Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

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Question: Why didn't Beth or Josh report Jacob to the faculty for everything he was doing in terms of bothering Beth? Jacob tells Josh to back off because Beth is "spoken for", he tries to win Beth at EL's party, but gets ignored by EL after Josh can't outbid him anymore, so Josh ends up winning, and he even tries to get Josh expelled from Ithaca University by pretending to be his Ancient Philosophy teacher and telling him that he can take his exam at a later date when Josh phones him from a payphone whilst on the road trip to Austin.

Answer: It's funnier if Jacob constantly bothers the characters and gets away with it, and receives his comeuppance in the end in an over the top manner (he forms a suicide cult but is the only member that actually kills himself).

BaconIsMyBFF

Question: Two questions are puzzling me. 1. Considering the tactics that Ray used to take control of McDonald's from the brothers, couldn't it be said that he cheated and conned the brothers out of their restaurant? 2. When Ray visits Mac in the hospital, he offers him a blank check to which the brothers agree. Why would they agree to such a thing instead of fighting to get their restaurant back?

Answer: 1. Yes, he pretty much cheated them out of their restaurant, royalties, intellectual property, etc. 2. Ray elaborates on this towards the end of the film when is on the phone with them. He's generated so much revenue from his real estate venture that he can afford to tie them up in court for years and drown them in legal fees if they decided to sue him for breach of contract. This is why they decide to surrender the company and everything that came with it in exchange for $1 million each and 1% perpetuity, the latter of which they never received.

Phaneron

Mistaken Identity - S1-E6

Question: Why does Carlton believe that his driving too slow was the reason he got pulled over? Will even stated that the real reason they were pulled over is because two black people driving an expensive car in a lower-middle income neighborhood looked suspicious. It was a case of racial profiling but, at the end of the episode, Carlton still believed it was because he drove too slowly.

Answer: Because Carlton is naive, trusting, and optimistic. He lived a pretty sheltered life in Bel-Air and just doesn't think police officers would do anything unjust. At this point in his life, he just hasn't gone through the things Will has to make him think otherwise.

Bishop73

Question: When Val and Earl first come into Perfection the sign says population 14. If you add up all the characters in the movie excluding Rhonda, there's 14 people. The question is who is taking care of Melvin?

Answer: According to one of the writers, his parents were both immature ne'er-do-wells who would often abandon him for long stretches of time. So he's pretty much on his own. Hence, his parents are not counted on the population sign, since they're barely there for him. It's also mentioned in the original script (which can be found online) that they spend a lot of their time in Las Vegas, presumably gambling. (Val says the line "Why don't his parents ever take him to Vegas with them?" in regards to Melvin in scene 13).

TedStixon

Answer: His Uncle Nestor.

To my knowledge, nothing in the film indicates Nestor is related to Melvin.

TedStixon

When Nester dies, Melvin lets the audience know that was his dad.

Um... no. No he doesn't. All he does when Nester dies is shout "No way, man! You guys have gotta do something!" to Val and Earl. He definitely never says Nester was his dad. As I said above, the writers have specifically said his parents were immature ne'er-do-wells who just aren't around most of the time. In fact, it's even mentioned in the original script that his parents were often away in Las Vegas rather than taking care of him.

TedStixon

Question: In real life, had Tarzan been raised by apes from the time he was a baby, would he have actually been able to be educated to act and speak like an ordinary person?

Answer: I'd have to disagree with the previous answer. Being that Tarzan was raised by apes from infancy, there are many higher-level brain functions that he (in real life) would never have completely developed, such as upright walking and other motor skills, cognitive and speech abilities, social interaction, and so on. There are some vital human-brain capacities that if not learned at certain stages of early-childhood, cannot or can only partially be learned later. However, it is highly unlikely an infant could survive long in such an environment.

raywest

That is a very valid point.

Quantom X

I actually agree with this answer. Thanks.

Answer: Any answer would be speculative at this point since we don't have enough examples of feral children living in the wild until Tarzan's age. Most children that become feral either start out at an older age, 5 or 7, where they know how to speak a language, or are found before they hit puberty. This makes teaching and integration somewhat easier. There was a case of a boy living in the wild for 15+ years that still had difficulty interacting with society even in his 60's and 70's. He had the ability to speak but eventually lost it as he became more feral and he had huge difficulties understanding technology, like radio and cinemas. In all probability, Tarzan, and similar characters, would not be able to learn how to communicate, even if he could learn to speak English. He would have an even more difficult time learning how to socialize and live as "normal" adults do. And I could not see any possibility he teaches himself how to read and speak English, or any language.

Bishop73

Answer: In the books, Tarzan was self-taught after he discovered the house his father built. He learned to read English using the elementary books his parents brought with them to teach the child they were expecting, these books were in the house. While studying these books, he mimicked many of the things he saw in pictures, which could have included walking upright. He did not learn to speak English until he was a young adult after traveling to Europe. Also, after rescuing Paul D'Arnot in Africa, the French officer taught Tarzan French as the two of them left Africa for Europe.

Noman

Yes, but the question was could he "in real life" be educated and learn to speak like an ordinary person if he had been raised by apes from the time he was a baby. You are only describing how Tarzan accomplished that fictionally in the book. In real life, that could not have happened.

raywest

Just adding a little perspective, which is why I qualified it to what was in the books.

Noman

Answer: Given enough time, yes. Even though the best time to learn a second language is when a person is a kid, many adults of various ages despite speaking one language all their lives, are able to learn a different one and be fluent with it given enough time and practice.

Quantom X

Question: Why did Jason Voorhees not tell his mother he was alive? This sequel shows he's alive, and she wouldn't be murdering people if she knew he wasn't dead.

Athletic Jason

Answer: The way I understand it, they just never crossed paths again after his incident. She's not exactly been hanging out around the lake where he went under. Jason has some heavy mental issues to boot and wouldn't know how to find her till it was too late. He was a lost scared little boy.

Quantom X

Question: In the first street race everyone scattered when they were informed of the police coming. Why? Surely they could say they were out for a walk, and for those with cars, a night drive?

Answer: It's pretty obvious they were gathered together for an illegal street race. And most of those cars had illegal upgrades that would have been discovered. Not only that but most of them probably had some hard drugs and weapons on them. They were all gathered in a huge group late at night with loud cars which probably breaks many regulations and codes, including noise levels. The police had everything they needed for "Probable Cause" to stop and search everybody there and find all these things.

Quantom X

Question: How was Ryan able to swim after the capsule splashed down in the water? Isn't readjusting to earth's gravity pretty difficult when you've spent a long time in space?

Answer: Swimming does not have the same gravity related constraints that walking on land has. It is not until she is on land where she shows signs of facing difficulties with the Earth's gravity. Also, when she swims up to the surface, she is rushing so she doesn't drown and in doing so, uses up most of her energy because she has been in space and is only now readjusting to Earth's atmosphere, so when she is above water and swimming over to land, she visibly shows signs of being exhausted and out of breath as she used up most of her limited energy attempting to swim up to the surface.

Casual Person

Swimming still has gravity related constraints, though right?

Gravity pulls water towards the earth, yes. But for a swimmer, the water provides buoyancy and supports them. The closest thing you can come to weightlessness on Earth (not including the flight training where they take you into a plane that glows up then drops) is in water, because it floats you.

She is swimming up to the surface at the fastest speed she can, so she doesn't drown. Perhaps there are some gravity related constraints to her swimming, but she is trying to fight against it so she can get to the surface. When she is above the surface and swimming/floating back to the shore, she is visibly exhausted, so it is apparent that she used up most of her energy in trying to fight against the gravity related constraints.

Casual Person

Answer: The movie opens with a servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope on the Space Shuttle - which had already been decommissioned for two years by the time the movie came out, but we'll let that slide. Because the Shuttle was powered by fuel cells that had a limited supply of hydrogen, it meant that realistically, Space Shuttle missions rarely exceeded two weeks in space, with an absolute maximum of 17.5 days. Two weeks in microgravity is not enough to cause significant loss of muscle and bone density, so Dr. Stone would be able to swim just fine. If you look up old footage of the astronauts disembarking the Shuttle after landing, you'll see they mostly walked out and down the stairs on their own.

Friso94

Answer: Yes.

Question: Why does Aquaman even use a thing as a shield in the submarine when he is bulletproof?

Athletic Jason

Answer: "Aquaman" director James Wan commented on this when a question was posed about if Aquaman is bulletproof, how can he get tattoos. "Bullets (or whatever else) will penetrate and break [Arthur's] skin. He's not a man of steel. He just has really dense mass/muscles. At least that's what Geoff Johns and I talked about." In addition to his advanced resilience, he also has advanced healing abilities. Geoff Johns is a comic book writer whose work includes Aquaman, and he was President and CCO of DC Entertainment at the time. In the comics, Johns has shown Aquaman to be vulnerable to bullets.

Bishop73

Answer: Just because a bullet won't kill him doesn't mean he'll get hit by bullets if he can avoid it. It would still cause pain. He also isn't bullet proof, he is merely bullet resistant. Larger calibre bullets would hurt him.

Question: In Biff's casino Marty is escaping Biff and his goons - he goes into the stairwell and jumps from one stair to another. What I don't understand is how this stairwell works as it seems to be double, with 2 sets of stairs ending up on the same floor parallel to each other, one on one end and one at another but on the same floor. Does this even make sense? Can anyone tell me why a big building would have 2 sets of stairs in 1 stairwell going parallel and end up on the same floors? Any special name for this type of stairwell perhaps? I can't find anything on it.

lionhead

Chosen answer: Your assumption is pretty much correct. There are 2 staircases spiralling around each other like a double helix. It is a fairly common way of constructing fire evacuation staircases as it allows a greater number of people to use them at the same time.

I see, so it's purely for fire escape reasons or more to handle overflow capacity in general?

lionhead

Answer: "The Lays of Ancient Rome" by Thomas Babington Macaulay. "Lays" are narrative poems. Specifically the film focuses on the poem "Horatius"

Bishop73

Answer: While we never actually see it happen, it's more than likely that someone eventually found her corpse.

TedStixon

Show generally

Question: When talking to Alston, the police captain said he sought out a black officer who hasn't made rank because he's "got no rabbi" and therefore is likely "on the outside enough to be trusted"- what does the phrase "got no rabbi" mean?

Answer: "Rabbi" is old police slang for a superior, experienced officer who mentors a younger officer. "Got no rabbi" in this context is saying Alston hasn't been on the job long enough to have been fully taken into the fold by the other officers, and would thus be a good choice for the Captain's plan of recruiting an un-corrupted officer.

BaconIsMyBFF

Answer: In fiction for the character, it's stated to have a 50 round capacity. This may not be canon, since during the shooting range scene when he finally stops shooting, the round counter reads 141 and he is not shown to stop to reload. In reality the gun used was a modified Beretta 93R, which has a 15 round capacity,.

Answer: No, his snap simply restored all the people Thanos' snap eliminated. They discuss it before he snaps. Tony reminds him to not try to do anything other than bring the people back.

We don't know that's all he did. Considering the Ancient One's warning that removing a stone for one's universe could have disastrous affects on that universe. One would think he would return the stones.

DetectiveGadget85

She was talking about removing them from the timeline, nothing about destroying them. According to the comics when the stones are destroyed the powers they represent will be made physical again in a different way. This does not happen when they are removed completely, since the power inside (the energy) cannot be reassembled again.

lionhead

Destroying the stones almost killed Thanos. Hulk would not have been able to bring back half the universe and the stones with no further impact.

We do know. As stated in the answer, Tony and Hulk specifically discuss ONLY bringing the people back. Since it's stated in the film, we can say with certainty that's all he did.

As stated in the film, he also tried to bring Natasha back who wasn't one of the half Thanos snapped away, so while unlikely, perhaps he did try more.

jimba

Show generally

Question: Was there an episode where Bobby wrote his name on someone else's jar and tried to rub it off when the owner came back, but it didn't work?

Answer: Most likely thinking of the episode where Connie's cousin convinces Bobby to make meth as their science fair project. One of the judges is a police officer and when he is approaching Bobby is scrambling to remove his name from one of the beakers.

Question: How did Anton not remember that he murdered his own parents when he was a killer all along?

adamjustus

Answer: He was either too high, sleepwalking or under the evil hand's control.

Question: The last we saw of Michael Myers he was trapped in a basement with a fire that started, and wasn't shown making any attempt to escape. I know he is never shown dead, except nothing in the movie gives any valid evidence that Michael Myers used a Houdini to get out of the basement. Nothing shows or implies that he escaped, but a sequel is in the works. If he survived during a fire then how the hell did he escape the basement?

Answer: This is meant to be ambiguous on purpose. We are not supposed to know how he got out... if he got out.

Quantom X

Question: How did Atlantis evolve in 5 seconds? We are shown Atlantis being destroyed in under a minute, the entire area is underwater, how did they all suddenly breathe underwater? How did they sleep whilst they built underwater, did they just bob about like jellyfish? Why not head to land...and finally how did humans turn into crabs in under 2000 years?

Answer: People survived the fall. Atlantis was destroyed and many Atlanteans were killed but a lot survived the devastation and with their advanced technology were able to keep living and building in Atlantis. Some didn't, chose other methods, different homes. At first they used technology to breathe underwater but eventually they either evolved or developed themselves into water breathing creatures. The Crab people were Atlanteans first as well, but evolved themselves in more hostile territory, causing more elaborate changes.

lionhead

Question: How come Gamora had no idea that an infinity stone was in the orb in GotG but does in Endgame?

Answer: She knew what was in the orb. That's why she was so intent on keeping it away from Thanos. It's why she insisted to Ronan that SHE retrieve it instead of Nebula. It's also why she tried to sell it to The Collector behind Thanos and Ronan's back. She stated that she had hoped he had the ability to contain its power. She just didn't tell the rest of the Guardians because she had just met them and didn't trust them.

Could you please provide a quote where she states that thought the collector could keep the orb safe?

Sam Montgomery

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