Alternative Character Interpretation: You could blame Dr. Angelo for being guilty of scientific hubris and exploiting an abused mentally handicapped man, while Jobe's intentions are more or less benevolent, arguably even after Dr. Angelo's boss meddles with the experiments and he goes on a killing spree of abusive jerks.
Fetish Retardant: The cybersex scene is this. Particularly once Jobe goes from humanoid to a frog-like abomination.
The film's claim that virtual reality will be in widespread use by the turn of the millennium, and especially Jobe's claim that everyone will be using VR by the year 2001, can only be described as a laughably bad prediction, and/or one that may be more than two decades off (as of the mid-2020s, VR is pretty much still a novelty tech with the biggest VR product so far—the Metaverse—flopping horribly).
Peter, played by Austin O'Brien, is told by Dr. Angelo to wait in the car with his mother, but ignores his instructions and eventually follows Angelo into the VSI building, nearly getting himself killed, but also causing Jobe to have a Pet the Dog moment that saves Angelo's life. The following year, another character played by O'Brien was left deciding whether to stay in a car, or follow The Hero into a building and possibly endanger his own life, but possibly also save the life of said hero — only this time there was way more Lampshade Hanging involved.
Memetic Mutation: Cobson Explanation A Soyjak variant based on a frame of VR Jobe's angry face when he says "I am God here".
Moral Event Horizon: Averted in the theatrical cut, since Jobe only kills bad guys, but in the director's cut he crosses the line into being evil himself when he kills Angelo's wife For the Evulz.
Narm Charm: The CGI may be outdated by today's standards, with the infamous VR Jobe's scene looking laughably poor by modern standards. But some can argue that the outdated CGI actually enhances the Nightmare Fuel of some scenes, especially with said VR Jobe scene.
Negated somewhat by how clunky the effects are, but the death by slow molecular dissolution that Jobe inflicts on several agents of The Shop in the climax.
On the CGI front, one of the studios, Angel Studios, would go on to become Rockstar San Diego, better known for Red Dead Revolver and its sequels.
Signature Scene: The "cybersex" sequence, to the point where images of it were even featured in some promotional materials for the sequel, despite it not even being alluded to in that film.
The SNES adaptation of the movie isn't entirely without merit, boasting a great soundtrack and some impressive-for-the-time "virtual reality" segments, but is let down by its repetitive, Nintendo Hard platforming segments.
The Genesis port is a reformulated version of the SNES game. While the virtual reality segments push the limits of what the console is capable of, the game nonetheless highlights how much weaker the console is in comparison to the SNES, particularly in its sound and photo compression.
The CD-ROM game released for PC, Macintosh and Sega CD is one of those games that put far more emphasis on showcasing the technology than making an enjoyable game. The game consists of various minigames depicted by looping prerendered video footage with player input limited to Press X to Not Die.
Woolseyism: The French and French-Canadian version of the film is called "Le Cobaye" (The Guinea Pig) which is not only a more accurate title but prevents issue with Stephen King's short story which is called "La Pastorale" in French in reference to the main character's lawnmowing company "Pastorale Greenery".
The sequel:
Audience-Alienating Premise: The decision to make it PG rated to attract an audience that probably didn't see the original, and have it star a cast of Kid Appeal Characters while only bringing back one minor actor from the first film killed its chances outright.
Hilarious in Hindsight: The device that jacks people into virtual reality is called "eyephone".
Which is a reference to the brand name of a real head-mounted display built by VPL in the early 1990s, heavily featured in the first movie (in pretty much every scene with virtual reality equipment, you can see the VPL logo somewhere). Incidentally, when VPL went bankrupt, its patents were acquired by Thomson, which is why a scene of another 1990s cyberpunk movie makes a reference to "Thomson Eyephones".
Nightmare Fuel: Jobe reprogramming the autopilot on Senator Greenspan’s flight back to Washington, causing it to crash and kill everyone on board. And we get to see every moment of the crash…
Sequelitis: The first film already wasn't generally felt to be a classic, but this one has an idiotic storyline even compared to the first, and doesn't even have the Visual Effects of Awesome that the first had (for the time), with VR mostly being depicted through live-action stock footage, and the few CGI effects that we see being no better than what you'd have seen on a contemporary episode of ReBoot. And even people who liked the first film weren't fans of the sequel largely for the fact that it ignores many of the events of the first film.
