Tangled/YMMV

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Depending on your viewpoint, Mother Gothel either cares nothing for Rapunzel herself, only her precious hair, and cynically manipulates the girl in order to control her, or genuinely does love Rapunzel but has a warped fashion of expressing it. If you go a lot deeper than the film really alludes to then Gothel's character gets a lot more depth. She is drawn looking very much like one of the Roma, which means that in the real world she would most likely have been the victim of years of hatred, distrust and persecution. This would mean that, for her, the twisted view of the world she imparts to Rapunzel is a pretty accurate one. She might really believe that she knows best.
• Award Snub: It lost a Golden Globe to Cher!. And why did this film have to come out in the same year as Toy Story 3? It wasn't even nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar.
• Crack Ship:
  • Mother Gothel x Frollo for similar motives, while Rapunzel and Quasimodo get paired up as platonic BFF's or adopted siblings.
  • If you go to Fanfiction.net and look up Tangled in the crossovers section, you will find 3 Tangled/Megamind crossovers. All three of them ship Megamind/Rapunzel (or Megapunzel).
  • Not to mention the amount of shipping Rapunzel has with Hiccup.
  • Flynn and everyone,
• Draco in Leather Pants: Mother Gothel has quite a committed fanbase, which can get slightly over-enthusiastic in either downplaying or defending her actions throughout the movie. While she may have sympathetic motives and/or backstory (and that's a pretty big case of Your Mileage May Vary in itself, and tends to depend on fan theorising or guesswork rather than what's presented in the movie proper), she's nevertheless consistently portrayed throughout the movie as vain and selfish, a child abductor, an emotional abuser towards that child and utterly ruthless (to the point of a clear willingness to commit murder) in her desire to keep that child all to herself.
• Ear Worm: Most, if not all, of the songs.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Actual horse. And all the Duckling Thugs. They don't even show on the promotional materials, but are one of the movie's best surprises.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: The movie's story has many aspects of a solar myth.
• Fanon: Already fanfic writers have started a trend where Rapunzel calls Eugene by his former assumed name of Flynn Rider affectionately, instead of using his real name, in fics.
• Harsher in Hindsight: This movie, and the TV show spinoff, take place in the kingdom of Corona. Following 2020, that word tends to mean something else.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • See 'Award Snub' above, then think a bit about who Mother Gothel looks like.
  • There was a Running Gag in the fandom that Flynn looked like Ezio Di Auditore (not to mention he also likes running on rooftops and trying to seduce women). Flynn's voice actor, Zachary Levi, dressed as Ezio during the intro to the 2011 VGA's.
  • Another is that Rapunzel is essentially Hungary with a wig. Must be her Frying Pan of Doom.
• Magnificent Bitch: Mother Gothel upgrades from standard Manipulative Bitch to this in her dealings with the Stabbington Brothers. They're murderous brutes and this woman with no magical powers whatsoever doesn't flinch when they pull their swords out, calls them out for squabbling over a tiara and uses the right means of motivation to get them to help her.
• Memetic Badass: Rapunzel and her frying pan.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • This piece of dialogue and the facial expressions Gothel makes during "Mother Knows Best" seem to be turning into one:

Gothel: The plague! Rapunzel: No! Gothel: Yes!

• • "Surrounded by enormous piles of moneeeeeyyyy!"
  • The Smoulder.
• Memetic Sex God: Flynn.
• Moe: Rapunzel. Just look at her! Especially when she laughs. She's more cute than beautiful, and even has a little overbite and a lisp that adds to her cuteness rather than subtracts. Additionally, part of the way through Gothel's Villain Song, "Mother Knows Best" features Rapunzel huddled up in a small fort made of her own hair. It is quite possibly one of the most adorable things in the entire movie.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Mother Gothel's death, she rapidly ages and crumbles into a pile of dust.
  • Also the whole idea of psychical and emotional manipulation of Mother Gothel. For example, merely setting a foot outside causes Rapunzel to freak out and consider herself a "bad daughter" and an "ungrateful monster" (when she doesn't dance around happily anyway). The idea of a treatment that reduces an otherwise sunny and upbeat girl into a ball of neurosis and fear is a nightmare fuel at its best.
  • The extended version of "Mother Knows Best" is much creepier than the version in the film. At one point Gothel is lying like a corpse on a table with her hands across her chest, and then sits up, pulling a face possibly creepier than any other face she makes in the movie. There's a reason this part was cut.
  • Mother Gothel singing the healing incantation at the beginning of the film is also kind of creepy. The way her voice gets younger as she does, and the way she's whisper-singing it the whole time, is unsettling.
  • The way that Gothel, at the end of "Mother Knows Best", tells Rapunzel to never leave the tower is creepy in a way that can't quite be articulated.
  • When she goes "You wanted me to be the bad guy? Well, now I'm the bad guy..." is creepy because she's still being passive-aggressive and not accepting responsibility. She is not acknowledging that Rapunzel doesn't "want [her] to be the bad guy", she flat out thinks Gothel is the bad guy.
• One True Threesome: Among her fellow Disney Princesses, Rapunzel is often neatly slotted alongside, romantically or platonically, Belle and Ariel.
• Paranoia Fuel: Your mother doesn't love you. In fact, she's not even your real mother. She's a woman who kidnapped you as a baby and raised you to be completely dependent on her. And she's willing to break your heart and kill your friends to control you. Love you, mom!
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Gothel apologists are claiming all the problems in the movie were the fault of the king and queen for destroying the flower in the first place, even though they didn't know that it could be used without consuming it, and Gothel, who they didn't know existed because she herself never came forward, was the only one who could have told them how.
  • The Captain of the Guard often falls victim to this trope. In various fanfics, he turns from a relatively well-meaning (if not very competent) soldier to a sadistic asshole who kidnaps Rapunzel solely to spite Flynn.
• Strawman Has a Point: Mother Gothel's condemnation of the world, for some, doesn't stray too far from truth.

Mother Gothel: The world is dark, and selfish, and cruel. If it finds even the slightest ray of sunshine, it destroys it.

• Approach it how you want, but the King and Queen did steal Gothel's flower. Doesn't even begin to justify child abduction but hey.

• Tainted by the Preview: When the first trailer hit theaters, many people were put off since there was so much focus on Flynn and so little on Rapunzel when the movie was clearly about her. There was also how slapstick and Shrek-like it seemed (not to mention the movie title being Tangled). The strong week-to-week holds of the film spoke volumes about the terrific word-of-mouth from those who did see it.
• Ugly Cute: The Big Nose Thug. His part in "I've Got A Dream" when he describes all his less than flattering physical attributes is a Lampshade Hanging of this trope — especially the part where he sings about a girl loving him.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Mother Gothel to an extent. When you keep in mind that she only does the things she does in the movie because she is terrified of dying, it makes her actions seem understandable. Not justified, mind you (controlling and destroying others' lives just to preserve your own is horrible), but nevertheless worthy of some pity. As noted above, this is a matter of intense debate in the fandom, which many raising the question of whether it is so much fear of dying that Gothel suffers from, or the rather-less-sympathetic fear of simply growing old and losing her looks.
• Win Back the Crowd: Designed to this after Disney felt The Princess and the Frog turned off the male market. And by all accounts, it was a huge success in this regard.
• The Woobie: Rapunzel. By the end she's an Iron Woobie.

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