
• Harsher in Hindsight: As he and Harold are escaping in the car they stole from them, Kumar leans out the window and flips off the racist bullies they'd encountered and throws their "Thank you, come again!" insult (a reference to Apu's Catchphrase in The Simpsons) back at them. As it turned out, this wasn't just some throwaway joke: in his interview for Hari Kondabolu's 2018 documentary The Problem With Apu, Kal Penn admitted to being one of several American actors of South Asian descent who despises Apu and the racism he enables, which has made it increasingly hard for actors like him to get roles which aren't similarly stereotypical or degrading (going so far as to accuse Kondabolu of hating himself for otherwise liking The Simpsons).
• Heartwarming Moments: Harold and Kumar belting out Wilson Phillips' "Hold On" together in the car, a Shout-Out to Tommy Boy, when Tommy and Richard initially express disdain for the sappy radio station they're listening to in the car, but end up singing along to the Carpenters' "Superstar" at top volume while sobbing uncontrollably.
• He Really Can Act: This movie is what really put Neil Patrick Harris' child star life behind him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Neil Patrick Harris plays a drug-addled pervert obsessed with getting women, several years before he publicly came out as homosexual. By the third film, the fictional version of Harris has also come out, but only as part of a strategy to get women into bed.
  • Rosenberg and Goldstein jokingly suggest Harold and Kumar were gay for each other. 17 years after the film came out, Kal Penn came out as gay and is engaged to another man.
  • Kumar tries to help Harold flirt with Maria, saying "Just pretend you're a nerdy Asian version of Tom Hanks and she's a hot Latina Meg Ryan with bigger tits.". In 2016, the meme "Starring John Cho" spread across social media, making the point about how plenty of Hollywood movies could easily star non-white actors.
• Ho Yay: This movie is positively filled with subtext for Harold and Kumar's relationship.
  • Kumar licks Harold's face because he "thought you'd wake up if I did some gay shit."
  • Then there's Ryan Reynolds cameo as the OR Nurse with a creepily obvious sexual attraction to Kumar. Including calling him "Sexy" while standing right next to him and sensually wiping the sweat off his forehead while whispering "Soooooft chocolate lipsss..."
• One-Scene Wonder: Anthony Anderson as the Burger Shack employee. "LET'S BURN THIS MOTHERFUCKER DOWN!"
  • Fred Willard as Dr. Willoughby, who interviews Kumar during his first scene and makes a Freudian Slip after spilling his coffee.
  • Ryan Reynolds' OR Nurse who helps Harold and Kumar during surgery.
  • Jamie Kennedy's "Is this your bush?"-guy.
• Memetic Mutation: Ryan Reynolds saying "But why?"◊.
• Squick:
  • The "secret ingredient" in the Burger Shack special sauce...animal semen.
  • "Would you like to play Battleshits?"
  • "Who wants first reach-around?"
  • Freakshow. Enough said.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • New Brunswick did have a White Castle before it closed in 2020. However, in 2016, a White Castle had opened in South Brunswick, which is approximately 20 minutes from New Brunswick, so nowadays, they wouldn't have had to drive all the way to Cherry Hill.
  • Since the 2010s, there's an increased push to legalize marijuana across the US, with NJ becoming the 13th state to legalize it in 2021.
  • The main characters only know Neil Patrick Harris as the star of Doogie Howser, M.D. (which stopped airing more than a decade before the film was released), and they don't see anything particularly strange about his shameless womanizing. Harris' role in this film would lead to his unexpected Career Resurrection after he was cast in How I Met Your Mother the following year, and he would come out as gay the year after that.
• Watched It for the Representation: The film is very popular with South and East Asian Americans because of its protagonists being from those demographics and defying many stereotypes about Bollywood Nerd and Asian and Nerdy, getting to be just as crass and flawed as many white comedic protagonists.
• Woolseyism: The "Battleshits" scene in French is translated masterfully for such a Pun-heavy scene. "Battleshits" are translated as "Bataille Anale" ("Anal Battle"), a pun on "Bataille Navale" ("Naval Battle", the name the table top game is marketed under in French). The "Aircrap Carrier" is translated as "Porte-étron" (Lit. "Turd Carrier", a pun on "Porte-avion", an aircraft carrier).

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