History Headscratchers / PansLabyrinth

* Everything about the "other" world seems to scream faeries, but throughout it is referred to as the Underworld. Do they mean Underworld as in, it's underground, but essentially Fairyland, or am I missing something crucial about Spamish mythology? Otherwise it sounds like Ofelia's apparent birth parents aere the King and Queen of the Land of the Dead.

* Now, it's been about 3 years since I've seen the movie, so details are a bit fuzzy, but this part of the ending really bothered me: ''Just what's so bad about a little baby blood??'' Now, I know that when people say that they want some of your blood-- even just a little!-- then that usually means that they're going to kill you and drain you of all of it. Were that the case, I could understand how this test would be a pass/fail re: becoming a princess of a magic fairy kingdom. But mystical creatures, so far as I've come to know them, are literal to absurd proportions. So, if they say "just a little blood", you could ''totally'' get away with giving them just a drop, and they'd just have to say "Well, I guess that ''is'' what I said..." and deal with it. Going with that line of reasoning, this implies that drawing even a drop of blood from a baby-- even if it's to complete a series of tasks while on a mystical quest wherein all of your other tasks have been presented on the level (i.e. not secretly devised to kill you or otherwise full of trickery and underhandedness)-- means you're going to die alone and no one will ever know about it, instead of being transported to a land of magic and wonder. Now ''that'' is some underhanded mystical creature shit right there. The reason this pisses me off so much is because ''I so totally would have given him the baby blood''. I mean, Jesus, he's a baby, not a Romanov; it's not going to kill him to have a drop of blood lost. Unless causing even mild, momentary pain to another person, even with legitimate reason (magical quest! magical quest!), is enough to destroy your Innocent Little Girl status? To which I say: [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotHeinous What Do You Mean It's Heinous?]] Damn mystical creatures.

* Alright, I know this has been discussed before, but it's a major wallbanger, so it should go here, too. The problem is, ''why the bloody hell did Ofelia eat the damn fairy food!?'' Ofelia is a smart girl, and reads fairy stories; shouldn't she have learned something? And if you learn ''anything'' from fairy stories, it's that ''You Do Not Eat The Fairy Food.'' It's one of those things that I learned so early I don't remember when - Do Not Go Places With Strangers. Do Not Leave Things For Other People To Trip Over. ''[[RuleOfThree Do Not]] Eat The Fairy Food.'' They are Not Like Us, what is Theirs is Not Ours, you Do Not Mess With The Fey. It's not that they're evil, but they're not human. So how come we expect them to be like us? Anyway. Sure, she was hungry, sure she's curious, sure it's a demonstration of how not all orders are obeyed, whatever. A fairy himself told her not to, even! But noooooooooooooooooo, she just had to eat them. And so [[CrapsackWorld it]] [[ItGetsWorse all goes down the drain.]] Gee, thanks!

** He probably wanted to make sure that she was able to bear a child. Also, you probably wouldn't want to marry a man like him, unless you are a single mother during...a not very friendly time period, having a high-rank militar would secure her some stability to raise her daughter. And more than resent, it's more like not caring for her. He has a reputation to maintain and he will get angry if she does something to treat that, but besides that, he doesn't seem to care all that much for her in both senses.

*** Exactly. And she passed the SecretTestOfCharacer because she didn't blindly do what she was told, just like the doctor had been saying to Vidal.

** Might be a case of a mistranslation; in the original Spanish film, the other world is referred to as "Reino Subterráneo", which literally translates to "Underground Kingdom", hence no relation to the Land of the Dead. They probably translated it as "Underworld" to make it sound more fairy tale-ish.

** They were paralyzed by fear? He ''is'' made of HighOctaneNightmareFuel.

* There was one thing that bugged this Troper when watching Ofelia's escape-from-the-Pale-Man scene. Why, exactly, did she have to get up on a chair and draw a trapdoor in the ceiling? Wouldn't it have been much easier- and, more importantly, much faster- to simply draw another one on the wall?

There was one thing that bugged this Troper when watching Ofelia's escape-from-the-Pale-Man scene. Why, exactly, did she have to get up on a chair and draw a trapdoor in the ceiling? Wouldn't it have been much easier- and, more importantly, much faster- to simply draw another one on the wall?

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* Why exactly is the pale man so threatening? Yeah, he looks scary, but he walks incredibly slowly, and can't use both hands at the same time without being blinded. The only way he can actually kill someone is if they deliberately go up to him, like the fairies. As far as we know, going up against him is as easy as going up against a single zombie. How did he manage to kill so many children?