Question: This is about the poker game on the coffee cup the cop gets. Was this an actual contest or something back in the early 90s? Would the cop have actually won something for the "full-house" or were those cups printed just for fun?
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: Exactly why did The Company create and experiemnt with a dangerous and life-threatening disease such as The Shanti Virus? Surely they must have known the risks?
Chosen answer: They didn't create it - it first manifested in Shanti Suresh. Their original reason for experimenting on it was probably to find a cure, just as real-world virus labs experiment on highly contagious viruses with that aim in mind. However, the effect of blocking access to powers was clearly of use to the Company in dealing with powered individuals, so their experiments also produced alternative strains of the virus, including the one used on Sylar and Niki Sanders that removed their abilities. These experiments may also have resulted in the ability negation pills given to Peter Petrelli during his time as a "guest" of the Company between seasons one and two. While the risks are obviously considerable, careful security precautions can be set up to guard against accidental release. Somebody insane enough to wish to release one intentionally is, of course, another matter entirely...
Question: At work, when Buck first sees Hank's bleached blonde hair, he says "You look like the fella who killed the other fella." Is this a reference to any real-life crime?
Answer: No, it's just a throw-away joke.
Answer: Maybe he just watched Fargo.
Question: Why does Elizabeth take the medallion with her after Will rescues her? Surely she must have known the pirates would come after her if she took it.
Answer: They're going to come after her anyway - she's really the only lead they have to finding Bootstrap Bill's real child (at least until Jack appears on the scene, but she doesn't know that). If she has the medallion, then she has leverage - the pirates need it, so it could potentially be used as a bargaining chip. If she leaves it behind, she loses that potential advantage.
Question: Two questions about Nancy and John Redcorn's affair. First, has it ever been explained why Nancy had an affair for so long and didn't leave Dale? Her relationship with John seemed to be more than just fun. Also, have the show's creators ever said why they didn't do an episode where Dale finds out about the affair?
Answer: In one episode, Nancy says that she loves Dale "in a 'lights-on' sort of way." She feels some type of love and affection for him. It could be a case of her wanting to "have it all." Dale, who doesn't make a lot of money and has low self-confidence, will help care for Joseph and the home, giving Nancy more time to have a passionate affair with John Redcorn.
Answer: Nancy's and John's relationship was based solely on a physical one. they both seem to agree that THAT was the way things were and nothing more could come from it. The reason why there was never an episode of Dale finding out is cause it was one of the shows running gags.
Homecoming - S1-E9
Question: Why does Jessica want to kill D.L. so much? I don't understand her motivation behind it.
Chosen answer: Jessica thinks she is the only one capable of taking care of her son. She feels that DL stole him, and she has to eliminate him as a threat.
Question: In the trailer the Joker walks towards Batman on the street, pulls out a knife and tosses it to his other hand, but in the movie they don't show that. Was that part cut out of the movie?
Chosen answer: Trailers are almost invariably put together before the final edit of the film is locked down. As such, it's not uncommon for them to contain shots from deleted scenes, alternate takes and so forth. The shot that you refer to wasn't used in the final version of the film, that's all.
Question: Shouldn't the bodies have rotted? They've been inside the walls for decades, yet still look as if they'd been dead for a couple days - maybe weeks.
Answer: It could be supernatural, but my guess is that the bodies were preserved with embalming fluid. the eyelids didn't decompose so they were preserved too. It wouldn't be too hard to acomplish since it was done in a funeral home by a mortician with a lot of expierence.
I would say that it's because the bodies are processed as they would be in a morgue. Since that's what the house used to be 'officially' before they bought it as a house. That's why the rent's so cheap.
Question: At the end of the movie, why doesn't Carlisle drain Bella's body of the venom seeing as human blood doesn't affect him anymore in the way that it does other vampires?
Answer: Because he is controlling the bleeding and doing other medical treatments. Also it is Edward's choice, he won't make that decision for him.
It's never said that Carlisle is no longer affected by desire for human blood - he was just able to restrain himself for the few people who became part of his family... Edward talks about how incredibly difficult that was for Carlisle to stop then, and (likely) still would be going forward. In the case of Bella, Carlisle asked Edward to do it because Bella's future was up to Edward's choice.
Question: This has baffled me for ages. Instead of tolerating John Bender, why doesn't Richard Vernon simply get him expelled? Vernon must have realised that Bender was not only uncontrollable and a potential threat to him, but also someone who didn't care about his education and was disruptive to others. So why didn't he take the simpler option of getting him out of the school, as opposed to giving him countless detentions?
Chosen answer: Vernon secretly cares about the kids. Pay attention to the scene where he talks to the janitor. He would rather see Bender stay in school and learn something instead of ending up in prison.
Question: What's Arthur Petrelli's motivation for wanting to create a formula that gives people powers?
Chosen answer: He feels that powered people are superior to normal humans (much like Magneto from the X-Men franchises) but is aware that the powered people are still a tiny minority and thus are easy to persecute. He also has a similar hunger for powers like Sylar - the more people who have powers, the more there are for him to take.
Question: Towards the end of the episode "Journey's End", Davros calls The Doctor "the Destroyer of Worlds". Isn't this just a little bit ironic considering Davros and the Daleks were about to wipe out the universe using a reality bomb?
Chosen answer: It's a psychological tactic. The Doctor thinks of himself as a good person, but he's had to do horrible things during the Time War and on other occasions. Davros is playing on his guilt.
Question: Christy and Billie Jenkins are very powerful witches, yet it's been established that their parents are ordinary mortals. So, where did they get their powers from?
Chosen answer: In the episode Mr and Mrs. Witch, Billy's mom explains that their grandmother was a powerful witch and that it just skipped a generation.
Question: I'm not sure about this, but didn't Grim's tires get blown out? If so, right after the next scene, where 14K hits Grim's car, the tires appear intact. It also looked new despite getting blown by a missile.
Question: What are the mechanics behind The Ghostbusters Proton Packs? How do they work?
Chosen answer: Theoretically, they are nuclear powered proton colliders. The positively charged energy released by the proton collisions is channeled through the neutrona wands into a manageable beam. This positively charged beam bonds to the negatively charged ectoplasm which ghosts used to manifest. This allows the Ghostbusters to draw them into their traps.
Question: Why did the Psychlos subject Jonnie to that learning machine? Surely a race as intelligent as the Psychlos must have known that there would be unforeseen risks of subjecting a human to so much knowledge? Also, why not simply programme the learning machine to download a limited amount of information into his mind?
Chosen answer: To see if the man-animals could be trained to perform tasks more complex than simple mining. The machine wasn't programmed to restrict the information it gave him because, smart as the Psychlos are, they're also very arrogant. It simply didn't occur to them that a species as inferior as humans could possibly become that intelligent.
Question: What did Magneto mean when he said, "I've heard these arguments before"? What arguments?
Chosen answer: He's talking about the government proposals to register mutants "for public safety" and so forth. He's comparing them to the Nazi programmes to weed out "undesirables" that ultimately led to the Holocaust and the deaths of Erik's family in the concentration camps.
Question: Before contracting The Shanti Virus, just how many powers did Sylar acquire?
Chosen answer: Confirmed powers prior to that point were telekinesis, freezing, kinetic projection, eidetic memory, liquification, enhanced hearing, precognition and radioactivity. There may have been others as well, but those are the definites.
Question: Exactly why do The Company and their agents conduct bag and tag missions? Is it simply to study evolved humans and their powers? Or do they have something more sinister in mind? Also, why bag and tag at all? Why not just talk to the people they target?
Chosen answer: It's partly study, partly containment, partly potential recruitment. Simply talking to the targets isn't going to get them what they need to know - they're looking for detailed genetic information, plus they want to install the tracking isotopes, neither of which could be done during a pleasant chat.
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Answer: They're just for fun, although it isn't unheard of for coworkers to gamble amongst themselves using the cups.
Phixius ★