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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00:00Telling a great story is one thing, but what about making a movie that unfurls added layers
00:04of storytelling and subtext on repeat viewings? It's a tough trick to pull off, concealing subtle,
00:09unspoken plot points in plain sight for attentive viewers to uncover when rewatching in the future.
00:14But when it works, it really works. And so, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture,
00:18here with the 10 greatest unspoken sci-fi movie plot points.
00:22Number 10. Doc burned down his mansion to fund his time travel research in Back to the Future
00:28In literally the first minute of Back to the Future, we see a newspaper headline which reads
00:32Brown Mansion Destroyed, referring to Doc Brown's family mansion which was burned to the ground,
00:38leaving him to continue his experiments in his garage, which survived the fire.
00:41None of the Back to the Future movies ever bothered to expand upon this, though in the
00:44Blu-ray commentary for the film, writer Bob Gale stated that the shot of the newspaper
00:48was supposed to imply that Doc had deliberately burned down the mansion as part of an insurance
00:53scam. Basically, Doc torched his own mansion in order to collect the insurance money,
00:57which he could then use to fund his time travel research.
01:00Though the Back to the Future comics ultimately contradict this, it's worth pointing out that
01:04both Gale and director Robert Zemeckis only regard the movies as canon. As such,
01:08there's no reason to disbelieve that Doc committed arson to further his research.
01:12It fits both the story and the character perfectly.
01:15Number 9. Animals are more important to humans now in Children of Men
01:20Children of Men takes place in a dystopian near future, where 20 years of human infertility have
01:25brought humanity to the brink of extinction. In the film's opening scene, we see protagonist Theo
01:29watching a news report in London about the death of the world's youngest person, Baby Diego,
01:34shortly before a bomb explodes. But if you pay attention to Theo's surroundings seconds before
01:38the explosion, there's a fascinating environmental cue which subtly hints at the changed nature of
01:43this baby-less world. On a passing bus, we see an advert for a spring collection of expensive
01:48clothing for Docs, seeming to suggest that in the absence of children, humanity has elevated
01:52the place of animals significantly. In our present reality, the prospect of fanciful
01:56animal clothing being advertised on the side of a bus sounds ridiculous, but in a world where
02:00children don't exist and priorities have consequently shifted, it makes sense that
02:04animals would fill the void of importance. As worldbuilding in sci-fi movie goes,
02:08this is low-key incredible, and actually adapted from P.D. James' original novel,
02:12which goes even further to have humans pushing newborn animals around in prams and dressing them
02:17in children's clothing. Number 8. John Hammond spared expense
02:21in his walking stick in Jurassic Park The plot of Jurassic Park is set in motion
02:26by mosquitoes. That is, scientists were able to extract dinosaur DNA from prehistoric mosquitoes
02:31encased in amber, allowing them to ultimately produce their dinosaur clones. You'll also
02:35surely remember that industrialist John Hammond's walking stick is topped by a chunk of amber
02:39containing one of the aforementioned mosquitoes. But on the off chance you know your mosquitoes,
02:44you'll probably recognize that the mosquito trapped in the amber on Hammond's stick
02:47is actually an elephant mosquito, which are noted for not sucking blood, and so there's simply no
02:53way that it would be able to contain dinosaur DNA. While some have pawned this off as a mere
02:57movie mistake, that Spielberg simply chose to use a larger breed of mosquito so it would be
03:01visible on camera, there's a better explanation that slots quite perfectly into the overall
03:05narrative. It makes more sense that Hammond, a man who claims to have spared no expense on his park
03:10and yet much evidence points to the contrary, wouldn't dare place one of his precious,
03:14ultra-valuable prehistoric mosquitoes inside his walking stick as an ornament. It's far more
03:18likely that Hammond indeed spared expense, instead intentionally using an elephant mosquito, which
03:23wouldn't be of any practical use to him, while knowing that the overwhelming majority of people
03:27who meet him wouldn't ever know the difference. Number 7. The T-1000's wardrobe fail, because
03:32it malfunctions, in Terminator 2 Judgment Day. The special edition of Terminator 2 introduces
03:38a plot point that's basically cut in its entirety from the more widely seen theatrical release.
03:43After the T-1000 is frozen with liquid nitrogen and shot, it reforms into its typical human
03:48disguise, albeit with some glitching side effects, where it struggles to maintain its desired form
03:52due to the damage it took from being frozen. In the special edition, we see the T-1000's hands
03:57and boots unintentionally mimicking the surrounding environment, but effectively every indication of
04:01this is cut from the theatrical version, ensuring the vast majority of people who've seen T2 have
04:06no idea about it. But there is one single clever hint to the T-1000 malfunctioning in the theatrical
04:12version. When the T-1000 first arrives at the steel mill at the end of the movie, keep your
04:16eyes on its clothes. For the most part, the T-1000 is wearing the same cop getup it wore for the vast
04:21majority of the movie, except that it's wearing the boots of the traffic cop it assimilated shortly
04:26before being frozen. Basically, the T-1000 has glitched out and combined two cop outfits into
04:30one slightly ill-fitting ensemble. It's far from obvious, but a brilliantly subtle indication that
04:35the T-1000 is having some serious trouble keeping things together. Number 6. The blind man is the
04:41Oracle's guardian in the Matrix When Neo and Morpheus pay a fateful
04:45visit to the Oracle in the Matrix, you might recall that there's a blind man situated outside
04:50of her apartment. More to the point, despite being blind, Morpheus nods at the man, who then
04:54inexplicably nods back. It's a minor moment, albeit one that certainly stoked its fair share
04:58of debate among fans. While this technically qualifies as more of a fan theory than a
05:03confirmed sliver of plotting, it's so brilliantly straightforward that it merits inclusion on this
05:06list. Though we never learn a single extra thing about this blind man, it's a reasonable assumption
05:11that he's probably a bodyguard for the Oracle, pretending to be blind to ensure he can catch
05:15any unwanted guests unawares. The man is absent from the immediate sequels, having seemingly been
05:20replaced by Seraph, who is undebatably the Oracle's guardian. Number 5. The Soviet Union
05:25still exists in Blade Runner 2049 Both Blade Runner movies are absolutely
05:29cram-packed full of fascinating world-building, and Blade Runner 2049 offers up an especially
05:35fascinating morsel that's never engaged with verbally. The Soviet Union never collapsed.
05:39Throughout the film, adverts for various products are visible, with mention of it being produced by
05:43the CCCP, which is the Russian abbreviation for the Soviet Union. It suggests that the USSR is
05:49still very much an entity more than 50 years after it fell in reality, though the circumstances which
05:54allowed it to thrive remain completely ambiguous. By director Denis Villeneuve's own admission,
05:59this was a carryover from Philip K. Dick's original Blade Runner novel,
06:02Android's Dream of Electric Sheep. Published as it was in 1968, almost 25 years before the
06:08Soviet Union fell, Dick could have never anticipated anything other than the USSR
06:12continuing to exist, as makes for a rather fascinating slice of alt-universe futurism.
06:17In an interview with Time about the subject, Villeneuve said,
06:19I went back to the Philip K. Dick novel and explored the geopolitics of the book.
06:23In the book, the USSR was still present. I thought that it would be interesting to think,
06:27what if the USSR was still alive? What if it was as strong a cultural and
06:31economic force as the US, but with different political laws? What if you saw Russian products
06:35in the streets of Los Angeles? I thought that would create an interesting distorted reality
06:39that would tell my audience right from the start that they're in a different world,
06:42with different laws from a geopolitical point of view. Well, there it is.
06:464. R2-D2 disobeys Luke because of Anakin in Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back
06:52In The Empire Strikes Back, you'll surely recall that R2-D2 isn't one for obedience.
06:56When Luke Skywalker insists that he remain with the ship, R2 refuses and follows his charge.
07:01At the time of Empire's release, this simply seemed like R2 being an adorably loyal bot
07:06who knew when Luke needed help but perhaps couldn't ask for it. But in light of the prequels,
07:10R2's defiance is viewed within an entirely different, more tragic context.
07:14The catalyzing incident seemed to occur in Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin lands on
07:18Mustafar with R2 and insists the droids stay with their ship. R2 obeys, but of course,
07:23Anakin subsequently fights Obi-Wan, gets horrifically injured, and is transformed
07:27into Darth Vader, ensuring he never returns to R2. As such, we can firmly deduce that R2
07:32developed some understandable attachment issues, and by the time Luke tells him to sit tight
07:36decades later, he's not going to be left to his own devices once again. Obviously, in reality,
07:40this was really a case of George Lucas reverse-engineering the plot in non-chronological
07:44order, but it still slides together quite perfectly. 3. Australia has renounced its
07:49colonial history in Event Horizon Event Horizon may ultimately be a film best
07:54remembered for its atmosphere and periodically insane gore, but it's also a smartly written
07:58movie with some fantastically detailed production design. For instance, keep your eyes peeled at Dr
08:03William Weir's uniform, and you might notice the Australian flag looking a little different than
08:07expected. The real-life flag is currently a blue field with six stars and the British Union Jack
08:12in the top left corner, but the flag on Weir's jacket is something else. It's actually the
08:16Australian Aboriginal flag, implying that in the film's setting of 2047, Australia ended up
08:21rescinding its colonial ties and status as a British constitutional monarchy. It's an attentive
08:26and unexpected detail, and one which Sam Neill himself apparently insisted upon in an attempt
08:30to pay tribute to Australia's Aboriginal population. When this was recently brought
08:34to the internet's attention, Neill tweeted that he wouldn't do it any differently today,
08:38an especially interesting remark given that there have been recent calls for Australia to indeed
08:42change their flag and ditch the Union Jack. If it happens within the next 25 years,
08:46then Event Horizon wasn't just clever, it was damn prophetic.
08:492. Agent T's wife and kids in Men in Black 3
08:53Men in Black 2 is far from a great movie, but it does tee up an amusingly long-gestating
08:58secret subplot which pays off quite incredibly in the third film released an entire decade later.
09:03In Men in Black 2, Agent J is paired with the well-meaning but incompetent Agent T,
09:07resulting in J eventually kicking him out of the Men in Black, neuralising him,
09:11and setting him up with a cute waitress at the diner. J suggests that T should get married and
09:15have a couple of kids, and lo and behold, in Men in Black 3's altered timeline, J encounters a
09:20woman in K's apartment with a husband and a few kids, the woman also being played by Alexandra
09:25O'Hara, who played that waitress in the diner. The obvious wink-wink implication is that in
09:29this timeline, Agent T did indeed marry the waitress and start a family. Even though the
09:33man seen in the back of the woman's apartment clearly isn't played by Patrick Warburton,
09:37who presumably wasn't available, it's still an ingenious slice of fun quasi-continuity between
09:42sequels.
09:43Number 1. Lambert was trans in Alien
09:46Ridley Scott's Alien is a masterclass of subtlety and restraint, despite fundamentally being a movie
09:51about a shitful of space truckers who get picked off one by one by a phallus-shaped monster.
09:55Though the film itself feeds us only morsels of information about the Nostromo's crew members,
10:00James Cameron's 1986 sequel Aliens added some sneaky context to one departed individual in
10:05particular. During Ripley's debriefing after being woken from stasis at the start of the sequel,
10:10the personnel files of her dead crewmates are projected on a screen behind her.
10:13This includes a file on Nostromo navigator Joan Lambert, which states that she was born
10:18male but given sexual reassignment surgery to female at birth, and that she had no indication
10:22of suppressed trauma related to gender alteration. In the film's original theatrical run and on
10:27earlier home video releases, it wasn't possible to read any of the text behind Ripley, but the
10:31DVD and Blu-rays of Aliens have included the crew's bios in their full HD glory,
10:36allowing fans to pour over them ad nauseam. It's certainly a fascinating revelation,
10:40albeit also a troubling one given the lack of exact context for why society would give a child
10:44sexual reassignment surgery at birth, evidently without their consent.
10:47And that concludes our list. If you think we missed anything, then do let us know in
10:51the comments below, and while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap
10:54that notification bell. Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be
10:57found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie
11:01with WhatCulture, I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.