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: I know this would end the movie, but when Jack is running alongside the bus, trying to get on before it reaches 50, why doesn't he shoot one of the tires? This would've taken the bus to a stop.

Answer: Shooting out car tires is a bit of a movie myth, and bus tires are much more heavily reinforced, so it would be very difficult to hit and puncture a tire successfully. It would also be very dangerous to fire a gun at a small, rapidly-moving target on a busy highway, and a person shooting at the bus would almost certainly make the driver speed up to get away. Finally, one of the tires does blow out at the airport, which makes virtually no difference to the bus's speed or motion.

Sierra1

Question: There is a scene in Robert Graysmith's kitchen where you can see a container of Old Bay Seasoning on the top of the stove. I am from Maryland and I found it unusual that they would have it out in California, especially before the internet came into being. Did I see that wrong? I couldn't find the answer anywhere else.

Answer: Old Bay seasoning has been available on the West Coast for many decades. I can remember my mother using it as far back as the 1960s. That was in Washington state.

raywest

Question: What is the name of the principal's rocking horse? Harley or Harvey?

Answer: It was Harvey. She says, "One year was a rocking horse, and I named it Harvey."

raywest

Question: Something that I can't figure out: Was there a reason why the Philosopher's Stone needed to be removed from the bank vault in the same week that Harry came to Hogwarts?

Answer: The timing was more a matter of convenience than absolute necessity. Dumbledore learned that one of Voldemort's servants might soon attempt to steal it. So, since Hagrid had to collect Harry from his Aunt and Uncle then take him to Gringott's among other places anyway, Dumbledore instructed Hagrid to get the stone for him while he was there.

Phixius

Question: In some of the scenes they are driving on the left side. I thought that all of Europe drove on the right?

Answer: Currently, there are 161 countries and territories world-wide with right-handed traffic, and there are 75 with left-side traffic. The 75 include several countries which were once part of the British Empire. Of these, seven are European, including the United Kingdom and Ireland. In the film, any driving in the UK would be on the left side of the road.

Michael Albert

Question: What is the first carol sung in the car?

Answer: If you're referring to the opening scene, they're finishing up "Oh Come All Ye Faithful"

Bishop73

Question: When they come across the girl crying over her mother's body, one of the guards says she has the sickness, and when they arrive in the city, they come across an old man who has the laughing sickness - what sicknesses are they referring to?

Answer: It is not specifically identified, but it appears to be the degenerative neurological disease called kuru. It is fatal and believed to have been spread in ancient sub-tropical cultures by cannibalism. Its symptoms resembles the encephalopathy disease known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob (Mad Cow), which is also called the laughing sickness, and is contracted by eating contaminated flesh.

raywest

Answer: Kuru only happens when you eat your relatives and the disease was discovered and studied in Papua New Guinea where eating your dead relatives was a way to carry them with you. There are books about it, fascinating stuff. Eating strangers is safe, not that I recommend eating anyone. The disease the girl has is smallpox brought by the Spanish, thus the ships at the end of the movie are not the first Spanish to visit the area. The laughing sickness could be straight up madness considering the horrible times everyone is living through, or a side effect of the limestone quarrying.

Question: How did the Stabbington brothers get Flynn to go on the boat, and steer it? It is shown that when he is at the place and the guards arrest him, he is sort of asleep.

Lily Harrison

Chosen answer: They surely clobbered him badly enough that he fell unconscious, and he didn't wake until the guards saw him. Also, they tied him up in the correct position and gave him a good push.

Question: Why do the guard do execution rehearsals with a man who's not going to be executed? At first I thought the rehearsals were so the person being executed would know what to expect. The guards know how to run an execution, so why would they need to practice without the one being executed?

MikeH

Chosen answer: They do it for the same reason people practice anything. It is to stay on top of how to perform a certain function or activity. The man is just a volunteer. Correction officers (prison guards) who do executions would particularly have to make sure they can perform flawlessly. The state and/or federal government would closely regulate and monitor this. If anything was botched, there would be severe legal repercussions, possible job dismissals, and even lawsuits by families of the condemned prisoner. Also, executions are not performed on a regular basis at any one penitentiary, so constant practice would be essential to maintain an adequate skill level. Most likely, regular drills are required by law. There would also be changing or rotating staff that needs to be trained and/or retrained. There's been much publicity recently about several executions using lethal injections being done improperly, so it is hardly surprising the procedures would constantly be reviewed and practiced.

raywest

Chosen answer: The general consensus is that Big Bird is a canary; however, according to Wikipedia, he's also been described as a condor as well as an ibis. The one constant factor is that regardless of his species, Big Bird is always eight feet, two inches tall and flightless.

Question: Why didn't Percy hit Wild Bill when he was strangling Dean? He enjoys hurting people, so what was the problem in that scene?

MikeH

Chosen answer: Percy is a coward and froze in the heat of the moment. He has no idea how to deal with dangerous people, only helpless ones who are behind bars, like Del.

MovieFan612

Safe and Sound - S4-E5

Question: In this episode they are digging the hole to get through to 'Scylla', when digging the hole the concrete bar drops or something. Brad goes in to the pipe help but he can't get out in order to get them to Scylla, so therefore he is left in there to die. That tunnel though is the source of the water to L.A. So there would be a dead body in the water and everyone would be drinking water where a dead guy was, am I right? Or did I miss out on something?

Jaylen110

Answer: They got Brad's body out.

Answer: Yes you are right, the entire city of LA was drinking water contaminated by a dead body.

Question: About what time frame is this movie supposed to take place? I know the future, but about when?

Quantom X

Chosen answer: The movie takes place in 2079, with flashbacks revealing what happened a short time prior to Snow being in custody.

Bishop73

Question: How do the lemons discover Leland Turbo?

Answer: They heard him recording the message to Finn and found his words suspicious.

Question: With security guards all over the place, how do the lemons get agent Rod Redline from the party to their hideout?

Answer: The lemons may have taken Rod to their hideout without being seen.

Question: Why did Shine not pay back the firm the $10,000 out of the $100,000 he got back?

Answer: I assumed that that Charles Shine did not have time to return the money to the work account before his boss discovers it is gone because the banks would have been closed when he was at the hotel and retrieved the briefcase with the $100,000. Granted, prior to this he asks his boss for a check for the commercial expense, so it might have made more sense to ask for a transfer earlier because a check implies that he did not signing for funds and could not have embezzled the funds. How he stole it if he did not have access to the account, I do not know.

The Big Bang - S5-E13

Question: This whole finale never made sense to me because of these plot holes. If all the stars were supposed to supernova when the Doctor was locked up, then why was the Earth not destroyed by the sun exploding? He says the world carried on relatively normal due to the TARDIS exploding being a light and heat source to replace the Sun, but the supernova should have decimated the planet regardless, shouldn't it? Also if the TARDIS was exploding at every moment in time and space (as the Doctor states) then shouldn't it also have exploded on earth every time it has been here in the past? Destroying the Earth that should have been destroyed by the supernova?

strikeand

Chosen answer: The stars didn't supernova, the rest of the universe ceased to exist. Earth still stands because of it's place in the eye of the storm and the TARDIS explosion providing the heat and light that the sun that now never existed would have, but history is still collapsing. Because they are all temporal anomalies, it buys them some time for the Doctor to pilot the Pandorica into the TARDIS explosion, restarting the universe.

Captain Defenestrator

Lisa's First Word - S4-E10

Question: During this episode we see Bart stay with Flanders while Marge is in labour with Lisa. However Rod and Todd seem to be the same age here that they are in normal episodes. Lisa even babysits them in some episodes despite them obviously being at least 4 or 5 years older than her. Compared to Bart and Lisa, how old are they supposed to be?

strikeand

Chosen answer: This extensive discussion of Rod and Todd's ages appears in the website simpsons.wikia.com: "There is also some controversy as to which of the two is the elder. In "Dead Putting Society" the commentator at the golf tournament states that Todd is 10. In Homer Badman, one of the corrections that the TV-magazine show Rock Bottom makes is to their claim that "the older Flanders boy is Todd, not Rod" (although this could have been included purely to stir up fans). Later, in Bart Sells His Soul, the Flanders family eat out for Rod's "big ten-oh", suggesting the two are of similar age (however, the present time in at least one other Simpsons episode has been set two years before that of others, as shown by All's Fair in Oven War). However, in "My Sister, My Sitter" Lisa, when babysitting Rod and Todd, tells a story about a robot named Todd who "had a brother named Rod, who was two space years older than him". Todd responds by saying, "I don't like this story!" As Rod is shown to be quite a bit bigger and taller than Todd, the claim that Todd is the older brother is disputed. Rod and Todd were both born before Lisa (who is eight), Todd appearing a younger age than Bart (who is 10) in the episode "Lisa's First Word" (when Bart was entering "the terrible twos"). Despite these discrepancies, the Simpsons official website states that "Todd is the youngest and most impressionable member of the happy Flanders clan". This seems to trump any inconsistency concerning age seen in the episodes. On the other hand, the character profile for Rod Flanders in the book "The Simpsons: A Complete Guide To Our Favorite Family" describes him as the "youngest of the Springfield Flanders.", but they have made some mistakes in that book. Another possible reason for the variation is that, in the DVD commentaries for show, the writers have stated that they are never sure which Flanders sibling is Rod and which one is Todd and are often forced to check character models to be sure. According to the commentary, early show writers used two different mnemonics to identify the taller brother; first that Todd started with T and was Taller, or that Rod was long like a rod and hence taller."

Michael Albert

Hot-Rodding Teenagers from Dimension X - S1-E4

Question: Back in the day when I was a little kid, I used to own a handful of VHS copies of some episodes of this series, and something that always stuck out with me was that on the covers of some, the turtle's weapons were changed in color. I don't remember for sure which ones, but I remember one example that I believe was on the cover for Hot Rodding Teenagers, Leonardo's swords were solid red. Bright red. Like they were made of plastic or something and looked like toys. Why did they do that for the cover? Was it really such an issue to show metal weapons on a kid's cartoon that was full of them anyways?

Quantom X

Chosen answer: No, that's just the kind of mistake that gets made when you contract a foreign company completely unfamiliar with the product in question to produce your marketing materials as cheaply as possibly.

Phixius

Question: The method of identifying citizens by a "tattoo" burned into their arm seems awfully prehistoric for such an advanced environment. The government would "know" the number of legit citizens and would know that the black market citizens were fake, right?

applejackson

Chosen answer: There is virtually no system in the world that is completely foolproof when it comes to regulating a large scale system related to identification. We only know the tattoo are for certain services. There might be more high tech security features for more restricted areas. As for whether they have an accurate count of all their citizens, they might, but again, how you go about regulating these systems is generally the tougher part. At the end of the day people required special transports to even reach Elysium, so it might have not been as big a concern.

Lummie

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