Line #163 Headscratchers/GroundhogDay


1	* What would've happened if he pulled an all-nighter?
2	** It was implied on the day he gets arrested that, when 6am comes around, he just appears in bed regardless of whether he's conscious or not. When Rita is with him at midnight, he also points out that he's only reset at 6 AM.
3	** He probably would be able to progress to February 3rd, and probably did a few times, but as soon as he falls asleep, he'd be back in his bed on Groundhog Day morning. One can imagine at one point he tried to see how many days he could go without sleeping, probably making it to February 5th or something, but had to return after dozing off.
4	*** Judging by his reaction of the empty streets on Feb 3rd, one could easily speculate he's NEVER seen it like that in however long.
5	*** His reaction there is because he's never seen it like that from that window immediately upon waking up. There's numerous shots of him walking around the town once the snow has settled, and he gets into at least two snowball fights. His reaction is almost certainly less because he's not seen the snow before then, and more because of what it ''means'' for him.
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8	* Why did Phil got trapped into the GroundhogDayLoop scenario in the first place, and why does it end when it does?
9	** Early draft had it from a gypsy [[Main/CursedWithAwesome curse]]; a second one had it [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19138_7-hotly-debated-movie-questions-that-totally-have-answers.html from an ex-girlfriend]]. The filmmakers thought that sounded stupid, so they cut it out. As for why it ended? The whole point of the movie was that he had to stop being such a self-absorbed jerk.
10	*** He stopped being a jerk for a while before he escaped, though.
11	*** The important part is not just stop being a jerk, but also being nice because you should, not because you need to, such as trying to impress Rita.
12	** Phil himself hypothesized "the groundhog did it.", though he was the only one to do so.
13	** Alternatively, it's a glitch in the Matrix.
14	** Another WMG: all the actions of his life added together to form what shall be called a "Jerkass Singularity", brought to Critical Mass by his manner towards his new coworker. To escape, he had to act in a manner that was explicitly opposite to the way he used to be, effectively canceling the singularity.
15	** BoringButPractical answer: it was AllJustADream. He doesn't seem to have the psychological effect of going through time that many times, he just learned a lesson. Maybe he just had a really freaky dream and decided to change his ways.
16	*** ''No psychological effect?'' He tries to kill himself multiple times. The reason he was calm at the end was because he'd gone through the proverbial five stages of grief.
17	*** He woke up in bed with the leading lady at the end, so it would have had to have been one heck of a dream.
18	*** And we also have a scene where the other characters are examining his corpse, so they function outside of his cognition.
19	** There are comparisons of this film to Buddhism and the concept of reincarnation, since it depicts the idea of living your life over and over again until you've become a good enough person. So, yeah... God literally did it.
20	** It could be like Nietszche's "Eternal Return". If you live a terrible life, repeating it for all eternity would be eternal damnation. But if you live a good life, then reliving it would be like going to heaven. Nietzsche's command was to go out and live the life you wouldn't mind living over again, which Bill Murray's character did. By the end of the movie, he didn't care if he had to repeat the day for all eternity, because he always made it the best day of his life.
21	** If we're working from the [[Series/XenaWarriorPrincess Lucy Lawless]] angle, we can notice that both stories reached their resolution once the OfficialCouple got together and circumstances no longer threatened to tear them apart. (An early attempt to woo her didn't work because she would have stopped being wooed if the next day started. She was intrigued, not in love.) Therefore, we can blame Cupid for Phil's situation as well.
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24	* Why couldn't he have used his situation to his advantage? Like buying stock. Or selling all of his stuff and spending it on the greatest night of his life, every night. Or setting cats on fire. Or pretending to be a psychic.
25	** He did? He stole money from an armored car, used information he got from previous days to seduce women, and lived it up, eating and drinking anything he wanted. When he describes all the ways he died, he listed "shot" and "stabbed" among them, implying he ''did'' get incredibly violent for a few cycles and the film just didn't show that part. Besides, he's living the ''same day'' for a ''very'' long time (WordOfGod says ten years). so eventually he got tired of it. Phil even lampshaded at one point how he had to be stuck in a small town in Pennsylvania instead of somewhere truly fun, like on a yacht or something.
26	** The [[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374358/ Italian remake]] elaborates on this a bit more: he does in fact actively hurt people, both physically (he hits a girl with a metal utensil just for the hell of it) and not (he phones an acquaintance and insults him, then phones another and cheerfully tells him he's had sex with his wife). He ''shoots'' at the birds he's supposed to be documenting with a submachinegun, and threatens his coworker with the same. Also, in his craze for responsibility-free sex, it is heavily hinted he goes bisexual as well. Which has nothing to do with being more evil, of course, but it does make for a less politically-correct film.
27	** In the DVD commentary, someone (the writer?) states that per formula the weatherman ''should'' have spent some time in a 'killing & destruction' phase but that would have changed the tone of the movie too much (to paraphrase the commentary: Did I really want John Woo directing the movie?)
28	** We're missing the woods for the trees here; he ''does'' use the day to his advantage, numerous times, but the movie makes it clear that because the day resets every time, none of it means anything. He wins big on the stock market? Great, by 6.00am the next day it's all gone. He sells all his stuff and has the greatest night of his life again and again and again and again? Eventually, the appeal of having even the greatest night of his life over and over is going to wear off, and/or is going to feel phonier the more he tries to recapture it. The point is that success and advantage, and especially purely material markers of success and advantage like these, are ephemeral.
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31	* Phil spent several decades going through Groundhog Day and retained all his memories. By the end of the movie, he's probably the oldest person in the town. Isn't that a little {{squick}}y?
32	** Well, WordOfGod (DVD commentary) was that he was in there for 10 years, so not that much.
33	*** Six weeks seems more appropiate because of the whole "six more weeks of Winter" thing. (This might imply that Phil's curse had a set expiration date and personal growth had nothing to do with it, but we'll leave that for the Fridge.)
34	*** Parallels to the Groundhog Day tradition aside, he could not possibly have done all the things in the movie in a mere six weeks. Becoming a virtuoso jazz pianist from scratch would take years of dedicated practice, all by itself. And before he even starts his piano lessons he tells Rita he spent 6 months, 4-5 hours a day, just tossing playing cards into a hat.
35	** Why Squick? What's wrong with him dating her, she's old enough to make her own choices. Is he supposed to spend the rest of his life alone, now that he's far older than anyone who looks his age? In any case, he's aged emotionally and mentally, but not physically; as far as the other characters in the movie are aware, he's more mature, nicer and wiser than he was the day before, but he's only physically aged one day.
36	*** In the time-traveling television show ''Seven Days'', the hero occasionally makes a romantic move that causes the love interest's feelings to deepen. But then he has to go back. And he realizes he cannot use this newfound knowledge to romance her, it is not fair. But Phil has no problem with this. He can anticipate her every feeling. SQUICK.
37	*** Probably why he stops doing it, and only gets the girl -- and gets his freedom -- when he stops trying to romance her and she genuinely falls in love with the man he's become. Besides, what's the big deal? He's learned those things the way most do (asking her), not by questionably unethical methods like snooping on her Facebook.
38	** In fairness, while he has lived a lot more days than she has, he isn't older than her in the same way that, say, a 90-year-old is older than her, because the extra days he lived were all variations of the same day, whereas a 90 year-old would have experienced all sorts of changes that Phil never did.
39	*** But a disproportionate chunk of that extra time has been devoted to stalking her, so that only deepens the imbalanced power dynamic.
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42	* Related to the above: After the auction, when Phil makes a snow sculpture of Rita's face, he says something to the tune of "I could do it without even looking at you. I know every inch of your face." A throwaway line indicates Rita is new at the TV station Phil works at. That's a very weird thing to say to someone you've only known for two days!
43	** Rita seems just the right kind of person to believe what Phil's been through - or even if not to believe outright, then at least still be nice and supportive regardless.
44	** Also, he's told her what's happening by this point. Remember at the party:
45	--->'''Rita:''' No, there is something going on with you.\
46	'''Phil:''' Do you want the short version or the long one?\
47	'''Rita:''' Let's start with the short and go from there.
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50	* For most of the movie, no matter how quickly or slowly Phil moves (most notably on the third day), he always runs into "pork chop" at the top of the stairs, Ned always spots him at the same place, Rita always asks "where have you been?" and he's always just in time for the groundhog to come out. But on the last day, he shows up early while Larry and Rita are setting up, ''and he's brought coffee and pastries''. And we find out later that he's bought insurance from Ned. Where did the extra time come from? It's not like he can wake up earlier.
51	** Rita asks "where have you been?" because he shows up RIGHT before the groundhog comes out (his original plan anyway since he doesn't give a shit about the dancing and whatnot beforehand, just there to do his job and get out as quickly as possible). Rita has most likely been there filming for at least an hour or two beforehand since she knows about everyone staying up all night, etc.
52	** He'd literally memorized every single detail of the day. By avoiding the unnecessary conversations and moving fairly quickly he could, possibly even take shortcuts he discovered (cutting through peoples' gardens, for example), he could, for lack of a better phrase, {{speedrun}} it.
53	*** No, the headscratcher comes from what appears to be the events waiting for him to play out - to use an extreme example to illustrate, the movie makes it seem like Phil could spend an hour hanging out in his room and he'd still encounter Pork Chop.
54	*** FridgeBrilliance: the first few times Phil is ''intentionally'' attempting to time things so that he meets Pork Chop, talks to the hotel manageress, encounters Ned, etc as an experiment to try and see whether he's just suffering deja-vu / going crazy or whether the day ''is'' repeating itself.
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57	* On his Final Day, how come the piano teacher recognizes him? That implies he got a piano lesson, but why would he have done that once he was an accomplished pianist?
58	** Perhaps Phil politely thanked her for the lessons and she assumed that he must be an old student that she has forgotten.
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61	* How would Phil adjust to NOT being in groundhog day afterwards? He'd look at his watch and then remember he didn't have to catch the kid, he'd cross the road without looking and nearly get run over etc.
62	** The human mind can frequently acclimate to new living conditions more quickly than it thinks it can. It shouldn't take him all that long. And really, how much would it bother him? He's free.
63	*** Prisoners freed from long periods of incarceration seem to have difficulty, though?
64	*** It's not quite the same as physical incarceration. For one thing, prisoners struggle when released is because the world has changed significantly while they've been away, not just in new tech but also their friends and family might have gotten married, had kids, died...
65	*** Second, ex-prisoners have a hard time dealing with the outside word because of a lack of routine and strict schedule. Phil, while he has lived the same day, still did different things from day to day.
66	*** Lastly, Phil can't just 'commit a crime' metaphorically speaking to get himself re-sealed in a time bubble. Since he ultimately has no choice but to get to grips with no longer being in the time bubble, presumably he eventually just knuckles down and gets used to it.
67	*** The difference between the real world and a world with no enduring consequences is much bigger than the difference between the real world and prison, though. And Phil is used now to already having all the answers, to knowing everything that's going to happen. If he is "a god", going back to normalcy is the biggest challenge possible. And just because adjusting would be in his interest, that doesn't mean he'll be able to do it. Once he gets run over by a bus his first day in the real world (because he's lost the instinct to look out for unexpected traffic) he no longer has the ability to adjust. And he's probably coming out of the loop with liabilities, like an exorbitant life insurance policy (silver lining, once he gets hit by a bus?). And he has put himself up on an unsustainable pedestal with Rita and the townspeople - no matter how morally improved he is, he's bound to disappoint them in future. He doesn't have the answers to their future problems.
68	*** But the point remains: unlike the prisoner, Phil ''has no choice'' but to try and adjust, so ultimately he will. Is he no longer a God? Sure -- but then, the loop made a point of reminding him that he never was in the first place, so that's immaterial. Will he get things wrong and maybe disappoint people? Sure -- but that's true of all of us. Will he have to learn to take care not to get hit by traffic? Sure -- but again, so do we all, and countless people walk in front of traffic after carelessly not looking both ways ''without'' being stuck in a time loop (that we know of). The answer to this question is that Phil will adjust to being out of the time loop the same way he adjusted to being ''in'' the time loop; one day at a time.
69	*** But that's not how reality works. Just because somebody needs to do something that doesn't mean he can or will do it. And yes, people learn how to cross streets, through a long period of supervision, because if they don't have that long period of suervision they die quickly. Remember Pet Sematary? The obstacles you think people just overcome because they have to, many people do not overcome them. And there's no evidence that Phil will be able to successfully overcome his obstacles without the help of the time loop.
70	** He now has a beautiful, kind-hearted girlfriend to help him with things, which probably won't hurt.
71	*** ... until she leaves him because he can't live up to the brilliance of that first day without the assistance of the time loop and their 1-day whirlwind romance fades.
72	** FridgeBrilliance is that this may be the exact reason why Phil decides to stay in Punxsutawney. Sure, he won't know exactly what will be happening next, but he's got an ''enormous'' load of information on virtually every denizen of the city, its inner workings, etc, which are highly unlikely to change overnight. And that is a smooth transition from the omniscience in the past to the frightening total ignorance in the future.
73	*** Yeah, but the people of Punxsutawney have heightened expectations of him he wouldn't have to live up to had he decided to go home. Phil the savior, doctor, philanthropist ... both of them have to quit their jobs, so he's not going to be able to afford Wrestlemania tickets and dinners for the homeless. At least he still has his music and ice sculpting. \
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75	* Why doesn't Phil ever steal the van and get out of town ''before'' the blizzard hits? He could have been back in UsefulNotes/{{Pittsburgh}} well before the storm hits and spent the day there.
76	** Could be that the storm is part of the curse; remember, it was originally supposed to skip Pittsburgh and the surrounding area entirely. Possibly no matter whenever he tries to leave, the storm shows up to stop him.
77	** Alternatively; stealing a news van is the kind of thing that tends to get you noticed by cops; not exactly a subtle choice of getaway vehicle. Not much good making a break for it if you're just going to end up getting arrested anyway.
78	*** True, but by a ''different'' town's police and spending the day in a ''different'' jail cell with ''different'' people - that probably would have been like heaven after a few hundred repeats.
79	*** The appeal of that probably wears off after a dozen times, too.
80	** When they ''do'' leave as in the original version of the day, it's still fairly early in the day, and the roads were already closed. The film pretty clearly gets the point across that the blockade was unavoidable. Even if he had leapt straight into a vehicle at 6:00 and started driving then, he likely would have run into it or at least got stuck in the road by the blizzard anyhow.
81	** Anybody know of a town where's there's only one way into/out of it? That's always seemed strange.
82	*** Yes, actually. There was towns which have more than one road, but if you were heading in a certain direction (like Phil) you only had one road out of town that direction. If a wreck or something shut it down, you'd have to go pretty far out of the way and sidetrack to get going in the right direction again (assuming you knew the roads well enough to do that.)
83	*** After an eternity in the town, any direction would have been good enough. Trekking through a blizzard would have been good enough, especially since he's probably associating the groundhogging with the town.
84	** It's entirely possible he ''did'' do that once or twice, maybe even made it back to Pittsburgh, but what's the point? He spends a good part of the day driving through a blizzard, and then he still wakes up at 6:00 in Punxsutawney the next day.
85	** Punxatawney is to the east of Pittsburgh, so going west (back into the storm) would always have led back into the storm path. OTOH you can easily drive east from Punxatawney which would have avoided the blizzard completely, since the blizzard never even hits Punxatawney (we see Phil and Rita hanging out outside in clear weather). So the most likely explanation is that Phil did go east and the film just doesn't show us because he didn't learn anything plot-relevant that day (he probably did lots of things we don't get to watch - we don't watch him becoming an expert ice sculptor or buy wrestlemania tickets for example). The other explanation apparently would be that supernatural forces deploy a blizzard to force him back to town no matter where he goes, but the blizzard doesn't hit the town itself - but that would be so strange to him he would likely have mentioned it to Rita.
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88	* Why did the PowersThatBe pick Phil for this experience? Basically, he ''does'' have godlike influence, in that the ''entire universe'' is put on hold to wait for his CharacterDevelopment. Phil may be somewhat of a jerk, but there are far worse people who could use the self-improvement, and far better people who could use [[SweetAndSourGrapes the reward]].
89	** Refer to headscratcher 1. The early drafts had it be a curse, both of which can only be broken by becoming a better person. It's possible one or the other is still the case in the final version. It's never explicitly stated that the entire universe is put on halt; perhaps Phil's loop is in a separate universe, and his breaking of the loop brings him back to the regular universe.
90	** It seems like each day is actually AlternateHistory: After he jumps off a building, Larry and Rita are shown identifing his body. If this curse was really just Phil-centric, wouldn't time skip from his death to 6AM?
91	*** Maybe not? Maybe Phil continues "as normal", no matter what happens, before resetting at 6.00am...meaning he gets to spend the rest of the day as a corpse before ''blammo'', back in bed.
92	** Since we don't know who exactly cursed Phil, we don't know if they would have had the power to choose a worse person. It's possible that the hidden power was somehow personally connected to Phil in a way that was required for the curse to take effect.
93	** Besides, how do we know other people ''haven't'' experienced something similar? After all, from everybody else's perspective, their reality has ''not'' been put on hold, they just lived that one (last) day. So it could have happened to anyone and everybody else would be none the wiser. It probably can't be a very common experience (otherwise it would've at least become a well-known myth or something), but there's no reason to think Phil is the only person in the entire universe to go through it.
94	** Because it had to happen to ''someone'', otherwise there'd be no story.
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97	* Why didn't Phil correct his earlier mistaken forecast? Presumably, a number of Pittsburghers and others had gone out of town thinking they would be safe from the blizzard. Giving them all a heads up might save lives (or at least inconveniences), would be a nice addition to his various good deeds, and would match his area of authority well.
98	** It wouldn't matter as the snow had already hit hard out of town.
99	** He can't really do it in the report he's shooting, since that's just a cute little segment to be shown before that day's weather report, not an actual weather report, and it probably didn't go out live; by the time it airs, they've already gone about their usual daily business and found out about the storm anyway.
100	** Phil's not Joe DeNardo, so it's doubtful most of us Yinzers would've believed his forecast in the first place.
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103	* Wouldn't Phil bribing a piano teacher to teach him instead of the girl lower his Karma?
104	** He probably doesn't get a lesson on the final day, so all of the times that he "stole" the pupil's lesson technically didn't happen.
105	*** The teacher is equally at fault here, too; Phill doesn't kick the girl out, the teacher does. It's true Phil bribed her, but she didn't need to take it.
106	** The bribing thing, to be fair, occurs when he's still in that jerk-to-nice guy transitional phase -- and furthermore, we only see him resort to bribery that one time. It's quite possible that once he's figured out the little girl and piano teacher's schedules he found some way to work it in to everything else he has to do that day.
107	*** yeah, we'd better hope phil is only paying the normal lesson rate by the last day and not bribing the piano teacher with excessive sums, because the way he was getting his hands on that cash was by robbing the armored car ...
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110	* Wouldn't someone go insane trying to spend goodness knows how many days ([[ShrugOfGod 10 years to 10,000, the writers never decided explicitly]]) desperately trying to get out? Has anyone read ''The Jaunt'' by Creator/StephenKing?
111	** He ''does'' go insane. He kills himself over and over, and those are just the things we see and hear about from him. There are probably tons of other things he's tried too, like go on a shooting spree or try to blow the town up or just spend a couple of "weeks" sitting in his room doing nothing. Eventually he [[BoredWithInsanity becomes somewhat tranquil]] about the whole thing, starts thinking about the bright side (he has literally infinite time to better himself), sets himself goals (like learning how to ice sculpt, how to play the piano) and so on. By the end of the movie he's probably got kind of a zen mindset going on.
112	** ''The Jaunt'' puts you in nothingness for billions of years, way less than the 10K even in the least conservative estimate. Phil also had a town to play in; people to interact with and things to keep him occupied.
113	** Plus, people are incredibly varied. Maybe Phil was just able to handle it better than most.
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116	* Did Needle-nose Ned really know Phil or did he just do research on a minor celebrity to sell him insurance?
117	** Ned says at one point "I dated your sister until you told me not to", so they probably really did know each other.
118	*** Ned not only said he dated Phil's sister, but actually named her (Mary Pat). Given that the easy ways we have to find information nowadays (Facebook, Wikipedia, etc...) didn't exist in 1993, it seems a lot of trouble to go to to sell a couple insurance policies.
119	** Phil had several years in which Ned was part of his day. Phil would have several days to either remember him or realize that he was lying. But without more information, we the audience wouldn't know.
120	** So is it just a big coincidence that Ned Ryerson happened to move to Punxsutawney? The attraction of the "Ned Ryerson is Satan tricking Phil into signing a deal with the Devil" theory is it explains why "Ryerson" would be there.
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122	* On the first day, Phil loses his room at the bed & breakfast because of the unexpected blizzard and suffers from a cold shower, but wakes up back in the bed & breakfast on the second day. Come the second night, history repeats; new hotel, cold shower. But he goes to bed breaking a pencil and it's intact the next day, showing that he spent the night at the bed & breakfast. Did he switch hotels in the night?
123	** He probably didn't lose his room at all. When he leaves the bathroom on the first night, he talks to the B&B's owner (the same lady he talks to in the mornings) and asks her about the hot water and she just laughs. He's only at the hotel because that's where the big Groundhog Day party is being held and everyone else is there.
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125	* How did Phil stop the van on the last day? Sabotage doesn't seem like an option at that point.
126	** He probably just suggested they stay overnight instead of rushing straight back to Pittsburgh. He was the only one who was initially in a hurry to leave, after all, the others didn't really care that much, so they were probably quite willing to hang around.
127	*** But didn't they have to bring the filmed material back to TV station?
128	*** At the beginning, Phil's stand-in says Rita suggested they spend a bit of time in town to get a sense of the celebrations and offers to cover for him, so presumably they weren't desperately waiting on the footage.
129	*** It's a news van. It might have the capability of sending a feed of the footage back to the station remotely even if the other lines of communication are down.
130	** They stayed long enough for the party, so they probably saw on TV or heard on the radio that the blizzard kept them from getting back to Pittsburgh.
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132	* On Phil's last day in the loop, Doris and Nancy not only know him but are almost prepared to fight for him. Well, suppose he could have tipped Doris big time... but what could he possibly do or say to Nancy on his last day to elicit such a reaction?
133	** Presumably he does something to help or otherwise charm Nancy at some point during the events of the day in order to win her over. Either that, or she's kinda man-hungry[=/=]desperate. He ''did'' once convince her to marry him after basically flirting with her over the course of one day, after all. Or could be that, well, Nice!Phil is just that darned amazing.
134	** It's a small town and clearly everything he's done has gotten around and everyone has heard what a great guy he is. The surprising thing is how Rita has managed to NOT hear any of this.
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136	* How does the loop affect the other characters? Do they just loop or do they go on with their lives on the next day,which means that every Groundhog Day creates new timelines based off what happened in that version of Groundhog Day?
137	** Well, the only (slim) bit of evidence that the loop is experienced by anyone besides Phil at all are Rita's one-time remark that she feels like she's having deja vu and the look on that bartender's face...
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139	* Why was the innkeeper laughing when Phil remarked on the lack of water like it's self-evident and absurd he'd ask?
140	** Could've been a number of things. A small water heater means not much hot water to begin with, so it'd run out pretty fast. With a bunch of guests staying there, there wouldn't be much time to warm up water once it's been refilled between one person's use of the water and the next, so it'd be a perpetual string of ice showers. Or maybe it gets so cold in Punxsutawney, the heater wouldn't get too far in heating its water in the first place and it'd barely remain above a simmer. Or maybe it's broken. Who knows?
141	*** Probably the first explanation, adding to it that with her preparing food for that many people, she would be using a lot more hot water in the kitchen as well.
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143	* How exactly does Rita fall in love with Phil during the evening of the final Groundhog Day? In order for them to fall in love on previous Groundhog Days, it took Phil a massive amount of planning and multiple attempts in order to craft the perfect day for Rita - that was, until he pushed it too far, lost the ability to woo her, and gave up, becoming incredibly depressed. But in the final iteration of the loop, as far as Rita is concerned, Phil just happened to become a vastly talented humanitarian superstar overnight and gives her the perfect evening. Wouldn't the same thing have happened here?
144	** Well, yes, she's been totally swept off her feet by Phil, probably just because it all felt totally genuine to her at last (after all, the lack of authenticity was why she repeatedly rejected him earlier).
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146	* How reformed is Phil, really? Because apparently there's a lot of speculation that even in the last day of the loop Phil is scamming people into believing they know him, which is not exactly good behavior ... beyond that, it's easy to be good when conditions are in your favor. The real moral test comes when you are challenged, when you don't know what to do, and Phil has had things under control for a long time.
147	** Phil is clearly not "scamming" people (and honestly, that's a total RonTheDeathEater-ing of the situation; anyone who claims he is more than likely just being unnecessarily cynical for the sake of it). A scam is when you are dishonest with someone for the intention of defrauding them for your own benefit. Phil is being a little dishonest, sure, but only out of necessity and by the end of the movie he's expressly doing it to help others with little to no gain for himself, which arguably puts it more into the 'little white lie' category of dishonesty. As for how sincere it is, or how long it will last once he's freed, that's for the individual viewer to determine for themselves, but Phil's clearly been through the wringer throughout the story, whatever force was keeping him trapped in Punxsutawney is clearly satisfied that his change in character is genuine, and if nothing else Rita believes in him. So there's little reason that the viewer shouldn't, outside of cynicism.
148	*** He's not lying to people out of necessity, no, he doesn't have to do anything, that's his situation. And some people would tell you that lying is wrong, even if you rationalize it as being for the greater good. And lying to people to ingratiate yourself with them so you can enjoy their happiness is self-interested, not selfless behavior. And there's no evidence in-story to believe the power engineering this scenario is good. Quite the contrary: to punish Phil for the sin of being a jerk and make him a modestly better person (he's not Einstein or Gandhi at the end of this) the higher power tortures him into insanity so severe and so prolonged that he kills himself over and over again - and the higher power won't even let him escape into death. That's such insane DisproportionateRetribution that if the higher power in question is good the the villain protagonist of the Saw series must be Mother Theresa.
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150	* How did Phil get Wrestlemania tickets in Punxatawney? Did he have to sneak out of town and come back?
151	** It's a NoodleIncident. It's never explained, just as there's a whole bunch of stuff we see Phil doing that last day that we have no idea how he learned about it; he's been looping the loop for ages by that point, he's almost certainly figured out a way to get wrestling tickets with the resources he has at hand. It's something that the viewer is meant to guess at.
152	** Most likely solution: Phil learned that someone else in town had the Wrestlemania tickets but needed a good deed doing, did the good deed, and earned the tickets as a reward.
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156	* Do we know that Phil told Rita about his secret on the last night? Because that makes a big difference to their relationship going forward. He was about to, but then got interrupted. And her behavior around the loop time is rather casual.
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158	* [[SelfDemonstratingArticle What would've happened if he pulled an all-nighter?]]
159	** It was implied on the day he gets arrested that... [[LateToThePunchline hey. Wait a second...]]

Context Headscratchers / GroundhogDay