- Adaptation Displacement: Philip K. Dick is the accidental master of this trope. Some people actually prefer the movie's message, thanks to the Precrime Division being Unintentionally Unsympathetic in the original story.
- Allegedly Optimistic Ending: The government decides to abandon the precrime project and allows the precogs to gain a normal life, but a lot of crime will still occur, a lot of would-be murderers are now back on the street and free to do what they want (granted, they're under government surveillance, but regardless), and the precog children will likely take a very long time to get integrated into society. And Anderton's son is still missing.
- Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Lamar Driven to Suicide because his grand plans failed spectacularly and unexpectedly, or did he finally mentally break down from all the clandestine activities he had to perform to make Precrime work? Perhaps a combination of all of the above. More specifically, was he just panicked over being exposed for murdering Anne Lively, and/or did Anderton going berserk over his missing son being used to drive him to murder help break Lamar and start causing him to loathe what he became?
- Award Snub: Despite astounding visual effects, cinematography and score (of course one from John Williams), and being named as the best film of the year by no less than Roger Ebert, it was only nominated for a single Academy Award: Sound Editing.
- Awesome Music:
- It's a John Williams score! For a highlight, the tension of the spider scene is greatly enhanced by a track full of
"Psycho" Strings. - Bach's "Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring" is used very well.
- The video game has an actual music video of The Apex Theory's "Apossibly", a song so awesome that it was used as the background music for the "Sprawl Riot" level.
- It's a John Williams score! For a highlight, the tension of the spider scene is greatly enhanced by a track full of
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The chase sequence with the jetpack cops. Five minutes of action that is oddly comedic as we see average people, like a boy playing a saxophone, react to jetpacks flying through the housing complex.
- Delusion Conclusion: The ending is considered by some viewers to be a little too happy to be realistic; as a result, a popular theory claims that Anderton was never rescued in the climax and imagined the happy ending while under the Lotus-Eater Machine-like effects of containment. After all, Gideon stating that "all your dreams come true" when you're in cryosleep had to be there for a reason, right?
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- At a certain point, a television plays an episode of COPS, still on Fox (then sister company of the film's co-distributor). The show had a Channel Hop to Spike TV on 2013 and was cancelled, probably for good, in 2020. Albeit that one could still work given the 2010s started a trend of show revivals, so who knows if by 2054 Fox wouldn't bring Cops back?
- Ads in this film seem to know the targets' names, personal tastes, and the like. Come the age of selling users' personal information to third-party companies for advertising purposes...
- Magnificent Bastard: Lamar Burgess is the director and founder of the Precrime program, and is dedicated to expanding the program no matter the cost. In the past when Precrime was threatened by Anne Lively, Burgess hired a man to kill her, stopped the murder using Precrime, then killed her himself to ensure that the Precrime image of him killing her was dismissed as an "echo" of the first attempt. When John Anderton came close to solving Anne's murder, Lamar hired a man to pretend to be the murderer of Anderton's son so Anderton would be driven to murder him and be arrested by Precrime. When Federal Agent Danny Witwer catches on to him, Burgess promptly murders him, knowing that the system being deactivated due to Anderton's actions will allow him to get away with it. Burgess' plan nearly succeeds, as he sees Anderton arrested and Precrime is adopted nationwide before he's exposed. When faced with the impossible choice of either killing Anderton and going to prison or letting him live and discredit Precrime, Burgess manages to go out on his own terms by killing himself instead.
- Memetic Mutation: The scene where Anderton runs after his eyeballs became popular on YTMND.
- Nausea Fuel:
- The other bottle of milk and sandwich.
- The guy who does the eye transplants doesn't have very good hygiene or a clean apartment.
- Sick sticks. Likely much more effective than a nightstick, but potentially much worse if they're aiming at you. And probably incredibly painful if you have an empty stomach when you get sticked.
- One-Scene Wonder: Lots of them. The movie's got an incredibly solid supporting cast.
- Special mention to Peter Stormare who dominates his only scene as Dr. Solomon P. Eddie. It's an intensely memorable scene rife with Black Comedy derived from Stormare's hammily amusing yet skin-crawlingly creepy performance.
- As Iris Hineman, Lois Smith gives huge style and more than a hint of menace to what is basically a thankless expository single-scene role.
- The Problem with Licensed Games: The video game version, Minority Report: Everybody Runs, has a different-looking, blond Anderton, as Tom Cruise's likeness couldn't be licensed. The game only vaguely follows the plot of the movie, Anderson acts like a completely different character, and the pre-crime organization is still in place at the end. It probably has more in common with Judge Dredd than the movie. And the gameplay is quite repetitive.
- Retroactive Recognition:
- Jessica Capshaw (Spielberg's stepdaughter) has a small role as the Precrime pilot during the spider sequence; she went on to become a regular on The Practice (44 eps) and Grey's Anatomy (140+ eps).
- Lily Rush is the wife of John Anderton.
- Spiritual Successor: With its classically philosophical and futuristic themes, and its running motifs applied to eyes, while also being based on a story by Philip K. Dick, this could be considered to be an example of this trope for Blade Runner.
- Unintentionally Sympathetic: Not enough to excuse him of attempted murder, but Howard, the arrested suspect at the beginning of the film, elicits more sympathy than expected. Not only does his wife cheat on him with another man mere seconds after he leaves the house, but she also doesn't even attempt to apologize when he catches her in the act. And instead of being justifiably angry or upset, he just sounds genuinely hurt when he comments about forgetting his glasses. The fact that she doesn't react to his arrest doesn't help either.
- The Woobie: The three Precogs. They were born to Fantastic Drug addicts and spent all of their lives having nightmares about murders. Then, people started to get wind of this and whisked them off and did unmentioned (but implied to be nasty) things to them. Then the Precog system was set up, which meant that they were forced to spend years and years lying in a drugged stupor in a pool, watching endless future murders. Oh, and the one time we hear about one of the parents trying to save her child from that, she's murdered. And said child is forced to watch her own mother's death and then watch as everyone ignores it.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/MinorityReport
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