Headscratchers / The Croods

Tomorrow Never Lasts

• At the end, the Croods reach "Tomorrow", the ideal, peaceful place Guy talked about. But who's to say that the shifting continental plates will end? Guy may not be smart enough to determine when they'll stop (for all his brains, he couldn't figure out where the sun went when fog obscured the view), and we know that the continents never ever stop moving to this day! Who's to say they're safe again?
  • At least now, they have room to maneuver and the confidence in their own resourcefulness to handle it if it comes up.
  • Yeah, I feel like it's more about the journey and the lessons learned than the actual destination. No doubt they'll still run into conflict and strife in some form or another, but when they inevitably die, whether it's one day or sixty years after the end of the movie, they'll have lived lives full of ingenuity, courage, and ambition. So much better than living and dying huddled in fear in the dark.
    • That smells like a Poorly Disguised Pilot...
  • It seems like the split was complete so it's likely they're out of danger and the place they were previously on was simply undermined by the splitting plates. They should be safe now.
    • Continental drift is happening today and has been going on since the split. The plates move less than an inch per year, and the whole 'the end' is implied to be the initial split that broke up Pangia, not the drift itself. The actual split was no doubt cataclysmic when it happened, but the drift is slow and steady enough to be barely noticeable.
  • The sequel brings up that Tomorrow isn't necessarily a place, but could be a person.

Douglas? Hey, I know that guy!

• How did Grug recognize Douglas? Thunk found him while they were all separated and he fell off the tree while Grug was still making his way to them.
  • Douglas fell off the tree with the seashell still in his mouth. Said seashell (along with the ones Guy gave to everyone else) were significant enough to be easily recognizable. When Grug saw Douglas, little D still had the seashell in his mouth and was clearly crying. As brainless as Grug may have been, it can't have been that difficult to put two and two together.
    • Except Thunk has an identical seashell in the mass shell-calling scene, suggesting either he or Douglas had to find a replacement shell which was an exact match for the first one.
    • Douglas definitely had the shell in his mouth when he fell, so Thunk would have had to find another. It's entirely possible that Thunk picked up a second while the family was crossing the dry seabed just to have two, or that Guy was sensible enough to bring a few extra in case any of them broke.
  • Thunk may have spent most of the day after they got separated talking about Douglas, and described what his dog/lizard/whatever buddy looked like.
    • And Douglas himself may have found a new shell and decided to bring it to Thunk. Either way, Douglas was the only alligator dog thing seen in the movie (all the others were the meerkat-frilled lizard things), so it's really not a stretch to think the animal that looks exactly like Douglas and has a shell is actually Douglas.
  • Ugga probably told Grug all about Thunk's new pet on the way back from the crevices, so he wouldn't immediately attack Douglas on sight thinking the animal was a threat.

Sleeping through a volcanic eruption

• Small one. On Guy's second night with the Croods (first night in the log), they are sleeping on a wide plateau. Come morning, that plateau has become a cliff-side with a literal river of lava at the bottom. There's no way that was a quiet or steady affair. Who could have slept through that?
  • Richard Attenborough? The man slept through a hurricane or something. It's not hard to believe that some cavemen could too.
  • Considering the Croods had just walked farther than they probably had in the entire rest of their lives put together, and Guy had been battered all to hell by Grug's and Eep's manhandling, it's perhaps not as surprising that they'd conk out thoroughly enough to sleep through anything.

Geographic Locations

• Another small one. In the prologue, if you look closely, the ground that crumbles under the Croods' feet is along the South American-African rift. If we take this to mean 'Tomorrow' is what it now South America, the Croods would have to be native to Africa. Neanderthals evolved in Eurasia and were never in Africa.
  • Its supposed to be fantasy in a way, not a documentary. Otherwise they would have used real animals rather than the large mix of hybrid "missing links" as the creators called them that are in the film.

Liyotes are off limits for hunting

• At the very beginning, the Croods are introduced one-by-one after Grug scares off a pack of Liyotes hanging around outside of the cave. My question is: why don't the Croods just hunt those? Grug might not be the brightest caveman around (Hell, the Croods haven't even figured out clubs yet), but you'd think that at least one of them would have figured out that it would have been easier to catch the several small but non-hostile animals nearby instead of hiking for miles to try and steal eggs from significantly more hostile animals. Sure they would have ran out eventually considering the appetites they all have, but you'd think someone would have recognized the easy meal right outside their front door while it lasts.
  • According to the Croods wiki, the Liyotes are cunning creatures, which from the Croods' then anti-intellectual view meant that they'd be too troublesome to go after; note that they eventually adopted one who wasn't really a pest but was looking to depend on someone. The other prey wasn't too bright and so were fair game.
  • Maybe liyotes simply taste awful.