Men in Black (film)/Fridge

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Fridge Brilliance

  • The reason Orion the Cat stayed with Rosenburg even after he was killed. It's because only his fake body was destroyed, he was still alive inside the mech.
  • The tests James and the soldiers/sailors/marines/et cetera are doing shortly before James is recruited as J had different reasons for being used than those that are apparent:
    • The first one, where they have to fill those documents, is actually about being able to think outside the box and perhaps even a willingness to break assumed rules. They were sitting down on chairs that, while comfortable, had no place to allow the candidates to write the answers. James decides to break the assumed rule of "do not touch the table" and to think out of the box, by grabbing the table and moving it so that he can write without having to twist himself.
    • The second one, the shooting range, is about both accuracy, critical thinking and tolerance. All other candidates shoot indiscriminately against all the aliens, figuring them to be hostile just because of how they look like, but James does not just look at the aliens, but he also sees what they are actually doing, which are inoffensive activities, while, when he looks at the little girl, he is able to see that she is actually bad because of what she is carrying (those quantum physics books) and the place where she is (in the middle of the ghetto, surrounded by apparently threatening aliens, without looking scared), which are not normal qualities in a little 8-year-old human girl. Not to mention, that, since there are many shapeshifting aliens, any human that behaves out of character is a serious candidate to being an alien.

Fridge Horror

  • Men in Black, the neuralyzers in particular. Assuming they can wipe out entire memories, someones entire personality, life decisions, changes, thoughts, plans could be obliterated and the victim would essentially be a blank slate who could be manipulated by the user. Now imagine if someone less honorable got their hands on the devices.
    • The organization exists basically to prevent whatever the aliens and its technology might inflict (panic, misusage)... so they must realize such a thing.
      • The above point is referring to MIB's technology, not the aliens'.
      • Most of the MIB's technology was 'confiscated from some friends from out of town'--AKA aliens. K explicitly stated in the first film that the neuralyzer is one such confiscated item.
  • In the second Men in Black movie, while Agent K is still regaining his memory, at one point he shoots off the head of an allied alien. Agent J asks him if he regained his memory, since he appears to know the alien's head would grow back. "His head grows back?" This is played for laughs, but when looked at logically is rather shocking: K is willing to kill an ally merely because he was annoying?
    • Though it is possible that K knew he could get away with it, but not WHY he could. Or maybe he knew all along and had a laugh at J's expense. It wouldn't be outside K's character.
    • He was also probably disoriented from being re-neuralized(?).
    • Muscle-memory, perhaps? Given how the 'interrogation' went in the first movie, this almost seems like a ritual between them.