History Fridge / Paycheck

** Note that this question is dealt with in the original short story: there's a specific clause in Jennings' (and any other mechanic at Rethrick Construction) contract that allows him to substitute the money with any objects he wants. As Jennings argues, Rethrick just recognized that [[spoiler: mechanics working on such a project would use the time mirror for their own goals anyway - and he didn't care, as long as they didn't interfere with his own ones. Kelly even says that ]].

* Why did Jennings allow himself to be captured by FBI in the first place? Evading them completely didn't sound like a big deal considering all the other things Mike did. Simple; First, it got him away from Rethrick at top speed instead of running back into his claws in search of his Allcom shares, and second, what better way for his amnesiac future self to realize how screwed he is than for some ''really'' pissed-off stormtroopers to ''explain it to him in detail?''

** Also note that these questions are dealt with in the original short story: there's a specific clause in Jennings' (and any other mechanic at Rethrick Construction) contract that allows him to substitute the money with any objects he wants. As Jennings argues, Rethrick just recognized that [[spoiler: mechanics working on such a project would use the time mirror for their own goals anyway - and he didn't care, as long as they didn't interfere with his own ones]]. As for the code key, Jennings in the short story says that "probably the Company assumed no one would ever want to get back inside again".

** Also note that this question is dealt with in the original short story: there's a specific clause in Jennings' (and any other mechanic at Rethrick Construction) contract that allows him to substitute the money with any objects he wants. As Jennings argues, Rethrick just recognized that [[spoiler: mechanics working on such a project would use the time mirror for their own goals anyway - and he didn't care, as long as they didn't interfere with his own ones]].

** Also note that this question is dealt with in the original short story: there's a specific clause in Jennings' (and any other mechanic at Rethrick Construction) contract that allows him to substitute the money with any objects he wants. As Jennings argues, Rethrick just recognized that [[spoiler: mechanics working on such a project would use the time mirror for their own purposes anyway - and he didn't care, as long as they didn't interfere with his own ones]].

* Why wasn't Rethrick aware that Jennings was manipulating his own future? The prediction Rethrick found of Jennings' death was made ''before'' Jennings started screwing with his own future, upon which he put together the envelope of items and sabotaged the machine. Especially since Rethrick is a CorruptCorporateExecutive who didn't realize he was LockingMacGyverInTheStoreCupboard. Right down to the exact circumstances of Jennings' death, which Rethrick saw on the machine even ''after'' it was repaired, which Jennings manipulated to befall Rethrick instead.

* It is really amazing that Jennings was able to use the machine to its fullest but had to resort to the microfilm placed on a stamp to get to think of such a simple thing as "Whatever future this predicts, we make happen. We give over control of our lives completely." Did he think that the machine was intended to be used by Karma Houdinis like himself?

* It is really amazing that Jennings was able to use the machine to its fullest but had to resort to the microfilm placed on a stamp to get to think of such a simple thing as "Whatever future this predicts, we make happen. We give over control of our lives completely." Did he really think the machine was intended to be used by Karma Houdinis like himself?

* It is really amazing that Jennings was able to use the machine to its fullest but had to resort to the microfilm placed on a stamp to get to think of such a simple thing as "Whatever future this predicts, we make happen. We give over control of our lives completely." Did he really think the machine is gonna be used just by Karma Houdinis like himself?

* It is really amazing that Jennings was able to use the machine to its fullest but had to resort to the microfilm placed on a stamp to get a think of such a simple thing as "Whatever future this predicts, we make happen. We give over control of our lives completely." Did he really think the machine is gonna be used just by Karma Houdinis like himself?

** Also, the changes caused by the politicians are at a very large scale, so they don't realize how much those changes can affect everything.

Headscratchers/{{Paycheck}}

!!FridgeLogic
* The time scope prophesies are only self-fulfilling if everyone [[IdiotBall critically fails at foresight]]. Of course herding the sick together causes an epidemic! If you go to war to prevent a war, ''you're still at [[PrecisionFStrike fucking]] war!'' [[{{Angrish}} Gah!]]
** Also contradicted by the movie's basic premise. Jennings is implied to have looked into the future and, each time he saw himself get killed, arranged for his future self to be carrying a gadget which will get him out of the situation. Was this too complicated for literally everyone else that did and would have used the machine?
** FridgeBrilliance: Jenning's job is to reverse engineer existing technology and improve on it. This means that he's really good at analyzing all aspects of something, while politicians might not be.
** Ask an epidemiologist which is more likely to spread a cold; twenty people in a crowd that has five people with colds distributed at random, or those same five people identified and isolated in a corner away from everyone else?
** (To OP) The reason why the people are isolated, and why a war happens, is because the politicians in control of the time scope only saw that the epidemic happened, and that the war happened, but they did not know how it happened, so... Also, the reason why Jennings manages to make all those changes only means that changes can be made to the future, but it is not easy to do it. Making small changes that affect the outcome of one, perhaps two or three, people, is relatively easy, but things that affect entire countries? Not so easy. It is basically the inverse of [[TheFoundation psychohistory]].
** Was the stock market panic supposed to be caused by a prediction of it? If so, that is a common occurrence in RealLife, as are bank runs due to fear of the bank failing, which then [[SelfFulfillingProphecy causes it to fail]] as people rush to withdraw their deposits and the bank is left with no reserves.
* Prepare for a long post. It will contain a new question as well as an attempt to answer the preceding one.
My question is as follows. Michael Jennings did amazing job to avoid his own death. As it has already been quite correctly noted, he basically ran along a simple pattern: have an idea about how to evade the imminent danger - check on the future-machine if the idea will help him to stay alive - if yes, then encounter the next problem - have an idea about what to do about it etc. So in the end he must actually have seen Rethrick's death on the machine and that is indeed what happened in reality. Then why do both he and Rethrick see HIS death instead? I'll propose my theory which you may or may not accept.
** Of course there might be a simple-as-hell explanation: Jennings just had hacked the system beforehand so it would show the false prediction, recorded by Jennings at the stage when he first discovered what awaited him. However, I'd like to offer a more interesting theory.

My answer is that the machine wasn't exactly what we think it was. The principle of its work was not in a right-out "optical travel to the future" taken completely independently from the acting subjects (in our case that is Jennings himself), but rather in some kind of PROGNOSIS - a thorough and highly accurate evalulation of what SHOULD happen in the future GIVEN the situation in the present, an evaluation which takes into account actual people and their capabilities as well. OK, suppose I got right this one; the question persists - why did prognosis change so dramatically over the time? Because a major thing has changed in the meanwhile: Jennings lost his memory due to some drug injected by Rethrick's minion. So if a week before machine made its calculations based on the fact that Jennings had a viable project of getting himself out of the trouble, now it assumed that he didn't know what to do about it (which was in fact perfectly correct as Jennings-that-lost-his-memory didn't "know" anything). So it honestly showed what had to happen in the scenario where Jennings could do nothing to save his life. By the way, maybe that's why one needs to place a palm on the machine - to let it somehow "penetrate" your brain through it? Or is it just a fingerprints scanner inserted to make sure you are "authorized" to see your future (the underlying idea being that in most cases it should be disclosed to the person in question and to nobody else)?

If my theory is right, it could help us in an attempt to answer the very top question on this page. It turns out that Jennings has actually offered a simplified explanation to the audience. At present it basically looks like this: we learn about the upcoming war - we react to it by starting a war - so we basically get the same war, only that it starts much earlier than "scheduled". Yes, we've actually brought it closer, but it was probably doomed to begin anyway even if we didn't have that devilish machine because the future had already been "programmed". However, if my theory is right, then without the machine war MIGHT NOT HAVE BEGUN AT ALL. Consider the following: if the machine makes a prediction rather than straightforwardly "sees" the future then it builds its predictions on the present situation. This might be enough if we deal with a limited amount of people and their wills: had Jennings decided not to act upon his knowledge of his future death (poor guy, I can only imagine what he must have felt the moment he knew...), machine's prediction would probably not have changed, because Rethrick's will to kill Jennings at any cost must have been present from the very beginning (and quite certainly to the very - tragic in that case - end). But it's a little bit more complicated in big politics, let alone international one: here we deal with a large amount of the most diverse forces, including those both under and not under control of any single individual (economics, social conflicts, personal ambitions etc). If, say, a trade war between the countries takes place, it's quite possible to predict that it will evolve into a full-scale military conflict; but a month after or even less the situation may take a sudden twist - and the prediction will be completely different. The forces of history are manifold, you know. Anyhow, I'll be more than glad to hear your feedback on this one.
* Jennings only escapes from FBI custody because of an extremely intense fire suppression system triggered by a cigarette smoked by an FBI agent. One would think he would be aware of that system's sensitivity. The pack is marked as "smokeless" - he only lit it in the same room because he thought it was safe to smoke!
** Well, a pack labeled "smokeless cigarettes" filled with normal cigarettes ''would'' be a pretty clever gadget to have in that situation.

* There might be a fair question: why did Jennings allow himself to be captured by FBI in the first place? Evading them completely didn't sound like a big deal considering all the other things Mike did. My answer to this one: he HAD to be captured because there was no other way to inform himself in the future that Rethrick posed an imminent threat to him; had he not been informed about Decker's death by FBI, he would surely have come right to his friend's claws to find out what happened to his Allcom shares.
* There might be another fair question: why did Michael put a crosswords into the encelope? It is fully understandable why he blocked the system but why did he decide that he should allow himself to use the machine once more before its destruction? After all, Michael-in-the-past (that is, before the injection that caused him to forget everything) knew everything he needed to concoct a successful scheme to avoid death and kill Rethrick, and for Michael-in-the-future what he saw didn't bring any "relief" or "knowledge" whatsoever (quite on the contrary, I would say); and we remember that because of the time spent to activate the machine Mike and Rachel barely escaped death at the hands of Rethrick's forces. My answer is as follows: Michael-in-the-past didn't give a damn about what Michael-in-the-future will see. The real target was... Rethrick; the whole "use-machine-for-one-last-time-thing in reality was done to lure Rethrick to his death. Consider the following: Jennings knew that death awaited him on the upper level, but in the end it was Rethrick who got the bullet in the head! How so? Because Rethrick saw that Jennings had to die on the upper level and so decided to bring him there - with himself, which was just what Jennings needed. So while our arch-enemy thought of himself as of hunter who was bringing his helpless prey, nearly strangled by electric wire, to the place of the latter's ultimate demise, in reality he himself was falling prey to Jennings' truly ingenious and mastermind trap. And the magnificent "Wolfe vs. Machine" scene also became possible thanks to this witty deception. Though I must say Jimmy could have been a little more insightful and just think: hey, this guy had (and made use of!) a million possibilities to see almost everything in the future... why the hell would he NOW want to take an enormous risk of getting inside Allcom to look once more?

** Well, a pack labeled "smokeless cigarettes" filled with normal cigarettes ''would'' be a pretty clever gadget to have in that situation.

* The time scope prophesies are only self-fulfilling if everyone [[IdiotBall critically fails at foresight.]] Of course herding the sick together causes an epidemic! If you go to war to prevent a war, ''you're still at [[PrecisionFStrike fucking]] war!'' [[{{Angrish}} Gah!]]
** Also contradicted by the movie's basic premise. Jennings is implied to have looked into the future and, each time he saw himself get killed, arranged for his future self to be carrying a gadget which will get him out of the situation. Why can't whoever uses the time scope do the same with policies that create wars and plague?

* Jennings only escapes from FBI custody because of an extremely intense fire suppression system triggered by a cigarette smoked by an FBI agent. One would think he would be aware of that system's sensitivity. The pack is marked as "smokeless" - he only lit it in the same room because he thought it was safe to smoke!

** Was the stock market panic supposed to be caused by a prediction of it? If so, that is a common occurrence in RealLife, as are bank runs due to fear of the bank failing, which then [[SelfFulfillingProphecy causes it to fail]].

** FridgeBrilliance: Jenning's job is to reverse engineer existing technology and improve on it. This means that he's really good an analyzing all aspects of something, while politicians might not be.

** (To OP) The reason why the people are isolated, and why a war happens, is because the politicians in control of the time scope only saw that the epidemic happened, and that the war happened, but they did not know how it happened, so... Also, the reason why Jennings manages to make all those changes only means that changes can be made to the future, but it is not easy to do it. Making small changes that affect the outcome of one, perhaps two or three, people, is relatively easy, but things that affect entire countries? Not so easy. It is basically the inverse of [[TheFoundation psycohistory]].

** (To OP) The reason why the people are isolated, and why a war happens, is because the politicians in control of the time scope only saw that the epidemic happened, and that the war happened, but they did not know how it happened, so... Also, the reason why Jennings manages to make all those changes only means that changes can be made to the future, but it is not easy to do it. Making small changes that affect the outcome of one, perhaps two or three, people, is relatively easy, but things that affect entire countries? Not so easy. It is basically the inverse of [[TheFoundation psycohistory]].

** Ask an epidemiologist which is more likely to spread a cold; twenty people in a crowd that has five people with colds distributed at random, or those same five people identified and isolated in a corner away from everyone else?

The time scope prophesies are only self-fulfilling if everyone [[IdiotBall critically fails at foresight.]] Of course herding the sick together causes an epidemic! If you go to war to prevent a war, ''you're still at [[PrecisionFStrike fucking]] war!'' [[{{Angrish}} Gah!]]