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Bottoms is a 2023 Satirical Black Comedy film directed by Emma Seligman (Shiva Baby). Seligman co-wrote the script with Rachel Sennott, who stars alongside Ayo Edebiri, Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, and Marshawn Lynch, with a score by Charli XCX and Leo Birenberg.

PJ (Sennott) and Josie (Edebiri) are dorky and unpopular lesbian high school seniors hoping to get lucky before they graduate. After an incident involving their school's star quarterback Jeff (Galitzine), the girls cover up their problem by telling their principal that they are starting a self-defense club for female solidarity. In reality, PJ and Josie use their "fight club" as a way to hook up with their respective cheerleader crushes, Brittany (Gerber) and Isabel (Liu).

This film provides examples of:

• Adults Are Useless:
  • The faculty at Rockbridge Falls High School — but especially Principal Meyers, who blatantly favors quarterback Jeff and the other players — are pretty useless much of the time, especially when it concerns punishing the football team. A strong example is when the football team publicly sets up Hazel to go against a much bigger wrestler, who then proceeds to brutally assault her with little to no intervention from the adults, with only the fight club being willing to help Hazel afterwards.
  • Mr. G is quite unbothered by Jeff breaking a beaker and making death threats in class, and is recruited as the club sponsor because PJ and Josie are sure they can just convince him to sign off and never show up.
• Age-Gap Romance: Jeff turns out to be cheating with the mother of his classmate Hazel, who is old enough that she could be his mom. Before that, he also was with Mrs. Reilly, an older teacher.
• Age Exaggeration: In the opening scene, high school seniors Josie and PJ lament that they're about to become "old hags in college" soon.
• All Gays Love Theater: The gay school drama club president Matthieu is a beloved figure in the school, proving that no one hates PJ and Josie solely for being gay.
• All Guys Want Cheerleaders: The cheerleader characters (Brittany, Isabel, and Stella-Rebecca) are universally seen as beautiful and desirable by people around them, especially by the female protagonists PJ and Josie. Isabel is also dating star quarterback Jeff. And while Josie is able to genuinely connect with and romance Isabel, PJ's interest in Brittany is implied to start and stop at how she's a hot, popular cheerleader.
• Almost Kiss: Josie and Isabel almost kiss in their car until Hazel's bomb blows up Jeff's car and everyone has to flee.
• Anachronism Stew: The film implicitly takes place in the present day (c. 2023), but current-era technology like the internet, modern smartphones, and modern cars are sparsely featured (albeit existing, one example being Josie having flatscreen computer monitors). The soundtrack contains songs from both the early 2000s and the 2020s. Email is referenced, but the only cell phone featured is a mid-2000s flip phone, and at one point a character relies on a physical phone book. This helps put the movie closer to the heyday of the sex comedies it parodies.
• And Starring: After listing the main cast, the credits go "with Dagmara Domińczyk and Marshawn Lynch".
• Angst? What Angst?: Played for Laughs In-Universe. None of the Rockbridge students who partake in the final fight are fazed in the slightest at having killed most everyone on the Huntington team. PJ and Josie even take a beat to acknowledge this, and simply resolve not to process it until much later.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In an attempt to bond, all of the girls explain reasons they want to participate in the fight club, including stories of being stalked and fear of being killed. Sylvie, who's made constant references to her stepdad throughout the film, implying he's sexually predatory, finally reveals the reason she hates him is that he subjects her family to elaborate Friday movie nights.
• Asshole Victim: Even before the big game, the Rockbridge students complain about the Huntington football team randomly assaulting them. Some of the girls even join the fight club because of their fear towards Huntington. On the day of the big game, the Huntington football players have emptied a whole barrel of pineapple juice — to which Rockbridge's Jeff is deathly allergic — and secretly put the juice in the sprinklers to, well, murder Jeff. And they try to murder the fight club as well when they foil their plans to murder Jeff. The girls win, though, which results in the Huntington players all dying. It is also revealed before the game that Huntington, for some reason, has a history of producing bloodthirsty students.
• Ax-Crazy: The Huntington football team, who have a tendency of murdering their football rivals at homecoming every so often.
• The Band Minus the Face: Downplayed, as even though the self-defense club is dead and PJ & Josie are Hated by All, Hazel, Isabel, Brittany, Annie, and Sylvie are implied to still hang out and be together even without them.
• The Beard: Parodied. Josie, panicking about the prospect of not losing her virginity to a girl, wails about losing it to their gay classmate Matthieu, getting knocked up, and the two of them needing to enter an unhappy double-bearding marriage and joining the church to save face.
• Becoming the Boast: In the end, PJ and Josie are able to fight off and kill the Huntington Golden Ferrets, despite their whole fight club journey starting on lies and misunderstandings.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Most of PJ and Hazel's scenes together consist of the two insulting each other and bickering with each other. However, they share a passionate kiss at the football game. Even Jeff of all people is touched by the emotional intimacy of the kiss, tearfully noting that it's "nothing like porn — is porn even real?" They later try to deny that they're into each other, claiming it was nothing more than a distraction — though they also clarify that they would gladly do it again if they were asked. The ending implies they might work on those hidden feelings for each other.
• Big Damn Kiss:
  • Parodied with Jeff and Josie. After Josie saves his life, Jeff tries to do one with her, but of course, Josie is a lesbian, so she turns him down.
  • Josie and Isabel have a long, intense kiss at the end on the football field after they reconcile.
• Big Fancy House:
  • Jeff's house is a huge mansion to the point that the girl's attempt to egg and TP the house falls short until Hazel's car bomb goes off.
  • Brittany has a massive bedroom with a four-poster bed.
• Big Game: The Rockbridge vs. Huntington game that comes with a fifty year rivalry, and last happened twenty years ago. Exaggerated into a deadly rivalry as Huntington in the past had killed Rockbridge players by burning at the stake, drowning, and quartering, and are now planning on spraying Jeff with pineapple juice.
• Bisexual Love Triangle: Isabel is on and off with Jeff and Josie, ending up with Josie. After Josie saves Jeff at the Big Game, he tries to go in for a kiss, but Josie politely yet firmly turns him down.
• Black Comedy:
  • Mr. G disparagingly mentions a student who stopped showing up to class after a week. Josie tells him that that student committed suicide. Mr. G just scoffs, "Suuuuure he did."
  • Stella-Rebecca's constant, nonchalant references to her stalker. The most she says of the police refusing to help her unless the stalker actively tries to kill her is "It's just, like, annoying."
  • One girl at the fight club is promised that with the help of the club, she won't be assaulted on her birthday. Again.
    Josie: Lucky number seven, okay?
  • The climactic fight between the fight club alongside the football team and the Huntington team, as most of the latter team ends up dead by the end, but the ending treats this like a heroic victory, with the school cheering the girls on, PJ and Josie realizing they just killed people for real but deciding not to think about it right now, Josie and Isabel sharing a kiss while there are dead bodies around them, and Hazel's bomb blowing up a large tree.
  • The goth kid's plan to blow up the school is treated as a funny background joke, with him getting mad when Hazel's bomb goes off at the end.
    Goth kid: Damnit! That was my thing!
• Blatant Lies:
  • Tim pits Hazel against a tall and muscular student who has to be kept in a cage and is the best boxer in school for a predictable Curb-Stomp Battle where Hazel nevertheless is able to hold her own for a while. Tim then asks how she couldn't hold her own in a fight against "a regular old guy".
  • After flip-flopping between being a Straw Feminist and Straw Misogynist, after the fight club defeats the Huntington players, Mr. G exclaims that he knew women are good all along, and he's "been saying that shit the whole time".
  • The stories PJ and Josie tell about their supposed trip to Juvenile Hell get more and more elaborate, culminating in Josie's tale of having people bet money on them, and having to survive the Tributes.
• "The Breakfast Club" Poster Homage: The movie poster pays homage to the film's poster. Josie and PJ are in the back standing and bending their arm like Bender, Mr. G is sitting in the middle and combines the athletic gear of Andrew with Brian's cross-armed pose, and Jeff, Tim, and Hazel are all lying down, with Hazel doing the closest to Clair's hand position. They all look as bored/expressionless as in the poster it's paying homage to (especially Hazel), except for Mr. G, who has more of a hapless smirk befitting a typical comedy poster on his face. Brittany and Isabel are the biggest break from the original poster layout, and are both depicted clinging to their love interests rather than following the formula of the original poster.
• Brick Joke:
  • A twofer at the very end.
    • Hazel tries to blow up a big tree at the football game when the fight club needs to create a distraction, but it doesn't detonate, despite her best efforts. Then after the day is already saved, the Huntington team is defeated, and everyone is celebrating, the final shot of the movie (minus the snippets in the credits) is the bomb finally going off while everyone stares.
    • About halfway through the movie, after being a Butt-Monkey one time too many, the goth student decides to start plotting to blow up the school. Once the credits start rolling after the above explosion, they express frustration that someone else stole "their" plan of setting off a bomb.
  • Another twofer comes in the form of Sylvie's animosity towards her stepfather. The first half of the film implies that he's sexually molesting or abusing her; she finally admits the reason she hates him is that he makes the entire family watch elaborately programmed movie nights every Friday. Later, after Hazel is beaten up by the football player, we see her resting on the couch while all of the girls from the fight club attend movie night.
• Cast Full of Gay: PJ, Josie, Hazel, Isabel, Stella-Rebecca, and PJ and Josie's Mentor in Queerness Rhodes are all queer. The school's drama club is also headed by an openly gay boy named Matthieu who only appears once but is established to be Loved by All. Additionally, Sylvie is a tomboy who loves to scream "YAS, QUEEN! SLAY!", and PJ and Josie do comment that she could be attractive if she got rid of her braces and stopped huffing paint, implying she is also possibly queer. Similarly, many of the non-speaking members of the fight club are gender non-conforming.
• Chekhov's Gun: Jeff, Tim, and the other football players yell at Janice the cafeteria lady for mistakenly giving Jeff a fruit cup with pineapples in it, which he's deathly allergic to. Later, the fight club figures out that the Huntington team plans to take advantage of this allergy to kill Jeff by lacing the water in the football field's sprinkler system with pineapple juice.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The caged football player in the corner in Mr. G's classroom goes uncommented, but comes back at the pep rally where Tim has Hazel set up for a Curb-Stomp Battle against the guy, who is also mentioned to be the school's best boxer.
• Childhood Friends: PJ and Josie have known each other since they were little, and had the same babysitter, Rhodes. They have a pair of split-heart BFF necklaces that Josie appeals to at the last hour.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Many of the girls, but especially PJ and Josie, seem to derive pleasure from punching and wrestling each other.
  Brittany, straddling PJ: Stop smiling! I'm kicking your ass!
• Conflict Killer: The Huntington football team's arrival ends all of the conflicts in the movie, from PJ and Josie's falling out to the fight club's feud with the football team, simply because they're so murderous and violent that everyone has to put aside their differences to stop them.
• Crapsack World: It's all Played for Laughs, but the world the Rockbridge students live in is truly quite horrifying.
  • There's a rival school (Huntington) that assaults and murders Rockbridge students just because of their football rivalry, and even students who aren't in the football team have to fear for their lives because of Huntington.
  • Tim and Jeff trick Hazel into getting brutally assaulted in front of the entire school, but everyone (even the faculty) lets it slide because they're football players.
• Cringe Comedy: PJ's and Josie's first attempts to talk to their crushes near the beginning. PJ invites Brittany to get a hot dog and tries to make an innuendo about the bun, but botches it entirely, and Brittany doesn't get it and is just very confused. Meanwhile, Josie's attempts to compliment Isabel's appearance just have her saying way too many times, in way too many not-particularly-complimentary ways, how "skinny" she is, and Isabel quickly goes from looking slightly confused at first to rather insulted.
• Curb-Stomp Cushion: In his ploy to expose PJ and Josie's lies, Tim tricks Hazel into publicly fighting against a member of the football team at the pep rally, who's also the best boxer at school. Hazel surprisingly holds her own for a while, knocking her opponent to the ground, punching him in the face, and even kicking his arm to the side, causing Tim's smug grin to briefly slip. But ultimately, she can't compete against her more trained opponent and is left a beaten, bloody mess, while the football player she fights only has a few cuts on his face.
• Defacement Insult: PJ and Josie's lockers are regularly painted with insults, such that the janitor Ted is apparently used to painting over them. At the nadir of their popularity, he doesn't even bother.
• Delayed Explosion: The bomb Hazel attached to a tree at homecoming doesn't go off, forcing them to find another distraction. Only after the fight club has saved the game does the tree suddenly burst into flames.
• Description Cut: After being informed that the club needs a teacher to sponsor, PJ and Josie wonder who would be dumb enough to sign off on a club where girls just beat the shit out of each other. Cut to Mr. G.
• Diagonal Billing: Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri are billed diagonally in the end credits.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: When Jeff is confronted by Hazel and Isabel over cheating on the latter with the former's mother, he tries to deny it. When Hazel points out that she literally saw them together, Jeff yells at Hazel, "Shut up, nerd, I fucked Your Mom!", only to then realize he's just confessed.
• Dirty Old Man: The customers for the sexualized car wash and Isabel's used panties are old, perverted men. One of them (sporting fully gray hair) reappears at the Big Game, and pulls attention away from Hazel and PJ's Big Damn Kiss by exclaiming, "Enough of this gay shit! I came to see some man-on-man, grappling-and-slapping football!"
• Disproportionate Retribution: The club pulls a Toilet Paper Prank against Jeff for cheating on Isabel with Hazel's mom, but some of them are quite alarmed when Hazel escalates it by blowing up Jeff's car.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Invoked at the homecoming game. The heroes try to get the cheerleaders to make out to distract the audience and players so they can figure out how Huntington will try and kill one of their team members. Hazel and PJ end up doing it themselves, and it does sufficiently distract the crowd (and serve as an LGBT Awakening for at least one other girl).
• Double-Meaning Title: The film's title refers to the sexual term "bottom" (the receptive or submissive partner in a relationship) and PJ and Josie starting out at the bottom of their school's social ladder.
• Enemy Mine: The girls' fight club starts to defend themselves from Jeff and his psychotic football buddies, but the girls join forces with their football team to fight the opposing team when they plan to kill Jeff.
• Et Tu, Brute?: The janitor Ted, who was the only person on relatively good terms with PJ and Josie, is so disgusted with them after they get exposed by Jeff and Tim that he refuses to paint over their lockers after they get vandalized again.
• Everyone Has Standards: Most of the girls do not like Jeff, but when they find out he’s the target of Huntington’s murder plot, they fight the rival football team to the death to save his life.
• Exercise Excuse: PJ and Josie (very lightly) collided with school's star quarterback Jeff in the parking lot, but overnight the story morphed into the pair beating him up. When the principal threatens to expel the pair, they improvise a lie about training for a self-defense club.
• Fake First Kiss: PJ kisses Hazel at the Big Game to draw the crowd's attention. However, the pair's Post-Kiss Catatonia and body language after the fight against Huntington hints at a Maybe Ever After.
• Fanservice Car Wash: In a scene antithetical to the club's self-proclaimed feminist goals, their pretty cheerleader members fundraise by washing cars while scantily clad. Isabel is also selling her dirty underwear.
• Feminine Mother, Tomboyish Daughter: Mrs. Callahan and her daughter Hazel are night and day in their style, but Ms. Callahan seems to be an Open-Minded Parent and accept Hazel as she is.
• Fight Clubbing: PJ and Josie end up starting a fight club for girls at the school, with the direct inspiration shouted out.
  Sylvie: Thanks for inviting me. I'm a huge fan of David Fincher!
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Zig Zagged with Hazel. She's clearly old friends with PJ and Josie, who are kind of dismissive of her. After the fight club comes under threat and Hazel threatens to reveal the secret motivation behind the club, PJ says Hazel has no friends and a skank for a mom, causing her to storm out. However, after Hazel gets the crap kicked out of her by the caged boxer, we see the other girls from the club taking care of Hazel, and when PJ is made to apologize, she admits it was wrong of her to say she doesn't have any friends in front of all her friends.
• Funny Background Event: Many.
  • In a lunchroom scene, a background actor behind PJ and Josie seems to mime performing oral sex on a corndog.
  • Early on, the sight of a football player in a cage in the classroom goes unexplained. Becomes a Chekhov's Gunman when said football player is released from the cage to fight Hazel.
• Future Loser: Discussed by Josie, who describes her preferred getting-together-with-Isabel scenario thusly: Josie shows up to their Class Reunion, sees that the once-popular Jeff and Isabel are now both washed up, and sweeps Isabel off her feet.
• Gay Guy Seeks Popular Jock: Gender Inverted. PJ and Josie are two unpopular lesbians who pursue a pair of cheerleaders, Brittany and Isabel.
• Gender-Inverted Trope: Bottoms is a send-up of the early 2000s sex comedy genre, but with gay girls instead of straight boys. The movie also flips the Gay Guy Seeks Popular Jock premise to one of lesbians seeking cheerleaders, and the self-defense club is called "Girl Fight Club".
• The Ghost: The school announcer, Mrs. Reilly, and the lunch lady Doris are never seen.
• Girl-on-Girl is Hot: The fight club tries to exploit this near the end to distract the football players so that the Huntington team won't kill Jeff by having two of the cheerleaders make out. PJ ends up kissing Hazel, which gets them their distraction.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: The fight club is the closest thing the movie has to good guys, as, even though PJ is only in it for selfish reasons, most of the girls care about solidarity and empowerment enough to be heroic. The Vikings (particularly Jeff and Tim), on the other hand, while serving as the antagonists for most of the movie, are ultimately Harmless Villains content to humiliate and break up the group. The third act then reveals that the Huntington football team are actually all violent and psychotic to the point that they are planning to murder Jeff, forcing the fight club and football team to put aside their differences in order to deal with them.
• Gossip Evolution:
  • The night of the fair, Hazel mistakenly thinks PJ and Josie were in juvie over the summer, and Josie gently taps Jeff's knee with her car. By the next morning's history class, everyone now thinks PJ and Josie "ate literal shit and killed girls in juvie" and that they beat up Jeff. Even Isabel, who was right next to them when the latter incident occurred, thinks that.
  • At the second meeting of the fight club, many newcomers have very different ideas of what the group is for, with Stella-Rebecca operating under the impression that they're fighting for money.
• Hated by All: Josie & PJ start the film as the most hated and bullied kids in school for being "gay, ugly, and untalented", and become popular after establishing the self-defense club. Jeff and Tim exposing them at the pep rally by revealing that the club was a ploy for them to get laid causes them to be hated even more, to the point where even the janitor refuses to paint their lockers after they get vandalized. They're eventually able to restore their reputations by reuniting the club, beating Huntington, and saving Jeff's life.
• Hemo Erotic: PJ in particular seems to enjoy having her blood spilled.
• Hilarious Outtakes: The credits are interspersed with alternate takes and bloopers from the movie. Highlights include:
  • A Dance Party Ending bit of the fight club girls doing the "Single Ladies" dance and twerking next to the cheerleaders.
  • Many Improv outtakes from Ayo Ebidiri and Marshawn Lynch, including a What's a Henway? interaction:
    Mr. G: I've been dealing with the D word.
    PJ and Josie, simultaneously: Death? Dinosaurs? Depression?
    Mr. G: DEEZ NUTS!
• Hollywood Healing: PJ heals from a broken nose in a few days, and Hazel walks off an absolutely brutal beating after spending a night with her friends recovering on the couch.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • PJ states that she believes that all girls are hot, not long after deeming the girls who initially joined the fight club "ugly".
  • PJ is also dismissive of Hazel's concern of lack of female solidarity in the school, only for the film to cut to PJ using the exact same wording while trying to recruit a pretty girl to come to the club.
  • After the aforementioned distraction kiss, one spectator (a Dirty Old Man who came out to the club's car wash/underwear sale in a previous scene) shouts to cut the "gay shit" so they can proceed with the football game and he can watch some "man-on-man grappling and slapping".
• I Banged Your Mom: Parodied. When Isabel confronts Jeff after being told that he's cheating on her with Hazel's mom, he vehemently denies it. Hazel then says that she literally saw them together, and Jeff's knee-jerk response is to shout, "Shut up, nerd! I fucked your mom!", immediately after which he realizes what he's just done.
• Idealized Sex: Invoked and Played for Laughs. Seeing PJ and Hazel kiss makes Jeff ponder that it's nothing like porn, which then leads him to doubt if porn is even real.
• Incompatible Orientation:
  • While she doesn't seem upset at PJ kissing her, Brittany gently lets her know she is straight.
  • Played for Laughs after Josie carries Jeff to safety. He does the whole "You saved me!" bit and tries to kiss her, but since she's very much a lesbian and also just doesn't like him as a person, she stops him with a fairly-polite-but-firm "No."
• Immediate Self-Contradiction:
  • PJ and Hazel have different ideas of what the club is for.
    Hazel: There is a serious lack of female solidarity at this school.
    PJ: Not the point, Hazel. Not the point.
    [cut to PJ by the lockers, talking to a pretty girl]
    PJ: Yeah, I mean, we just felt like there's a serious lack of female solidarity at this school.
  • PJ rants to the club about how no one is allowed to show up late no matter the excuse, only for her and Josie's crushes, Brittany and Isabel, to walk in late, at which point she just meekly welcomes them in.
  • Jeff passionately denies cheating on Isabel with Hazel's mom. When Hazel states that she literally saw them both together, he immediately replies, "Shut up, nerd! I fucked your mom!"
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: One of the Huntington football players gets run through with a sword by Sylvie — completely by accident, as the weight of the sword had made her fall to the ground, and someone else pushed the player on top of the sword.
• Impersonating a Gangster: PJ and Josie pretend to be hardened criminals and multiple murderers to impress the girls at the fight club.
• Inelegant Blubbering: Played for Laughs. When Josie tells Isabel Jeff's been cheating on her, Isabel starts to first laugh, then cry, scream and slam her head on the table at a crowded diner.
• Introvert–Extrovert Pairing: Josie and PJ, respectively. Lampshaded when Isabel is talking to Josie about how different the two are using Hand Signals; she describes PJ with karate chops, and Josie with wavy, flowing hand motions.
• Ironic Echo: At the fair, PJ insists to Josie that people at school don't just judge or dislike them because they're gay, or untalented, or ugly. The next day, Principal Meyers refers to them as "the ugly, untalented gays" when calling them down to his office.
• Jerk Jock: The entire Rockbridge Falls High School football team, but especially Jeff and Tim, are deeply unpleasant, immature, and self-centered jocks who get away with their bullying actions simply because they're football players. However, the Huntington football team turns out to be far worse since they have a tendency of murdering the quarterbacks of their rival schools.
• Juvenile Hell: Invoked. Rumors begin spreading that PJ and Josie spent time in juvie over the summer. They never publicly deny these rumors as they provide notoriety, and regularly build on them by describing the "hellish treatment" they experienced, such as ritual hazing, regular gladiator-esque betting on fight clubs, and several near-death experiences. And of course, surviving the Tributes.
• Karma Houdini: Tim doesn't face any comeuppance for his actions towards PJ, Josie, and the club, especially since he tricked Hazel into getting brutally beat up and no one except the fight club batted an eye.
• Lady Swears-a-Lot: PJ is prone to giving Too Much Information about her sexual desires and (solo) sexual habits, and curses like a sailor when in her Drill Sergeant Nasty mode.
  PJ: Alright, you cunt-sucking pieces of shit, welcome to our fucking fight club!
• Laser-Guided Karma: Jeff, unlike Tim, does face consequences for some of the things he does. He's outed for cheating on Isabel, and the girls then egg and TP his house for it (Hazel even blows up his car). Later, while he does win Isabel back following PJ and Josie being outed as liars, he loses her again in the ending to Josie. However, since he's not present for that, this one's more downplayed.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Occasionally employed, usually when the movie is leaning on tropes or to acknowledge production shortcomings. For example, PJ and Josie resolve their Second-Act Breakup by pulling out their previously unremarked-upon friendship necklaces.
  PJ: Wow, pulling out the friendship necklace in the final hour.
• Liar Revealed: After Tim exposes the true reason PJ and Josie started the fight club, the main characters are (even more) ostracized by their classmates and have to hastily win back their respect during the third act.
• Lipstick Lesbian:
  • Maybe a lipstick bisexual since she's dating Jeff at first, but Isabel falls for a lesbian girl, Josie, and they kiss, then have sex together offscreen. She's a very feminine cheerleader who's always in blouses, skirts, has long hair and loves pink.
  • Another feminine cheerleader, Stella-Rebecca, realizes she's a lesbian near the end of the film by seeing Hazel and PJ kiss.
• Loafing in Full Costume:
  • The football players all wear their full uniforms (sans helmets), including to class every day. Jeff is only seen out of uniform immediately post-sex (though still wearing the pads) and alone in his bedroom, where he wears a blue dressing gown.
  • The team mascot is seen roaming the school in full costume.
  • However, averted with the cheerleaders, who wear normal clothes most of the time.
• Lying by Omission: Technically, as PJ points out to Hazel, she didn't lie about going to juvie. Hazel was just Sarcasm-Blind to her comment, they were interrupted before she could correct her, and Gossip Evolution took care of the rest.
• Maintain the Lie: PJ is quick to embrace the lie about her and Josie going to Juvenile Hell over the summer at the first fight club meeting, and Josie first reluctantly joins in but later is shown willing to exploit the legend to get closer to Isabel.
• Magic Realism: With the Ambiguous Time Period and heightened high school stereotypes, deadly football rivalry and Hazel's easy access to plastic explosives, it's fair to say the film exists in an universe of its own.
• Maybe Ever After: After PJ and Hazel share a kiss at the football game (which is mainly as a distraction, but they both seem to enjoy it), they're seen happily chatting together at the ending and even walk together shoulder to shoulder, with the implication that they have feelings for each other and will get together. However, it's more ambiguous than Josie and Isabel, who share a kiss and hold each other in their arms.
• Meaningful Background Event: During the first classroom scene, there is randomly a muscular shirtless man in a cage in the back of the class. The camera doesn't linger on him, so the bizarreness of the setting doesn't set in unless you pay attention. It turns out he's a rabid football player and the best boxer in the school, as shown when Tim deliberately unleashes him on Hazel.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: Josie drives her car toward Jeff and just barely taps his knee with her bumper. He tumbles to the ground in agony while his fellow teammates rush to his side and act like he just got the Tonya Harding treatment, and shows up to school the next day in crutches.
• Mistaken for Badass: After Josie lightly taps Jeff with her car, everyone at school the next day stares at her and PJ with mixture of fear and awe, as they now believe they "beat up Jeff" and "ate literal shit and killed girls in juvie".
• Mistaken for Gay: PJ thinks Brittany is also into girls, and that their banter in her bedroom is flirting, until she kisses Brittany, who afterwards tells her she's straight.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: Of the three founders of the fight club, Hazel is nice, PJ is mean, and Josie is the in-between. Hazel is the only one genuinely interested in creating a safe haven for the girls, and is the first to suggest getting everyone in the club to truly know each other. PJ, while she has a soft side, is selfish, manipulative, and borderline abusive to the other members of the club, being solely motivated by her pursuit of sex in addition to usually being dismissive of the feelings of others. Josie, while far kinder than PJ, is still predominantly motivated by her personal desires for sex, and is more than willing to lie about herself and the purpose of the club in order to get closer to Isabel.
• Never My Fault: PJ is ready to blame everyone but herself for anything that goes wrong, including saying the fight club was Josie's idea when it was PJ who jumped on the word "fight club" when the principal said them.
• No Full Name Given: With the likely exception of Hazel (even in her case, it's only due to her mother's last name being revealed), none of the students have their last names revealed in the story. The football players even just have their first names on their jerseys.
• NO INDOOR VOICE: Sylvie is prone to pretty loud reactions in general, but it's taken up to eleven when she starts shouting "YAS, QUEEN! SLAY!" at the top of her lungs to the shock of the other club participants.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: Microcosmic example, but in Rockbridge Falls, homophobia has become a non-issue. Everyone just hates PJ and Josie for being gay, untalented and ugly.
• No Sympathy: Played for Laughs. Not a single person at Rockbridge Falls remotely cares about the numerous Huntington students who were killed by the end of the film, with the commentator even enthusiastically yelling at their corpses to decompose. Justified as Huntington regularly attacks and even kills students at Rockbridge Falls every so often.
• No OSHA Compliance: The sword carried by the Viking mascot is not a prop, meaning that it is in fact walking around with a dangerous weapon in school. This is shown when Sylvie can't use it properly in the final fight because it is so heavy, and still impales someone with it regardless.
• Oblivious to Love: Fans have noted that, even in scenes before she breaks up with Jeff, Isabel is openly checking Josie out, and seems to like what she sees. It makes the scene where they finally do hook up even cuter, as everything from the way Isabel is acting to the incredibly low cut top she wore seems to indicate she got tired of waiting for Josie to get the message and just took matters into her own hands.
• Opposing Sports Team: The Huntington High School football team shows up in the third act to face off against the Rockbridge Falls Vikings, and are then revealed to be the Exaggerated version of this trope — a bunch of murderous maniacs who sabotage the opposing team by assassinating key players, escalate to try to kill the opposing team (and anybody they can get their hands on) in open combat if the assassination part is foiled, and are revealed to be Serial Killers in training just to cement their Asshole Victim status.
• Organizational Purpose Drift: Parodied with the "Girl Fight Club". While it's originated as an excuse for PJ and Josie to hook up with other girls at the school, it actually becomes a good outlet for the girls who join and form a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, giving them confidence and camaraderie (in addition to Josie's original intent ultimately being successful) to the extent that they convene to commit light terrorism against the ex-boyfriend of one of the members. Once the lie is revealed, the club members distance themselves from PJ and Josie, but after Josie finds out about the Huntington team's dastardly plan to kill Jeff, she reconciles with PJ and gets the group back together, and they all end up fighting and killing the other team and becoming heroes of the school.
• Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Several in rapid succession.
  • First, PJ, frustrated at the idea that the club might get shut down without her accomplishing her goal of scoring with Brittany, snaps at Hazel that she has no friends and her mom's a skank, causing her to leave in tears.
  • The next day, after Tim reveals to the whole school that PJ and Josie were never really in juvie and started the fight club with the goal of getting laid, the rest of the girls abandon them in disgust, with Isabel — who slept with Josie the night before and is the most hurt by this revelation — calling her pathetic. Mr. G, the club advisor, is also upset by being taken for a fool after "[playing] the role of an amazing ally", and goes on a fairly misogynistic, homophobic rant at the two before storming off as well.
  • PJ and Josie then each blame each other for everything falling apart, and stop speaking while actively avoiding each other.
  • All of this is resolved once Josie learns that the Huntington team is going to kill someone on the Rockbridge team. She gets PJ to help her and also sincerely apologize to Hazel for everything she said, and Hazel forgiving her makes the other girls agree to help. They're able to win Brittany and Isabel back through fighting the Huntington team to save Jeff, with the two joining the rest of them.
• Post-Kiss Catatonia: After PJ and Hazel kiss to distract the crowd, both are stunned for minutes afterwards.
• The Power of Sisterhood: Zig Zagged. Hazel invokes this as a genuinely good intention for founding a fight club, which Josie dismisses to her face, only for her to use Hazel's words verbatim in the very next scene in an attempt to get a girl to come to the club. The sisterhood nevertheless does emerge over the course of the club training and bonding together, but after PJ and Josie are exposed, a distraught Annie says, "This is the Second Wave all over again." Ultimately, after the threat posed by Huntington is fully revealed, the club, including the cheerleaders who hadn't previously accepted PJ and Josie's apology, show up for the final showdown.
  Mr. G: Man, I knew women were good. I been saying that shit the whole time, man!
• Putting the Band Back Together: After Josie learns about Huntington's plan to kill a player at the big game, she rushes to make up with PJ, and to get the fight club back together to stop the plan, with the initially reluctant cheerleaders also joining in line when the Huntington players enter the field.
• Quest for Sex: Josie and PJ have tried throughout high school to get laid but failed due to their social awkwardness. PJ uses Josie's lie about a self-defense club to create a space where they make physical contact with attractive girls, though she's disappointed how few actually attractive girls join. While Josie does succeed in hooking up with her crush, PJ does not due to Brittney's Incompatible Orientation, something Josie calls out during their Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure.
• Questionable Consent: PJ bluntly asks her clubmates who among them has been raped. No hands go up. She then clarifies that "gray-area stuff counts, too". Almost everyone's hands go up.
• Plot Allergy: Jeff's deadly allergy to pineapples, which the Huntington team attempts to exploit in their plan to kill him by having the sprinklers on the football field spray pineapple juice during the game.
• Police Are Useless: The movie takes place in a world where football players routinely murder students at their rival schools without repercussion. Stella-Rebecca mentions that she has a stalker who has threatened to kill her, but the cops refuse to do anything about it until he actually tries to — which is like, really annoying.
• Poke the Poodle: Subverted. The club's idea of revenge against Jeff for cheating on Isabel is to toilet paper one tree. PJ jokes that they might get fined two dollars for it. And then Hazel blows up Jeff's car.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Girl Fight Club contains a diverse bunch of outcast nerds, queer teens, a Black Republican, as well as three popular cheerleaders.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: PJ is confident and belligerent (red), whilst Josie is shyer and more cautious (blue). Throughout the film, PJ tends to escalate confrontations, in contrast with Josie who tries to avoid them.
  Isabel: Yeah, but you guys, like, could not be more different. She’s so, like, like… (Death Glare, choppy hand gestures) You know?
  Josie: Yeah.
  Isabel: And you’re… you’re so, like… (gentle smile, wavy hand gestures) You know what I mean?
• Rescue Romance: Parodied and subverted. Josie carries Jeff off the field, away from the sprinklers that will spray pineapple juice, while the rest of the fight club battles the Huntington team. Jeff is grateful to her for saving him and attempts to kiss her in response, but she's not at all into guys, and firmly shuts him down and heads off to join her friends.
• Revolutionaries Who Don't Do Anything: Parodied when Josie tells Mr. G that he could be the School Club Advisor without showing up.
  Josie: That's my favorite way to be an ally. You just say you're doing something, and then you don't do any of those things.
• Running Gag:
  • Mr. G looking for any excuse to vent about his divorce.
  • Josie and PJ's lockers are repeatedly defaced with "[insert insult here] #1" and "[insert insult here] #2", though when the pair are at peak popularity, they're instead called "hot shots".
• Sarcasm-Blind: Hazel exhibits unfamiliarity with slang and sarcasm several times. She asks Josie if she broke her arm at juvie, PJ sarcastically responds in the affirmative, and she believes it, leading to the Gossip Evolution about the two of them "eating literal shit and killing girls in juvie". Later, when Hazel suggests making a bomb ("you know, a small bomb") as a part of their revenge on Jeff for cheating on Isabel with Hazel's mom, Hazel again doesn't quite get that PJ is being sarcastic when she says "Yeah, Hazel, let's do terrorism."
• Satire: Of high school sex comedies, featuring an over-the-top plot for the protagonists to score with their crushes that's filled with exaggerated dialogue and scenarios.
• Save the Jerk:
  • In the fight against Huntington, Hazel saves Tim even though he was the one who tricked her into getting brutally assaulted by a wrestler.
  • Jeff is a cheating, dumbass Jerk Jock, but the girls pull him off the field after learning that the Huntington football team was going to kill him by spraying him with pineapple juice since he is allergic.
• School Club Advisor: Mr. G is recruited for this position because PJ and Josie assume he would just sign off on the club and not show up, with Josie even suggesting that as "the best way to be an ally". However, Mr. G, having been told by his mother that he needs a hobby, takes the position seriously and shows up at every meeting.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Jeff, the star quarterback, both when bumped by Josie's car and when he sees his car got blown up.
• Secretly Gay Activity: PJ and Josie's (but especially PJ's) plan for the girl fight club.
• Serious Business: High school football. The school's football team is venerated as gods, and the rivalry they have with Huntington is taken so seriously that a player is killed every time they play. In the end, the girls save Jeff from being the victim of Huntington's murder plot, killing several Huntington players in the process... and the school cheers them for it.
• Sex as a Rite-of-Passage: The impetus for the film's plot; PJ and Josie start out as virgins in their last year of high school, and PJ doesn't want to be the only virgin at college.
• Sexiness Score: PJ started the self-defense club hoping to hook up with her cheerleader crush, Brittany, and complains that they are (at first) only able to recruit "sixes".
• Sexy Discretion Shot: After Josie and Isabel share their First Kiss, they then start taking their clothes off and the camera pans up as Josie gets on top of Isabel.
• Shout-Out:
  • Doubles as a Take That!; Josie says that PJ’s favorite show is Entourage, and specifically brings it up to prove that she "doesn't care about feminism".
  • Sylvie seems to think the fight club was inspired by the movie, as she tells PJ and Josie that she loves David Fincher. Later, when the club is helping Hazel recuperate with a movie night, we see a sign that says "David Fincher Movie Club".
  • Played for Laughs; when giving a speech about "her time in juvie", Josie is pretty much just describing the plot of The Hunger Games.
  • The diner that Josie and Isabel go to is unsubtly titled "But I'm a Diner". To drive it home, the camera briefly focuses on their waitress's name tag, which says "Natasha" in honor of that movie's star.
  • Josie says that PJ used to call their babysitter Rhodes “gay Yoda”, presumably from her ability to impart advice.
  • The goth student that Tim throws the fruit cup at is clearly inspired by JD from Heathers, going so far as to write "blow up school" in their notebook. At the end, when Hazel's tree bomb explodes, they loudly complain, "That was my thing!"
  • The film's poster is an homage to the one for Revenge of the Nerds; both have the protagonists performing a bicep-curling gesture, being fawned over by cheerleaders, and standing over the jocks in nigh-identical poses.
• "Shut Up" Kiss: At the finale, Isabel kisses Josie mid-sentence.
• Sistine Steal: Parodied. The footballers are so worshipped at the school that they eat lunch in a special table at the back of the cafeteria backdropped by a parody mural of Creation of Adam, with quarterback Jeff in the position of Adam and a football in the hand that is touching God's. For bonus points, they are seated only in the back half of the table facing the camera, with Jeff in the center.
• Slow Clap: After the sprinklers go off, and Tim tastes the pineapple juice spraying out, he stares at the assembled fight club on the field and starts clapping, with the crowd joining in.
• Snowball Lie: The fight club revolves around one. It technically starts with Josie wearing her arm sling past the point of needing it at the fair, which prompts Hazel to ask how she got injured; her thinking PJ and Josie went to juvie due to not picking up on PJ's sarcasm leads the whole school to believe they ate literal shit and killed girls. When threatened with expulsion for an incident with Jeff at the fair, the girls claim they were practicing for a self-defense club, and when the principal comments "Like a fight club?", they run with it. Then, at the fight club, they tell increasingly lurid stories about how juvie was insane, culminating in Josie talking about having to fight girls to death and "surviving the Tributes" while people bet money on them.
• Sorry, I'm Gay: Inverted with Brittany, who has to let down PJ after she kisses her when they're doing homework on Brittany's bed. Played more straight when Jeff tries to kiss Josie after she carries him off the field.
• Speak in Unison: PJ and Josie have a habit of this, both completing each other's sentences and Stereo Fibbing. When Hazel brings up that she knows Stella-Rebecca, they ask "Stella-Rebecca, who models at car conventions in Chicago on the weekends?" in perfect unison.
• Stereo Fibbing: PJ and Josie, both when coming up with the Exercise Excuse in the principal's office and when recruiting Mr. G to be the School Club Advisor for their "female empowerment club".
• Strange Minds Think Alike: After PJ refers to herself and Josie as "gay, untalented and ugly" the previous night, the next day the intercom asks "the ugly, untalented gays" to report to the principal's office, to which Brittany notes "That must be you" with a smile.
• Straw Feminist / Straw Misogynist: Mr. G flip-flops in his position on women as a whole throughout the film. When he becomes a part of the fight club, we see him writing the word "FEMINISM" (above "Who invented it? A. Gloria Steinem B. A man C. Some other woman") on the blackboard. When the club falls apart, we see him crossing the word out (above "Why all presidents have been men and it should stay that way!"). Then, when the fight club save the day at the big game, Mr. G exclaims, "I knew women were good! I've been saying that shit the whole time!"
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Sylvie picks up a sword and prepares to wield it against a football player... then falls backwards because she has no idea how to wield a heavy metal sword.
• Suspicious Ski Mask: The club dons black ski masks when going to get revenge of Jeff for cheating on Isabel.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Jeff is first seen cheating on Isabel with Mrs. Reilly, a teacher at their school.
• Teacher's Unfavorite Student: Principal Meyers despises PJ and Josie and nearly expels them for "attacking" Jeff (in reality, Josie accidentally tapped Jeff in the kneecaps with her car bumper though the football team and Meyers play this off as intentional and a far more brutal assault than it was) and makes rather demeaning and homophobic remarks towards both of them, like explicitly calling them "the ugly, untalented gays" over the school intercom.
• Test Kiss: PJ kisses Brittany, who doesn't reciprocate and afterwards tells PJ that she's straight.
• Testosterone Poisoning: Parodied very heavily in this film. Most of the men worship cis, straight masculinity to ridiculous levels. The school principal even tries to punish the two main girls (Josie and PJ) for "injuring" (not really) Jeff, whom he considers America's manliest man in a long time.
• Throat-Slitting Gesture: Jeff does this at Josie (or "overalls bitch") in class by smashing an Erlenmeyer flask and using the broken stem. Mr. G doesn't approve.
  Mr. G: Goddamnit, Jeff! Couldn't you do that with just your fist?
• Time Bomb: Hazel can apparently very easily assemble working explosive devices and plants two — one under Jeff's car, and another on a tree during the Big Game — with there being an issue with the timer in both instances.
• Toilet Paper Prank: The self-defense club try to toilet paper Jeff's Big Fancy House, but they only really throw a few rolls on one single tree. PJ snarks that they might get fined a whole two dollars if they get caught.
• Tomboy: A large number of the fight club girls wear boyish clothes and have more short or low-maintenance haircuts.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: PJ is the Girly Girl to Josie's Tomboy, while both of them are the butch counterparts to their respective cheerleader crushes, Brittany and Isabel.
• Too Much Information:
  • PJ is a chronic oversharer, casually mentioning she masturbates after every therapy session among other revelations.
  • Mr. G is going through a divorce. After PJ and Josie are revealed as liars, he goes on a rant about women being untrustworthy that veers into him clearly venting about his filed marriage, and then criticizes their plan to use the club to hook up with girls because he doesn't think they would even know what to do.
    Mr. G: And I know y'all ain't tickling the pearl, knowhamtalmbout? You know what I mean? Caressing the back of that neck and all type of—
    Josie: Sorry, I just don't know if you're supposed to be talking to us like that. Just, like, as a teacher...
• Transparent Closet: Within Josie's catastrophizing fantasy of a lavender marriage with Matthieu, where she gets pregnant because he's gay and they didn't use protection and they have to join the church, with Matthieu becoming a pastor.
  Josie: And yeah, sure, his sermons are good, but everybody knows he's fruity! EVERYBODY KNOWS HE'S FUCKING FRUITY! By the way, our son, Hezekiah, hates us because he knows we're both closeted.
• Two-Teacher School: Other than the principal, history teacher and eventual fight club sponsor Mr. G is the only teacher the characters ever interact with.
• Wacky Homeroom: Mr. G's classroom. Despite him seemingly mostly teaching history, he has chemistry glassware lying around, and there's a student locked in a cage in the corner who is, like the other football players, Loafing in Full Costume.
• Water Source Tampering: Pineapple juice in the sprinklers.
• Weaponized Allergy: The Huntington team attempts to murder Jeff by spraying the football field with pineapple juice, which he's deathly allergic to.
• We Need a Distraction: The girls in the fight club say this word-for-word at the football game to prevent it from starting so the Huntington team won't kill Jeff. Initially, Hazel attempts to bomb a tree to accomplish it, but it fails to go off. They then try to invoke Girl-on-Girl is Hot with the cheerleaders, and when they won't cooperate, PJ and Hazel start making out instead, which does succeed for at least a couple of minutes.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: The team at the end of the movie wins after never playing at all because the girls have killed all the members of the Huntington team.
• World of Ham: Very few characters have an indoor voice, and those who don't scream and overreact at even the smallest of things.