Answered 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.

Question: Does "pattycake" also mean something sexual? We were obviously at first supposed to think Jessica and Acme had sex, but if they were, why would she say "pattycake" and why does Maroon say "You're not the first guy whose wife went pattycake on him"? Am I missing out on something?

MikeH

Chosen answer: According to the director, Pattycake is the toon equivalent to sex.

Greg Dwyer

Question: I heard that originally the character of Lt. Ripley was supposed to be male, is this true?

Answer: Lt. Ripley stands as one of the first strong female lead characters in American science-fiction. In an early version of the script, writers Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett had written all of the roles as generic male ones with a note in the script explicitly stating "The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women." It was left to director Ridley Scott and the casting agents to choose the cast of any gender composition they wished.

Michael Albert

Question: I've seen this movie a million times and I still can't figure out the whole "Peter having one testicle because another guy had a pencil in his back pocket because he was a lawyer while they were playing basketball" thing. I got that they were playing basketball but still, can someone please explain to me how Peter lost a testicle while playing a game? Thank you.

Answer: Peter was being boxed out by the other guy, so the other guy was putting his back against Peter's front. With a pencil sticking out of his back pocket, you can imagine how some damage might be done.

Greg Dwyer

Chosen answer: No, it's spelled correctly. It's written in cursive so it might just seem misspelled.

Bishop73

Question: Why can't the video just be passed to inmates on death row?

Answer: Who says it can't?

MasterOfAll

Answer: There was a deleted subplot from the film involving Chris Cooper as a child murderer. Originally Rachel would show the copy of the tape that she had Aiden make to this character, in order to end the cycle started by her on someone deserving of death.

Phaneron

Answer: Maybe because we have something called a "humane death" which caused all the death sentences that involved pain to be banned, leaving only the lethal injection to be a humane death. I think being assaulted by a child ghost who will literally scare you to death isn't considerd a "humane death."

lionhead

This presents a paradox. Whether or not it is "cruel and unusual" to force a condemned inmate would be a matter for the Supreme Court. but in order for them to rule, they themselves would all have to view the tape (and perhaps the lawyer for the condemned and the Solicitor General as well), so at least 11+ "death surrogates" would have to be found just for a decision to ever be rendered. But, if it's true that the person has to watch the entirety of the tape for it to be lethal, perhaps they could divvy it up, so that every part of the tape could be watched by at least one justice.

Sam Donaldson

Question: The last person to take out the tape is Samera's father, Robert. Did he mix up the images on the tape, or did she put them on there in that order? Also, if he knew about the tape (clearly he didn't want to watch it) perhaps he watched it once and gave it to his wife so committed suicide and he lived, leaving the tape at the inn.

Answer: The tape that Richard Morgan was the last one to watch was not Samara's cursed tape; it was a tape that monitored her sessions at the Psychiatric hospital. The taped sessions were significant because it proved that The Morgan's knew of Samara's psychic photography abilities. I highly doubt Richard knew of the cursed tape beforehand. Once Rachel told him about the existence of the tape, he automatically knew what it was and who created it because Samara was still tormenting him from the grave.

Answer: She put them on there. It never says anything about the father doing it, but it does say Samara used her powers to burn the images onto it.

Chosen answer: "Absolutely Wasted" by Sporting Riff Raff. Sample lyric: "I wanna get rinsed / get off my face / wanna have a party now in this place / get plastered, pasted, absolutely wasted."

Michael Albert

Question: A nit-picky question, but why did Hermione tear out a book's page of information about the basilisk? I have read the novel and Professor McGonagall says that she was found *near* the library when petrified, not *in* it. So I am puzzled about why she would want to damage a book instead of borrowing it.

Answer: A number of books in the library were restricted - either they were off limits to students or they could be read but not checked out. This was probably such a book. Hermione loved books, and would not normally approve of damaging them, but this was too important to her, and she needed that specific information. Of course, it also serves the overall plot because Harry finds the page after she's been petrified, and he is able to glean clues from it.

raywest

Question: What is the significance of the wound and blood we see on the back of Ray Liotta when he takes off his coat for a minute? The camera focuses in, so it is important, but I have never figured that out. It almost seems just where the wound would be where he stabbed the cop who was driving his car.

Answer: It's the cop's clothes. He takes them after killing him so he wouldn't have to settle for wearing his own prison uniform while a fugitive.

Phaneron

Question: In the part where all the fish are brainwashed, how come Sandy got brainwashed when she is wearing a helmet? (01:33:05 - 02:13:10)

LIKEme

Chosen answer: The buckets don't brainwash through skin contact. They brainwash through Plankton's signal. All you need to do is wear it close to your brain.

MikeH

Question: When Cady walks into the gym (after the large multi-girl fight scene), she tells the viewer that she knows everyone was just talking about her. How can this be? They only just discovered the book pages in the hallways, and they were so busy fighting each other, they obviously they didn't stop to discuss the fact that Cady was not mentioned on any of the pages. So why would everyone have just been talking about her?

Answer: Girls notice these things easily. The plastics are the most hated girls in the school, so if there's a book saying mean things about everyone, people would assume the plastics are in it. Everyone was running around the room reading all the pages, possibly trying to find what it says about the plastics. Since nobody could find them, they would think the only logical explanation is they wrote the book, just like Mr Duvall, since they're so hated. In the gym, they would've been asking each other if they could find pages about them, and since nobody could, they would be discussing reasons why. And besides, when Cady walked into the gym, everyone was looking at her. That's enough to realise everyone was talking about her, with or without a good reason.

MikeH

Question: What does Sofie Fatale say in Japanese on her cellphone? Just before Sofie Fatale and the rest of the crew are about to enter the Japanese nightclub, there's a flashback in which she's speaking Japanese into her cellphone during the wedding rehearsal fight. I know it's probably not important for the story, but was always curious: what is she saying? She starts with Mushi mushi, which is all that I recognise.

Answer: It translates to "Hello. I'm in the middle of a meeting. Can you call me back later? You're with your wife? I got it."

MikeH

Question: When Seth and Veronica are in bed for the first time and Seth rolled onto something that got stuck in his back (that Veronica had to pull out), what was it?

Bishop73

Chosen answer: I think it was a chip from an old-styled electrical device, like a computer.

kh1616

Chosen answer: It is Hebrew. It means "soul" but is used as a term of endearment as in you're a part of me, "Neshama shellee" means "my soul".

Bishop73

Chosen answer: Because Eve told her.

Greg Dwyer

Question: When loading the bullet into the gun, why didn't they realise that the chambers of the revolver were empty of any spent cartridges? They could have easily concluded that the "corpse" wasn't dead and the film would have ended quite differently.

Freefall1984

Chosen answer: First, odds are neither of them had much experience with guns. They wouldn't necessarily think about it. Second, who's to say that the person who put them there wouldn't have removed it anyway.

Greg Dwyer

Answer: The other answer is solid. I will also add that neither one of them were in any state to deduce that the gun was empty. Dr Gordon is on the brink of insanity, and Adam is fearing for his life.

jshy7979

Question: How could they possibly remove Archer's bullet scar? If they could, wouldn't that just create a bigger scar?

MikeH

Chosen answer: Surgical scar removal is a real thing, usually involving skin grafts or lasers. Keloid scarring is a result of the body aggressively attempting to heal/repair itself after trauma or injury (in this case, the gunshot). With proper surgical techniques, the body isn't traumatized to the point that deep scarring occurs. Of course, just like with the face surgery, the movie exaggerates the results of the scar removal.

Bishop73

I thought he kept it.

He says he wanted to keep it at the beginning of the movie, but when he is about to have his face changed back at the end of the movie, he says he doesn't need it anymore.

jshy7979

Question: Why does Voldemort say that Barty Jr.'s loyalty has never faltered? At his trial, Barty Jr. got upset and tried to deny that he helped torture the Longbottoms.

Answer: Of course Barty denied it. He would do anything to keep from being convicted, and it has nothing to do with his loyalty to Voldemort. If he's sent to prison, he can't serve his master very well.

raywest

Question: What kind of judge would agree to this kind of custody arrangement?

Answer: None. It's total fiction made up solely for the purpose of the movie. Even for a movie, it's far beyond the "suspension of disbelief" that siblings would ever be divided up between the two parents, and neither would have no contact with them, much less be prevented from knowing they had a brother or sister.

raywest

It was during the 1960s, the courts had no way of forcing parents to share children. They could have very easily just stayed away from each other out of the view of the judicial system.

This is what I always assumed as well. That this wasn't decided by court, the parents decided this on their own and did not bring it up to the court.

There has actually been a history of separating identical twins as babies, as there has been a fascination in studying what ways they'd be alike, and how they'd be different. During this time period, there were even agencies that would pay women who gave birth to identical twins to give them up for adoption, and have them be adopted in separate families. In today's world, this would not happen, but I wouldn't put it past a judge back in the 1960s.

Question: OK, so I get nearly everything in the film except one thing. Who is the man in the hospital (60% of skin burnt) and how does he know the portrait of Keyzer Soze. Doesn't that mean he saw his face? Also they say there is another guy who escaped the fire unharmed. Who is that?

Answer: One of the Hungarians from the ship who survived the fire. He's the only person left in the world who's seen Keyser Soze's face. The unharmed guy is Verbal Kint.

Captain Defenestrator

Answer: Keyser Soze, being built up as the meticulous mastermind that he is, would not have gone through all that just to kill the wrong guy. The man he shoots in the head twice is the only man who can ID him. The cops found that body and identified it as the rat who named 50 criminals including Soze. The Hungarian with the burnt skin likely was one of the people buying this guy from the Argentinians. He was on the boat when it blew up and saw the true events of what happened that night (Verbal killing Keaton and presumably everyone else). Considering the fear and mystery shrouding Keyser, it's a pretty easy conclusion to make that the only man who survived, the man he witnessed kill everyone, was Keyser Soze. The Hungarian becomes the only man to be able to identify Soze (a mistake on Verbal's part for unknowingly leaving a witness), but by then it doesn't matter. Verbal/Soze said it himself; he wouldn't come this close to getting caught and then stick his neck out again. He's gone.

Answer: The man in the hospital is "The Man" the Hungarians were protecting...he is the man that knew and could ID Keyser Soze. Now back in the boat Keyser shoots twice in the head a man that was being protected. This was was a decoy. You find that out when they say they pulled a man from a drain pipe...the real one didn't speak English, only Hungarian, and he ran for it once the fight erupted.

The guy shot on the boat wasn't a decoy. It's the same guy we saw Keyser Sose let go in the flashback. The burnt guy was one of the soldiers who fought them, saw Keyser Sose's face, but didn't manage to escape the following explosion, although he survived.

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