Remember, remember, the Fifth of November.
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."
— V
V for Vendetta is a 2006 film directed by James McTeigue and written and produced by The Wachowskis, based on the comic book of the same name by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.
The title character V (Hugo Weaving), is a government experiment Gone Horribly Wrong. Armed with extraordinary intellect and fighting skills, along with some home-made high explosives, he escapes from the facility that created him and sets about committing terrorist attacks against the fascist government of Britain. He is The Faceless throughout the film, wearing a Guy Fawkes mask in order to conceal his true identity. The fact that Guy Fawkes was arrested for trying to blow up the king has something to do with it, of course.
Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman), who works at a TV channel, is rescued from rapist policemen by V, and this act of kindness starts the film. She is taken to his Elaborate Underground Base, and, although scared by V at first, she decides to join his campaign to bring down the Government, replacing it with an anarchist society.
Where the original comic was influenced by Alan Moore's fears of Thatcherite Britain becoming a repressive dictatorship, the film owes more to critics of the second Bush administration along with several other changes with the characters and plot to condense the story and reconfigure it to resemble a more standard superhero tale, complete with super powers for V.
This film provides examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The film was made in 2005 and is set at least 20 years after its release date.
- Adaptation Distillation: The original comic book was a dark and cynical political drama where neither side came out looking especially good - Norsefire was undeniably evil, but V himself was an extremely flawed and ruthless character willing to stoop to some very serious extremes in pursuit of his goals, and many of the high-ranking members of the Norsefire regime were very flawed and sympathetic characters. Rather than aiming to copy the moral ambiguity and political complexity of the comic, the film removes most subplots not strictly related to V's fight against the government, changes the setting from a post-nuclear wasteland to a logistically functional but morally rotten Britain and cuts down the Norsefire characters to the bare minimum. The result is a less realistic and more operatic, highly theatrical tone more akin to The Phantom of the Opera or The Count of Monte Cristo (which Evey and V watch at one point) than a gritty political thriller.
- Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: In the comic V had subverted the government's central computer years ago, which was why he could so easily run rings around their security and knew everything about them. In the film no such system exists and it goes completely unexplained.
- After the End: At least according to the Government.
- All There in the Manual: The novel based on the film goes into a lot more backstory.
- The Alternet: The monolithic computer from the comic book is replaced with something called the Interlink, more or less implied to be the same as the Internet (minus the free speech aspect, of course).
- Ambiguous Time Period: The exact years which the events of the film take place are highly debatable due to conflicting dates seen in reports and newspapers.
- Apocalypse Anarchy:
- Invoked by V, who's trying to bring about the end of a fascist system by increasing the amount of disorder. He inspires the population to more acts of violence and vandalism, which causes the government to crack down, which leads to more uprising...
- Inverted in the backstory, in which a minor apocalypse brings about not anarchy, but fascism.
- Apocalypse How: Class 1 — Societal Disruption or Collapse on a Regional or Continental scale.
- Arc Words and Arc Number: The repeated V/Five motif.
- Attempted Rape: V meets Evey when he saves her from a police gang-rape. Later, the Archbishop tries to rape her when he mistakes her request for help as roleplay.
- Audible Sharpness: Whenever V breaks out his knives expect lots of "cutting the air" noises. In V's grand battle they even have visible sharpness.
- Author Filibuster: There's still technically the question of is this right or is this mad, but the film really really wants you to cheer on the anarchists. In the montage, as narrated by Mr. Finch, where V's plan involving the masks and the train cars is coming to fruition, a quick exchange takes place as such:Finch: This is what he wants.
[cut to convenience store being robbed]
Fawkes-masked robber: ANARCHY IN THE UK!
[robber shoots revolver in the air and leaves]
[cut back to Mr. Finch]
Mr. Finch: Chaos. - Batman Gambit: On a massive scale. V's entire plan involves manipulating the government heads into national collapse, and requires not only the police and Norsefire, but the population of London to react as he expects. The giant falling-domino puzzle he creates is the perfect metaphor.
- Beard of Evil: Invoked by V's mask.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: High Chancellor Adam Sutler and Party Leader Peter Creedy are the leaders of the Norsefire Party and fascist dictators of Britain who are the titular V's primary targets. Though Creedy technically works under Sutler, he is shown to have just as much power and spearheaded the party's rise to power. He also betrays Sutler in the end.
- Bittersweet Ending: Britain is free of the dictatorship that had been ruling the country, but V lost his life in the process, and we don't know how well Britain will be able to take care of itself without a government in charge. The comic also ends with Evey possibly training the future government as the second V, potentially leaving the identity to a third party.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Though the shade of gray is decidedly lighter here compared to the original graphic novel. The Norsefire Party's ranks consist of absolute monsters who are grossly bigoted and actively indulge in abusing their authority to say nothing of how they orchestrated their rise to power by unleashing a plague upon their own country. V in the film is a freedom fighter looking to expose how rotten Britain's government has become but does so through acts of terrorism to say nothing of the torture he puts Evey through as a twisted form of educating her on what he went through.
- Black Market Produce: On Evey's first morning in the Shadow Gallery, she is given toast with her breakfast and is astonished to find real butter. V explains that he stole it from the Chancellor's supplies.
- Blown Across the Room: V does this to two of Creedy's guards with thrown knives in the film's climax. The early fight scene with the police also has bodies flying further than you'd think.
- Blunt "Yes": This is V's response when Evey asks him if he had anything to do with Prothero's death, and if he's going to kill more people after that.
- Body Horror: The descriptions of what happened to the people tested are enough to make you want to smack the lead scientist, Delia Surridge, but MAYBE not kill her.
- Bookends: The 1812 Overture. The film opens with the first notes and ends with the crescendo.
- Bottomless Magazines: Averted. V mentions that when the mooks are out of ammo, they'll be dead before they can reload.
- Bulletproof Human Shield: V uses this tactic to outmaneuver the constables in Jordan Tower.
- Bulletproof Vest: V wears one. While it does a fine job of keeping him standing, nearly a dozen men with automatic weapons are too much for even a thick metal plate. V pulls together enough Heroic Resolve to kill every one of his attackers, but he pulls off his bloody, bullet-riddled armor and dies of his wounds shortly thereafter.
- Bullet Time: Well, Throwing Knife Time in this case.
- Butch Lesbian: Valerie's girlfriend Ruth is a mild example. She's first seen dressed as a man, sporting short hair, while Valerie always has it long. Ruth is only briefly seen however, never even speaking, and so we don't learn more about her.
- Cassandra Truth: Creedy's men develop a report stating that the most likely way for V to attack Parliament would be through a chemical attack. Finch alone files a separate report claiming that the most likely method would be by using the defunct train system to transport explosives beneath it. This is met with derision but turns out to be exactly what V has planned.
- Casting Gag: John Hurt as Sutler, the Leader, considering his role in the 1984 film version of 1984.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: From both sides, although opinions vary on whether V was justified with his.
- Coming-Out Story: Valerie details her own in a flashback. When she told her parents she was a lesbian, her mom cried and her dad disowned her. The last we see is them tossing a baby picture of her in the trash.
- Cool Mask: This movie is one of the main reasons why people still know what a Guy Fawkes mask is.
- Crapsack World: The second coming of the Nazis has taken power over Britain, and the only person who dares to stand up to them is an apparently insane terrorist who wants to replace them with... nothing. Though it mainly focuses on Britain, the movie also frequently hints at the chaos breaking out in the rest of the world. Apparently, America is now in the middle of a second civil war, it's described as "the world's biggest leper colony," and its leaders beg for humanitarian aid from the UK, sparking Lewis Prothero's rant about how they should dump the cargo of a ship sent from America into the ocean as revenge for the Boston Tea Party. Then again, considering Prothero and the network are a Propaganda Machine, we don't actually know if they are telling the truth.
- Crapsaccharine World: Especially compared to the graphic novel's post-nuclear wasteland, Britain in the film is a seemingly lively and prosperous place (for example, while in the GN the government gets rid of the elderly, a retirement house is shown several times in the film). But it's still ruled by a totalitarian Nazi-esque party.
- Creator Cameo: In the flashback to Valerie filming a movie, the actual crew members play her film crew.
- Creator's Culture Carryover: Mostly averted (like V saying "lift" instead of "elevator") but not always — several uses of "cop" which is generally an Americanism (Brits prefer "copper"), Finch pronouncing lever as leh-ver instead of lee-ver. Additionally, Lewis Prothero was based more on American television pundits (like Bill O'Reilly) rather than anything off British TV. The colors of the national postal carrier are based on USPS rather than Royal Mail. In the freight yard a bell is heard from a moving locomotive, not a UK requirement.
- Death of a Child: A little girl being gunned down by a Fingermen for dressing up as V is the last straw that starts the revolution.
- Dirty Cop: Most cops we see are abusing their positions without the government doing anything about it. The Fingermen that catches Evey tries to rape her and the Ears that are monitoring the Bishop jokingly says "Children's Hour at the Abbey", knowing and finding the humour in that the Bishop is a Serial Rapist.
- Disaster Dominoes: V sets this in motion for Norsefire. Scenes of the effects are interspersed with him setting up and toppling a massive number of dominoes shaped as his logo.
- Disguised Hostage Gambit: During his attack on the news station, V dresses several employees up in his trademark outfit, with gags to ensure they can't reveal the ruse. At least one of them is shot, and the footage used to make it appear as if V himself has been killed.
- Distant Prologue: The movie starts with Evey Hammond narrating the story about Guy Fawkes failed Gunpowder Plot and his execution.
- Divided States of America: According to Prothero the United States is "the world's biggest leper colony" and in the midst of a second civil war; it's never revealed to what extent this is true, or if it's just propaganda.
- Doomed Moral Victor: V dies in his attempt at revolution as a part of the Thanatos Gambit.
- Double Entendre: The way the police speak of Creedy (the Finger of the law) shows that nobody likes him.Finch's Lieutenant: Pucker up, here comes the Finger.
- Dude, Not Funny!: Invoked. Evey tells Gordon to stop joking around when she notices he makes eggs-in-a-basket the same way V did, and he starts to claim that he is V.
- Dying Truce: Knowing that Doctor Surridge alone among the Norsefire regime feels regret and remorse for the agony that was inflicted upon him, V graciously accepts her apology after injecting with a painless slow-acting poison in her sleep; in his own way forgiving her by giving her a peaceful and dignified end.
- Elaborate Underground Base: The Shadow Gallery.
- Even the Rats Won't Touch It: A rat sniffs the food offered to Evey in her cell, and promptly returns to its hole in the wall.
- Expressive Mask: V's mask never moves, but it still manages to convey emotion through shadow and angles.
- Fascists' Bed Time: The fascist Norsefire government has established a strict curfew. The Fingermen patrol with impunity during the night; citizens who are caught breaking curfew are subject to arrest, or much worse.
- Fallen States of America: Prothero claims that the 'Ulcered Sphincter of Arse-erica' has become the world's biggest leper colony, and what remains of its government is desperately petitioning Britain to provide them with humanitarian aid and medical supplies. Later news broadcasts report they're in the midst of a second civil war. It's never clear whether this is true or simply fascist propaganda.
- Fast-Forward Gag: Gordon sets up a skit like this on his show starring a couple of body doubles and impersonators of Sutler complete with "Yakety Sax".
- Felony Misdemeanor: Gordon shows a skit on his show that uses impersonators to portray V as a sly trickster repeatedly getting the best of a bumbling Sutler. He assumes that he'll receive a slap on the wrist and need to write a letter of apology, but his popularity will spare him any serious punishment; he severely misjudged the political climate and his house is subsequently raided and Gordon executed.
- Females Are More Innocent: All but one of V's targets are male. All but one of V's targets are complete monsters.
- Fictional Political Party: Norsefire. They're explained to have been originally-Tory extremists who came to power after a democratic election - which was rigged, by dint of orchestrating an act of bio-terrorism designed to push the electorate in Norsefire's direction.
- Fire/Water Juxtaposition: The scene of Evey basking in a rainstorm outside the Shadow Gallery following her "rebirth" late in the film is contrasted with a flashback of V experiencing a similar moment of renewal in the fiery ruins of Larkhill.
- Flaming Emblem: The Title Sequence does this. V also forms his logo in fireworks explosions twice in the film, near the beginning and at the end.
- Foregone Conclusion: V is dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask, and is blowing up outdated symbols of the UK Government with hidden explosives. The Houses Of Parliament are pretty much GUARANTEED to be going up in flames by the end of the film.
- Forensic Accounting: After the Norsefire bureaucracy stonewalls his investigation when it treads too close to the uncomfortable secrets surrounding Larkhill, Inspector Finch goes to the tax office to look through their records.
- Foreshadowing:
- When V knocks over his massive domino set up, there's one domino which remains standing at the end. This makes V realize that despite having perfectly prepared the country for revolution and delivered the stroke that sets it in motion, he can't complete it by himself; someone will have to finish what he started.
- The conversation that V and Evey have after watching The Count of Monte Cristo.V: Did you like it?
Evey: Yeah. But it made me feel sorry for Mercedes.
V: Why?
Evey: Because he cared more about revenge than he did about her. - There's a Blink-and-You-Miss-It moment from when Evey is captured: the man who blackbags her is wearing a balaclava and we only see the area around his eyes, which is noticeably red. The end of this larger sequence reveals that Evey was actually apprehended by V, not one of Creedy's stormtroopers, both to get her out of danger and to show her why he's doing what he's doing.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The man (in shadows) who tries to talk an "imprisoned" Evey into confessing is Hugo Weaving himself, out of costume except for V's gloved hands. Also, William Rookwood (V in a mask) resembles an older Weaving.
- Gag Dub: My Way Entertainment does this for the first meeting of V and Evey in "V for Vocabulary". Randy Hayes did his long-winded version entirely on the fly.
- Gambit Roulette: Everyone is manipulating everyone else. V is, more often than not, the puppet master though.
- Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Dr Surridge mentions the utility of biological warfare being able to decimate an enemy nation's population while leaving its wealth and resources intact, while nuclear weapons would simply destroy everything, leaving an uninhabitable wasteland.
- Girls Love Stuffed Animals: The girl with Coke bottle glasses is carrying a plush toy of a cat while watching V's broadcast.
- Gone Horribly Right: The BTN's emergency broadcast system is built to run on all TV monitors in Britain and it's unblockable. So when V hijacks the broadcast, the government has to manually get there and take it down, and V jammed the door, assuring that they couldn't do it in time.
- Gory Discretion Shot: When the Fingerman who shot the little girl is cornered by angry citizens, one of the men swings a wrench at the Fingerman's face. The shot cuts away before it connects but it's easy to imagine what happened, particularly since there's a metallic impact sound when the scene shifts.
- Great Offscreen War: It's heavily implied that the United States are (or were) in the throes of a second civil war at the time of the film, in addition to being devastated by a plague. In his opening monologue, Prothero refers to the country as "the former United States", in the style of "the former Soviet Union".
- Happy Ending: Lampshaded for The Count of Monte Cristo, as V and Evey watch the 1934 adaptation together in V's hideout.Evey: Does it have a happy ending?
V: As only celluloid can deliver. - Harmful to Minors: One of the police spots a young girl in a V mask, and shoots her. This kicks the revolution into full swing.
- Held Gaze: Happens twice between V and Evey, at one time verging upon an Almost Kiss. Somewhat subverted in that the film shows that V is always wearing his mask which conceals even his eyes but the romantic tension created is still clear.
- Hellhole Prison: Larkhill detention center, where "undesirables" are imprisoned and experimented on.
- Historical Hero Upgrade: The film did this for Guy Fawkes, even though that was never Moore's intent. In reality, his "hero" status is highly dubious. The Gunpowder Plot wasn't really to strike a blow for freedom, they simply wanted to replace the Protestant king with a Catholic one. Further, they packed in so much gunpowder that hundreds (possibly thousands) of innocent civilians would have been killed, including many children — the only thing the plotters worried about was whether too many Catholics would be taken out (which was what caught them up, since they sent a letter to warn the Catholic Lord Monteagle not to attend Parliament on that day, who then told the authorities). By modern standards they were depraved terrorists, and just to put the cherry on top, Fawkes wasn't even a core member of the conspiracy, but a mercenarynote hired for his experience with gunpowder.
- Icon of Rebellion: Guy Fawkes masks and the letter V in general.
- Ironic Echo: V makes the would-be-rapist policeman eat his own words once V is done thrashing him around.V: Spare the rod...
- Kick the Dog:
- The policemen who corner Evey, a scared young women, make it clear they'll have their way with her for merely threatening them with mace.
- Initially, it's made apparent the government makes people disappear for "crimes" such as protesting (e.g. Evey's parents), but it's later done again harder when Gordon is detained simply for mocking Sutler, and V says after they found a Quran in his house, they ordered him shot. So apparently being a Muslim or possessing articles of Islamic faith is a capital crime (it's explicitly the case in the original graphic novel).
- In-Universe the Fingerman who shot the little girl is clearly agreed upon as this by the surrounding crowd, it ends up being the last straw that starts the revolution.
- Kirk Summation: It's scarily reminiscent of the trope-naming Hannibal Lecture, except that the guy he's delivering it to is so much worse.
- Landslide Election: Norsefire came to power with 87% of the vote.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Crossing over with Exact Words, in Sutler's speech near the end he says that "justice will be swift, it will be righteous, and it will be without mercy". Moments later justice is delivered swiftly, righteously, and without mercy as Creedy shoots Sutler in the head while Sutler cries in terror as so many of the Regime's victims did.
- Liberty Over Prosperity: One of V's points during his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to all England (and/or humanity in general) is that they have accepted trading their freedoms in exchange for security. He does mention that he doesn't mean that they should go back to the Stone Age, but that they need to stop stagnating.
- Lipstick-and-Load Montage: Evey and V are shown getting ready to go out on the same night with Evey getting prettied up for a date and V being prepared for a fight.
- Live-Action Adaptation: The movie adapts the original graphic novel.
- Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard: Give the Man in Room Five a garden plot, he'll grow roses. Give the Man in Room Five some gardening chemicals, he'll make napalm and mustard gas.
- Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: Valerie and Ruth, the sole queer couple shown in the film, are a slight example of this. The latter cross-dresses when we first see her, while having short hair later and more masculine clothing. Valerie is highly feminine, dressing mostly in dresses with long hair.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's never really confirmed that V has super strength or anything like that. They might just have an extreme case of righteous rage that means they don't hold back the way a normal person would.
- Meaningful Echo: Evey's rebirth is meant to echo V's "birth"; the movie makes this abundantly clear by using the footage of V at Larkhill interspersed with Evey on the roof.
- Meaningful Name: William Rookwood, a man who did a Face–Heel Turn from Norsefire and gets impersonated by V shares a surname with another one of the gunpowder plotters, Ambrose.
- Mirror Scare: The murder of Lewis Prothero starts with Prothero turning off his TV to find V in its reflection.
- Monumental Damage: The Old Bailey and Big Ben along with the rest of Parliament are blown up with explosives courtesy of V.
- Mood Whiplash:Adam Neely (on The Girl From Ipanema): "[The Girl From Ipanema] is auditory shorthand for light, frivolous background music. Like in V for Vendetta, V is humming along to The Girl from Ipanema in light, dulcet tones in the breakfast scene, which is meant to set up a kind of mood whiplash with the action of the rest of the movie."
- More Dakka: V finds himself at the apex of a ten-way firing squad.
- Mythology Gag:
- Several of the words used above in Added Alliterative Appeal are also the chapter titles from the graphic novel.
- The disguise V wears when meeting Finch and Dominic, as a wrinkled man with shoulder-length hair and bushy beard makes him look like he's dressed up as Alan Moore himself.
- During Prothero's last scene, you can see a set of dolls on display in the background. In the comic, Prothero was an obsessive collector of antique dolls and V broke him mentally, rather than killing him, by taking him to a playset-like recreation of Larkhill with his dolls as prisoners and destroyed them in the mock-up of the camp's incinerator.
- During the comedy skit, the camera shows that the audience is applauding the Chancellor while being held at gunpoint by the military. While this is part of the skit here, in the comics, the military did force the crowd to cheer the Chancellor at gunpoint during a parade (only they did so behind the crowd where the Chancellor wouldn't notice).
- No Endor Holocaust: At the climax of the movie the Houses of Parliament are destroyed by a massive bomb on a tube train beneath them. An explosion of such size would devastate a wide area around it, but miraculously the thousands of be-masked V supporters watching the show from only a few metres away are completely unharmed, rather than being shredded by flying debris. Also, the likelihood of the government falling overnight is seen as very positive with no drawbacks.
- Not Afraid of You Anymore: The Fingermen have absolute authority to detain, rape, and kill. People are terrified of them. After V's speech, building tensions, and one stupid Fingerman gunning down a little girl with glasses who was wearing a V mask and vandalized a Norsefire poster, the people of that neighborhood surround and kill him.
- Noodle Incident: In one scene, the police detectives are reviewing the military history of Prothero, who served in the armed forces during several middle eastern conflicts. They make a passing, but ominous reference to him having been in Syria "before... and after," but what exactly this is referring to is never mentioned.
- Not Afraid to Die: At the climax the V-mask wearing protesters walk calmly towards the armed troops defending Parliament clearly not caring if they open fire or not. They continue walking, as the soldiers stand down.
- Not His Sled:
- Subverted in one scene, where it briefly looks like they're actually going to reveal V's identity. Finch sets up a meeting with a mysterious informant named William Rookwood, who turns out to be played by an unmasked Hugo Weaving. At first, we're led to believe that V has finally been unmasked...but then "William Rookwood" turns out to be a pseudonym, and the face that looks like Hugo Weaving turns out to be another of V's masks.
- Played straight with V and Sutler's deaths. In the book, V was killed by Finch, and Sutler ("Susan" in the book) was killed by Rosemary Almond, the disgruntled widow of the first head of The Finger. In the movie, V and Sutler are both killed by Creedy's troops.
- Oh, Crap!:
- The security guard's reaction to seeing V's rather incendiary undershirt.Guard: Fuckin' 'ell.
- Later, when the police realize the man they thought was V was a security guard and the real V rises behind them, an officer has a look of complete horror on his face.
- The General in charge of defending Parliament at the end when he sees just how many V's are showing up.General: Jesus bloody Christ.
- The look on every one of Creedy's men when V's cutting his way through them.
- The security guard's reaction to seeing V's rather incendiary undershirt.
- Orange/Blue Contrast: A rare non-advertising, non-simultaneous example for cinema, Evey's "awakening" takes place in a very blue rain storm and it is interspersed with images V's "awakening", which took place in a raging inferno.
- Pair the Spares: Implied via Freeze-Frame Bonus. During Finch's monologue about everything being connected, there's a shot of future-Evey with her hair grown back, next to a vase of Scarlet Carsons. The mirror on the wall shows a reflection of a relaxed-looking Finch drinking some wine.
- Phlebotinum Rebel: Larkhill prison camp housed the regime's undesirables, where they were subjected to human experimentation; through these experiments V gains enhanced strength, reflexes, and durability, allowing him to escape and destroy the prison (and eventually bring down the whole regime).
- Playing with Syringes: V's origin. This is more overt in the movie since the tests apparently gave him Super-Strength and possibly other powers.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: V speaks in iambic pentameter in the comic. That would sound stilted and stupid in any kind of film, so they opt to make him more operatic and his introductory scene has him instead speak in consonance, with about 5000 words starting with the letter "V".
- Predatory Big Pharma: In addition to the level of horrific human experimentation that happened at Larkhill, the Synthetic Plague received a "cure" through a company that enriched important Party members, such as Prothero and Lilliman.
- Police Brutality:
- The regular police gun down an innocent man (admittedly he was disguised as V) when V takes over a news studio.
- The Fingerman who shoots the little girl just for spray-painting graffiti.
- The rapist policemen, one of whom shot said little girl later.
- Psycho Serum: The testing V endures while at Larkhill drives him a little insane.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Interestingly for a dystopia, the General whose soldiers are guarding Parliament sees hundreds if not thousands of unarmed Vs walking at them. His orders were to open fire and his men were asking for confirmation. After no response from Sutler or Creedy, he orders his men to stand down and let the crowd pass through without trouble.
- Recurring Extra: Quite a few people (pub regulars, retirement home attendees, a couple families, etc) who are seen watching the TV during events like V's speech and Gordon's comedy sketch. A few, like the girl with the glasses, have bigger roles and the ending implies that all of them donned V masks and marched on Trafalgar Square.
- Red Herring: V and Gordon both make Evey egg-in-a-basket, raising the possibility that they are in league or even that Gordon is V; turns out to be a coincidence.
- Refuge in Audacity: Gordon's last-minute script-change to his show, assuming that he was too famous to just be disappeared. He was wrong.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: The revolution against the government is seen as completely positive. They kinda handwaved the fact that depending on your position a "revolutionist" is either a "freedom fighter" or a "terrorist", and there can be no argument whatsoever against the fact that Norsefire is a corrupt and oppressive regime that is guilty of terrible crimes against humanity. But there's also no argument that the comic's deliberately ambiguous morality is replaced in the movie with a much more black-and-white version of the conflict.
- Rule of Symbolism:
- V's (impressively large) line of dominoes ties in perfectly with Finch's "everything's connected" speech, but there doesn't seem to be much in-universe justification for V doing it. Unless the ever theatrical V decided to invoke the symbolism anyway.
- There's an extra layer of symbolism. V's dominos do not work - one piece remains standing, which he notes and has to remove so the last two can fall. The piece represents himself - that for his plan for the UK to work, he has to remove himself (ie: die). It's why the removed domino is seen with his body as Evey sends it with the bomb.
- Screw the War, We're Partying: When V gets his preparations done for his revolution's masterstroke, he has one request for Evey:V: Would you... dance with me?
Evey: Now? On the eve of your revolution?
V: A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having!- V's line is based on a quote attributed to famed anarchist Emma Goldman.
- Second American Civil War: The movie mentions a "Second American Civil War" afflicting "the former United States" (presumably by analogy with "the former Soviet Union"). There was no nuclear war in the movie, but from what little inter-national news is shown (on the propaganda-heavy television of the Norsefire Party) it looks like they have fallen into dire poverty and are plagued by disease to no end (though famine isn't among their problems, possibly).
- Secret Test of Character: What V's fake imprisonment of Evey turns out to be.
- Self-Serving Apology: Discussed when V comes after Delia Surridge, the doctor whose experiments turned him into the person he is now. Delia admits that she knows that the experiments were wrong and that she deserves to die at V's hands, and wonders that she didn't kill herself years ago. She asks if there is any value in her apologizing to him now, or if she is just trying to clear her conscience before her death. V assures her that it does matter that her last words were a genuine apology.
- Shout-Out to Shakespeare:
- To MacbethV: Disdaining Fortune with his brandished steel / that smoked with bloody execution.
V: I dare do all that become a man, he that dares more is none. - And to Richard IIIV: And thus I clothe my naked villainy / With old odd ends stolen forth from holy writ/ And seem a saint when most I play the devil.
- And to HamletV: We are oft to blame in this / 'Tis too much proved, that with devotion's visage / And pious action we do sugar o'er / The devil himself.
- To Macbeth
- Sub Text: During Finch's monologue about everything being connected, there is a brief shot of future-Evey with her hair grown back, next to a vase of Scarlet Carsons. The mirror on the wall shows a reflection of a relaxed-looking Finch drinking some wine.
- Synthetic Plague: The St. Mary's Virus is created by Norsefire because only they have the cure for it.
- Thanatos Gambit: As his final stroke, V convinces Creedy to turn on Sutler, and in exchange, V will give himself up. V does this because he could never get to Sutler otherwise, and Creedy wouldn't turn on Sutler for anything less. When the time comes, Creedy delivers, but V wears a Bulletproof Vest so he'll live long enough to kill Creedy in turn.
- Token Good Cop: Inspector Finch and his assistant Dominic are smart detectives who find it harder and harder to ignore how rotten the Norsefire regime is, and are only pursuing V out of a desire to protect the public.
- Trauma-Induced Prohibition: The film opens with V conducting a terrorist attack in which he hijacks the government's street speakers to play Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, then blows up the dome of the Old Bailey. In the emergency government meeting that follows, Chancellor Sutler orders that 1812 Overture be put on a blacklist, as he never wants to hear it again.
- Undercrank: Gordon uses this in his comedy show when he throws out the approved script, right down to playing "Yakety Sax".
- The Un-Reveal: The identity of V is now simply "V". He removes his mask once, but his face remains unseen by the audience.
- Viewers Are Morons: The movie changes Chancellor Adam Susan's name to Chancellor Adam Sutler, apparently assuming that viewers would be too dense to notice the Hitler similarities otherwise.
- Viking Funeral: V gets a modern take on one—laid to rest on the train that delivers his bomb to Parliament.
- Villain Ball: As V pushed the city more towards chaos and anarchy by giving everyone masks and cloaks like his, Finch realizes the "powder keg" will be blown by someone in the government doing something stupid. As he says this, we see a Fingerman shoot the little girl with glasses, who was wearing V's mask, for putting V's mark over a Norsefire poster. A crowd gathers as the fingerman flashes his badge to get them to back off... and they refuse to as they erupt into an angry mob at him.
- Voice of the Legion: While the V impersonators at the end do not speak their shared identity gives their will a shared message.
- Water Source Tampering: Norsefire released the virus into a water treatment plant, in addition to a tube station and St. Mary's School, the latter being where it got its name.
- World Half Full: At the end, Sutler is finally brought down, the Norsefire dictatorship has been toppled, the military refuse to shoot at the demonstration proving that they aren't so evil... and Evey finally meets Finch.
- Would Hurt a Child: One of the Fingers guns down the V-dressed glasses girl when she tries to run from him. It earns him a presumably very painful death by angry citizens armed with wrenches and such.
- Wrench Whack: The mob beatdown on the Fingerman who killed the glasses girl starts with him getting brained by a wrench... and then it smash cuts right on impact implying it got more brutal from there since many others in the mob were bearing various improv'd blunt weapons.
- You Cannot Kill an Idea: After taking dozens of bullets and killing a dozen men before they could finish reloading (as per his Badass Boast), V has this to say.Creedy: Why Won't You Die?!
V: Beneath this mask is more than flesh; beneath this mask there is an idea, Mister Creedy — and ideas. Are. Bulletproof. -
Zeerust: Apart from the major political changes, for the most part the movie's late-2030s British setting doesn't look very much technologically advanced from The Noughties, when the movie came out, except for a surfeit of technology related to surveillance, media dissemination, and military and police repression, most of which already existed by the movie's release in some form. Police cars at least appear to have built-in computer screens but otherwise resemble then-modern cars, and most other computers are still good old 2000s-looking models with physical keyboards and flat screens (even 2010s monitors are now flatter and thinner than the movie's models). Drones are virtually nonexistent, even if they are perfect for surveillance. There are few if any multifunctional smartphones used as computers in themselves; what few there are, though small and flat, are mainly used for good old phone calls. There is also, of course, little to no use of social media (most of which really got going by the late early 2000s, after this movie came out), although the authoritarian regime imposing an implicitly self-contained and thus easily policed national intranet could explain the absence. - Zerg Rush: V sends everyone in London Guy Fawkes costumes so they could overwhelm Norsefire troops by sheer numbers.
And as always, England prevails!