- Award Snub:
- At the time, Best Makeup at the Oscars was a "Special Citation" award that was given out twice.note So, this film's failure to get the citation was seen as a snub. The resulting controversy was the instigator for the establishment of the Best Makeup Oscar the following year.
- The only reason that John Hurt not winning the Oscar doesn't count as this trope played absolutely straight is because the winner was Robert De Niro for Raging Bull. Hurt did win the Bafta for his work however, so his performance thankfully did not go home empty handed.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Quite popular in Japan, being the second-highest grossing foreign film of 1980 (behind, unsurprisingly, The Empire Strikes Back)
- Hilarious in Hindsight: The ending, which its swooping starfield and Merrick's mom narrating Tennyson's poem "Nothing Will Die", leads flawlessly into the beginning of Dune (1984), David Lynch's next movie!
- Moral Event Horizon: "Sunny" Jim the Night Porter letting drunken citizens in to see and harass Merrick for both money and For the Evulz is rightfully deemed unforgivable by Dr. Treves when he learns of it. In the film novelization, Treves even tries to kill Jim in his outrage over it.
- Nightmare Fuel:
- While John's unconventional appearance isn't all that frightening (especially given his gentle nature), the sack he wears as a mask is a little off-putting, leaving his face underneath up to the imagination.
- John Morris' "Elephant Man Theme"
is already an eerie lullaby, but the unused track "Belgian Circus Episode" is straight up Circus of Fear music.
- Retroactive Recognition:
- Dexter Fletcher is Bytes' Boy.
- A whore is played by Pauline Quirke, who would later be best known for playing Sharon Theodopolopodous in Birds of a Feather.
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