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The letter from Charlie's father to his son.Even worse, it's implied that had this event not occurred, Raymond could have been a higher-functioning person who could live without assistance.Raymond was unable to speak up for himself due to his disorder, and his father never found out the truth as a result. Raymond revealing to Charlie why he got sent to the institution- he saved Charlie from being burned by hot bathwater when he was just a child, but his father mistakenly thought that Raymond had tried to burn him on purpose.Suspiciously Similar Song: Compare 'Las Vegas' to 'This Corrosion' by The Sisters of Mercy (which some may know as the end credits theme to The World's End).Signature Scene: The shot of Raymond and Charlie descending the escalator in Caesar's place in matching grey suits, making Ray look almost cool.

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'Seinfeld' Is Unfunny: Perhaps due to autism being better-known these days, some people (even autistic people) find the movie pretty unremarkable (that is, if they don't outright hate it, as noted above) despite the hype alongside the stereotype.

(Which is also Hilarious in Hindsight, as Hunt would go on to co-star with Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire nearly a decade later, and Cruise didn't remember who Hunt was).

Retroactive Recognition: Bonnie Hunt plays the waitress who drops the toothpicks.

Raymond's meltdowns with the hot bathtub and the smoke detector.

There is some Truth in Television to this compulsive, stereotyped motions known as 'stimming' are common among autistic individuals as a means of venting stress, and while most cases of it are fairly benign (if odd-looking to a neurotypical person), in some rarer and more extreme cases it can indeed include self-harming behaviors such as striking oneself on the head. But just before they board it, Ray screams bloody murder and hits himself on the head repeatedly, and it's absolutely terrifying, which forces Charlie not to take the plane. Charlie tries to force Raymond to go on a plane, even after he insists that there's a real risk that it'll crash.Nightmare Fuel: Any time Raymond has a meltdown.Come this decade, and slowly but surely the Kmart stores slowly began to close up- with less than 400 stores remaining. Harsher in Hindsight: Following the poker scene, Charlie lets Ray in on a secret: 'Kmart sucks'.

That this film created a trend in Hollywood for self-consciously sympathetic and tearful films about Inspirationally Disadvantaged, which turned into one of the most negative examples of Oscar Bait before too long, exacerbates this fact. The simplistic portrayal of autism in the movie and the way it's used as a plot device to teach the 'neurotypical' protagonist not to be a Jerkass make it guaranteed Flame Bait on many autistic support forums.

Glurge: Despite the general positive reception of the movie and Dustin Hoffman's great Oscar-winning performance, for many autistic people, the movie's much more glurge-y than anything else.According to the book NeuroTribes, the movie also helped the general population become much more sympathetic towards autistic people, as the movie gave them a basic understanding of the condition. However, mainstream awareness of autism owes much to this film, and it opened the floodgates for introducing sympathetic portrayals of mentally challenged characters in media.

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Fair for Its Day: The movie is criticized nowadays for introducing the stereotype that all autistic people have savant skills, and for giving out a strict criterion for autism portrayals when the condition is, in reality, loosely defined and highly variable from person to person beyond base commonalities (Hence why the full name for the mental disability is 'Autism Spectrum Disorder').