Question: How did Paul die? Was his body dissolved by lahar? And did this lahar contain any acidic substances from volcanic activity?
Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more
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Question: When riding through the village Bond remarks "this is the work of Muhjadeens." What actions does he refer to?
Answer: Bond is referring to an attack on the Soviet military. There are damaged military vehicles and the bodies of Soviet soldiers lying around, so the village appears to have been recently "liberated" from the Soviets by the mujahideen, although with significant collateral damage to the village itself.
Question: How did they get the 20mm cannon? Did they buy it legitimately, or obtain it by deception?
Answer: Since the crate was labelled machine parts, I'm guessing fraudulently.
My Best Fiend's Wedding - S6-E7
Question: How does Ella realise Amenadiel is an angel? Either I missed something or else there's just a few leaps of calculation missed, because it seems like she goes from "frog falls from the sky", to "Amenadiel says he'd feel if something was wrong, but backtracks", to her big whiteboard putting everything together, and then knowing she's at a "demon wedding." Just feels quite rushed.
Chosen answer: She has been keeping that whiteboard for probably the duration of the series. She has been piecing together clues the whole time. It was more obvious with "God" when she was fishing for info and mentioned the best hugs ever. I feel it was intentional to just spring the whole "I knew it!" in the last episode (s). I personally was hoping she would get a better sense of "closure" as she was really the only main character not in on the deal.
Question: Couldn't they move dinosaurs to Isla Sorna?
Answer: There are probably many reasons they didn't. There was extensive debate on whether dinosaurs should be allowed to exist as they had naturally gone extinct and artificially brought back to life, nor were they true dinosaurs. They are basically "invasive" species that affect the island's ecosystem. The costs and resources to move the animals would be enormous with no clear source on how to fund it. Also, Isla Sorna and Isla Nublar are not owned or governed by the United States, so the U.S. government's involvement would be restricted and controlled. Another factor, dumping a large amount of dinosaurs onto an island that is already populated by other dinosaurs would have further severe ecological consequences. As seen, private enterprises might finance the relocation, but they would do it for profit.
Question: When the character was at the cafe and the truck was there, but he didn't know who the driver was, why didn't he just go and wait by the truck, smash the windshield, fill the gas tank with sugar or water, slash the tyres?
Answer: At that point in the film, the protagonist David Mann is ready to confront the truck driver. When he sees the old Peterbilt truck outside, David mistakenly assumes the truck driver has already entered the diner, so he confronts a likely suspect that he sees at the counter (but he has misidentified the man). The misidentified man takes offense and punches David out. By the time he recovers his senses, David sees the old Peterbilt truck leaving the parking lot. Which means the actual homicidal truck driver never entered the diner in the first place and was waiting outside the whole time. If David had first gone outside to the Peterbilt, there was a good chance the waiting homicidal truck driver would have killed him right there, and the story would have abruptly ended. So, David's misidentification of the truck driver allowed the film to move ahead into its next act.
Yes, I get why the filmmakers did that, but I still think it is a plot hole. If the Dennis Weaver character was afraid of getting killed by the truck driver, I doubt he would have confronted him in the cafe.
Question: Maybe someone with agricultural expertise can answer this. Ray's entire cornfield is large and obviously worth a lot of money. How much would the small section of corn that he plowed under for the baseball field have been worth in comparison to the rest of the crop once sold?
Chosen answer: In modern times (say, over the last 10 years) corn crops yield about $240 in profit per acre. In the mid-to-late 1980s (when this movie was made) the profit yield was far less, maybe only $150 or less profit per acre. Today, most farms produce about 1100 acres of corn per season; but, back then, most farms produced around 600 acres per season. Of course, these are all just average figures. So, let's say Ray had an average Iowa farm of 600 cultivated acres in 1989, expecting to profit $150 per acre. Optimistically, Ray would profit about $90,000 on his total crop. Meanwhile, the acreage of a large baseball field (with 90-foot baselines) is only about 5 acres. Which means Ray plowed under only about $750 worth of his crop profits to open up land area for the baseball field. It doesn't sound like much of a sacrifice at all, in terms of corn. Ray could still potentially profit $89,250 on his remaining crop (assuming he had the farm hands and heavy equipment to harvest it).
Thanks! The plot seemed a bit far-fetched by implying that he would go completely bankrupt because he sacrificed five acres to build a baseball field. And it appeared that not all of those five acres near the house were previously being used for growing corn. Factoring in the other incidental building costs would be a different consideration, however.
Yeah, the 5 acres of corn was not a bank-breaker. My impression was that Ray probably cut down the corn himself at no great loss; but he then mortgaged his farm to have that one small piece of the cornfield leveled and professionally developed with ballpark-quality turf, baselines, stadium lighting and fencing, et cetera, not to mention the bleachers and professional-grade field equipment...all of which would total, what, a half-million bucks (or more) in the 1980s? Ray's brother-in-law rightly thought it was an insane risk that would result in bank foreclosure.
I just watched it again. It's mentioned they paid for building the field using all their savings, so presumably nothing more is owed. Another year passes and there is another crop of corn to be harvested, but the bank is threatening to foreclose.
Maybe it's a plot hole or a deleted scene; because, if the bank was threatening foreclosure, then a mortgage of some kind existed somewhere.
He did spend a lot to build the field, and those profit margin numbers are best-case, no?
Yeah, all the figures I provided were just averages for the year 1989; but the figures do demonstrate that cutting down 5 acres of corn didn't significantly impact Ray's profit on the whole crop. It wasn't cutting down the corn that cost him money (as the original question inquired); rather, it was developing the cleared 5 acres into a level, professional-standard baseball field that cost him a ton of money.
Question: The seventh season opening shows a scene where Phoebe gets trapped in some sort of cage - anybody know what episode that's from?
Answer: It's from s06e23, "The One With The Ring." Chandler and Phoebe are at a jewelry store and Phoebe tried to run after a guy while still holding store property, which caused the door to lock and the metal gate to come down.
Question: Who was "Nimrod"?
Answer: Nimrod's actual identity was never revealed in the series. It was only known that he was a British intelligence agent. Nimrod was not Colonel Klink. Hogan had only implied it was him as a ruse to get Klink returned as camp commandant, not wanting him replaced by someone more competent who would impede the Heroes war activities. (As another contributor previously posted, the term "nimrod" is slang for a nerdy, doofus type of person, though it's unclear why that was his code name).
Question: It's revealed that the ooze came from TGRI but, what were they planning on originally doing with it before they decided to dispose of it?
Answer: If you pay attention to the professor's explanation (starting at 0:55:55) he says "An unknown mixture of discarded chemicals was accidentally exposed to a series of radiated waves and the resulting ooze was found to have remarkable but dangerous mutanagenic properties... on our way to bury them a near collision caused us to lose one of the canisters down a sewer 15 years ago." Basically, "we had an accident and the results were dangerous and unpredictable, so we immediately went to dispose of it all." So there actually were no plans for what to do with it at all.
Question: How come Ransom did not realise that Marta had not given Harlan the morphine when he went back to the study room to switch the evidence?
Answer: She didn't drain either of the vials so unless he actually measured how much of each liquid there was to start with, he was unlikely to notice that the amounts weren't quite what would have expected. He knew enough to know that the switch could lead to a death, but he's not anal enough to note every tiny aspect of the situation to verify that nothing's gone wrong.
Question: Why is it Doc Brown and Principal Strickland both look the exact same age in 1955 and 1985?
Answer: Doc doesn't really look the same age; his hair is shorter/blonder, and he doesn't have as many wrinkles. Christopher Lloyd was only in his mid-40s when the movie was made, so they actually used makeup to age him for the 1985 sequences. As far as Strickland goes, it's a joke in the film... Marty even asks, "Geez, didn't that guy ever have hair?" when he first sees him in 1955.
Answer: Technically you CAN see an age different in Strickland. First seen in 1985, he is FULLY BALD, and has some wrinkles and looks of retirement age. Then seen in 1955, he is mostly bald but still has some hair on the sides and does look younger (like 35 or 40) - no wrinkles.
Question: In the fight with Ryu and Ken in the courtyard, Vega uses a claw similar to his conventional one. How did he come into possession of that? He couldn't have smuggled it in because it would've been confiscated. I don't think that he had the materials necessary to make a new one either. So, where did it come from?
Answer: To this day books, magazines, phones, food and drugs have been smuggled into prisons, getting a hook smuggled into or made in a third world prison would be easy.
Question: When Ben and Fred are trying to call people with the calculator, why does the calculator randomly start playing "Help me Rhonda"?
Answer: They could only communicate via musical tones. They were trying to give Sandy clues as to where they were being held (playing 'Downtown' to let her know they were downtown). 'Help Me Rhonda' was a clue that they were in trouble.
Question: Are we to assume Gabriel lives on as a human on Earth after Father takes his wings? Can there be another reason Gabriel submerged into the water after his wings are burned off? Suicide maybe?
Answer: Gabriel would never commit suicide. That is a mortal sin and would put him in Hell. Yes, he lives his life as a mortal from now on, and like Constantine did, he has to prove himself to God again to be brought back into His good graces. Or wind up in Hell otherwise.
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Answer: Paul got stuck on the bridge that was being washed away by the rampaging river after the dam broke. His van didn't have enough power to make the jump across the bridge like the Humvees did, as a result he got washed away and presumably drowned due to the force of the water.