10 Greatest Unspoken Sci-Fi Movie Plot Points
The Men in Black sequels have a secret sublot playing out in plain sight.
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00:00 Telling a great story is one thing, but what about making a movie that unfurls added layers
00:04 of storytelling and subtext on repeat viewings? It's a tough trick to pull off, concealing subtle,
00:09 unspoken plot points in plain sight for attentive viewers to uncover when rewatching in the future.
00:14 But when it works, it really works. And so, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture,
00:18 here with the 10 Greatest Unspoken Sci-Fi Movie Plot Points.
00:22 Number 10. Doc burned down his mansion to fund his time travel research in Back to the Future
00:28 In literally the first minute of Back to the Future, we see a newspaper headline which reads
00:32 "Brown Mansion Destroyed," referring to Doc Brown's family mansion, which was burned to the ground,
00:38 leaving him to continue his experiments in his garage, which survived the fire.
00:41 None of the Back to the Future movies ever bothered to expand upon this, though in the
00:44 Blu-ray commentary for the film, writer Bob Gale stated that the shot of the newspaper
00:48 was supposed to imply that Doc had deliberately burned down the mansion as part of an insurance
00:53 scam. Basically, Doc torched his own mansion in order to collect the insurance money,
00:57 which he could then use to fund his time travel research.
01:00 Though the Back to the Future comics ultimately contradict this, it's worth pointing out that
01:04 both Gale and director Robert Zemeckis only regard the movies as canon. As such, there's
01:08 no reason to disbelieve that Doc committed arson to further his research. It fits both the story
01:14 and the character perfectly. Number 9. Animals are more
01:17 important to humans now in Children of Men Children of Men takes place in a dystopian
01:22 near future, where 20 years of human infertility have brought humanity to the brink of extinction.
01:27 In the film's opening scene, we see protagonist Theo watching a news report in London about the
01:31 death of the world's youngest person, baby Diego, shortly before a bomb explodes. But if you pay
01:36 attention to Theo's surroundings seconds before the explosion, there's a fascinating environmental
01:41 cue which subtly hints at the changed nature of this baby-less world. On a passing bus,
01:45 we see an advert for a spring collection of expensive clothing for Docs,
01:49 seeming to suggest that in the absence of children, humanity has elevated the place
01:52 of animals significantly. In our present reality, the prospect of fanciful animal
01:56 clothing being advertised on the side of a bus sounds ridiculous. But in a world where children
02:00 don't exist and priorities have consequently shifted, it makes sense that animals would
02:04 fill the void of importance. As worldbuilding in sci-fi movie goes, this is low-key incredible,
02:09 and actually adapted from P.D. James' original novel, which goes even further to have humans
02:14 pushing newborn animals around in prams and dressing them in children's clothing.
02:18 Number 8. John Hammond spared expense in his walking stick in Jurassic Park
02:24 The plot of Jurassic Park is set in motion by mosquitoes. That is, scientists were able to
02:28 extract dinosaur DNA from prehistoric mosquitoes encased in amber, allowing them to ultimately
02:33 produce their dinosaur clones. You'll also surely remember that industrialist John Hammond's
02:37 walking stick is topped by a chunk of amber containing one of the aforementioned mosquitoes.
02:42 But on the off chance you know your mosquitoes, you'll probably recognise that the mosquito trapped
02:46 in the amber on Hammond's stick is actually an elephant mosquito, which are noted for not
02:50 sucking blood. And so there's simply no way that it would be able to contain dinosaur DNA.
02:55 While some have pawned this off as a mere movie mistake, that Spielberg simply chose to use a
02:59 larger breed of mosquito so it would be visible on camera, there's a better explanation that slots
03:04 quite perfectly into the overall narrative. It makes more sense that Hammond, a man who
03:08 claims to have spared no expense on his park, and yet much evidence points to the contrary,
03:12 wouldn't dare place one of his precious, ultra-valuable prehistoric mosquitoes inside
03:16 his walking stick as an ornament. It's far more likely that Hammond indeed spared expense.
03:20 Instead, intentionally using an elephant mosquito, which wouldn't be of any practical use to him,
03:25 while knowing that the overwhelming majority of people who meet him wouldn't ever know the
03:28 difference. Number 7. The T-1000's wardrobe fail, because it malfunctions, in Terminator 2
03:34 Judgment Day. The special edition of Terminator 2 introduces a plot point that's basically cut
03:40 in its entirety from the more widely seen theatrical release. After the T-1000 is frozen
03:44 with liquid nitrogen and shot, it reforms into its typical human disguise, albeit with some
03:49 glitching side effects, where it struggles to maintain its desired form due to the damage it
03:53 took from being frozen. In the special edition, we see the T-1000's hands and boots unintentionally
03:58 mimicking the surrounding environment, but effectively every indication of this is cut
04:02 from the theatrical version, ensuring the vast majority of people who've seen T2 have no idea
04:07 about it. But there is one single clever hint to the T-1000 malfunctioning in the theatrical
04:12 version. When the T-1000 first arrives at the steel mill at the end of the movie,
04:16 keep your eyes on its clothes. For the most part, the T-1000 is wearing the same cop getup it wore
04:21 for the vast majority of the movie, except that it's wearing the boots of the traffic cop it
04:25 assimilated shortly before being frozen. Basically, the T-1000 has glitched out and combined two cop
04:30 outfits into one slightly ill-fitting ensemble. It's far from obvious, but a brilliantly subtle
04:35 indication that the T-1000 is having some serious trouble keeping things together.
04:39 Number 6. The blind man is the Oracle's guardian in The Matrix
04:43 When Neo and Morpheus pay a fateful visit to the Oracle in The Matrix,
04:47 you might recall that there's a blind man situated outside of her apartment.
04:51 More to the point, despite being blind, Morpheus nods at the man who then inexplicably nods back.
04:56 It's a minor moment, albeit one that certainly stoked its fair share of debate among fans.
05:00 While this technically qualifies as more of a fan theory than a confirmed sliver of plotting,
05:04 it's so brilliantly straightforward that it merits inclusion on this list.
05:07 Though we never learn a single extra thing about this blind man, it's a reasonable assumption that
05:11 he's probably a bodyguard for the Oracle, pretending to be blind to ensure he can catch
05:15 any unwanted guests unawares. The man is absent from the immediate sequels, having seemingly
05:19 been replaced by a serif who is undebatably the Oracle's guardian.
05:23 Number 5. The Soviet Union still exists in Blade Runner 2049
05:28 Both Blade Runner movies are absolutely cramp-packed full of fascinating world-building,
05:32 and Blade Runner 2049 offers up an especially fascinating morsel that's never engaged with
05:37 verbally. The Soviet Union never collapsed. Throughout the film, adverts for various
05:41 products are visible, with mention of it being produced by the CCCP, which is the Russian
05:46 abbreviation for the Soviet Union. It suggests that the USSR is still very much an entity more
05:51 than 50 years after it fell in reality, though the circumstances which allowed it to thrive
05:55 remain completely ambiguous. By director Denis Villeneuve's own admission, this was a carryover
06:00 from Philip K. Dick's original Blade Runner novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
06:04 Published as it was in 1968, almost 25 years before the Soviet Union fell,
06:09 Dick could have never anticipated anything other than the USSR continuing to exist,
06:13 as makes for a rather fascinating slice of alt-universe futurism. In an interview with
06:17 Time about the subject, Villeneuve said, "I went back to the Philip K. Dick novel
06:21 and explored the geopolitics of the book. In the book, the USSR was still present.
06:26 I thought that it would be interesting to think, 'What if the USSR was still alive?
06:29 What if it was as strong a cultural and economic force as the US, but with different political laws?
06:34 What if you saw Russian products in the streets of Los Angeles?' I thought that would create an
06:38 interesting distorted reality that would tell my audience right from the start that they're
06:41 in a different world, with different laws from a geopolitical point of view." Well, there it is.
06:45 4. R2-D2 disobeys Luke because of Anakin in Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back
06:52 In The Empire Strikes Back, you'll surely recall that R2-D2 isn't one for obedience.
06:56 When Luke Skywalker insists that he remain with the ship, R2 refuses and follows his charge.
07:01 At the time of Empire's release, this simply seemed like R2 being an adorably loyal bot who
07:06 knew when Luke needed help but perhaps couldn't ask for it. But in light of the prequels,
07:10 R2's defiance is viewed within an entirely different, more tragic context.
07:14 The catalyzing incident seemed to occur in Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin lands on
07:18 Mustafar with R2 and insists the droids stay with their ship. R2 obeys, but of course,
07:23 Anakin subsequently fights Obi-Wan, gets horrifically injured, and is transformed
07:27 into Darth Vader, ensuring he never returns to R2. As such, we can firmly deduce that R2
07:32 developed some understandable attachment issues, and by the time Luke tells him to sit tight
07:36 decades later, he's not going to be left to his own devices once again. Obviously, in reality,
07:40 this was really a case of George Lucas reverse-engineering the plot in non-chronological
07:44 order, but it still slides together quite perfectly. 3. Australia has renounced its
07:49 colonial history in Event Horizon Event Horizon may ultimately be a film
07:54 best remembered for its atmosphere and periodically insane gore, but it's also
07:58 a smartly written movie with some fantastically detailed production design. For instance,
08:02 keep your eyes peeled at Dr. William Weir's uniform, and you might notice the Australian
08:05 flag looking a little different than expected. The real-life flag is currently a blue field with
08:10 six stars and the British Union Jack in the top left corner, but the flag on Weir's jacket is
08:15 something else. It's actually the Australian Aboriginal flag, implying that in the film's
08:19 setting of 2047, Australia ended up rescinding its colonial ties and status as a British
08:24 constitutional monarchy. It's an attentive and unexpected detail, and one which Sam Neill
08:28 himself apparently insisted upon in an attempt to pay tribute to Australia's Aboriginal population.
08:33 When this was recently brought to the internet's attention, Neill tweeted that he "wouldn't do it
08:37 any differently today," an especially interesting remark given that there have been recent calls for
08:41 Australia to indeed change their flag and ditch the Union Jack. If it happens within the next 25
08:45 years, then Event Horizon wasn't just clever, it was damn prophetic.
08:49 Number 2. Agent T's wife and kids in Men in Black 3
08:53 Men in Black 2 is far from a great movie, but it does tee up an amusingly long-gestating
08:58 secret subplot which pays off quite incredibly in the third film released an entire decade later.
09:03 In Men in Black 2, Agent J is paired with the well-meaning but incompetent Agent T,
09:07 resulting in J eventually kicking him out of the Men in Black, neuralising him,
09:11 and setting him up with a cute waitress at the diner. J suggests that T should get
09:15 married and have a couple of kids, and lo and behold, in Men in Black 3's altered timeline,
09:19 J encounters a woman in K's apartment with a husband and a few kids,
09:23 the woman also being played by Alexandra O'Hara, who played that waitress in the diner.
09:27 The obvious wink-wink implication is that in this timeline, Agent T did indeed marry
09:31 the waitress and start a family. Even though the man seen in the back of the woman's apartment
09:35 clearly isn't played by Patrick Warburton, who presumably wasn't available, it's still
09:39 an ingenious slice of fun quasi-continuity between sequels.
09:43 Number 1. Lambert was trans in Alien
09:46 Ridley Scott's Alien is a masterclass of subtlety and restraint, despite fundamentally being a movie
09:51 about a shitful of space truckers who get picked off one by one by a phallus-shaped monster.
09:55 Though the film itself feeds us only morsels of information about the Nostromo's crew members,
10:00 James Cameron's 1986 sequel Aliens added some sneaky context to one departed individual in
10:05 particular. During Ripley's debriefing after being woken from stasis at the start of the sequel,
10:09 the personnel files of her dead crewmates are projected on a screen behind her.
10:13 This includes a file on Nostromo navigator Joan Lambert, which states that she was born male but
10:18 given sexual reassignment surgery to female at birth, and that she had no indication of suppressed
10:23 trauma related to gender alteration. In the film's original theatrical run and on earlier home video
10:28 releases, it wasn't possible to read any of the text behind Ripley, but the DVD and Blu-rays of
10:32 Aliens have included the crew's bios in their full HD glory, allowing fans to pore over them
10:37 ad nauseam. It's certainly a fascinating revelation, albeit also a troubling one given
10:42 the lack of exact context for why society would give a child sexual reassignment surgery at birth,
10:46 evidently without their consent. And that concludes our list. If you think we missed
10:49 anything, then do let us know in the comments below, and while you're there, don't forget to
10:52 like and subscribe and tap that notification bell. Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there,
10:56 and I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
11:00 I've been Ellie with WhatCulture, I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.