Finding Nemo/Headscratchers

One of the supporting cast has an allergy to water. So he sneezes. Was I the only one who was scratching their head after that?
- Rule of Funny
Why is there light inside a whale?
- Because a blank screen doesn't make for an interesting movie.
- Bioluminescent parasites in its stomach?
Not that Nemo or Marlin would have known this, but the fishermen would have just thrown Dory back once they pulled up that net.
- Possibly.
- She'd be dead by then.
- And they wanted to save all those other fish as well, y'know.
- And, most importantly, they didn't know that she would be thrown back.
What does a vegetarian shark eat?
- They weren't vegetarian. They're more than willing to eat dolphins. Also, nothing is said of non-fish aquatic animals, such as crabs and octopodes. And lastly, they're apparently not very good at keeping their oath.
  - Although to be fair, that's only because one of them got the scent of blood -- the others seemed okay.
    - They were supposed to bring a buddy, and one of the shark's 'buddies' ended up a skeleton between his teeth...
It appears that every fish in the movie has eyelids. Why?
- Most Writers Are Human.
- And it would look too freaky (for a kids movie at least) if the majority of the cast never blinked.
  - Especially during the scenes where they're sleeping.
How old is Dory? I always thought she was like teenage aged but now that I'm older she seems almost Marlin's age.
- Well, considering lifespan and all, she probably went ahead...oh my...
- The actress who voiced Dory is almost the age of the actor who voiced Marlin. Not that that necessarily means anything.
Shouldn't that pufferfish, umm, Bloat, right? Shouldn't he have popped that bag? I don't know if those spikes are actually sharp at all (but I think they are?) but pufferfish suck up water so they can inflate in the first place, so he would have pretty much inhaled the bag.
- Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they sell non-lethal types of puffers for doctor's offices and households? Also, judging by how much water was in the bag, he might've suffocated himself in the attempt.
  - Pufferfish are only deadly if eaten, and their spines aren't very sharp or stiff enough to pop a plastic bag.
- The holes would have been tiny, several orders of magnitude too small for him to swim through.
- Also, the end credits imply them to have escaped those bags anyway.
Were Marlin and Dory meant to be just friends or is there some sort of text behind the subtext?
- Hmm... I never really got the vibe that it was more than friendship.
How come every aquatic animal from octopi to fish to pelicans to turtles speak the same language but whales apparently don't? A fish to mammal isn't any more different than a fish to a reptile, or a fish to a bird, or a fish to a cephalopod (ok, they're obviously not all the same, but you get the point).
- They do. They just speak it veeeeerrrrrrry slooooooooowwwwwwly.
Quick point: Those fish bags at the end of the film wouldn't have floated above the water .... Being filled with H 2 Oc, gravity would have had the bags mostly or completely underwater. Obviously, this would have been less funny to humans (air breathing and claustrophobic and all), but it still drives me nuts.
- There's still room for buoyancy with the air in the bag, though, so it wouldn't have sank. It'd just have floated at a slightly lower elevation.
- Ever gotten a fish from the store, and let the bag float in the tank? (you're supposed btw, it lets the temp adjust and has less chance of putting the fish into shock) The bags do float.
The fullscreen version of the film: Near the end of the movie, a female patient can be seen in the dentist's waiting room, and said patient is actually revealed to have long, thin legs. In the fullscreen version, her legs are always visible, especially when she first enters the waiting room, causing the fish to mistake her for Darla. Does anyone notice her legs in the fullscreen version?
- The fish knew Darla was coming that day, so when they heard the door open, they thought it was her.
- I said the patient's legs, not the fish mistaking her for Darla.
Why would the dentist put a bag of water in the trash can?
- This is the same guy that thought he was saving Nemo when he took him away from Marlin. The writers probably dropped him the Idiot Ball.
- In his defense, he didn't know any better. All he saw was a disabled fish in a very, very dangerous environment; it's no secret that in nature, the weak perish easily, so from his perspective, Nemo was living on borrowed time before a predator eventually got him. It's not like he saw Nemo safe and secured in coral and decided to get him out anyway.
How come the sea turtles never seemed to have any concern about resurfacing to breathe? They can hold their breath for long, but not THAT long.
- We don't know how long they've been down there. Maybe not too long after their scene is over, they resurface.
If Marlin can't read the writing on the back of the scuba mask, how come Nemo knew the tank fish were talking about Darla when they tried Censorship by Spelling?
- They were spelling her name in fish language, the scuba mask's writing was in English.
- Either that or they also knew how to read. These are the same fish that were familiar with the dentist's work, maybe they also inadvertently learned how to read from him also.
- Oh, they know how to read. It's just that Nemo shouldn't be able to, thus he shouldn't know what they're spelling. Fish language was a possibility I hadn't considered, though.
- Marlin couldn't read the mask because it was upside down, but he didn't realize it(as he says "What do these markings mean?!", we see it from his point of view and he's looking at it upside down). If he was looking at it right side up, he probably could have read it.
- Maybe Nemo just guessed from context? That's what I always thought, while Dory and the Tank Fish actually can read.
How does Marlin know who Moby Dick is? (Inside the whale, he yells "Do I taste good, Moby?") Is Sandy Plankton also a literature expert?
- Maybe Moby existed in this universe and is something of a legend.