History Headscratchers / PiratesOfTheCaribbean

** The Pearl is shown to be faster in "Curse of the Black Pearl" due to it's rowers and being to go at incredibly fast speeds with the wind, presumably due to it being incredibly light. This is what enables it to catch up with the Interceptor, the fastest ship in the Royal Navy. The Pearl is faster than the Dutchman because the Dutchman is faster against the wind which is how it takes it's prey. With the wind, the Pearl robs the Dutchman of it's advantage.

* Barbossa needs to get over himself. Jack is so damn clever. Why won't he just build a fleet with him?!Barbossa hates Jack so much because Jack is sort of like a pirate White Prince compared to him: (1) His father's already a powerful pirate, (2) Jack's spoiled and probably didn't start out by the "sweat of his brow" and all that and (3) Jack got a top-rate ship for nothing while Barbossa lost everything he had in Europe and had to start again in the Caribbean. Barbossa needs a hug. :)

* WTF is with Beckett and his "just good business" CatchPhrase? Breaking your agreement with other people is ''not'' good business - it is, in fact, the opposite. Word tends to get around quite quickly if you stop keeping your end of the bargain when you negotiate with people, and in a situation like what Beckett was trying for with the East India Trading Company (a complete corporate monopoly of all trading routes), you ''need'' people to trust you - which they won't, if you've proven that you'd be inherently incapable of negotiating in good faith if your life depended on it. Otherwise, they start looking for methods that don't involve dealing with you to get what they want - and, when they're dealing with a ManipulativeBastard like Beckett, those ways will involve removing said bastard from power if at all possible, ''by'' any means possible.

** That's not what "just good business" means. It's an echo, and it's meaning changes, depending on who's using it and in what context. It's used as a justification for cruelty, dishonor, greed, and cowardice, and later Beckett repeats it when his ultimate defeat becomes reality - he never planned on losing, you see. But when he says it "to" Jack earlier, when he assumes he's won and Jack's come crawling for his forty pieces of silver, the lips say "good business", but the eyes say "[[EvilGloating pwned]]!"

* At the end of DMC, the SequelHook has the crew of the cast decide to rescue Jack simply for the purpose of rescuing Jack, believing that he pulled a HeroicSacrifice. Come the third movie, it seems like they are only doing it out of necessity (note the show of hands when Jack asks if anyone came along just cos they wanted to see him again). That said, certainly the oncoming war would rearrange their plans, but it would have been nice if someone had SAID that.

** She says that Will taught her how to handle a sword, so whose to say he didn't put her on his own training regimen? Besides, she already acquitted herself pretty well in the FinalBattle in Curse of the Black Pearl, so it's not like she was completely helpless before.

* What kind of a lord is Lord Beckett? He's referred to either as Lord Beckett or Lord Cutler Beckett. According to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtesy_titles_in_the_United_Kingdom this,]] the form " Lord first name last name" is reserved for younger sons of Dukes and Marquesses, so Beckett could only be officially called "Lord Cutler Beckett" if his father was made a Duke or Marquess and he was the younger son. And even then, it is simply a courtesy title based on his relationship to an actual title holder and has no legal standing. By all accounts, Beckett holds his title in his own right, and according to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forms_of_address_in_the_United_Kingdom this,]] all peers below Duke are allowed to use the system "Lord Title" but mainly just barons use the form lord. So assuming that Beckett was created a baron, his official title would presumably be "Cutler Beckett, 1st Baron Beckett" shortened to "Lord Beckett" in colloquial use, with the Beckett being derived from his title and not his surname, although they may be the same. He wouldn't however be called "Lord Cutler Beckett". So why is he called that?
** His introductory scene in ''Dead Man's Chest'' hints "Lord Beckett" is the correct form and he was recently awarded some form of nobility. Swan refers to him as "Beckett?" and he responds with "It's ''Lord'' Beckett now.". The way he gloats about it implies he was made nobility recently and by his own merits (rather than his father becoming a duke), so this gives credence to the idea of him being recently made a Baron. The only characters who refer to him as "Lord Cutler Beckett" are his enemies (usually Barbossa, like at the Shipwreck Cove speech), who have no reason to give half a damn about how his title is to be said. The man himself and his henchmen always seem to refer to him as "Lord Beckett!".

** THIS flimsy-looking refined boy is an accomplished blacksmith? O'RLY? In the beginning of the movie, when Will delivers the sword, and the governor asks him to "pass his compliments on to the master", the confusion makes sense - he looked like a delivery boy, not a craftsman.

** In the canon novel "The Price of Freedom", Jack meets a younger Barbossa on Shipwreck Cove and Barbossa owes Jack a debt for helping bring the rogue pirates who sunk Barbossa's ship to justice seeding the start of their friendship. Barbossa doesn't seem to show any resentment to Jack for being the son of a Pirate Lord and Barbossa even becomes a Pirate Lord because of Jack; the Pirate responsible for sinking Barbossa's ship was a Pirate Lord and knowing he's going to die. This Lord gave Barbossa his piece of eight when Barbossa visited him, actually making Barbossa superior to Jack for many years (depending when Teague retired and gave Jack his Piece of Eight making Jack a lord).

** The ''Pearl'''s being a one time cargo ship doesn't rule out it ''also'' being exceptionally fast. Possibly it was originally built for high speed so that it could be used to transport time-sensitive goods, like priority mail and expensive fruits and meats.

* Barbossa needs to get over himself. Jack is so damn clever. Why won't he just build a fleet with him?!Barbossa hates Jack so much because Jack is sort of like a pirate White Prince compared to him: (1) His father's already a powerful pirate, (2) Jack's spoiled and probably didn't start out by the "sweat of his brow" and all that and (3) Jack got a top rate ship for nothing while Barbossa lost everything he had in Europe and had to start again in the Caribbean. Barbossa needs a hug. :)

* Did the ''Flying Dutchman'' receive, for lack of a better word, "upgrades" to her appearance and propulsion methods once the "[[{{WoodenShipsAndIronMen}} Age Of Sail]]" ended? Is she now a nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier or some such, or still a sailing ship?

** The ''Pearl'''s being a onetime cargo ship doesn't rule out it ''also'' being exceptionally fast. Possibly it was originally built for high speed so that it could be used to transport time-sensitive goods, like priority mail and expensive fruits and meats.

** Then again, Jack isn't exactly the most... dependable guy. Would ''you'' keep him as your second-in-command ? Or, CrystalDragonJesus forbid, as your commander ? And of course, should they even agree on a you-command-these-guys, I-get-those-guys deal, there's the whole "Who gets to sail the Pearl ?" thing.

*** #1, Yes, Barbossa clearly needs to get over himself, but in COTBP, Barbossa was willing to work with Jack at the end of the movie, and look what happened? He got shot in his chest! #2, Teague doesn't necessarily hate everyone, he's probably just a hard-ass Rules Nazi, (it ''is'' his job) and he seems to get along better with Jack than anyone else.
*** Taking into account the flashback from Dead Men Tell No Tales and the fact we know who his father is Jacks' name is probably Jack Teague, Sparrow is a nickname he gained because of how he beat Salazar, so its possible he either took the name Sparrow to get past his fathers name, or he is just unmentioned as Captain Jack "Sparrow" Teague.

*** Expanded material mentions somewhere that Teague was a Pirate Lord back in his day, but he's since retired (though he did give his seat to Jack.) Apparently Sao Feng also inherited his post from his father.

** In the canon novel "The Price of Freedom", Jack meets a younger Barbossa on Shipwreck Cove and Barbossa owes Jack a debt for helping bring the rogue pirates who sunk Barbossa's ship to justice seeding the start of their friendship. Barbossa doesn't seem to show any resentment to Jack for being the son of a Pirate Lord and Barbossa even becomes a Pirate Lord because of Jack; the Pirate responsible for sinking Barbossa's ship was a Pirate Lord and knowing he's going to die, the Lord gave Barbossa his piece of eight when Barbossa visited him actually making Barbossa superior to Jack for many years (depending when Teague retired and gave Jack his Piece of Eight making Jack a lord).
* WTF is with Beckett and his "just good business" CatchPhrase? Breaking your agreement with other people is ''not'' good business - it is, in fact, the opposite. Word tends to get around quite quickly if you stop keeping your end of the bargain when you negotiate with people, and in a situation like what Beckett was trying for with the East India Trading Company (a complete corporate monopoly of all trading routes), you ''need'' people to trust you - which they won't, if you've proven that you'd be inherently incapable of negotiating in good faith if your life depended on it. Otherwise, they start looking for methods that don't involve dealing with you to get what they want - and, when they're dealing with a ManipulativeBastard like Beckett, those ways [[strike: may]] will involve removing said bastard from power if at all possible, ''by'' any means possible.

*** That's not what "just good business" means. It's an echo, and it's meaning changes, depending on who's using it and in what context. It's used as a justification for cruelty, dishonor, greed, and cowardice, and later Beckett repeats it when his ultimate defeat becomes reality -- he never planned on losing, you see. But when he says it "to" Jack earlier, when he assumes he's won and Jack's come crawling for his forty pieces of silver, the lips say "good business", but the eyes say "[[EvilGloating pwned]]!"

** Barbossa was Pirate Lord of the Caspian Sea, where there's no other water sources leading into it and therefore not too many ships passing through, if any at all, so he probably just said "Screw this" one day and decided that he was better off as a first mate in one of the busiest seas in the world than a captain of an unpopulated water hole, assuming there were any other pirates, of course.

** It was the Piece of Eight that made one a Pirate Lord. He had to be given the Piece of Eight by a former Pirate Lord, so when he did get it, he became that Pirate Lord. The Piece of Eight is proof of lordship is the Piece of Eight, as Barbossa says when the Brethren Court meets: "Prove your lordship and right to be heard."

* Bootstrap Bill, Will Turner's dad, is still alive, and working for Davy Jones. However, he was one of the original Pirates that stole the Cursed Treasure in the first Movie. So when the Pirates, who kept turning into Skeletons at night, left Bill for dead he chose to work with Jones. Did the curse still affect him as he became a Squid man? Or is working for Davy Jones a way to end the curse?

* At the end of DMC, the SequelHook has the crew of the cast decide to rescue Jack simply for the purpose of rescuing Jack, believing that he pulled a HeroicSacrifice. Come the third movie, it seems like they are only doing it out of necessity (Note the show of hands when Jack asks if anyone came along just cos they wanted to see him again). That the oncoming war would rearrange their plans, but it would have been nice if someone had SAID that.

*** The end of the second film implies that the whole point of their quest is to retrieve Jack, and regardless of their true motivation, Will and Elizabeth appear to be going along with it the 'he was a good man' story. Come the next film, they are are required to retrieve Jack for the war, with that little pep talk at the end of DMC seemingly forgotten. Small in the grand scheme of things, but a bit jarring...
*** Possibly their eagerness to go rescue Jack just for friendship's sake took a severe dip when Tia Dalma explained just how hard, long and risky the trip to the Locker was going to be?
*** Or they ''initially'' wanted to rescue him for his own sake, but over the months of set-up work required to get the map to the Locker, guilt had time to work on Elizabeth's conscience and Will's concern for his father had time to fester.

*** One should also consider they're living in a universe where AllMythsAreTrue [at least the nautical ones]: Putting underwater risks some ancient evil underwater creature eating it or something. Hell, if the Mermaids from the fourth movie decided got curious they could kill him. So putting in a far-away, abandoned island [seriously, there's ''no one'' there] should do the trick well enough.

*** That seems logical. They were as close to being friends as two pirates of their sort could be.
*** They were definitely enemies in the first film, but it appears Jack's killing Barbossa (even temporarily) has settled the score. In the scene beside the dead Kraken, they recognize their common situation (being pirates in a world they don't entirely fit into anymore), so by OST they've become VitriolicBestBuds... or at least frenemies.

* The ''Flying Dutchman'' can go underwater. Yet when she surfaces (as demonstrated early in the third movie) she can immediately start to fire her cannons. -- How do they keep the powder dry?

* Elizabeth's fighting skills. She goes all the way from damsel in distress in the beginning of the first movie to holding her own with a cutlass against multiple crew members of the Flying Dutchman in the second to being on par with any main character in the third in terms of fencing. Where did that all come from exactly? Did she stat practicing fencing for three hours a day?
** She says that Will taught her how to handle a sword, so whose to say he didn't put her on his own training regimen? Besides, she already comported herself pretty well in the FinalBattle in Curse of the Black Pearl, so it's not like she was completely helpless before.

* Somewhat related to the above point, what exactly gives Beckett the authority to stroll into the Caribbean, start ordering everyone around, including Admirals, and even order executions? He's a Lord, but does that really come with carte-blanche authority over any territory he happens to fancy? For a while, he's blackmailing Swann, who holds the actual post of Governor, into putting his signature on Beckett's orders. ''That'' makes perfect sense. But after Swann is killed, how does Beckett keep making enforceable orders? What's his post supposed to be?

** One of those orders Beckett coerced Swann into signing was probably an order designating Beckett as the Governor's provisional successor. In the event of Swann's death - which Beckett eventually arranged, but it ''could'' have happened naturally; Swann was an older gentleman and the Caribbean was rife with disease back then - he'd ''need'' a designated successor to run things until the King could formally appoint and send a replacement. Which never happened, as word of Swann's death was most likely "lost in transit" on its way back to England ... if indeed Beckett even told anyone the rightful Governor was dead and not "indisposed" from malaria or whatever.
* This one is about the ride: The Skeleton in bed and the Skeleton on the pile of Treasure. How did they die in those positions? Usually when you die your body goes limp, but they're in positions that would be impossible for a dead person to hold. How did they get this way? There's no evidence someone came along and did that to them either; no ropes or supports are keeping them in position, the skeletons are literally just in those positions.

** It's entirely possible the age of sail [[MedievalStasis never ended]] in Pirates of the Caribbean: the conflict of the second and third movies seems to be about the end of the Age of Discovery and the world setting into the pace it acquired in the 19th century of a globalized nature with no "blank spots on the map", but by the end of the third it is shown pretty unanmbiguously that the heroes squashed that process. As for "IRL", the sightings of the Dutchman (the latest high profile ones being from the 1940s) seem to always include it being a age of sail-ish vessel decked out in full masts, so it seems like the Dutchman can hold its own fine through the ages. It is magic after alll.

** Elizabeth was motivated by guilt, Will wanted the ''Pearl'' to save his father, and Barbossa had his own agenda (which was also at least in part Tia's agenda), which is fairly clear at the end of DMC ''and'' pointed out by Jack in AWE. Pintel, Ragetti, Marty and Cotton all raised their hands for the "saving Jack just because they missed him" crowd, and while Gibbs didn't raise his hand, the way he rolled his eyes at Jack seemed to me to indicate both exasperation and affection. In short, there isn't a discrepancy between their motivations between movies- though of course the EITC is a much bigger threat in everyone's mind come AWE.

* Oh, man, don't get me started. How about the first movie, when Will ''kills his own father''. Did you realize that? Let's work this out: ten years ago the pirates all took the gold and got cursed. Bootstrap Bill was also cursed, as the countermeasure requires his blood, and presumably it needs the blood of every cursed person. (As opposed to the-blood-of-everybody-that-was-cursed-and-also-everybody-else-that-happened-to-work-on-the-same-boat.) So Bootstrap was cursed along with the rest of them. Now, they tell us that Bootstrap was chained to a cannon and dumped into the ocean, but he's cursed, therefore he ''can't die''. So, for the last ten years, Bootstrap Bill has been sitting around at the bottom of the ocean, dealing with incredible boredom but nevertheless still living. Then, when Will puts the last piece in the chest, the curse is lifted, which means that Bootstrap can die now, which means he suddenly suffocates at the bottom of the ocean. And ''no one'' figures this out. No one.
** Will actually ''did'' figure that out. There's a deleted scene from DMC, included on the Blu-Ray set, where Will tells Bootstrap he'd thought he'd killed his father when he broke the curse. And that he believed Bootstrap would prefer that to being permanently trapped at the bottom of the sea (not an unreasonable assumption.)
** Because by then he's been recruited by Darth Squid.
*** Well sure he gets recruited, but that doesn't change the fact that he was killed in the first place. (You have to be dead or near-dead in order to join the Flying Dutchman. That seems to be the deal. And Bootstrap couldn't have been either of those things until the curse was lifted.) And in film #1 we didn't even know about Darth Squid, so somebody should've been like "Wait, won't Bootstrap die if we lift the curse?"
*** Yeeeees, that is what we call a ''mercy kill''.
*** Indeed. What part of "trapped in the crushing, lightless depths of the sea for his entire immortality" implies that death would be a ''bad'' thing?
*** Bootstrap bartered his soul to Jones in exchange for freeing him from the cannon.
*** More to the point, Bootstrap explicitly tells Will this aboard the Dutchman. He didn't wait the full ten years to die, Jones came to him sometime in the middle there, and sailing with Jones was a better option than maybe-eternity in the crushing depths.
** But Will had no way of knowing whether or not Davey Jones had rescued his father. As far as he knew, his immortal father was trapped in the ocean depths, and Will chose a path that would result in his father's death. Out of story, when the writers were coming up with the plot for the second movie, they noticed the giant plot hole in the first and quickly filled it in before anyone noticed.
*** Will had no way of rescuing his father at all. It's not like they had submarines, and Bill mentions the crushing depths, so it's unlikely Will could swim down. How you have saved him? Like somebody else said, mercy kill. He was stuck in a Main/FateWorseThanDeath.
*** More to the point, did Will even ''know'' his father was an undead zombie skeleton? He didn't even know he was a pirate. It stands to reason that Will would think his father was just plain ol' dead.
*** He probably did know, or at least suspected so. After all, he knew they needed his blood, meaning someone related to him had removed at least one medallion from the chest (since he himself hadn't), and he knew (from Jack) that his father was a pirate.
** In the first movie, Barbossa mentions that Bootstrap didn't like the idea of the mutiny against Jack. They mutinied after Jack gave up the location of the treasure. Bootstrap might have objected then, but not ardently enough for them to take it out on him. It wasn't until Bootstrap deliberately took one of the gold pieces and sent it to his son, basically condemning them to the curse, that they got pissed and tossed him over board.
** Think about it: given that he is immortal, there is no way of permanently binding him to the cannon. If you take Pintel's account literally, and say that the cannon was just bound to his feet, he would have freed himself in a day; a week at most. If Pintel was just being witty and they in fact tied his entire body down, his escape would be hindered, but by no means halted. Ten years gives you a lot of time to break out of your bonds, especially if you can find a sharp rock on the ocean floor. Chains would have been the greatest hindrance, but ten years is sufficient time for them to rust enough to be broken out of, especially by somebody who never gets tired. Plus there's the fact that if the moonlight ever reaches him, he loses half his body mass and slips free, and spends the next ten years walking on the ocean floor (as is demonstrated to be possible) until he finds land. He could have done this, if he had thought ahead a bit before Davy Jones approached him.
*** Moonlight would probably never get to him, if he was deep enough. There are some parts of the ocean so deep that there is no sun or moonlight(hence luminous fish and such).
*** You forgot the water pressure. ''Metal'' submarines, if built improperly, implode at certain depths, and Bill mentioned crushing depths, so we can assume he was deep enough to experience real water pressure. It'd be like being sealed in a casket. Even if he could move, he could've been in a steep pit or something. Presumably he was thrown in the middle of the ocean, and not on the shore.
*** 1) Water pressure is no issue here. Submarines only implode if they are filled with air, if they were filled with water, they wouldn't. Fish don't, for that matter, because the water in their bodies can't be compressed. A human is subject to implosion, if his lungs were filled with air (which Bootstrap doesn't rely on), still there would be absolutely no force pressing him to the cannon. 2) Pits won't stop him. He should be able to swim during the day, and find some place to sit during the night.
*** Ever tried to figure out which way is up, never mind North/South/East/West, when you're underwater? It's ''hard''. Scuba divers can determine which way up is by following bubbles, but Bootstrap would've voided all his air on the way down. Unless they dumped him in fairly shallow water, there'd be no light to guide him; even if he broke free and tried to reach the surface, he'd get disorientated as soon as his feet lost contact with the seabed. Or, if he tried to hoof it, at best he'd have untold miles of trackless, pitch-black mud flats to trudge across, wandering in circles no doubt.
*** First of all, the real issue in Will looking for him was, where the hell would he look? It's not like "the crushing black oblivion" was mapped by OnStar. Secondly, Bill said he was "unable to move" down there, so let's say he was chained down, and really not able to get loose. We're just assuming he wasn't a skeleton when he was bound. If he was, they could've bound him by his bones, but as soon as he slipped into the pitch black and was no longer touched by moonlight, he'd be bound ''through his body''. Icky thought. Also, as far as "Did Bill have to be dead to attract Jones," not only is that not the way Jones plays it, they actually address this in the screenplay. When Bill says he'd take "even the tiniest hope of escaping this fate" of being crushed under the weight of the ocean, unable to move or die, Jack says that it was the kind of thinking "bound to catch his attention," which Bill confirms, suggesting Jones is somehow attracted to his ideal victims. But not in a gay way. * lol*
*** How bout Will clearly never met his father and had less than no relationship with him.
** This is from the script for DMC, '''Will:''' "I lifted the curse you were under... knowing it would mean your death. But, at least, you would no longer suffer the fate handed to you by Barbossa." Also, in different versions of the COTBP script, Pintel's "Crushing black oblivion" story gets these reactions: *''The Crew all look a bit sick at the idea of it.''* *''Will reacts with shock at the account of his father's fate.''* Sounds like they got the picture. Addressing the above, ''"Out of story, I heard that when the writers were coming up with the plot for the second movie, they noticed the giant plot hole in the first and quickly filled it in before anyone noticed. Not that it worked."'' Pintel never says they killed Bootstrap, and if they could, (or thought they could) why sink him to the crushing depths tied to a cannon for damning them? That's REALLY suspicious. The writers knew what they were doing.
** If it makes you feel better, there was never any chance of Bootstrap suffocating to death at the bottom of the ocean after Will lifted the curse. :) [[ComicallyMissingThePoint The "crushing depths" part ensures his body wouldn't survive nearly long enough for asphyxiation to become an issue; the weight of the ocean would have killed him by pressure alone well before!]]
** Given Bootstrap's comment "They strapped me to a cannon, I ended up on the bottom of the ocean, the weight of the water crushing down on me. Unable to move, unable to die, Jack, and I thought that even the tiniest hope of escaping this fate, I would take it. I would trade anything for it," it seems that at some point during the 10 years he was cursed, Jones found him and offered to free him in exchange for joining his crew and thus, Bootstrap was already on the Dutchman by the time the original curse was lifted.

** He was also an unkillable undead dude, as was his crew. He wouldn't find it difficult to kill another Pirate Lord and nab one of the pieces of eight. And Jack is Jack, if he didn't have one before he was marooned I'm sure he would have picked one up somewhere.

*** Actually,vyou might have to be a captain to be a pirate lord, but that's according to the highly suspect DVD extras, that I'm guessing have little to do with the writer's intentions.

** But Will had no way of knowing whether or not Davey Jones had rescued his father. As far as he knew, his immortal father was trapped in the ocean depths, and Will chose a path that would result in his father's death. Out of story, I heard that when the writers were coming up with the plot for the second movie, they noticed the giant plot hole in the first and quickly filled it in before anyone noticed. Not that it worked.

** 'K, weighing in. This is from the script for DMC, '''Will:''' "I lifted the curse you were under... knowing it would mean your death. But, at least, you would no longer suffer the fate handed to you by Barbossa." Also, in different versions of the COTBP script, Pintel's "Crushing black oblivion" story gets these reactions: *''The Crew all look a bit sick at the idea of it.''* *''Will reacts with shock at the account of his father's fate.''* Sounds like they got the picture. Addressing the above, ''"Out of story, I heard that when the writers were coming up with the plot for the second movie, they noticed the giant plot hole in the first and quickly filled it in before anyone noticed. Not that it worked."'' Pintel never says they killed Bootstrap, and if they could, (or thought they could) why sink him to the crushing depths tied to a cannon for damning them? That's REALLY suspicious. The writers knew what they were doing.

** Given Bootstrap's comment "They strapped me to a cannon, I ended up on the bottom of the ocean, the weight of the water crushing down on me. Unable to move, unable to die, Jack, a I thought that even the tiniest hope of escaping this fate, I would take it. I would trade anything for it," it seems that at some point during the 10 years he was cursed, Jones found him and offered to free him in exchange for joining his crew and thus, Bootstrap was already on the Dutchman by the time the original curse was lifted.

** Elizabeth was motivated by guilt, Will wanted the ''Pearl'' to save his father, and Barbossa had his own agenda (which was also at least in part Tia's agenda), which is fairly clear at the end of DMC ''and'' pointed out by Jack in AWE. Pintel and Ragetti, as I recall, both raised their hands for the "saving Jack just because they missed him" crowd, and while Gibbs didn't raise his hand, the way he rolled his eyes at Jack seemed to me to indicate both exasperation and affection. In short, I don't see a discrepancy between their motivations between movies- though of course the EITC is a much bigger threat in everyone's mind come AWE.

* Are Jack and Barbossa friends? This isn't too bad of a headscratcher, and I've come up with my own theory, but I want to know what other people think, because their relationship is ''odd''.

*** That seems logical. They way I always thought of it was that they were as close to being friends as two pirates of their sort could be, but I like your theory as well.

* How were Commodore Norrington and Governor Swan so easily... shall we say... neutered by the East India Company? Anyone that high up in the military or political ranks in those days surely had very influential friends, and one would think they would have put up more of a fight. (Truth be told, it was disappointing if not depressing to see the only two good, honorable authority figures in His Majesty's service defeated by a villain that didn't qualify as a WorthyOpponent or a MagnificentBastard; Norrington and Swan deserved better.)
** Norrington was lower than Beckett, so he had to do what he was told, sadly. Swan I'm a bit confused on, to admit. Perhaps Beckett convinced the King that Swan was a traitor for helping Elizabeth escape so that he could push him around.
** Even if Governor Swan had a lot of friends back in Britain, they were a looooong way away, with no means of knowing what's happening in the Caribbean except what turns up in the occasional trans-Atlantic letter. Beckett could easily use bribery or coercion to cut the Governor's lines of communication with the Crown, then send a message to London that Swan had died of natural causes after having him killed.
** Firstly, Beckett had something on his side that was like kryptonite to Swann and Norrington, and that was the fate of Elizabeth. Now, as far as the EITC knew, she was aboard the Pearl when it sank and Beckett assumed she was dead, but he continued pretending to look for her, all the while privately threatening Swann that he would kill Elizabeth with all the other pirates if Swann didn't become his stooge. Also, Norrington just made a selfish, stupid mistake- he did what's expected of him so he could have his life back, no questions asked.

* Does anyone else think that the story could have been executed just a little better if it were a series of books or a television series not limited by an expected run time of 2.5 hours tops? I just hadn't his nagging feeling that they could have explained/executed several of the plot twists ''much'' better or worked out rushed character-development and clarified background story much better if they didn't have to cram a plot into the movies time length.
** That sort of thing happens when you plot out your film ''while you're filming''.
*** See, I personally never had any trouble following the movies, but I definitely think the franchise would've had less people complaining if it was release in small, weekly bites like Lost. People never seemed to care that Lost was complex as hell and that they were just making it up as they went along -- they couldn't wait for the next episode to come out. I think it's all that waiting and speculating that makes things easier to understand, like how now people say that the first Pirates film was simple and linear when, originally, most people had no freakin' idea what was going on and complained about it in reviews. I'm calling it Film/BackToTheFuture syndrome, where watching a movie with a complex plot a hundred times renders it simple and timeless.
*** There's a YKTTW right there.

* This is a minor thing, but, when everyone's gearing up for the big war with the East India Trading Company, why don't some of them take a brief detour (I say brief because of how quickly sailing around the globe seems to be in ''At World's End'') and pick up some of those Aztec coins from the first movie? They'd become unkillable and indestructible, which would give them a bit of an edge against their opponents (who have only got the one immortal, Davy Jones, on their side), and just return all the gold pieces when they were done? Like I said, it's a minor thing, and it doesn't really ''bug'' me, so much as it seems like a missed opportunity for awesomeness.
** The second movie explicitly states that the Isla de Meurta sank into the sea in a massive storm. They couldn't get to the Aztec coins even if they wanted to.
** Bad idea anyway. Ship to ship combat means lot of people will be lost at sea. You don't want to be immortal and lost at sea. Remember what happened to Will Turner Sr?
** I knew I wasn't the only one who wasn't deeply, deeply disappointed that the third movie's climactic battle didn't take place at night, with the crew of the Dutchmen boarding the Pearl only for Barbossa and the crew to step out into the moonlight and go all skeletal. "WELCOME TO THE GHOST STORY, LADS!"
** As awesome as that idea might be (the previous Troper's scenario helps in boosting said awesomeness), I think it's been established that the Aztec curse doesn't grant you total invincibility. Case in point: the three mooks who got blown to bits in Curse. Considering the danger of being blown to bits in big naval battles is incredibly high, it probably negates the invincibility factor a bit.

* Why was the monkey still undead? Wouldn't breaking the curse of the Black Pearl affect him too?
** In the first movie's stinger, the monkey takes another coin and gets cursed again.
** He presumably does get un-cursed by the end of the fifth movie, though. However, his last scene in AWE implies he probably was un-cursed again before hand. (he eats a peanut, and seems to have enjoyed it).

** His introductory scene in ''Dead Man's Chest'' hints "Lord Beckett" is the correct form and he was recently awarded some form of nobility. Swan refers to him as "Beckett?" and he responds with "It's ''Lord'' Beckett now.". The way he gloats about it implies he was made nobility recently and by his own merits (rather than his father becoming a duke), so this gives credence to the idea of him being recently made a Baron. I may be mistaken but I believe the only characters who refer to him as "Lord Cutler Beckett" are his enemies (usually Barbossa, like at the Shipwreck Cove speech), who have no reason to give half a damn about how his title is to be said. The man himself and his henchmen always seem to refer to him as "Lord Beckett!".

* I'm admittedly not really expecting a definitive answer here, just thought I'd see what people think. Did the ''Flying Dutchman'' receive, for lack of a better word, "upgrades" to her appearance and propulsion methods once the "[[{{WoodenShipsAndIronMen}} Age Of Sail]]" ended? I mean, is she now a nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier or some such, or still a sailing ship?

* By the end of the series, one thing is true: Barbossa needs to get over himself. Jack is so damn clever. Why won't he just build a fleet with him?! I think Barbossa hates Jack so much because Jack is sort of like a pirate White Prince compared to him: (1) His father's already a powerful pirate, (2) Jack's spoiled and probably didn't start out by the "sweat of his brow" and all that and (3) Jack got a top rate ship for nothing while Barbossa lost everything he had in Europe and had to start again in the Caribbean. Barbossa needs a hug. :)

*** That's Jack's older brother.
*** No, no it's not. Captain Teague is explicitly Sparrow's father.
*** Okay, let's deal with this for a minute: #1, Yes, Barbossa clearly needs to get over himself, but in COTBP, Barbossa was willing to work with Jack at the end of the movie, and look what happened? He got shot in his chest! #2, Teague doesn't necessarily hate everyone, he's probably just a hard-ass Rules Nazi, (it ''is'' his job) and he seems to get along better with Jack than anyone else. #3 Teague ''is'' Jack's father, but it's not explicitly stated anywhere in the film. Personal thoughts: I also jumped to the conclusion that Jack's the pirate version of a White Prince, and is thus roundly disdained by other pirates, but he's in a scary and dangerous profession -- one mustn't assume Teague ''wanted'' his son to follow in his footsteps. EDIT: Also had to add, about the Teague and Jack thing, notice the different last names? There's a chance Jack pulled a Nick Cage, there. Trying to make a name for yourself isn't easy when you're dad's a legend.

*** Jack directly refers to Teague as "Dad" in the fourth film.

** Besides, it's hardly good business to leave a professional wild card like Jack Sparrow running around when you already know that he hates you (and you return the feeling). I doubt any of Beckett's merchant prince buddies would fault him for going back on that deal.

** He was also an unkillable undead dude, as was his crew. I imagine he wouldn't find it difficult to kill another Pirate Lord and nab one of the pieces of eight. And Jack is Jack, if he didn't have one before he was marooned I'm sure he would have picked one up somewhere.

*** Actually, I think you might have to be a captain to be a pirate lord, but that's according to the highly suspect DVD extras, that I'm guessing have little to do with the writer's intentions.
** I thought it was the Piece of Eight that made one a Pirate Lord. He had to be given the Piece of Eight by a former Pirate Lord, so when he did get it, he became that Pirate Lord. The Piece of Eight is proof of lordship is the Piece of Eight, as Barbossa says when the Brethren Court meets: "Prove your lordship and right to be heard."

* Oh, man, don't get me started. How about the first movie, when Will ''kills his own father''. Did you realize that? Let's work this out: ten years ago the pirates all took the gold and got cursed. I can only assume that Bootstrap Bill was also cursed, as the countermeasure requires his blood, and presumably it needs the blood of every cursed person. (As opposed to the-blood-of-everybody-that-was-cursed-and-also-everybody-else-that-happened-to-work-on-the-same-boat.) So Bootstrap was cursed along with the rest of them. Now, they tell us that Bootstrap was chained to a cannon and dumped into the ocean, but he's cursed, therefore he ''can't die''. So, for the last ten years, Bootstrap Bill has been sitting around at the bottom of the ocean, dealing with incredible boredom but nevertheless still living. Then, when Will puts the last piece in the chest, the curse is lifted, which means that Bootstrap can die now, which means he suddenly suffocates at the bottom of the ocean. And ''no one'' figures this out. No one.

*** Well sure he gets recruited, but that doesn't change the fact that he was killed in the first place. (I mean, I presume you have to be dead or near-dead in order to join the Flying Dutchman. That seems to be the deal. And Bootstrap couldn't have been either of those things until the curse was lifted.) And in film #1 we didn't even know about Darth Squid, so somebody should've been like "Wait, won't Bootstrap die if we lift the curse?"

*** This troper always sorta figured that Bootstrap bartered his soul to Jones in exchange for freeing him from the cannon.

*** More to the point, did Will even ''know'' his father was an undead zombie skeleton? I mean, he didn't even know he was a pirate. It stands to reason that Will would think his father was just plain ol' dead.

** In the first movie, Barbossa mentions that Bootstrap didn't like the idea of taking the gold. I was under the impression that this meant Bootstrap was never cursed, and was killed very shortly after his cannonball run.
*** Watch it again. It was the mutiny against Jack that Bootstrap objected to, not taking the gold.
*** If it was the mutiny then maybe he still wasn't cursed. Didn't they find the treasure after the mutiny?
*** If he wasn't cursed, they wouldn't have needed Will in the first place. He was definitely cursed.
*** They mutinied after Jack gave up the location of the treasure. Bootstrap might have objected then, but not ardently enough for them to take it out on him. It wasn't until Bootstrap deliberately took one of the gold pieces and sent it to his son, basically condemning them to the curse, that they got pissed and tossed him over board.
** This troper was immediately convinced that Bootstrap survived the first film after seeing it. Think about it: given that he is immortal, there is no way of permanently binding him to the cannon. If you take Pintel's account literally, and say that the cannon was just bound to his feet, he would have freed himself in a day; a week at most. If Pintel was just being witty and they in fact tied his entire body down, his escape would be hindered, but by no means halted (I have this hilarious image of him ''rolling'' himself to shore). Ten years gives you a lot of time to break out of your bonds, especially if you can find a sharp rock on the ocean floor. Chains would have been the greatest hindrance, but ten years is sufficient time for them to rust enough to be broken out of, especially by somebody who never gets tired. Plus there's the fact that if the moonlight ever reaches him, he loses half his body mass and slips free, and spends the next ten years walking on the ocean floor (as is demonstrated to be possible) until he finds land. I'm still convinced that he could have done this, if he had thought ahead a bit before Davy Jones approached him.

*** They couldn't have "bound him by his bones" as you put it. Pintel explicitly says that it wasn't until ''after'' they tossed him overboard that they found out about the curse.
*** It wasn't until after they tossed him overboard that they found out about ''breaking'' the curse.
*** Not true. Pintel specifically says "'Course it wasn't until ''afterwards'' [i.e. after they tossed Bootstrap overboard] that we learned about the curse."
*** No, he says it wasn't til afterward that they learned they needed his blood to ''break'' the curse:
-->'''Pintel''': It was only after that we found out that it was Bootstrap's blood we needed to lift the curse.\\
'''Ragetti''': I guess that's what you call ironic.
*** How bout Will clearly never met his father and had less than no relationship with him. I'm trying to save a major hottie from undead pirates my long lost never met father doesn't even cross my mind later in hindsight.

** Given Bootstrap's comment "And I thought that even the tiniest hope of escaping this fate, I would take it. I would trade anything for it," I always assumed that at some point during the 10 years he was cursed, Jones found him and offered to free him in exchange for joining his crew and thus, Bootstrap was already on the Dutchman by the time the original curse was lifted.

* I want to sincerely apologize in advance if I am missing something obvious because I haven't seen the third film in a while, or because I am just thick. At the end of DMC, the SequelHook has the crew of the cast decide to rescue Jack simply for the purpose of rescuing Jack, believing that he pulled a HeroicSacrifice. Come the third movie, it seems like they are only doing it out of necessity (Note the show of hands when Jack asks if anyone came along just cos they wanted to see him again). I can believe that the oncoming war would rearrange their plans, but it would have been nice if someone had SAID that.

*** Also when Jones raised it it was renamed the Black Pearl by Jack because Beckett burned it, and when it was raised it kept the charred look, hence a "Black Ship".

* The ''Flying Dutchman'' can go underwater. Yet when she surfaces (as demonstrated early in the the third movie) she can immediately start to fire her cannons. -- How do they keep the powder dry?

* I'm admittedly not really expecting a definitive answer here, just thought I'd see what people think. Did the ''Flying Dutchman'' receive, for lack of a better word, "upgrades" to her appearance and propulsion methods once the AgeOfSail ended? I mean, is she now a nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier or some such, or still a sailing ship?