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Heartwarming / Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

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Moments pages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.


  • Chief Willoughby setting up the stuffed animal game for his daughters is very sweet; they seem very used to his use of the word "goddamn", amusingly.
  • Mildred warning Charlie to be good to Penelope. Despite having every reason to dislike her, she clearly doesn't want her to be abused the way she was. She also appears to understand that Penelope is a completely innocent girl who only means well.
  • During a rather heated argument, Chief Willoughby accidentally coughs up some blood on Mildred. His first reaction is to apologize profusely to Mildred, and Mildred's is to reassure him that she knew he didn't do it on purpose, and runs to get help. Despite their grievances, they both clearly respect each other enough to handle the situation appropriately.
  • In an admittedly somewhat morbid way, Willoughby's motives for his suicide arguably double as this and a Tear Jerker: he didn't want his family to have to care for him as his condition declined and he became incapable of functioning due to the pain of his illness. He wanted their final memories of him to be the happy day they'd spent together, rather than of him as an invalid. He himself lampshades the morbidity of this in his suicide note, but says that after they get over their initial shock and anger, he hopes they'll be thankful that they didn't have to see him suffer. His notes themselves unambiguously qualify, and not merely the one to his family - his note to Mildred provokes a response of Actually Pretty Funny, and his note to Dixon provokes a genuine Heel Realization.
  • Dixon and Cedric (the desk sergeant) were at each other’s throats early in the movie, but they console each other following Willoughby’s death.
  • In an odd way, but when Dixon is hospitalised for burns, he ends up in the same ward as Red. When Red is nice to him and asks if he's okay, Dixon starts crying Tears of Remorse and sincerely apologises for beating him up. Red understandably freaks out, but then he gives Dixon the glass of orange juice he'd offered earlier anyway.
  • Jerome, one of the guys who helped put up the billboards in the first place, gives Mildred the spares so she can put them back up.

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