Men in Black (film)/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • I can (sort of) see the Edgar bug stuffing himself inside a metal spaceship that's less than half his size. But how does he keep his skin-suit from splitting apart in a nice gory mess? Worse yet, it's shown to be a loose fit when he stretches his face. The hell?
    • The book chalks this up to him folding himself into an appropriate size, and specific mention is made as to how he prepares the skin suit so he doesn't destroy it instantly.
    • He's a space bug- Bizarre Alien Biology is definitely in effect.
  • Why does Edgar stop talking once he's in bug form? We've already seen that he can talk ("Place... projectile weapon... on the ground"), so why is he suddenly mute? Did they think him talking would make him less scary?
    • I don't remember him ever talking in bug form, so I was guessing he needs a larynx to make a voice. It doesn't work when you take in consideration the other bugs in the series, though. Maybe there was a change in script but they forgot to update the previous scenes?
      • He does when he first crash-lands. We don't see it, but we hear it. And all he took from Edgar was his skin, not his larynx or any other organs.
    • When he crash lands and starts talking with Edgar, he sounds hesitant, like he's speaking a language not native to his own. So when they're having the fight at the end of the movie, he's probably not going to speak Human because he consciously has to think about it. (Don't ask how he's much more fluent while wearing the Edgar-Suit.)
      • It's some kind of translator he's using at the start. He gets a better grasp of the language later.
      • Also, he has a tongue and teeth while in the Edgar suit. It's hard to speak English clearly if all you have is a gullet.
    • "Did they think him talking would make him less scary?" Maybe. In the script he actually had lines; he said "Like this?" after pulling his Edgar suit off, and "Stop it!" to J when he started mashing roaches.
  • It's all well and good that MIB agents have to get their fingertips burned off, but haven't these people ever heard of gloves? Even better, the movie very explicitly states that all trace of the agents' former lives is erased; shouldn't that include fingerprint records?
    • More practical than gloves. Gloves can be taken off, damaged or simply slip out (and who knows whether you'll have one around to replace it). Not having fingerprints at all is just... a more surefire way of preventing that, though it raises the question of how agents that are "erased" get them back to return to their normal life. And even if fingerprint records are erased, leaving the same fingerprints around various suspicious locations would definitely ring a bell with someone.
      • But even if they leave a million fingerprints, it doesn't matter if they're not on file. They won't lead back to anyone, so at worst the police will simply think they've got an unknown suspect. Hardly worth the effort of burning off their fingerprints.
      • The original fingerprints may not be on file, but the "new" ones would be put on file. They'd keep finding them in places, and possibly track the agents through them. Much tidier not to leave any fingerprints at all.
      • They can collect all the blank fingerprints they want. The MIB have shown that they can wipe those files with a few keystrokes. They have the capacity and authority to do so, and is shown explicitly when they're wiping Jay's identity.
        • So what about eyelashes, skin flakes, and any of the countless other traces that the agents must leave behind? Genetic evidence is every bit as dangerous as fingerprint evidence, and obviously they can't do anything about that. So the question is still, why bother?
      • All that stuff is much, much harder to use to track someone than CSI would have you believe. Not to mention harder to find and isolate unless you've got a quarantined crime scene.
      • To put it in perspective, 90% of dust is human sheddings (hair, skin, etc). So while, yes, it'd be possible to get something from such things, the time and effort required to do so in an average crime scene would be horrendously costly for the benefit.
      • Yeah, this is a case of The CSI Effect in full swing here. the kind of meticulous CSI-style studies are only going to happen at high-profile crime scenes, which are invariably going to have MIB agents there with mind-wiping tech and clean-up teams to eliminate evidence anyway.
    • As for getting them back when they leave, I think fingerprints actually grow back naturally if they're burnt off. Fingertips have fairly impressive regenerative abilities, so they probably have to go through the 'burn off your fingertips' thing periodically.
      • If i remember from the book, there's something about how they have to get their fingerprints removed yearly as they were burned off and the prints would start to return at about that time (which, as i've burned myself repeatedly.. fingerprints will start to come back if the burn isn't bad enough)
    • Redundancy, the way I took it. MIB is pretty hardcore about keeping that outfit anonymous, physically removing prints is likely among the easier things they can do to protect themselves.
    • Okay, forget gloves. Surely the MIB have access to some sort of ultra-thin polymer or something that adheres to your skin so you don't have to get your fingertips painfully burned off every so often? Then again, this is veering dangerously close to Wild Mass Guessing territory...
    • Occam's Razor, the simplest solution is usually the best. They have a device that burns off your finger prints. No need to worry about gloves getting damaged, lost, lifted from an agent, or being identifiable in and of themselves (if leather). They can wipe prints from databases, and perhaps the machine that burns them off also takes a record of them and scans databases to automatically delete them, so that if the agent misses his yearly burn, the police won't get a lead.
    • What a lot of people don't realize is that actually having no fingerprints is worse. Here is a link to a guy who tried that in real life before the days of DNA testing. How did the police catch him? by looking for one of the only guys in the world without fingerprints.
  • This one comes up as a result of some stuff that came about in the film's post-production phase. Originally (the novelization backs this up, if memory serves, because novelizations of movies are usually based on early screenplay drafts) there were supposed to be two alien ships looming over the Earth, demanding the galaxy: an Arquillian ship (as seen in the final film) and a Baltian ship. Rosenberg (the little green man) was originally a Baltian. The Baltians and Arquillians had been at war, and were making peace by having Rosenberg deliver the galaxy to the Arquillian ambassador. And then the Bug came along. But anyhoo, the whole bit with the Baltians was omitted, and after some post-production work (namely dubbing the aliens' conversation into alienspeak), Rosenberg became an Arquillian. Thing is, the tall alien ambassador is listed in the end credits as "Arquillian" which means that there should be a tiny green man inside his head, shouldn't there? I know, I know, I should really just relax... a minor but maddening quibble...
    • The DVD contains 3 scenes that were cut which dramatically shifted that part of the plot, the studio execs wanted a streamlined plot and the director found he just needed to redub two scenes and while third mostly needed a different CGI shot on the computer screen to remove the whole peace conference plot into a simpler theft and assassination. They pretty much missed that error as the change was very last minute for a big budget blockbuster, apparently some of the main actors themselves had no idea that lot had been changed and were surprised at the final version.
    • Also, we only saw the coroner examining Rosenberg. The other guy probably did have an alien in his head but they didn't show it.
  • In Men in Black II, how does Kay (okay, Kevin) not notice the smell of cigarette smoke coming from the sorting machine? Unless it's airtight, which I doubt, he ought to smell something; cigarette smoke is notoriously pungent. Given how he reacts to a coffee spill, I can't see him not doing something if he suspects someone's smoking inside a government building, which is a big no-no. Plus, they must open it from time to time to load more mail into it. (For that matter, the alien inside is lucky he never set the mail on fire...)
    • Maybe the other aliens cover for the guy.
    • Maybe Kevin thought the machine just gave off really bad exhaust.
    • The guy is an alien, so it might not be tobacco he's smoking. No, that's not a weed reference, he could be smoking an alien plant that is less smelly.
      • Or maybe it's one of those electronic cigarettes.
    • More importantly, why can't his very loud music be heard from that big slot he's throwing mail through?
  • Where's the Deviant ART fan art? Most of it is of characters dressed up as MIBs, rather than fanart of the franchise proper. Come on, guys!
  • I'm sure there is one, so what's the official explanation behind the whole... "your codename is your first initial and there are more than 26 agents" thing?
    • Dunno if it helps, but in the series, there's one former member who's known as "Alpha," so maybe they go into other alphabets.
    • It's been a while since I saw the movies, but do we know if they actually have more than 26 agents? Also, Zed's name isn't Z, so it is possible they just give the lone letter to the first person with that name and resort to other codenames starting with said letter from then on.
    • They probably have a system of letters and numbers in various languages. Zed may not be his name. In many countries, Zed means zero. You can hear it in Stargate Atlantis when McKay sometimes refers to ZPMs (Zero Point Modules) as Zed PMs.
      • Zed is how Brits (and presumably Canadians and so on) pronounce Z, so Zed is sticking to the single letter codename thing (why he's using British english, I have no idea). This just brings us back to the core problem of limited codenames, of course.
      • Zed sounds much, much cooler than Zee
        • And Zed is the boss, so he can pronounce it however the hell he wants.
    • It's possible that not all who work at MIB are called agents. The agents, who get code letters, are just a specific set of field operatives, while there's a much larger support staff with a different naming scheme.
    • If I recall from the novel that's set between the first and second film, they start using slight variations, probably based off of initials or the first few letters of a name.
    • The third movie gives us Agent AA, showing that an agent can have more than one letter.
  • Why don't they use the neuralyzers as weapons? Every skirmish would be over pretty quickly if they went into battle with sunglasses and wiped every hostile's memory.
    • It probably works only on humans due to biological differences.
      • Or perhaps because, since you have to be looking at the neuralyzer for it to work, using it in a melee would be too inefficient.
      • That and eyes.
      • "only works on humans" is confirmed in the animated version.
  • In the Animated Series Alpha is repeatedly referred to as one of the original Men in Black and Z's predecessor as head of the organisation, as well as having trained K. However in Season One's The Head Trip Syndrome, the five later six original Men in Black are stated to be D, T, H, Q and K and Moffitt. It's unlikely Moffitt became A(lpha) given his first initial does not match nor does he look anything like Alpha's human form, nor does there appear to be more than maybe a decade between Moffitt and K, when there was a sizeable age gap between the latter and A and the two did not meet until after the MIB was established.
    • My interpretation is that Alpha was head of the predecessor organization that became MIB after the official first contact. That organization sent D, T, H, and Q to where they were fairly sure that aliens would land to ensure future good relations. The "founding agents" are a somewhat symbolic distinction, as they consider MIB as they know it to have been founded at the moment of first contact, even though the precursor organization basically changed into the modern MIB immediately (with one new member). The non-symbolic distinction being that if those five hadn't been there, first contact would never have happened, and the precursor organization would've been disbanded before they had another chance. It's still full of holes, but that's my personal canon.
      • Makes sense, or at least as much sense as MIB's fluctuating canon will allow. Perhaps Moffitt went on to become Z and that changed up the timeline a bit as well. Dude had to go somewhere.
  • Why did K give J a deceptively powerful weapon on his first mission? That's just asking for trouble. It seems like nothing but an invocation of the Rule of Funny.
    • Caution. Given that most of the people they come across are tougher than humans, making sure your new recruit will survive is probably a good thing. At least until they have the savvy to handle aliens in other fashions.
      • Still begs the question of why they didn't demonstrate the power of the Noisy Cricket for Jay. Seriously, how many innocent civilians could he have vaporized if his aim had been off the first time he fired it?
    • The MIB aren't terribly good at training new field agents, judging by how they handle J. They don't explain to him that he's not supposed to discharge his weapon in public either. The impression I get is that all the field agents are very old men and they haven't trained any new agents in decades, so they're getting rusty.
      • Jay already has training as a policeman and, as seen with the alien couple, it's probable being a MIB agent isn't a lot different than a simple police agent, he just needed experience, not training.
    • I believe because they consider he should be smart enough to know to not use it in public, especially since he was once a police agent, he should be aware to not shoot unless it is strictly necessary. They were wrong.
      • J seemed to be using it as he would a regular pistol. He fired upon a fleeing criminal that he believed was deemed "armed and dangerous." I also thought he was admonished for firing alien tech in view of the public, not for endangering people. He also was still under the normal belief that recoil and power is directly related to size. MIB needs to add training to all their other overly thought out protocols; they have pretty extensive recruitment process and protocols it seems.
    • Also, I read somewhere (I forget where) that the Noisy Cricket is the training weapon for new recruits.
    • I've always gone with the theory that giving the Noisy Cricket to a new recruit is an intiation rite or hazing.
    • Both are right. It's a training weapon for new recruits, but, ratcheting up its power so that it sends the shooter flying is also a prank pulled on those same recruits.
      • To be specific, in the West End Games MIB Pen And Paper RPG, it's designed to break Trigger Happy newbies of the habit of pulling guns and shooting things in public. Every time a officer discharges his weapon outside the range, he has to fill out paperwork defending the use of his sidearm - an incredible hassle meant to discourage reckless shooting. When a MIB fires off a ray gun, all civilians present have to be neuralized, and that's an incredible hassle for the rest of the agency. Hence giving the newbie a gun that feels like getting kicked by a mule every time it's used - no paperwork, but you are going to carry that wrist-snapper until you learn some restraint. We're not running an intergalactic kegger here.
  • Exactly how did Edgar kill the Arquillian prince? We see his stinger go right through the Arquillian's neck, but that's not his real neck. It's a human-sized power armor for an action figure-sized alien. So how did the sting kill him?
    • It looks like it damaged whatever life-support system he had inside his robo-body. Kind of how if you pierced the oxygen tanks on the Space Shuttle, you can kill the astronauts on board without ever touching them directly.
  • Why does K retire from MIB? Unlike the old geezer in the beginning of the movie, he didn't lose his touch, and if the reason was his extremely traumatic experience inside the roach's gullet, why didn't he just erase that particular memory? In fact, the same can be said about all the "hundreds of memories" he wanted to forget. Fair enough, so why doesn't he?
    • He does erase those memories. Problem is, neuralizers aren't selective. They wipe out entire blocks of memories. The only way to forget all the horrible things he's seen as an MIB agent is to wipe out his entire experience as an MIB agent.
      • Lolwut? They use the neuralizers to erase short scopes of memory all the time! That's what the dials are for - they determine how far in the past will the memory be erased. So, what I meant was neuralizing himself after each traumatic event, including the one with the roach.
      • Yes, because an agent regularly erasing large blocks of their own memory--useful memory on how to fight the things he's going to be up against every day--is a really good habit to build up.
      • So you're suggesting he wipe out all of his combat experience after every encounter, therefore making it impossible for him to remember what he's learned in combat? Brilliant!
        • Record the necessary information beforehand, then playback it. Experiencing those traumatic events second-hand wouldn't be so bad.
      • Also, that was what happened in the sequel. He'd neuralized himself after the whole 'Light of Zarthon' incident and those memories didn't come back after he was de-neuralized until he put together the clues he left. So it makes sense to only neuralize himself once, just in case he needs to be brought back quickly.
    • He still pined for his old girl and his old life. He is shown spying on her at one point. Getting eaten was just the tipping point.
    • This one's pretty much been done to death but I also think he probably didn't want to get to the point where he retired old and bumbling. He probably wanted to get out while he was a) still alive and b) had some good years left.
      • I think the biggest unanswered question is why does he retire on J's second day? couldn't he wait at least a month? there is a ton of stuff he doesn't know!
  • So...in the second movie, was Laura K's kid with the alien princess? It's never explicitly stated, but I was kind of getting that vibe. Especially at the end where he's convincing her to leave Earth.
    • Yep. That's why she looks like a human but has emotions that affect the weather.
  • Whatever happened to K's girlfriend during MIB and MIB II? She's suddenly forgotten and we get a (sort of) alien relationship out of nowhere.
    • Listen to the dialogue when J first goes to get K back. He says exactly what happened.
  • Does anyone else find it odd that MIB agents are apparently empowered to fire their partners from the service and then neuralyze them to forget what they know? Both J and K are seen doing so unilaterally and on the spur of the moment, and the only time Zed (their nominal boss) says boo about it is when he razzes J for doing it to too many of his partners in a row. This seems to me to be a disturbingly loose way to handle severance from an organization that prides itself on only allowing in the elite (and which therefore will always be very small in size), and that's not even getting into what could happen if an agent went rogue and just decided to neuralyze his partner every time they stumbled onto his crimes.
    • I haven't seen either film in a while, but I don't recall seeing both agents in a pair holding a neuralyzer. Maybe Zed decides which agents actually get to carry the mind-effer based on how experienced they are or how unlikely they are to screw up and/or misuse it. The first agent we see neuralyzed is K's partner, who's barely capable of staying in the game.
      • Which, BTW, raises another question. How did they allow such a whiner into their ranks in the first place?
        • If you mean J's partner at the start of 2, presumably he was more gung-ho about it when recruited and it was the reality of the job tha got him.
  • How the heck does nobody but the outfielder notice the alien spaceship flying over Shea Stadium? You'd think, at the very least, some of the other players would have also been looking at the ball and seen the ship behind it.
    • The same reason why nobody but a small minority of people noticed a Tyrannosaurus rex walking around San Diego in The Lost World. In other words, Weirdness Censor.
  • Why do they change the colour of the neuralizer from red to blue? are we just supposed to forget that the bulb used to look completely different for no reason?
    • Newer model?
  • Why does K neuralize J after meeting him for the first time if he was just going to recruit him the next day?
    • The other recruits were probably not neuralized when they were recruited. They were probably chosen because they were the at the top of their respective fields. Edwards, on the other hand, is a different story. He had a close encounter with an extraterrestrial and K took him to Jeebs to identify the weapon the ET was going to use to assassinate the Arquillian prince. K neuralized Edwards after that to erase the memory of aliens, alien weaponry and protect MIB secrets. But he may have decided later that Edwards would make a good replacement and had him tested with the other recruits whereupon he'd have to subject him to a second reveal regarding extraterrestrials.
  • Does the US branch of MIB control all the Agents in the world or are there other branches? a London office for example.
  • So if the MIB suit is the last suit you'll ever wear... why is J wearing some kind of Oriental inspired number with a white polo neck underneath during the final seconds of the first movie? hasn't he just broken one of the main tenants of the entire organization? and why isn't he customizing his outfit in the sequels?
  • What happened to K's futuristic handgun and J's Cricket during the final battle against the Bug? Were they stupid enough to leave their sidearms behind? sure those laser cannons they keep in the trunk were cool and all but, as they both proved quite conclusively, if you happen to lose them during the battle to save the entire Earth you are left with nothing to attack with except for a few rocks. Your back-up battle strategy shouldn't consist of Hell, if something happens I can always let it swallow me whole...
  • Since Agent K disappeared from the modern timeline, he would thus have never recruited Agent J in the first place. The timeline should have reset to have Agent J be in the NYPD or some other non-MIB employment. J should not still be an MIB agent if K doesn't even make it to the 1990's. That does not preclude another MIB agent to recruit Agent J, but that affects other events as well. It's possible that the other agent would be J's partner and not Agent K. There is also the possibility that J would be recruited by someone else and then *assigned* to K, but that contradicts the loose recruiting and trainer/mentor model that MIB uses.
    • Timey-Wimey Ball. Seriously that is really the only answer you need.
    • There's a lot of Timey-Wimey Ball in the movie, but it isn't necessary for that. K had nothing to do with the Bug's plan in MiB, so in either timeline, J runs down a Cephalapoid on foot as an NYPD officer, and an Agent gets assigned to investigate. J is legitimately Men In Black material, so it's no stretch to assume that whoever was assigned to his case decided to give him a shot, and he aces the test on his own.
  • The ending of third film involves a pretty big unspoken Temporal Paradox because K kills past!Boris in the past. Since Boris is dead in the present he can't travel to the past to kill K and give J a reason to go to the past. But since that logically means J would never tell K to kill him Boris would have survived in that timeline. This means he would have gone back in time to kill K but then J would have... My brain hurts.
    • past!Boris killing the colonel, past!Boris's death, past!K's acknowledgment of past!J as a child and events that follow on create a Timeline C (the "Good Guys Win, Someone's Dad Dies" timeline) that erases Timeline A (the original starting from 1969) and Timeline B (the "Boris Wins" timeline). So the paradox mentioned above is erased, unless there is evidence to the contrary.
  • Each film reveals that Kay had a different Love Interest, all of them from his past. Is it just me or does it seem like he's uncharacteristically...loose?
    • Could be another explanation for why he's so stoic and strict now. Also it may depict Kay as having to try and get over "losing" his wife after recruiting with MIB.
  • Boris was apparently pen-pals with the woman who helped him escape from prison. How did he write to her if one of his arms was blown off and the other was permanently encased in that device?
    • He dictated them to a guard who either drew the short straw or pissed the bosses off. This also meant they knew what was in those letters.
  • Hokay, major Mi B 3 plot spoilers below:
    • So what happened at Cape Canaveral in the original timeline? I expected something traumatic, something, well, worse than having to neuralyze a kid you'd end up working with later (talk about a retcon), especially since the one change seems to be not arresting Boris. Future!Boris and J's presences canceled each other out as far as interfering with the Boris-K fight went, so, what was it that happened to K (and O) that it's so classified?
    • Also, why did "When you meet the guy you're after tomorrow, kill him, don't arrest him?" prompt K to shot down the giant neuralyzer?
      • Theory: J is banking on K's suspicion and intuition from describing an event that J has knowledge of, yet K doesn't. J, of course, correctly predicted that K would be too curious to spare J from the neuralyzer.
  • How did J know that the temporal device could be switched to Mental Time Travel and why didn't it leave Boris just as prescient as J himself?
    • Presumably it was quick thinking on J's part, something he's known for.
  • What's the deal with Boris' unnamed girlfriend? Past!Boris is never seen with her, and though it's mentioned the two have been sending each other letters, how does that relationship get to the point where she had his name tattooed on her back?
  • Maybe this is Bizarre Alien Biology with a smidge of Rule of Funny, but J deals with the giant alien fish by pulling its heart out. It collapses, quite obviously out of commission if not outright dead. A scene or so later, the fish is seen strapped to a truck, flopping around vigorously. Wha happa? Did its heart grow back? Did an agent put its heart back? Did it have a spare kick in after the original was removed?
  • Why are the guards at Lunar-Max so Too Dumb to Live? Among their many idiocies:
    • Their scanners are as specific as "ceramic confectionery", but not more than "organic matter"...which encompasses everything from poisons to viruses, both of which would be invalubale in a prison escape.
    • They have weapons that can breach the wall of an airtight space station...in an airtight space station.
    • When they have an item that they have reason to believe contains harmful substances, they...stick their finger in it.
    • Seriously, MIB. The bad guys are the ones who are supposed to need the Evil Overlord List, not the good guys.
  • In MIB 3 near the end J&K have to get a macguffin into space in order to save the Earth. The headscratcher comes from the fact that they had to use 1969 moon launch to get it up there. Seriously? You're telling me that out of the dozens of perfectly docile aliens that we see in the movie and the probably countless others on the planet there's not a single one anywhere that has a spaceship they could have used instead?!?
  • The colonel is one giant example of a headscratcher. Why, on the day of the launch of the lunar mission, did he bring his son along in the family car and park on the beach near a lift-off site, which, as we see, is vulnerable to being hit by the blast from lift-off. Granted, the blast is non-lethal, but why where they there in the first place? To watch the lift off from a dangerous spot where they could be injured? Now, it's possible that he had to drive out there to see the intruders for some reason, but why bring along his son? Furthermore, while he saw how important it was to help K and J accomplish their mission, the Colonel could have asked one of the guards to drive his son to safety. As it's presented, the idea that young J was patiently waiting inside the car the entire time during the final fight, liftoff, and his father's death seems downright silly.
  • After Boris goes to the past and defeats K, why is his visit still listed in Jeffrey Price's logbook? Why would he ask to time-travel to 1969 in a timeline where he had already won?
  • What sort of eleven word phrase would take several hours to translate?
  • In Men In Black I, K says that MIB is not part of the government as they ask too many questions. In the third movie, J says that MIB is a government organization.
    • K never says that MIB isn't part of the government. He just says that they don't answer to any other branches of the government or government departments. Big difference.
  • Men In Black 3: Griff says the Boglodites died out in the main timeline because the ArcNet prevented them from eating Earth, and they starved to death. In the timeline where K dies, the ArcNet never goes up, but he somehow drives off the Boglodites anyway, preventing them from eating Earth. So why are they still alive?
    • Perhaps the Boglodites were convinced to change their invasion timing by Boris, because Boris wasn't certain as to whether it was safe to assault Earth at that time.
  • When Griffin says that the ArcNet has to be sent outside the atmosphere, why does young K seem like he has no idea how to do that? If there are aliens on Earth in the 60's, then MIB should have access to plenty of ships that could easily get outside the atmosphere.
    • MIB is set up as a refuge spot on Earth for all of those other visiting aliens. It's probably strongly frowned upon by policy to get them involved in the politics of MIB and other races.
  • Why was Boris' girlfriend even allowed to have knowledge of him, let alone write him letters and travel to the moon?

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