Angst? What Angst?: Sophie's grandfather died, and she's committed to protecting the man he ordered her to find. While she confronts a bound Silas for murdering Jacques, for the most part her bigger priority is finding out first how to clear Robert's name and then solve the secret her grandfather was carrying. Likewise, she finds out her brother and grandmother are alive, and it's revealed while the car crash was real, Jacques and his wife agreed to separate with their grandchildren so as to protect them from potential assassins. Sophie takes this well when she thought her whole family was dead. The film notably gives her a moment where she gets angry at Silas and tells him "Your God doesn't forgive murderers. He burns them!"
Fridge Horror: The French police find out that they were on a Wild Goose Chase and hunting down an innocent man across country lines. This isn't good optics for them, as Fache notes at the end. To his credit, Fache realizes his mistake and apologizes to Sophie when she calls the British police and reveals that Silas kidnapped Leigh Teabing. In fact, his bigger worry is that she's going to confront a killer and orders her to stay where she is so the bobbies can provide backup. It seems All Is Well That Ends Well with Teabing arrested, and the pair's names are cleared. Even though they eventually get the right guy, they have to hope that the public will believe Collet when he claims that Sophie and Robert were willingly part of a sting operation in the hopes of luring out the real killer. Fache and Aringosa commiserate over the fact that their well-intentioned actions led to great disaster.
In Leigh Teabing's library, he has a statue of Janus - the god with two faces. This foreshadows that Leigh himself is two-faced and will betray them.
Bishop Aringarosa's name is made up of the words 'aringa' and 'rosa', which can be translated from Italian to mean Red Herring.
Ho Yay: Silas and Aringarosa. Fache and Collet. The first seems to go both ways. The second is more of a case of Collet sorta worshiping Fache and Fache, at first, thinking him not-so-great. The book and film go about it differently, but at the end of each, Fache's opinion of Collet has somewhat improved.
Jerkass Woobie: Silas may be violent and somewhat unstable, but he's had a really shitty life. By the time he repents, he dies not long after.
Bishop Aringosa believes that a mysterious benefactor is helping him restore credibility to Opus Dei. When he finds out said benefactor was using Silas to commit mass murder, of fellow Church members no less, we see a Badass Preacher in action. Aringosa bribes a pilot to turn a plane around so he can confess to the police, accepting full responsibility for what happened. In fact, this is what clears Robert and Sophie's names when he establishes that neither of them were involved. Then he does all he can to find Silas and stop him, because Silas is his son in all but name.
Fache is a Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop but he has what most people don't have: the courage to admit when he was wrong. Like Aringosa, he is willing to accept consequences for his actions in chasing down Robert and Sophie, and Robert would have every reason to file a civil lawsuit against the French police for the manhunt.
Robert, despite himself, has been interested in the hunt for the Holy Grail— Mary Magdalene's tomb. He's been careful with each cryptex, knowing that manhandling one would destroy the papyrus. When Teabing holds him and Sophie at gunpoint in Isaac Newton's tomb, Robert at first seems lost at solving the code. Then he tosses the cryptex in the air, seemingly sacrificing the knowledge for the greater good. All Teabing can do is lunge for it, and hear the vinegar bottle in it crack, before realizing the cryptex is open. Robert cracked the code, but he says apologetically to his friend that he can't let him know the answer to where the Tomb is.
Older Than They Think: The idea of an American man and a French woman uncovering a conspiracy involving the Knights Templar and its modern-day secret society in Europe was first implemented in Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars.
Film version
Awesome Music: The musical score by Hans Zimmer is well acclaimed, particularly its emotional final track, Chevalier du Sangreal, playing as Langdon tracks the final clues through Paris and kneels at the final burial place of Mary Magdalene.
It's often assumed that National Treasure was created to follow this one's success. The book it was based on was written in 1999, and the film adaptation was in production before The Da Vinci Code.
This film is also responsible for two public misconceptions about Mary Magdalene - first is that the church labelled her a prostitute. The majority of biblical scholars have rejected this legend, and Mary is still considered a saint who had churches built in her honour - so accusations of being a prostitute would never have been popular enough to defame her, which is even lampshaded by Teabing himself. The second is that she's secretly in The Last Supper, when it's more likely John; following on from the above, Mary being at the supper would not have been controversial enough for Leonardo Da Vinci to have to disguise her as one of the disciples. She was in fact already depicted as being at the supper in Fra Angelico's painting.
Critic-Proof: Negative critical reviews couldn't stop this from making $700 million worldwide.
Don't Shoot the Message: Whatever one's opinion on the subject matter is, highlighting how the church has historically persecuted and punished women and covered up much of its dirty laundry are topics worthy of mainstream discussion.
First Installment Wins: While fans may prefer the Angels & Demons film that came later, as far as casual discussion goes, love the film or hate it, it's the one everyone knows of even outside of the dedicated fanbase. The publicity the film got compared to later installments, good or bad, certainly played a part in this.
Genius Bonus: Going by his tie, Teabing is an Old Etonian - which takes the whole Evil Brit thing up to eleven.
Magnificent Bastard: Sir Leigh Teabing is a wealthy and brilliant British Historian whose desire is to find the Holy Grail to use to reveal the truth about Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene and expose the church's lies. To his ends, Teabing convinces Bishop Aringarosa and Warrior Monk Silas to join his cause, having the latter kill multiple members of the Priory of Sion and framing his friend Robert Langdon for the murders, forcing Langdon and Sophie Neveu to come to Teabing for help. Smuggling Robert and Sophie out of France and into London, Teabing frees Silas, having him hold Sophie hostage while having his servant Remy hold Robert at gunpoint, forcing Robert to hand over the cryptex containing the map of the Holy Grail's location to them. Teabing goes with Remy and Silas where he kills the former and sells the latter out to the police once they served their purpose to him. Teabing then reveals himself to Robert and Sophie where he forces the duo to solve the cryptex's puzzle and retrieve the map for him by holding them at gunpoint.
Narm: Towards the end of the movie, Langdon has a speech where he recalls nearly drowning in a well as a child, and praying to Jesus to keep him alive ("Sometimes I wonder if I wasn't alone down there!"). It's not necessarily badly written, but it has basically no relation to any other theological topic that comes up in the movie, and it was pretty obviously stuck in to deflect claims that the original book had an atheist message. "Oh, Christians are angry that the story questions Jesus' divinity? Well, we better shoehorn in a speech where the hero claims that prayer saved his life..."
No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Despite the controversy and calls to boycott the film because of its subject matter, it was a huge hit.
Offending the Creator's Own: Christian critics of the work are probably unaware that Tom Hanks is a Greek Orthodox Christian (he converted to the religion upon marrying Rita Wilson). When confronted with this, Hanks found it befuddling that people were taking the subject matter at face value and stated, "My heritage, and that of my wife, suggests that our sins have been taken away, not our brains." Perhaps Hanks' prayer speech (see directly above) might have been the driving force in him not turning the movie down in the first place.
Retroactive Recognition: While Ian McKellen had already played Magneto at this point, Paul Bettany would later go on to play Vision in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, who just happens to marry Magneto's daughter Wanda. This puts the scene of Teabing beating up Silas in a hilarious twist.
, playing as Langdon tracks the final clues through Paris and kneels at the final burial place of Mary Magdalene.