Headscratchers / Face/Off

The film:

• Castor Troy is shown to only kill Walsh, Miller and Tito in the fire, so why didn't the other doctors who helped perform the surgery say anything to defend the real Archer?
  • Perhaps Castor arranged for everyone else to all have unfortunate accidents that don't tip off the police.
  • It's possible the other doctors weren't informed who their patient or the donor really was, as a security protocol and/or to ensure they'd have plausible deniability. Even if there's never a formal inquiry into what went down so they wouldn't get called to testify about a morally-dubious counterterrorism op, cutting off an unconscious prisoner's face with neither medical necessity nor consent is hardly in compliance with the Hippocratic Oath.
  • Even if the other surgeons knew the details on the surgery, all they knew about was that Archer was given Castor's face. Dr. Walsh was the only one at the hospital who knew about Castor being given Archer's.
• How did Troy even get Archer's face? He's one guy. As I remember it, he wakes up, the medical and police team has an Oh, Crap! moment and next thing we know he's got Archer's face. He's one guy. They would have had to sedate him to put the other face on. Castor has no resources there, and he's just a regular human, why didn't anyone just strap him down again while he was sedated?
  • He wasn't one man. He'd called in his friends. They're the ones that actually haul Dr. Walsh in. You're misremembering how the movie went.
  • The real question is how could the surgery possibly be performed in a single night by a single doctor, when originally it required an entire team and much more time?
  • The hard part may have been removing the two faces in such a fashion that neither the face nor the various underlying structures would be damaged, not the attachment process. If so, the team already did that part; Walsh just went through the procedure they'd already laid the groundwork for, having intended to perform it on Archer himself to reverse the surgery once his mission was over.
• This continuously bugs me: after the switch is made, Castor goes home to the "lonely wife," Eve Archer. It is implied through foreplay and dialogue that the two did sleep together physically in the same bed and have sex. Wouldn't Eve known something was immediately wrong by reasoning that Archer did not..."feel" the same way as she would expect?
  • Perhaps she would, but it's not like one night of different sex would make her immediately suspect her "husband" is Castor Troy wearing her real husband's face. Plus, notice that Castor looks in Eve's diary and reads that they haven't been getting it on much recently (as in not in the last two months, to which Castor quips "What a loser"), so she may just chalk it up to remembering poorly.
    • I expected there to be a Chekhov's Gun about his lack of scar being how she identified him either before or during said lovemaking.
    • Castor may have explained the lack of scar simply by saying that he got plastic surgery while he was away, which is, twistedly enough, the truth.
    • In the script, before driving to Michael's grave, it's suggested that Eve is suspicious, as in the script she states, "Last night, I thought — this isn't my husband. Then I woke up in the middle of the night — and found you passed out in the study."
  • Castor read's Eve's diary, and finds out that they hadn't slept together for 6 months, and seeing as it's implied before Castor killed Michael, Archer was much more "fun" and energetic, only to lapse into workaholism and depression, perhaps the nights they did sleep together before the 6 month dry spell, weren't very... enthusiastic, and she wrote off his sudden increased sex drive as the weight being lifted off after finally "killing Castor" and stopping his last deed.

• How the hell does Castor get away with shooting Agent Loomis when Pollux gets killed? I know the ballistics might have taken a while to do, but Castor uses his FBI duty pistol to headshot Loomis, which should have been easy to trace. And I can't even remember if Pollux had a gun on him at that point.
  • Pollux did have a pistol. You can see him raise it as Archer swings over on the rope and he is about to shoot when Archer slams into him and knocks him into the skylight, and he falls to his death.
  • Castor would also have had the advantage that it's unlikely anyone would have thought to test the bullet in Loomis against 'Archer's' gun. With so many different guns being fired that night, determining exactly who fired which bullet wouldn't particularly matter, especially when Loomis would have died so soon after the rest of the agents on the raid that nobody would be able to confirm he actually died after the main fight was over. Hell, even if they work out that it was "Archer" who shot him, the cops might think he caught an unlucky headshot or that "Archer" was startled.
• So if Castor is a terrorist for hire... who exactly hired him to plant the bomb? By all rights that would be the real Big Bad (at least of the first act).
  • Perhaps once Archer defeated Castor for good and had his face restored, the first task he did upon being declared fit to return to duty was track down Castor's employer.
    • Or Troy was branching out and going into business for himself.

• What's the point of Erehwon Prison? It seems that it's a secret prison where criminals are held without trial. Why? If they're criminals who were captured on American soil, why wouldn't they be tried in the courts and then sentenced? Or if they're really dangerous, just hold them there pending trial. There doesn't seem to be any legal or practical reason for that prison to exist.
  • No less a luminary than Michael J. Nelson also pointed out just how absurdly expensive the prison must be to operate, especially with the electromagnetic lockdown grid and special boots all prisoners have to wear. And why the need for such exorbitantly expensive technology when your prison is in the middle of an ocean and any escapees would be ludicrously easy to recapture? Sure, Archer got away, but that was only because the guys in charge of Erehwon were too stupid to search for him. Also, "The Geneva Convention does not apply here"? No shit, dude, it doesn't apply to anyone who's not a P.O.W. Come to think of it, "the guys in charge of Erehwon were too stupid" just might be the best answer to all our questions.

• Why did the doctor even give Castor the surgery? Even if they killed him for not doing it, it still means that Castor is without a face, so there's at least the possibly he won't be able to succeed. Or did he just think Castor would let him live afterwards?
  • Castor threatened to torture him and slaughter his family.
  • Earlier versions of the script suggested that Castor and/or his two lackeys used torture to coerce Dr. Walsh into performing the surgery. That, or they did use the "we have men waiting to kill your family if you don't cooperate" approach.
    • The family threat seems to be the only effective one since it would be rather easy for Dr. Walsh to kill Castor and/or himself during the surgery.
  • Easy - the doctor was scared shitless and did the one thing that gave him a decent chance of living a little longer; rational analysis likely didn't even come into it. Turned out he was wrong but what can you do?

• Did no one investigate the fire at the institution? Shouldn't someone have discovered that the three victims whose lives it claimed were all tied up, or that it had been set deliberately with gasoline?
  • Perhaps the LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division investigated, but since there were no records of Archer or Castor ever being at the Institute (this thing was done entirely off the bookies), they probably were able to prove that yes, someone deliberately tied up Dr. Walsh, Miller and Tito, then burned down the building. Without any evidence to tie Castor to the Institute, he won't be considered a suspect. The LAPD is able to prove that Tito and Miller were there, but since the plastic surgery was off-the-books, that's all they can prove, and to them, it may seem like they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
  • Except that Miller and Tito were federal agents, so the FBI —which would naturally include whoever else signed off on the surgery to begin with, because NO administrative officials EVER act alone in a federal bureaucracy— would absolutely be involved in the investigation.
  • As was said before, the police investigation would undoubtedly prove arson, and the bodies were identified. However, Archer's surgery was done off-the-books, meaning that only a few people truly knew that Archer was impersonating Castor, and thanks to the arson, all of them are dead save for Archer and Castor. As far as anyone not in on the job sees it, Castor had just been shipped off to Erewhon Prison while Archer was away on an unknown assignment. As for Tito, Feds might believe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hell, it might even be believed that the Walsh Institute fire was started by a third party trying to cover up an unrelated incident.
  • What about the remaining surgeons? Did Castor also kill them? But how would he even find them? Or were all of them so afraid for their lives (even though nothing pointed to them, so they were most likely safe) that not a single one went to the police?
• Why didn't Archer's wife tell anyone about the facial transplant before the shootout at the funeral?
  • Without anyone else except Archer himself to back up her claim, it might take a while to convince them.
• Why don't they just interrogate Pollux for the bomb's location?
  • Archer's boss makes a big deal about how they don't have any concrete proof that there is a bomb. I don't think it's legal to torture someone over something they don't know for sure is a real thing. (I don't even think it's legal for them to torture even if they knew the bomb was real, but they might be able to utilize more extreme measures if they had proof.)
  • Simple: Torture is completely useless for getting genuine information.
  • Plus Archer said the only person Pollux would talk to about anything really is Castor. He would die before telling them anything.
• Sasha tells Archer that she brought her son to stay with relatives or friends before the confrontation at the funeral...If that's the case, how did Archer find him in order to adopt him, and how was he able to take him from the last people his mother had left him with? I know Sasha had told Sean to look after the boy before she died, but that was because she still thought he was Castor.
  • That's not even getting into the fact of exactly how Archer managed to adopt, you know, the son of his most personal and hated nemesis. Apart from that, imagine you adopted the child of the person who murdered your child, then that child grows up, puberty kicks in and hey, guess who he looks like?
  • To be fair, the boy doesn't look that much like Castor at the moment. As for how Archer found him, Sasha's social circle is probably small enough that it wouldn't be hard to track down people she would have trusted with her son who wouldn't have been involved in recent events.

• Okay, it's obvious Joan was going to be upset about Archer going away on assignment. I mean, what spouse wouldn't be? But even though Archer was under explicit orders not to tell anyone what the assignment was, surely his wife would be one such person who should be in the know, in case something went wrong?

• Why can't Sean simply show his chest to his wife? While he tries to convince her after she's out of bathroom, why does he try a lot? He had kept the scar having resulted from the murder of his son before the surgery. This little detail was not even forgotten at the end of the movie, when he said "You can remove that scar now," making the audience feel he's finally freed from the trauma, after defeating Castor. Then, why can't he show that scar while it's there, to his wife? She wouldn't need to take the blood sample from the man sleeping in her bed, risking his finding out about her sudden escape to her hospital in the middle of the night...
  • The scar isn't exactly proof of anything; if she was actually dealing with Castor Troy, the man seems crazy enough to have had himself shot to lend weight to such a seemingly insane story.

• If Troy and Archer have differing blood types and this fact is a plot point in getting Archer's wife to realize Archer is Troy, how come Archer's body didn't reject Troy's face when it was put on him?
  • Anti-rejection drugs. These days people that get Real Life facial transplants need to take them for basically the rest of their lives.
  • Same applies to any transplant really.
    • Yeah, but that's not mentioned: they never take any either.
    • The film has advanced medical tech to grow an ear from scratch and transplant someone's face onto someone else, and the doctor even mentioned the anti-inflammatories they have help healing in days rather than weeks. With these in mind, it's not hard to imagine they managed to make some form of anti-rejection that doesn't have to be taken very much, maybe even a pump device that does so.
  • Also, the latency of rejection varies between people; some people reject in days and some take weeks. It could be that rejection never came up as an issue because it wasn't happening to a noticeable degree yet. Even if Castor had to be on any kind of medication, he could easily be disguising them as painkillers, and nobody would question it because he is pretending to be an Agent in a high stress job.
    • Taking that further, it could be that Archer was given anti-rejection medication that would last for at least a few weeks to ensure he could convincingly pass as Castor without Pollux noticing any inexplicable medical needs, and as previously speculated, Castor could be disguising his own medication as standard painkillers.
• How does his wife not notice his penis is different? Something brought up by many critics, including Roger Ebert.
  • It's implied that the couple haven't been having sexual relations for a while. Beyond that they two may not have that different a penis. It's not exactly a one of a kind part.
  • An early draft of the script had a line stating that Castor and Archer had virtually identical body types and, yes, penis sizes. While the line isn't in the film, I imagine the idea must have still been in mind.
• How did Castor learn the identities of everyone who's aware of Archer going undercover as him so fast? You could assume he had Dr. Walsh coerced into giving up the others, but they all arrive simultaneously.

The Reality Show:

• What on earth was up with the beginning of season 4's "Alien Apocalypse"? Eric has unexplained family issues and thus doesn't get to go to the set of the show for inspiration. Since the show at the time hadn't even aired yet, this is a huge setback. Obviously since this isn't remotely his fault, the proper thing to do is to let him go first picking out his species. So why did they also decide he should go dead last? Also, slightly off topic, why did the Defiance guest judge complain that Eric's job was "patchwork" instead of "hybrid"? Hybrid between a living organic creature and a machine? Are 99ers machines capable of organically breeding? And if so, how on earth was Eric supposed to know that?
  • It's not really called out (though it's more visible in later seasons when they show more of the workflow), but everyone in all seasons and challenges are given tablets and reference material.