All spoilers for Mad Max: Fury Road, will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a 2024 Australian-American post-apocalyptic Science Fiction film, the fifth film in the Mad Max film series and a prequel to 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road ^note and by extension, a sequel to 1985's Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Series creator George Miller returns as director and writer once more (the script actually predated Fury Road by 14 years), with Nico Lathouris as co-writer. Junkie XL returns for the soundtrack.

As the world falls, young Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and into the hands of a biker horde led by the warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Sweeping through the Wasteland, they come across the Citadel presided over by Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme). While the two tyrants, Dementus and Immortan Joe, war for dominance over the Citadel, Furiosa survives many trials as she plots a way back home through the Wasteland.

The film was released May 23, 2024 in Australia and May 24, 2024 in North America and much of the world.

Previews: Trailer 1, Trailer 2

This is her odyssey…

• Actor IS the Title Character: This TV promotional spot states that Chris Hemsworth is Dementus and Anya Taylor-Joy is Furiosa.
• After the End: A given for the franchise, but the trailer gives an explicit mention that the collapse of society occurred forty five years previously.
• The Alleged Car: Chumbucket offers Furiosa a broken-down husk of a vehicle which only has three of its wheels. Still works well enough to get her out to Joe's front line and find an upgrade, though.
• All for Nothing: In a whole-plot sense, all of Mary and Furiosa's efforts to allow Furiosa to return to the Green Place are for nothing, as the Green Place will no longer exist when Furiosa reaches it in Fury Road.
• Ambiguous Situation: While it is beyond doubt that Furiosa and Praetorian Jack have come to love each other by the time they made plans to run off together to find the Green Place, it is left ambiguous if this is romantic love, familial love, or if (given their age difference) they are Platonic Life-Partners.
• And the Adventure Continues: The film ends with Furiosa sneaking the Wives aboard the War Rig, and the credits play in between footage from Fury Road.
• Apocalypse How: Class 4. The beginning of the movie gives a better look at how much the nuclear apocalypse has ravaged the Earth with a global view of the planet, showing that not only is the entirety of Australia a desert wasteland, but so is every other continent, albeit to lesser degrees.
• Artificial Limb: Furiosa tears off her own battered arm to escape Dementus following Jack's execution, and later grafts on an artificial arm taken from one of the Citadel's machines.
• Arc Welding: This film includes elements from both Fury Road and the 2015 Mad Max video game, bridging them both together.
• Astronomic Zoom: The movie begins showing the Australian continent from the Earth's orbit before we zoom in until we reach the Green Place where the opening scene unfolds.
• Bad Boss: By the time Furiosa is old enough to participate in runs with the War Rig, Dementus has run Gas Town into disrepair. He comments to the Citadel convoy that their supplies are running low, the workers are getting unruly (with several of them being shown executed in public as they try to talk back to their guards), and Dementus ultimately steals the shipment of food before sending Jack, Furiosa and the convoy back with their tails between their legs to tell Joe that Dementus wants a new deal.
• Bait-and-Switch: Chumbucket's boast of "I have a car" seems to be setting up a badass reveal of an Improbably Cool Car, but it is in fact an Alleged Car, which is even missing a wheel.
• Bait the Dog: In Dementus's very first scene, he's gentle with the captive Furiosa, telling her that she doesn't have to tell them anything at all (in contrast to his men, who've been trying to threaten her to tell them where she came from), has her taken to another tent to be cleaned up, and orders a couple of his men to make sure no one else in the horde tries to harm her. Then soon after, he captures her mother and literally forces the poor girl to watch them torture Mary to death by not allowing Furiosa to turn her head to look away, and just casually tastes her tears and has the History Man comment on their nutritional value while showing no compassion for her pain.
• Bald Head of Toughness: Before the climactic battle, Furiosa shaves her head for a second time, bringing her closer to her appearance in Fury Road.
• Bittersweet Ending: Furiosa survives and eventually sets out to embark on her epic quest in Fury Road, but Praetorian Jack is dead, Furiosa doesn't get much satisfaction from giving Dementus a Fate Worse than Death, and in the interim she still has to serve Immortan Joe.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: The movie is essentially a big conflict between a bunch of violent and amoral gangs and warlords. Furiosa and Jack aren't horrible people and are just trying to survive, but they do so by running shipments for said warlords in order to get by. Meanwhile, we see that the peasants suffer at all 3 major strongholds. Furiosa makes a choice to be better at the end of the movie by helping Immortan Joe's wives escape, leading to the events of Fury Road.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Much more violent than previous entries in the franchise, with far more brutal kills and visible gore.
• Bookends:
  • The film begins and ends with Furiosa plucking fruit from a tree: first as a child in the Green Place, and then taking one from the tree that she grew out of Dementus' belly.
  • The first and last act begin with a lone woman pursuing a group of Dementus's men across the Wastelands, picking them off one at a time. In the first act this was Mary Jabassa trying to rescue Furiosa, in the last act it was Furiosa hunting down Dementus. Both of them also begin with the pursuer landing a shot on one of their targets, followed by another member of the group grabbing some binoculars and diving into the dunes.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: In the climax, when Furiosa confronts him about killing her mother and stealing her childhood 15 years before, Dementus' response basically says that really doesn’t narrow it down. He only realizes who she is after she grabs his stuffed bear.
• The Caligula: Dementus has no problem killing his men or treating using one as a Bulletproof Human Shield. He also tends to swing between Faux Affably Evil and murderously angry. He is a brilliant strategist and has grand visions of ruling the entire wasteland, but has no idea how to rule after ending his nomadic lifestyle. After taking over Gas Town, he runs it into the ground, with many noting he's completely out of control and isn't nearly as competent as its former ruler. The Bullet Farm is destroyed by Furiosa and Praetorian Jack the same day Dementus conquers it.
• Call-Forward:
  • The tagline "Remember her" alludes to Furiosa's Pre-Mortem One-Liner ("Remember me?!") before she killed Immortan Joe in Fury Road.
  • In the first act, Furiosa's mother posts up at a narrow gap so she can slow down Dementus' forces. Team Furiosa uses a similar tactic, with more effectiveness, in the climax of Fury Road.
  • When first brought to Dementus's camp, Furiosa jams an arrow tied to a wire into her biker captor's tires while the wire wraps around his neck and slices it open. She will later use a similar tactic in Fury Road to rip Immortan Joe's face off.
  • Furiosa and Praetorian Jack plot to steal the War Rig and escape to find the Green Place; years later, Furiosa puts this plan into motion when she defects from the Citadel and brings the Five Wives with her.
• The Cameo:
  • In the prologue at the Green Place, we see a young Valkyrie appearing alongside the young Furiosa.
  • Chumbucket from Mad Max (2015) appears briefly to help Furiosa.
  • We also get a silent cameo of Mad Max Rockatansky himself next to his V8 watching Furiosa walk through the desert.
  • During the montage of the 40-Day War between Immortan Joe's and Dementus's forces, the flamethrower guitar-wielding Doof Warrior briefly returns in all his insanely awesome glory.
• Canon Immigrant: Scabrous Scrotus from Mad Max (2015) video game and Fury Road prequel comics appears as a prominent character in this movie. Chumbucket from the same game also makes a brief appearance, but is only identified by name in the credits. Gas Town is also modeled after its appearance in that game.
• Chariot Pulled by Cats: One of Dementus's preferred vehicles is a chariot pulled by motorcycles, looking like a Roman emperor. It's a flashy vehicle that simultaneously demonstrates his power (the same way Immortan Joe's Gigahorse conveys he has two of everything in a world where most people don't even have one, Dementus has three motorcycles all to himself), serves as a visual shorthand for how society has regressed After the End, and it looks cool as hell.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Subverted; early on in the film, Furiosa uses The History Man's lesson on tattooing and her own knowledge of the Green Place to tattoo a map on her arm, which she subsequently hides from Dementus, Joe and his forces for years. She makes plans with Praetorian Jack to escape the Citadel and travel to the Green Place, but ultimately has her arm mangled, is forced to amputate it to escape from Dementus, and loses the exact knowledge of where she came from, fueling part of the plot of Fury Road (traveling through the Green Place without realizing it has become a swamp).
  • The seeds which Mary Jabassa gives to Furiosa are (seemingly) hidden until the very end of the film, where presuming Dementus' final fate is true, she forced Dementus to become a "living tree", with the seeds growing out of his abdomen in a secluded part of the Citadel.
• Cold-Blooded Torture:
  • Furiosa's mother, Mary, is slowly tortured to death by crucifixion over a fire in order to learn where she came from. She never breaks.
  • Furiosa's close friend/possible love Jack is also tortured to death by being dragged behind a car for hours while also being eaten alive by Dementus's dogs. In his case, it's just for the sake of forcing Furiosa to watch his Cruel and Unusual Death.
• Continuity Nod: A souped up hot rod 1934 Chevrolet Master Coupe 5 similar to the one driven by Nux in Fury Road is driven by Furiosa until it's destroyed as she and Praetorian Jack try to escape Dementus.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Several of note:
  • Furiosa's mother is crucified by Dementus' lackeys and tortured to death by repeated stabs to the abdomen.
  • Praetorian Jack is chained up and dragged in circles until sundown while Dementus's dogs attempt to eat him.
  • Dementus himself is made to be the living soil for a peach tree growing out of his stomach, planted by Furiosa.
• Death by Irony:
  • This movie reveals how Joe took in Furiosa in the hopes that she'd bear his children and bring life. She - with help - kills him, destroys his legacy, and brings new life to his oppressed people.
  • All of Furiosa's possible fates for Dementus have this.
    • Coldly executing him while they were alone in the desert, with none of the attention or bombast he loved so much. And with his own gun.
    • She could drag him to death behind her car, like he did to Jack, or crucify him over a fire, like he did to Mary.
    • Or she could take the destructive, narcissistic warlord, use his body to create life and a symbol of hope, and give it to Joe's Wives just before they escape. Which would leave Dementus to die alone in a remote and unobserved corner of the Citadel, with the muscled body he was so proud of reduced to a withered husk, chained down by his arms and legs. Just as he liked to do to others.
• Didn't Think This Through: Upon learning of the existence of the Citadel, Dementus immediately leads his entire horde to lay siege to it, without stopping for a second to gather any intelligence on the place's defenses, manpower or fortifications. It goes as well as can be expected for him.
• Doomed by Canon:
  • Mary Jabassa, the mother of Furiosa, is mentioned to have died three days after she was kidnapped in Fury Road, so her days are numbered from the moment she appeared on screen.
  • Praetorian Jack, the driver of the War Rig before Furiosa. Sure enough, he's executed by Dementus for his part in devastating the Bullet Farm.
  • The current Mayor of Gas Town isn't the People Eater (who's part of Joe's court at the Citadel at the time). He's killed by Dementus after he takes over Gas Town.
• Dramatic Irony: Those who've seen Fury Road will realise that the Green Place has likely already been reduced to a polluted swamp by the time Furiosa and Praetorian Jack are able to realistically consider escaping from the Citadel.
• Dressing as the Enemy:
  • Mary Jabassa steals the clothes from a mook she killed to sneak into Dementus' camp and rescue Furiosa.
  • In order to gain access to Gas Town, Dementus attacks a Citadel convoy, then has some of his men disguise themselves as War Boys to have them pretend they're under attack from his gang. It doesn't work until Dementus decides to legitimately kill his disguised men.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The Octoboss is outraged at Dementus' habit of offing his own men. In fact, by the time Furiosa has grown up enough to participate in runs with the War Rig years later, the Octoboss and some of his followers have gone rogue from Dementus and formed their own gang because of it.
  • As bad as Dementus is, he never once sexually abuses the child Furiosa and even orders two of his soldiers to make sure no other men in his ranks try to do so. He clearly sees her instead as a Replacement Goldfish daughter figure and is initially reluctant to hand her over to Immortan Joe, especially after the latter directly offers to make her one of his Wives when she's older, before Furiosa herself volunteers. Knowing the fate of the Wives (a fate Furiosa narrowly escapes herself), he was justified to be resistant on that account.
  • Related to the above, even Immortan Joe himself doesn't give any indication that he intends to have sex with Furiosa as a child when he takes her in, as his words show he plans to wait until she's of childbearing age. Though this is largely Pragmatic Villainy since his Wives mainly exist as breeders (and he's shown to have many more of them at the start than the five from Fury Road), it also contrasts him with his son Rictus, who apparently is a pedophile and takes Furiosa from the Vault one night with the heavy implication that he's going to force himself on her (which she takes advantage of to escape).
• Evil Counterpart: Though they never meet, Dementus is this for Max. They’re both extremely deadly and macho drifters who have lost their children to the Crapsack World they live in, causing them both to go insane. However while Max still has a Hidden Heart of Gold and ultimately chooses to protect people, Dementus has become a despicable and sadistic tyrant in his grief.
• Evil Versus Evil: Dementus first tries conquering the Citadel, and when that doesn't work, he takes over Gas Town and forces Immortan Joe to work with him. At least until he decides to try conquering them again.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Furiosa shaves her head twice in the film. The first time, she turned her hair into a wig so she could escape Rictus when he tried playing with her hair. She does so again just before the climactic battle to show she's once more discarding her femininity.
• Face Death with Dignity:
  • Once Dementus and his men capture Jack and Furiosa, they clearly have no expectation of surviving, and neither of them speak a word at all, just sharing a Headbutt of Love with each other that's clearly meant to be a "goodbye" of sorts. Furiosa ends up getting away by cutting off her arm, but Jack does die, and is never heard making even so much as a grunt of pain during his slow, torturous death.
  • When Dementus realizes that Furiosa has him completely dead to rights, he doesn't try to beg for his life or fight the inevitable. He just waits for her to pull the trigger. He even tells her that shooting him from behind might be more satisfying for her as it'll only make his death more nerve wracking for him since he won't see it coming. It's clear that he's just completely done with the world he lives in.
• Fake Shemp:
  • Max Rockatansky is seen from a distance when Furiosa is returning to the Citadel after losing her arm. For this one brief scene he's played by Jacob Tomuri, who was Tom Hardy's stunt double during Fury Road.
  • At the end of the film Furiosa approaches the Wives from Fury Road and helps them sneak out to the War Rig. The Wives are only seen in silhouette or with their faces in shadow as none of the original actresses returned. Similarly, Furiosa is clearly still Anya Taylor Joy and not Charlize Theron.
• Fate Worse than Death: Ultimately, Dementus is used as the soil for a healthy peach tree that Furiosa grows out of his stomach. It's made clear that she's deliberately keeping him alive, he's too weak to kill himself, and the maggots are having a field day.
• Faux Affably Evil: Dementus has the initial vibe of being a man who is vicious towards his enemies but kind and loyal to his allies. He tortures Furiosa's mother to death right in front of her and upon defeating a smaller gang, he forces its members to fight each other to the death for 5 positions in his crew (and violently execute their old leader in the process). But said new members are treated just the same as the rest of his crew (the woman whose face was mutilated becomes something of a Mauve Shirt), and he treats Furiosa relatively well, seeming to see her as a replacement for his own children he lost. However, he is willing to kill his own followers if it serves him (such as when he kills the men disguised as War Boys to make their False Flag Operation look more realistic, which causes the Octoboss to defect with his crew), and when Furiosa speaks for the first time since Mary's death to tell Immortan Joe that Dementus isn't her dad and killed her mom (resulting in Joe demanding her as part of his price for an alliance), Dementus coldly rips the teddy bear he gave her away from her before walking away without a second glance at her.
• Forced to Watch: Dementus inflicts this on Furiosa twice while he subjects her loved ones to a slow Cruel and Unusual Death: Mary the first time as a child, and Jack when she's a young adult. Ironically, he doesn't realize it's the same girl/woman both times until their confrontation in the ending, probably because it's heavily implied he does this very often to his defeated enemies.
• Foregone Conclusion: As a prequel to Fury Road, several parts of this story are clear from the beginning:
  • Immortan Joe has to win his war against Dementus, since he's still in power some years later.
  • Furiosa's escape attempts are doomed to fail, given she still works for Immortan Joe at the start of the original film.
  • Something's going to to take Praetorian Jack out of the picture, since there's no mention of him in Fury Road and Furiosa is the driver of the War Rig in that film.
  • The lush, verdant Green Place will become a polluted bog.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: It becomes clear at the end that Dementus is a man who was completely broken by the end of the world. He had children who he dearly loved and carries one of their teddy bears with him everywhere he goes as a memento. But it's also clear that none of that excuses all the atrocities he has committed, and his Fate Worse than Death is treated as fully justified.
• From Bad to Worse: Played with when Furiosa is traded to Immortan Joe as part of the deal for Gas Town.
  • In the short term, this makes her situation infinitely worse. While she loathes Dementus, he saw and treated her as a daughter, whereas Joe sees her as breeding stock and is clearly going to force himself upon her as soon as she's old enough to safely bear children. Still, Furiosa (understandably) hates Dementus so much for killing Mary that she practically volunteers herself to be traded just to get away from him, since he initially refuses to hand her over until she tells Joe the truth that he's not her dad and murdered her mom.
  • Ultimately, Furiosa is able to use her wits to turn things around for herself in the long term by taking advantage of Rictus's lust for her to escape. While posing as an anonymous, mute male Citadel worker, she rises in the ranks over the course of a decade or so and learns a number of useful skills that are crucial to her survival in this movie and Fury Road, which she very likely wouldn't have if she'd stayed with Dementus. (Not to mention that his horde and hold on Gas Town increasingly falls apart during this time.)
• Great Offscreen War: The 40 Day War takes place almost entirely offscreen as Furiosa spends most of the time recovering and building her new prosthetic arm. Only the aftermath is seen, as the War Boys sort through the wreckage of Dementus's forces.
• Harpoon Gun: Furiosa fires a harpoon on at the Octoboss from atop the War Rig.
• Headbutt of Love: There's even an origin story for Furiosa touching foreheads with Valkyrie in Fury Road. Her mother does it with her and a comrade from the Green Place, establishing it as a tradition in their culture. Furiosa later does it with Praetorian Jack multiple times.
• Hollywood Tactics:
  • Played straight and then subverted by Dementus.
    • His original attempt at conquering the Citadel consists of simply marching his horde up to the gates of the impregnable stone fortress whose very existence he just discovered (and thus knows nothing about its defenses or manpower), loudly announcing that he's laying siege to the place and demanding its surrender. The War Boys attack him from fortified high ground and utterly crush him.
    • His attack on Gas Town on the other hand displays classic tactics. He first attacks and captures one of the convoys, dresses some of his people as War Boys and chases them back to Gas Town faking an attack. Once the rig is inside the gates, his forces concealed inside quickly take control of the gates and let the rest of the horde in.
  • The 40 Day War subverts this trope as both sides resort to well-thought out strategies and subterfuge to gain advantage on the battlefield.
    • Dementus calls for a meeting of the Warlords at the Citadel in three days and while the others go there to prepare an ambush for him, he launches a sneak attack and conquers the Bullet Farm. He then sets a fake fire to make it look like he's destroying Gas Town to lure the bulk of Immortan Joe's forces away from the Citadel, all the while using a water truck to spray water ahead of the force he is leading to attack the Citadel through the desert so it doesn’t raise a dust cloud and thus not be detected.
    • Despite Scrotus's insistence on playing this straight, Immortan Joe knows better. He intended to lay an ambush for Dementus at the meeting the latter called, but when Furiosa informs him and the other leaders that the apparent fire in Gas Town is an attempt to lure his forces away from the Citadel, he turns the trap on itself by sending a small party to raise a large dust cloud and make it look like the bulk of his army is heading to Gas Town to lull Dementus into going ahead with the attack, and eventually is able to destroy his forces in 40 days.
• Hope Spot: After years of desperate survival and longing to go home, Furiosa discovers a true friend, ally and (possibly) lover in Praetorian Jack, who's not only willing to let her escape the Citadel but also decides to go with her and help her to find the Green Place. Then Dementus once again ruins Furiosa's life by occupying the Bullet Farm and ambushing and destroying the War Rig; there's another brief moment of hope when they manage to escape in a vehicle, but Dementus catches up to them, tortures Jack to death, and maims Furiosa's left arm so severely that she has to amputate it; as her arm bears the tattoo of the star chart leading to the Green Place, she's thus lost her final tie to her beloved home.
• Hope Sprouts Eternal: Before their final parting, Mary gifts her daughter a seed from their home as a reminder to find her way back through the now largely inhospitable desert. Furiosa keeps it through thick and thin, but finally plants it over Dementus' still alive but decaying body in an inhospitable cliff in retribution, and a symbol of life and hope. As a final kicker, she feeds the tree's fruit to the Wives before they escape.
• It's Quiet… Too Quiet: The first time we see the War Rig visit Bullet Farm, they are met by a swarm of cheering miners lining the road. The second time, nobody is around and Jack is obviously suspicious. Dementus has conquered the Farm and the miners are all hiding in the pit.
• Last Stand: Mary Jabassa tries this against Dementus' forces in the opening act, telling Furiosa to run away while she tries to hold them off. It's ultimately subverted; though she downs several men, she's eventually overpowered by a swarm of them and knocked out, then gets crucified to death, while Furiosa is re-captured almost immediately anyway.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: On the off chance that the viewer hasn't seen Mad Max: Fury Road, several scenes from it (shown in chronological order) are played throughout the end credits, including Nux's ultimate sacrifice to destroy the War Rig and impede Joe's forces at the canyon pass, which happened at the climax of the movie.
• Lesser of Two Evils: Zizagged in regards to Dementus vs. Immortan Joe. Both are despicable men, but Dementus has some sympathetic moments whereas Immortan Joe is, well, Immortan Joe. On the flip side, as awful as Joe is, he is at least competent in running and maintaining his dictatorship, and he manages to keep the trifecta of the Citadel, Bullet Farm, and Gas Town afloat and operational, whereas Dementus runs Gas Town into the ground in a matter of years.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: When it's become clear that Dementus, Immortan Joe and the Bullet Farmer are likely going to start a fight, Furiosa and Praetorian Jack decide to take advantage of the stituation to defect from the Citadel and strike out for the Green Place.
• Mama Bear: After Furiosa is kidnapped by Dementus' mooks, her mother Mary chases after them by herself and picks off all but one of them with her sniper rifle. Apparently Furiosa got her Improbable Aiming Skills from her mom.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The Octoboss and his crew turn on Dementus after years of mistreatment, starting when the latter kills several of them in order to gain access to Gas Town.
• Mook Horror Show: Furiosa's final confrontation with Dementus. He wakes from a sleep to discover that somebody has cut his waterskin and stolen the front wheel from his bike without waking him, and she then coldly stalks him through a sandstorm until he's exhausted.
• Myopic Conqueror: Throughout the story, Dementus is more fixated on the getting his hands on things than in thinking through what he's going to do with them once he has them. After conquering Gas Town and getting Immortan Joe to acknowledge it as his fief, he runs the place into the ground over the course of no more than a decade through his mismanagement. Instead of acknowledging his failings, his solution is to double down and start a war to conquer the Bullet Farm and the Citadel.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The trailer has Dementus saying "Do you have it in you to make it epic?" framed in a way that makes it look as if he's giving Furiosa a Dare to Be Badass pep-talk. In the actual film it's during their final confrontation, and he's asking her if she's going to kill him quickly or in a crueller and more theatrical way.
  • The trailers also paint the film as the relentless action spectacle that Fury Road was. While Furiosa certainly has plenty of action as well, it's a much slower, more contemplative film much more focused on character and theme than its action-packed predecessor.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Dementus notes that both he and Furiosa are driven entirely by the pain left in their hearts after the loss of their families, saying she'll be just like him in no time. Furiosa verbally denies this but one can see in her face that the observation gets to her. Her subsequent decision to depart with the wives to the Green Place seems at least partly motivated by not wanting to end up like Dementus.
• Onscreen Chapter Titles: Each section of the film is preceded by a title card, usually accompanying a Time Skip of several years.
• Origins Episode: As indicated by the title cards in the trailer, the film will detail how Furiosa was abducted from her home at the Green Place.
• Papa Wolf: Dementus provides a villainous example towards Furiosa when she was a girl, even saving her from a scavenger in the Citadel who tried pulling her into a hole. He seemed to genuinely view her as his daughter after the loss of his own children. Unfortunately for Dementus, since he killed her mother, Furiosa only hates him.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The History Man remarks on several theorized fates of Dementus, from merely being shot in the head, to being dragged behind Furiosa's car like Jack, to being tied to a tree and slowly tortured to death like Mary. Only he and Furiosa know Dementus's ultimate fate: She plants a seed inside his body and keeps him alive as a tree grows out of his withered flesh.
• Plot Armor: After Furiosa escapes from Dementus missing an arm, she finds herself at the Citadel in a cavern full of dead bodies, with maggots crawling on her open arm stump. She shows no signs of illness or infection for the rest of the movie and her arm stump heals up cleanly.^note In real life, maggots in wounds are often surprisingly helpful to healing, eating necrotic flesh with great precision and leaving healthy flesh alone, and it's suggested in the scene that the people with Furiosa might have been deliberately harvesting maggots for that purpose.
• Pragmatic Villainy: This film shows Immortan Joe at his most rational, showing that when his judgment wasn't clouded by anger at having the Wives stolen from him, he could be frightfully efficient.
  • Instead of being angered at Dementus conquering Gas Town, he simply negotiates down his demands and even gets a new Wife and poaches Dementus' most competent underling right from under him.
  • After procuring her as a Wife when she's still a child, he doesn't lay a finger on Furiosa, and it's implied that it's not out of any moral qualms about molesting a child, but because she's still way too young to bear children.
  • Even though he probably doesn't recognize her as the child Wife that went missing from his harem years before, Joe doesn't throw the clearly healthy and beautiful woman into his harem the second he sees Praetorian Furiosa, recognizing that she's much more useful as Praetorian Jack's second in command than she is as a breeder.
• Punny Name: Two members of Dementus's Biker Horde, seen briefly, are referred to respectively as "Mr. Harley" and "Mr. Davidson."
• Replacement Goldfish: Dementus tries to make Furiosa this for his dead children, dyeing her hair red to match his and presenting her to Immortan Joe as his "daughter". Furiosa hates him too much to go along with it and immediately tells Immortan Joe (who'd already noticed that they don't look related) that he's not her father.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Dementus' cape starts out white, representing his (thin) messianic facade. Shortly after he executes Furiosa's mom, red dye from a flare gun stains the upper parts (also coloring his hair red for a while), and it then gets some black during his time in Gas Town, and he stops wearing the hood. Furiosa steals and wears it when she hunts him down, with the hood up, shortly before he says they're not so different.
  • The red dye is also in Furiosa's hair when Dementus claims she's his daughter and trades her to Immortan Joe, which starts her life on its bloody path to becoming like Dementus.
  • Dementus' revolver is a LeMat, with an underbarrel shotgun. Furiosa repeatedly uses an Apache revolver, which is also a knife and knuckledusters. Both of them of them end up with multi-mode revolvers specialized for close combat, because they're similar.
• Sawed-Off Shotgun: Praetorian Jack gives Furiosa a powerful sawed-off shotgun when he decides she's ready to strike out on her own, seemingly the same one she carries in the War Rig by Fury Road.
• Saved by Canon: The film is a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, so the characters from that film who show up here (like Furiosa, Valkyrie, Immortan Joe and most of his retinue) are safe. Any new characters who don't show up in that film (such as Dementus, Praetorian Jack, and Scrotus), however, are fair game.
• Shout-Out:
  • Furiosa's mother posts up at a narrow gap so she can slow down Dementus' forces. This is very similar to what happened in 300, though it's also just basic tactics.
  • One of the opening voiceovers is a shout-out to Deus Ex: Human Revolution. "It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from here".
  • The painting prominently featured in the mayor of Gas Town's office is Hylas and the Nymphs. There is a large mural of it in his office, a lackey is seen painting it, and the mayor's severed finger is sent to Immortan Joe in a postcard of the painting. The choice of painting is rife with potential symbolism — it's a relic of the old civilization in a desert lacking drinking water and full of people being driven to bad fates through greed. Later we see that Dementus's office has crudely repainted over the mural to show Hylas choking one of the nymphs instead, emphasizing the setting's resentment towards women and refinement ("Who killed the world?" the brides ask in the next film).
• Senseless Sacrifice: Mary's sacrifice to allow Furiosa to escape is in vain, as Furiosa is immediately caught anyway.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: Furiosa's mother dons a helmet made with a skull in order (stolen from one of the enemies she'd just killed) to sneak into Dementus's camp.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Praetorian Jack looks and behaves a lot like Max himself as depicted in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Retroactively, this gives off the impression that Furiosa trusts Max in part on account of his similarities with Jack.
• Theme Naming: Some of Dementus' henchmen are named after classic motorcycle brands, such as "Mr. Harley", "Mr. Davidson" and "Mr. Norton".
• This Means Warpaint: After she becomes a part of the War Rig convoy, Furiosa starts wearing her trademark war point, though it's implied to be to keep the sun out of her eyes, as her partner Praetorian Jack wears the same.
• The Title Saga: The subtitle is "A Mad Max Saga".
• Time Skip:
  • One of several years after Furiosa escapes from Immortan Joe's harem.
  • The very end of the movie features one, as after Furiosa captures Dementus and the History Man goes over the possible fates she may have inflicted on him, the film jumps approximately 5 years into the future to right before the events of Fury Road with Furiosa smuggling the Wives out of the harem and loading them into the War Rig.^note During her final confrontation with Dementus, Furiosa tells him that it's been 15 years since he killed her mother, and thus since she was taken from the Green Place. Fury Road takes place over 7,000 days (approximately 20 years) after Furiosa's abduction from the Green Place, which means that the time gap between the end of one film and the start of the other is of around 5 years.
• Trojan Horse:
  • Dementus pretends to "chase" a rig back to Gas Town, so they'll let his hidden men inside. All he had to do was sacrifice a few of his men to sell the attack.
  • He arguably does the trope psychologically by showing the War Rig that he's losing control of Gas Town, and says he needs a meeting in three days...so he has time to conquer the Bullet Farm in preparation for going after the Citadel again.
• Underestimating Badassery: Dementus attempts to take over the Citadel by appealing to those living there to turn against Immortan Joe. Joe responds by showing off his Cult of Personality before having his forces wreck Dementus's gang. This is inverted later when Dementus catches everyone off-guard in his takeover of Gas Town and the Bullet Farm despite the warlords thinking of him as a base lunatic.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Mentioned by Dementus at the end: no matter how much Furiosa rages and screams and beats him, her family and old life is gone forever and trying to get closure will always be futile. Dementus cites his own experiences with losing his family as reason enough not to dwell on trying to get justice for past transgressions. If the ending where Dementus is chained up and used to host the peach tree is what actually occurred (and it is strongly implied to be true), it's likely that this was Furiosa's way of ultimately subverting this trope: by using her nemesis' body to grow fresh fruit, she can help nourish new life rather than try to trade taking lives to balance the scales.
• Villainous Breakdown: After Jack and Furiosa completely decimate the Bullet Farm not long after he conquered it, Dementus is nothing short of livid, his usual bombast giving way to murderous rage as he immediately hops into a monster truck and goes barreling after the pair with his horde in tow. Once he catches them, Dementus launches into a furious, unhinged rant, growing even angrier at seeing the pair share a Headbutt of Love since it reminds him of the family he lost, and he then orders Jack's brutal execution with the intent of forcing Furiosa to watch his demise.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Scabus Scrotus survives the war against Dementus, yet isn't featured in Fury Road, leaving his fate unknown. Although what seems to be the same character previously showed up in Mad Max (2015) (which appears to be set after this film) and got a definitive fate there.
  • The History Man is last seen in the company of Scrotus as Furiosa takes off after Dementus in the final act, with his fate left unresolved by the time Fury Road occurs. Barring He's Just Hiding or death by old age, his ultimate fate is left unknown (though his writings are still referenced in the latter film).
• Won the War, Lost the Peace: Dementus is a skilled enough military leader to conquer Gas Town and the Bullet Farm. However, he is an incompetent administrator, to a degree that causes Gas Town to descend into riots and the other warlords turn against him.