History Headscratchers / ThePhantomMenace

** Qui Gon was making a bold statement when he said that the Sith returned. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Unfortunately for him, he didn't have anything solid yet to back up his story. As we learn from the dialogue, individual Council members--to varying degrees, it would seem--already saw Qui Gon as an unorthodox crank who marched to his own beat; otherwise, he would have been on the Council himself. So initially, they did not take what he said at face value. By the time Qui-Gon's theory was vindicated, he was dead. Also a bit of FridgeLogic here: the fact that many Council members did go to investigate Qui Gon's death, pay their respects, and so forth, but could not detect a Sith master right in front of them at the funeral serves to show just how powerless the Jedi were at that point to halt the advance of the Phantom Menace.

** This was partially explained in ''Legends'' material. In ''VideoGame/StarWarsGalacticBattlegrounds'', there was a Trade Federation mission where you had to destroy all communication towers in the Naboo countryside so that they could not contact the Senate. If they had landed right next to Theed, that would have raised the alarm.

** On the other hand, remember that it was Obi-Wan who said it, and from watching the entire saga, we know that [[Film/AttackOfTheClones Yoda trained Dooku, Dooku trained Qui-Gon]], and Qui-Gon trained Obi-Wan. So, FromACertainPointOfView, Yoda ''did'' train Obi-Wan.

*** Qui-Gon says that Obi-Wan has "much to learn". He does ''not'' say that Obi-Wan isn't ready for Knighthood. Even a knight has "much to learn". Even a Master has "much to learn"! Qui-Gon himself achieved something that no Master had ever done before when he invented the Force Ghost technique, and presumably his willness to always learn more had something to do with his success. So all he's doing with that line is imparting the same idea to his pupil: "Always be willing to learn; ''never'' get complacent and assume that you already know everything." As for the specific question of knighthood, when Qui-Gon tells the council he wants to take Anakin as his student, he's told he can't take two students at once. He replies that Obi-Wan is ready for knighthood, and Obi-Wan chimes in with "I am ready to take the trials". It appears that Obi-Wan is already has the skills of a knight, but doesn't have the rank yet because he hasn't formally been tested. Quite possibly he could have graduated a year ago but simply didn't bother, because there was no pressing need for it. (Neither Qui-Gon nor Obi-Wan is the type to get obsessed with titles for their own sake.)

** You can know about somebody's rules even if you doubt their existence. We can easily imagine that the Sith just wrote the Rule of Two in a book somewhere and somebody found it after the Sith fell and now people know about the Rule of Two, but they think the Sith are defeated. Then some new Sith show up and Yoda says "Huh, a Sith. He's probably following the Rule of Two, since that's a Sith thing we learned about earlier.