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- Director Displacement: It's directed by Tobe Hooper, not Steven Spielberg.
- Funny Aneurysm Moment: Several, involving Heather O'Rourke and Dominique Dunne, but the most wince-inducing is Carol Anne's remark from the second movie: "I hope I don't grow up... doesn't look like much fun."
- Harsher in Hindsight: An odd meta-example. The scene near the end where an invisible force pulls up the mother's night-shirt and exposes her panties gets laughs from kids. However when seen as an adult, you realize that the poltergeist is attempting to rape her. (In the screenplay it actually does).
- Memetic Mutation: "This house is clean."
- Narm: Steve's angry outburst towards his boss at the end when the corpses of the cemetery their house was built in start bursting from the ground during the final meltdown, revealing that he'd only moved the headstones and left the bodies exactly where they were is rendered unintentionally funny by Craig T. Nelson's hysterical delivery:
- "You only moved the headstones! WHYYYY?!! WHYYYYY ?!!"
- The constant screaming at the end can veer off into this for some viewers.
- Nausea Fuel
- Nightmare Fuel: A bit of Enforced Method Acting, said to have been Spielberg's idea. Some of the corpses in the final scene were real.
- Paranoia Fuel: The chairs. Good GOD the chairs.
- Sequelitis: The second one was well-received for some... but the third? Not so much.
- What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: Yup. Written by the same dude who did ET the Extraterrestrial. And, you know... Jaws.
- To make things even more interesting, according to David Hughes' The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made, originally E.T. and Poltergeist were one film, the never-produced Night Skies. The mind boggles.
- Actually, the dude who directed the first two The Texas Chainsaw Massacre films directed this... though people have their theories about who directed what.