Awesome Music: The orchestral cover of The B-52s' "Planet Claire" that plays as the President prepares to make first contact.
Cargo Ship: B.O.B./Green Jello. A match made in mixers.
Crazy Is Cool: General W.R. Monger, who ran a secret monster prison for 50 years just in case aliens invaded, loves parachuting into random places whenever he feels like it, wedgies uncooperative staff, flew a warplane into the path of a spaceship laser and almost dodged it and came prepared for a giant woman by equipping his army with a giant sedative syringe, a catapult to launch it and a trampoline.
The fact that President Hathaway designed the nuclear fallout button to be right next to the latte button (which, by the way, looks exactly the same) is rather ridiculous, but then it leads to this interaction.
W.R. Monger: And we all know... nukes ain't an option. President Hathaway: Sure, they are. Just, uh... (casually leans on the nuclear fallout button)
It's honestly pretty sad when B.O.B. is genuinely devastated that the Invisble Man never escaped and died 25 years ago. Then, it crosses into funny again when Link claims that he's still in the same chair he died in — at which we cut to a visibly empty-looking chair.
As the movie itself mostly glosses over Susan's time trapped in the monster base, plenty of fanfics - most notably God Help the Outcasts - have expanded on it in some way.
The movie's concept of monsters being imprisoned in a military base lends itself very well to stories about new, OC monsters suddenly being imprisoned and interacting with the main cast.
In one scene one of the President's advisors says: "In these situations I think to myself, what would Oprah Winfrey do?" Years later, Oprah would be briefly considered by the populace to run for the 2020 Democratic party presidential nomination (and didn't end up running).
The news anchor sarcastically comments that the U.S. is the only place UFO's ever seem to land in. Later that same year the movie was released, a UFO landed in South Africa.
The film wasn't the only DreamWorks film that had pop-culture references to the sci-fi genre ten years ago.
Paul Rudd, the voice actor of Derek — Susan's fiancé who selfishly dumped her after she gained her abilities to shrink and grow — would later play the role as Scott Lang, who can shrink and grow with the Pym Particles in Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp.
This movie features a blue-skinned alien with a giant forehead as the main villain. A mere year later, another DreamWorks Animation movie, Megamind, would also feature a blue-skinned alien with a giant forehead as the main villain... only this time, he's the main character and eventually pulls a Heel–Face Turn.
Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Gallaxhar may be the main antagonist, but he is Laughably Evil incarnate. Most of the hate goes towards Susan's self-centered fiancé, Derek, who dumps Susan after she's turned giant and is completely inconsiderate to her, caring more about his career.
Memetic Badass: President Hathaway is supposed to be ridiculous, but many have found themselves admiring him for his method of confronting a gigantic alien robot and genuinely see him as an Action Politician.
I may not have a brain, gentlemen, but I have an idea.
B.O.B. wiggling a plate of jelly to Derek's face has been frequently used to depict situation where one's bragging about something they have to those who don't.
Shallow Parody: Aside from using famous monster stand-ins for the main cast and numerous brief shout-outs, the film doesn't actually do much to parody old B-Movies, ending up much closer to a typical action-adventure flick.
Ship-to-Ship Combat: The fandom is a bit split when it comes to who Susan gets paired with. Given the lack of Token Romance within the film, many tend to gravitate towards Dr. Cockroach/Susan since he takes an active role in trying to reduce her size and they seem to converse the most (also, they're the only two monsters who used to be human). But Link/Susan has its share of fans as well, considering that Link's whole deal is that he chases beautiful babes anyway. A small segment of fans pair Susan off with her Disposable Fiancée Derek instead, though this pairing is much rarer by comparison and usually involves the latter being given either the Draco in Leather Pants treatment or some degree of redemption first. Of course, being an animated comedy superhero film, the majority of viewers and fans never considered shipping anyone in it.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Missing Link. The film sets him up as being past his prime, and he proves totally useless in the San Francisco mission, which he's seen taking poorly. One might assume this is setting up a character arc where he proves he's still got it, but the best he gets is beating up a lot of Gallaxhar clones during the climax.
The film claims to be a B-Movie parody, but doesn't take the idea very far. If one replaced the smaller monsters with super-powered humans, the film would mostly be the same.
The film mostly glosses over Susan's time in captivity, skipping ahead roughly three weeks after the first day to when the monsters are released to fight the giant robot. This means that we don't get to see Susan actually bond with any of the monsters in any meaningful capacity until much later on - meaning her "amazing!" speech at the gas station comes out of nowhere - even though seeing her gradually adjust to her captivity and interacting with the rest of the monsters would have added to their True Companions dynamic and made for an interesting subplot in its own right.
Ugly Cute: Pretty much all of the other monsters aside from Susan herself.
Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The human characters all have realistically rendered skin, which clashes with their stylized designs. Most viewers found them creepier than the actual monsters for that reason.
Viewer Gender Confusion: Insectosaurus. The movie calls the monster a "he", but a behind-the-scenes book lists the monster as a female. This has led to a Broken Base amongst the fans of the movie as to which is truly canon regarding the monster's gender.
Susan. After Derek dumps her, she looks so much like a kicked puppy.
The monsters, after they scare off the party.
Tropes For The Game
Annoying Video Game Helper: Dr. Cockroach will constantly stop the game to explain the mechanics, even repeating himself a few times for moves that both Link and B.O.B. can do. He'll also politely belittle you if you don't get a score that meets his standards at the end of the level.
No Problem with Licensed Games: A surprisingly decent action platformer that does its best to take advantage of the film's material, with some good variety between the main playable monsters and has 2 arcs that are original to the game. Though the story does follow a repetitive formula, leading to a lot of the samey environments, and has a lot of the gameplay ideas are interesting but undeveloped, the writing and graphics are very faithful to the film, with many fans often calling the game a rare instance of a videogame adaptation that exceeds the quality of the source material to the point where it's seen by some as the definitive version of Monsters Vs. Aliens rather than being just as good or worse than it. Definitely an A for effort and ambition, if only a B- or C+ for execution.
Padding: Most of the levels taking place inside giant robots. While the Colossus Climb makes for some exciting set pieces, the repetitive environments gradually outstay their welcome.
Although she is the protagonist, Ginormica's skating stages are the least involved and the least frequent of all the playstyles, giving her the least to do.
Dr. Cockroach is only playable as a second player, where he's represented by a crosshair to take out enemies.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Although the San Francisco mission is the film's Signature Scene (to the point of inspiring Ginormica's entire gameplay style), there's only one level actually taking place in it, while the rest is set inside the Robot Probe itself. Further, destroying the robot is meant to be a turning point in her character development, but in the game Ginormica doesn’t even fight it herself.
, which are designed to help those who earn their doctorates become performance artists.