Fridge / The LEGO Movie

Fridge Brilliance

• Upon release, one of the major criticisms about the film was how much it used photorealistic animation for the Lego world, as opposed to the more traditional Stop Motion Animation of Brick Films, with a few calling it "lazy" or "cheap". But think about how the film's being told: it's one massive story played out in young Finn's head. By having the film in photorealistic animation and yet also adhering to the rules of Stop Motion, the film itself becomes an existential allegory for imaginative Lego playtime. And when it finally does employ Stop Motion in the real world scenes, it becomes significantly more symbolic of how much harder it is for Lego toys to move in our universe.
  • Also, the filmmakers couldn't get ahold of the insane amount of LEGO bricks they'd need to construct the sets.
• Why does the Time Skip say "8 1/2 years later?" That's how old Finn is.
  • If you want to read more deeply into it: President Business has been a Dark Lord ever since Finn was born. Does this mean that the day a child entered into his life, all the responsibility of taking care of a kid made Dad forget how to have fun?
  • Finn had no way to know how his father used to be before his birth. He just knows that he gave him his much older throw-away pieces to play with and kept the newest sets for himself. As such, in Finn's eyes, his father has always been Lord Business. Furthermore, Benny the Spaceman, MetalBeard and other "Cloud Cuckoo Land minifigs", are old and messed up enough to come from Business' scrap heap, giving Finn a hint that once even his father used to be a kid having fun, placing the "Age of the Master Builders", before Lord Business' rise to power, somewhere between Finn's father's past and his fatherhood.
  • Plus, Finn's dad is, well, his dad. All a father really has to do to become the villain in his son's playtime is tell him to brush his teeth, eat his vegetables and go to bed; note how UniKitty's rules for Cloudcuckooland include things like "no bedtime" (how many kids get into a snit just because their parents tell them to go to bed when they still want to stay up?) and "no babysitters" (likewise, how many kids would rather have the house to themselves rather than have a babysitter watch over them?).
  • I see it as Finn thinks "He has always been that way" as kids often does exaggerate such things.
• The weird falsetto voices given to the Micro-Managers make perfect sense when you realize that it's Will Ferrell voicing them, and they're extensions of the father's viewpoint.
• At the beginning we listen to "Everything Is Awesome". Everything is perfectly ordered, everybody is brainwashed, and you get to see the Evil President Business. Emmet says "I could sing this song for hours!" Five hours later and they're still singing and building according to the boring old instructions. Why? Because Finn's Dad has been building and playing for five hours. Only when he goes off to work, does Finn sneak down and start playing. Only then do things start going crazy.
  • Supported at the beginning with a sneaky bit of foreshadowing, when you hear the construction foreman say "New instructions from Central: tear down everything weird!" Finn's Dad is tearing down everything Finn has built in Dad's domain...
• Vitruvius and Cloudcuckooland seem like pretty high-brow references for a 8-year-old's playtime. But then in the credits song, among other things The Lonely Island lists as "awesome" is "a book of Greek antiquities." So that's how Finn knows those names! At least for Cloudcuckooland; Vitruvius is technically Roman but I guess we can assume there's other historical books around his house.
  • And of course one would expect such books to be there - Will Ferrell owns many leather-bound books, after all.
  • Maybe Finn reads this website?
  • Vitruvius perhaps (although it's possible that Finn heard his name during a history lesson at school) but it should perhaps be noted that outside of its context in antiquities, "cloud cuckoo land" is a pretty common expression ("The guy's been acting so weird, it's like he's living in cloud cuckoo land").
  • Actually, if you look on the box that clearly has the Cloud Cuckooland bits in, it has the word "CLOUD" on it with a picture of a, um, cloud with what seems to be a rainbow off it, and it's printed not hand-written. It's very likely the name of the toy store that all the LEGO come from is Cloud Cuckoo Land, and the box is from when they had LEGO bricks shipped to the house once, and that's why it's called Cloud Cuckoo Land- cuz that's what it says on the box the bits are kept in.
  • Oh, and the best part? The historical Vitruvius was also an architect.
• A bit of Fridge Heartwarming: Considering his age, one presumes that Benny and some of the other very old mini-figures belonged to the dad when he was a kid (or at least a teen), which is why they're still around despite being broken.
  • Also Fridge Horror: So the father used to play creatively with his own LEGO sets when he was younger, but lost that joy enough to become a control freak and perfectionist of possessing the things he once loved.
  • Double Fridge Horror: During his first rant against Finn, Finn father's bluntly cuts him out claiming that, if he wanted to play, he could have used every discarded item in the basement, including the Cloud Cuckoo Land figures... including his old and battered mini-figures. Even if his own older, broken pieces were once his treasures, now they are useless hand-me-downs to keep his son occupied.
    • Fridge Heartwarming once he finds those old mini-figs that he used to play with again... and they return to be both his treasured toys, and a way to reconnect with his own son.
• The theme is "Everything is Awesome" for a huge reason. When Finn and his dad finally start playing with Lego bricks side by side, combining creativity with solid construction concepts, everyone is part of the same team, living out their dreams, and truly having fun. Because Finn and his dad are enjoying themselves with Lego, everything is awesome.
• Emmet was most likely intended as by Finn's dad as just another construction worker with no major role, so it would make sense that initially, no one would think he was special. Since Finn picked him out of many other identical pieces to be the hero of the story, Emmett really is The Chosen One.
  • Also, remember when Vitruvius said, Master Builders spend forever to get a glimpse of the Man from Upstairs?
• If you pay attention to the song, "Everything is Awesome" is crammed full of subliminal messaging from Lord Business. Not only does it keep everyone complacent, but the line "Everything is better when we stick together" seems to be a way to say that literally sticking everyone together with the Kragle is a better way to live. Likewise, the line about everyone being "the same" promotes the sheep-like mentality that keeps things in order. Plus, the line "it's awesome to lose" echoes a few times after it gets sung, potentially implying that everyone should lose their freedom to President Business.
  • Oddly, if you also listen to the song without paying attention to the subliminal messages, it still applies to Emmet's situation. "Everything is cool when you're part of a team"? Well, Emmet sure agrees, once he's finally found the Master Builders and becomes part of their team, giving him some social interaction he barely had before. By becoming someone important, he's living a dream. Also, despite his lack of imagination, his newly-found friends still "stick" with him after he's proven to have good ideas (by combining the creativity of the Master Builders first, and later by telling them to follow the instructions in order to sneak inside Lord Business' tower). Last but not least, by the end, they really all are the same; that is, LEGO minifigurines being toyed with by a child who is making up a story.
    • Alternatively, everyone is the same because everyone is special.
    • Also, the lyrics fits perfectly Finn's point-of-view. Once he got his father to understand, being allowed to join in his plays, melding his father's expertise with his own brand of creativity, everything became suddenly more awesome.
• The sequences introducing Emmet are a goldmine of brilliance once the larger connotations of the ending revelation sink in. The first minutes of the film introducing us to Emmet have him gushing over the importance of following the instructions, watching inane sitcoms, gushing again over buying overpriced coffee, going to work to build things only to destroy them all over again become that much more significant when you realize that what we are actually seeing is a young child's perception of what "adult life" is supposed to be like, full of rules that make little to no sense and activities that seem largely pointless. The allegory goes further when we get to Cloud Cuckoo Land, which is full of childish idealizations of what life is supposed to be like, with UniKitty tossing around things like "no rules" and "no bedtimes."
  • If you believe this, the sitcoms in particular take on a real embarrassing context: Finn once walked in on one of his parents watching the end of a sex scene.
    • A more innocent interpretation: to kids of Finn's age, underpants are inherently funny.
    • Splitting the difference, a sitcom where a character loses his pants in a non-explicit but risque situation. He missed the risque aspects, but did understand that it was supposed to be funny.
  • The overpriced coffee makes more sense also. It's not necessarily the case that prices in Real Life are ridiculously high, only that they seem very expensive to an eight-year-old. How much of a cash allowance is a boy as young as Finn likely to get?
    • He's also probably heard adults complaining about coffee prices but buying them anyway, hence the belief that you buy them because they're overpriced.
  • Doubly so when you realize the reason Emmet and the construction workers are knocking down and rebuilding the same buildings over and over is also because that's how Finn's been getting away with playing with his father's toys without him noticing.
    • Possibly doubles as Fridge Horror, as the construction workers are saying to clear out the weird junk and follow the instructions... it's more likely that this is Finn's dad coming in, seeing the 'mess' his son has made, and tearing it down to rebuild it exactly as he had it before.
• Once we learn that Cloud Cuckoo Land is the only part of the Legoverse built with Finn's own Lego bricks, UniKitty's long list of things the Land lacks acquire a lot of subtext, and UniKitty's anger management issues become a lot darker, since they probably indicate Finn has the same problem. This also explains how so many characters from history, franchises, and worlds can come together here - because it's the one place Finn can play with LEGOs without any rules!
  • So why was it destroyed? Because the LEGO pieces it was made of were on the floor and the place's destruction was it getting taken apart and put up.
    • If you look closely, Finn's Legos are in a box labeled "Cloud Bros. Movers" which means the family's moved recently. Which adds quite a subtext to the scene where UniKitty watches out the window as her home drifts away...
  • It is also possible that, Finn built it during playtime and then, without his knowledge or consent, Finn's dad took it apart as a routine clean-up. Finn must have been resentful of that.
    • We can then say that no wonder Finn's dad took it apart, because for one it didn't follow the rules - not to mention he'd probably think UniKitty looked more like a mishmash of parts that didn't make any sense to him compared to what LEGO figurines normally look like - and that it was a place that didn't follow his idea of perfection, seeing the lack of any sensible rules or structure. He's also a parent, so a demolition of Finn's idealistic fantasy world (no bedtimes, for example) of doing whatever you want sounds a lot like parental discipline.
• Why do the Duplo Aliens want to destroy everything? They're controlled by Finn's little sister, and we all know how destructive young children can be when playing with building block toys.
• Emmet and Wyldstyle are only holding claw-hands and not kissing at the film's end because Finn is the one manipulating their actions in the real world, and considering his age, he may think of kissing as gross. Kids his age would not be above holding hands though.
• The other master builders are either Lego figurines based on real people (such as Shaq and Lincoln), or main characters from the LEGO Adaptation Game, where every character can indeed build.
• If Cloud Cuckoo Land has "no government", then how is UniKitty a princess? Because there's "no consistency".
  • Also, Finn is only 8 and a half. It's highly likely that he sees the concept of "government" in the most simplistic terms (i.e. the American government - President, Congress, the senate etc, which seem very boring to a young child) and doesn't view princesses or positions of royalty as being "government" in the same terms, rather just being cool titles and meaning "the one who's in absolute charge of everything and who can do whatever they want" which is how most media aimed at kids that age presents it.
• Why are the business robots so taken with "Bizniz Kitty" just saying "Business" and "Numbers"? Because Lord Business had them built as literal Yesmen to justify his ideas. It's also because rudimentary ideas about business is all Finn is familiar with in terms of the workplace.
• Emmet's big speech before storming Lord Business's tower is that, while the Master Builders can make cool stuff but doing their own thing (Rainbow-bat-spaceship submarine!) they could do even greater things by working together cohesively and coming to an understanding to create a final product. Finn has fun and is creative playing with Lego by himself, but probably secretly wants to build things side-by-side with his dad, and knows that they'd have more fun (and build better stuff) if they worked together.
• If you look closely at the bodies of Emmet and some of the other Lego characters, you can see faint fingerprints on their bodies, foreshadowing the fact that they are really being controlled by Finn.
• When Lord Business tells Bad Cop about how stupid the idea of the Double Decker Couch is, he says that it'd be more difficult to watch TV with it, at one point saying that the people on the top's legs would just get in the way. Minifigures can't bend their legs, meaning that the Double Decker Couch was Finn's idea, and his dad criticized it which is reflected in Lord Business's dialogue.
• When Emmet encounters the Piece of Resistance, he voices his temptation to touch it and the movie plays up the dumbness of the situation by even having the piece whisper, "Touch the piece... touch the piece..." While this is all Played for Laughs it gets a deeper meaning when you suspect that this probably reflects Finn's temptation to touch his father's Lego.
  • Listen closely - that's Finn whispering to Emmet. He also whispers, "It's your turn to be the hero."
• Why are all the minifigs voiced by famous (grown-up) actors? Because Finn would have overheard the actors from shows/movies his parents watch! If they are Community and Parks and Recreation fans, this would give UniKitty and Emmet their voices. Liam Neeson (action hero) and Morgan Freeman (wise man) are everywhere, etc. Charlie Day moves it slightly into Fridge Horror territory. Hopefully he heard it from Pacific Rim and not It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
• Out of all the superheroes that appear in the film, why is Batman the one with the most screen time? Because he's Finn's favorite superhero.
  • Which also explains why he gets his own big storyline in Finn’s imagination.
  • He's also the most similar conceptually to Emmet; unlike the other superheroes in the movie (Superman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman), who depend on their natural powers, Batman is a normal human; only his determination and skills as an engineer allow him to stand a chance against the opponents he faces.
    • Green Lantern’s powers come from a power ring. He’s pretty similar to Batman and Iron Man in that he has no real powers, just advanced tech. Finn might not know that much about Green Lantern, so he might assume his powers are (at least at this point) inherent to him.
• The Take That! at BIONICLE and a few other Lego sets. Finn probably just isn't a fan of them, so of course he wouldn't include them in his story.
  • Or probably his father doesn't own any of them.
    • The Bionicle shout-out happened when Wyldstyle was telling Emmett about the other Lego worlds which are all walled off... which is really Finn's dad's obsessive organisation of his Lego sets. It's possible the Bionicles, very cool-looking action-figures, are just kept on a high shelf where Finn's pesky little hands can't get to them to 'damage' them.
    • Not just to keep Finn from reaching them: given how the Man wants things to be organized, he probably wants action-figure scale stuff together. In addition, Bionicles are basically action figures and all the realms are minifigure-scale. They are too big to really be involved in the plot: they’d be knocking into buildings, Micromanagers, and Master Builder flying machines in the Bricksburg battle while also stepping on the bots and Master Builders.
  • It could also be a subtle foreshadowing to the actual re-release of LEGO Bionicle in 2015. This movie and year is not their time, next year is.
• Why does the Piece of Resistance attach to Emmett's back? It's the cap for the Kragle. It might have had residue left on it.
  • You can see the glue left over on his back after Lord Business removes it with the Knife of Exact Zero.
• When Emmet touches the Piece of Resistance, he has a crazy vision involving images of the real world, including a giant hand, The Man Upstairs, and the cat poster. This makes sense because in order for Finn to attach the Piece to Emmet, he would have had to pick Emmet up (and maybe take him to Finn's dad's desk) giving Emmet glimpses of the real world.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy/Daddy issues is actually a theme throughout the movie, which makes sense after The Reveal. Batman is a main character. His parents are dead. This could represent Finn feeling abandoned by his parents/dad. It's hinted that Wyldstyle was mentored by Vitruvius, so it's possible that he was a father figure to her and she wanted to be The Special partially to make him proud. Wyldstyle/Lucy leaving Batman for Emmet at the end could represent Finn leaving behind his abandonment issues brought on by not being able to play with his dad. Also of note is that one of the more memorable scenes had Star Wars characters in it, and in the climactic scene of the last movie a father makes a Heel–Face Turn because his son still believes there is good in him. Although Luke and Vader don't actually show up...which could be because they're already represented by Emmet and Lord Business, or because the figures didn't come with that kit.
• Finn's dad takes his LEGO-building way too seriously...almost like he's turned it into a job. He's taken what's supposed to be an escape from his (probably) boring real life and turned it into just another thing he has to work on. And if he had glued all of the LEGO pieces in place forever, what would he have done after that? He'd be left with nothing but giant lumps of plastic and glue; sure it might be nice to look at, but he never would have been able to play with them again. That's why he needs Finn to tell him that he's special and important and creative and he doesn't have to be the "bad guy" in this story. He needs to learn how to make his hobby fun again, because otherwise he would have been stuck like that forever.
• In-universe, Emmet inspiring Lord Business's sudden Heel–Face Turn might not have made sense. If the movie was just that universe, then it might have seemed unrealistic and silly and submitting to a cliché overly-idealistic childish optimism. But with The Reveal, it all makes perfect sense once you know that it's actually about a son reaching out to his father and telling him that he loves him and thinks he's amazing and that he just wants to play with him.
  • The Reveal explains pretty much any similar Deus ex Machina moment that appears throughout the movie; it's a child's game. Things like the Millennium Falcon appearing out of nowhere happen because for a kid, it's more fun and cool for that to happen.
• Why does Lord Business actually lock up the Master Builders? It's because the Master Builders do not go with the Lego sets we see in the movie. Them being locked up is actually Finn's dad putting them in special boxes to store them.
  • If you look in the background during the live-action scenes, Finn's dad has one of those walls with little shelves for all the minifigures he doesn't have anywhere to put. It's possible that this is what inspired the Think Tank in young Finn's story.
    • Quite fittingly, a lot of the Master Builders appear to be part of LEGO's Collectable Minifigs line, so they genuinely don't have any sets they belong to.
• Why do the drawings on Emmet's plan look like they were drawn by a kid? Yet another hint at who's controlling the story.
• Guess who was the one who scribbled the new face on Bad Cop?
  • And why was it erased in the first place? Because Lego do make figures with two-faced heads, usually used for emotions. Maybe the Good Cop / Bad Cop was a misprint of some sort, and Finn's dad, being the control freak he is, couldn't decide on one face to use, so scrubbed out the 'wrong' one, leaving the one that actually looks like it belongs on a cop minifigure
• Vitruvius' wizard staff is a mostly eaten sucker with a chewed-on stick. This particular type of sucker has a pole that fits perfectly with Lego minifigure hands, and more than one child has done this before to get a makeshift weapon.
• There is a nod towards the Tsundere trope when Emmet is Distracted by the Sexy ("I like you but I'm angry at you for some reason."). It makes a lot more sense after The Reveal. Finn may have come across works that have Tsunderes and as a kid would have no understanding of exactly why they're Tsunderes. Hence the generalization.
• The *real* reason, of course, that no Marvel characters show up in the film is due to WB making it (and even if they wanted to, they probably wouldn't have wanted to go with any rights fees and stipulations especially for a movie they weren't sure would be a hit), but there are also TWO Fridge Brilliance reasons for why: First, in the Lego Universe, all the Marvel characters may have been captured by Lord Business back during the first conflict between him and the Master Builders, so they are stuck in distant parts of the Think Tank we can't see the whole time and, second thing of Fridge Brilliance Finn only has access to his dad's LEGO, so much like how Bionicle doesn't show up except for a brief cameo, it's just possible that his dad doesn't have any sets from that line. Doesn't explain how they got the Star Wars references in though.
  • They probably just paid for the rights. And Finn's dad has a corner of the Space Section for Star Wars LEGO sets, with the Millennium Falcon and Super Star Destroyer clearly visible.
  • Also explains that brief Lego Friends one. After all, it's a set made for girls and Finn definitely isn't one.
• The simplistic yet overblown nature of the Prophecy of the Special ("the most important, most talented, most interesting, and most extraordinary person in the universe") at first seems like a parody of similar prophecies in fantasy movies, and it certainly functions as that. After The Reveal the viewer realizes that it's so simplistic because it comes from the mind of a child. But it's not until the end, when it's applied to President Business that the final layer is revealed: it's so overblown because it represents the idealized view Finn has of his father, who may seem arbitrary, frustrating, or just plain unfair, but is still a figure of awe.
• When Emmet is telling Lord Business that he's "The most important, most talented, most interesting, and most extraordinary person in the universe", notice that the first shot shows him saying it to the camera.
• Emmet is repeatedly stated to be no one special, a completely ordinary guy. He also spends most of his time facing the 'camera' so the audience only gets a few glimpses at the back of his head. Emmet has a cowlick on the back of his head, a feature that no other Lego minifig (other than the tie-in sets of him) has. He's been special since the beginning, it was just hard to see.
• The story is being told by Finn, a young boy. President Business represents Finn's father, who, being an adult, is a lot taller than Finn. So that's why President Business has those ridiculous platform shoes; it's part of how Finn sees his father!
  • In unused dialog, President Business certainly makes a big deal about how being taller than everyone else means he can boss them around...
• "emet" is the word inscribed on a golem that animates it. Breaking the Fourth Wall or referring to Finn?
• After Vitruvius says the prophecy, Lord Business tells him, "Oh, yes, the prophecy... that YOU made up!" Later in the movie, we find out that he's right- the prophecy was made up (but true).
• In the beginning of the movie when Emmet is following the instructions, it seems like he's acting ridiculous in a way that might cause the audience to think following the instructions is "bad." Later when Emmet and the Master Builders are building the Octan spaceship, they all do it step by step as written in the manual. This shows that following the instructions can be good; even UniKitty is willingly helping. Why is it good now? Because now they chose the goal themselves and they know exactly why they are doing it. In the beginning of the movie, following the instructions was bad because they didn't have a choice.
  • Also, when they're building the submarine to escape from the destruction of Cloud Cuckoo Land, the film shows the downside of aimless creativity (which Emmett also later points out): the builders are incapable of working together because they're all so focused on doing their own thing, resulting in the submarine they build quickly falling apart. In the end, the movie isn't really promoting one extreme over the other and is instead saying that there needs to be a balance between being creative while also being able to work with others hence Finn and his dad (and his sister) playing together at the end - which is exactly the kind of life lesson a child starts to understand at roughly 8 years old.
• At one point, Batman mockingly tells Emmet "Yeah I read your instructions, dad..." which may subtly refer to Finn's subconscious disagreement with his father's insistence to follow instructions.
  • Another hint is when Lord Business complains about Bad Cop's parents constantly fidgeting when he's trying to Kragle them, which sounds an awful lot like an anal-retentive man complaining his parents won't sit still for a picture.
  • Another thing that's interesting about this scene is that it reveals that President Business isn't the only representation of Finn's father in the story that Finn is telling. In many ways, Emmett himself is a representation of Finn's dad - whereas President Business represents a darker view of Finn's dad, Emmett is Finn's dad in the moments when he's not obsessing over the state of his Legos or too distracted by his work to play with Finn.
• Bad Cop said to Emmet that the robots found Emmet convulsing at the construction site after touching the Piece of Resistance. Now it would seem like a classical case of being possessed by a supernatural being, but the supernatural being in this case is Finn and Emmet was being directly manipulated by the hand of the child.
• Rewatching some of the trailers, one of the songs used is "Feel This Moment" by Pitbull and Christina Aguilera. That song takes the beat to A-Ha's "Take On Me" for which the best known video clip has a woman meeting a man from a series of black-and-white comic books and the two worlds colliding for a moment. This song hides it very well, but if you know what song "Feel This Moment" was based on and the video clip, then you could guess a major plot point in this film.
• Note Lord Business' colour scheme. Red and black. A colour combination very well known to be symbolic of evil. Maybe Finn and the narrative he played out which was based on his father whom he saw as the 'bad guy' meant he made a good decision to use those colours.
  • Let's not forget how tall Lord Business is, the coffee cups on his helmet, his tie-shaped cape and the fact that from behind he looks like a tie (the helmet representing a tie knot or clip) which is representative of Finn's father, whom also wears business attire, in particular his vibrant red tie (this recurs vividly throughout the film and is a main symbol in business). The fact that part of the villain's name is Business doesn't help, as well as a possible proclamation of 'Lord' and 'President' due to Finn's perception of his father ruling over everything.
  • The constant announcements of the 'bad guys'? Finn is telling the story based on his father whom he perceives to be the 'bad guy' in resenting him, so maybe this becomes metaphysical when you see who this is directed at ("you don't have to be the bad guy" - Emmet to Lord Business a.k.a. his father) and who says it ("Ruh roh, it's the bad guys" - Bad Cop). Also notable is that an 8 year old telling the story means the use of opposing forces between the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys'.
• President Business says "...Follow the rules (or you'll be put to sleep)." What happens when a kid doesn't follow the rules? Early bedtime, either missing out on dinner or their favorite TV show, depending on how strict their parents are.
• President Business' rant about how nobody told him he was special so he went and made something of himself, specifically, "I never got a medal just for showing up" or "got told I was some special little snowflake" is a nod to the classic bit where a parent mocks a kid for coming home with a "participation award", and real concerns that undeserved praise fosters a lifetime of mediocrity.
  • Note how this rant comes when President Business is pretty much at the height of his villainy - he's just captured Emmett and the others and is planning to "release the Kragle" with seemingly nothing to stand in his way. Now consider that this is exactly the kind of thing a parent says when they're particularly angry or frustrated with their child, and how an 8 year old would perceive that situation. Now consider the sheer number of times in the film people insist that Emmett isn't anyone special. In this context, President Business' rant becomes more than just a playful jab at the people who throw around "snowflake" as a generic insult and moves into slight Fridge Horror territory. Finn's dad has probably said that exact thing to him before now and Finn only being 8 would have taken it to heart. Finn's absolute insistence to his dad that Emmett is special possibly reflects his conviction that he himself is special, even if he perceives his father not believing that.
• How could Emmet move in the real world? I don't know about you, but I was certain my Lego bricks were hiding from me when I wasn't looking.
• President Business's name. At first, it sounds like a cliche villain name, but since Finn based him on his dad, and may not fully understand what his dad does as a career (based on his attire, it is likely in the business field), he may have named him "President Business" as a nod to his controlling demeanor and what he does.
  • Alternately, his full name could be Sirius Business.
• Both songs that are original to the film ("Everything Is Awesome" and especially Batman's "Untitled Self Portrait") have Stylistic Suck elements to them. This fits in with The Reveal because in-universe, both songs were written by an eight year old, presumably based on his impressions of contemporary pop music and industrial metal (or just loud, "angsty" music in general). It's not surprising that Finn has experience with the current top 40, because by definition a lot of those songs are played everywhere. As for "Untitled Self Portrait", he may have some teenage relative who listens to industrial metal or what have you; he either actually heard a little of this music through them, or just based the song on what he thought it might sound like. You could apply this to Where Are My Pants?, being based on Finn's vague idea of what prime-time sitcoms are like.
• There are numerous Big Brotheresque banners up all around the city with messages from Lord Business:
  "DON'T STAY UP ALL NIGHT"
  "DON'T TOUCH MY STUFF"
  "BECAUSE I SAID SO"
  "WHAT PART OF 'NO' DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?"
  "COLOR INBETWEEN THE LINES."
  • After The Reveal, they start to make a lot more sense - they're practically textbook Dad-phrases.
  • Additionally, Lord Business's Deadly Euphemism of "put to sleep" makes more sense after The Reveal, too: who hasn't been punished as a kid by being sent to bed early?
• The LEGO world was chugging along, ordinary, oblivious, and mundane, until Finn came along and started changing things, introducing the concept of creativity and innovation to the world, doing so in direct opposition to the commands of the one who actually rules it (his dad). When Emmet has an encounter with Finn, he returns to his world imbued with all the powers of a Master Builder, passing on the creative spark to all. Finn is Prometheus.
• Emmet is said to have the most common of all faces, yet it's actually a unique model. Of course, an eight-year-old wouldn't consciously notice the differences, and hence believe it actually is the standard model, but subconsciously he'd have picked a unique one as the main character of his story, and that's where the inconsistency comes from.
  • It is the standard face, as best seen when Emmett is in the real world
• Why does President Business's office have an infinite number of floors? Finn must have asked an adult for the biggest number that exists, and wasn't told that it means going on forever.
• All of the Master Builders seen at Cloud Cuckoo Land share two things. First, they're all figures that Lego had already made, and second... they're all famous people (fictional or otherwise) that Finn would have undoubtedly heard of at least in passing. Superheroes, Ninja Turtles, basketball stars, even real people like Lincoln, Cleopatra, Shakespeare, etc... they're all people that Finn holds in high regard, either as great thinkers, artists, or just really cool people.
  • Abraham Lincoln was in the movie and was only made as a minifigure for this franchise. Still someone Finn would have heard of.
• Why do Lord Business' coffee mugs shoot fire? It's made by a little kid, who doesn't interact with coffee much. His parents probably do, and one day he got curious and it burned him. Therefore coffee is fire and adults like fire.
• The time card during the construction scene near at the beginning states six hours. Of course it's gonna be six hours, as that's the usual time for a normal school day! No doubt Finn does go to school considering his age, and he naturally may have assumed most jobs work like this.

...and everything not related to The Reveal

• How much of an inexperienced doofus is Emmett? Note that he sits on the horse improperly, and doesn't use the grooves intended for minifig legs.
• The Western saloon is playing a honky tonk piano version of "Everything is Awesome".
• Everything made by President Business is orderly and aesthetically correct. The machines made by the Master Builders are functional and cool but lopsided and prone to breaking down easily. Have you ever built something out of mixed LEGO sets before? Those are the sorts of things you invariably end up with. But when Emmet unlocks his Master Builder potential, it combines with his knowledge of the instructions, so his construction equipment mecha is not only cool but also symmetrical and attractive. It's sleek and looks like something you would build from instructions despite being a hodgepodge.
  • In short: Lord Business is Boring, but Practical, Master Builders are Cool, but Inefficient/Awesome, but Impractical, and Emmet is awesome, yet practical.
  • Also, when the double-decker couch isn't broken apart after the submarine was attacked; it was close enough to something built with instructions that it didn't have the frailty of a normal Master Builder's creations (and also may have been why the Micro Managers overlooked it).
    • It didn’t come apart because he (presumably) made sure to push the pieces down firmly to make it more stable. When the others were making the submarine, each was going crazy fast and undoing what the others did. They likely didn’t push the pieces down firmly.
• Perhaps unintentional but one of the TV spots uses "That's Not My Name" by The Ting Tings. Wyldstyle is not her real name.
• If you rewatch Emmet's morning routine as he greets his neighbours, you might notice that, while he knows their names, none of them of them greet him back with his name, instead calling him things like 'dude' or 'buddy'. This gains new layers when you find out that they all consider him a bit of an unmemorable blank slate and probably can't actually remember his name.
  • Emmet's design himself. He's an unremarkable "blank slate" because he's a standard Lego man with no real facial features other than the default smiley face and Black Bead Eyes. Compared to the others, who have their own unique faces, he really is forgettable because he's literally one of an enormous group.
• The tentacled machine that Lord Business plans to unleash is called the TAKOS. Tako is the Japanese word for octopus.
• It's been shown that all Master Builders have their own area of expertise or preference. Batman only works in black/grey, UniKitty only builds things that are colorful and cute, Benny's great with 80s technology, etc. So then, if all the people in the LEGO universe have the potential to become Master Builders, even those who think like Emmet, why did Emmet take so long to unlock his potential? Maybe because his area of expertise is construction equipment! In the beginning of the movie, he's always one step ahead of his fellow construction workers, already handing them whatever piece they need when they ask for it. Plus, the first truly awesome thing he builds without instructions (apart from the double-decker couch, of course) happens after he lands back in LEGO land—and he crashes straight into a construction site!
• Dumbledore and Gandalf being friends. Aside from the awesomeness of having two of the most powerful wizards in literature together, there's also this: Dumbledore is canonically gay, and Gandalf is portrayed on film by openly gay actor Ian McKellen. Crossover Shipping, anyone?
  • What's more, the two have literally got beards that they can swap!
• Upon hearing of the Double-Decker Couch, one of the problems Lord Business mentions relating to it is "Who would sit on the bottom?", since that's the less desirable place. After the final battle, when the characters are relaxing on the couch, Business has apparently volunteered to take the "worst" place, signifying his change.
• After spending a few moments in Cloud Cuckoo Land, Batman grumbles that he hates it as a clown and a guy in a green dinosaur suit dance around him. Not only does the world's colorful and cheery atmosphere contrast with his dark and brooding demeanor, but Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you realize that it also makes sense that Batman would hate clowns and green reptile men.
• Of course Green Lantern is a master builder. Making things is what he does!
  • And Superman. This is a guy who restores the Titanic in his spare time, and rebuild the Great Wall of China just by looking at it.
• Piece of Resistance? Kind of a weird name for a magical relic. Until you realize that it's just 'piece de resistance', translated into English.
• The Piece of Resistance could also be foreshadowing what the Kragle is: When you put the cap on, it "resists" the glue coming out. Plus, ever had a cap that glued itself on to the tube? It's really hard to get it off if you still wanna use that tube. It's a literal piece that resists.
• Why does Princess UniKitty finally snap at the end? Usually she forces down negative emotions and focuses on the bright side, however there is no bright side to your friends being violently attacked by swarms of robots.
• Emmet's terrible at pretending to be a cowboy, so why can he imitate a robot better than Wyldstyle? He hasn't had an original thought in years, so he's basically a robot already.
  • Considering the garbage TV that citizens of Bricksburg watch, it would not be above perpetuating stereotypes, possibly further evidenced as to how Emmet thinks a cowboy acts and wondering why everyone in the bar is staring at him.
• Why is Green Lantern made fun of so much and portrayed as so useless? His superpower is to build stuff with his mind... but he's in a world of LEGO. EVERYONE can do that!
  • Yeah, but can they do it out of thin air?
    • It could just be a nod to the fact that translucent green Lego pieces are pretty rare and limited in shape, making representing his powers impractical. (Not to mention that translucent bricks have an incredibly weak hold.)
    • Or a nod to the comic where Green Lanterns used to be weak against yellow. Yellow minifigs are in the majority.
    • Or a way to keep him from doing anything that would solve every problem the Master Builders face in less than ten seconds.
    • Or because, in order to use his Green Lantern powers, he needs to wear his Green Lantern ring''. How exactly are you going to fit a ring on a LEGO minifigure?
    • The official DC LEGO sets have gotten around the issue of minifigures not having fingers by having the object needing to be held represented by a LEGO stud. Of course, given how small those are, it could be that Finn lost Green Lantern's "ring" piece like any boy would be expected to do with a small toy that could easily be scattered when not carefully looked after.
• Superman hitting on the Statue of Liberty is just a Take That! at his reputation as The Cape. "Truth, justice and the American way" and all that.
• Why is Vitruvius' room built with the walls and ceiling behaving like floor surfaces? He's blind, so removing the problem with walking into walls would be a priority for him.
• Some of the actual toys sold include none of the leading characters, a rare move in any Merchandise-Driven media. By the end of the movie, everyone in this world is a Master Builder, so it still fits.
• Similarly, MetalBeard's Non-Standard Character Design is no longer so, when some of the civilians rebuild vehicles into mecha. Everyone is special indeed.
• MetalBeard's pirate law about "never put your rear end on a pirate's face". Sounds like he really hates the Stern Chase.
• Vitruvius has a tie-dyed top under his robes. Look at that headband again, and watch all the hippy tropes roll in.
• During the Traintop Battle, Bad Cop shoots Emmet with something nonlethal but still making him yelp. That's the most plausible moment for the bug to be planted.
  • You can see it attach on contact (it actually is visible for a few frames before the angle changes), but then for a while after that it's gone. It doesn't show up again until Emmet's speech inside The Dog. So that's definitely when it was planted, but the filmmakers kinda cheated to keep it from being noticed.
    • It actually wouldn't be considered a cheat if you apply The Reveal into this: Finn must've removed the bug right after the scene of Bad Cop shooting Emmet with it, possibly because it would've hindered Emmet's movement or made the figure bothersome to hold. He only reattached the bug for the scene of it being discovered.
• Vitruvius seemed to go down with very little fanfare after his fight with the robots, but of course he did - he's blind so he was probably using his Master Builder sense to know what was going on in the fight, and the penny isn't a LEGO piece and so wouldn't be visible to those.
  • Same with why he thought Wyldstyle was the Special: the Piece isn’t LEGO and she wasn’t wearing a cape or hood-down piece, which would be pushed in if she was the Special.
  • The reason he ended up using binoculars to look at a wall right in front of him and tried throwing the birds out a closed window? He didn’t think to use his skill.
  • He also might not be able to detect printing/color.
• In the Creative Closing Credits each stop motion Lego scene is matched with the names being shown. This is rather straight forward for the actual characters like Batman, Emmet, etc, but what do you show for the 12 or so executive producers? Well, their Lego scene features champagne, stretch limos, awards ceremonies and private jets.
  • Production Designer Grant Freckelton has an owl show up on his scene, referencing his previous work as Art Director for the Owls of Ga'Hoole.
• Emmett saying "It's big. I must be smart." when they're inside his mind foreshadows Emmett in the end being smart enough to become a Master Builder. Notice Virtuvius doesn't say he isn't smart, just that there's "not a lot of activity" in his mind.
• Most of the movie's main characters have some kind of "theme" that relates to their building preference and usually their personality. So why does Wyldstyle have a graffiti theme, of all things? Because it's representative of Master Builders and their conflict with Lord Business. When it comes down to it, Lord Business' problem with them is that they misuse public property for artistic purposes - sound familiar?
• Why is it that the cover lies? Finn probably wanted the characters that ended up not important to the plot to be important to it, but as time went by he couldn't fit them into the story after all..!
• At first, Superman being stopped by pieces of gum seems like The Worf Effect/Adaptational Wimp in place. But if you think about it, it makes sense: real-life objects like gum, golf balls and the Krazy glue are treated as mystical objects in the LEGO realm, and Superman has always been vulnerable to magic!
  • And while this version presumably still has Super-Strength, it’s only super relative to other minifigs. The gum was sticky, so it stuck him to the ground. That stopped him from using his flight. His lasers were his only power that would be able to get him out of the gum…but his eyes were out of the gum and his head was unable to turn. The bots probably also took him from behind.
• Lord Business abandoning Bad Cop in the Think Tank really was "just business". Bad Cop was hired to capture the last remaining Master Builders. Following the destruction of Cloud Cuckoo Land and Emmet's failed infiltration of the headquarters, there are no Master Builders left to capture. Thus, Bad Cop has outlived his usefulness, and there's no point keeping him around any more.
• At first, having a cast with a lot of stars looks like the standard fare for a big-budget movie, but it makes even more sense when it's revealed that this is all a story being told by a child; the actors in question are all well-known for playing the archetypes seen in the movie (i.e. Liam Neeson as the Badbutt cop, Chris Pratt as the awkward Reluctant Hero, and Morgan Freeman as a wise mentor figure (he did manage to pull off God pretty well...)), so it's not at all surprising that Finn might have seen bits and pieces of these movies and had those voices associated with those characters.
• Batman's preference of black and sometimes very dark gray is a very clever reference to the Batman comics: they follow a theme of Black-and-Gray Morality. After all, they take place in a Crapsack World (Gotham City) and the protagonist, Batman, is an Antihero of sorts whose methods of dealing with criminals are brutally beating them to a bloody pulp. It is also a subtle example of Invoked Trope.
• It's clear that Emmett believes, sincerely and whole-heartedly, in the groupthink tennets perpetrated by Lord Business (or, more precisely, in the non-malevolent, "face value" spirit of groupthink like teamwork and camraderie). This is borne out in a couple of plot points:
  • Why was Emmett able to deliver an awesome Rousing Speech on the pirate ship whereas earlier in The Dog he failed miserably at same? Because in The Dog, he was trying to sell himself to the Master Builders as The Special, and Emmett didn't have much faith in himself at the time so how could he inspire it in others? But later on the pirate ship, his speech is about cooperation and working toward a common goal, something he's very familiar with so he sounds more confident and convincing.
  • It has been noted elsewhere on this page that Emmett is always one step ahead of his co-workers, handing them a needed piece almost before they even ask for it. In fact, Emmett is the only one of the construction workers shown to be so on-the-ball; so how is it that the co-workers fail to recognize someone who is probably the single best worker they have (other than the obvious, to sell Emmett as The Generic Guy)? Simple: as stated, Emmett truly believes in the spirit of teamwork; but his co-workers, like most of us, are probably just trying to get through their day, engaging in just enough "groupthink" to avoid unnecessary conflict and keeping their heads down most of the time. And when your head is down, you don't see what's right in front of you.
• Emmet's status as The Chosen One among Master Builders actually has some merit, despite the prophecy being made up. Whenever Master Builders built anything out of random parts, their creations usually only worked for a short time (Wyldstyle's bike/hovercraft, the group's submarine), or not at all (Shaquille O'Neill's catapult). But Emmet's Humongous Mecha creation was grand enough to catch the Micro-manager's collective attention, while his background as a construction worker meant his creation was durable enough to withstand a large amount of attacks, only losing one wrecking ball when dogpiled by Micro-managers.
  • People on You Tube comment sections before COPPA erased them from existence have also stated that it could also be that Emmet incorporates his pre-existing construction knowledge into the builds, and that's how they're so durable.
• President Business mispronounces the names of the artefacts for comic/fantasy effect. But why doesn't he know what a nail is? Because nobody in his universe has fingers (or builds anything out of timber).
• When Emmet first meets Vitruvius, Wyldstyle tries to prove that Emmet can't possibly be the Special, and challenges him to build a racecar using only the bricks in the room. Emmet looks around and blankly points out he can't see any wheels, which Wyldstyle and Vitruvius take as a sign of his lack of ability or imagination... except he totally has a point. Any car would need at least three wheels to be classed as such (only two would make it a bike), as well as something to steer it with (also a wheel-shaped object). It's a very brief moment but it points out the entire fallacy of the Master Builders: they think everything has to be 'out of the box', but forget that sometimes things have a function for a reason. A car does need wheels, Emmet was in no way wrong about saying that, yet they reacted as if he was... except how else would they make a car?
• Vitruvius was killed by Business' penny despite minifigures being able to put themselves back together. This is because he was killed with a relic.

Fridge Horror

• Considering that the entire film is one big Allegory Adventure, the fact that Good/Bad Cop's face got erased with nail polish means that Finn or his dad did it themselves.
  • The WMG suggested that Bad Cop's "good face" was a defective product from the factory, and that Finn's father wiped it off to make it "perfect".
    • There are actually some Lego minifigs who come with faces on both sides of their heads (typically ones with hair or helmets that obscure the back one) so that they can display different facial expressions. The Lego Ghostbusters for example have both a happy expression and a scared expression.
    • When there are heads like that, the expression is pretty much all that changes - not sunglasses to normal glasses.
• During the Taco Tuesday commercial, President Business threatens that all rule-breakers "will be put to sleep." Why, of all the euphemisms he could have used, does President Business choose that one? What does a parent say to their child when their pet has died?
  • Or it could be seen as a Fridge Brilliance if you consider a parent telling their children to go to their bedroom when they're grounded.
• Finn's dad taking apart his son's creations and generally not encouraging his creativity. As pointed out in the Awesome section, Finn is a very creative kid, having made an entire story involving different characters. Had Finn's dad successfully discouraged his son's creativity, Finn would probably never fully realize the extent of his abilities, which is just horrifying to think about.
• Although largely Played for Laughs in The LEGO Movie, Benny is a character who, in a non-comedy film such as Gravity, would be living in a nightmare. A lonely astronaut who has been in the empty vacuum of space for thirty years, barely surviving with a cracked helmet that has left him oxygen-deprived for who-knows-how-many years, and the lack of oxygen going to his brain has turned him into a loony Perpetual Smiler suffering from Space Madness and constantly rambling about SPACESHIP. Think about that and shudder.
• Consider for a moment the possibility that everything that has ever happened to you was caused by the will of bickering, fallible deities who mostly don't even think of you as a living thing, and wouldn't even notice if they stepped on you by accident^*Okay, they'd probably still notice, this being LEGO, but you know what we mean. Yeah, this film may be Played for Laughs, but at the end of the day it's basically a Cosmic Horror Story.
• If the whole film is one big Allegory Adventure, did Finn base Emmet's obscurity on himself, because he suffers the exact same problem at school and has no friends?
• The death of Vitruvius is this once you learn about Finn and how he has been controlling the entire plot of the movie from the beginning. This means that Vitruvius has died not because of Lord Business, as it seems at first, but because Finn wanted him to for the sake of the story he's telling. And what's worse, Finn has no idea that Vitruvius is actually alive, and thus has no real idea about what he's just done. Granted, Finn brings Vitruvius back as a ghost, but man, that is still very chilling.
  • It becomes less chilling when you realize that Vitruvius isn't really dead. Well his figure is just fine, at the very least. Finn merely put a ghost sheet over it and attached a string to it.
  • Hmm, where have we heard of this before? Coincidentally, that's another rare film starring Will Ferrell in a serious non-comedic role.
• It's kind of chilling when you realize that, given that Lord Business cuts the Piece of Resistance off Emmet with an X-Acto knife, Finn has basically been playing with knives.
  • Which may be another reason why Finn's dad doesn't want Finn playing with his things; many hobbies have tools that could injure a child, and Finn is old enough/tall enough to reach them even if they're stowed away.
  • It could have been the dad that removed the piece with the knife.
• Taking both the above points into account, does that mean Finn deliberately Kragled Bad Cop's parents for the sake of the story?
  • Finn's dad may have been testing the glue's effectiveness and used (in his mind) two unimportant figures.
• It makes it difficult to forget that the Micro Managers look quite similar to the Martian war machines in The War of the Worlds, as well as the TAKOS right down to the nozzle with the spray having some sort of resemblance to the Heat Ray. It becomes apparent when you realise that Lord Business was planning to take over the world, as it were, by turning the world to his design. The Martians did a similar thing with the Red Weed, to make Earth look like Mars. The way the Micro Managers collapse at the end as well after being deactivated look eerily similar to how the war machines have been scattered about after the bacteria hit.
• The Kragle is Krazy Glue. Some glue removers (like "UN-GLU Mineral Spirits") can be corrosive on certain plastics (like those not meant to have mineral spirits used on them—e.g. toys vs. model ships or cars), discoloring them at a minimum if not disfiguring them. Even if that doesn't happen, it's still meant to strip paint off, which means more may end up like Bad Cop.
  • How many people who play with LEGO ever keep the same products in the same containers? Chances are, the product inside that can is not what was originally in it.
• So... what movies did Finn watch to include a Chainsaw Grip Minigun?
  • Team Fortress 2 with sillygibs.
• The Exogorth had swallowed the Millenium Falcon thanks to Batman. How is that going to change the story of the movies?

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