Revealing mistake: When Alex says they should go find the penguins, he says "To home" and Marty, Melman, Gloria and Julien place their hands on top of his hand. In the next shot it shows all of them together. But due to the position of Julien and his arm length, it would have been impossible for Julien to have his hand fully placed on Alex's hand. (00:05:05)
Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012)
1 revealing mistake
Directed by: Tom McGrath, Conrad Vernon, Eric Darnell
Starring: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, David Schwimmer
Other mistake: In the scene where Vitaly jumps the flaming hoop again, in the shot before he says to light the hoop on fire, if you look at the dogs you can see that three of them do not look like they do in the rest of the movie. One of them even looks completely different.
Question: How come Alex's parents or any other character from the last movie don't make, at least, a small appearance in this movie? I know that Bernie Mac, who voiced Zuba, is dead, but can somebody explain Zuba and Florrie's fate?
Answer: Perhaps this has to do with the death of Zuba's voice actor. Since nobody could voice Zuba, it would make sense for the third movie to just say that Alex's parents are probably dead.
Answer: They don't make an appearance because they were irrelevant to the story. The decision to go back home would have been made with or without any character introduced in the previous movie, so they were simply not included. Alex's parents would have continued to live in Africa after Alex and the others left.
Casual Person
That makes no sense though because (I know it's a kids movie) but the way they portray it, it makes it seem like Alex doesn't care about leaving his parents and what he just recently realised is his birth home. Like, it feels like there was some necessary dialogue there (probably not for the kids though).