Please Please Me | With the Beatles | A Hard Day's Night | Beatles for Sale | Help! | Rubber Soul | Revolver
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band | Magical Mystery Tour | The White Album | Yellow Submarine | Abbey Road | Let It Be
Past Masters | The Beatles Anthology | The Beatles: Get Back
The Album:
- Awesome Music: This being a Beatles album, it shouldn't be surprising in the slightest that this trope is here.
- Nightmare Fuel: "I Am the Walrus" as it progresses — it gets more aggressive and dark as it goes on. "Man, you should've seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe" indeed.
- Refrain from Assuming: The song where the phrase "Don't be long" is repeated over 18 times at the end is assumed by many to be the song's title, when it's actually called "Blue Jay Way".
- Spiritual Successor: A lot of the songs were viewed as being like siblings to songs on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. "Magical Mystery Tour" is the opening theme song like "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", "The Fool on the Hill" is like a cross between the contemplative "Fixing a Hole" and the dramatic storytelling of "She's Leaving Home", "Blue Jay Way" continues George's fascination with Indian classical music expressed on "Within You, Without You" (though done on Western instruments), "Your Mother Should Know" is a bouncy retro-style tune like "When I'm Sixty-Four", and "I Am the Walrus" mixes the wordplay of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (which it lyrically references) and the sonic experimentation of "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite".
- The Woobie: "The Fool On The Hill". No one likes him, no one accepts the fact that he's wise, and no one listens to what he has to say.
The Movie:
- Aluminium Christmas Trees: Possibly for American viewers and anyone born after... well, about 1967. Bus tours to a 'mystery' location were a fairly common feature of British holidays in the 1950s and 60s (between most people holidaying by train and most people either buying cars or being able to afford foreign travel.) Mystery tours actually usually departed from busy holiday resorts to nearby places of interest that the tourists might not have known.
- Bizarro Episode: Relative to the rest of the Beatles' filmography. Although A Hard Day's Night, Help!, and later Yellow Submarine had their surreal moments, this film is one long surreal moment.
- Epileptic Trees: Supporters of the Paul Is Dead Theory have noted that during the "Your Mother Should Know" sequence, Paul has a black carnation, while the other Beatles have red ones.
- Harsher in Hindsight: Mr. Richard B. Starkey is seen happily and nonchalantly singing and drinking on the bus, with his aunt and other passengers. This is not that funny when one takes into account the struggle that Ringo Starr has had against alcoholism.
- Misblamed: All four Beatles are credited with "writing" the film, but everybody blames the whole thing on Paul McCartney.note
- Narm: The big, fat "CENSORED" box pasted over the stripper's bare breasts.
- Nausea Fuel: Let it be said that John Lennon with slicked-back hair looks like he really wants to murder you with that shovel.
- The spaghetti, which looks less like spaghetti and more like unappetizing, brown meaty mush. Urrgh...
- Nightmare Fuel:
- The spaghetti sequence (which actually is a nightmare). It looked like brown mush, and the fact John kept piling it on the plate was scary enough with that Slasher Smile.
- "Blue Jay Way", especially due to this nightmarish image towards the end of the sequence.
- Buster Bloodvessel, due to his eccentric, daydreamy, and somewhat shut-in attitude regarding the tour, even taking control of the bus at one point.
- Retroactive Recognition: Jolly Jimmy is played by Derek Royle, who would later be best known for playing the second LeClerc in 'Allo 'Allo!.
- So Bad, It's Good: The film has acquired a cult following of not just Beatles fans, but those who love it for its endearingly bizarre plot and utter lack of exposition. "The Beatles get on a bus and stuff just sort of happens" is honestly the best explanation one can give for it.
- Unintentional Period Piece: Pretty much everything about it, from the bus painted in the most psychedelic colors possible to the fashions to the "experimental" (in reality incomprehensible) plot, screams 1960s.
- Vindicated by History: Well, sort of. Steven Spielberg apparently cites it as an influence, and was moderately successful as a cult film when eventually released in the US. McCartney defends it on the grounds that it's the only film of the band performing "I Am the Walrus." Defenders of this film blame its initial failure on the fact that it was originally broadcasted in black and white, preventing viewers from appreciating its psychedelic cinematography.
