History Headscratchers / Wicked

* I'm probably looking too much into this, but I recently watched ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'' while keeping ''{{Theatre/Wicked}}'' in mind, and during the scene where the Tin Man is introduced, he mentions that he became rusted a year ago. But according to ''{{Theatre/Wicked}}'', Tin Man/Boq becoming rusted couldn't have been more than two days before Dorothy and Scarecrow/Fiyero encounter him. I can readily agree with the theory that Scarecrow/Fiyero is lying (or stretching the truth, at the very least) about not having a brain, but what reason does Tin Man/Boq have to lie about how long he was rusted?

* Okay, so "March of the Witch Hunters" takes place after Dorothy and company meet the Wizard and decide to kill the Witch of the West. Ignoring for a moment that we have the citizens of the Emerald City singing, "Kill the Witch!" (how do they even know that Dorothy's group are setting out to kill Elphaba? What, did Dorothy blurt it out after leaving the Wizard's palace or something?), Tin Man/Boq sings lines like, "I have a personal score to settle with El--with the Witch!" and "And the Lion also/Has a grievance to repay./If she'd let him fight his own battles/When he was young,/He wouldn't be a coward today!" and, if I remember correctly, he mentions that he witnessed the lion cub incident while at Shiz University. Wouldn't singing/saying stuff like that lead to Dorothy asking questions, questions that Tin Man/Boq might not want to answer?

*** On that note, although probably not an intentional reference, Fiyero having a gun is actually a bit of FridgeBrilliance. He's the only one shown with a gun in the whole show, right? Well, in the 1939 film, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene where the Scarecrow is holding a revolver to hunt the Witch Witch after the gang leaves the Emerald City for the first time. It's a weird prop, for sure, but nonetheless it's the only gun you'll see in the whole film. So, Fiyero holding a random rifle for a hot minute then becomes very subtle LampshadeHanging.

* "The Tinman had a crush on Glinda the good witch, but she pushed him off on the Wicked Witch of the East cause she was only interested in the Scarecrow. The Scarecrow, however, ran off with the Wicked Witch of the West."...I love Wicked, but you have to admit, it sounds like a crazy fanfic.
** It ''is'' a fanfic, if you define fanfic as taking an existing source material and expanding/changing/rewriting it to suit you.
*** That is literally what it is. Wicked is, in its purest form, an extended fanfiction that was given a budget and a soundtrack. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
*** In many ways the musical is a Fanfic of a Fanfic. Think about that.

*** Cardboard? Oh, please, that is an exaggeration. He's CAPTAIN of the guard, guys. He has to be cooler, duh.

*** On that note, although probably not an intentional reference, Fiyero having a gun is actually a bit of FridgeBrilliance. He's the only one shown with a gun in the whole show, right? Well, in the 1939 film, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene where the Scarecrow is holding a revolver to hunt the Witch with after the gang leaves the Emerald City for the first time. It's a weird prop, for sure, but nonetheless it's the only gun you'll see in the whole film. So, Fiyero holding a random rifle for a hot minute then becomes very subtle LampshadeHanging.

** The spell protects her from attempts to shoot her down. As she said, "And nobody, in all of Oz, no wizard that there is or was is ''ever'' gonna bring! Me! Down! Besides, it's going to be much harder from a PR standpoint to explain killing her that just capturing her alive. If they shot her down, they would have made her into a martyr.
* Why, oh dear Oz, why wouldn't Elphaba take Fiyero with her to save her sister? Yes, setup for a big save, but that's a meta-reason. She isn't a soldier, and doesn't have any training at arms, and she has with her the freaking captain of the guard who can and will fight to protect her!

** Um, yes it was. In the original wizard of oz book Dorothy spends her first night in oz sleeping in a farmhouse owned by a munchkin named Boq.

* Where exactly is Shiz in relation to the Emerald City? The play kind of suggests it's in the Emerald City, what with how quickly Morrible gets to the wizard...

** I thought magic was UTTERLY RANDOM- considering Madam Morrible has it, and she had normal conditions for conception, presumably.

** The only answer to this is the out-of-universe explanation which is that it's probably a by-product of the 1939 movie still being under copyright, meaning that the writers of the musical were legally prevented from making references to it = the only one they were allowed to keep was the "lemons and melons and pears" bit. You shouldn't try to match them up because they're two completely separate entities - a ''lot'' of things don't make the slightest bit of sense in either version if you start comparing them, the amount of time the Tin Man spent rusting is just the tip of an emerald-coloured iceberg.

** The timeline's a bit confusing because we don't get to see any of the scenes with Dorothy in -- maybe "The March of the Witch Hunters" happens ''after'' Dorothy gets captured by the Witch, with Boq going back and using that as the final straw to rouse up the mob against Elphaba.

** I'm pretty sure magic in the books is considered something you have to train yourself to be good at. But Elphaba seemed to just be naturally good with it, even though she has no idea how she really does it, or have any conscious control over it. Like when she turned the water to ice beneath her feet when she ran into a lake without thinking.
*** Wrong ''character'' and wrong ''work''! That was ''Elsa'', not ''Elphaba''!

* It bugs me from a logic standpoint that Oz has guns as evinced by Fiyero's arbequesque like rifle, but no one tried to shoot down Elphaba at the end of 'Defying Gravity'

* Did Fiyero and Boq recognize each other as The Scarecrow and the Tin Man? They were in the same circle of friends at school, it's not like they changed personalities that drastically?