Megamind/Fridge

Stuff that occurs to the viewer after one or more watchings of DreamWorks' 2010 Megamind.

Fridge Brilliance

Aside from being Crazy Prepared, why would Megamind carry his dehydration gun even when wearing pajamas? He made it from his binky.
It is really subtle, but look at the "warden's" eyes when Megamind has his heel face turn. They ARE THE WRONG COLOUR!
- Even moreso: Metro Man has blue eyes, whereas Megamind has green. Look very closely at "Metro Man's" eyes when he "returns" and saves Roxanne from the bus.
Megamind doesn't mind going to jail; it's not just because it's made of cardboard, but because he grew up there. Jail is the closest thing to a home he has! (And the Warden the closest thing to a father; yes, it's as sad as it sounds)
- And towards the end, he even tells Roxanne, "I'm going home," then walks straight into the jail and turns himself in.
- Let's not forget the Foreshadowing done where the magazine used to show Hal as Metro City's new hero is used to show who really becomes a hero and gets Roxanne.
- The Warden didn't misspeak about the "88" life sentences Megamind had; it was Minion in disguise getting the number wrong -- but even better? Most of those sentences were for kidnapping Roxanne who is now in love with him, so has dropped all the charges.
  - But that WAS the warden...
  - Actually, the first time the warden mentions the life sentences is when he's reading the card that came with "Metroman's" gift. Since Minion sent the watch, he wasn't wrong and the warden confirmed it. The second time the warden was Minion in disguise and says "88". So either Megamind DID earn a few more sentences, and/or he told Minion the right number to put on the card. Or Minion did forget.
  - Megamind might have collected the extra life sentences for his reign of terror on the city.
  - Or racked them up while the watch was in the mail.
- A lot of people thinks that Megamind got off easy in the end for all his crimes after he has a Heel Face Turn, but to him, prison was just like a second home and he could break out whenever he felt like it. So in reality, him being a hero no only gives them a new hero, it saves them the trouble of sending him to jail (which did nothing to change him because he felt like it was his home) and saves money for repairing any damage his break out would cause.
  - Even better? Megamind saving the city from Titan and then repairing all the damage with his bots? The ultimate in community service.
In his speech to the adoring crowd, Metro Man solemnly tells them, "At the end of each day, I often ask myself: what would I be without you?" On first viewing it seems like just another faux-humble bit of patter from a Smug Super, but then it turns out he really means it. Minutes later, his identity crises comes to a head and he decides to fake his own death so he can find out what he is without them.
- Plus there's his face as he's saying it. If you look carefully, in the second before someone yells "I love you Metroman!" he has this contemplative look like "No really, who would I be without you?
- Also, look at what he does at the opening for the museum; juggles babies, walks on water, openly (if subtly) insults his audience ("... the helpless people of Metro City." "And I love you, Random Citizen!") -- things that, if his audience wasn't being so fawning, they'd be genuinely and reasonably upset by. He's not just being smug; he's getting so frustrated with being the perfect hero loved by all that he's trying to provoke a rise out of his audience and shake them out of their complacency so that for once he has something different in his life.
  - But the thing of it is: the citizens let him juggle the babies because they know he'd never hurt one. And the citizens of Metro City know that they are really helpless in comparison to Metro Man. So they might've been too subtle as insults to really upset the citizens.
The seeds for Metro Man's emergence as "Music Man" were sown pretty early on in the film. In the backstory montage, while young Megamind dehydrates/rehydrates minion, young Metro Man is playing ukulele in the background. The music career didn't just come out of nowhere, it had been a hobby since boyhood, pushed to the side by the superhero career. Granted, he had talent...
- This same scene also foreshadows the fact that Minion isn't dead at the end; he tricks Megamind by floating upside down after being dehydrated, only to pull a 'gotcha!' when Young Megamind nervously taps his tank.
On that point, you might note that during Metro Man Day, Metro Man strums air guitar and generally acts like a rock star... because that's his fantasy. That's the happiest you ever see him in the film.
When "Bernard" points to a door in Megamind's lair and says "This way looks exciting." and Roxanne replies "No, it says exit." "Bernard" comes up with the lame excuse "...which is the abbreviation for exciting right?" He's not making it up. He really thinks Exit is short for exciting, which would also explain why a door marked exit has an alligator dance party behind it.
- And he wants Roxanne to see it because it's new and unexpected, when earlier she insulted him by being unsurprised by all his traps.
- Might be the Captain Obvious here but it occured to me when reading the above fridge: Megamind thinking "Exit" meaning "Exciting" is not because he's socially inept, but because he grew up in a prison. Think about it: the most exciting thing for any prisoner is to step out the Exit Door.
Megamind's strangely purplish ears are easily explained by the high concentration of his blood vessels through that area. His blood is red.
Notice how the colour of the dresses Roxanne wears change throughout the movie. The first one is red, the second purple, the final one blue. Red for when she's an enemy of Megamind, purple when she's -- thanks to her interactions with 'Bernard' (and the effect she's having on him) -- a bit more ambivalent towards him, and blue when he's finally managed to win her over.
It's extremely foggy on the day that Space-Dad takes Titan out for flying lessons. It's easy to miss because they're flying above it. This is, of course, so that nobody gets a preview of the new hero before he's ready.
Shortly after Megamind creates the infuser gun, he begins a monologue about how now all he has left to do is find someone with sufficiently heroic qualities. Then his (stolen) cellphone goes off.
- In light of this monologue and who it describes (someone of noble heart and mind, who puts the welfare of others before their own), consider also who's calling him -- no one said the perfect candidate had to be a man...
- Man, I was fooled by that too--I predicted that the hero would be Roxanne; She would be perfect! but I was disappointed to find out it was Hal that got the abilities. She would have been the right choice, though, and that's why she didn't get the powers: choosing her would have ended the story right then and there.
When Titan is terrorizing the city, why doesn't Metro Man stop him? At the very end, we see that he turns up to Megamind's first public appearance as a bona fide hero and whispers "Good for you, little Buddy. I knew you could do it!" He was fully expecting Megamind to rise to the occasion.
- It is also quite likely that when Metro Man went underground, he blocked out all incoming communication and cut himself off from what was happening in Metro City. In this troper's mind, he probably didn't even know that Titan existed until Megamind and Roxanne showed up and told him.
  - Agreed. He only turned on the TV after they came and called him out.
The whole Titan/Tighten name issue makes more sense when you remember that Hal is a bit of an idiot. When Roxanne sucessfully figures out Megamind's plan, we see it's spelt 'Titan', which was (probably) Megamind's intent of how it should be spelt, but when Titan/Tighten is rampaging through the city, he himself spells it 'Tighten', not probably knowing about it's homophone, seeing as he was only told it verbally. Thus to most ctizens it's Titan, but to Hal himself, it's Tighten.
Bernard actually has a good reason to think that Megamind's costume needs work. If you look at the Megamind masks and dummy in the film the heads are way smaller than his as it just wouldn't be practical for a mask or dummy's head to be that size. So it's a case of in-universe Reality Is Unrealistic.
- He also has good reason to think that Megamind's costume needs work because Megamind isn't wearing one of his usual supervillain outfits -- he's wearing his pajamas.
Some were bugged (this writer included) about some of the licensed songs in the film, but there is a reason for it: It's Megamind! The guy uses these songs to pepper up his entrances.
- And I have no doubt he pays no licensing fees, the cad.
At first, Metro Man's skeleton flying directly to Megamind and Roxanne in the beginning can be easily chalked up to Rule of Funny, but when we learn that Metro Man faked his death, it becomes obvious that Metro Man threw the skeleton to them in order to give incontrovertible "proof" that he was dead.
- This was explicitly shown in the film...
Minion is shown preparing a lot of Megamind's look and style - the Black Mamba cape, the Tesla coils in the lab, etc - and what is it that Minion-as-Megamind says separates a villain from a supervillain - "Presentation!"
Roxanne and Megamind comment that Metro Man was really good at 'last minute escapes'. Given that neither of them seem to be aware of his superspeed at this time - Megamind doesn't train Titan to use it, Roxanne never brings it up - maybe that is how he has been escaping the majority of Megamind's traps all these years.
When Metro Man is having his revelation-flashback, a beam of light illuminates him as he has the idea to fake his death. This seems just like a expository effect, contrary to the Megamind-made clouds above Metro Man at that time ... until you remember that the Death Ray has just begun charging in orbit, possibly causing a glare to break through clouds. The 'lightbulb' effect for Metro Man's idea was literally produced by the Death Ray he'd use to fake his death.
If you look closely, when Hal is on his bed, unconscious courtesy of the Forget-Me-Stick schtick,there is a book titled: The Best Villains Ever.
Over the course of the film, Roxanne, Metro Man and the Warden are shown to start to believe in Megamind. Their eye colour? Blue, of course. Roxanne's clothing plays this theme straight - Red, Black of mourning, Purple, and finally Blue for Megamind, though the mayor inverts it for some reason - he spends most appearances wearing a blue suit, only to go brown when Megamind is the city's hero.
In the opening flashback, when young Megamind is being carted off to prison again for setting off the blue bomb, he clearly looks excited. Then young Metro Man picks up the School House and flies it away - putting the prison outside of its catchment area, probably. The moment before this cuts away, you can see young Megamind's heart break looking at it. He clearly thought he was going to get to 'play' with Metro Man again. A headline of this cuts directly to a headline of their first fight, somewhere in their twenties. This sets up a couple of things: (a) Megamind had no formal education past a certain point, explaining certain speech and object-recognition quirks and (b) When Megamind goes too far, Metro Man runs away with, later to, the School House.
At first, you kinda wonder if Megamind had a chance at behaving in school, given that he was, you know, raised in a prison. But then you remember that Megamind has an apparently throwaway line about getting to go to school due to 'good behaviour'. He actually was trying to improve himself before getting sent back to prison.
Metro Man has a line "ever since I can remember, I've had to do what is best for the city". It explains the strain and wear he must have been under, but it also implies, if taken literally, that he has a human-level memory, and remembers nothing about bashing Megamind's ship into the prison as a baby, and has only fuzzy memories of early childhood.
Letting an alien newborn be raised in a prison is sort of ridiculous ... in the real world. In a comic-book universe however, if we take the characters to be in their mid-twenties now, then the ship crashed in the mid-eighties - somewhere in the Bronze Age, even more probably, the Dark Age of Comic books. A comic book universe going through a Dark Age would easily lock up a baby in a prison - that was Bane's origin in the early nineties, after all. Metro Man's early characterisation also fits - superhuman jerk fawned over from birth? Dark Age. Small mercy that Megamind seems to have either been educated by Silver Age villains in his prison or had a Modern Age Reconstruction by the time he began his career, turning him into an ineffectual villain.
A lot of the story is a Silver Age throwback - the ridiculous hero-centric villain Megamind, Metro Man faking his death for a new life, referring to Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow , the deliberate good bye to the Silver Age character. Then we have Nineties Hero Titan, becoming Nineties Villain Tighten - gifted with unbelievable powers from a vague cosmic entity seems very Miracleman, particularly when it all turns out to be an illusion. And then a Noughties-style character reconstruction, complimented by an Antihero Heel Face Turn.
A minor one: Roxanne and Megamind-as-Bernard comment that they've inspired each other a lot. Later, Megamind-as-Space-Dad comments that romance is very inspiring.
Of course Minion-as-Megamind's plan mostly involves not dying. His job is just to get Roxanne to safety and distract Titan while Megamind gets into position!
- Plus, when breaking Megamind out of prison, Minion doesn't exactly react well to Megamind's claim that they're going to die fighting Titan.
Megamind is a thinly-veiled Michael Jackson conspiracy theory. The whole idea of a hero staging his own death, making a fake corpse and choosing to do all this to reinvent himself and live a different life may be enough. But also note when Metro Man is seen in his disguise of a coat and a white fedora: many who believe in the conspiracy theory that The King of Pop is still alive will point out the video footage of his memorial: in the third row is an old man dressed the same way, and apparently nobody can explain who he is or what he is doing at the service-some believe he is Michael Jackson in prosthetic makeup, watching his own funeral. Jedd-the-Jedi
Anti-Villain Protagonist Megamind has an army of menacing little brain-bots with the personalities of puppies. As per Rule of Funny, right? But think about it: what's one of the best qualities that dogs and puppies are known for? Unconditional love. His instilling them with such a personality trait is yet another reflection of how starved he is for affection. - Shaka Raka
Why doesn't the disguise watch cover the eyes? Because you need to see through that "hole" in the disguise! (Well, it's at least a semi-plausible theory.)
Usually the disguise watch also changes the wearer's voice, but Megamind sounds the same as Bernard. This is because he didn't have time to capture Bernard's voice. It also explains why Megamind asks the warden for the time; to record his voice for future use.

Fridge Logic:

Megamind tells Roxanne he can't use the same infuser/defuser gun that created Titan the new super powered villain because he left it in the back of the invisible car when she dumped him, and (he was so distraught over being dumped) that he walked away and forgot where he parked it. Why didn't Megamind just build another infuser/defuser gun? Because he was also so distraught over losing Roxanne that it simply didn't occur to him. And then, he was so eager to salve his wounded pride that he went and picked a fight, which backfired in his face, and that's what drove him to go find Roxanne to seek out Metro Man's hideout.
Why doesn't Megamind try shooting Titan with his dehydration gun? He has it with him all the time in the last battle (and presumably all the previous battles, as he even carries it when wearing pajamas), and it sure is not nearly as hard to do as trapping Titan with a copper sphere.
- I'd be willing to bet somewhere in the collection of superpowers Metro Man has is one that makes him (or someone else with his powers) immune to being completely dehydrated. Maybe aliens from his planet look vaguely human but have some kind of amorphous solid putty (or gas) in place of blood. I mean it'd be pretty stupid if Megmind hadn't used his signature weapon against his signature foe in all of their various different show downs... Granted, they could have slipped in a scene showing how Metro Man is immune to being dehydrated back when they were both in school, and maybe there already is a deleted scene to that effect, but either way, that's my two cents...
- Megamind's had the Dehydrate Gun since childhood. Presumably in one of his many (many many) battles with Metro Man since then, he's tried it out and long-since learnt it didn't work. And since it didn't work with Metro Man, it's not going to work with Titan now.
When Megamind and Minion go into their Space Dad/Space Step-Mom disguises, Minion has a Paper-Thin Disguise, presumably because he doesn't have Megamind's hologram watch. But later he is disguised as Megamind while Megamind is disguised as Metroman. So why didn't Minion have a better Space Step-Mom disguise?
- His current Space Step-Mom disguise worked and he liked it or was used to it.
- Or maybe Megamind realized that such disguises may not fool all the citizens of Metro City and created another hologram watch for Minion to use before the battle.
- Well it worked, didn't it?
The opening of the Metro Man Museum was PACKED - the entire area around the lake was wall-to-wall people. Easily well over a hundred thousand. However when Metro Man takes his break to do a little soul searching (during which all those people were watching the events on the big screen), there are plenty of people at the park, the library, and the cafe. I guess there were a few folks who really didn't care much themselves.
- Maybe they just didn't think that there was much point in going there in person to join the back of a multi-million person crowd to see a speck in the distance.
- Same reason that even, say, an incredibly popular rock band doesn't get everyone in any given city at their gigs; not everyone could safely fit into the space provided, lots of people probably had other stuff to do at the time, and of course, some people probably just weren't interested anyway.
Over several dates, why does Roxanne not wonder why "Bernard" never changes his clothes? The closest we get is her wondering why he was power walking in a suit...
- He looks like -- and acts, and Megamind probably insists that -- he's the type of guy who buys multiple versions of the same clothes.
How did Megamind dehydrate Carlos? By that point he'd sacrificed his gun holster for thigh-high boots.
- He probably had an alternate holster made somewhere else on the costume.
  - Where? The outfit gets progressively stripped down to the point that he's in nothing but the jumpsuit by the end, and there is still no gun visible anywhere on him.
  - Perhaps he took a quick trip back to his lair to get the gun before looking for Roxanne.
- For that matter, Megamind says a few minutes later that he lost the gun in the invisible car, doesn't he?
  - There are two guns, the multipurpose one which he likes to use for dehydration and the single purpose one that is only used to empower/depower Tighten. The first one was with him, the second one was left in the car.
Why did Megamind use Metro Man's dandruff to get DNA to create Titan rather than the actually skeleton, which would clued him into the fact that Metro Man had faked his death?
- On the DVD commentary the creators mention this point, saying they were originally going to have the skeleton turn to dust, but couldn't show it and just had to leave it.
- This troper is willing to bet that Megamind, being an antagonist in mourning, tastefully placed the bones somewhere he'd never have to look at that again so as not to be reminded of the actual act of killing him. Using dandruff, was likely a bit to exploit and revel the weakness of a man who he described very early on as having "great hair".
No one wonders why there even is a skeleton after that explosion, why the bones don't look charred at all, or why the cape survived? Megamind clearly knows his biology, and is a general genius, so how did he miss this?
- He was hit with a death ray powered by THE SUN. Never heard of bleach dried bones? Multiply that by a weaponized scale.
Megamind is a rather... waif-ish man. Minion on the other hand has a bulky, gorilla-shaped body. [[spoiler:How the hell did Roxanne not realise that it wasn't Megs by virtue of the fact that his body was bigger?]
So Minion is fitting Megamind in a basic frame for the Black Mambaaaaaaaaaa right before they have their big falling out. Minion leaves, Megamind goes on his date, gets dumped, comes back... and the cape is now finished. What?
- What in the world makes everyone think the cape is finished? It... Looks no different - at least to my eyes - and actually it looks as though the collar needs finishing off with more material over the base structure. Honestly, I think Megamind donning the unfinished cape, despite his adhererence to 'preparation' is supposed to be what tells us that he means business.

Fridge Horror:

The Brain-bot with the biting problem is covered in red splotches, probably blood. But if that wasn't bad enough, consider the fact that Megamind probably has blue blood given his coloration and Minion's body is robotic. So who does that blood belong to...?
- Actually, since Megamind is shown to have pinkish/purplish ears and cheeks - as well as a red/pink mouth - it might still be his blood. However, we never see Megamind bleed so there is no confirmation and Fridge Horror might still apply.
  - It's lipstick. Concept art has there be one female brainbot. It has lipstick.
- The splotches look more pink than red. This Troper assumed that Megamind had marked that particular Brain-Bot so he could tell it apart from the others.
  - Maybe because it's one that keeps biting him?
At the beginning Megamind is serving 88 life sentences. Looks like folks actually died during some of the conflicts...
- Although in a less horrific interpretation, in certain American jurisdictions kidnapping can receive up to a life sentence depending on the severity of the crime and whether federal authorities get involved; we certainly know that he's kidnapped Roxanne a lot (maybe eighty-eight times?). It's also probable that Megamind has long-since fallen foul of any three-strikes laws in operation in Metro City (essentially; someone who commits three serious offenses receives an automatic life-sentence on the third offence). Kidnapping and bank robbery amongst others would probably count here.
- Don't forget the attempted murder charges: The only way to defeat Metro Man was to kill him, so Megamind's been trying to kill him. Also, typically a repeat offender - especially one that is unrepentant - will get a stronger punishment. (Ironically, this line of logic leads the conclusion that Megamind can't have killed anyone: The worst they can do to him is keep piling on life sentences, so he's never done anything that could justify an execution. Actually killing someone would count, so those 88 life sentences actually reinforce how harmless he is as a villain.)
  - But Megamind did (as far as everyone knew) commit first-degree murder in the movie itself. Though he received no immediate punishment for it due to his overthrow of the city, he did turn himself in of his own free will later. Did he go back with full realization that he now faced the death penalty? It was Minion, not the Warden, who mentioned his sentencing later (to which Megamind seemed a little confused), so it's quite possible he was now on death row.
- And there is another crime he keep committing: breaking out of prison. Given how many times he seems to have been captured...
- The orbital shots (and Word of God, partially) indicate Metro City is in Michigan; we haven't had the death penalty for over a century and a half, thank you.
  - You haven't had a Super Villain, either.
    - Yet...
Does nobody else wonder what happened to the original Bernard that Megamind dehydrated to then use his identity? He's never seen in the rest of the movie.
- He shows up during the credits. Megamind forgets to empty his pockets and Bernard is re-hydrated in the washing machine, then Minion whacks him with the Forget-Me-Stick.
Remember when Megamind says, "Imagine the most horrible, terrifying, evil thing you can possibly think of and multiply it...by six!" The most horrible, terrifying, evil thing I can think of is child abuse. So Megamind is bringing child abuse times 6? Aw...crap.
- I wouldn't go that far. Megamind's idea of 'evil', even before his Heel Face Turn, is clearly more along the lines of the melodramatic Card-Carrying Villain who twirls his evil moustache and laughs his Evil Laugh as he uses his evil rope to tie the Damsel in Distress to the evil train-tracks, all of which conveniently takes long enough for the good guy to swoop in and save the day -- the sort of villain who makes a lot of noise about being a villain but once you look beyond the surface is actually more-or-less harmless. He's clearly bluffing because he's got no idea what he's doing and has never imagined a day where he'd ever have to think this far ahead.
- I always saw it as Nothing Is Scarier. He hadn't thought of a method of villainous torment for the city folk because, well, he never really thought he'd have to. So he tells them to think of something horrible because nothing he could say would match the power of human imagination. It made sense, since the citizens didn't appear too fazed by Megamind's presence later in the film, such as when he's wearing his new mecha suit and they're all just standing around awkwardly. They only became truly frightened when a real villain showed up.