Men in Black 3

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


A 2012 sequel to Men in Black, with Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith reprising their roles and the writer for Tropic Thunder and Idiocracy on writing duties.

A very dangerous Boglodite named Boris The Animal breaks from a lunar prison and swears revenge on K, who took away his left arm during his arrest 40 years ago. He successfully erases K from the present by helping his younger self to kill him in 1969, allowing a Boglodite invasion. Somehow the only one in the present who notices the change, J must travel back to 1969 to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.

Tropes used in Men in Black 3 include:

J: Listen, I have rights and I demand to see my lawyer before you press that small button on the side firmly.

  • Brick Joke: Possibly with Agent J being pulled over in 1969 simply because he was black (he had 'stolen' a car but the cops didn't know that). In Men in Black II, J remarks that the inflatable autopilot agent in the car used to be a black guy, but he kept getting pulled over.
  • Broken Aesop: J delivers one to the cops that pull him over in 1969.

J: "Just because you see a black man driving a nice car does not mean it's stolen! Well, this one is..."

Boris: "Let's agree to disagree."
Boris: "It's just BORIS!"

  • Cerebus Retcon: The reason K has always been such a curmudgeonly old guy is because he witnessed J's father sacrificing himself to save K from Boris back in 1969, which ended up with him somewhat becoming a surrogate to J.
    • The movie also explains why he talked Z into recruiting J despite him being the most unconventional candidate.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The Moon landing.
  • Continuity Nod: While he doesn't appear in the film, Frank is referenced twice. Over Jay's bed, a huge portrait of a pug is hung, and a sideshow poster on Coney Island references the "amazing talking dog" - a pug.
    • Agent Kay is back living in the apartment that he used to have prior to Men in Black II.
    • The Colonel says "that's some next-level stuff" as the Arcnet Shield is deployed. J said "there's some next-level shit" when getting on the elevator as he returned to officially join up in the first film.
    • The cafe K and J go to is the same one J took T and Laura to in the second film.
    • Hey, K, have you ever flashy-thinged me?
  • Conveniently an Orphan: Agent J.
  • Corpsing: When our heroes first meet the Colonel, one of the MP's in the background is clearly trying not to crack up.
  • Deceased Parents Are the Best: J's father.
    • Agent K's actions make this an Invoked Trope as he neuralyzes the young J and tells him that all he needs to know is that his father was a hero.
  • Disney Villain Death: Subverted by both versions of Boris. Future!Boris survives getting pushed off a great height, but he is burned alive by the rocket as it takes off. Past!Boris falls after his arm is blown off, but he gets blown up by K.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead.
  • Eureka Moment: J figures out where Griffin is by hearing two diner patrons talk about the Mets.
  • Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: A T. Rex appears during the time jump sequence.
  • Exact Words: Why do you think it's called a time jump?
    • Lily's cake was 96% organic material, as analyzed by the LunarMax guards.
  • Exclusively Evil: The Boglidites are implied to be this, which would make sense since the heroes need to remain sympathetic after wiping them out save for Boris.
  • The Fun in Funeral: Kay's tribute to Zed consists in two phrases with no emotion at all. Agent O (Emma Thompson) imitates a tearful female alien spewing high-pitched gibberish.
  • Funny Background Event: Lady Gaga is an alien, living under her given name.
    • So is Yao Ming.
    • And Justin Bieber, David Beckham, and Richard Nixon.
    • That one big-eyed alien at Zed's memorial service who keeps blinking, and blinking, and blinking...
    • More of a Throw It In but look at one of the guards when J, K and Griffin are talking to the general.
  • Gene Hunt Interrogation Technique: Happens with the aliens in the bowling alley - when one doesn't talk, J uses his head for a ball.
  • Genre Blindness: The prison guards in the opening scene. Someone brings a cake into a prison and you don't think to check it beyond a cursory scan?
    • Not to forget leaving massive guns in the same area of a prison some of the worst inmates are kept in and not shooting Boris, despite him having a gun that can punch a hole in the hull of the lunar prison.
  • Good Cop, Bad Cop: J and K.
  • Grandma, What Massive Hotness You Have!: Agent O, played by Emma Thompson in the present-day scenes.
  • Ham-to-Ham Combat: Boris does this with himself almost immediately after meeting himself circa 1969.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: The Colonel, who turns out to be J's father.
  • Hero of Another Story: J finds out he's not the only MIB agent leaping back into time during the first time jump.
  • Historical In-Joke: Undercover agent Andy Warhol desperately needs a transfer. He's so low on ideas he's been reduced to painting bananas and soup cans!
  • Horde of Alien Locusts: The Boglidites. Their species can only survive by conquest, they wipe out entire species as they move through the galaxy, and if they can't move on to a new species, they will die out.
  • I Hate Past Me: Boris. He sees in his past self all the mistakes that led to losing his arm and ending up The Last of His Kind. The loathing is mutual, though, as Young Boris sees in his future self all the failures that he hasn't suffered yet.
  • Innocent Inaccurate: "Mommy! The president is drinking my chocolate milk!"
    • "He didn't even say please.."
  • Insectoid Aliens: The parasite that lodges in Boris' hand and "completes him."
  • Insistent Terminology: It's JUST BORIS!
  • Ironic Echo: "Let's agree to disagree."
  • I Want My Jetpack: Lampshaded when O straps J and K to car sized jetpacks. J remarks there is a reason they don't use them.
  • Large Ham: Boris the Animal.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: Two prototypes of Neuralyzer exist in 1969, the giant one in which J is locked into and a smaller one with a battery attached to K's belt (which for some reason has a dial-up modem).
  • Last of His Kind: Boris is the last Boglodite alive.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Towards the start of the movie, Agent J claims that a fallen flying saucer was caused by someone on an airplane not turning off their cellphone when instructed to do so. He then starts a lecture telling people to turn off their cellphones, which could also be a message directed at the audience.
  • Make Wrong What Once Went Right: Why Boris travels back in time.
  • Mirthless Laughter: Boris. Just listen to it. Yikes.
  • Missing Trailer Scene: Notice that Flaco never appears in the entire film?
  • Mistaken for Gay: The guy who gives J the time travel device comments "You must really love him", referring to K.
  • "Mister Sandman" Sequence: The first things J sees when he travels back in 1969? Cars, hippies...
  • Monumental Damage: An alien ship pulls out the top of the Eiffel Tower.
  • More Teeth Than the Osmond Family: Boris' "true form" seems to be nothing but teeth. Foreshadowed by the mouth-like fissures his body is covered with.
  • Motor Mouth: Griffin can lapse into this, but considering he can see every possible timeline all at once it's understandable.
  • Mythology Gag: The plot resembles the MIB animated series episode "The Head Trip Syndrome" which was about a human bigot who hated Aliens and uses a time machine to kill off the founding members of MIB. The difference for the film is that the villain is an alien who wanted to travel back in time to kill K.
    • Both also involve K in an important event in history. In the TV show episode, K was there when the first aliens landed and presented them flowers (originally meant for a date) as a welcome gift (this actually was a callback to the first movie when K mentions the MIB origins). In this movie, he was responsible for sending a defense network out into space around Earth to keep alien invasions from happening by planting it on the Apollo 11 launch. This is part of the reason Boris wants him dead (though the majority for his motive is revenge).
    • Boris is also similar to Agent Alpha, a Psycho Prototype who K knew.
  • Newspaper Dating
    • What Year Is It: When the attempt at newspaper dating doesn't work because the guy in the elevator keeps shifting the date on the paper out of J's line of sight.
  • No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel: To be fair, the police still pull people over and give them a hard time for "driving while black."
  • Not the Fall That Kills You: The only way to make the Time Travel device work.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: The Boglodites out of necessity need regularly to consume all the resources (and life forms) of a planet or they'll starve and die.
  • The Omniscient: Griffin. He's a spacetime omniscient alien who can see every single future possibility of given events and how these possibilities are influenced by other small events.
  • One-Winged Angel: Boris's true form at the end is pretty nasty looking. Subverted in that K isn't fazed at all and wastes no time disintegrating Boris with his laser gun.
  • Orphan's Plot Trinket: J's watch from his father.
  • Overly Long Tongue: With plenty of Squick to go along with it.
  • Phrase Catcher: "Boris the Animal!"
  • Remember the New Guy?: Agent O.
  • Retcon: In the first film they portrayed K as a man holding out for The One That Got Away. In this film they have him flirting with O every time they are together.
    • It does reinforce the theory that he had a love child with the queen of Zartha.
  • Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: J can remember the "real" past, which is explained as an effect of him being there, resulting in something of a Stable Time Loop.
  • Rubber Forehead Aliens: MIB headquarters in 1969 is populated by aliens that are accurate to late 60's sci-fi portrayals.
  • Sea Monster: The alien fish the Chinese restaurant keeps for their non-human patrons.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Why J travels back in time. More precisely, he needs to set right what was once right but then was made wrong.
    • Interesting enough next to J fixing the direct problem, future Boris and J also help fixing something else by accident.Because of future Boris, K has a legit reason to shoot him instead of arresting him. Likewise meeting future J, means K knows the boy will develop right lessening the guilt of not having been able to safe his father. Both changes cause K to be less grumpy and more friendly, somewhat.
  • Shout-Out: Both the LunarMax prison in the beginning and the bunker to the Apollo launch site in the end are labeled CRM-114, a code that pops up frequently in Stanley Kubrick's films since Dr. Strangelove.
  • The Sixties
  • Spike Shooter: Boris.
  • Stable Time Loop: Apparently the time travel plot was always supposed to happen. It results in J's father not being there while he was growing up, K becoming The Stoic (and looking after J throughout his life), and J having Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory.
    • It's also subverted since some events do change.
  • The Stoic: K. He has never been so stoic, and there's a good reason for that.
  • Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Zed, whose death happens offscreen. The film opens with J and K discussing what K will say at his funeral. Though oddly he does not make an appearance when J goes back in time.
  • Suicidal Overconfidence: Boris is utterly sure he will be victorious, even despite his future self coming back to tell him that he wasn't.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: When Agent J returns to 2012, and does a Calling the Old Man Out routine on K and O's relationship in 1969, Agent K cites an MIB no-fraternization rule between agents. But he never actually denies J's claim, and J doesn't believe K's deflection anyway.
  • Theme Song Power Up After K shoots off Boris' arm and sends him off the Apollo 11 launch pad, the theme song kicks in when he has to retrieve the Arknet and jump onto the Apollo 11 rocket to attach it.
  • Thrown Out the Airlock: Well, technically, it's Thrown Out The Gaping Hole Blasted Into The Ceiling, but this is how Boris deals with the prison guards when he escapes Lunar-Max.
  • Time Travel
  • Timey-Wimey Ball: Poor Griffin lives in one inside his head. He seems to enjoy it at times, but knowing how every moment in existence could go horribly wrong in infinite ways obviously wears on his nerves.
  • We Hardly Knew Ye: The girl who helps Boris escape and the prison inmate who is the father to the store clerk that sells him the time travel device.
    • Although, by Boris's death in 1969, they should both be inserted back into the new timeline.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Jeffrey Price, the time-traveler's son, really wanted to see J when he got back. Guess we'll never know why.
    • Jeebs, who is usually the go-to-guy of illegal alien tech is replaced by a guy who runs a toy store.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Boris's poor prison pen-pal.
    • Ungrateful Bastard: Poor girl goes through all the trouble to sneak a ...alien thing...to help him to escape. He repays it by letting her fly out into space.
  • You Killed My Father: It is revealed very late into the movie that Boris is the reason why J's father never saw him grow up. However, J never actually finds out until after 60s-era Boris does the deed and dies by K's hand and J finds his father dead, and likewise, J didn't remember until then because K neuralyzed him.
  • Zeerust: Done deliberately with the MIB headquarters in 1969.