YMMV / The World's End

• Accidental Innuendo: Gary loves these. When the Network talks about "penetration points," Gary giggles and makes a "fucking pussy" gesture with his fingers with a whistle.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Gary King - Jerkass Manchild who never grew up, or a suicidal man desperately clinging to the last time he remembers feeling happy and optimistic? Or both? Similarly, throughout the film he consistently forgets details of his friends' lives, is dismissive of or ignores certain danger and seems in general very out of it. Is this because he's a Jerkass Manchild, or is it indicative of mental illness beyond suicidal tendencies?
  • Is The Network 100% well intentioned, or are there some seriously bad, less benevolent intentions behind the mask (to go with or without the good intentions depending on your interpretation)? While Word of God ultimately characterized it as benevolent in a really warped way, there is evidence for both.
  • A popular alternative interpretation of the second half of the movie is that Gary is an Unreliable Narrator who is having a psychotic breakdown, and the robot invasion isn't happening at all outside of his own head.
• Awesome Music:
  • The entire soundtrack, but special mention should go to "So Young" by Suede, "I'm Free" by Soup Dragons and "Loaded" by Primal Scream.
  • Silver Bullet's "20 Seconds To Comply" playing during the Beehive fight stands out as particularly awesome.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Oliver might be the least prominent of the group but is well liked for being played by Martin Freeman, having some good lines and being a relatively decent brawler during his one fight with the Blanks. Plus his creepy scenes after being replaced.
  • Old Basil is a decently funny and competent Mr. Exposition character.
  • The traffic cop is one of the more notable Blanks, especially given that it's a bit harder to tell if he is one at first.
  • The "Marmalade sandwich" Honey Trap Blanks are pretty memorable for being Ms. Fanservice characters who provide a couple laughs.
• Genius Bonus: Gary is a huge fan of The Sisters of Mercy. Their song "This Corrosion", which is featured heavily in the film, is about the lead singer's personal struggles after the rest of his band up and left him to go on with their lives and careers (as well as sue him over ownership of the band's name).
  • Bonus points for the fact Gary's dressed like the lead singer from the official music video.
  • Sam and Steven took part in the production of Cabaret. This musical deals with the life on the eve of a catastrophe (Germany just before Nazi takeover). Some of the last words spoken onstage are in fact "it was the end of the world".
    • The first words Gary says to Sam are "Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!". This are also the first lines of the first song from said musical.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The Blanks' primary method of attack, the Facepalm Of Doom, initially seems a bit comical and silly during the first few fights. Then we see what happens when they succeed at getting a good hold on your face. Not so silly anymore, now is it?
  • Simon Pegg later came out and said he had a dark period of alcoholism and depression, even going on a week-long bender while promoting his film Paul at the San Diego Comic Con. He said his bottoming out moment was the birth of his daughter and his shock that such a joyous event didn't snap him out of it. He admitted certain aspects in this film were a cry for help.
• He Really Can Act: Nick Frost gets praised a lot for how instead of playing the Manchild of the group, he takes the role of the Straight Man and utterly aces it. Similarly, if this film doesn't convince you that Simon Pegg can do his dramatic scenes really well, nothing will by this point.
  • Pegg also shows how capable he is of being the Manchild to Nick Frost's Straight Man, whereas it usually has been the other way around for most of their films.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Martin Freeman, who played Bilbo Baggins, is a character who becomes an evil robot, similarly to how Ian Holm, who also played Bilbo, portrayed a character who reveals to be a robot too.
• Misaimed Fandom: In a similar vein to the fandom that has arisen around several of the Manchild-yet-badass characters of Spaced and the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, some fans have latched on to Gary King as an example of the Manchild-yet-badass rebel who plays by his own rules and lives every day like he was still a teenager seemingly without it fully registering that Gary is actually a deconstruction of that type of person; his life is shown to be pathetic, empty and miserable, his hedonistic and self-centred lifestyle has cost him all his friends, and towards the end he outright comes out and admits that the main reason he acts like he's still a teenager is because he's accomplished nothing else in his life and it's the only time he remembers being truly happy.
  • In a similar vein to the above, Wright, Pegg and Frost in several interviews admitted to being somewhat bemused by getting messages from fans who eagerly enthused that they'd love to go on a pub crawl with them similar to one the characters embark on, because (a) it's usually pretty clear that what these people really mean that they'd like to go on one with the characters from Spaced, Shaun of the Dead etc. developed and portrayed by younger versions of the three creators; (b) because these people don't seem to realise that the movie is in fact an expression that the three men have grown and matured out of being solely like the people their younger selves were; and (c) because they also don't seem to realise that the whole point of the movie is that the pub crawl is a spectacularly bad idea that is the brain-child of a man who is pathetically and almost inescapably trapped in his youth. And (d) because the pub crawl ends with the destruction of the world as we know it and a return to the Dark Ages.
• Moral Event Horizon: The Network crossed it by murdering almost all of humanity and converting them into Blanks to achieve its aims. It then crossed it further when it upped and left, taking its technology with it, plunging the Earth into a second Dark Ages and killing even more people in the process.
• Song Association: Try listening to "This Corrosion" by The Sisters of Mercy and not think of the last scene.
• Spiritual Successor: The closest we'd get to a remake of They Live!. The film is very similar to The '60s Z-film The Human Duplicators, including incredibly fragile ceramic heads.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The story of the friends coming together in the beginning was a perfectly enjoyable setup that would have been interesting to see how it would come to its conclusion as a relationship movie, without any aliens or end of the world stuff. A darker story could have been told about how Gary accidentally killed a teen boy and he and his friends had to cover it up.
  • More of a "They Wasted A Perfectly Good Very Very Minor Subplot" but the bully-victim relationship between Peter and Shane seemed like it was actually a very heartbreaking insight into the psychology of bullies and their victims (Peter instantly recognises Shane despite not seeing him for years because Shane mercilessly bullied him at school, while Shane has absolutely no memory of Peter). This is a very real situation and might even have been worth some degree of exploration beyond a single expository scene. But then come the aliens, and Shane having no memory of Peter is handwaved away as him being a Blank. Even Peter taking his revenge feels slightly hollow because by this point, the Network has realised its "mistake" and has given Shane memories of Peter in order to trap him.
• The Woobie:
  • Peter. He was once beaten up so bad his eye popped out of the socket and was so bullied so much that he would hide for hours in the toilets. Even today he seems pretty easily intimidated. He eventually gets replaced by a Blank.
  • The Blanks. They claim they aren't slaves, but they are — beholden to the Network. When the Network leaves, they all revert to their normal personalities and are finally free of its control, and then subject to Fantastic Racism.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Gary and, to a lesser extent, Andy. Gary's pretty selfish and only cares about completing the Golden Mile, but then you find out what his life has been like, and that the closest thing to a success he's had in his whole life was a failed attempt at a pub crawl. Andy is constantly serious, always talking down to people (especially Gary) and criticizing everything he does. But, when you find out why, you can understand why he's so cynical.

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