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.

Boring - S1-E3

Question: What is it exactly that Rik reads from the paper? The thing that Neil repeats that brings the little devil to them? I'm assuming it's a poorly pronounced version of something that was in the papers at that time, but I can't think of anything that fits it.

Gary O'Reilly

Chosen answer: It wasn't referring to anything real, just that the government's bureaucratic naming, The Guardian's mangled spelling or Rick's bad pronounciation resulted in the unlikely word "Footumch" being spoken.

Sierra1

Question: What does the "JAS" in Hook's "JAS Hook, Captain" signature on the ransom note stand for? Is it possibly Hook's true name? (Going off of the Q&A about his name posted here).

Answer: Jas is simply an older three-letter abbreviation for the name James. Was also used in Peter Pan creator J. M. Barrie's short story, "Jas. Hook at Eton" - a reference to the fact that James Hook might have been an Old Etonian, due to the fact that he has a tattoo of the crest of England's Eton College on his chest.

Jazetopher

Answer: Lilith had an affair with one of her colleagues.

Captain Defenestrator

Question: When Tesla first tests the 'machine', the original hat stays in place, while the copies appear in the woods. Does this mean that whenever Hugh Jackman's character uses the machine during his show, he is actually sending a copy of himself up into the balcony, and sending himself to drown below the stage? If this is so, the implication would be that the 'copies' contain every memory, etc. of the original Hugh, up to and including the point at which the copies are made.

Answer: Tesla himself suggests the mechanism is not so much "a copy" as "a pair of duplicates." Neither is the original and neither is a copy. They are both the same individual, there are just two of then now. One got teleported and the other did not. Admittedly, it requires a pretty abstract point of view to understand it.

Phixius

Answer: Angier states himself as he is dying that it took courage for him to step into his machine every night, because he didn't know if he'd be the one that ends up drowning or the one that ends up in the prestige. So the teleportation/cloning is entirely random.

Phaneron

Question: When Sandy's skirt gets lifted up at the bonfire, Frenchy comes to her defence and does some weird flappy hand movement. What is it meant to mean? She basically just waves at the girl, but Sandy is very grateful.

Answer: The hand shooing gesture by Frenchie is actually a reference to the 3 stooges, a very popular but juvenile show on American TV. Doodie also makes a reference to it in the beginning of the movie when he makes a whoop whoop whoop noise when he first sees Danny.

Answer: The Pink Ladies were held in a high regard as well as very well respected and feared at Rydell high which means you didn't want to upset them or mess with them. Therefore, if they told you to do something you better do it.

Question: Would the guards have made up a reason to move a death row inmate out of death row so the inmate wouldn't have to watch the guards do a runthrough of his execution?

Answer: Most likely that would be the reason. As the guards explain to Percy in one of the scenes that the best course of action to take with death row inmates to keep things as calm and relaxed as possible. This way they don't have to worry about upsetting the inmate.

Lummie

Answer: Yes, it is.

Question: What was the point of having all the girls at the camp march to the isolation cabin with Hallie and Annie?

Answer: The girls are mostly going out of curiosity, and it's an opportunity to further humiliate and mock Hallie and Annie for being punished. Kids can be mean that way.

raywest

Answer: To produce pressure by letting the girls be the reason everyone else had to go on that long, exhausting hike. The other girls being allowed to go back to their usual activities was a reward. There are also collateral effects of the other girls seeing Hallie and Annie punished. Even if they weren't humiliated as punishment, the other girls would be made to know their fate.

Show generally

Question: Why were the preliminary trials for the Chunin exam done as single elimination? It would not really cause the best of the best to be chosen because when two strong Ninjas fight (like Gaara and Rock Lee) one has to lose, while when two weak ninja (Sakura and Ino) fight, one gets to go through, only to be guaranteed failure. How is that fair?

Answer: Out-of-character, because single elimination is the most exciting format for the viewers of the anime. In-character, a possible reason is that the failure of single elimination to correctly identify the second and lower places was only recognised relatively recently - there is an essay by Lewis Carroll (yes, that Lewis Carroll), describing the problem in detail, written in 1883. Ninjas were around in about the 1300's, so it probably hasn't been discovered yet. Of course Naruto's history might not match real history but if you depart from reality then there can be no answer but the out-of-character one.

Moose

Question: What are the meanings of the random French words that Del uses throughout the movie? When Percy is chasing the mouse, he calls him a dumb something. (I don't want to put it here because it might be profane.) And when talking about who will take care of Mr. Jingles, referring to Dean's son, he says "He just a boy, n'est-ce pas?"

Answer: In the example you gave he says "He's just a boy, isn't he?"

Phixius

Question: When Willy Jack picks up the girl on the side of the road (after leaving Novalee at Wal-Mart), why doesn't he want her to put the last of her bags in the backseat?

Answer: I assume he wanted the backseat empty to do dirty business with her.

Answer: I think he motions for her to put them in the backseat simply because nothing else will fit in the trunk. I'm sure that it's safe to assume that he and Novalee had placed all their belongings in there already, so there wasn't much room left.

Answer: There were stolen items in the trunk. The officer rattled off a list of items "same exact items stolen" from a store. He probably didn't want her to find it.

Actually those "stolen items" were stolen by the girl he picked up, she wanted to go "anywhere but here" because she had robbed the store (hence why she had all that loose cash).

Answer: Honestly, I thought it was because he assumed it was dirty laundry since it was in a trash bag. No one wants smelly clothes in the backseat smelling up the car.

Question: What are the other inmates on death row for?

Answer: Wild Bill is condemned for murdering people during a robbery. John is there for the twin girls. In the book, Arlen Bitterbuck was there for murdering a man over a pair of boots and Del was there for arson, rape and murder.

Question: I didn't completely understand when V asks for Evey's help and says he needs someone with theatrical abilities. Then it shows the scene where Evey comes in as the woman for the priest. When she is warning him about V, is she acting or is she really trying to get help from him? I figured it was real because she didn't go back to V, she went to Gordon's house.

Answer: The "acting ability" V needed was to convince the priest that she was there "for" him. The confession and warning were real and not planned by V. That's why he abducts her later, so she'll lose her fear and won't be tempted to do something like that again.

Phixius

Question: What exactly is Frollo's position of authority?

Answer: He's a judge.

Phixius

Answer: More specifically, he is the Minster of Justice, the highest judicial position in France at the time.

Show generally

Question: Why do the characters in this show, and other animated shows, always wear the same clothes and have just a few different outfits (ex: Marge's regular green dress and her Sunday dress)? Wouldn't most fans be able to recognize the characters even if they did wear different clothes in each episode?

Answer: They do this to make it easier to draw the thousands of cells they need to make a cartoon.

pross79

Show generally

Question: In one episode, Tim's mother says that she raised five boys. Three of those are Tim, Jeff, and Marty, but what do we know about the other two? There's another episode where Randy mentions his uncle that doesn't talk to their family anymore.

Answer: Tim's other brothers are named Rick and Steve. They never appeared on the show, and were only mentioned in passing.

Cubs Fan

Question: There's a scene in this movie that I've never understood. When Ron Kovic is in the VA hospital, there's one scene where he wakes up in the middle of the night, and looks up and sees something, and screams. What did he see that made him scream?

Answer: He doesn't see anything. He hears his blood dripping back into the makeshift machine the doctors have set up and realizes it isn't working properly. In the previous scene he was told that if they couldn't get the machine to work, he would never walk again.

No, in the previous scene he was told that if they couldn't get the machine to work, he would lose his leg. He was already told he would never walk again.

Show generally

Question: How can Flanders afford stuff like a huge boat and a motorhome if he doesn't make a lot of money?

Answer: From time to time he has explained his above average income has come from a variety of reasons. First of all he has mentioned from time to time of other business ventures he has been involved. At one time he was doing advertisements when he shaved his moustache and another he was trading in religious website store. Secondly the Leftorium that he runs has had his highs and lows which would explain why he can sometimes afford more expensive items. Thirdly he seems to be quite clever when it comes to saving and business. For example he showed Homer about the Mega Savers course that showed about how to buy more expensive items at lower prices.

Lummie

And he was once a successful pharmacist. He says so when he burns his tie announcing the Leftorium.

Question: So what was so important about those specific 1000 souls in the contract?

Answer: It wasn't the souls themselves, it was the fact that there were so many on a single contract. By stealing it, the ghost rider robbed Mephistopholes of not one, but one-*thousand* souls.

Phixius

Question: I'm confused about the ending. Aquamarine didn't find romantic love, but she did find friendship love with Claire and Hailey. However, doesn't Aquamarine's father already believe in family or friendship love? He obviously cares about Aquamarine, since he was angry when she ran away, and he and her mother named her after a "rare and precious gemstone".

Answer: Many people treat their children like possessions. You would be angry if your TV disappeared, but that doesn't mean that you love it like it was your child.

Myridon

Answer: I think her father's anger was more specific: she refused to marry the boy that he wanted her to marry, as was their custom. He probably agreed to the deal - her finding love in three days - because he expected her to fail anyway. Then she actually made some progress by developing a friendship with two humans. Apparently this made an impression on her father, even if she didn't find romantic love.

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.