YMMV / Only Fools and Horses

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Del's indirectly warning Rodney and Mickey about the broken lawnmower engines in "Healthy Competition" — was he genuinely trying to make sure Rodney didn't screw the pooch on his first day in business, and just couldn't be specific about the lot he was selling because he'd have clued all the other potential buyers into his scam? Or was it Schmuck Bait designed to trick Rodney and Mickey into buying the engines, and thus allowing Del to immediately recoup the money Rodney took out of Trotter's Independent Traders?
  • Delboy in general, is he an egotistical, narcissistic man with delusions of grandeur who refuses to earn money honestly and is abusive towards and emotionally blackmails Rodney just so he can exploit him and boost his own ego? Or is he someone who, having hand to fend for himself and his family from a young age, well-intentioned if misguided and his get-rich-quick schemes are his way of trying to look out for and provide for his family?
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Rodney's nightmare that spoofs the serial Cold Lazarus at the beginning of the first chapter of the 1996 Christmas trilogy, "Heroes and Villains", in which a grown-up Damien not only runs Trotters Independent Traders, but also rules the western world in the year 2026, declaring war on other countries. While Del Boy, Lord of Peckham, and Raquel live a luxurious life in Trotter Towers, Rodney himself is reduced to being an old messenger, Cassandra is a maid after Damien took over her bank and fired her, and Uncle Albert's body has been preserved, repeating his trademark phrase on a constant loop. As Rodney berates Damien for ruining everything, Del wakes him up.
• Common Knowledge: It's a common misconception that Boycie's real name is "Aubrey Boyce", thanks to his actual first name, Terrance, not being revealed (and even then, being very easy to miss) until the 2001—2003 trilogy. He actually reveals that "Aubrey" is his Embarrassing Middle Name during "Sickness and Wealth", but the audience laughter makes it easy to mishear the line where he specifies that it's his middle name.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • Many fans ignore the 2001-03 Christmas trilogy because it completely undid the 'perfect' ending of the original finale; the 1996 Christmas trilogy, where the Trotters at last achieve their dream of becoming millionaires and walk off into a glowing sunset... apparently only for Del to lose it all on the stock markets. The fact they eventually get a lot of it back [via Uncle Albert's will] makes if feel even more pointless (though Cassandra does give birth successfully this time round as one redeemer).
  • One detail that needs highlighting is the end line. At the close of the first 'last episode' Del declares, "This time next year, we could be billionaires," a superb twist on his defining catchphrase. After 2003, the final line would always be, "D'you know Rodney? That's a bloody good idea." Which doesn't quite have that same ring to it.^note ("Beckham in Peckham," which came along 11 years later, at least has a more thematically appropriate final line, namely Del and Rodney calling David Beckham a plonker after he unwittingly imitates Del's fall from "Yuppy Love")
  • Perhaps a real-world case of Be Careful What You Wish For. Its status as Britain's most popular sitcom meant writer John Sullivan had been asked about a return almost constantly. And to give him some credit, he was trying to keep a sense of perspective. The wider context of the 'billionaires' gag was Del's enthusiasm for investing in the futures market - which did undergo a genuine slump not long after the episode originally aired.
    • Interestingly, Sullivan originally wanted the sunset ending to be done as a cartoon, indicating that the characters were no longer in the real world and would not be coming back, but this was rejected.
    • For some fans, this amounted to It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: They liked the idea of seeing Del and Rodney living their fish-out-of-water lifestyles among the jet-set, but what they got was Del and Rodney back in their old Peckham flat, and doing the same old thing.
• Franchise Original Sin: A major criticism of the 2001—2003 trilogy was its falling back on Status Quo Is God and putting the Trotters back in their usual situation by having them lose their fortune in a stock market crash. In fact, something similar had happened to Rodney during the show's original run, with Season 6 showing him getting into a relationship with and eventually marrying Cassandra, moving into an apartment with her, and getting a much better job with Cassandra's father. By the middle of Season 7, however, Rodney's marriage had seemingly collapsed, he had thrown away his new job in a botched power gambit, and he was living with (and working for) Del once again. In that case, however, Rodney's falling back into his old status quo was balanced out somewhat by Raquel's pregnancy, and he did eventually mend fences with Cassandra, although he never regained his job with her father and remained Del's sidekick for the rest of the show's run.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The series is hugely popular in the former Yugoslavia, to the point where David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst get mobbed whenever they visit. They even have even pubs and bars named The Nag's Head.
• Growing the Beard: The first series isn't bad, but it lacks the familar elements of the series (of the supporting cast, only Trigger and Boycie appear, albeit in single episodes and the former is a completely different character). The second series saw the show really hit its groove.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In "Sickness and Wealth", Trigger says that the figure being described by the spirit medium "sounds like Jimmy Savile", when it was in fact Del and Rodney's mum. They were not impressed by the comparison even then, and this was long before the truth about Savile became known.
    • Even worse, the Trotters made a cameo on The Russel Harty Show in 1983 where Rodney asks Del what to say if anybody asks who he is, Del replies with "I don't know, say that you're a Jimmy Savile love child!"
    • In "Strained Relations", Del serves as Albert's character witness and claims that he runs marathons for charity, to the extent that he's called the Jimmy Savile of Peckham.
  • In "Watching The Girls Go By", Del jokes with Albert about how thinking about his ex-girlfriends makes him feel old. David Jason's long-term partner Myfanwy Talog died in 1995, and the dialogue is sometimes excised from repeats, possibly for reasons of sensitivity.
  Albert: Some of them married are they?
  Del: Some of them are dead!
  • "Wanted", in which as a joke Del convinces Rodney that a woman has accused him of sexual assault (she actually uses the word "rape") doesn't sit well in today's climate and the serious consequences that such an accusation can have for a man. There's also the fact that the woman is clearly vulnerable and would have an elevated risk of being raped for real, and would stand almost no chance of being taken seriously. As in "A Royal Flush" later on, Del veers from Jerk with a Heart of Gold into plain Jerkass territory, continuing to taunt Rodney about it when Rodney is clearly upset by the whole affair.
  • The ending of "The Sky's the Limit", which shows a large aeroplane seemingly about to crash into Nelson Mandela House, has become this since 9/11.
  • In the 1983 Christmas special "Thicker Than Water", Reg Trotter returns, and comes close to convincing his sons that he isn't really Del's father. Much later, the 1987 Christmas special "The Frog's Legacy" suggested that Rodney was not Reg's son and the 2003 episode "Sleepless in Peckham" finally confirmed it (although "Thicker Than Water" showed that both Del and Grandad already had some doubts about Rodney's paternity).
  • The show's first Christmas special, "Christmas Crackers" has Del telling a friend whose father is dying of cancer to demand antibiotics, claiming that they're like a miracle cure. Rodney later tells him how stupid that suggestion is, but Del admits that he knows perfectly well that it won't achieve anything, beyond giving said friend some small amount of hope. Today, with frivolous prescriptions for antibiotics having given rise to extremely deadly drug-resistant forms of bacteria, the scene takes on a somewhat darker feel.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In "It Never Rains", Granddad mentions a friend called Nobby Clarke. Kenneth MacDonald, who played Mike from "Who's a Pretty Boy?" to "Time On Our Hands", played a character by that name in It Ain't Half Hot, Mum.
    • In that same episode, Granddad says that the Trotters have never made good sailors. This was before Uncle Albert showed up.
  • In the 1992 Christmas special "Mother Nature's Son", the Trotters attempt to pass off tap water as "Peckham Spring Water" — it glows in the dark due to dangerous contaminants. Coca-Cola would proceed to do this when it launched Dasani in the UK. That and the discovery of carcinogens led the product being pulled. When Dasani was found to be just filtered mains water, it got nicknamed "Sidcup Spring" after this episode and the location of the Dasani bottling plant. Which just adds to the parallels with the episode, since Del managed to pollute the 'Peckham Spring' water with some chemical dumped in the reservoir (that caused the water to literally glow in the dark).
  • In "Dates", Raquel mentions that until that point her career highlight had been a small role in an episode of Doctor Who — which was intended to show how spectacularly unsuccessful she had been as an actress, since the show's ratings and reputation were a complete joke by that point, and it would be cancelled just under a year later. Exactly 25 years later the actress who played Raquel, Tessa Peake-Jones appeared in "The Time of the Doctor", with the show's reputation pretty much the opposite of what it was when Raquel first appeared.
  • Jim Broadbent playing a Dirty Cop seems like preparation for Hot Fuzz.
  • In "Beckham in Peckham", Del Boy makes a reference to Dragons' Den, but in-context it's obvious that he's confusing it with The Apprentice, with him mistakenly referring to the show's host as "Alex Sugar". In the 2023 series of The Apprentice, an animated version of Del Boy appeared in the introduction of the third task, and made the same mistake over Lord Sugar's name, to boot.
  • Del supplying the Church with white wine in the Miami Twice 2-parter. Some Churches do use white wine for communion these days.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: When the series was revived, many fans were worried that it would spoil the popular original ending, which saw Del and Rodney finally become millionaires. There was hope among such fans, however, that the revival might offer some amusing insights into the Trotters' fish-out-of-water lifestyle among the global jet-set. Instead, the first thing the revival did was to bankrupt them and put them back in their old Peckham flat. The return to business-as-usual did indeed spoil the original ending, badly.
• Misattributed Song: Many people mistakenly believe that the show's opening theme is sung by Nicholas Lyndhurst. It's actually performed by John Sullivan.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • When Slater is first introduced in "May the Force Be With You", it becomes clear that he is incredibly petty and a bully even to his fellow police officers. When Del, Rodney and Granddad refuse to grass on whoever gave them a stolen microwave, he threatens Del, with planting drugs on Rodney, and promises that while they do their time in prison, Granddad will be left alone on the estate - and Slater will ensure the local thugs know it. This is when you realise just how loathsomely corrupt this man is.
  • In Reg Trotter's sole appearance, he sends Del Boy and Rodney to get blood tests for fear of catching a hereditary blood disease. While they get an all-clear, they appear to have different blood groups, Del's being AB and Rodney's being A, implying that they have different fathers. Reg, having opened the letters before they read it, proclaims that Del is the "Lone Ranger" and begins to alienate Del at every opportunity, especially making references to The Lone Ranger. It transpires that not only did Reg have no such illness, but he sabotaged the letters by adding the B, just to spite Del. Even Granddad, who was happy to see his son again, is disgusted.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • When Rodney joins an aspiring rock band in "It's Only Rock and Roll", one of the band members is played by David Thewlis.
  • Jim Broadbent was a relative unknown when he first portrayed Roy Slater in the 1983 episode "May The Force Be With You", but has since become a well-known film actor, winning an Oscar along the way.
  • Vas Blackwood, who plays Lennox (the one who unsuccessfully tries to rob the supermarket) in "The Longest Night", later appeared in Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels as Rory.
  • Nervous Nerys is played by Andrée Bernard, who would later be best known for playing Liz Burton in Hollyoaks.
  • The axe murderer from "Friday the 14th" is played by Christopher Malcolm, who would later be best known for playing Justin in Absolutely Fabulous.
  • June Snell is played by Diane Langton, who would later be best known for playing Nana McQueen in Hollyoaks.
  • The river policeman from "Ashes to Ashes" is played by John D. Collins, who would later be best known for playing Fairfax in 'Allo 'Allo!.
  • Mrs. Creswell from "The Jolly Boys' Outing" is played by Rosalind Knight, who would later be best known for playing Beryl Merit in Gimme, Gimme, Gimme and Horrible Grandma in Friday Night Dinner.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • At the very least, nearly everyone agrees that the 2001—2003 trilogy is markedly weaker than the rest of the series.
  • Some consider the series to have been at its best when it was just two guys and their grandfather/great-uncle trying to pull off "get rich quick" schemes, and that its initial premise was derailed by the introduction of Cassandra and Raquel. At the same time however, others believe that the series was already suffering from this by that point, and that their introduction reinvigorated it.
• The Scrappy: Damien in the 2001-2003 trilogy. An extremely obnoxious Spoiled Brat who speaks almost exclusively in Ali G-style gangster phrases. At one point he freely admits that he wants his own father to go to prison just so he could fit in with the fatherless yobs on the council estate. As James Buckley (Young Del in the prequel Rock & Chips) later proved, you can pull off a rebellious teenager and make him endearing if you try.
• Sophomore Slump: Inverted with the second entry in the 2001-2003 trilogy, "Strangers on the Shore," which is widely considered the highlight of that trilogy due to essentially being a traditional Only Fools and Horses story, as compared to the more exposition-heavy nature of the other two episodes. The jokes also tend to come across more as well-executed satire instead of being just references.
• Tear Dryer:
  • Grandad's funeral in "Strained Relations" is played completely straight and is a sombre farewell to both the character and the actor. Del placing Granddad's favourite hat in the grave is both sad and heartwarming. Then it becomes hilarious when it turns out to be the vicar's hat.
  • Cassandra's miscarriage in "Modern Men" is one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the series. It's immediately followed by Del Boy punching out an obnoxious hospital patient.
  • Rodney finally opening up to Del in a broken down lift in "Time on Our Hands" is one of the series' most emotional moments. Then it's revealed that the lift wasn't really broken and it was just a ploy by Del to get Rodney to talk about his feelings.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The 2001-2003 trilogy could have shown more of how the Trotters coped with being rich and their new lifestyle. But John Sullivan believed that rich people weren't funny, so he undid the happy ending of "Time on Our Hands" and put them right back to square one.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The show is firmly rooted in the 1980s. "The Russians Are Coming" has the Trotters preparing for a nuclear war by testing a bomb shelter and Del became a yuppie in season six having seen Wall Street. Not to mention the clothes, the music, the references to British culture of the time...
  • The 2001—2003 trilogy establishes that the Trotters still have their old flat because Del couldn't sell it for its actual value. This dates it to before the 2000s property market explosion in London, which would have seen prospective developers and landlords left, right and centre trying to buy the flat from Del. If anything, he'd likely have had a bidding war on his hands just a few years later.
  • A key part of the plot of "Strangers on the Shore" involves Del getting Denzil to drive over to France, buy a vast amount of cheap booze, and then sell it to Sid to stock up the Nag's Head. Following the UK's departure from the European Union, Del's scheme wouldn't even come close to being viable, as Denzil would only be able to buy a fraction of the amount of alcohol he did in the episode before the paperwork and fees involved would cause them to lose money on their scheme. In addition, the end of free movement between the UK and EU would mean that Rodney's drug conviction may have denied him admission to France, depending on how generous the French immigration officers were feeling.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Del's homophobia, which was Played for Laughs in a way that reflected society's attitudes at the time the early seasons were filmed. Interestingly, the show noted the change in opinions - Rodney is much more accepting, and calls Del out when he suspects that he could have gotten AIDS from an effeminate hairdresser.
  • There are a couple of instances where Del makes jokes about the Chinese eating cats and dogs.
  • In a few episodes, Albert and Del casually makes references to "Pakis" and "the Paki shop" ^note As of the time period it was written and filmed in, 'Paki' wasn't considered a racist term and the term 'Paki shop' was common slang for a small (and often independently-run) local convenience store, as they were (and still are) commonly owned by people of Southern Asian descent in the UK. Over a remarkably short amount of time in the late 2000s, it became an extremely racist term, which means that younger viewers could accidentally mistake Del as being incredibly racist., and on several occasions various characters refer to restaurants serving Chinese takeaways/takeout as a "Chinky". ^note Similarly, 'Chinky' was a non-racist piece of common slang that exclusively referred to a restaurant serving Chinese takeaway/takeout, while referring to an Asian person as a 'Chink' or 'Chinky' even back then was considered to be racist. While 'Chinky' is still retained in places Oop North and among older generations as slang for a Chinese takeaway, it's largely unheard of by younger generations and rarely appears in media released after the 1990s, presumably due to its inherent similarities to and possibly confusion with the very racist term 'Chink'.
• Viewer Name Confusion: Applies to Boycie's rarely-used first and middle names (even his wife just calls him "Boycie"). His middle name is revealed as "Aubrey" in the episode "Sickness and Wealth", although audience laughter obscures his full explanation, leading some to assume that that's his first name. Said first name is either "Terence" (as seen on a contract in "Strangers on the Shore") or "Herman" (as given by the vicar when he and Marlene remarry in the spin-off series The Green Green Grass).

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