YMMV / This is Spın̈al Tap

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: You may be surprised to find out that the "Lick my Love Pump" gag is indeed based on real life- Mozart had a piece called "Leck Mich Im Arsch" (Lick Me In The Ass), which is the German equivalent of saying "Kiss my ass".
• Awesome Music: Not only are some of the songs ("Stonehenge" particularly) fairly awesome, but when you remember that they were written as parodies of real rock songs, they become all the more so.
  • Especially the case with "Big Bottom": the lyrics are inane (they are literally about women's arses) but the songs uses keyboards and triple bass guitars for crying out loud. Not many real bands could even pull that off trying to create serious music.
  • It is telling that the songs still really work even though they're comical and mostly parody. The follow-up album, Break Like The Wind, has this in spades too, and has a bunch of prominent musicians who got the joke (and didn't take it too seriously) guest-starring in the songs.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • The original cover for Smell The Glove (which the band can't understand why the label finds offensive).
    Bobbi Flekman: You put a greased naked woman on all fours with a dog collar around her neck, and a leash, and a man's arm extended out up to here, holding onto the leash, and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it. You don't find that offensive? You don't find that sexist?
    Ian: [...] Well, you should have seen the cover they wanted to do! It wasn't a glove, believe me.
  • The pedophilia humor in "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight."
    You're sweet, but you're just four feet
    And you still got your baby teeth
    You're too young, and I'm too well hung
    Tonight I'm gonna rock you
• Director Displacement: A semi-example. Since Rob Reiner is well-known and appears in the film, most viewers are aware that he directed, but since Christopher Guest would go on to use the Spın̈al Tap template for his own series of Mockumentaries, it's often thought of as a Guest film.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Bobbi Flekman. Her character was so popular that an episode of her actress Fran Drescher's series The Nanny revolved around her, with Drescher Acting for Two.
  • Paul Shaffer brought back Artie Fufkin for a Funny or Die video.
  • Paul Benedict as the oddball desk clerk at the hotel in Memphis makes a strong impression in his short scene, coming up with two great one-liners in his verbal sparring with Ian Faith—"don't tempt me, sir" (in response to Ian asking how they're supposed to fit 14 people into one bed) and "I'm just as God made me, sir" (his indignant reply after Ian calls him a "twisted old fruit").
• Fountain of Memes:
  • "These go to eleven."
  • "Money talks and bullshit walks."
  • "NO, WE'RE NOT GOING TO FUCKING DO STONEHENGE!"
  • "There was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf."
  • "You think of yourself as a preserved moose?"
  • "Enormo-dome"
  • "What's wrong with being sexy?" "Sex-ist. Sex-ist."
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • The "Mach" piece. Nigel says it's a combination of Mozart and Bach, but it's also a mach piece (as in, say mach 5), something the band members would likely call their music, as well as a "mock" piece, because it's not a real song; finally, if you know your Mozart and your Bach, you know that to call this very pretty but not-at-all classical piece of music a 'combination of Mozart and Bach' is, well, a mockery. The title "Lick My Love Pump", the most obviously absurd part of the bit, actually is very similar to a few Mozart song titles.
  • The song "Big Bottom" features 3 bassists instead of a guitarist. As in, a large low end.
• Genius Bonus:
  • People knowledgeable about music history can tell that the band has spent their whole careers chasing the most popular music styles, but always getting there a bit too late.
  • Towards the end of the film, Derek and David discuss a proposed musical about Jack the Ripper called "Saucy Jack." There actually was a 1976 Jack the Ripper musical, and one of its songs, "Ripper's Going to Get You," has a similar music hall style to "Saucy Jack."
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The song "Gimme Some Money", in light of the 2017 lawsuit spearheaded by Harry Shearer (which Guest, McKean and Reiner all joined later) against Vivendi over their Hollywood Accounting practices, which means the creators have seen hardly any royalties for the three-plus-decades of Spın̈al Tap projects.
  • In 2020, Queen guitarist Brian May really did suffer a bizarre gardening accident. Fortunately, he survived it, likely because he's not a drummer.
• Ho Yay: Nigel seems to have a crush on David. At the launch party, both Nigel and David have venereal diseases on their lips (indicating if they weren't kissing each other, they were engaging in a three way.)^note There were deleted scenes about Spın̈al Tap's support band. A still of the female lead singer (reprinted in a book about the movie) shows that she also had a herpes blister on her lip, the implication being that she went through half of Spın̈al Tap before she and the rest of her band decided that Tap's evident massive unpopularity meant that being Tap's support band was actively bad for their image, and bailed early on in the tour. They ended up being cut from the final film. As Roger Ebert noted in his re-review of the film:
  Ebert: When Nigel learns that David's girlfriend Jeanine Pettibone is flying over from England to join the tour, his heart sinks. His crush on David is obvious to everyone except, of course, David.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "None more black"
  • "Quite exciting this computer magic"
  • "Bizarre gardening accident"
  • Up to eleven was Defictionalized by its inclusion in the Oxford Dictionary, and the movie's IMDb page. Specifically the star rating. It also used to be the name of a since-removed Trope.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: The movie is popular among touring musicians of all stripes. As the Life Imitates Art example on the trivia page attests, the events of the film hit very close to home for many musicians. Despite the potshots taken at Heavy Metal musicians and fans, metalheads and metal musicians alike are also big fans of the film.
• Misaimed Fandom: "Up to Eleven" has entered the public consciousness as an example of something going above and beyond its initially perceived potential. In the film itself the phrase is a joke, as the amplifiers that supposedly go to eleven are obviously designed with the exact same audio spectrum, only with more units.
• Production Posse: Rob Reiner's usual stable of actors, including Billy Crystal and Bruno Kirby (most notably for When Harry Met Sally...). The leads would have bit parts in his films, too.
• Retroactive Recognition: In spades, many of the following actors and actresses would go on to become famous.
  • Billy Crystal and Dana Carvey as a pair of catering mimes.
    Crystal-Mime: (bossy) Come on! Mime is money!
  • The late Bruno Kirby as a limousine driver. (His part was larger in the Pilot Movie.)
  • David Letterman's bandleader as the band's A& R rep.
  • Fran Drescher as Bobbi Fleckman, the record company exec who criticizes the original cover of Smell the Glove.
  • Stan Sitwell as a previous drummer during their Beatles phase.
  • Diana's rival from the original V as David St. Hubbins' girlfriend.
  • Fred Willard as a military commander at an airbase Tap performs at.
  • Anjelica Huston as the poor prop designer who is told to 'fuck the napkin!'^note Derek: Well, you really can't fuck the napkin.
  • B-movie scream queen Brinke Stevens as a groupie.
• Signature Line: "These go to eleven".
• Squick: One drummer died choking on vomit. Someone else's vomit. ^note  Whose is unknown, because, "You can't dust for vomit."
• Values Dissonance: After 9/11, Derek's prank at the airport metal detector with the zucchini would not be taken so lightly, and to a modern audience it seems downright irresponsible.
• Values Resonance: Bobbi Fleckman's criticism of the sexist proposed cover for Smell the Glove seems apt with the #MeToo movement's skepticism of sexualization in media, with the line, "We don't have this mentality anymore."

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