Question: Why doesn't Boris the Animal kill Jeffrey Price after he gets the Time Jump Device? He doesn't seem to have problems killing anyone else who gets in his way or helps him. (I don't think saying that if he killed Jeffrey, there's no way J can go into the past is sufficient as that's a plot device.) (00:11:25)
Question: If time travel was banned throughout the universe and they imprisoned Obadiah Price as the inventor (time 1), why didn't MIB confiscate the devices and continually make sure his son Jeffrey never has the devices or lets others use them? He has a log book and Boris the Animal's entry is more than a few pages in (time 2). (00:30:21 - 00:32:00)
Answer: They did, but the son had the knowledge in his head, so he did it in secret. The son dealt in black market devices.
Question: Griffin can almost exactly predict when and what happens next, but when it comes to Boris the animal he can't. Every time Boris got close to Griffin, every possible scenario seems to change. Griffin also says, "Oh no! I didn't think this through or see this happening." Is it some sort of firewall that Boris has on Griffin?
Answer: He doesn't see one future, he sees multiple. So there are multiple possibilities of what is going to happen and he knows all of them and can only predict once something has been confirmed first. This is demonstrated when he and J first meet.
Question: At the Lunar-Max prison, Boris asks the guard to cut the cake for them. But then the guard proceeds to just shove his finger into the center of it why? Was he going to crudely cut the cake with his finger? Is he further checking it? Is he just being a jerk and trying to ruin the cake?
Answer: The last one. He is bullying Boris by ruining his cake.
Question: When Agent J travels into the past, he is being put into a neuralizer because he wouldn't tell young Agent K anything. When the neuralizer was being charged up, why didn't J simply close his eyes?
Answer: This neuralizer works more thoroughly and is more powerful than the simple hand held version. This one goes directly for the brain whilst the hand held goes through the eyes.
Answer: MIB agents wear their sunglasses for a reason whenever they neuralyse people, or else they wouldn't have been needing them if all they needed to do was to close their eyes.
Question: I really don't understand why K called J? All he said was that he owed him some answers, Regret was the most destructive force in the universe and that he promised him the secrets of the universe and nothing more?
Answer: They had a falling out and K felt like he had to try and patch things up with J.
Question: When Obadiah Price's son talks to J about how he was "there" and you'll tell him all about it what did he mean?
Answer: J asked why he remembers K when no one else does and Price says J remembers K because J was in 1969. One of the things with time travel is that effect can precede cause, meaning J was in 1969 before J travelled to 1969. Then Price says he wants J to tell him all about it when he gets back to the present.
Possibly but when talking time travel, theories expound endlessly. Your explanation generally fits the events, or how they're authored to occur, but it's almost too simplistic. I believe that it is impossible for effect to precede cause... At least not without a break. To me, for time travel to exist and be possible, it would require endless loops or time-lines. Essentially that the moment you go back in time and make any change, which could be almost impossible not to, you break the original timeline thus creating a new one. Only then, could effect precede cause imho. It's the butterfly 'effect' :) or the ripples in the pond theory. Even then, I'm not sure that effect could ever precede causation. Your thoughts?
I purposely kept the answer simple since most movies with time travel don't go into much details about how time travel is possible and all the consequences, etc., especially in comedies. Plus there tend to be plot holes left when only partially explained. There was a saying I heard in passing in regards to writing science-fiction (so I don't know who said it or the exact quote), "it's better to have unexplained science than faulty science." One example of effect preceding cause is "tachyons", a hypothetical particle that travels faster than light. As such, a tachyon fired from point A to point B would reach point B before it was fired, due to special relativity. I personally don't subscribe to this theory and say if it was to occur, the tachyon would simple arrive before a particle of light would. I don't believe time travel into the past is possible, so as long as a movie is consistent, I don't think there's anything wrong with picking a closed time loop over an alternate time loop.
Question: J said that that's not what he was asking O, so what was he asking her?
Answer: Earlier in the movie, the way K was talking about Boris was different than what J had come to expect of his partner. So J wanted to know what happened between Boris and K at Cape Canaveral that changed him. So more of what did Boris do to K rather than just the report of what K did.
Question: Did K meet J when he was a boy in the original timeline as well? I mean the one where Boris was arrested?
Chosen answer: Yes, he did. Mentioned earlier in the movie, it was stated something happened to K when he stopped Boris the Animal at Cape Canaveral. This event was when he met J as a child after Boris killed his father and that he erased this from younger J's memory.
Question: Exactly what was that phone call between K and J about when J was playing a video game?
Chosen answer: K was trying to explain to J why he suspended him, but without fully having to explain to him why. Later on in the movie, we find out that Boris killed J's father and that K erased it from J's memory as a child and the reason why he suspended J was because he did not want J to try and continue searching for Boris or it may lead him to finding out the truth. He called J to try and explain why he suspended him the best way he could without having to reveal everything to him.
Question: Was J lying when he said that Boris kills K at the Apollo launch? If not, how did he know he died there?
Chosen answer: This can be a little confusing, but here goes: Early in the film, Boris escapes from the lunar prison and returns to Earth, confronting both agents K and J and telling Agent K that he's "already dead" (Boris was implying that he was going back to 1969 to kill K at the Apollo launch site, thus preventing K from deploying the ArcNet). When Boris does kill K in 1969, it changes the timeline, so only Agent J can remember K's existence in 2012. When Agent J goes to MIB headquarters the next day, he is baffled that nobody remembers K, and Agent J has to convince Chief Agent O that K was alive just the day prior. It is Chief Agent O who deduces the timeline fracture, and J suddenly understands that Boris killed Agent K in 1969 at the Apollo launch, preventing K from deploying the ArcNet (which necessitates J going back in time to save Agent K). Although J tried to keep all of this a secret from 1969 Agent K, he eventually admits to K that Boris killed K at the Apollo launch.
Question: Because of time constraints, the only way that J, K, and Griff could get to Cape Canaveral fast enough was with those clunky jet packs. How did Boris the Animal manage to get to Cape Canaveral as quickly?
Answer: The most likely assumption, they took a bus ride or a plane to get to Cape Canaveral. If there was not enough time to do this, then they probably just used the time travel device to go back a few hours, giving them enough time.
Question: How did Zed die?
Chosen answer: It's never explained how Zed died. Rip Torn, who played Zed, may have been unexpectedly written out because at around the time of filming he had been arrested for breaking into a bank branch while intoxicated and carrying a firearm (he believed he was entering his own home). Rather than going into a detailed reason for Zed's death or incorporating it into the plot, it was simply stated that he had passed away.
Question: Is a young Zed ever shown somewhere in the movie? Like in the background at the '69 MiB HQ somewhere?
Chosen answer: No.
Question: Why is the place they find Grif called "The Factory"?
Chosen answer: It was what Andy Warhol called his studio. Musician John Cale explained: "It wasn't called the Factory for nothing. It was where the assembly line for the silkscreens happened. While one person was making a silkscreen, somebody else would be filming a screen test. Every day something new."
Question: It was K that recruited J to the MIB. But Boris goes back in time and kills K, creating an alternate time line. Yet in that time line, J is still part of MIB. So who recruited him in the alternate time line?
Chosen answer: As mentioned in the corrections section, anyone could have handed him that business card, it's never mentioned.
Question: When O is speaking in Finucian for her eulogy of Zed, you see the tombstone-like monument statues of other fallen MiB agents behind her. One of them bears the initial, T. But wasn't T J's partner in the beginning of MiB II, and only neutralized and not killed? So why is his statue there?
Chosen answer: An agent's name comes from the first letter of their first name. Even if J neutralized T, there was most likely another Agent T (whose first name began with T) who joined MIB and died battling aliens.
Question: When J is in the elevator after his time jump and asks the guy with the news paper about the date, you can faintly hear elevator music playing. It sounds extremely similar to the song Back In Time written by Pitbull for this movie, which plays as the credits start. Is it supposed to be like a tribute to this song as an elevator version or something?
Chosen answer: The name of the song is "Love is Strange," recorded by Mickey and Sylvia, and released November 1956. Pitbull sampled it in his song "Back in Time."
Answer: He may not have known about the son when he killed Obadiah in the space prison. He thought no one else had a time device. Besides, he was completely focused on his mission. He thought of nothing else.