Why do the prostitutes always have perfect paperwork? Because a large and openly operating brothel in a communist nation is going to need friends in the government to survive. They are probably the only people actively getting help to make sure they can get into the country. Alternatively, their boss comes in with good papers, too. It's likely he checks them himself, so he doesn't lose any business.
Why does EZIC give you a second, larger, gift if and only if you refuse the first one? Consider the effect on gameplay. By the point they give you the gift, you might have already decided to deny the first agent. Accepting either of the gifts results in you being investigated, and the only way to continue the game is to let in the second agent, thereby locking you out of the loyal ending. If you play with these choices, you act as an inspector who wanted to be loyal but got greedy and now finds himself blackmailed into joining the conspiracy. And EZIC tries to force the gift on you because they knew this would happen.
Alternatively, EZIC is testing the Inspector. Maybe they thought that the Inspector turned down the original gift because he wanted more credits, so they send him a larger gift. If the Inspector accepts the gift, he is forced to admit the second agent so he doesn't get arrested. If the Inspector has been helping EZIC and doesn't accept the second gift, either, EZIC knows they can trust him, because he's not doing this for the money.
Why do you have to get Ending 20 to unlock Endless Mode? Because Ending 20 has you continue your job as a border inspector. Endless Mode represents the days following the events of the story.
Ending 18. The Arstotzka Inspector gathers his family and heads to Obristan. He remarks the fake passports look horrible. There is then a tense scene before he and his family are accepted. The fridge part comes with the Inspector's words. Seemingly by reflex, the Arstotzka Inspector says to the Obristan Inspector: "We come to visit relatives." This is a complete contradiction that should have revealed the whole thing to be a ruse right there. The family is entering with Obristan passports. That means they are posing as native Obristan-ians. Why would they be returning to their own country to visit relatives? The answer is: they wouldn't. It's only because the Obristan Inspector is either stupid, senile, or apathetic that this contradiction gets overlooked.
By that logic, any Canadian passport holder who lives in the US (or vice versa) but occasionally crosses the border to visit family would be turned aside or imprisoned. In Arstotzka that might be the case, but Arstotzka is clearly not how a healthy country is supposed to operate.
It is actually logical to return to one's native country to visit relatives; one example can be an immigrant living with their family in another country and having extended family back in their homeland, then returning to the homeland to visit said extended family.
The Inspector musing that his passports "look terrible" could just be him nervously worrying, considering his work over the last few days involved going over such things with a fine-toothed comb. Jorji's forger is apparently good enough to fabricate documents indistinguishable from the real thing, since you have to let him in with seemingly accurate papers eventually.
It's also possible you tried to play the game as a chaotic good, letting in people you think are just trying to survive and having empathy for those struggling, even if it resulted in citations... And then you escape, and find yourself on the other side of that exchange, dependent on the whims of a person you don't know. Is this Obristan guard not just the same as you were? And might your own escape be the result of him showing the same empathy for desperate people that you did?
Perhaps the reason that Jorji Costava appears at the player's checkpoint with such shoddy documents (or lack thereof entirely) is because he's used to the far more relaxed Obristan checkpoint?
This may also explain a lot of the frustration that other travelers display. They simply aren't used to these harsher standards and longer wait times.
Why does EZIC keep on trying to get you to perform missions for them, even if you have never cooperated with them even once? You would think that after the first few times, they would have figured out that you are a lawful Arstotzkan citizen who is 100% loyal to the regime... Except that if your inspector managed to make it that far into the story, then he is NOT a 100% loyal Arstotzkan citizen, since a loyal citizen would have given the EZIC coded document to the M.O.I. investigator on Day 12, resulting in your arrest (unlocking the "Too honest" achievement). The only way for the player to make it past this point in the story is by deliberately withholding information from the M.O.I., indicating that the inspector is either sufficiently jaded about his government to harbor doubts about it, or is well aware of the "leave no stones unturned" policy of the M.O.I., and therefore decides to take his chances in withholding information from the agent instead of facing almost certain arrest. Therefore, from EZIC's perceptive, there is a chance that you can still be persuaded into helping their cause if they just keep on pushing.
In the Soviet Union, there existed a permit system called "Propiska" which kept track of people's movements and applications for residency. Supporters of Propiska said that it allowed them to track criminals and suspects more easily and prevented overcrowding of lower-class dwellings, while opponents said that Propiska violated freedom of movement and promoted segregation by excluding people from certain areas. Perhaps the reason why EZIC agents don't bring Entry Permits is because they don't want to be identified and tracked down by the Ministry of Information.
Two bits of Fridge Brilliance pertaining to the escape endings:
The Obristan border guard asks for your whole family's passports instead of letting them through one at a time like you did. Perhaps he had come across a situation like the one sidequest where one member had his papers in order and was let through, but the other didn't and had to be rejected. By asking for everyone's papers up front, if anything's wrong with any of them, he can reject the whole group (or warn them that not everyone will make it across and let them decide), which would probably be easier on his conscience than splitting them.
You tell the border guard that you're there to visit relatives, but the border guard apparently isn't required to know this, as he responds "I do not care why you come." Why did you tell him without prompting? You needed to know that information yourself when you were a border guard, so you probably pre-mediated that reason in case the Obristan guard asked the same question, and ended up stating it anyway out of nervousness (you did say the forgeries looked terrible, already slashing your odds of entry).
For a 3rd minor one, The Inspector may be using this line because it was the same type of line that appealed to his sense of empathy.
Why does the player point out every discrepancy when interrogating, but when the weight is different he just says they've been selected for a "random search"? Because if he pointed it out, they might panic and run if they actually have contraband. The Inspector could have let a smuggler get away.
Or they could make a break for it and try to rush in to Arstotzka with their goodies.
Some of the contraband you can find includes knives, guns and suspicious-looking packages that could be explosives. Drawing attention to the fact that you suspect them might turn out to be a fatal mistake.
One Fridge Brilliance regarding unauthorized wall-hangings is that the game will allow you to see the inspector approaching, allowing you to quickly pull them from the wall, mimicking someone going, "Oh, Crap!" and cleaning up their cubicle before their boss arrives, which in this game is literally a matter of life and hard labor — then putting them back up after he's gone.
Still on this matter, one of the reasons that the mere things like drawings can lead to forced labour is that your boss doesn't want to take any chances in having someone knowing you and trying to sympathize their way in. That and the Control Freak thing about him.
It's written down as Good Bad Bugs, but there actually is an explanation for someone who is smuggling something to be lighter than their passport lists them to be. Namely, at least some of the smugglers are not amateurs and as such would know that extra weight would get them discovered, so they either get their passports altered/faked to show them as slightly heavier than they are or they lose weight after getting the passport. The thing is that you don't scan people with correct weight, usually, so you wouldn't be able to detect those who pulled this off successfully, but those who didn't quite get back to the listed weight for some reason (like their scales being broken) result in this.
The fact that the Antegrian whistleblower disappears after gaining asylum into Arstotzka doesn't necessarily mean that she was caught/eliminated by vengeful Antegrian operatives. It could alternatively mean that there was a covert plan on Arstotzka's end to assist her by throwing off any remaining pursuers: The only way for anyone to lose their trail is to throw away their old identity, sometimes through a faked death, and then adopt a new one afterwards.
Sergiu: There is more action at this checkpoint than in the war. I fought in Kolechia for 5 years. If you think it is bad in Arstotzka, it is ten times worse in Kolechia. I do not blame them for coming here.
It's no secret that some people (and, in fact, most of them) in the West had a very incorrect idea about life in USSR; even those who thought it was bad usually didn't realize just how bad it was. It's possible those immigrants just don't have the full picture and their decision to move would turn out to be a life-destroying mistake.
Furthermore, if The Republia Times (another game by Lucas Pope that was set in a similar universe) is an indication, both EZIC and the Arstotzkan government are downright benevolent when compared to both the Democria rebels and the Republia government. For one thing, if you are 100% loyal to either EZIC or the Arstotzkan government, the former will take good care of your family while the latter will leave them alone. In Republia, however, no matter what you do, your family will be killed by the end.
Some Nightmare Retardant kicks in in that not ALL the applicants are desperate refugees, criminals, and terrorists. Many of them are government officials, journalists, or other people on official business, and that other countries (such as Obristran and the United Federation) are at least A Lighter Shade of Grey.
Which is thrown out the window if you consider the United Federation as a stand in for Yugoslavia and not one for the USA. Yugoslavia cozied up to the west to get better tech, but ended up balkinizing in the already balkanized Balkans because of a literal genocide. "United" may be as ironic a title as a People's Republic of Tyranny.
Indeed, a fair number of them are just visiting because they have family in Arstotzka or are tourists. Early on, there's also a crapton of people who are trying to get to whatever country is past Arstotzka (the ones whose entry permits say "transit").
What's more, there's one entrant who has insufficient papers, but wants to enter because the surgery he wants is illegal in his home country; while making his case for letting him through, he also mentions that he only trusts Arstotzka doctors. Combine this event with the headline that Arstotzkan doctors managed to pioneer a breakthrough form of spinal surgery, and one gets the general idea that Arstotzka has a good health care system (or at least decent compared to their neighbors). That, or there's a good reason why his questionable surgical operation is banned back home.
Commerce seems to be booming in Arstotzka too. You get returning citizens who promote their businesses such an engineering firm and a gym, lots of immigrants come to the country for work, and Arstotzka has a sports team with a healthy fanbase. You never hear about positive business happenings in other countries (to be fair, the newspaper you read daily is Arstotzka-centric).
In one of the Golden Endings, you and your entire family managed to escape to Obristan. Hooray! You are now free from both the oppression of Arstotzkan government and the manipulation of EZIC! Obristan above all! .... Except that by this point, you and your family are alone in a foreign country as illegal immigrants, might have very little money left, have no place to stay, and the only employment skill that you have as a border inspector is totally useless. Now What?
Jorji helps you once again, as you are now in debt with him over the whole passport deal and he could blackmail in turning you in... and your experience as a border agent is doubtless valuable for his smuggling operation. Or he could help just because he is quite possibly the nicest drug dealer you met.
The whole deal between Arstotska and Kolechia also has a historical counterpart: the Soviet-Afghanistan War. Suddenly those suicide bombers aren't so different from modern ones, after all...
If Arstotzka descends into civil war, Sergiu will very likely be fighting on the side of the current government, since he is a soldier. Even if you choose to flee to Obristan instead of stick around and fight for EZIC, his survival chances drop a fair amount.
The reason why EZIC requires you to confiscate Kallo Kordon's passport and still allow him entry is because it's an absolute necessity for the impostor to take his place. Otherwise the plan will completely fail due to the outrageous confusion about one Kallo going back to Kolechia and complaining about being mistreated and another Kallo going to the peace talks and making an inflammatory tirade against Arstotzka. The fact that the impostor succeeds in his mission means that the real Kallo had "disappeared" and never made it to the peace talks.
Some of the entrants carry forged documents. While some of them could be trying to get in for shady purposes like drug deals and terrorism, there may also be those who get forged documents because they're refugees and can't afford authentic papers (one entrant makes it a point that an Access Permit is more expensive than the Entry Permit and ID Supplement combo). Sure, Arstotzka later implements an asylum program, but even that might not be fast enough for some entrants depending on circumstance.
Even the "Loyalty" ending doesn't escape this. Most players on their first attempt reaching this ending likely won't have a whole lot of money by the time they reach the end of the game. Some of their family may even be sick and/or starving. Now remember that EZIC's attempted attack on the border takes place on December 23rd, and the border doesn't reopen until January 1st. Also remember that the inspector makes money based on the number of immigrants he processes. In case you haven't put two and two together yet, that's eight days where the inspector is completely out of work and, consequently, isn't earning any income. While the Arstotzkan government might have issued a temporary halt on rent in order to prevent its loyal border inspector from being kicked out of his own home through no fault of his own, there's no reason to believe they'd help him out with food, heat, and/or medicine. Therefore, what happens to your family during that extended downtime?
If you shoot the Man in Red as ordered by EZIC, resulting in your arrest and subsequent execution (or forced labor if you used the tranquilizer rifle), then EZIC keeps your family safe. But now said family have to live with the fact that, as far as the public is concerned, the father of the family murdered an innocent. Even if EZIC do inform them of why he did what he did, the replacement inspector's non-cooperation with EZIC and the group's subsequent collapse means that the family lost a member of them for nothing.
How do entrants show up with documents that have expiry dates before the date those documents started being issued (e.g. the Access Permit)?
Fake papers?
Legitimate papers from another checkpoint with different rules?
Bureaucrats being jerks, most likely. They didn't like you, you got documents dated in such a way that they are useless, but you got your documents so get lost now. Or alternatively, only those who gave bribes got documents with the correct dates.
Possibly misprints (it happens).
After the contraband scanner gets installed, it's possible to stop suicide bombers from getting into Arztotzka through your booth (and one does try to get in that way every so often). Once the Player Character discovers the bomb they're carrying, he says something to the would-be bomber that more or less should tell them that the jig's up, so why don't they just detonate their bomb when you try to detain them?
It could be the Oh, Crap! feeling the suicide bomber gets when being discovered, distracting them from detonating the bomb.
Their bomb's detonators are taped to the middle of their backs. They probably can't dig the darn things out in time. That, or they're afraid of killing the people in the line (also why no one tries to bomb the outer cordon guards).
Or they just don't see a point in killing an innocent (as far as they know) inspector who's just doing his job. Going after armed soldiers loyal to their government is a different story entirely.
Further justified by there being no point in blowing a hole in the inspection booth. The wall connecting to the border is short enough to allow just about anyone to leap over it, so killing you would be a waste of a bomb and an unnecessary death.
A few even outright admit their guilt upon being caught, asking things like "You can see that?" or "Is it so obvious?" It may just be a case of the would-be terrorists being Graceful Losers who know when the jig is up.
It could also be they were coerced into it. Maybe they were lied to or manipulated into doing it or their families and friends were threatened. They may actually be really happy they got caught so they don't have to go through with it. If an agent was nearby making sure they made the attempt, seeing the booth swarmed by guards is a good enough indicator that the would-be bomber made an honest attempt at it. At least an ambiguously honest enough one that they can't justify hurting the bomber's loved ones without losing the trust and loyalty of other members. If you let them through, the observer would know they backed out if they don't denotate the bomb, so they have to trigger it. The reason they don't just admit to it immediately may be due to nerves (and fear of long term pain and torture as opposed to a quick death) or because they are still vaguely loyal to the cause even if their faith is wavering.
Kolechia must have really bad border inspectors. Why do so many entrants from countries other than Kolechia arrive at your booth with problems that should have been caught by the Kolechian border inspectors like stolen passports (this is obvious when you see someone else's photo in the passport and the fingerprint test exposes the entrant as an impostor), passports with invalid issuing cities, passports with mismatched biological sexes, and no passports at all (which is made even more stupefying because some entrants apparently do not know what a passport is)? All of this means that Arstotka's police, courts, jails, and prosecutors' offices could get giant backlogs if the inspector decides to detain as many criminals as possible. Fortunately, the police are shown to be lightning-quick in shutting down a Sex Slave human trafficking ring if the inspector arrests Dari Ludum, the said human trafficking ring's mastermind. It will need that speed.
Kolechia just got out of a six-year war with Arstotzka, during which presumably not as many people would be traveling through an active warzone. On top of that, the in-game map shows that Kolechia pretty much stands directly between most of the other countries and Arstotzka, with the other options being to go around through Obristan (which would be the long route given Kolchia's border extends up north a bit) or to travel by sea. Kolechia's probably overwhelmed by suddenly becoming an important nexus of transit due to its location, and undergoing the same six-years-overdue mess of updates to procedure that the player experiences happening in Arstotzka.
Kolechia might as well be pushing those people to the Arstotzkan border on purpose, in an attempt to destabilize their neighbour. It’s not unheard of in the real world.
M. Vonel arresting the Inspector for handing the EZIC documents to him seems harsh at first, but someone who co-operates will naturally be less likely to be seen as suspicious (which is what an EZIC agent would want). Vonel wants to ensure that there isn't any reverse psychology BS being pulled off here (something a secret police officer would be well versed in) and wants to verify for himself. Besides, it's not hard to get the info from the documents then hand them over once you're done to make everyone think you have nothing to do with it.
