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  • The shooting the killer in the head thing bugs me. I have no problem with a character killing in self-defence. The intent there isn't to kill but to protect their own life with their attacker's death being a consequence of that. However, if the killer is unarmed and weak enough that they can be restrained, then, the response should be to wait until medical help and the police show up. Shooting an unarmed individual who has recently been unconscious, has lost a significant amount of blood, and who may or may not have internal injuries doesn't fall under the category of self-defence due to the fact less extreme options are available. 'This person killed my loved ones and tried to kill me,' are not acceptable moral nor legal justifications for taking an at-the-moment defenceless person's life. Sidney, Dewey, and whoever else shot the still alive killers are murderers themselves.
    • And??? You’re talking about morals and judgment while referring to the victims of serial killers? Are you serious? You have no clue how you would react after being chased down and repeatedly attacked by a crazy killer. Morally speaking, Sidney had every right to make sure Mrs Loomis was not going to get back up and attack again. Legally speaking, I’m pretty sure Sidney wouldn’t go to jail for shooting her, especially since she could’ve easily argued that she still saw Mrs Loomis as a potential threat. No jury would convict a victim under those circumstances.

    • Look what happened in Scream 5, after Dewey hesitated to shoot the killer in the head, when he thought they were unconscious. Giving a serial killer the thought they would never give you, will be your downfall in a horror movie.

    • The only kill you could possibly be referring to is Mrs. Loomis. Billy, Roman and Jill were all shot in the head when they were attacking Sidney, Dewey and Gail. Sidney was confident that Mrs. Loomis would return for a "final scare", just as Billy and Mickey did. Yes, the right thing to do would be to wait for the police to get there and deal with it. But the woman a psychotic murderer who'd killed Sidney's closest friend, but was also responsible for planning the deaths of her boyfriend, roommate and several others and had planned to kill her and frame her for the murders. The bitch may have been defenseless, but getting shot in the head when she was probably dead anyway does not put her in the category of "sympathetic mass-murderer".

    • And as for "Sidney's a murderer" thing, that's the point.
    • Remember also that these are Genre Savvy horror movie characters, so they know that if they don't finish off the killers, it will almost certainly lead to dozens more deaths. In horror films, after all, Police Are Useless, every prison is made of cardboard, and every injury that isn't explicity a killing blow is Only a Flesh Wound. How many people died because Dr. Loomis didn't headshot Michael Myers the first chance he got? If Charles Lee Ray had his brains blown out before performing his voodoo curse, he could never have become the killer doll Chucky. If Tommy Jarvis had severed Jason Voorhees' head rather than just hacking his face a bit, that killer may never have come back to slaughter hundreds more people. Since the Scream characters are aware of the horror movie conventions in effect in their daily lives, I would argue finishing off a 'defenseless' killer is technically self defense in this case.
      "You're forgetting one thing about Billy Loomis... I fucking killed him."

    • Legally, it might not completely excuse the killing, but it would probably make it legally manslaughter (or a less severe degree of murder). If the shooter has just seen their victim kill multiple other people and repeatedly attempt to kill them, that situation is definitely going to affect their judgement, and the law would most likely take that into account.
    • In any case, Sydney's state of mind may be irrelevant. In order to convict her for any of the above offenses, a medical examiner would need to decisively prove that Mrs. Loomis hadn't already bled out when the Boom, Headshot! took place. Given the tight timeframe of the closing scene, how severely she'd already been wounded from Cotton's gunshot, the other witnesses being able to testify that Billy's mom hadn't discernably moved or blinked since she hit the floor, and the way the blood she'd lost from both of her wounds would've pooled together indistinguishably, it'd be impossible to establish that beyond a reasonable doubt.
    • Adding onto what the troper above mentioned, it is also worth noting that you also are going have to prove that they were shot after they went down. Which would require witnesses. And do you expect Sidney, Dewey, and/or Gale to testify against one another? And also, I highly doubt the cops will even ask that question. After all, they'll have three witnesses connecting the dead body to multiple murders across the past few days (and in Scream 3 and 4's case, actual police officers to confirm their stories).

  • How do the other killers (after Billy and Stu) know what Ghostface sound like? I know his mask was shown on the news, but his voice was never recorded, or captured on tape.
    • A likely answer would be if either Gale or any other reporter got a hold of the voice changer Billy and Stu used and showcased it in the news, making it easy for future killers to buy a voice changer and tinker with it until finding the same voice heard in the news report.
  • I get that Billy killed Maureen, but did he do it in his Ghostface persona or as himself? Speaking of Ghostface, who created the Ghostface persona? Roman or Billy?
    • Billy and Stu most likely killed Maureen in the Ghostface persona. One of the Stab 3 sets in Scream 3 implies Maureen was called before being murdered, which is Ghostface's M.O.
    • Roman, in his monologue after his reveal, tells Sidney how he gave Billy a few tips in murdering Maureen but never mentions creating the Ghostface persona, meaning Billy or possibly Stu invented the persona first.
  • Why are companies still producing Ghostface/Father Death costumes after the murders? Seems distasteful to still have them in stores. In-universe, who in their right minds would continue to produce them after hearing about the deaths of a poor girl's friends? Shouldn't they be banned in some states, especially Sidney's hometown?
    • Perhaps the people behind the Stab movies bought the rights? It would make a great media tie-in for the crazy folks who would watch the (equally distasteful) Stab movies.
    • Or more simply they did stop producing them. But since they had been sold everywhere beforehand, maybe the copycats just got them off Ebay. And at the Stabathon party, the teens could have made some of the masks themselves like cosplayers.
    • It could be possible that they were commissioned replicas from a fan based replica site. I mean, there are such sites like the Replica Prop Forum that have people who make replicas, including limited run pulls of props. It could also explain how the killers in Scream 2 on forward could have figured out what voice changer was used: if it's featured in the film and it is in good view, a group of replica prop fans may have been able to figure out the same model and make of the voice changer used. And, there are those who have done replicas of masks (for example, before Trick or Treat Studios got the rights to do reproductions of Michael Myers' masks from the first Halloween film, there was a whole website dedicated to users who made their own replicas of the masks not just from the first film, but from the later films as well, with the fans who made them offering limited runs of the replica masks).
  • Tatum. Why is she barely mentioned after the first film? For being Sidney's best friend and Dewey's sister, neither Sidney nor Dewey show much sadness after her death after Sidney's shock over seeing her dead in the cat flap. There's a reason why that Angst? What Angst? is on the YMMV page.
    • For Sidney? Probably because, harsh as it is, learning your boyfriend killed your mother and having to kill him is probably the tantamount trauma of the event, no matter how much she may have liked Tatum. As for Dewey... yeah, the writers most likely forgot about their relation in the second film; he rather casually brings up Tatum's death alongside the other Woodsboro victims in the sequel. The closest we get to acknowledgement is in the 3rd film, when a character mock Dewey (or rather, the killer pretending to be Dewey) over it. If I had to guess, I'd say losing his sister was a catalyst for Dewey feeling more free to leave Woodsboro in the sequels, and for becoming a little more active in fighting the killers.
    • What makes you think Dewey has forgotten Tatum? There's a good chance that her death shaped Dewey in the films after the events of the first film, and that he doesn't have to mention how her death has affected him (see WMG section).
    • I’m not sure what reaction you wanted Sidney to have. She was clearly horrified when she saw Tatum’s body. She spent the next movies recovering from what had happened, but she lost more than her best friend. As for Dewey, he kept her ashes with him, as we saw in Scream 5.

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