YMMV / Tombstone

• Anti-Climax Boss: Curly Bill. The film keeps building up to their confrontation at Iron Springs, and it looks like it'll be a prolonged fight, right until Wyatt walks up to him and shoots him at point blank range, fully protected by his historical immunity to bullets the entire time.
• Award Snub: Val Kilmer wasn't even nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Doc Holiday.
• Awesome Music: Bruce Broughton's score for this is a completely different beast to Silverado but just as fine in its own way. And how many Westerns can you name that end with a waltz? Bear McCreary's thoughts on this: They don’t make 'em like this anymore, folks. This score is so good it hurts.
• Complete Monster: Johnny Ringo, worst of the Cowboys, is a man so empty that nothing can fill his soul no matter how much he kills or steals. First helping Curly Bill Brocius lead a slaughter of a wedding party that sees the bride dragged off to be raped, Ringo callously guns down a priest, an act which shocks even his fellow Cowboys. Later helping to lead other Cowboy raids, Ringo tortures and murders a Cowboy defector just as a message to Wyatt Earp as he plans to duel and kill him.
• Cult Classic: The film was not a major hit at the box office, but is considered nowadays to be a fairly classic western, particularly of the 1990s.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Doc, to a degree that can't really be overstated. He may be a major supporting character, but to hear most fans talk about it you'd swear almost everything with the Earps was just Filler.
• Fountain of Memes: Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday. Pretty much everything out of the man’s mouth has become a meme. Funnily enough, the real Doc also loved him some memes. His most famous taglines ”I’m your huckleberry” and ”You’re a daisy” are contemporary pop culture references Doc was famous for trotting out whenever he thought he could get away with it.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Either this or Hilarious in Hindsight, but try to watch the film after playing Red Dead Redemption 2 to the end, as the film foreshadows the similar fate of 36-year-old Arthur Morgan due to tuberculosis.
  • It can be pretty uncomfortable seeing Val Kilmer, who would later develop throat cancer, playing someone with terminal tuberculosis.
• He Really Can Act: Yes, even in a cast which includes the likes of Kurt Russell, Bill Paxton, Sam Elliott, Michael Biehn, Powers Boothe, and many others, Val Kilmer gives a performance which outshines them all, and not by a little bit either.
  • And props to actors Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton, best known and loved for their work in the Sci Fi Ghetto (especially when the film was released), holding their own in this ludicrously-talented cast.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Bill Paxton and Powers Boothe playing enemies on opposite sides of the law is pretty amusing to fans of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., where they both played members of the HYDRA organization. Similarly, Kurt Russell plays a good guy here and Michael Rooker plays a bad guy (at least at first). Come Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Michael Rooker still pulls a Heel–Face Turn, but Russell plays the Big Bad.
  • Also, Val Kilmer being opposed to the former two becomes funny since he played Batman.
• Magnificent Bastard: Doc Holliday is an infinitely charismatic gunfighter who maintains a laid-back yet deadly disposition despite his lethal affliction of tuberculosis. A master card player who always wins with luck and swindling alike, Doc rips off poker houses he plays at through guile and gunpoint alike. Through playing up his illness and often presenting himself as defenseless, Doc lures many an enemy into their doom by tricking them into underestimating him, killing even the dangerous Johnny Ringo while taunting the murderous criminal all the way. Truly loyal to the Earp brothers and assisting them in all their ventures to protect Tombstone, Doc uses the final moments of his life to impart advice and encouragement to his close friend Wyatt, Doc accepting with wry amusement that his death by tuberculosis is far from the blaze of glory he had once hoped to go out in.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Well... bye." has since become a response to Rage Quitters and/or Sore Losers.
  • "I'm your huckleberry."
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Arguably, Ringo shooting the unarmed priest.
  • Shooting at the wives of the Earps was this for several members of the Cowboys, who promptly leave in disgust.
• Narm:
  • "NO!" for some.
  • The scenes with Wyatt and Josephine, especially since there's quite the overbearing love overture that plays in just about all of their scenes. The movie basically forgets about its own Rated M for Manly badassery and briefly turns into a chick flick whenever they're on screen together.
• Narm Charm: Or this for others.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Johnny Ringo getting shot was pretty scary seeing that he was still standing and struggling to walk for about 10 seconds despite it being a head shot.
  • Sherman McMaster's ultimate, gruesome fate, and face.
  • Morgan getting shot and his death scene, especially with them beforehand trying in vain to dig the bullet out of him, which doubles as Squick.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • A young Thomas Haden Church plays Ike Clanton's brother, Billy.
  • Billy Bob Thornton appears in a brief scene as the drunken trouble-maker Johnny Tyler at the bar.
• Tear Jerker: Doc's deathbed scene, which some fans will describe as a "manly" emotional equivalent of the ending of Titanic (1997).
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Mattie. We know that she's hopelessly addicted to laudanum and that Wyatt has definitely fallen out of love with her, but the matter of which problem came first is never really explored. The story more or less treats her like a mere obstacle to Wyatt's relationship with Josie, and sort of glosses over her obvious struggles with dependence and heartache over his infidelity to her.

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