Baby Face Nelson Being Led to the Gallows in O Brother Where Art Thou

♫ I am a man of constant sorrow,
I've seen problem all my days...♫

"Y'all seek a great fortune, y'all three who are now in bondage. You volition notice a fortune, though it volition not be the one you seek. But kickoff... first you must travel a long and difficult route, a road fraught with peril. Mm-hmm. You lot shall see thangs, wonderful to tell..."

—The Blind Railman

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 comedy film written and directed past The Coen Brothers, (very) loosely based on Homer's The Odyssey.

The story follows three escaped prisoners in Depression-era Mississippi — Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney), Delmar O'Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson), and Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro). After fleeing the concatenation gang, they embark on a rollicking adventure in an endeavor to accomplish a huge stash of money that Ulysses cached in his backyard. They take only a short time to exercise this, though, as the lawn in question is in an area slated to be flooded by the Tennessee Valley Authority to build a reservoir.

On their journey they meet, among others, a blind prophet, sirens, a Cyclops, and a gifted black guitarist who "sold his soul to the devil". In their attempts to evade the government and reach the money, they wind up recording a hit song, robbing a depository financial institution with George "Infant Face" Nelson, encountering the KKK, and inadvertently getting mixed up in the state gubernatorial election. And on superlative of all that, Ulysses must grapple with the prospect of reuniting with his lover and their children...

It was noted for the tremendous success of its soundtrack, most of which was recorded by Alison Krauss & Union Station and other country-bluegrass acts (Dan Tyminski provided Everett'south singing voice).

Bonus points if you recognize the title from Preston Sturges' 1941 film Sullivan'south Travels.

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O Brother, Where Fine art Thou? provides examples of:

• Added Alliterative Appeal: "Songs of salvation to relieve the soul."
• Agent Scully: Everett, who despite beingness pursued by Satan, meeting a prophet, being seduced by sirens, and being obviously saved from execution past divine intervention, still insists that there is a reasonable explanation for everything. At least it'south Lampshaded. And by the stop, he doesn't really seem sure of himself any more later seeing the cow on the roof of a shed, which the prophet told them that they would run across back at the beginning.
• Ambiguous Disorder: George Nelson shows symptoms of bipolar disorder. He's in an farthermost manic episode when the protagonists come across him, and lapses into a deep depression later someone calls him "Babyface." Then when he'southward captured and facing the electric chair, as Delmar puts information technology, "Looks like George is back on tiptop!"
• Anachronism Stew: The Confederate flag did not go associated with the KKK and racists in general until the ceremonious rights movement in the 1960s. In the 1920s and 30s, they still used the American flag.
• And Your Little Canis familiaris, As well!: George Nelson takes a break from shooting at the cops during his getaway bulldoze to shoot some cows.

  George: Cows. I detest cows more coppers!

• Pointer Catch: It looks like Big Dan Teague is going to get skewered by the pole of a falling Confederate flag... just then he stops the pointy tip inches from his face past catching it with both hands. However, a flaming cross does him over just afterward.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • Some of Homer Stokes' accusations most the heroes near the end of the motion picture: "These boys is not white! Hell, they ain't even old-timey."
  • I of the people attention George Nelson'southward march toward the electric chair is most upset about his having shot a moo-cow with a tommy-gun.
• At the Crossroads: The three meet Tommy here after he sold his soul to the devil ("I wasn't usin' information technology for nothin'") to become a famous musician; this is based on the existent life Tommy Johnson who was the originator of the story. Yes, he did it earlier Robert Johnson.
• Shell Them at Their Own Game: Pappy's son offers one of his brighter options to beat Stokes in that they could get a dwarf fifty-fifty stumpier than his. Pappy angrily shoots information technology down, pointing out that Follow the Leader at this point would just brand them expect like even bigger laughingstocks and pathetically desperate for any points, assuming that they could even detect a stumpier dwarf.
• Conventionalities Makes You Stupid: Everett repeatedly chides people for their religious faith. Examples:
  • When Everett witnesses a riverside baptism service, he comments: "Well, I guess hard times flush out the chumps; everybody's lookin' for answers."
  • After Everett's travel companions get baptized themselves, Everett remarks; "Baptism! You 2 are dumber than a bag of hammers."
  • Toward the end of the picture, when facing his own death, Everett falls on his knees and repents of his sins before God. Subsequently he is delivered from death (thanks to a sudden and massive inundation of water), Everett discounts his conversion by noting that "any man existence volition cast nearly in a moment of stress." When his companions proclaim that the alluvion was an human activity of God, Everett comments, "Again, you lot hayseeds are showin' your desire for intellect." (Notation: Everett's watery salvation functions as a clever twist on Expiry by Irony. Deliverance past Irony, peradventure? Miraculous Baptism?)
• Berserk Push:
  • Don't phone call George Nelson "Babyface" ("He's a live wire, ain't he?"). Truth in Television with the real George Nelson.
    • Perhaps an inverted trope, as he'south already an established madman, and calling him "Babyface" really shatters his ego, lowering his self-esteem.
  • Also, Pete doesn't take kindly to people stealing from his kin.
  • Don't carp offering Everett Fop. He'southward a Dapper Dan man!
• Bugged Amphibians: Delmar is at one indicate convinced that Pete was transformed into a frog.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Homer Stokes seems like a nice enough guy and mayhap a better governor than Pappy O'Daniel. And then we see him leading a Ku Klux Klan rally...
• Blackness-and-Grayness Morality:
  • The protagonists exist on the gray side. Three escaped convicts and a musician who sold his soul to the Devil ("I wasn't using information technology"). Everett is a complete liar who tricked the others into thinking that at that place was treasure so they would help him escape prison in fourth dimension to end his wife from remarrying. Pete is loyal to his friends and family, though he is a scrap trigger-happy. Delmar and Tommy are genuinely nice fellows, but Delmar did in fact rob a Piggly Wiggly and lie about it, while Tommy ran off on his own when in that location was trouble.
  • Pappy O'Daniel and Penny are slightly further down, but withal gray. Pappy is rude, selfish, and opportunistic. However, co-ordinate to him, he tried everything he could to help the people that now support Homer Stokes. He as well has no problem with the Soggy Lesser Boys including a black guitarist, even smiling when he notes "folks don't seem to listen they's integrated." Penny told her daughters that their male parent was hitting by a train. But, given that Everett is a conman and a captive, she is correct that remarrying the wealthy and "bona fide" Waldrip is probably best for her daughters.
  • The antagonists are firmly on the black side of things. The Sheriff does a great deal of damage in his pursuit of the protagonists, threatening to hang Pete if he doesn't surrender his friends' destination. He too tries to hang them fifty-fifty subsequently they were pardoned, and includes Tommy in the hanging simply for associating with them. Also, he might be Satan. Big Dan Teague is a conman worse than Everett: he assaults Everett and Delmar for their money, and later participates in a lynch mob. Homer Stokes presents himself equally the "servant of the petty man", but it turns out that he's a Yard Dragon of the KKK, leading the lynch mob to kill Tommy. And, finally, how on earth did Waldrip know that Tommy had sold his soul to the devil?
• Blatant Lies: "That ain't your daddy. Your daddy was hit by a train."
• Blind Seer: Lampshaded past Everett, who insists that the man has a Inability Superpower.
• Bookends: The picture show opens with a chain gang together working near a railroad runway and singing. Shortly after escaping the chain gang, the protagonists run into the blind prophet on a push-car. The movie closes with Everett and Penny's daughters tied together past twine walking over a railroad track and singing. And the blind prophet can be seen passing by on the tracks.
• Break Away Pop Hit:
  • The soundtrack had its own sequels.
  • In-movie also, since the Soggy Bottom Boys' singing is so good that information technology helps resolve the plot.
• Brick Joke:
  • Later mocking Delmar and Pete for being baptized early in the movie, skeptic Everett admits his failings and begs for mercy in a Not-So-Final Confession at the gallows. He is then forcibly immersed by the floodwaters, and everyone is saved. Literally.
  • Early on in the moving picture Everett, Delmar and Pete meet a blind prophet who claims, "You volition meet thangs, wonderful to tell. You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house." At the end of the movie, they exercise indeed come across a cow on a cotton fiber firm roof.
• Censorship by Spelling: Sort of. One character wants to prevent his son from knowing that his mother left the family, so he just says "Mrs. Hogwallop upwardly and R-U-N-N-O-F-T." Subverted later on, in that the kid knew exactly what he was talking virtually, anyway.
• Chained Heat: The three convicts are chained together for awhile at the beginning.
• Chekhov's Gun: Everett's pomade, particularly its distinctive smell, which lets the Sheriff track them down.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Delmar "Nosotros Idea You Was a Toad" O'Donnell.
• Color Wash: The hue and saturation of the film was messed with until everything was an intensely colorful brown, imitating the look of sepia-toned photos. Without this, the Mississippi (and South Carolina, for some scenes) summer landscape would take been a brilliant greenish, which the creators said was also brilliant for the Depression era Dust Basin-type experience they were going for.
• Comically Missing the Indicate:
  • Afterwards they get escape and don't quite get in onto the railroad train, Everett and Pete both think they should be the one in charge.

  Pete: Well, I think it should exist yours truly!
  Everett: Well, I think it should be yours truly, too!
  Beat They turn and look at Delmar.
  Delmar: Okay, I'g with you fellers.

  • When Everett admits he made the treasure up to convince his chainmates — i.eastward., Pete and Delmar — to aid him escape, Pete realizes that fifty years will be added to each of their sentences for fleeing the chain gang, and that he won't leave of prison until he's 84 years old. Delmar happily chimes in, "Well, I'll only be 82!"
  • Also, when Pete responds to Delmar's whispered "Nosotros thought you was a toad" line with a confused Flat "What", Delmar repeats the whisper more slowly and emphatically.
• Comic Trio: Everett is The Leader, Delmar is The Fool, and Pete is the But Sane Man (compared to the other two, at least).
• Community-Threatening Construction: Ulysses Everett McGill needs to retrieve a treasure buried in the lawn of his old firm. Even so, the expanse is scheduled to be flooded by Tennessee Valley Authority's damming activity. In this case, Ulysses doesn't e'er try to prevent the construction (in fact, he sees it as the Dawn of an Era) — information technology just serves every bit an inexorable deadline for Ulysses and his partners to accomplish the homestead.
• Contrived Coincidence: Of course the guy the KKK decides to lynch is the one our heroes know and are on friendly terms with. Not likewise contrived, though, if you lot know your history. Beingness an unemployed black man was a criminal offense only slightly worse than being an employed blackness man in the South.
• Corrupt Hick: The insanely corrupt Big Dan Teague. Who is channeling the cyclops Polyphemus.
• Beat the Keepsake: Big Dan attacks Ulysses and Delmar to meet what it is they're carrying. When he sees information technology's just a toad (they thought Pete had been turned into one), he crushes information technology in front of them.
• Cult Soundtrack: The soundtrack album is regarded as one of the nearly important Land and Bluegrass albums of the decade and sold over seven meg copies. Information technology likewise won the Grammy Honor for Anthology of the Twelvemonth in 2002, making it one of only three soundtracks to ever win that accolade.
• Dawn of an Era: Everett'south view of the building of a hydroelectric dam, which saves his and his friend's lives:

  Everett: No, the fact is, they're flooding this valley so they can hydroelectric up the whole durn country. Yes, sir, the South is gonna change. Everything'southward gonna exist put on electricity and run on a paying ground. Out with the erstwhile spiritual mumbo jumbo, the superstitions, and the backward ways. We're gonna see a brave new world where they run everybody a wire and hook us all up to a filigree. Yeah, sir, a veritable age of reason. Like the one they had in France." *He sees the cow that the bullheaded soothsayer prophesized* "Non a moment too soon..."

• Bargain with the Devil: Tommy Johnson traded his soul to the devil at the crossroads for his guitar skills.
• Decease by Childbirth: Pappy mentions that Junior's mother died giving birth to him.
• Deep South: Much of the film takes place in Dust Bowl-era Mississippi.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Of the sepia diverseness, come across Real Is Brown below.
• Deliberate Values Racket: The most notable being the scene where Pappy is considering using the Soggy Bottom Boys to help his entrada and snub Homer Stokes, his son points out that the band's integrated and they're a Deep South state. After a moment to scout the cheering oversupply, Pappy decides to become alee with it by noting information technology seems the public doesn't care most the integration.
• Deus ex Machina: The flooding happens at exactly the right time to salvage them all from being hanged. Possibly a literal instance, only it's foreshadowed enough that it doesn't suspension the plot even if the viewer doesn't translate it as spiritual.
• Did Not Die That Way: He didn't die at all, Everett finds out his wife has told his daughters that he got hit by a railroad train, rather than tell them he was sent to jail.
• Disney Decease: Pete was believed to have transformed into a Toad by the launderer sirens, and so they take him in a box. The toad was and so killed past Large Dan Teague past beingness crushed, and his friends were physically incapable of stopping his death because they were beaten to encarmine pulps. It was after revealed that the toad was actually not Pete, nor was he even transformed into a toad. Turns out those "launderer sirens" really delivered him to Sheriff Cooley'south men for the reward, and is now a prisoner back at the farm.
• The Ditz: Delmar.
• Empty Piles of Clothing: This (and a toad) causes Delmar to assume Pete's been turned into a toad.
• Eyepatch of Power: Big Dan Teague.
• Expy: A number of characters serve as references to characters out of the Odyssey or Greek mythology more than generally: Ulysses Everett McGill is of class Odysseus (Ulysses being the Roman version of the proper name Odysseus) who is trying to get home to his wife Penelope (Penny), Pete and Delmar are the notoriously fractious and uncontrollable crew of Odysseus, the 3 women bathing and singing in the river are the Sirens, Big Dan Teague is the cyclops Polyphemous, and the bullheaded man in the beginning is the blind prophet Tiresias. At that place's even a human being named Menelaus! But he'southward not an expy (see Historical Domain Graphic symbol beneath).
• Fake Band: The Soggy Bottom Boys.
• Fan Disservice: The Sirens, in addition to being generally beautiful, all article of clothing wet dresses so you can see their lingerie. Yet, combined with the creepy song they keep singing, and the fact that 1 of them is forcing a drug downwardly Everett'due south throat, you lot can't help but experience there's something off about the whole thing. That's because they're seducing them to betray them to the Sheriff.
• Fat, Sweaty Southerner in a White Suit: Several. Most notably, Governor Pappy O'Daniel (for the mildly corrupt version) and Big Dan Teague (for the insanely corrupt version).
• Faux Affably Evil: Large Dan Teague, who engages the boys in friendly chat earlier beating them up and robbing them. He's too a member of the KKK.
• First Father Wins: Everett'due south ex-wife has told his daughters he's dead due to his lack of steady employment and criminal beliefs, and Everett must find his way and win them back before she marries a successful but stodgy political advisor.
• Apartment "What": A silent one from Pete when Delmar tells him he thought he turned into a toad.
• Friend to All Living Things: Delmar, or butterflies at the to the lowest degree.
• Freudian Trio: Everett (Superego, uses logic and reason); Pete (Id, relies mostly on instinct and opposes Everett); Delmar (Ego, acts equally a peacekeeper betwixt the two).
• Funny Background Event:
  • Everett, Delmar, and Pete are all chained together, and try to escape past boarding a moving railroad train. In the foreground we run into Everett (on the train) introducing himself to some hobos. In the background, Pete trips before he can climb in...
  • Also, Pete'southward gloriously goofy dancing during Delmar'southward rendition of "In the Jailhouse Now."
  • Background singing — in Human of Constant Sorrow, Everett finishes singing a depressing stanza that ends in the line "peradventure I'll die upon this train..." and Delmar and Pete chinkle in with a cheery "Perhaps he'll die upon this train!"
• Genre-Busting: It'due south a musical/one-act/social commentary/retelling of The Odyssey... that's set in The Corking Depression.
• Skilful Old Fisticuffs: Vernon gives Ulysses a practiced old-timey donkey-whoopin' in the Woolworth's. Vernon plainly has some grooming in the pugilistic arts, whereas Ulysses... not then much.
• Historical Domain Graphic symbol: Several appear in the picture, though the details of their lives are skewed for the sake of the story. They include bank robber George "Babyface" Nelson, Blues musician Tommy Johnson, and pol Due west. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel. The latter arguably undergoes the most changes, having his first proper noun changed to Menelaus as a nod to The Odyssey and being governor of Mississippi rather than Texas, while the old died three years before the film's setting and was The Napoleon in existent life ("George Nelson" was also an alias, for what it'southward worth).
• Historical In-Joke: A great deal of the humor in this pic is derived from these.
• Hobos: "Any of you fellas smithies? Or, if not smithies per se, were you otherwise trained in the metallurgic arts before straitened circumstances forced yous into a life of aimless wanderin'?"
• Hypocritical Sense of humor:
  • Everett, clearly touched by his run across with the blind seer, goes on at length nigh how the blind are mayhap attuned to the future and hold the souvenir of prophecy, to business relationship for their lack of vision. When Pete points out that the future he foretold was one where they wouldn't go the treasure they sought, Everett shoots dorsum in frustration, "Well, what the hell does he know?! He's an ignorant former human being!"
  • Just as he is about to exist executed, Everett prays to God to let him see his daughters at least i more time. When the dam breaks and saves him, he starts going on about reason. The other two immediately phone call him out on it.
• Implacable Man: The Sheriff. Naught volition cease him from bringing down the main trio. Not even a pardon from the governor himself.
• Inspector Javert: The Sheriff characterizes himself this mode at the very stop, challenge that the boys accept only been pardoned by the law of homo.
• Informed Attribute: This applies to the Governor, while Homer Stokes runs on a reform platform, calling O'Daniel a tool of the interests. The audience, who doesn't see that much of the Governor, never sees him practise much beside swear at and set on his aides with his hat.
• Insane Troll Logic: Committed by Everett, called out by Pete.

  Pete: You stole from my kin!
  Everett: Who was fixin' to betray us.
  Pete: Y'all didn't know that at the time!
  Everett: So I borrowed it 'til I did know!
  Pete: That don't make no sense!
  Everett: Pete, it'south a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the man centre.

• Ironic Nursery Tune: The siren-seduction scene, to "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby" Also a rare case of erotic horror.
• Jerkass: Pappy O'Daniel, oh so much. Even though he's the one who pardons our main characters, meaning they no longer take to be outlaws, it'south solely for his own reelection campaign.
• Wiggle with a Heart of Gilded: Everett. He's greedy, mendacious, sneaky, and big-headed but truly does care for his friends and loves his daughters dearly. When all promise seems lost and he starts praying; Everett prays for everyone else'due south prophylactic and happiness, only asking that his own life be spared then that his daughters tin accept a father to look later them.
• Kick the Canis familiaris: Big Dan beats up Everett and Delmar, steals their money, and crushes their frog whom Delmar thinks is Pete in front of them.
• Kids Driving Cars: Everett, Pete, and Delmar manage to escape from a burning barn when Boy Hogwallop bursts through the befouled door in his dad's machine and offers them a lift. Since Boy is quite pocket-sized, he uses a brick to weigh downwards the accelerator. Later, Everett steals the car, leaving Boy to expletive him, Pete and Delmar every bit he walks back to his dad's farm.
• The Klan: Appears as enemies near the terminate of the movie, every bit Everett, Pete, and Delmar must rescue their friend Tommy from the Klan.
• The Lancer: Pete.
• Large and in Accuse: Governor Pappy O'Daniel. "Nosotros're mass communicatin'!"
• Large Ham:
  • Homer Stokes. It's particularly noticeable in the scene where he leads a KKK rally. Of form, it makes sense, given that he'south running for governor and a talent for public oratory would help him a lot.
  • George "Babyface" Nelson. "I'One thousand FEELING TEN FEET Alpine!"
• Louis Aught: The Sheriff who is chasing after them is unsaid, and even theorized to be past the characters, to exist this. His Scary Shiny Glasses reverberate fire a lot.
• Lyrical Dissonance: The Soggy Bottom Boys' extremely cheerful, upbeat rendition of "Man of Abiding Sorrow".
• Magic Realism: At that place are more than a few downright mystical occurrences in the film, such as the prophet, the sirens, the strong implication that the Warden is Satan, and God saving the protagonists at the climax.
• Meaningful Name: In a story based off The Odyssey, the master character's name is Ulysses.
  • Besides the Governor, whose proper noun is Menalaus, although that'due south a little more than The Iliad.
• Misspelling Out Loud: "Mrs. Hogwallop up and R-U-North-N-O-F-T."
• Mistaken For Transformed: Played for Laughs when the escaped convicts wake up after drinking with some strange women by the river, find Pete gone and a toad in his abandoned apparel, and jump to the conclusion that he was Baleful Polymorphed. They go along the toad for a while before finding out that the women actually sold Pete to the police.

  Delmar: Them si-reens did this to Pete! They loved him up and turned him into a h-horny toad!

• Musical World Hypotheses: Diegetic all the mode through, making its nomenclature equally a musical to begin with dubious to some.
• Mythical Motifs: While the film doesn't follow The Odyssey to the letter, information technology does borrow some notable plot elements from it, such as the Cyclops, the sirens, and one of the chief characters trying to get abode to his wife so she won't marry someone else.
• Mythology Gag: Big Dan the cyclops looks like he's going to lose his eye to a flung Confederate flag spear, much similar Polyphemus, only he manages to take hold of it betwixt his hands at the last moment. Then the gang cuts downwardly the fiery cross, which falls on acme of him, almost certainly called-for his eye out and preserving a piece of the narrative.
• Never Trust a Title: No, the iii main characters are not brothers, nor are they trying to find their long-lost brother. The title is really a reference to an old moving-picture show.
• No Animals Were Harmed: The cow that was run over by the cops in pursuit of Baby Face Nelson was CGI, which resulted in the rare annex to the alarm, "No animals were harmed in the making of this film. Any scenes showing animals in jeopardy were faux."
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: There really was a Low-era Governor named Pappy O'Daniel, but his given name was Wilbert Lee O'Daniel; in the moving-picture show the governor's real commencement name is Menelaus (some other Homer reference). Besides the existent O'Daniel was governor of Texas, not Mississippi.
• Not His Sled: The expected fate of John Goodman's "cyclops" is deliberately referenced and so avoided. Then happens slightly differently anyhow.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Teague'southward reaction when he realizes that the fiery cross was coming downwards straight at him.
  • Homer Stokes' reaction when he realizes that the town, subsequently his try at getting the Soggy Lesser Boys arrested failed, is now going to run him out of town on a rail as revenge for interrupting the performance.
  • Finally, the tedious, dawning realization in the climax that the Warden fully intends to lynch them on the spot, despite the fact that they were given a pardon, and, besides, murder Tommy, only for being there.
• Paper-thin Disguise: Toward the end of the film, the fugitive "Soggy Lesser Boys" perform "In the Jailhouse Now" and "Man of Constant Sorrow" while bearded with false beards. Lampshaded later, when their performance wins over the oversupply and Everett deliberately yanks his beard off for a moment to bear witness Penny who he is.
• The Pardon: Granted but ignored.
• Pedal-to-the-Metallic Shot: Parodied. The male child who helps our heroes escape a burning barn in a Ford Model A has fruit crates strapped to his shoes. What's more, the car tin can't go very fast anyhow, then breaks downwardly shortly afterward their escape.
• Politically Correct History: Zig-zagged. The white heroes refer to Tommy every bit a "boy," but otherwise treat him as an equal. The radio station manager insists that he won't play "colored songs," simply once the "Soggy Bottom Boys" become pop he'south ecstatic about them and signs them. Pappy O'Daniel doesn't seem to intendance that "they's integrated" after seeing how a crowd adores them and boots out his gubernatorial opponent for interrupting them. The KKK is shown in all its theatrically racist glory, but is besides portrayed as a fringe organisation that is not looked upon favorably by the common townsfolk. This portrayal has some basis in reality, equally past the 1930s the second Klan's membership had dwindled compared to its heyday in the mid-1920s ^note Specifically, the murder of Madge Oberholtzer in 1925 caused members to go out in droves; membership continued to decline until the Ceremonious Rights Movement started gaining momentum in the 1950s, but they accept never come close to the level seen in the twenties. It should be noted, however, that Homer Stokes feels perfectly comfortable announcing to a roomful of people that he belongs to an system, flash-flash-nudge-nudge, that engages in cross-called-for and lynching, and expects the audience to empathise with him when he attacks people for stopping a lynching. Information technology's not difficult to guess that the only reason he'southward booed is because the people he's accusing happen to be a very popular music ring, not because of general principle.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Homer Stokes, candidate for governor by day, Klansman by nighttime.
• Popculture Osmosis: The Coens accept claimed that they've never actually read The Odyssey, only know the story through its various adaptations.
• Produce Rain: What the audience does when Homer Stokes ends upwards interrupting the Soggy Bottom Boys performance to get them arrested, that as well as ride him out of town on a rail.
• Real Is Brown: Pursued with a vengeance, given that a substantial portion of the film's postal service-production budget went into extensive color-correction. The Coens wanted every frame of the picture show to reflect the dingy, withered dustbowl await, and in some cases took entire fields of dark-green flora and turned them yellow.
• Reduced to Ratburgers: Pete and Delmar cook a gopher and offer it to Everett. He doesn't seem very enticed past the notion — not because of their pick of nutrient, simply considering splitting such a small animate being three ways wouldn't be much of a repast. Delmar heads him off with news that they actually caught and cooked quite a few gophers, then Everett can take the whole thing.
• Retirony: Of a sort. Pete was two weeks from being released from prison anyhow. Now that he's escaped, he'll have to serve another 50 years and won't get out until nineteen87.
• Road Trip Plot: The convicts are trying to get from their escape from the concatenation gang to Everett's secret stash, encountering many obstacles and interesting characters forth the way.
• Rock Me, Asmodeus!: "And I have information technology from the highest 'thority, that that negra... sold his soul to the Devil!!!" ^note The townsfolk don't buy into it, though.
• Running Gag:

  "Damn, we're in a tight spot!"

  • Everett's obsession with his Dapper Dan pomade likewise counts, as well as his reflexive worrying near his hair whenever something wakes him in the heart of his sleep.
  • The abiding reference to Everett supposedly existence hit by a train once he reunited with some of his daughters.
• Satanic Classic: Sheriff Cooley fits Tommy Johnson's clarification of the Devil exactly: "He'southward white, as white as you lot folks, with empty eyes and a big hollow vocalization. He likes to travel around with a mean one-time hound." Withal, upon seeing him at the finish of the moving-picture show, Tommy doesn't seem to find.
• Saved by the Coffin: Subsequently the valley floods, the protagonists cling to one of the coffins the sheriff was planning to bury them in.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: The Sheriff/Warden/Devil wears these.
• Seinfeldian Conversation:
  • This charming case:

    "He's gonna paddle our piddling behind."
    "Ain't gonna paddle information technology — gonna kick it. Real difficult."
    "No, I believe he's gonna paddle it."
    "I don't believe that's a proper description."
    "Well, that's how I'd characterize it."
    "I believe it's more of a kickin' sitchiation."

  • The discussion of a "grease spot on the L&Northward" and a "bona-fide" suitor ranks right up there also.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness:
  • Everett. For instance, from the Funny Background Effect described to a higher place:

    Everett: Say, any of you fellas happen to be smithies? If not smithies per se, perhaps you trained in the metallurgical arts before straitened circumstances led you to a life of bumming wandering?

  • Likewise Big Dan Teague:

    Large Dan Teague: And thank you for that conversational hiatus. I generally refrain from speech while engaged in gustation. There are those who endeavor both at the same time; I find information technology coarse and vulgar.

• Shout-Out:
  • The film's title is itself a Shout-Out to Preston Sturges' Sullivan'southward Travels.
  • The entire plot contains various shout outs to the Greek epic poem The Odyssey past Homer. The main protagonist is named Ulysses in both stories, has to become habitation to prevent his wife from marrying someone else, and they meet singing women who seduce them (the Sirens) and a i-eyed behemothic homo (the cyclops). The reform candidate is named Homer Stokes, referencing the author Homer. The blind railroad man predicting events references Tiresias, while the blind radio station manager references Homer over again, who was also said to be blind.
  • Tommy's Deal with the Devil is a reference to a like deal supposedly made by existent-life bluesman Robert Johnson. (Or perhaps Tommy Johnson, depending on whom you enquire.) And the vocal that Chris Thomas Rex performs during the campfire scene is "Hard Fourth dimension Killing Floor Blues," originally by Johnson's contemporary Skip James.
  • Not to mention that a homo named Ulysses meets a guitarist at a Crossroads.
  • The KKK scene is based off of the scene in The Wizard of Oz where the Scarecrow, King of beasts and Can Man try to sneak into the witch's castle. The guards are chanting the way the KKK does and fifty-fifty doing a like trip the light fantastic, and the three heroes steal disguises from the guards/KKK.
  • The Soggy Bottom Boys are a reference to the Lite Crust Doughboys, who were featured on the existent-life Pappy O'Daniel's radio show, and/or the Foggy Mount Boys (founded by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs).
  • In that location'south a bury floating on a flooded river at the stop, which is most certainly a Shout-Out to William Faulkner'due south As I Lay Dying. And they use it equally a raft.
  • Sheriff Cooley looks and dresses very similarly to Dominate Godfrey in Absurd Hand Luke, right downwards to his Scary Shiny Glasses.
  • George Clooney's functioning equally Everett owes more than a little to Clark Gable.
  • A throwaway gag may be a shout-out to Porky Pig:

    Everett: Well, nosotros are negroes, sir. All except for our air-conditioning-c-c-c... our air-conditioning-c-c-c... uh, the homo who plays the guitar.

  • "Is you is, or is you ain't, my constituency?" ^notation ...my baby
• Sold His Soul for a Donut: The master characters run into a young musician who claims to have sold his soul to be able to play the guitar really well. Delmar, who recently had a religious experience, is disappointed by the thought of selling a soul for so little.
• Something We Forgot: The trio arrive at the cabin in the valley to retrieve Penny'due south ring, forgetting that Sheriff Cooley had earlier learned of the location past torturing Pete and is now lying in wait for them.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Many of the characters in a patchily educated manner, only mostly Everett. "I'm the goddamn paterfamilias!"
• Source Music: All the music in the flick is diegetic.
• Stout Strength: Large Dan Teague.
• Stern Hunt: The Warden's search for the iii convicts.
• The Stool Pigeon: Pete ends upwards becoming a Lacerated Larry afterward the "Sireens" basically turned him over to the sheriff'due south men for a bounty (which initially led them to believe that Pete was really turned into a frog due to it being in his dress).
• Surrounded by Idiots: Pappy O'Daniel'due south cronies and son are sycophantic yes-men who are a flake slow on the uptake, and Pappy is painfully aware of this. This is most likely the reason he tries to convince Vernon T. Waldrip to exit Stokes' campaign and join his.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: "Who is that man?" "Not my husband." Too doubles as a Shout-Out to the source material.
• Symbolic Baptism: Played for Laughs when the escaped convicts Pete and Delmar stumble onto a grouping baptism in a river and jump at the take a chance to start over with a clean slate... which generally means doing exactly what they were earlier. They're also a scrap confused to hear that it doesn't actually do annihilation for their criminal records.

  Delmar: Just they was witnesses that seen u.s. redeemed.
  Everett: Even if it did put you lot foursquare with the Lord, the state of Mississippi's a niggling more than hard-nosed.

  • Everett is then fifty-fifty more symbolically baptized when he gives his Non-So-Last Confession, on his knees praying for salvation... when the damming of the river floods the valley and sweeps away not but sins, but sinners, and houses.
• Those 2 Guys: Pappy's two advisors, see the Seinfeldian Chat above.
• Trail of Staff of life Crumbs: How the sheriff keeps finding Everett. Everett's a Dapper Dan man, going through obscene amounts of the stuff whenever he tin go a agree of it. The sheriff'southward bloodhound tin can rails him easily.
• Travel Montage: We get a series of scenes showing the trio making their way beyond Mississippi, stealing a car, stealing a pie (Delmar pays for it), telling scary stories around the campfire (claw-handed man)...
• True Companions: Everett, Pete, Delmar, and Tommy.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
  • The bank customers at the robbery seem to exist rather not-plussed by all the shooting.
  • Everett himself is rather not-plussed by Big Dan beating the hell out of Delmar with a tree branch until Big Dan starts attacking him.
• Upper-Class Twit: Pappy O'Daniel's son.
• The Vamp: The three sirens.
• Villainous Glutton: Large Dan Teague, as befits his correspondence with the cyclops Polyphemus.
• Villainous Breakup: "Babyface" Nelson and Homer Stokes.
  • Nelson gets better...sort of.
  • "MY NAME IS GEORGE NELSON, AND I'Chiliad FEELIN' TEN Feet TALL!"
• Villain with Good Publicity: Homer Stokes, oh and then much.
• Wardens Are Evil: The Sheriff. While at the showtime he is in the right to hunt down Everett, Pete, and Delmar (because of them being fugitives), he goes for overkill tactics like burning down a barn with them inside. He insists that he answers to a higher law than man's (so he will merely continue coming no matter what), and the moment he makes it articulate that he will run across them all hang even if they are at present pardoned (and he volition impale Tommy for no reason other than him being there with the fugitives), he crosses the Moral Outcome Horizon difficult. That he is a Satanic Archetype doesn't help any.
• Warm Identify, Warm Lighting: The moving-picture show uses an extreme yellow filter throughout that makes what were green fields look yellow. While information technology gives the movie a cornball sepia feel, it also accentuates the fact that the story takes place in sweltering rural Mississippi in the middle of summer.
• Wedding Band Removal: As the guys run into the singing sirens, Everett, in the background, pulls his wedding ring off correct before the girls come over and start getting cozy with them.
• Whole Plot Reference: Loosely, to The Odyssey.
• Working on the Chain Gang: The story begins with Everett, Pete, and Delmar escaping from this while chained to each other. Pete, at one point, is recaptured and put back to work on the chain gang and has to exist broken out of prison again.

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/OBrotherWhereArtThou

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