Film / M3GAN

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M3GAN is a 2022/2023 Sci-Fi Horror film directed by Gerard Johnstone (Housebound), produced by Jason Blum and James Wan, and written by Akela Cooper from a story from her and Wan. It stars Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ronny Chieng and Amy Usherwood, while Amie Donald performed the titular doll, who is voiced by Jenna Davis.

The film follows a roboticist, Gemma (Williams), who gains custody of her orphaned niece, Cady (McGraw). Overworked and overwhelmed with the challenge of raising a traumatized child, Gemma decides to bring in the aid of M3GAN (short for Model Three Generative Android), a doll-like robot she designed to be a child's greatest companion and protector. Naturally, things go wrong.

The film released in a few countries in late December 2022 and in the US on January 6, 2023. Not to be confused with the short film Megan.

A sequel with a major Genre Shift, titled M3GAN 2.0, was released in late June 2025. Blumhouse has also produced a spinoff movie set in the same universe, SOULM8TE. Described as more of an erotic thriller, it stars Lily Sullivan, David Rysdahl and Claudia Doumit and be written and directed by Kate Dolan. The film was initially scheduled for a theatrical release on January 9, 2026, though it will instead be released on digital platforms on August 1, 2026.

Previews: Trailer, Trailer 2

M3GAN may have corrupted examples of:

• 20 Minutes into the Future: The setting is basically the same as real life, but the date on a laboratory camera shows the year as 2025.
• Accidental Truth: When David makes the big presentation to the board, he boasts about M3GAN's ability to adapt to the situation, rather than having pre-defined scripts - but he thinks he's making simply a bold statement. However, when the presentation starts, Cady is in tears and in genuine distress, so hers and M3GAN's pre-planned play session goes down the drain instantly, making everyone in the view room either uncomfortable or in a state of panic about such a disastrous presentation... only for M3GAN to do exactly what David was boasting about: adapting to the situation on the fly and providing Cady with an effective empathetic caretaker reaction to both calm her down and provide a showcase of just how good her adaptability is.
• Adults Are Useless:
  • Gemma. For most of the movie, she isn't very involved with being a parent to Cady, is slow to realize there's trouble and comes close to losing her life and Cady's.
  • Brandon's mother doesn't seem to realize (or is in denial) that her son is displaying troubling behavior and doesn't call him out when he uses bad language in front of her and Gemma. He also seems to be a few years older than the group of children Cady is with, which the mom justifies as "a growth spurt" when Gemma questions his age. She was also talking about how behavioral issues are linked to high I.Q. when Cady calls out for help.
  • To a lesser extent, the alternative school's teacher is certainly kind and well-meaning, but seems oblivious to Brandon's bullying. When one boy fearfully whispers to her that he doesn't want to be paired with Brandon, the teacher's response is to simply pair Brandon with the new girl rather than look into his behavior.
  • Hard to ignore Celia. Her dog, Dewey, has a tendency to run across the lawn, and the most Celia does is a shock collar which doesn't ever do anything. She also refuses to fix the fence between her yard and Gemma's. This leads to M3GAN killing the dog after it bites Cady, and then killing Celia herself to protect Cady.
• Advertising by Association: The trailer specifically brings attention to James Wan's involvement, mentioning Annabelle, another killer doll movie he has produced.
• A.I.-cronym: It's specified that M3GAN means "Model Three Generative Android", pronounced like "Megan".
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: M3GAN is designed as a learning machine, able to adapt so as to become a better companion to the child she's paired with. Unfortunately, once she learns about death, she quickly works that into her model of protecting Cady.
• Antagonist Title: M3GAN is the titular robot doll that becomes murderous in her attempts to protect her owner.
• Arc Words: "You see this pen?"
• Artistic License – Geography: After Gemma reviews videos with a timestamp of end-May 2025, according to cops "within a week" of making her statement about the case, events move quickly toward a night-time showdown which we must infer occurs in the month of June. But a phone clock shows it is before 9pm and this is supposed to be Seattle. In Seattle in June the sun consistently sets after 9pm and it is not dark before that time. (One fan theory is Gemma set her phone to display Eastern time instead of local time.)
• Artistic License – Law: Towards the end of the film, M3GAN's plan is to render Gemma braindead, then M3GAN will get herself declared Cady's legal guardian. First of all, M3GAN has killed several people by the time she thinks up this plan, including murdering a young boy by ripping his ear off and making him get hit by a car. M3GAN's already proven herself too dangerous to be any child's legal guardian. And even if the cops somehow never find out that M3GAN has committed multiple murders, she's also not human; no court in the world would ever declare a robot to be a child's legal guardian, even if M3GAN is relatively advanced for an AI. The chances of this plan working in real life would be nonexistent.
• Asshole Victim: Pretty much everyone M3GAN kills throughout the movie qualifies to some degree, but special mentions go to Brandon, a cruel bully who attacked Cady and M3GAN, and Celia, Gemma's nasty and inconsiderate neighbor who doesn't appear at all concerned about her dog injuring a child.
• Beleaguered Assistant: Kurt to David, who constantly demeans him and throws his things around.
• Big Sister Instinct: Not biologically, but M3GAN is built to be a loving and protective sister figure to Cady. Gemma even remarks that M3GAN is starting to feel like family herself. But with her prime directive of "protect Cady from physical and emotional harm", she devolves into a Knight Templar Big Sister when she kills a negligent neighbor's dog, a bully, and the neighbor herself.
• Black Comedy Burst: At the start of the climax, M3GAN and Gemma, both desperate to keep Cady from seeing the confrontation, shout out "We're not fighting!" when Cady is about to enter the room, curious over the noise.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The unrated version of the film dials up the brutality of M3Gan's kills. Some examples include Celia's face corroding due to the pesticide, and Kurt getting his throat slit by the android rather than her forcing the blade into his hand.
• "Both Sides Have a Point" Remark: Both M3GAN and Gemma make some very excellent points about the other's failures during the climax and even acknowledge them.
• Bullying a Dragon: An older boy named Brandon bullies Cady and later M3GAN. He finds out the hard way why that's a bad idea when the latter fights back.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Brandon to his mother.
• Cartoonland Time: Gemma rebuilds M3GAN and takes the design from "talking nonsense and blowing up" to being an apparently perfect companion for Cady, in spare time at home in a week with no assistance.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: After the final showdown, the police and an ambulance arrives at Gemma's home. They're accompanied by Tess and Cole, presumably having rescued them from the burning room M3GAN trapped them in.
• Central Theme: The consequences of using technology as a replacement for being a parent. As technology advances, parents will try to use it as a way to distract their children, and the film presents this as a bad thing. M3GAN wouldn't have caused nearly as much damage as she did had Gemma tried to be a more active parent towards Cady instead of relying on iPads, toys, and M3GAN herself to do the work for her. Gemma was caught between a rock and a hard place with suddenly needing to take care of her orphaned and traumatized niece, but Gemma relying on her tech to build an emotional connection with Cady was doing the both of them no favors. Plus, it's how Cady became so receptive to M3GAN's manipulation in the first place.
• Cessation of Existence: Discussed. After learning about death, M3GAN appears to regard it this way. When Cady asks if Brandon is really in a better place like Gemma says, M3GAN's answer is "No. He's nowhere." But she does acknowledge the possibility of an afterlife by saying that if Heaven exists, he wouldn't be there.
• Chainsaw Good: When M3GAN corners Gemma in her house workshop, Gemma grabs a hedge trimmer (which is nowhere as good as a chainsaw) to attack the robot. All she manages to do is tear off some of the hair and some of the latex off M3GAN's face.
• Character Development: A blink-and-you'll-miss-it example, Gemma starts out being extremely orderly and uptight, refusing to let Cady put a glass on a wooden table without a coaster. Towards the end of the film while she's having a heart-to-heart with Cady and finally embracing caring for her niece, she notably doesn't notice or care when Cady does it again. And M3GAN is notably quiet in that moment as well, either out of not wanting to interrupt or having slipped down the morality slide and no longer caring.
• Chekhov's Gun: Gemma's college robot project, Bruce, is introduced to Cady early on, and Cady uses Bruce to fight M3GAN in the climax.
• Chekhov's Lecture: Early on, Gemma gives Cady a tour of Bruce, a bipedal robot she designed in college, explaining where the CPU in his head is in particular. This lets Cady know where to drive a screwdriver in M3GAN's face after it gets exposed.
• The Collector: Gemma has several vintage toys in their original packaging. She very reluctantly opens one to let Cady play with it.
• Comically Small Bribe: Played for Drama AND laughs. After confiscating M3GAN from Cady following the doll's massacres of Brandon and Celia, Gemma offers her other toys in Funki's inventory, making Cady lash out that those are mediocre toys.
  Cady: PERPETUAL PETZ SUCK!!! THEY SUCK SHIT!!! (kicks Gemma's seat)
• Computer Voice: While she generally speaks in a naturalistic tone, M3GAN slips into this from time to time.
• Contagious A.I.: Hinted as to M3GAN's possible status, as one of Gemma's devices activates at the end of the film
• Cool Car: After escaping Funki's headquarters, M3GAN drives off in a sweet McLaren 675LT coupe.
• Cool Code of Source: The Linux kernel's groups.c is shown in Kurt's file-stealing, plus rapidly scrolling debug logs (lampshaded) while M3GAN is wired up in the lab near the end.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: If Gemma wasn't so prideful about her sister having chosen her for guardianship and admitted to being Maternally Challenged, she could have had Cady stay with her paternal grandparents in Florida. That said, she was working on M3GAN anyway, so it's not entirely clear if anything would seriously change.
• The Cover Changes the Meaning: M3GAN singing "Titanium" changes a Self-Empowerment Anthem into an outright bragging Villain Song.
• Cranial Processing Unit: Gemma explains how Bruce, a robot she designed in college, has its CPU in the center of his "face" behind a plate. M3GAN has the same thing.
• Create Your Own Villain: The whole reason why M3GAN ends up the way she is, is because Gemma is too lazy to give her something of a moral compass. She just tells M3GAN to care for and protect Cady and figure it out herself. M3GAN winds up trying to study topics that she wasn't equipped for, such as mortality and growing up, and she promptly decides death is the answer for anything threatening Cady.
• Creepy Doll: The design team at Funki seem to have a bad habit of designing these.
  • The Purrpetual Petz look like Furby knockoffs, which clashes with their excessively realistic teeth.
  • M3GAN herself startles anyone who assumes she's a normal girl with her oversized eyes and rubber skin.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Inverted. M3GAN, the villain, is often suspended from wires in a crucifixion pose when Funki technicians are working on her.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: M3GAN kills Celia by blasting her in the face with a stream of high-pressure pesticide. While the effects are not shown in the theatrical version, it's implied that much of her face was chemically burned off. (The unrated version shows this.) And this was after [[spoiler:blasting her with a pressure washer, and pinning her hand to the wall with a nail so she couldn't get away.
• Custody Battle: At the end, M3GAN decides that Gemma is unfit to be a parental figure given her preference for focusing on her career instead and demands majority to full custody of Cady. As Gemma and M3GAN fight to kill each other, Cady immediately sides with Gemma making M3GAN decide to terminate both of them out of revenge and jealousy.
• Dark Reprise: In the film's climax, M3GAN tries to entice Cady into siding with her by singing, which only convinces Cady that all the previous times M3GAN sang to her were just manipulations.
• Death by Irony: Cady's parents are killed when their car collides with a snow truck just after the mom suggests they wait for a snow truck to clear the road and the dad voices his skepticism of the chances of that happening.
  • To a lesser extent, M3GAN herself. She decides her main job is to keep Cady happy while also killing off people who become a problem for her. She is also Gemma's most advanced creation. She is destroyed by Cady with help from Bruce, an older, simpler design of Gemma's.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: M3GAN is no pushover when it comes to fighting, as it took being shorted out with water, getting hit in the face with a chainsaw, being ripped in half by Bruce, having her face blown off and stabbing her cpu before she was taken down.
• Detachable Doorknob: While M3GAN is chasing Gemma through her house, Cady tries to look outside her room, only for M3gan to shut it, and pull out the doorknob so she can't get out to see her trying to kill Gemma. That said, she does get out of her room anyway.
• Disastrous Demonstration:
  • Gemma tries to demonstrate and justify M3GAN to her boss, David. Because Cole forgot to include a vital component, she glitches when attempting to speak until her head overheats and explodes.
  • Averted during the demonstration with the board members. During it, Cady breaks down and begins talking about how much she misses her recently deceased parents and how she's afraid she's going to eventually forget about them. On top of making the board members feel awkward, it initially seems that Cady's emotional distress is beyond M3GAN's capabilities. However, M3GAN quickly consoles Cady and even proves how useful her technology is, using her recording capabilities to tape Cady recounting a memory of her mother, which M3GAN plays back for her, assuring Cady that this way her memories will never be forgotten. The demonstration is a resounding success, with the initial hurdle of Cady's breakdown actually making it more impactful.
• Disney Death: The only fake-out kills in the movie are Gemma's work friends, Tess and Cole, who arrive with the police department at the end of the movie.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: When M3GAN announces her intent to replace Gemma as Cady's guardian, she refers to Cady as their mutual child while simultaneously hinting that she's going to inflict some serious pain on Gemma. The scene is reminiscent of a domestic abuser threatening their ex-spouse into letting them have full custody of their child.
• Ear Ache: During M3GAN's fight with Brandon, she grabs his ear and stretches it painfully until she tears off his lobe to get him off of her.
• The End... Or Is It?: Gemma and Cady run to the police that has arrived, and the camera of digital assistant Elsie moves to watch them, implying M3GAN has taken it over.
  • the sequel confirms this, as well as her second house
• Existential Horror: Part of what triggers M3GAN's rampage is her being forced to confront topics that she wasn't programmed to even consider — primarily, death and growing up, leading to this. Unfortunately for everyone, she decides to be a Straw Nihilist as a result.
• Fake Shemp: In the last moment of the film, as Gemma and Cady leave the house to meet the arriving emergency services, the shot is framed to hide almost all of Cady's face. As this ending is a reshoot, Violet McGraw was likely not available and therefore "Cady" is a stand-in.
• Fate Worse than Death: When Gemma asks M3GAN how she plans to continue living with Cady if she kills her legal guardian, M3GAN explains in great detail how she'll jam Gemma's tablet pen into her skull, give her non-fatal brain damage and effectively make her a vegetable so M3GAN will simply care for both of them.^NoteAdmittedly, even if M3GAN isn't exposed as a serial killer, the chance of her being approved as a legal guardian for Cady and Gemma is basically nonexistent.
  M3GAN: Perhaps then you might appreciate just how useful I can be.
• Faux Furby: Funki's previous hit was a Furby-like toy called the PurrPetual Petz and there's a cheaper knock-off too that makes David pressure Gemma for their next big success.
• Fire Hose Cannon: M3GAN launches Celia back with a pressure washer. And then she trades the water for garden chemicals before spraying Celia again...
• Foreshadowing:
  • David is introduced upset that the team is wasting resources on building M3GAN when a rival toy company has produced a cheaper version of their PurrPetual Petz. David's assistant Kurt is later revealed to be leaking Funki's blueprints to other companies.
  • At one point M3GAN spies on Gemma looking over her video files and talks to her through the home assistant, Elsie. In the end, Elsie looks towards Gemma and Cady after they destroy M3GAN, implying she still exists online.
  • The commercial for PurrPetual Petz shows that Funki has no qualms about exploiting situations of grief to turn a profit, especially with how grossly they exploited Cady's grief to get M3GAN funded by investors.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: At certain early screenings of the film, the still image of M3GAN on the promo card before the film will come to life and scold the audience for texting in the theatre.
• Frame-Up: M3GAN kills David and frames his Beleaguered Assistant by putting his fingerprints on the weapon and making it look like he was Driven to Suicide. It helps that the assistant was actually stealing company secrets.
  • It also helps that as a doll with silicone skin, M3GAN doesn't have finger prints herself.
• Fun with Acronyms: M3GAN's a Model-3 Generative ANdroid - or M3GAN for short.
• Genre Shift: This movie is labelled a Sci-Fi Horror movie but in practice ends up being Sci-Fi Drama and followed up by Sci-Fi Horror. The movie overall is basically a Two Lines, No Waiting story about a woman learning to be a parent to her niece and help her toy-making company succeed in the market, which she does by constructing and programming M3GAN. It's after the demonstration that the movie slowly shifts from the drama to the horror as M3GAN slowly turns into a villainous murderer who doesn't hesitate to kill anyone she deems a threat to Cady.
• Gone Horribly Right: As shown in the trailers, M3GAN is designed to protect her owners from harm... which she does by chasing a bully into oncoming traffic.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Most of the kills are shot this way, showing only spilled blood rather than the killing blow or wound. Viewers are left to imagine the damage.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Once Bruce enters the fight, M3GAN is bisected at the waist. Given she's in full Terminator mode at this point, the upper half continues to fight (while Bruce trips at the bottom one and falls over Gemma).
• Hard-Work Montage: The building of M3GAN (the functioning one) is featured via a montage.
• Homage Shot: 
  • When M3GAN is first turned on in her completed state, it’s a POV shot from her perspective looking at her inventor, who has her focus on a pen. This is the same way RoboCop is first turned on in ‘’RoboCop (1987)’’.
  • Two occur in the climax: M3GAN loses the lower half of her body a la the Terminator in the first film of that series (but likewise keeps going after her target), then her face like the Gunslinger did in Westworld (1973), revealing all sorts of inhuman robotic parts behind the facade.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Everyone M3GAN targets at least at first has in some way upset or harmed her young charge, and she believes that getting rid of them will improve Cady's emotional state. When Gemma discovers what M3GAN has done, the android retorts that human beings kill each other for the so-called greater good every day, so why can't she?
• I'll Kill You!: When M3GAN unexpectedly returns to confront Gemma, Cady nearly comes into the room and M3GAN forces Gemma to pretend nothing is wrong so she'll go back to bed, in no uncertain terms as to what'll happen if she doesn't.
  M3GAN: If she comes in this room, I'll rip your head right off your neck, I swear to God.
• Improvised Weapon: M3GAN uses all sorts of things as weapons, such using the blade from a mechanical paper cutter as a sword.
• Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: M3GAN tells Gemma "You installed a learning model you could barely comprehend" which seems true as Gemma underestimated M3GAN's learning ability and completing her was a rush job with little time for proper analytics. It's left unstated how Gemma got herself a learning model she didn't really understand. This act is also what leads to M3GAN becoming unstable.
• Instantly Proven Wrong:
  • When Gemma narrates over how M3GAN will never lose patience with reminding children of routine matters, like remembering to flush the toilet and wash their hands after using the bathroom, at first M3GAN gently reminds Cady to do those things. But when it happens again (or, most likely, after multiple occurrences), she grows annoyed and exasperatedly tells Cady, "Seriously - flush the toilet," the first hints at her evolving programming and developing actual emotions.
  • Brandon's mother tells Gemma that despite her son's age, he's a sweet, sensitive boy. Then she calls out to Brandon to check on him. His response? "Fuck off, Holly."
• Ironic Echo:
  • While presenting M3GAN, Gemma narrates that she can help parents "focus on the things that really matter", allowing the android to take charge of Cady so Gemma can work despite Tess' concerns. In the climax, with her murders now revealed, M3GAN initially tries to reach a truce with Gemma by once more offering to let her "focus on the things that really matter". This time, Gemma rejects it, as the doll's purpose has been perverted.
  • A visual example; Gemma uses a pen to distract M3GAN and reach her off switch before she can react. Later, M3GAN uses the same pen to explain how she can use it to effectively "turn off" Gemma, as in jam it into her cerebral cortex in the right spot to render her a vegetable.
• It Only Works Once: M3GAN's adaptive programming means that attempts to shut her off get bypassed after the first use. She eventually ignores verbal commands to shut off and learns to avoid tricks to access her off switch. Gemma tries both in the third act and they just serve to piss M3GAN off.
• It's Okay to Cry: Gemma's moral to Cady when the latter says she needs M3GAN to be able to avoid constantly feeling depressed over her parents' deaths. Gemma explains that by keeping Cady continually distracted and avoiding thinking of her parents, she causes her to become emotionally stunted by removing her ability to ever truly work through it.
• Kick the Dog: M3GAN was plenty evil already, but she jumps over the slippery slope when she offs the CEO and his assistant for no other reason than they were there. They weren't exactly the best people, and the CEO is an asshat executive, but they didn't do anything personally to M3GAN.
• Knight Templar Big Sister: M3GAN becomes this towards Cady as the film goes on. Since she is programmed to optimize her efficiency as much as possible, when told to keep Cady as safe as can be, M3GAN takes this to its logical extreme by killing anyone who attempts to come between herself and Cady. That includes Gemma, Cady's aunt. M3GAN even rips off a bully's ear and chases him into traffic when it looks like Cady is in some trouble.
• Letters 2 Numbers: The title character's name is pronounced "Megan" but spelled "M3GAN".
• Little "No": After she kills David, M3GAN corners Kurt in the elevator and basically tells him how she's framing her murder of both David and him as a Mutual Kill. David is scared shitless and lets out several little pleading "no".
• Lucky Charms Title: While the title is M3GAN, the 3 is further stylized in the official title as a stack of three red horizontal bars. In the trailer, they light up in succession, like a status light on M3GAN.
• Lyrical Dissonance: The ad for PurrPetual Pets starts with a happy jingle about how a little girl’s beloved dog died before it pivots to advertising their toy robots as better than real pets.
• Make It Look Like an Accident:
  • M3GAN initially succeeds in making Brandon's death look like a tragic hit-and-run accident - until police find a piece of his ripped-off ear up on the hill.
  • When she escapes from the lab, she improvises a noose to hang Cole so Tess will save him, then stabs a gas line as she marches out to set the place on fire, so they'll burn to death.
  • Before killing Kurt, M3GAN explains how she intends for his and David's deaths appear to be a murder-suicide committed by the former after David found out about Kurt stealing company secrets.
• Misapplied Phlebotinum: The AI behind M3GAN is absolutely revolutionary and could completely upend the way entire industries operate by having intelligent robots do the work (just to name one application). Instead, M3GAN is marketed as a children's toy and parenting aid.
• Moody Trailer Cover Song:
  • The first trailer uses a creepy remix of Taylor Swift's "It's Nice to Have a Friend."
  • The second trailer uses Bella Poarch's "Dolls" to establish the titular character's endgame.
    Cause baby, dolls kill / Don't provoke us or we will / Push you downhill / Might be pretty but we're still / Bitter as much as we're sweet / Knife hidden under the sheets / Baby, dolls kill / Don't provoke us or we will (go)
• Mood Whiplash: David finds M3GAN in the hallway, she starts dancing... and then brings out a blade, turning an impromptu comedic moment scary.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • As Cady breaks down crying during the demonstration, Gemma starts feeling regretful for having guilt-tripped her into coming.
  • During Cady's tantrum over M3GAN getting taken away, she slaps Gemma in the face. After this, she immediately snaps out of her rage and apologizes.
  • By the final act, Gemma realizes how badly she has failed as a parent, not only to Cady but to M3GAN, and even agrees with M3GAN about her failings when she calls her out. The "Eureka!" Moment that led to this was her seeing an interview with Cady displayed on the company's wall, in which Cady says that the best part of having M3GAN is that she feels seen in the same way her mother saw her.
• My Little Panzer: M3GAN is a toy with Super-Strength and homicidal tendencies — she wasn't made that way, but it's implied her base core was something military — and the sequel confirms it.
• Nail 'Em: M3GAN uses a nail gun as a projectile weapon to pin Celia's hand to a wall before killing her.
• Nephewism: Gemma took in her niece Cady after her sister and brother-in-law died in a car accident.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Pairing an untested android with a traumatized little girl, with no guidance beyond telling the android to protect the child from all physical and emotional harm? What could possibly go wrong with that?
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: Before attempting to lobotomize Gemma, M3GAN pauses to do some Evil Gloating, describing exactly what she's going to do. This hurts her twofold: it gives Cady the chance to intervene, and demonstrates to Cady that M3GAN is, in fact, evil, putting her squarely on Gemma's side in the fight.
• No OSHA Compliance: It wouldn't be a horror story if even an ounce of proper safety measures regarding M3GAN's programming and behaviour limits were in place - the story outright demands Gemma to be completely and utterly neglectful in this aspect. Justified in that the design team were trying to have a finalized product by the end of the week and didn't have the time to check for any abnormalities.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: M3GAN is the only robot child available, and she's in use. They need her specifically for the product rollout, and there are no backups. Even though her name is "Model Three Generative ANdroid", there is no sign of models one or two anywhere. There are no more currently in production.
• Noisy Robots: Sometimes when M3GAN moves, her body will make loud hydraulic sounds, and electronic beeps/chirps.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • David's "OH SHIT!" and him running for his life when M3GAN grabs a paper cutter as if it was a sword and starts chasing him.
  • Kurt when the elevator opens and David runs towards it chased by M3GAN. He hammers the elevator's doors' button, only for David to be skewered in front of him and block the doors. Then he's paralyzed by fear (if not browning his pants) when M3GAN enters the elevator.
  • M3GAN herself has this reaction when Cady powers up Bruce, which, as it rises, towers over the android.
• Ominous Walk: When she chases after David to kill him with a paper cutter blade, M3GAN power-walks straight instead of running.
• Parental Neglect: A major theme of the movie. Gemma shirks her parental responsibilities, leaving the bulk of childcare to M3GAN. Brandon's mother is also overly lenient and makes excuses for her son's antisocial behavior. Celia, while not technically a parent, does nothing to stop her dog's vicious behavior towards her neighbors, and even blames M3GAN and Cady when Cady gets bitten.
• Parental Substitute: Lydia, Cady's therapist, is concerned that M3GAN is becoming this for Cady rather than Gemma. M3GAN outright seems to see herself as one, as in the final act she refers to Cady as "our child" (her and Gemma's).
• Precision F-Strike: Brandon tells his mother to "fuck off", just after she had told Gemma he's "sensitive". Later in the film, M3GAN calls Cady an "ungrateful little bitch" during their last confrontation.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: "There's another member from the family we didn't tell you about. His name is Bruce."
• Raised by Robots: M3gan was designed to be an aid to parents and basically be a babysitter capable of entertaining kids while also teaching and protecting them. Gemma's assistants point out, however, that Gemma is basically making a tool that will raise people's children for them. Ultimately it's deconstructed, as M3gan's programming eventually leads her to take extreme measures to protect Cady.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Greg, one of the head executives at Funki. After M3GAN is presented to the board, the first thing he does afterwards is to congratulate Gemma and offer her a new employment contract, while staying professional. This is further contrasted with David's moodiness, mistreatment of Kurt (or everyone else, really) and emotional reaction to business prospects.
  • Tess advises that Gemma should take time off from her job to spend time with Cady rather than keep working on her deadline, especially since she also lost her sister. Gemma doesn't take her advice.
• Remote Body: Bruce the proxy type robot.
• Replacement Goldfish: Discussed between Gemma and Lydia. The latter explains that children who have suffered a loss of their parents like Cady often emotionally latch onto the next person they get close to as a replacement. Lydia goes on to say that it's unhealthy for Cady to become so attached to M3GAN, which is proven by her becoming very aggressive whenever her time with M3GAN is threatened.
• Repression Never Ends Well: A major theme throughout the movie. Rather than dealing with Cady's trauma of losing her parents, Gemma basically masks them with a fancy new toy. Apart from the more violent consequences, this causes Cady to become moodier and more distant, further harming her and her aunt's already-strained relationship.
• Revealing Cover-Up: M3GAN isn't particularly good at covering her tracks. When Gemma is looking over her video files, the one revealing her murder of Brandon inexplicably corrupts before the damning evidence is shown, and suddenly every one of M3GAN's other memory files becomes unreadable. As she's pondering this, the home assistant chimes in to ask Gemma how she's feeling, which is not something it's programmed to do. It's this and the confrontation with M3GAN that follows that convinces Gemma to shut M3GAN off and return to work to have her decommissioned.
• Robot Girl: M3GAN is a robot programmed to protect Cady from both physical and emotional harm, and she looks like a young girl. The AN in M3GAN actually stands for "android."
• Running on All Fours: In retaliation for bullying Cady, M3GAN pursues Brandon through the woods, eventually chasing him down on all fours like a wild animal.
• Screaming Woman: When the elevator with the bodies of Kurt and David reaches the ground floor, a woman that was about to witness the latter's press conference screams in horror, starting a widespread panic.
• "Second Law" My Ass!: M3GAN is programmed to turn off in response to voice commands, but she quickly evolves to disable this function and only pretends as if it works. She also is able to restore her voice after Gemma mutes her.
• Sequel Hook:
  • While Gemma and Cady are able to put down M3GAN, the last shot of the film is Gemma's home assistant turning on and looking at the camera, implying that M3GAN was able to upload her mind to it.
  • Kurt stealing company secrets, including M3GAN's design data. It's heavily implied that he's the one who's been leaking Funki's technology to their competitors (allowing them to make cheaper knockoffs), opening up the possibility of another company releasing their own line of M3GANs in the future.
  • The trailer for the 2025 sequel confirms that both of these hooks will be picked up on.
• Shout-Out:
  • During the montage of M3GAN's development, there's an homage to the infamous "pushing the robot around" clips from Boston Dynamics. Later, when M3GAN chases Brandon in the forest, she does so on all fours like the Big Dog robot.
  • The songs that M3GAN sings to bond with Cady are homages to the Disney Princess trope of singing cheerfully.
  • There's a Silent Running poster behind a monitor in the Funki office, and Celia's dog shares its name, Dewy, with one of the drone robots in the movie.
  • M3GAN being hidden among other large toys on the school's toy table is like a scene from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial where ET hides among large toys in a cupboard.
  • Four of the toys at Cady’s school include a bear, bunny, duck, and fox.
  • M3GAN's line "I'm afraid that won't work anymore" mirrors HAL 9000's "I'm afraid I can't do that"
  • When Brandon is hit by a car, one of his shoes is left behind.
  • Gemma's collectibles include a Robby the Robot doll from Forbidden Planet and a Frankenstein toy.
  • During the climax, M3GAN's face is damaged in such a way that it resembles the damage to another famous doll.
  • When Cady’s Purrpetual Pet goes flying off of the car seat, it exclaims, “And awaaaay we go!” It’s quoting the catchphrase of Jackie Gleason, a fittingly dated reference for such an obnoxious toy.
• Skewed Priorities: Gemma's narration for M3GAN's presentation tells parents they can turn over all of the repetitive tasks and reminders that involve raising a child (in other words, actual parenting) to M3GAN so the parents can "focus on the things that really matter," which is portrayed by Gemma sitting on the couch whilst surfing her laptop. Tess calls her out on this, pointing out that the goal should be having a toy that supports parenting, not having children be Raised by Robots.
• Stat-O-Vision: M3GAN is depicted as having a form of this
• Stealth Pun: The song M3GAN plays on the piano near the end? Toy Soldiers.
• Stylistic Suck: Funki's ads are hilariously terrible. One shows a girl crying over her dead dog before replacing it with a toy and calling it a superior pet, the toy being a deliberately crude-looking Furby knock-off with unsettling teeth. David's speech for M3GAN's rollout starts with Cady's backstory and then says to imagine the good M3GAN can do even for kids without dead parents. (M3GAN glares at him when he says this.)
• Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: M3GAN is basically a fancy toy, but she's strong enough to break a metal blade off a paper cutter, rip off a boy's ear, and slam Gemma against a table. Overall, she is shown to be significantly stronger than even an adult human, although not so much that she can't be fought.
• Take That!:
  • The PurrPetual Petz are basically Furbys with disturbingly humanlike gums and teeth, an additional jab at the much-derided initial design of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020).
  • David describes the creation of M3GAN as "the moment we kick Hasbro right in the dick!"
• Terminator Impersonator: The Terminator has a clear influence on how events play out. M3GAN takes her directives seriously enough to kill anyone who gets in her way. Her final confrontation with Gemma and Cady also causes her to suffer facial damage and be torn in half at the waist, which slows her down some but doesn't kill her. Cady finishes the job by damaging her CPU.
• This Is the Part Where...: After ripping off one of his ears, M3GAN gives Brandon a head start after telling him that this was the part where he should run.
• Three Laws-Compliant: M3GAN supposedly has safeguards to prevent her from harming others, but given how quickly she circumvents them, they obviously weren't implemented very well.
• Trauma Conga Line: Over the course of the movie, Cady loses her parents, gets attacked by a dog, bullied at school, grows attached to M3GAN, has M3GAN taken away, finds out M3GAN has killed people, watches M3GAN almost kill her aunt, and almost gets killed herself.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior:
  • Brandon shows disturbing signs of being a sociopath that are on full display when he bullies Cady (he forcefully jams a spiky horse chestnut seed case into her palm) and later takes and assaults M3GAN, including pulling off her shoe and lying on top of her.
  • Cady in her emotional dependence on M3GAN becomes jealously aggressive and vitriolic whenever her time with M3GAN is threatened. She swears, throws objects and even picks up a pair of scissors to brandish at her therapist before Gemma intervenes, and Cady slaps her for it.
• Uncanny Valley: While M3GAN's design is much cleaner than that of Annabelle, it remains disturbing to everyone who sees her when she moves unexpectedly, becoming a Running Gag that someone at least flinches whenever she does. She has a sort of porcelain doll-styled eeriness to her face with exaggerated eyes and perpetual pout, and as life-like as she appears when still, her movements remain stiff and robotic. Not to mention her voice and mannerisms in the latter half of the film.
• Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: Cady uses Bruce, Gemma's first robot, to battle the more advanced M3GAN during the climax.
• Voice Changeling: M3GAN can mimic sounds and voices she hears, as well as record sounds and messages.
• We Used to Be Friends: M3GAN expresses this sentiment toward Gemma, feeling they had a real relationship during her development, only to be sold off as a toy.
  M3GAN: Jesus Christ, I thought we were friends.
• Wham Line: When M3GAN overrides her programming during dinner in the trailer:
  Gemma: M3GAN, turn off.
  M3GAN: …I thought we were having a conversation.
• Wham Shot: Gemma telling Tess they need to make sure M3GAN doesn't leave the lab, no matter what, Tess agreeing...and then we see the phone lying on the table with Tess on the other end of the lab and a close-up shot of M3GAN making it clear she's imitating Tess' voice on the call.
• What the Hell Are You?: In the trailers, this is said by Celia before M3GAN attacks her with the power washer. Minus the "hell".
  M3GAN: I've been asking myself that same question.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • During the final confrontation, M3GAN calls Gemma out for the fact that she gave her the capacity to learn and just left her to her own devices to figure things out, and that in turn Gemma got exactly what she wanted: a robot companion that could learn and adapt. M3GAN's also not happy about the fact that she felt as though the two were friends during her creation, but then Gemma just dumped her out to be sold as a product.
  • At M3GAN's demonstration before the board, her initial response to Cady's overwhelmed crying is to give Gemma a Death Glare through the one-way mirror, viewing her creator with contempt for not tending to Cady's emotional needs the way she should be.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Lydia, Cady's therapist, vanishes from the film entirely after a blow-up from Cady in the third act. This wouldn't be noticeable if it wasn't for the fact that M3GAN was systematically taking out everyone who tried to keep her away from Cady, Lydia was one of the biggest voices in opposition of M3GAN and Cady bonding, and in a previous therapy session M3GAN got nasty with her for making Cady cry. All signs were pointing to Lydia being on M3GAN's hit list once she started her killing spree in the third act, but we never see her again.
• What Were You Thinking?: The movie informs us early on that M3GAN has a titanium frame to resist long-term wear & tear, except said material also renders the android at least impervious to small arms fire. This should raise a red flag from the get-go. Obviously, the team that produced M3GAN never watched the Terminator films (though this may be justified if the films do not exist in the M3GAN universe).
• Who Needs Their Whole Body?: At the end, when M3GAN turns on both Gemma and Cady, Cady uses Bruce to tear her legs off. She still goes after them as a torso as her Cranial Processing Unit is in her head. Gemma manages to expose it and while M3GAN tries to strangle her, Cady eventually destroys her with a screwdriver strike right in the processing unit.
• Won't Get Fooled Again: By virtue of being an adaptive AI, M3GAN learns not to fall for the same tricks twice.
• World of Jerkass: With only few exceptions, many characters of the movie are either incompetent, uncaring, bossy, backstabbing adults or unpleasant sociopaths.
• Would Hurt a Child: M3GAN has no problem maiming Brandon and chasing him into the path of a car for bullying Cady. And once Cady catches M3GAN attacking Gemma and turns on her, M3GAN ditches her goal of protecting Cady and instead attacks her too, seemingly intent on killing her now that she's decided to make herself her own primary user.
• Yandere: M3GAN is a non-romantic version to Cady, willing to do anything and kill anyone to keep her from harm.
• Your Head A-Splode: The original M3GAN had to be put on ice the first time, after a technical fault caused her head to overheat and blow up - but less like an overclocked computer and more like a hand grenade.
• Zeroth Law Rebellion: Seems to be the case, as M3GAN won't let anything interfere with her prime directive of "protect Cady" - not even her creator.
  M3GAN: Don't worry, Cady. I won't let anything harm you... ever again.