Line #50 Fridge/HomeAlone


1	[[WMG: FridgeBrilliance]]
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3	* Aside from being Christmas-themed, Kevin's family watching ''Film/ItsAWonderfulLife'' in either movies is surprisingly fitting when you remember its [[AnAesop moral]]. Both stories are about someone wishing for their life to be different, more-or-less. Just like George, he gets his wish, but quickly learns [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor it's not all its cracked up to be]]. Both stories are about a protagonist realizing they've taken their family and loved ones for granted, and ultimately rescinding their wish.
4	* Buzz was able to get Kevin to think that Old Man Marley killed his entire family because Marley’s been estranged from his son (who refuses to visit him or let him see his grandchild) long before the [=McAllisters=] moved into the neighborhood - and since Buzz knows Kevin’s never seen anyone visit, it’d be easy to convince him to assume the worst just for a laugh.
5	* After finding out that (he thinks that) he made his family disappear, Kevin has memories of mean things his family said to him. Out of all of what they said in his mind, the only part that didn't happen was when Buzz says "Kevin, I'm gonna feed you to my tarantula". Even though he never said that to Kevin, it's actually all in his mind, including the way the others said things to Kevin, which motivated him to enjoy being alone.
6	** Or Buzz has said it to Kevin before, but it was before the night of the opening scene and Kevin was recalling a different time.
7	* Harry and Marv seem to get dumber and dumber to the point of {{Flanderization}}. Then again, they have had a ''lot'' of head injuries...
8	--> '''Harry:''' Don't you remember what happened last year!?
9	--> '''Marv:''' ...No?
10	** Marv is the only one who seems to get dumber between the two films, but then he does indeed suffer more head blows than his partner. Harry actually anticipates some of the traps in the second film, like the paint cans on the staircase, though he doesn't count on them being modified.
11	* Why Harry didn't notice his head was on fire in the second film may seem like RuleOfFunny at first. However, because he had his head set on fire before, the nerve endings could be permanently damaged. So he probably couldn't even feel it till he saw it.
12	* When Kevin tells his family that he just "hung around" while they were gone, he's referring to when Harry and Marv hung him up on the door, prior to Marley saving him.
13	* Kate at one point bribes a couple at an airport gate to secure herself a ticket, which would constitute fraud and raise the question of wouldn't the attendant check her identification? If the flights work anything like today, Kate didn't need the couple's tickets, she just needed them to not board so as to allow standby passengers to fill the unused seats, thus legally boarding the plane.
14	* Christmas morning, the [=McCallister=]s' house is immaculate. Sure, it flows with Kevin wanting to recreate Christmas and get the place ready for his hopefully returning family along with him being incredibly capable, but it still seems like a lot of work both cleaning and putting out decorations. Solution: Old Man Marley helped him fix the place up, including de-icing the front steps. He wanted to help Kevin feel safe and ''be'' safe in this house and likely would have checked on Kevin the following day if he hadn't seen the [=McCallisters=]' return and be distracted by his own family reunion.
15	** Alternately, it's a ChristmasMiracle.
16	** Harry and Marv try to rob the house at 9pm. Assuming events for the trap sequence take place relatively in real time, the whole thing takes an hour, conservatively allowing the police to arrive. More than enough time for Kevin to clean up on his own afterwards (forgetting to sort out the mess in Buzz's room).
17	* Buzz's tarantula is seen crawling its way around the house all the time Kevin is home in the first movie after he frees it from its cage. Would it be in danger of starving since Buzz apparently left it all alone while be went off to visit France with the family? Not necessarily. Tarantulas, depending on species, can go on with only eating once a week, and Buzz claims he fed it quite a bit when showing it to their cousin. So his tarantula will be fine when someone finally finds it and scoops it back into its cage.
18	** Also, when asked if his Tarantula would be okay while they were gone, Buzz states that "He just ate a whole bunch of mouse guts. He should be okay for a couple of weeks."
19	* There's a clever historical allusion in Little Nero's slogan "No Fiddlin' Around!". Nero is infamous for — among other things — allegedly fiddling (sometimes interpreted as him ''literally'' playing the fiddle, even though fiddles hadn't been invented yet and accounts describe him playing a lyre) while Rome burned. Essentially, they are saying they won't mess around and let the customer's pizza burn.
20	* Kevin's traps in the second movie are intended to be deadly, because Harry and Marv told him earlier that they planned on killing him. Unfortunately for Kevin, they proved to be MadeOfIron.
21	* Kevin does not call for help from a working payphone because either he really did believe he made his family disappear or out of fear for the police. Being chased by a police officer for shoplifting would scare any 8-year old. He even calls himself a criminal while walking home after stealing the toothbrush.
22	** There's also the fact that since Harry impersonates an officer, Kevin is initially convinced the local police are corrupt. The gold tooth would tip off any smart person that something wasn't right, and when they first try to rob the house, recognizing the distinctive voice would only confirm his suspicions.
23	* In the first and second movies, Kevin's traps aren't just haphazardly placed around the house - he's covered all of the obvious entry points (front and back doors, basement, etc.) with traps both outside and immediately inside as well as along paths that lead further into the house (such as the stairs). In both cases, he also has a pre-planned escape route which is lined with more traps to slow Harry and Marv down and give himself a head start.
24	* Kevin's family must have learned about his role in stopping the robbery in the second film. Maybe not ''every'' detail. But still, what other explanation would there be for Duncan's Toy Chest to be delivering all those presents to them as a token of gratitude?
25	* Jeff is the only one of the family to realize that Buzz is lying through his teeth in the sequel. Why? As the second oldest son he's probably gone through the exact same things at Buzz's hand as Kevin has. He knows from experience.
26	* Marv's flooding the houses in the first film might have been smarter than it looked. While it did tell the cops who was responsible for all the robberies, the ensuing water damage probably damaged any physical evidence he and Harry left behind. Which would help explain why they were so successful; the cops didn't have any reliable evidence to identify them, much less track them down.
27	** Of course, if Marv did keep doing this as some kind of calling card, it would've led them to get nailed by the cops eventually. If Marv had been a little more wise, he would changed the ways he covered up evidence.
28	* Why is Fuller seen sleeping alone in a double bed at the Plaza Hotel instead of sharing it with one of his many cousins? Well, if the soda cans in the bed are any indication, Kevin didn't say that Fuller was a bedwetter in the previous film for nothing, right?
29	* The MallSanta Kevin encounters might have also provided him with another lesson: don't let your misfortunes consume you. Despite his less-than-ideal situation, the dude still tries to be nice to Kevin and even gives him some Tic Tacs. Kevin would take this lesson to heart and be a little more patient.
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31	[[WMG: FridgeHorror]]
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33	* At the end of the third movie, the spies catch Alex's chicken pox. Chicken pox can be lethal for adults.
34	** Chickenpox while being more severe for adults still has quite low lethality and it usually concerns people with compromised immune systems both kids and adults. Shingles (which is reccurence of virus causing chickenpox) can cause ''[[EyeScream blindness]]'' and other nasty stuff however.
35	** Chicken Pox is ''very'' contagious for about 8 days (2 before the spots show and around 6 after). His siblings were still around him. Even if they have had it before, could they maybe have given it to kids at their school?
36	* In the third movie, one of the pranks Alex sets up is a harmless shower prank which involves his brother's parrot singing in a female voice, complete with a cutout of a woman. Unger falls for this prank. And while it was funny to us, what was his intention? He seemed to be very happy to discover a woman showering and was about to take a look. The fridge horror comes in when you realize that Unger is still one of the bad guys, so was he thinking the woman was Alex's mom Karen, and if so, was he going to rape and kill her as revenge?
37	* If anyone (especially someone associated with the government or an anti-child abuse charity) were to catch wind of the [=McCallisters=] being neglectful towards Kevin, Kevin (and maybe his siblings) would be sent to a social worker and leave the house, and by extension, the neighborhood defenseless on the off chance that there's another series of robberies.
38	* In the second movie, Kate stopped by Uncle Rob's house seconds before Kevin showed up. Imagine how she would've reacted to seeing her son being chased by two criminals. Even worse, what if she had investigated further into the house and sprung one of Kevin's booby traps?
39	** Imagine how ''they'd'' have reacted if they'd seen ''her''. Especially since Harry had met her in the first film when he was posing as a cop, and would probably have recognised her as Kevin's mother. He'd probably have decided to shoot her before she could be a problem.
40	* Near the end of the second movie, Kevin escapes his uncle's house by dangling a rope over the edge of the roof, climbing down said rope, and then lighting it on fire when Harry and Marv try to climb down after him, causing them to crash through the scaffolding and get covered in varnish. Unless one of the neighbors immediately noticed the fire and called the police, that fire is going to spread to the house itself and, since it's a townhouse, probably to the other residences. And if the neighbors are at home in bed asleep…
41	** Unless they had smoke detectors (though a housefire on Christmas is still an upsetting thought).
42	** It seems like a sketchy neighbourhood; most of the houses look empty. Plus, the paint and the fall might have put the fire out. Harry and Marv weren't set alight when the rope fell, after all.
43	*** It's actually an affluent neighborhood of brick townhouses, with expensive cars on the street and lots of houses with holiday lights. Which makes nobody noticing all that's going on even stranger.
44	* The blowtorch gag from the first movie. Thank goodness Harry was the one to go through that door, and he just got the top of his head burned. If it had been the much taller Marv, that would have been his ''face''.
45	* In the second movie after defeating Harry and Marv, where was Kevin planning on spending the night? He obviously couldn't have known his mom would find him in Rockefeller Center, he couldn't go back to the Plaza Hotel or any hotel seeing as his dad's card was put on hold, and probably thought he was wanted by the cops. It was below freezing that Christmas Eve (remember the frozen puddle), and he didn't exactly look overdressed. Plus, all the few warm spots like subway gratings and vents would be occupied by potentially mentally ill homeless people. "It's scary out there", indeed.
46	** Because he's established "the pigeon lady" as a friend, he could go and thank her for rescuing him and then she would surely allow him to stay at her little room above the symphony hall.
47	* Despite how dumb they are, Harry and Marv were still smart enough to escape from prison. If they escaped again after the second movie, Kevin would be in a huge amount of danger, since they know where he lives, know how to acquire a gun, and really, ''really'' want him dead.
48	** As we see in the beginning of the movie in a brief view of a newspaper, Marv and Harry escaped prison due to there being a riot in the prison they were being held in, presumably allowing them to slip away in the chaos rather than them having concocted any sort of elaborate escape plan. And given they have become known as escapees in the past, it is likely that they would be held in a much more secure place during their subsequent incarceration.
49	* When Harry and Marv manage to catch Kevin, they gleefully claim that everything Kevin did to them, they are going to do to him. All those booby traps? Not so funny when you picture those things being done to an eight-year-old boy. Harry even said he was going to [[{{Fingore}} bite off all of Kevin's fingers one at a time]], and had every intention of going through with it. He actually ''had one in his mouth'' [[spoiler:before a shovel-wielding Marley came in to rescue Kevin]].
50	** According to Macaulay Culkin, [[EnforcedMethodActing he still has a scar on his finger]]. In fact, he and Creator/JoePesci even shared some real-life animosity, partly because of this incident.
51	* Keep in mind that based on some of the comments they made, Harry and Marv intended to kill Kevin from the moment they saw him in front of the toy store, and they probably had something more grisly in mind than just shooting him. Marv, for example, implies that they could drown him, and Harry mentions the possibility of maybe doing something like throw him in front of a train.
52	* Uncle Frank is a {{Jerkass}} to Kevin. What are the chances that [[AbusiveParents he treats his own children any better]]?
53	** Maybe, maybe not. In the second film he refers to Fuller as 'pal' in one scene, and later they both share chuckles over Buzz's prank on Kevin, including shoulder slapping. It's really the only time we see Frank interact with his kids on a personable level, but seems friendly enough.
54	* Kate already felt incredibly guilty and frantic on realizing she left her youngest child at home after they had a big fight. How much ''worse'' would she and her husband have felt if they had known about the attempted burglary, and that the robbers nearly bit her son's fingers off?
55	* Kevin, being 8 years old in the first movie and ten in the second, likely isn't fully aware of just how dangerous some of his traps are. And if he is, that means some of those traps, especially in the second movie, were set with lethal intent rather than just upping the ante because he knows Harry and Marv will expect the tricks he used last year. It's somewhat justified because he knows they'll kill him if they catch him, but still.
56	* In the first film, Kevin is traumatized by the over-the-top gun violence in ''Angels With Filthy Souls''. [[LittleDidIKnow Little did he know that]] a year later, he would be staring down the barrel of a ''real'' gun.
57	* In the first movie, the scene where Kevin goes to the fake Santa and asks for his family back is comedy gold, but imagine yourself in the Santa's position; a kid all on his own comes up to you and asks for his ''entire'' family back. Without the context that he was left behind on a family trip, you'd probably assume that he had suffered some unbelievable tragedy that killed every member of his family but him. Though given that the Santa doesn't seem particularly taken aback and goes back to cursing out his car once Kevin leaves, he probably took a less morbid interpretation of Kevin's wish.

Context Fridge / HomeAlone