Cantonese Show Where Guy Sucks Poison Out of a Old Mans Back

1930s Shanghai is in the grip of various gangs struggling for power, with the Axe Gang being foremost. Main character Sing is an ineffectual small-time crook trying to join the Axe Gang. In doing so, he and buddy Bone attempt to command respect from the Pig Sty Alley. Their bumbling attracts the real gang, who are repelled by the unexpectedly skilled fighters: Coolie, Tailor and You-Tiao (fried dough sticks) baker. What results is an Escalating War between the Axe Gang and the (surprisingly strong) residents of the impoverished Pig Sty Alley.

Directed, led and written by famous Hong Kong comedian Stephen Chow, it is a comedic parody of and homage to Chinese Wuxia films and American musicals from the 50's, best summarised, in the words of Roger Ebert, as "like Jackie Chan and Buster Keaton meet Quentin Tarantino and Bugs Bunny". But really, it has to be seen to be believed.

Compare Shaolin Soccer and God of Cookery, from the same creator.

A sequel was set to release 2012, but apparently, that didn't happen. Stephen Chow has stated that he's been putting it on hold for other projects.

---

This movie contains examples of:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The axes used by the Axe Gang are sharp enough to cut clean through a man's leg when thrown. The harpists' invoked blades as well.
• Acrofatic: The Landlady, The Tailor, and The Beast are all middle aged and plus sized, but they're all formidable kung fu masters.
• Affectionate Parody:
  • Of Wuxia in general.
  • The "burly brawl" parody was directed by Woo-ping Yuen, the fight choreographer for The Matrix Reloaded.
  • Escape from Pig Sty Alley, Sing was chased by the Land Lady... Road Runner style!
  • When Donut is dying he manages to say, "In great power lies great responsibility."
• Age Cut: The ending, sorta. The camera pans around Sing and Fong when they meet, and the next time each of them are shown on screen, they appear as their younger versions, representing their reconciliation.
• Agony of the Feet: The foot-stomping Sing delivers to some members of the Axe Gang, and later to the Beast, in the final battle. It's so strong, their feet get flattened and you can even see the cracks underneath their feet. Ouch!
• Almighty Janitor: Basically The Movie of this trope, as all of the martial artists in the story have lowly occupations and/or appear quite wimpy until they display their powers. The five undercover masters are a tailor, a baker, a coolie (unskilled laborer) and the landlady and landlord. The barber boy flips an Axe Gang member and stuff him into a trash can in a single motion, so fast that no one can see how it's done. Even the farmer lady that is challenged by Sing can punch him hard enough to make him cough up blood. Then there's the blind musicians who are actually Musical Assassins and the Beast seems to be some sort of insane asylum patient. Sing becomes one at the end, as a he is a former two-bit crook who now runs a candy store, but is nevertheless the most powerful martial artist in the movie.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The Japanese version of Kung Fu Hustle uses "Shiwase Nara Te wo Tatakou" by Nobodyknows as the theme song. The trailers in the US made use of the song "Ballroom Blitz."
• Ambiguously Bi: In his Establishing Character Moment, the Landlord drunkenly flirts with both the Camp Gay Tailor (even giving him a Flirtatious Smack on the Ass) and one of his lady customers.
• Amusing Injuries: Sing repeatedly suffers serious injuries throughout the film (that he usually deserves) only to be fine in the next scene. At first it seems like Cartoon Physics, but he's the only character who takes that amount of punishment without dying. It's a hint that he's really a nascent kung-fu master with a massive Healing Factor.
• An Aesop: Anyone can become a hero- though, more specifically, anyone can become a hero through kindness. Sing spends most of the film an ineffectual bystander watching how the residents of Pig Sty alley continually stand up for each other, and in turn slowly drag their hidden heroes out of retirement. Sing eventually defeats the Beast not through martial arts prowess, but through kindness, which ends up giving a happy ending to everyone.
• Anger Born of Worry: It's heavily implied that the real reason the Landlady flipped out on the Three Masters and threw them out wasn't about their back rent, but because she was worried that their fight against the Axe Gang was going to get them killed. As they finally lay dying she drops her callous act, and she and her husband are revealed to be more distraught and angry than anyone.
• Animal Motifs:
  • Sing associated with butterflies. Throughout the film, Sing is shown to be a lost, incredibly inept young man with signs of potential, much like the caterpillar. When he emerges from his full-body cast, it is juxtaposed with a newly formed monarch butterfly emerging from a cocoon, symbolizing his Heel–Face Turn from an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain into an Action Hero.
  • The Beast is associated with Toads. Just outside the Beast's cell-door, there are various toads in the hallway, and in his rematch with Sing, he uses a Toad-style fighting technique. Like toads, the Beast is an unassuming, seemingly unimpressive man, surprising everyone when it shows that he is most definitely a predator with venom under his sleeves (in his case, a pair of poison-darts he keeps in his pockets). Traditionally, frogs and toads in China are seen as beasts who represent a lack of understanding and vision, which makes it all the more ironic that he is defeated by Sing after he has a vision of the Buddha in the clouds, the Buddha a figure that combats such things.
• Anything That Moves: The Landlord hits on a young girl and a Gonk within a minute of his debut. Both times, he gets interrupted by his wife.
• Arc Words: "The good cannot coexist with the bad," which is said before the Landlord, Landlady, and the Beast begin fighting are this for Sing, whose conflict comes from his innate nature as a good person with a desire to be bad because he thinks good guys can't win.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: The Beast, who claims nothing can beat him... despite wanting someone to beat him for a while. However, once he's definitively beaten, he immediately and genuinely concedes.
• Audible Sharpness: From actual blades, but more badassedly: and the harpists' sonic attacks summon blades, and at one point a zombie army wielding said blades.. Which is, of course, because they're made out of sound.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: The ferocious landlady and her lecherous husband, who have been squabbling for the entire first part of the movie (she even hits him in the head with a flower pot), band together to defend the neighborhood from the Axe Gang, fight the Beast, and nurse the movie's hero back to health. They're also named after famous lovers.
• An Axe to Grind: The Axe Gang had this as their motif.
• Back Blocking: Done oddly; when Sing and the mute girl meet each other in the denouement, the camera spins around the two; when the girl passes through the camera and obstructing Sing's view in the process, suddenly Sing turns into his younger self.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: During the first mass brawl. Provides the trope image.
• Badass Bystander
  • Low-life crook Sing discovers too late that everyone in Pig Sty Ally could kick his ass all day. Then the shy, effeminate tailor turns out to be the most badass martial artist of the lot.
  • Sing also gets his ass kicked by a random clerk he keeps making fun of for no reason on a train.
• Badass in a Nice Suit:
  • The Axe Gang uniformly dress in nice suits.
  • The Landlady and Landlord, for majority of the movie, wears pajamas and a nightgown. Until they go to fight the Axe Gang, where they have a change of clothes and look a lot more fashionable.
  • The Beast also trades in the dingy tank top, boxers & flip-flops he wore at the asylum for a tailored three-piece suit and stylish leather shoes (except he doesn't wear a shirt under the jacket).
• Bandage Mummy: Sing is reduced to this after his thorough thrashing by The Beast.
• Bath of Poverty: The slum that most of the movie takes place in has a communal fountain that some residents have to use to clean themselves... when the water's even turned on, as the landlady is prone to turning it off on a whim.
• Battle Couple: The Landlord and The Landlady.
• Beneath Notice: The entire reason why the premier martial arts masters of the time are all living in a slum doing menial jobs.
• Better Than New: The Hero gets fully healed (and becomes much more powerful than before) because being beaten nearly to death by the Big Bad turned out to awaken his Chi.
• Berserk Button: As stated above, the Beast pretty much loses his shit after Sing takes a broken post to his head. It's not from the blow, not by a long shot, it's the sheer disrespect of it all. And Sum wasn't very helpful there.
• Big Bad: Brother Sum, though he's eventually replaced by the Beast as the main antagonist after the latter kills the former.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • In the first attack on Pig Sty Alley, there are three Big Damn Heroes moments, one from each of the Three Heroes. The first is easily the most impressive, involving a lighter being caught by a coolie in a scene that would make the Firefly crew green with envy, and the hero facing off against something on the order of a hundred gangsters. The others are less impressive, but only by comparison, involving a gay tailor sending a man through a wall and beating the crap out of the gangsters swarming the first man, and a congee-making baker taking on three men armed with Thompson machine guns with a pair of blunt sticks meant to roll out dough before kicking up a dust cloud that lasts long enough for him to defeat the entire rest of the gang before it settles. Ain't they just Three Big Damn Heroes?
  • The landlords showing up at the casino, suddenly decked out in their finest and ready to do battle with the Beast.
• Big Little Man: The cowardly hero is facing down a hostile crowd, and looking for an easily beatable opponent to prove his nonexistent skills against. He calls out a runty-looking fellow who, it turns out, was sitting down, and actually taller than everyone else in the film. He then calls out a literal child from the crowd to fight instead... who turns out to be implausibly huge and muscular when he steps to the front of the others.
• Blatant Lies: At the beginning, with Sum and the Crocodile Boss' wife:

  Sum: Don't worry. I don't kill women. You can go!

  Wife: Thank you, Big Brother.

  (She turns to leave, Sum takes a shotgun and blows her away.)

• Blown Across the Room: When Sum wipes out the Crocodile Gang, he shoots the Crocodile Boss's wife in the back with a shotgun, flinging her halfway across the street.
• Book-ends: The first and last kung fu fight took place in Pig Sty Alley.
• Break the Haughty: When Sing finally defeats the Beast, he offers to teach him his technique. The Beast responds by sobbing, and then he bows and calls Sing his master.
• Bullet Catch: The Beast demonstrates that he is a Not-So-Harmless Villain Old Master by putting a gun to his own head, firing, and catching the bullet with two fingers. Any remaining dissent was silenced.
• Bully Hunter: Sing's Start of Darkness involves him getting beat up by a gang of bullies because he tried to defend a mute girl from them.
• But I Read a Book About It: Sing learned his "Buddhist Palm" technique from a book sold to him by a homeless man for $10 - the bullies even point out that it's advertised as costing $0.20. Once Sing's chi is unblocked, he is able to use the technique effectively against the Beast.
• Butterfly of Transformation: The film intercuts between a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis and Sing emerging from his cocoon of bandages, showing that he Took a Level in Badass.
• Came Back Strong: Sing is practically beaten to death, but he emerges from his cocoon of bandages as a super-powered kung fu master.
• Camp Gay: The tailor.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Brother Sum embraces his role as a villain and states that as the bad guys, the Axe Gang should be kicking everyone's asses and not the other way around.
• Casanova Wannabe: The Landlord.
• Challenge Seeker: The Beast, by virtue of being a Blood Knight.
• Challenging the Chief: Sorta. When The Beast breaks Brother Sum's neck, he apparently becomes the leader of the Axe Gang.
• The Chew Toy: Sing. He gets beaten up by a string of Badass Bystanders and, in one scene, accidentally takes three knives in the shoulders. His status as this gets subverted towards the finale, however as it turns out he only survived his injuries through being a top-tier kung-fu genius, and his final beating unlocks his latent chi.
• The Chosen One:
  • Played straight in that Sing's brutal beating clears his chi flow, allowing him to properly use the style he learned as a boy and become a master of kung-fu.
  • The barber kid tried to prove he was it shortly after Tailor, Donut, and Coolie die. Pity he was floored with one punch from the Land Lady.
• Clothing Damage:
  • Accompanies any Curb-Stomp Battle, from the blind harpists' clothes being shredded by the landlady's sonic scream to Sing's clothes burning up on reentry... except for the Magic Pants.
  • There are also two memorable shots of The Beast twisting the landlord and landlady's arms so hard it makes the sleeves of their shirts unravel and fly apart.
• Color-Coded Characters: Not only is the Axe Gang dressed in black, not only do the various kung fu masters wear white clothes (most of the time), Sing's wardrobe changes colors to match his inner character through the film.
  • This is also an inversion of the Eastern convention of Good Colors, Evil Colors, as it eventually becomes for Sing.
• Combat Pragmatist: While the Beast is an unstoppable juggernaut of power that can shrug off injuries that would kill or incapacitate most men, that doesn't mean he's an idiot. Whenever he is cornered with an attack he can't deflect or withstand more than once, he will fake a surrender as a means of disarming his opponent, allowing him to collect himself, get close and stick them with his dart-blowers.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Dozens of Axe Gangsters vs. a trio of martial arts masters, and later vs. one single man. Guess who wins in each of these scenarios.
• Contrived Coincidence: The ice cream girl Sing decides to rob just so happens to be the girl he tried to save when he was a boy.
• Cranky Landlady: The Landlady is this trope weaponized. Her Establishing Character Moment involves her callously shutting off her tenants' water for not playing rent, yelling at and threatening to evict almost everyone in the public square for the same, and then forcing everyone to be quiet. Once she's revealed to be a kung-fu master, her crankiness and ability to yell at people is weaponized through her Lion's Roar ability, a shout attack so loud, it can blast people through the air. She defeats the kung-fu musicians by yelling at them to be quiet after emerging from her room in a nightgown.
• Creator Cameo: Yuen Cheung-Yan plays the hobo who sells the Buddhist Palm manual to a young Sing. It's mentioned in the Director's commentary, however, that the media and most reporters of the movie thought it was Yuen Wo-Ping (his brother, who cameoed in Chow's previous movie), and wouldn't believe Stephen Chow when he said it wasn't.
• Crippling the Competition: The Harpist manage to cut the palms of Donut, whose speciality is with staffs.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Almost the entire cast. Even the background characters get their moments. That farmer lady can pack one hell of a punch.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Near-death Sing is bandaged this way: and quite appropriately comes Back from the Dead later.
• Cultural Translation:
  • The American sub replaced an offhand reference to two beautiful, star-crossed lovers in Chinese literature with Paris and Helen of Troy. The sub script is Woolseyed in other areas as well, while the dub is more straightforward, including keeping the reference to Yang Guo and Xiaolongnu (from yet another famous Wuxia novel). The French dub preferred the less subtle Romeo and Juliet.
  • "Donut" also counts since Dong Zhihua's character makes fried dough sticks, very similar in concept to the donut, hence his more appropriate sub name.
• Culture Chop Suey: The overall aesthetic, which blends traditional Chinese and more modern, Western-derived styles.
• Curb-Stomp Battle
  • The Landlord and Landlady vs the two blind musicians.
  • Everyone the Beast fights except Sing at the end.
• Cut Apart: When the Beast and the Axe Gang head to Pigsty Alley to confront Sing and the landlords.
• Cute Mute: The mute ice cream vendor.
• Deadly Dodging: The Landlord defeats the pair of kung fu villains who double as Musical Assassins by throwing his arms over their necks in the way friends often do. Then he moves his hips and head, causing their punches to strike the other one. Even when a punch connects, it bounces or slides off and hits the other man in the face.
• Death from Above: Subverted, in that Sing halted his attack as soon as the Beast faked his surrender. Prior to that, he was knocked into the sky by the Beast's Frog technique, which in turn helps Sing realize the full potential of his Buddhist Palm technique before falling back down to Earth. Like a meteor. In flames.
• Death Glare: After defeating the pair of musical assassins and performing the first part of a Stealth Hi/Bye, the Landlady gets her point across to the Axe Gang leader with one of these.
• Defiant to the End: After Sing strikes The Beast with a post, The Beast flips out and smashes his face in. The Beast then asks Sing why he hit him, and, rather than answer the question, Sing picks a splinter up off of the floor, and bops The Beast on the head with it. He gets three more smacks to the face that sink his head further into the ground for this.
• Dirty Cop: In the opening, a cop was counting money implying they take bribes from the Axe Gang and even helped them take out the Crocodile Gang by refusing to let them inside.
• The Dirty Thirties: The movie takes place in 1930s China.
• Died Standing Up: Brother Sum.
• Disabled Love Interest: Sing's love interest, a mute ice cream vendor.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Brother Sum. Gang leader, jerkass, annoys The Beast and gets his neck broken for it.
• The Dog Bites Back: Sing's attempts to prove he's a ruthless criminal always backfire, usually by having whomever he's picking on fight back and kick his ass.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: The Landlady and her husband. It makes more sense when it's revealed that his kung fu specialty is absorbing damage.
• Dragons Up the Yin Yang: The Landlord traces out a taijitu in the courtyard of Pig Sty Alley when fighting the Musical Assassins in the cobblestones, with their toes.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: The end of the three masters begins with Coolie being offed in this fashion.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Sing and his friend give up on trying to be criminals, finally got themselves out of poverty, and open up a candy shop. Sing also reunites with the mute ice cream vendor from his childhood.
• Easily Forgiven: The ending of the film, in which Sing has proven to be more than a match for The Beast. Rather than killing him in cold blood, he forgives him and takes him as his first student, giving the mass murderer the same chance he got to start a new life as a good person.
• Empathic Environment: The first time the Axe Gang rolls into Pig Sty Alley, storm clouds gather overhead. Strangely enough, they only gather over the gang proper.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Brother Sum's very introduction has him axing the Crocodile gang leader to death and shooting his wife after pretending to spare her.
  • Later, after the Beast is freed from the mental asylum by Sing, he's casually sitting in a tank top and slippers, yet due to his reputation everyone in the room is scared shitless of him. He then asks to get thrashed over the head before one of the Axe Gang members pulls a gun on him; the Beast quickly disarms him, quips if they make them for men, and then promptly fires it at the side of his head...and does a Bullet Catch with two fingers, finally cementing his power. It only gets worse from there after he does an ax-kick and makes a casino wall explode.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Subverted by Brother Sum in the beginning. After murdering a rival gang leader, Sum tells the man's wife that "I don't kill women." Then immediately after she turns her back on him, he cold-bloodedly shoots her dead anyways, thus establishing what a merciless, ruthless thug he really is.
• Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting
  • And we mean everyone. Played to hilarious, awesome excess!
  • "Whoever wants to die, step forward!" (everyone does)
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Coolie is only ever referred to as Coolie.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Brother Sum finds this out the hard way when he releases the Beast from his asylum to kill the Landlords, only for the Beast to kill him and usurp control over the Axe Gang.
• Evil Is Petty: Almost all of Sing's villainous acts fall under this and Poke the Poodle.
• Eviler Than Thou: The Beast casually kills Brother Sum when the latter mouths off to him. The Axe Gang immediately acknowledges his authority.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Can you guess what is the axe gang's signature weapon.
• Extremity Extremist: The Coolie's fighting style consists entirely of kicks.
• Fan Disservice: One Pig Sty resident's butt is hanging out the entire movie. Doubles as Running Gag, and he's seen talking up a girl in the background of the final scene.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • Brother Sum, who has no qualms with murdering anyone who gets in his way, even after calmly and politely pretending that he'll spare their life.
  • The Beast is very laid-back and friendly at first, but eventually shows that he's not above dirty tricks when he's backed into a corner and pretty much drops the facade by the time he takes over as leader of the Axe Gang.
• Finger Poke of Doom
  • Averted. Sing threatens the Beast and is about to punch him, only to poke him, run behind a statue, and ask if he's okay. Mind you, this is wimpy, jackass Sing.
  • Later handled properly in the climax. First, one of Sing's Signature Moves in the climax is that he steps on his opponent's foot so hard and so quickly that it tears the sides of their shoes in the impact, a move the Beast remarks as "kid's stuff". Then Sing defeats the Beast using a Face Palm Of Doom.
• Finger Wag: Landlady, Bruce Lee-style, to the Axe Gang leader. That whole scene is a Shout-Out to Way of the Dragon. It quickly morphs into a Fist of Rage.
• Flare Gun: Used by the Axe Gang to signal when their members need help. It even releases fireworks in the shape of an axe!
• Flower-Pot Drop: Parodied. The Landlord doesn't get up after a pot is dropped on him from a top level apartment, and still played for laughs. When bad stuff starts happening, he gathers the scattered dust around his head to hide.
• Flynning: The tailor uses the iron rings on his arms to block attacks by the Axe Gang members that didn't look like they were close enough to hit him if he just kept his arms down.
• Foe-Tossing Charge
  • Played with when Sing is approaching the Beast through a group of mooks. The camera pans to the Beast's face, looking somewhat amused, then back as Sing reaches him to reveal the aftermath of a foe tossing charge in a confined space. One mook's head is still wedged in the ceiling.
  • The Beast's Toad Style, which throws himself with a lot of force directly at an opponent.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Possibly just for the gag, but the scene where Sing runs away from the Landlady and is able to run about the same speed as her is possible foreshadowing to the fact that he has The Gift since the only other characters seen running that fast in the movie are master warriors.
  • When the Landlady draws lots to decide whether to evict the Three Masters, the lot drawn is "exceptionally bad luck". Sure enough, the three die that night to the Musical Assassins.
  • The cartoonish amount of abuse Sing takes throughout the movie, without dying, is a hint that he's a little more than just Made of Iron.
  • When Sing approaches to free The Beast from his cage, there is a multitude of frogs jumping in the corridor of his cell. This foreshadows the Beast's use of the Toad style.
  • During the fight at the casino, the Landlady comments (regarding the Beast) that "Good cannot co-exist with evil. Sooner or later one must face their fate". As she says this, the camere closes in on Sing.
• Freudian Excuse: Sing was badly beaten when he tried to fight a gang of bullies as a child. This led to him becoming a criminal as an adult to try and get back at the world.
• Friendship Trinket: The Cute Mute ice cream vendor and the lollipop that the bullies were trying to steal before Sing intervened.
• Gag Boobs: Anytime the Landlady winds up her devastating sonic scream.
• Gag Dub: in the Spanish version, which takes several liberties with the original dialogues, and makes the characters speak in a variety of Spanish dialects.
• Gale-Force Sound: The Harpists are two villains who fight their opponents by playing a guzheng (Chinese zither), which can send anything from bone-crunching fists to blades to a fucking skeleton army. Then there's the Landlady's Lion's Roar, which reduced walls and concrete to smithereens and, when amplified with a bell, destroys everything in an ear-shattering soundwave and even manages to temporarily defeat the Beast.
• Gang of Hats: The Axe Gang all wield axes, wear black suits (with some of them actually wearing top hats) and perform choreographed dancing in unison. Brother Sum is played by a professional choreographer.
• The Gift
  • Namely, Sing having everything punched in gets his chi flow cleared, making him a badass.
  • Foreshadowed when Sing was roughing out the snakebite in the traffic light.
• Glass-Shattering Sound: The Landlady can scream loud enough to break a wine glass. Also all the bones in your body.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: Sing and Bone are this until Sing calls in the Axe Gang, to the point that a single Badass Bystander beats them up on the trolley car after they'd harassed him.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking
  • The Landlady's ever-present cigarette, which always burns out when she prepares her sonic scream.
  • Sum obviously smokes, but after his first meeting with the Landlady, the next cigarette he lights sets himself on fire. He's also an opium addict, which is why his teeth are all black and messed up.
• Gratuitous English: The baker's last words: "What are you... prepared to do?!" Unfortunately the Landlords don't understand English.
• Graceful Loser: Once he realizes he's truly lost, the Beast bows to Sing and calls him master.
• Half The Cat It Used To Be: The harpists' first onscreen kill is a cat which they slice into half using their instrument, though its only shown in silohoutte.
• Healing Factor: An early clue that there is more to Sing that even he realizes, in that he recovers completely from all the injuries he received during one encounter (including 3 knife wounds and snakebite) overnight, though it appears it wasn't a pleasant experience.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Who knew how far a little kindness to all sides would go? Sing manages to get it done.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: Sing in the finale. The normally slovenly Landlord and Landlady also dress up to the nines when they enter the casino: with the real intention of battling the Axe Gang.
• Henpecked Husband: The Landlord. He deserves it.
• Here We Go Again!: A heroic version; a little boy outside Sing's candy store is approached by the same crazy old man who gave Sing the Buddhist Palm manual. He declares him the next natural-born martial artist... and shows him a fistful of new manuals that make the kid's eyes light up.
• Hero Killers: The harpists.
• Ignorant About Fire: After the Landlord and Landlady scared them to go away from their house complex, Brother Sum and his advisor is still shuddering from the experience. The advisor tries to light a cigarette for Brother Sum, then he accidentally burns his hair. Then said advisor tried to put it off, but he poured an alcoholic drink instead, making the fire bigger.
• Ignored Epiphany: Less "ignored" and more "interrupted", but Sing seems to have a Heel Realization moment after realizing that the ice-cream vendor he'd stolen from was the girl he'd saved as a child, which was his Start of Darkness. At least until after a pair of Axe Gang members approach him because Brother Sum needs his lockpicking skills.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: Sing's main motivation for most of the movie.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: All five Hidden Masters we find living in Pig Sty Alley were just doing their best to live quiet normal lives. Justified in universe as it's made quite clear that having such masters around just draws unwanted attention and trouble.
• Impact Silhouette: The Buddha Palm technique. Foreshadowed when Sing, wracked with the pain of knives and snakebites, hammers the sides of the traffic tower and leaves a barrage of perfect handprints.
• Implacable Man: The Beast. Takes being punched through walls and flattened into the ground and still keeps going.
• Improvised Lockpick: During his infiltration into the asylum that contains the Beast, Sing uses a steel wire to open the lock to the Beast's cell.
• Improvised Weapon User: The Lion's Roar is a weapon unto itself, but alone is a No-Sell against the Beast. When focused using a funeral bell as a megaphone, the results are impressive. More realistically, Tailor using his shelf rings as bracers and Donut using kneaders as staffs.
  • Although using the rings as bracers is an actual style of fighting in the martial art. More probably Tailor used his weapons as shelf rings.
• Inexplicably Awesome: While the film establishes that many of the great warriors featured in the film possess The Gift, giving them enhanced durability, stamina and ambiguously magical martial arts skills, it is explicitly said that only the Landlord and the Landlady have the gift and they cannot train the rest of Pig Sty Alley because of it. This doesn't explain how everyone there is able to defend themselves against the Axe Gang (to varying degrees of success) to the extent that they do, even if Sing is Giftedly Bad at being intimidating.
• In the Back: Sum is not above shooting unarmed and surrendered enemies in the back.
• I Surrender, Suckers: The Beast attempted to pull a fast one (twice) with a dart gun disguised as a flower ornament when faced with someone who can give him a real fight; the first time against the Landlord and Landlady, the second against Sing. The first time, it works. The second, it doesn't.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Sing and the Landlady, who act like assholes but, underneath, are really nice.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Sum shoots the Crocodile Boss's wife in the back after pretending to let her go free. He essentially kicks the dog every minute he's on screen, but this clinches it.
  • Sing stomping the kids' soccer ball is a Poke the Poodle moment, since it's so petty and small, but also establishes the fact that he's a real asshole.
  • Sing robbing the mute ice cream girl, then telling Bone to go away, as Sing is in the middle of a Heel Realization.
    • Prior to this, he and Bone steal some ice cream from the same vendor, with Sing laughing hysterically at her futile pursuit of the pair. He only realizes why she's chasing him during the aforementioned scene.
• Large Ham: All of Stephen Chow's "guests" have been given full license to ham it out, and Tailor, Landlady and even the Beast all have their moments. Special mention must be made of Yuen Qiu channeling Bruce Lee in the completely wordless scene in Sum's car.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Everyone!
• Lighthearted Rematch: Coolie, Tailor and Donut, crossing into It Has Been an Honor.
• Lip Losses: In one scene, Sing accidentally gets a cageful of snakes dumped over him. Bone suggests he whistle to calm them, only for Sing to get bitten squarely on the lips the moment he tries. For good measure, his lips end up swelling to the size of watermelons.
• Made of Iron:
  • Sing gets a comical number of injuries throughout the film. It turns out that it was necessary.
  • The landlords manage to steal Sing away and heal him despite the snot having been kicked out of them.
  • The Beast of course, able to take blows to the head without even wincing.
• Magic Music: The Harpists fight using a guzheng, a Chinese plucked zither. They can manipulate the vibrations into shapes such as razor sharp swords and skeletal warriors capable of cutting through stone.
• Magic Pants:
  • When Brother Sum cuts down Crocodile Boss' wife with a shotgun, large piece of her dress is blown into pieces, but pants on the exact same height are left untouched. They aren't even blooded, despite the shot causing the poor woman to be blown half-way across the street.
  • The Landlady's "Lion's Roar" destroys the skeletal sword-wielding ghosts, the two musician killers' instrument and clothes, but not their underwear.
• Major Injury Underreaction: The Landlord of Pig's Sty is not only thrown out of a third story window, but gets a potted plant dropped on his head, actually drawing blood. He simply tells onlookers to go away when they inch closer to check up on him.
• Make Me Wanna Shout: The "Lion's Roar" technique the landlady uses. Foreshadowed that she was a badass when she used it to make her angry tenants shut up.
  • The Lion's Roar is strong enough on its own. Then she rips the top off of a giant funeral bell and uses it as a megaphone.
• Male Gaze: The Crocodile gang boss' wife. Baby got back.
• Martial Arts for Mundane Purposes: In spades. Because the theme of the movie is ordinary-looking people turning out to be kung-fu masters, we typically see the "mundane" use before their true abilities are revealed to the viewer. The strong, silent Coolie who carries heavy loads for people uses his super-strong legs for kicking. The doughnut-maker who uses long poles to knead the dough is a master with spears and bow-staffs. The tailor uses heavy rings to both hang up his wares and wears them on his arms in combat. The Landlord who's constantly being beaten up by his wife can secretly deflect and withstand heavy blows. The Landlady who's always yelling and roaring at everyone has an outright sonic scream.
• Martial Pacifist
  • Sing at the end becomes an example of this trope, as he opens a candy shop as opposed to, say, teaching kung fu. He, too, faces an arrogant villain, The Beast. It is, however, apparent he's teaching The Beast.
  • The other masters were attempting to live peaceful lives as well. Then Sing accidentally drew the Axe Gang's attention to them, ruining any chance of peace.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The hobo and his martial arts manuals. The manual doesn't seem to work on Sing as a kid, but once he gets his chi unlocked, it's quite effective. The hobo also seems to magically appear at the end of the film without any sign of aging, giving another kid the same pamphlet in almost exactly the same way.
• Mexican Standoff: Parodied when the Beast and the Landlord and Landlady attempt a series of complicated limb-locks on each other, the end result resembling a game of Twister gone horribly wrong.
• Mickey Mousing: The zither players/assassins play a guzheng to fire blades. The side effect is that the music matches the fight, as the music plays faster the more intense the fight gets.
• Minion with an F in Evil: Throughout the film, Sing does everything to try and be a gangster, his attempts to intimidate failing epically due to the bumbling of his sidekick Bone, being hilariously outclassed by whoever he is trying to pick a fight with (which is everyone) or just sheer bad luck. This is a sign that he is not destined to be a bad guy, his Heel–Face Turn happening almost by impulse when he ends up hitting Brother Sum and the Beast in the head with a table-leg, the following beating by the Beast unblocking his chi pathways and metamorphosing him into the Action Hero he was destined to be.
• Mood Whiplash
  • Sing's Heel–Face Turn is marked by a whole series of these. It begins with the (apparently) moral conflict within him as Sum orders him to attack the helpless Landlord and Landlady... only for Sing to turn around and attack Sum. Not out of right or wrong, but stress. Then Sing mans up enough to attack the Beast: only to have his own head beaten into the ground. Cue the futile but significant show of defiance as Sing... weakly picks up a bit of rubble to bonk the Beast, to no effect at all..
  • Earlier, there was a scene where the Landlady and Landlord were dancing happily in their apartment after previously shown dancing to the The Masochism Tango. Only for the Landlady to see lipstick on the Landlord. Cue another beating.
  • Also when Sing was dying, he draws a lollipop, showing he was thinking of the Cute Mute ice cream lady. Then the Landlord freaks out, telling him to write in Chinese because he didn't understand what he was trying to say.
• Mook Chivalry: Inverted and subverted, especially in the first and the last mass brawl. The mooks don't shy from pulling Zerg Rushes and generally try to take all possible advantages they might have... but they are just mooks in an Affectionate Parody of wuxia.
• Mook Horror Show: Every scene where the Axe Gang confronts Pig Sty Alley directly basically ends with half of the gangsters getting their asses handed to them and the other half running away.
• More Deadly Than the Male: The Landlady henpecks her husband despite him being a powerful Taichi master, and for good reason. Most other martial arts require the combatants to get in close range, but her Lion's Roar can obliterate opponents at range.
• Musical Assassin: The Harpists. They pluck and strum their guzheng to summon blades and even undead warriors to cleanly slice apart their foes before they even knew they were there.
• My God, What Have I Done?: A variation occurs when Sing tries to steal from the ice cream lady. He realizes that she was the little girl he tried to save when he was a kid and just how far he had fallen from his previous ideals.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Beast. His Chinese name (火云邪神) counts as well, as it means "Fiery Clouds Evil God".
• Neutral No Longer: The Landlady and Landlord - neither of them are willing to get involved in the Axe Gang's initial appearances at Pig Sty Alley, and it's not until Donut, Coolie, and the Tailor are all defeated that they get involved.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight: Bringing in guns will just get your ass kicked by Donut.
• Never Mess with Granny: The Landlady, who just so happens to be made of awesome, as she's a master of Lama Pai Lion's Roar technique. She's strong enough to crack the top of a funeral bell and hold it to use it as a megaphone. Her actress, Yuen Qiu, really does have martial art skills, shown in her small role in The Man with the Golden Gun.
• Nice Guys Finish Last:
  • Sing's philosophy after his attempted heroics as a kid got the tar kicked out of him by the bullies he picked a fight with.
  • Brother Sum holds this philosophy as well; the reason he's so fixated on revenge with the Pig's Sty slum is because he thinks, since he's the bad guy, he should be "doing the ass kicking." While Sing realizes his mistake and tries to fix it, Sum never wises up, and gets killed as a result.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain
  • And the irony of it: Sing gets pounded by the Beast during his Heel–Face Turn and mortally wounded, only to have his chi flow cleared, restoring him to life and unleashing his actual potential. Cue a butterfly emerging from its cocoon and Sing appearing again all healthy and sound, ready to punch out whoever gets into trouble with him any day. And it became subverted when the Beast somehow wanted to see a worthy opponent before his eyes.
  • And then Sing gets launched into the sky by the Beast's Frog technique, only to have him fall back down to Earth and deliver a finishing move while falling. Looks like the Beast is a nice guy after all.
• No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: The Beast is introduced locked up in a mental institution, but he could easily break out any time he wishes. He voluntarily stays there because there doesn't seem to be anyone left who can offer a challenge and put up a good fight against him.
• No Name Given: Almost nobody in the movie is given an actual name. At best, you'll get a title to refer to them by instead (the Landlord and Landlady, Donut, Tailor and Coolie, etc.)
• No-Sell: At the start of the fight with the Landlord and Landlady, the Beast ends up taking a jump kick to the face, and then a punch and a kick to either side of his head, without even budging.
• No Sense of Personal Space: As befits his Casanova Wannabe personality, the Landlord's attacks begin with what looks like a hug.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: The Beast. Bald, overweight, and at first dressed in a tank top, shorts, and cheap flip-flops, even The Syndicate that freed him didn't believe he was really the Beast until he held a gun six inches away from his head, pulled the trigger, and caught the bullet. He quickly ascended to being the Big Bad shortly after.
• Off with His Head!: How Coolie meets his end.
• Oh, Crap!
  • "Wow, that's a huge fist."
  • Also when The Beast sees the Landlady about to use her Lion's Roar with the help of a funeral bell.
  • The Beast's reaction moments later when, as he's struggling to get up to crawling, she's about to use it again at point-blank range!
• Old Master: The Beast, a rampaging, unstoppable killing machine before he became a hermit by way of locking himself in an insane asylum. The Landlord and Landlady are also revealed to be a pair of badass Old Masters living in retirement.
• One-Man Army: All kung fu masters, but especially Sing at the end, when he takes out several dozen armed opponents in minutes.
• OOC Is Serious Business: After disposing of the Musical Assassins, the Landlady calmly and wordlessly threatens Brother Sum with violence if he and the Axe Gang ever return to Pig Sty Alley. Up until then, she is easily the loudest and most temperamental person in the movie.
• Pinball Gag: Done in the climax, complete with electro-mechanical sounds and chimes.
• Poke the Poodle: Most of Sing and Bone's antics, ranging from trying to skip out on paying for a haircut, harassing random people on the street, and so on, for most of the movie. In harrassing the mute ice cream girl, however, he crosses into Kick the Dog.
• Pun:
  • The Landlady's technique, the Lion's Roar, is a reference to the Chinese idiom "the lion east of the river" which is slang for a domineering wife.
  • When the Landlord and Landlady confront the Axe Gang, they reveal that they've prepared a funeral bell for them as a gift. "Gifting someone a bell" (送鐘) and "paying one's last respects (during a funeral)" (送終) are homophones in Chinese, which is Lampshaded by Brother Sum's assistant in the Chinese dub.
• Punch Parry: Done accidentally by the musicians as the result of the Landlord's Deadly Dodging. Appropriately, it does nothing but hurt them both.
• Punctuated Pounding
  • Sing picks on a clerk on the tram, who retaliates by rhythmically pounding his and Bone's heads against the bench while berating them.
  • In a similar vein, the Landlady assaulting Sing with a slipper while mocking him with his own words.
• Radial Asskicking: Sing vs. the Axe Gang near the end of the movie.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: The Beast is so fast he can achieve this effect in slow motion.
• Razor Wind
  • The Harpists summon swords with each strum of the qin.
  • It's more or less an interpretation of what their attack will do upon impact. Sometimes they summon winds that can punch your guts out.
  • Based on how they play the instrument. Played horizontally, it creates Razor Wind. Vertically it creates blunt wind (in the form of fists or a shield). It's a really memorable scene.
• Redemption Equals Death: Subverted and played upon, with Sing. But it quickly turns out to be Nice Job Fixing It, Villain.
• Redemption Promotion: Sing was a horrible criminal but achieves enlightenment after deciding to help The Landlord and Landlady (And getting beaten within an inch of his life for it)
• Retired Badass
  • The Beast, waiting for someone worthy to come along.
  • Also, the Landlady and her husband, who gave up martial arts after their son was killed in a fight.
• Rivers of Blood: When Sing is infiltrating the asylum The Beast is being held in, he runs through the corridors until he runs onto one cell at a dirty-looking corridor. The cell door slowly opens and then a large stream of blood floods out of the cell room. It turns out to be merely Sing's Imagine Spot; he was merely staring at the door, imagining it happening.
• Rock Beats Laser:
  • After being awakened, Sing uses a technique where he stomps on the feet of opposing mooks in rapid succession, resulting in comically paper-flat feet in cratered tile. The Beast sees it and mocks it ("The Toe Crusher. That was old when I was in kindergarten...") but yet falls for it himself later.
  • Donut destroys a few Tommy guns and Mauser C96 pistols with his Simple Staff.
• Rule of Cool: Oh, so, so many... 90% of the movie is either taken up by this, or Rule of Funny. The whole fight scene all the way through with the blind musicians takes both of these Up to Eleven.
• Rule of Three: The number of times Sing gives a right-leg roundhouse kick to The Beast. The first time he's right back up to let you know he's no slouch. The second time, he nearly needs to put a hand on the ground to steady himself. The third time takes him to his knees.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Beast. Subverted because he willingly checked himself into the insane asylum out of boredom from the lack of worthy opponents to challenge and kill. Of course when we first see him after his cell door is picked open, he's sitting on the john reading a newspaper which makes him Sealed Evil On the Can.
• Shadow Discretion Shot:
  • When Coolie is walking down the alleyway, about to be killed by the murderous musicians, you can hear their music being played, and a cat walks on one of the roofs and offscreen. However, you can still see the cat's shadow become bisected to the music while Coolie notices nothing. Plus a splatter of blood on the wall. Ominous.
  • Coolie's death is somewhat... less shadowy.
• Shout-Out
  • Donut's dying words include "What are you prepared to do?". Before that, he says, With great power... comes great responsibility.
  • "This could be the end... of a beautiful friendship..." He's just FULL of these.
  • The Landlord getting hurled out of a window and smashing through awnings on the way down shouts out to a similar (and nearly fatal) movie by Jackie Chan in Project A. Of special note is the Landlord's actor, Yuen Wah, who was Jackie's fellow disciple.
  • The chase between Sing and The Landlady is an obvious tribute to Tom and Jerry, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, and every other "chase" cartoon out there.
  • Sing juggles a soccer ball and then stomps it flat, shouting, "No more soccer!" This is a reference to Chow's previous film Shaolin Soccer and his refusal to make a sequel.
  • Upon arriving at the Beast's cell, Sing imagines the door opening and blood pouring out of the room.
  • The various fighting techniques demonstrated in the movie contain many shout-outs that had been twisted and parodied in some way for comedic effects. For example, the Ha Ma Gong (literally, Toad Technique, used by The Beast) is a technique used by an infamous poison-master from one of Jing Yong's famous novels. It's supposed to create harmful chi in the target's body, eventually killing them with no external injuries (the toad is considered one of the "Five Poisons" in Chinese culture, along with snake, lizard, centipede and scorpion). In the movie, however, this is taken a bit more literally.
  • ALL the names on the manuals the beggar held at the end of the movie are shout-outs to many of Jin Yong's novels. Audiences unfamiliar with the Wuxia genre will not be able to fully appreciate the parodic values of it.
  • The Axe Gang's introduction is styled suspiciously similarly to The Blues Brothers (complete with a knockoff of the famous Peter Gunn theme music).
  • When the Landlady appeared in the seat of Sum's car, she wordlessly threatened him with her fists, cracking her knuckles and brushing her nose in a way reminiscent to what Bruce Lee did in Return of the Dragon.
  • The Landlady and Landlord introduce themselves to The Beast as being Xiao Long Nu and Yang Guo, the protagonists of Jing Yong's "Return of the Condor Heroes".
  • The scene where Sing - attacked from all sides swoops down and crushes the toes of his enemies - is a homage to one of the more comedic Wong Feihong movies Last Hero In China, where Wong Feihong himself uses the counter-strike whilst dressed as a chicken.
  • The Buddha's Palm technique (and the 'Daring General' tune of the soundtrack) are lifted directly from the 1982 film Buddha's Palm.
  • The blind musical assassins are a shout-out to a real assassination attempt that was made upon Qin Shi Huangdi, when his blind musician tried to smash his head in with a weighted lute. ^note It didn't work.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: While The Beast and Sing fight, The Beast stops to mock his opponent's technique while praising his own. The opponent in question interrupts his sentence by FLATTENING his foot with a stomp, and then kicking him in the side of the head. Worse, the Beast had seen that technique earlier, and mocked it as only fit for children: yet he still fell for it.
• Simple Staff: Donut's primary weapons in the opening fight are the rolling poles he uses to roll dough. In the battle with the musical assassins, he upgrades to Blade on a Stick.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: This movie has a rather clearly evident Algorithm, starting with the Shanghai Police completely dominated by the Crocodile Gang, and then the Crocodile Gang getting massacred by the Axe Gang. The Axe Gang are countered by the Pig Sty Alley's three martial artists, who are then countered by the Axe Gang's hired Musical Assassins, who are then countered by the Landlord and Landlady, who are in turn countered by the Made of Iron and superhumanly-fast Beast, who is in turn countered by the Heel–Face Turn-ed Unsympathetic Comedy Villain Protagonist. The Beast attempted to use a pile of basic Axe Gang members to soften up the hero before properly fighting him, unfortunately for him the algorithm was still in place and they got splattered without slowing him down.
• Spiritual Successor: The movie's essentially "What if Mel Brooks made a Wuxia parody?"
• Spoiler Cover: The home versions both feature Sing (albeit clean-shaven) in a heroic pose, but he spends two-thirds of the movie as a Harmless Villain.
• Start of Darkness
  • A flashback reveals how Sing got into a life of crime: he tried to protect a girl from a gang of thugs using a kung-fu manual he bought, only to get the shit kicked out of him, laughed at for learning a fake technique from a fifty-cent mock kung-fu manual, and pissed on. This moment convinced him that Nice Guys Finish Last.
  • Except the "fake" kung-fu manual turned out to have been the genuine article all along when Sing lets loose with the Buddha's Palm, one of the techniques taught, on The Beast.
• Stealth Hi/Bye
  • While he's busy turning Brother Sum's head backwards, the Fated Couple make off with Sing before the Beast can react.
  • They pull the Hi version earlier, appearing in the shotgun and back seats of Sum's car with each camera cut.
• Stealth Pun:
  • Tailor's Camp Gay behavior belies his martial art, which requires extremely strong (as opposed to limp) wrists.
  • The Beast's very first attack, after being recruited by the Axe Gang? An axe kick.
• Stepping Stones in the Sky: On a bird, no less.
• Sunken Face: When the Landlord and Landlady battle the Beast, their punches flatten his face several times. Notably, all it really does is amuse him.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: This is a Troperiffic Affectionate Parody of all the over-the-top supernatural martial arts films to ever come out of Hong Kong.
• Super Speed:
  • One of the Beast's abilities, which he demonstrates by shooting himself in the head, and then catching the bullet in mid-air.
  • And in the fight scene that comes after, he's moving in super speed while the scene is running in Bullet Time.
  • The Landlady demonstrates this as early as the first time the Axe Gang sets foot into the Pig Sty Alley... by running back home to hide underneath her covers. She then uses it to chase Sing out after the failed assassination attempt, and to carry the badly injured Sing out of the casino after the Beast's beatdown (this one, along with her husband).
• Tailor-Made Prison: The Beast, though he stayed there voluntarily because he ran out of good opponents... by killing them. It's more or less explicit that he could have escaped any time if he wanted to.
• Teeth Flying: When one of the Musical Assassins punches the Landlord, his fist just bounces straight into his partner's mouth, sending a bloodied tooth straight upwards.
• Threw My Bike on the Roof: Sing stomps the kids' soccer ball flat for no reason than to be an asshole. Behind the scenes, it's also a clever retort to fans who keep insisting that Chow make a sequel to Shaolin Soccer.
• Took a Level in Badass: Sing. Almost every time he gets seriously hurt, he always manages to come back stronger. By the end of the film, he's a One-Man Army and a Worthy Opponent to the Beast.
• Totalitarian Gangsterism: The Axe Gang rules all of Shanghai and spend an awful lot of time, energy and resources to snuff out any sign of dissonance. They were able to spook the entire Shanghai Police Department and clear out the streets just to kill the Crocodile Gang (which is just four guys and the boss' defenseless wife), they send an army of goons to ransack the impoverished Pig Sty Alley when two of their lowest goons fail to intimidate them, they hire two of the most deadly (and expensive) assassins in the world when three of their tenants manage to fend them off, then they break out the Beast - who was being held at a government facility for essentially being the deadliest man on Earth - as their last resort.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: After being beaten to within an inch of his life, Sing suddenly awakens to his true power as a Kung Fu master.
• The Triads and the Tongs: The Axe Gang, led by Brother Sum. There's also the Crocodile Gang at the beginning of the film, which is destroyed after most of its members defect to the Axe Gang, allowing them to eliminate the few remaining Crocodile Gang henchmen and their boss.
• A Twinkle in the Sky: Sing ends up as this when the Beast launches him upwards with the Toad Technique. However, subverted immediately afterwards, as it ends up as a setup for Sing to deliver the Buddha's Palm onto the Beast.
• Undefeatable Little Village: Pig Sty Alley is this kind of village within a larger city dominated by criminal gangs.
• Under the Truck: A humorous case without motorcycles occurs in the film. In the scene where the landlady begins chasing Sing they end up running on the road. As they come up on a truck Sing opts to use this trope sliding under the truck at high speeds. The landlady opts to jump over, and ends up hitting a billboard.
• Up to Eleven: The Landlady's Lion's Roar, already able to obliterate the blind harpists, later gets augmented with a funeral bell that she uses like a megaphone. Even the Beast is impressed by the move. Too bad it doesn't stop him.
• Urine Trouble: Played for drama in Sing's backstory, in which a group of bullies beat up and pee on a young Sing after he tries and fails to use kung fu to defeat them.
• Villainous BSoD: The Beast has spent his entire life looking for a Worthy Opponent, who he tells the Landlady and Landlord he expects to kill him. He finds his Worthy Opponent in Sing, but when Sing defeats him but not only doesn't kill him, but offers to teach the Beast his ways, the Beast is so moved, he collapses in tears.
• What the Fu Are You Doing?: The hero starts out this way.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The Axe Gang's accountant was last seen having a gang member tossed onto him, what happened to him after that is unknown.
• Wheel o' Feet: Rare live-action example, namely the chase scene with the Landlady running after the hero. To reinforce how absurd this is, the hero uses two knives buried in his shoulders as rear-view mirrors, and at the end the Landlady goes flying and ends up flattened against a billboard for pain medication (somehow losing her hair curlers and bra on impact).
• Who's Laughing Now?: Played with through Sing. After being beaten up and humiliated as a child he attempt to invoke this by become a thief and tough guy. Unfortunately for him he sucks at it and ends up being the Butt-Monkey. When his kung fu skills finally do awaken he subverts it, choosing not to get revenge on everyone who laughed at him and instead becoming the good man he wanted to be as a child.
• With This Herring: Inverted. Sing is given a big bag of tools to use to break The Beast out of the mental asylum... which he promptly loses once inside. He actually gets the door to The Beast's cell open with the same dinky bit of wire he used to break out of his own shackles earlier in the film.
• World of Badass: Almost everyone can fight on some level; street-thugs armed with shotguns and hand-axes, innocuous civilians who are more than willing to kick your ass if crossed, everyday shop-owners who happen to know Supernatural Martial Arts, blind Musical Assassins, etc.
• World of Ham: Everything operates somewhere between Wuxia-style Wire Fu and Toon Physics, their bad guys Cartoonishly Evil and their strongest martial artists including a Cranky Landlady and her pervert husband, a Camp Gay tailor, a baker, blind harpists, the most dangerous man in the world who can turn himself into a human toad and the guy (who just the day before was the biggest loser in Shanghai) who defeated him with the hand of God ^note well, Buddha, but the principle still applies.
• Worst Aid
  • "If you whistle, they'll go away!" Claims Bone to Sing, regarding venomous snakes all over him. Sing tries it and is promptly bitten.
  • It's kind of a running gag with those two. From the same Humiliation Conga, came the above "Don't pull it out! / Oh sorry *stabs back in*", which fits just as well. Unless prepared to deliver immediate first aid, or if the object itself is an ongoing threat due to dirtiness or instability, it's better to leave something like a knife impaled in the wound to limit bleeding. But if you do pull it out, it's an even worse idea to put it back in.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: How The Beast takes control of the Axe Gang.
• You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry!: Brother Sum - in a fit of extreme hubris - calls out the Beast and scolds him for letting Landlord and Landlady get away with Sing when they were all on the verge of being killed. The Beast promptly breaks Sum's neck with a backhand, spinning his head 540 degrees.

---

Cantonese Show Where Guy Sucks Poison Out of a Old Mans Back

Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/KungFuHustle

Bagikan Artikel ini