Macalou

19th Jul 2004

Forrest Gump (1994)

Question: When Forrest is introducing the members of his Platoon in Vietnam all of the character names are the names of cities, he then tells where each solider is from but their hometown is different then their nick name. (for example "Dallas from Phoenix") why would each person have a name of a city as their name?

Answer: This is just a bit of incidental humor. For example: Dallas is the young man's real name. Why would his parents name him Dallas if he was from Phoenix? Same with Cleveland.

Macalou

Theyre just nicknames aren't they? Like Bubba.

Tex seems to be an obvious nickname, but Dallas and Cleveland are more than likely their real names since many people have those names.

Bishop73

Answer: Forest is mistaking their nicknames for their actual names, and misremembering where they were from. The soldiers are given nicknames based on where they are from. Tex from Texas, Dallas from Dallas. Etc. The funny bit is that Forest isn't putting it together.

There's nothing to indicate Dallas and Cleveland aren't their real names, just like Dan is his real name. The joke being he's remembering where those two are from but when it comes to Tex, an obvious nickname, he can't remember where he's from. Plus, why would a guy from Texas get the nickname Dallas and another guy from Texas get the nickname Tex and not the city he's from?

Bishop73

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