Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

These are questions relating to specific titles. General questions for movies and TV shows are here. Members get e-mailed when any of their questions are answered.

Question: When Beetlejuice tried to get the Maitland's business - I don't recall hearing what he expected for payment from them - does anyone know?

Answer: He didn't really talk about payment from the Maitlands. He made it seem like he was good at getting rid of the living and just wanted to help out. But really, he was trying to get "hired" so they would say his name 3 times so he could be summoned. Then by marrying Lydia, he could escape the Neitherworld.

Bishop73

Answer: Because she was a loose end who could have conceivably undermined his carefully-constructed lie that he was working for the Allies all along.

Answer: I always took it he admired her so much and maybe even pursued a relationship with her that never came to pass. Her lying to him was a personal betrayal that drove him to strangle her. Crime of passion. Just always has been my theory.

Question: Why didn't Superman spin the world (and time) backwards enough to prevent the nuke from exploding in the first place? Wouldn't that have saved a lot more lives?

briggs

Answer: Just to clarify: Superman didn't spin the Earth backwards. We just see the world turning backwards when he went back in time. Of course this doesn't answer your question and it shows how difficult it is to write a good time travel story that doesn't leave the audience thinking of better ways to solve problems.

I guess the way they wrote it, Superman got to be the hero and also get the girl, not really too bad of an outcome.

briggs

Answer: Well yes. This is actually a perfect thing to submit for a Stupidity. Cause it's just bad writing all around.

Quantom X

Answer: John planted fake blood work for Laura indicating that she had hyperkalemia (increased potassium levels), a condition that is potentially fatal. She would need to be transferred to a hospital to be treated.

raywest

If Laura was was suffering from hyperkalemia, wouldn't the jail doctor have reported it before John planted the fake blood work?

She wasn't actually suffering from it. John had planted the fake medical report that the doctor presumably then read and acted upon by arranging for her to be transferred to the hospital.

raywest

I doubt the jail's doctor would be fooled by the fake medical report since Laura wasn't showing any obvious physical symptoms.

Many medical conditions do not show physical symptoms early on, but are detectable with tests. For example, people live with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, brain tumors, etc. for some years before experiencing any physical effects. The doctor read the results of Laura's blood test, and, as was standard procedure, had her admitted to the hospital, presumably for additional testing that could not be performed within a prison setting. Also, after some additional reading on the subject: hyperkalemia often has no early symptoms. Later symptoms are flu-like-such as muscle aches, physical weakness, nausea, fatigue, etc. That may be why John chose that particular condition, and it is something Laura could easily have faked.

raywest

I still think the jail's doctor would get suspicious since blood test results are not monitored and delivered to a county jail by an outside lab.

Suspicious or not, he would act in the patient's best interests. If the hospital blood tests come back negative, then he doesn't have a problem. If Laura dies in his care from an easily treatable condition which he knew about, it's goodbye career and hello huge malpractice suit. He would be fully conversant with the procedures used while transferring prisoners to local hospitals, including the very close security put in place, and he has no reason to think that someone is putting this incredibly elaborate escape plan into effect.

Speaking of a prisoner being transferred to a hospital, does that happen very often?

But don't jails, and prisons tend to keep a prisoners hospitalization a secret?

Question: In the droid factory, when the smasher crushes what Anakin's arm is trapped in, his lightsaber shoots out, but how is it when his arm is released from it, it's now back in his hand as if it never shot out? It seems too noticeable to be a mistake.

Answer: I watched the clip on YouTube. It's hard to see, but Anakin's light saber is always in his hand. Just after the light blade is switched off, the sword's hilt can still be seen in his palm as his arm is trapped. When his arm is freed, he's still holding the light saber, but it has been damaged.

raywest

Yeah the top part of the lightsaber is cut off by the machine and bounces off. I think that what the question asker is referring to, mistaking it for the entire saber.

lionhead

Answer: Most likely it was an act of defiance and to show that it was controlling its own death and didn't fear dying. It may also been attempting to kill Dutch in the resulting explosion.

raywest

Answer: Note that he had just learned to laugh from Billy (after hearing the silly joke of Hawkins). Maybe he misinterpreted the situation or redefined the sense of laughing for his purpose.

This is true, the Predator doesn't understand the human expression of laughter, but uses it anyway. Probably a misinterpretation by the predator.

lionhead

Answer: The predator began laughing knowing that he was about to kill himself and his greatest rival.

Answer: Dutch may have won the battle, but he lost the war. Even though Dutch beat the Predator, the Predator - by blowing up both of them - was the ultimate winner. The Predator was telling Dutch, "Got ya!" - despite your strategies, persistence, and effort, they were all in vain. But the Predator wasn't around to see that Dutch was able to flee in time and save himself. (Now who is laughing?)

KeyZOid

Question: How can Pete understand what Elliott is saying when he speaks gibberish?

Answer: He has a bond with Eliot so he understands what he is saying.

Question: If they were after Kimble, why did they kill his wife? She wasn't in the way because he wasn't in the house.

Answer: Kimble was called at the last minute for an operation at the hospital unbeknownst to Sykes and Nichols. Even so, it was likely that they would kill his wife to tie up loose ends. Their plan was to kill Kimble, possibly his wife, and stage the crime as a robbery.

The only reasonable answer is that the wife found this guy's hiding spot, and that left him no choice but to act. Otherwise, he would have simply stayed in hiding until Richard came home and killed the both (while sleeping most likely, but by surprise certainly).

oldbaldyone

Relics - S6-E4

Question: When Scotty was at the door of the Holodeck, he calls for the bridge of the Enterprise, "no bloody A, B, C, or D." When the doors open, it's the bridge of the original ship. However, he was Chief Engineer on the refit Enterprise (no A). Besides the obvious "it's in the script", why didn't the computer ask for a distinction?

Movie Nut

Answer: As a product of 24th Century technology, the ship's computer is an example of extremely advanced artificial intelligence that is capable of intuiting deeper meanings based on inflection and speaker personality profiles. The computer probably (and correctly) intuited from Scotty's profile and the exasperated tone of his voice that he meant the original, unmodified Enterprise NCC 1701.

Charles Austin Miller

Question: When the building with the hostages gets destroyed, Simon tells the police that he told John where the bodies were, with John responding that he didn't care. Clearly a blatant lie - why would the police actually take the word of a murdering psychopath like Simon considering that he would do or say anything to save himself?

Answer: Spartan didn't have authorization to go in and apprehend Phoenix to begin with. Depending on the time and manner of deaths of the hostages, it may have been impossible for the authorities to determine that they were already dead before Spartan went in guns blazing, so it would be determined that he was criminally negligent in their deaths. Whatever Phoenix had to say on the matter probably didn't even factor into Spartan's trial.

Phaneron

Answer: They didn't. They found the bodies and knowing how badly John wanted to take down Simon, they assumed Simon was telling the truth. I always felt that there was an assumption that Simon also had other planted evidence to frame John but that is never confirmed, just my hunch.

The_Iceman

Question: When the dynamite goes off in the theatre, destroying it, there is a shot of a woman being blown out of the top window of the building screaming for a brief moment. Who was that woman and how did she get there? It couldn't have been Shosanna as she was very dead from being shot before that moment. And it wasn't the translator for Goebbels either for the same reason. Most everybody else was in the theater room or the balcony's themselves. So who was that woman?

Quantom X

Answer: I'm not entirely sure it's a woman. I slowed the scene down and the person looks like they are wearing a tuxedo. So probably a man with a high-pitched voice/scream. My best guess is that it is one of the attendees who may have excused themselves from the auditorium before all the doors were locked, and once the fire and massacre started, they were running through the corridor unable to escape and were eventually thrown out of the window by the explosion.

Phaneron

Yesterday's Enterprise - S3-E15

Question: The ever-popular gag in this episode is that Worf consumes prune juice for the first time and declares that it is a "warrior's drink," to Guinan's amusement. However, Worf was adopted as a child by human parents, he grew up on Earth, he was highly educated and graduated Star Fleet Academy on Earth. Given the reputation of prune juice as a natural laxative throughout human history, how could Worf not know what prune juice is, having lived most of his life on Earth?

Charles Austin Miller

Answer: There's nothing to indicate that Worf had never heard of prune juice before, just that he had never tried it before. He doesn't recognize the smell or taste of the drink as prune juice because he's never had it before. But that doesn't mean he has no idea what prune juice is, or that it is used as a natural laxative. In a later episode Guinan directly asks Worf's parents why he never had prune juice prior to her serving him the drink. They answer that as a child Worf refused to eat human food of any kind, everything he consumed had to be Klingon. Other episodes show that Klingons tend to despise human food in general for being bland. It stands to reason that someone who shows no outward interest in human food might not know what prune juice is usually used for. But then again, maybe he does know and he doesn't care because prune juice is delicious to him.

BaconIsMyBFF

Thanks for reminding me about that later episode, although I think the later prune juice explanation from Worf's adoptive parents was scripted to address many fan questions along the same lines as my own.

Charles Austin Miller

Question: Why did the soldiers shoot the non-infected people in the cattle trucks? Is there something going on here that I missed? Does everybody have the virus?

Answer: Possibly because the Government didn't want word about the virus getting out to the general public so they ordered the solders to shoot the non infected people in order to silence them all, and then created a cover story about a chemical plant exploding in the town.

Trainman

Answer: At this point, the army had decided to simply kill everyone from the town, rather than risk the infection spreading and to save the time and trouble of checking whether people were infected or not.

Also, they probably wanted to contain knowledge of what they'd done. No witnesses.

Answer: Money.

Question: Since it was possible to create a clone army, why were cybernetic parts given to Anakin, instead of cloning the limbs he lost and attaching them to his body?

Answer: To add to the above it is not just that he is missing arms and legs but his internal organs like lungs are incapable of working properly. So one would have to do more then just replace the arms and legs. In addition Palpatine make the suit vulnerable to force lighting making it harder for Vader to overthrow him as is the way of the Sith.

Answer: It's debatable whether or not they could clone individual body parts. Also, since Anakin's limbs were severed with a lightsaber, his nerve endings would be cauterized, so simply reattaching organic limbs to them wouldn't be an option.

Phaneron

Answer: Adding to what Phaneron, also note how long it would take to grow said limbs for a full adult. The clones themselves have growth acceleration so that they take half the time a normal person to reach full maturity and growth. But this still takes 10-15 years for the to get to physical adulthood. And their growth acceleration doesn't stop at that point. The reason why none of the Storm Troopers are Clones in the original trilogy, by the time New Hope rolls around, is because they age twice as fast. Most died of old age or were very old by that point as in that 17 year time gap between Episode 3 and 4, they aged 34 years physically, without the growth acceleration being stopped as it's likely not able to be stopped. So it would take a very long time to grow cloned limbs for Anakin and be physically a match for him. And if they did accelerate the growth for said limbs, it would only take a few years before he'd be a younger guy walking around with very old man legs and arms. Not to mention, the arms and legs wouldn't have his muscle mass grown by default without being used.

Quantom X

Where or when is it said the accelerated growth doesn't stop or is removed when the clones reach adulthood?

lionhead

In many places in the canon. Just look at the new Rebels show even. There are still a few clones left, and they are very very old.

Quantom X

Show generally

Question: All through the show MaryAnn makes coconut cream pies for everyone. Where does she get the eggs, milk, wheat flour...every ingredient but the coconut?

Answer: It's never explained how she gets the ingredients. There may be substitute ingredients someone on a tropical island could possibly use, like eggs from island birds, wild sorghum as a substitute flour and sweetener, wild goats milk (such creatures are common enough thanks to sailors of previous centuries), citrus fruit for flavor, etc.

raywest

Question: How would Doug leave the clues if Claire is already dead? The incident with Carroll happened before he went to her house to wash the blood off, which means she would have already been killed before he could've gone to her house and set all the clues.

Answer: This is just one of many examples of using the causal loop aspect of time travel. The clues aid Doug in his quest to catch the bomber and rescue Claire, but he is the one that puts the clues there. It's similar to "Terminator," in which Kyle Reese is sent back in time to protect Sarah Connor, and by extension, her future son John. but Kyle is the one who fathers John when he goes back in time.

Phaneron

Question: When Daniel is calling home to apply for the job of housekeeper, why did he use different accents instead of just using the British accent instantly?

Answer: Daniel was pretending to be different people that were just all very horrible, so he used different accents. This way, when the "British nanny" calls, he was hoping Miranda would instantly consider him. If he called pretending to be Ms. Doubtfire right away, she might not have basically given him the job right away. And if he used the charming British accent for all his characters, it would have lost its charm when he decided to be Ms. Doubtfire.

Bishop73

Answer: He was just practising or trying it out, and took a while to think of it.

Harvest - S5-E3

Question: Why does Mrs Perez tell Catherine that they couldn't find a marrow donor for Daniel because he's mixed race? I thought it didn't matter what race you are when it came to donating organs or blood, as long as the blood types match or were compatible.

Answer: What is often called bone marrow transplants is the transplant of hematopoietic stem cell. Instead of blood type match, patients need to be an HLA match (human leukocyte antigen). There's a lower percentage of matching one's HLA type with a random person than blood type. When it comes to matching human HLA types, a person's ethnic background is important in finding a match because the HLA markers used in matching are inherited, and some ethnic groups have more complex tissue types than others. A person's best chance of finding a donor may be with someone of the same ethnic background, meaning someone on the registry would have to be of mixed race as well. At the time, the total number of multiple race donors in the registry was very low (I don't have the figures for 2004, but in 2014 there were less than 500,000 multiple race donors).

Bishop73

Question: Could Indy ever survive the nuclear blast in a fridge?

Answer: This universally reviled and ridiculed scene has been analysed many, many times, and the conclusion the world has come to is the obvious one: No, one cannot survive a nuclear explosion in a refrigerator. Do not attempt.

Answer: If you were far from the initial explosion, the lining of the fridge may protect you from some residual radiation, but it would not protect you from the force of the blast or the intense heat. Being thrown by the blast would kill you whether you were inside a metal box or not.

Answer: Inconceivable heat and bombardment by gamma radiation notwithstanding, the sheer G-forces of being blasted miles away in a matter of seconds (and the terrific impact of striking the earth) should have pulverized Indy to jelly inside the refrigerator. So, factually speaking, no normal human being was walking away from that one. However, of course, Indiana Jones is no normal human being, and he had already impossibly survived so many catastrophes in his life that we just accept that the guy is charmed or protected by the hand of God. That's the running gag of the entire Indiana Jones franchise.

Charles Austin Miller

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.