YMMV / Sausage Party

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• Accidental Aesop:
  • The film features Camp Gay, Straight Gay, and bisexual characters, but more importantly, treats sexual orientation as a complete and utter non-issue. Characters simply love who they love and, in the end, have sex when, how, and with whomever they like. The film, even as it indulges in a graphic food orgy, makes it a point to portray this as wonderful and liberating.
  • The food items, when they're not floundering in shallow prejudice or stressing over the "gods", get a lot of mileage out of the little things in life — sex, love, swearing, partying, and getting high as a kite. One interpretation is that the human condition, while uncertain and crude, is actually pretty awesome.
  • As Screen Rants pitch meeting showed; the gods are dead, so just indulge in mindless hedonism.
• Adorkable:
  • Barry is a cute little sausage who's just as eager to get inside a bun as all the other sausages and shows such adorable enthusiasm at the thought of doing so. He still maintains his adorkableness when he leads the revolt against the humans. Plus, being voiced by Michael Cera doesn't hurt.
  • Sally, Barry's bun girlfriend, who shares his physical abnormality (in Sally's case, being smushed) that sets her apart from her peers. She also gains a shy and timid voice following her being smushed by Brenda.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: A much more modest example. The film's success, critical and otherwise, came as a surprise to many.
• Animation Age Ghetto: Intended as a gigantic middle finger towards this mentality, as it goes out of its way to promote itself as such. But... weirdly enough, a year later, when an HBO channel in Brazil aired the movie, it was subsequently banned by the government with a fine Of R$ 2 million, because according to them "it aired inappropriate content at the time", since it was aired in the morning. But the channel denied it, claiming that they clarified the content of the animation and its age ratings. The weirdest thing of this is the fact of this channel not even being free-to-air, one of the most mature HBO channels and being one of the most expensive pay TV channels in the country...
• Anvilicious: The arguments over the Great Beyond's existence or lack thereof are taken straight from the standard arguments between believers and atheists. To some, the film ultimately comes down on the "side" of vague agnosticism, to others on the anti-religious atheist side (see What Do You Mean, It's Not Political? below). Whatever the case, there is a message that if you want to challenge a belief system, you need to offer an appealing alternative, as summed up by Barry late in the movie:
  Barry: (to Frank) You can't just slam their beliefs! You have to show them that there's a better way. You need to inspire them like you inspired me! You need to give them... hope.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: Before release, Sausage Party was seen as this: an R-rated CGI-animated film starring Anthropomorphic Food, full of raunchiness, crude jokes, offensive stereotypes, and inappropriate visual puns. It became a critical and commercial success, unexpectedly.
• Award Snub: We wouldn't exactly say that this is an award deserving movie per se but, more than a few fans were disappointed that the film didn't receive even a single nomination at the Academy Awards, citing "The Great Beyond" as a perfect potential nominee for Best Original Song.
• Awesome Music: "The Great Beyond", which sounds exactly like a song from the Disney Renaissance (with added raunch, obviously). Not surprising, considering who wrote it.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Ask around and there are two things you will find this film most remembered for: Camille Toh, and the rather graphic food orgy at the end of the story.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: While it may have been hilarious, from a plot standpoint, the food orgy fits the definition of BLAM quite nicely.
• Broken Base:
  • The film itself is extremely polarizing. Either you think it’s a hilarious Affectionate Parody of animated films or you think it’s an overly vulgar and substance lacking abomination that embodies everything wrong with adult animation. There is no in-between.
  • The film being announced as the first R-rated CGI-animated feature was bad enough, but the release of the Red Band trailer further worsened the division. Opinions of it range from being a faithful Affectionate Parody of Disney/Pixar movies, to being a cold-blooded and hilarious skewering of those same films, to being a typical Seth Rogen film completely devoid of any funny moments.
  • The news of the Troubled Production and mistreatment of animators. For some people, those are enough to completely dismiss the movie all together, while for others, it's not much of big deal or even increases their appreciation for the film.
  • On a lighter note, some are split whether the ending was meant to be a legitimate Sequel Hook or is just another throwaway gag that shouldn't be taken seriously.
• Critical Dissonance: Film critics seemed to mostly praise the film, awarding it a solid 83% "Certified Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes, while overall audiences reception seems to be more in the polarizing camp. The backlash involving the terrible working conditions the film's animation studio inflicted on its animators only seemed to sour these sentiments further.
• Crosses the Line Twice: It's safe to say that Sausage Party gleefully plays double dutch with every line it can find.
  • "They're eating children! FUCKING CHILDREN!"
  • When we meet the traumatized roll of toilet paper, the "corpse" (cardboard tube) of his predecessor is seen hanging on the bathroom handle behind him.
  • The best way to describe "The Great Beyond" is that it takes everything good and decent in the world and fries it, boils it, gouges its eyes out and tears its head in half all while being sung in a Musical Number akin to a film from The Renaissance Age of Animation.
  • During the supermarket's What the Hell, Hero? reaction to Frank when he insults their belief in "The Great Beyond", one of the foods calls him an "intolerant piece of shit". Now, this example wouldn't be here if the food in question hadn't been Sauerkraut Hitler!
  • Barry complimenting the squished hot dog bun on how her lopsided face "just gives up halfway through."
  • The climax (pun intended). More specifically, after the food defeat the evil humans, they have a massive orgy.
  • The scene where the Condom is lamenting on what he was used for shouldn't have been as hilarious as it was.
  • All of the ethnic stereotypes. All of them. Mostly because it's generally agreed that they never cross the line from good-natured ribbing to outright cruelty.
• Dancing Bear: The main draw of the film is that it's the first feature-length CGI film targeted to adults.
• Designated Villain: The humans, who need to eat food to survive, but are nonetheless portrayed as being evil, monstrous murderers. Probably intentional, as the food characters clearly don't know that and the humans aren't actually portrayed as "evil" (except for Darren, but he's more of just a typical jerkass). According to Firewater, the reason that the humans kill food is because it makes them stronger.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Douche gets this treatment a lot on Tumblr, with some seeing him as a sympathetic villain, others depicting him as a good-looking human, and others have him paired up with El Guaco and juicy box.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Barry has received a good deal of love from both critics and audiences. His cute looks and personality, along with Michael Cera's performance, certainly helped.
  • The juice box that gets raped by Douche is very popular with fans, especially shippers... unfortunately.
  • The Non-Perishables. Right next to Douche, El Guaco, Barry and Teresa Del Taco, they're practically the most popular characters in the film.
• Fandom Rivalry: The film was thrust into the crosshairs of DC Extended Universe fans when it provided a surprising amount of competition for Suicide Squad (2016).
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Successful as it may be everywhere else, the film is way less polarizing in New Zealand.
• Gotta Ship 'Em All: There are a lot of Ho Yay pairings for this movie. Douche/Frank, Douche/Juice Box, Firewater/Twink, Firewater/Grits, Twink/Grits... the list goes on.
• Harsher in Hindsight: A meta example, as well. The cheery "That's terrible work, you're fired" gag in Seth Rogen's Animation-Imaginatorium became a lot less funny when people realized the horrible working conditions the animators had been under.
• Heartwarming Moments: For how dirty this movie is, one can't help but admire Frank and Brenda's relationship.
  • Same can be said for his relationship with Barry.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Invoked Trope. Once the foods find out the truth about the Great Beyond, you can't help but feel a bit bad for them when they sing about how the Great Beyond is a wonderful place in the beginning of the film.
  • The food are shown at Camille Toh's house realizing their true fate after seeing their food friends get murdered. Cut to three months after the movie was released, and a South Park episode contains a scene where Randy attempts to kill the member berries, who are a bunch of anthropomorphic grapes. This results in the rest of the member berries observing the murdering process from the kitchen counter and sneaking out at night to escape his house.
  • Considering the reports of how cruel co-director Greg Tiernan had been to most of the animators, it's hard not to imagine the catharsis they must feel when watching the potato he voices get his skin brutally peeled off, if not when they were animating it.
  • The Whole Cake Island arc of One Piece (which was in publication around the time this movie was in theaters) featured animate, sentient food who insist they taste delicious and actually want to be eaten - the polar opposite of Sausage Party's foodstuffs.
  • There was a Saturday TV Funhouse sketch on Saturday Night Live that parodied VeggieTales. It had a line saying that if you masturbated, you went to hell, showed several scenes of food murdering other food, and had a scene where a tomato is portrayed as having a harem of 70 virgins. Fast forward to this film, and there's a scene where Brenda worries that bad things are happening to her and Frank because they "touched tips", which could be seen as being equivalent to masturbation or dry humping, a product who murders other foods (Douche), and Lavash saying that in the Great Beyond, 70 bottles of extra virgin olive oil wait for him.
  • Douche shoving himself up Darren's butt is even more amusing now that Nick Kroll, Douche's voice actor, is playing Professor Poopypants in Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie. This is also hilarious because in the books, Professor Poopypants had robotic pants that he poked his head out of the zipper portion of in one point, which is also seen in the end credits sequence of the Captain Underpants movie during the part where it shows Nick Kroll’s name.
  • Here, Nick Kroll plays a sex-crazed douche that can't be seen by normal people. In Big Mouth, he'd play a sex-crazed monster that can't be seen by normal people. Not only that but he'd repurpose his voice for Douche, a narcissistic bully of a villain, for the character of Coach Steve, the single nicest character on that show. Similarly, Kristen Wiig, who plays a character who resembles a sentient vagina, would later appear on Kroll's show as an actual sentient vagina.
  • The YouTube Poop "Billy Mays Pitches Sausage Party" has Billy Mays smashing the movie posters of Ratatouille, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 at one point in the video when he tells the audience they could say goodbye to those films after seeing the movie. In the deleted alternate ending, Seth Rogen and his friends state that Sausage Party is the best food movie they’ve seen since Ratatouille and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
  • It only took four years after this movie for a genuine Pixar film, Soul, to unironically call the afterlife “The Great Beyond.”
• Hype Backlash: Despite the acclaim the film has received from critics, many general audience members find the film to be overly raunchy and arguably less mature than many so-called "kids'" films from Disney and Pixar, despite being advertised as the first ever CGI-animated film for adults.
• Inferred Holocaust: Just how many living, breathing food items were brutally carved up before the events of the film? And what is to become of the foods at the other supermarkets??
  • For that matter, what of the families and friends of the customers and staff that were killed by the rebellious food items? Or any other people that could end up killed if the foods in other stores do similar uprisings?
  • While drugging humans with bath salt would enable the grocery items to rebel against the humans, it would not guaranteed the success of said rebellion. Now imagine what would have happened to the surviving grocery items and humans if the latter had miraculously defeated the rebellion.
• Iron Woobie: Barry does take a level in badass mid-way through the film and even kills both of the movie's villains.
• It Was His Sled:
  • The food's "destiny" is actually to be eaten. Duh.
  • Thanks to the leaked script and countless reviews on the internet, everyone going to see this movie will be fully aware of the food orgy.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Honey Mustard. He might be full-of-himself, but he suffers from honest to god realistic portrayals of PTSD when he comes back from the "Great Beyond". Being Driven to Suicide definitely brings him even further into sympathy.
  • Even Darren to an extent. While he is a sleazy worker, did he really deserve to get blown up along with Douche and being sexually controlled by Douche?
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Douche gets paired with most of the male characters in the film, particularly Frank, Barry, El Guaco, and the Juice Box.
• LGBT Fanbase: The film is pretty popular among gay and bisexual audiences, owing to the film's cast consisting largely of gay and bi characters with the film itself treating these characters in a casual manner.
• Love to Hate: Douche. Despite being a massive... well, douche, fans can't help but be entertained by how stereotypically over-the-top he is.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • 88 KILLS. ^ExplanationA "review" of the movie by former Super Origami Kingdom member TamatoaGamingDA was nothing more than an angry rant about how the movie was "bad", to the point of calling it a "goddamn godawful adult humor penis hell". The real kicker was that one of his criticisms was that the movie had 88 overall kills, which is "inappropriate" for an animated movie, despite the fact that Cars 2 was an animated children's movie and had a kill count of 26.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales:
  • Most of the food characters (such as Teresa Del Taco and Sammy Bagel Jr.) are pretty popular among people that represent their respective ethnicities, despite being rather blatant stereotypes.
  • Similarly, Twink is popular with LGBT viewers despite his Camp Gay personality.
• Misaimed Fandom: Douche gets paired with the Juice Box a lot (nicknamed "Juicy" by most of the fandom), despite the fact that Douche raped the juice box to death when sucking the juice out of a wound located on his crotch.
• Mis-blamed: Regarding the controversy over the animators' working conditions, the animators that spoke out stressed that their issues were strictly with the animation company, Nitrogen^note a non-union animation studio based out of Vancouver, Canada, and director Greg Tiernan, and had no complaints against writer-producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg or director-producer Conrad Vernon. Despite this, many angry responses were directed against the film's crew as a unit (or, more egregiously, singled out Rogen), and the issue was often framed as a way of "vindicating" complaints about the content and morality of the film itself.
• Moe: Barry, Sally, Twink, the baby carrots, and interestingly enough, Camille.
• Moral Event Horizon: Douche crosses it when he drinks the juice out of a wounded Box of Grape Juice.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • The orgy scene. Just the idea that they show various food items having sex can really disgust people. It barely even made sense at all.
  • During the supermarket battle, one man's head is blown up.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: The red-band trailer accidentally being screened in front of Finding Dory increased interest in the movie.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters was another adult animated film about anthropomorphic food (like the TV series it was based on) that was released nine years before Sausage Party. However, Sausage Party features a far more diverse variety of food characters; the Aqua Teen movie primarily featured three (albeit more if you count the intro with the movie theater snacks singing the advertisement jingle and Chicken Bittle, whom were all minor characters). Also, the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie was based on a TV series and only had a limited release.
  • This is not, in fact, the first computer animated film to receive an R rating. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut earned that title seventeen years prior. This film, however, is the first to have 3D computer animation, whereas the South Park movie used it to create crude 2D puppet animation.
  • Heavy Metal was another adult animated film. Which was the inspiration behind Conrad Vernon joining as the co-director of the movie according to Word of God.
  • The Ripping Friends used the "Hot Dog Buns with sideways mouths" design before this film did. Although here, it's a bit more blatant.
  • Back in the 80s an episode of Tales from the Darkside had a similar premise, although from a human perspective. A woman tries a weight-loss plan that gives her glasses and an earpiece that cause her to see faces on her food, and hear them talking to her. In that episode, however, it's not totally clear if this is actually happening, or if it's an illusion to discourage her from over-eating. The episode ends with the woman sewing her mouth shut and starving to death. Oddly, that episode ventured into Unbuilt Trope territory, and can actually come across as a Deconstruction of this movie, acknowledging that the food is basically screwed either way, and not eating it actually means a slow and painful death by rotting.
  • The Simpsons had a scene that also made fun of Pixar with Anthropomorphic Food. The only difference is that the food act like the way the toys in Toy Story do rather than the whole Alternate Universe situation. It's actually gotten to the point where people have mistaken that Simpsons scene for a scene in Sausage Party
• Overshadowed by Controversy: It's very difficult to bring this movie up in animation circles without mentioning the mistreatment of the animators by co-director Greg Tiernan.
• Periphery Demographic: Betcha never expected a raunchy, R-rated film about talking food would be so popular with women now, didja?
• Protection from Editors: According to the filmmakers, they actually had full control over production, which was how they were able to get away with much of the film's risque content.
• Questionable Casting: Many question if Alan Menken's involvement in the movie was necessary, let alone fitting. Is it just so he can poke fun at his works with Disney? Or is it an attempt to try something new and shake off his reputation of being a Disney composer? His hiring to do the score was bizarre to many, even to Disney fans who enjoy his scores, aside from his work in Little Shop of Horrors before working with Disney.
• Rooting for the Empire: Since the villains of the story are the humans who are just eating the food to, you know, fulfill a very basic survival need, it's not hard to relate, and for some people, to side with them.
• Shock Fatigue: Owing to this movie's Broken Base, people either love it for the swearing, violence, and sexual humor because it's an Affectionate Parody of animated movies, or they find the vulgarity (such as the scene where everyone has a massive orgy) too over-the-top to the point where it gets old. There is no in-between.
• Signature Scene: The entire orgy scene between the lead gang and all the other foods is quickly reaching this status, with the scene where Camille slaughters the foods at her home not far behind.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Can be considered a deconstruction of The Brave Little Toaster. Just replace household items with food products.
  • In that it's a brutal, adult-centric work disguised as something child friendly, it can be seen as one for Happy Tree Friends, Conker's Bad Fur Day or possibly Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt.
  • Many YouTube comments have often referred to the movie as the film version of Attack on Titan. Only here, we're the Titans.
  • It's also been described by fans as "the version of Foodfight! that doesn't suck."
  • Let's see... An animated product that uses Anthropomorphic Food to deliver its message about Religion. Gee, doesn't that sound familiar?
  • In the words of Brad Jones...
  This movie's kind of the Logan's Run of talking food movies.
  • For some people, the kitchen scene is very reminicent of The Annoying Orange earliest episodes and many older DaneBoe talking food videos. They refer to them as "Sausage Party before Sausage Party".
• Spoiled by the Format: Because it's a spoof on the Animation Age Ghetto and designed to resemble the kind of film which plays it straight, Sony was practically required to release the red band trailer first and put a huge "RATED R" stamp on the home media artwork to make it perfectly clear that it was a spoof, more or less spoiling the main joke.
• So Okay, It's Average: Despite its overall reception being much more positive-to-polarizing than had been expected, the consensus is that it's a perfectly serviceable raunchy comedy, but otherwise doesn't have much appeal beyond the novelty factor of basically just being a DreamWorks movie that's explicitly for adults.
• Squick
  • The close-up of Camille Toh's... well, camel toe as Douche ogles it.
  • The food orgy. Some laugh, some puke.
  • The discarded, used condom. There's still remnants of semen on him.
  • The piece of poop in the street Barry sees that still has corn pieces in it. And then the corn pieces come to life as zombies.
  • Douche sodomizing Darren and yanking on his scrotum to puppeteer him (essentially a grosser version of Ratatouille).
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Douche's leitmotif sounds very similar to the theme for Hopper and his band from A Bug's Life.
• Ugly Cute: Given the animation style and the fact that the characters are food items. Barry most especially.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Owing to the film's modest budget, some of the facial features on the human character designs seem a little off. To say nothing of the anthropomorphic hot dog buns, who resemble blow-up dolls whose mouths go the wrong way.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • While we're meant to understand that Frank judging the groceries when showing them the proof of what really happens in the Great Beyond is meant to be him disrespecting their beliefs, the problem is that they aren't any better when it comes to judging others for different beliefs. It's even stated in the opening song that foods with different beliefs are "fucking stupid", so really, they have no right to get angry at Frank for judging them.
  • The Food as a whole fall into this following the climax because the moment they stop living with any kind of purpose, every last product in the store descends into mindless hedonism. Not only that, but their activies appears to be a little self-destructive judging by how violent that orgy gets. Not a very good use of their newfound freedom.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Despite the above, the animation is surprisingly top-notch for something made on such a small budget, helped by the fact that one of the co-directors is a veteran of DreamWorks Animation.^note Though if you really want to give credit where it's due, you can thank the poor animators who were forced to work overtime for no pay.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?:
  • Those who first watched the Red Band trailer anticipated that it would be a children's movie since it involved anthropomorphic food and that it bore an uncanny resemblance to what you would see in a Disney, Pixar or DreamWorks film. Then, once the Irish potato dropped the F-bomb, said viewers thought, "What the hell is this?". One of the TV spots had to give a warning that the movie is rated R twice the first at the very beginning and the later ones even had to put a red stamp saying "Rated R" on the film's release date.
  • A trailer for the film was shown just before Finding Dory in one California theater. The theater apologized later on, explaining that Dory had not been scheduled in that auditorium until late due to unexpected demand, and they had forgotten to switch it out with an adult-oriented movie (and its trailers) playing earlier in the same auditorium. The theater stated that the Sausage Party trailer has never been scheduled with Dory; however, it has been speculated that the reason the error wasn't caught until it was too late was because the first trailer to play was for a bright, cheerful-looking animated picture.
  • And after the home release, several stores and streaming services have put a big red "Rated R" label on the movie's cover and advertising, less risking a parent bring this movie home for his little child.
  • Verizon Fios initially incorrectly labeled the movie as having a PG-13 rating. According to a Tumblr post, this also happened at one Regal Cinemas location in New York during the Columbus Day weekend re-release when a PG-13 MPAA rating card showed up before the movie started.^note The PG-13 rating doesn't particularly mean a film is kid-friendly either, but this film definitely makes anything PG-13 rated you've seen look G-rated in comparison.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • Moral Guardians, aside from being horrified by the adult jokes and stereotypes, accused the film of promoting an anti-religious message, as it is a major plot point that the food are taught to believe humans would send them to "their destiny," which supposedly means food heaven, instead of being chopped and cooked for a human meal in reality. The food's "religion" is revealed to be a lie (akin to some hardline atheists views on religion), this idea is introduced by a Stephen Hawking expy (Hawking himself was an avowed atheist) whose knowledge of the food's "religion" is correct, and the foods go on to fight and kill some of their "gods" and the story treats it as a good thing. Many early reviewers who saw the rough cut at the SXSW festival did not fail to point this analogy out. While the film isn't explicitly pro-atheist, the film is a rather big indictment on when organized religion is rigid.
  • A large contingent of Tumblr saw the film as one long nose-thumbing against "political correctness", feminism and racial equality.
• Woolseyism: In the Japanese dub, since douches aren't common in Japanese stores, Douche is renamed Bidet (a sink used for washing genitalia and buttocks).
• The Woobie: Poor little Barry. He's a misshapen hotdog who's constantly bullied for his short stature, insecure over his feelings of inadequacy and perceived lack of desirability to the buns, witnesses his fellow foods being brutally slaughtered, and he gets thrown far out of his element in the humans' world. He grows out of being a woobie by taking several levels up in badassery and gets a happy ending ultimately.

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