History Headscratchers / CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory

* What would Willie Wonka have done if he had gotten two or more well-behaved children out of the test? Have them fight to the death?

* How is Wonka not the most hated man in town? Think about it. First, opens a big factory providing lots of people with jobs. Then, he shuts it down, leaving all those people without jobs. Then, a few years later, he reopens the factory, but none of the former workers gets their job back. When he gives the tour, he tells everyone how he smuggled a bunch of immigrants over to work for him. I don't see any of the laid-off former workers caring whether Oompa Loompas has the proper documentation or not. ''And'' if the Johnny Depp movie is to be believed, Wonka was also responsible, in part, for a big lay-off at the toothpaste factory.

*** Long time ago? It took place during the Golden Ticket craze but the book has no mention of Wonka being in any way responsible and the movie's layoff was restricted to employees in charge of putting the lids on toothpaste tubes before the factory bought machines to do the job. Even if Charlie's Dad wasn't the only one fired because of this, there couldn't have been enough of them for it to be called a "big" layoff.

** In fiction (and real-life) there are plenty of very intelligent characters known for being at least someone lacking in common sense.

*** There is a scene in the second film showing just how much taffy gets pulled and to be fair, the Oompa Loompas would only have Willy Wonka as a model for how humans should look. Given that they are the size of dolls, they probably just kept pulling when trying to get Mike to be as wide as a normal person. That or there may have been a risk with taffy tearing or leaving lumps if not doing in one go.

* Shouldn't the Oompa Loompas hate Wonka by now? I mean in the book, it says that one was forced to suck on candy for over a year (and still is), another had his hair grow out so fast that they needed to cut with a lawnmower, another probably floated into space...plus all the ones that got turned into blueberries testing out his gum, yet they love him. I know they're getting paid with their favorite food, but that doesn't seem like enough for the kind of abuse they're taking. Why don't they leave or go on strike or something?
** I'm not sure about the sucking on candy, but the rest were through their fault presumably knowing the risks and Wonka even warned ''against'' the one that became like Violet.
** In Violet's case, she took it when she wasn't supposed to. The Oompa Loompas ''are'' supposed to and test out Wonka's candy for him regularly. Even if they're given informed consent, forcing your illegal-immigrant scab-workers to taste potentially-deadly candy to see if it's safe has some weird implications, Mr. Wonka.

** Never mind their working conditions: why are the Oompa Loompas so mellow about the fact that Wonka seems never to even have considered '''them''' as potential heirs to the factory? They're professionals, they know how the factory works, they support his business philosophy. They're the only reason he still ''has'' a working chocolate factory in the first place, and have been proving their competence for many years. And they're sufficiently devoid of the very character-flaws Wonka was determined to screen out of the child candidates - gluttony, bad manners, self-centered attitudes, addiction to mindless entertainment - to perform freakin' ''musical numbers'' about their comparative virtue. So why are they so content to be passed over, one and all, no matter ''' how''' much they've done for Mr. "I Can't Bring Myself To Trust A Successor Among My Hundreds Of Capable Employees" Wonka, for some random twelve-year-old paperboy?

** In the 2005 movie, it's been awhile since I last saw the movie but Wonka said that he was worried about who would look after the Oompa-Loompas (and the factory), so anyone else getting the factory might not guarantee the Oompa-Loompas have a job or a home anymore or even know how to keep the factory successful enough to keep running. I mean, he can't just leave it to ''anyone''.
*** If you think about it, his concern for the Oompa-Loompas might be FridgeBrilliance. His concern for the Oompa-Loompas gives us insight into ''why'' he decided to test the kids. The other kids were greedy (Augustus), overly demanding (Veruca), overcompetitive (Violet), and arrogant (Mike) that would make them really bad heirs and even worse business leaders. Since Charlie was the only good one by being well-behaved, honest, and polite, it'd made perfect sense to have him as an heir.

* Willy Wonka shuts down his factory because he's sick of spies stealing all of his ideas. Why can't he just patent his inventions? Then it won't matter how many recipes his rivals steal because they won't legally be allowed to sell them. Closing down his factory seems a little drastic in light of a much simpler solution.

** And there were plenty of treats in the chocolate room but Augustus had to go for the river. And when Wonka told him to stop, he didn't listen and fell in. And as said above, the other children were only putting their safety at risk but Augustus was putting everyone else's - if he hadn't got sucked into the pipe, someone would have had to go into the river after him.

** Honestly, the fact that he's watched so much TV is probably the exact reason ''why'' he wasn't more GenreSavvy than that. It would probably be like a big Doctor Who fans suddenly seeing a real-life TARDIS, or a Lord Of The Rings fan meeting a hobbit. Or heck, anyone meeting their favorite celebrity. It's one of those situations where common sense just goes completely out the window.

* In both the book and the 2005-movie, why is the garbage chute in the nut-sorting room big enough for an adult human to go through? It's only supposed to be for rotten nuts, so a much smaller chute would do just fine.

* How ''does'' the elevator fly? Willy Wonka was asked this question twice and said something different both times. The first time, he said it was "one million sugar power", but what does that mean? The second time, he said it was an invisible sky-hook but doesn't answer when asked what the other end of the hook is attached to.

* Augustus is described as being very thin after being squeezed in the pipe. How is that possible?? Is his flesh just hanging off him loosely? And for that matter, how does the physics of the entire pipe scene work?

** My theory is that they will diss track the child for being clumsy.

*** In my version, Grandpa Joe gives him sixpence, and then later he finds a fifty pence piece. This places the book at a post-1971 date. Although sixpences are pre-decimal, and 50p is decimal, people still used sixpences for a time as 2 1/2 new pence.
*** In the second book when one of the grandmothers regresses backward through her life the historical events she remembers - the major one is the death of Abraham Lincoln - seem to imply they're in America. It confused this (British) troper no end as a kid.

*** I'm pretty sure the 2005 film was set in America. My reasoning for this is because when Charlie finds the last golden ticket, two people approach him and offer him 50 dollars and 500 dollars, respectively. I would guess that there are just a lot of British immigrants in the town they live in.

*** The same would have happened with Charlie for whatever happened. Try swimming after Agustus despite probably having no swim lessons? He would have been likely pulled under by the fat boy or would have been sent up the pipe (in the book version) and processed quickly. Veruca? Might be tossed into a table or experiments, caused her to swallow the gum, or be bitten as the Oompa Loompas add verses to their song about not sticking his hand where it shouldn't belong. Mike? Only part of them are sent over or they are fused. The book mentioned that he avoided playing to preserve what little energy his body had and it does him well here. Naivety or white knighting might be his fault otherwise.

* Before moving on from the chocolate river, why when Augustus falls into the river he gets immediately covered with chocolate but when the Oompa-Loompas jump there to swim while they sing Augustus' song they didn't get covered at all? Because they wore swimsuits or what?

* Why was Veruca's father the only parent that got a punishment? He sure was taking her to the person she is, but every other parent was that to their kids too and the punishments for them were running after their kids. Also, he didn´t even mean to make her obnoxious and dominant, he just wanted to make her happy, although he did it in the wrong, material way. Violet's mother was far worse, probably forcing her daughter into that hobby.

*** Probably because two-metre-long chocolate bar/[[NightmareFuel boy]] + transmission = Six-inch-long bar/boy. Six-inch-long chocolate bar + transmission = 1.1 centimetre long chocolate bar. You probably wouldn't even ''see'' it on the screen, let alone be able to take it or get the wrapper off.

*** The bratty qualities of the other children can be blamed (well, partially) on the parents, too, though. If the Gloops made sure her son knew how to control himself and enjoy a healthy diet, he wouldn't have practically dived into the chocolate lake; if Mike's parents raised their child instead of letting him become obsessed with television, he just would have been in awe of Wonka's invention instead of rushing to use it and the same for Violet and gum/winning. And the other parents are punished as well because they have to deal with a stretched-out son or a purple daughter; in other words, they have to deal with the mess they created. The children were all brats because of their awful personalities and because of bad habits their parents allowed them to keep.

** I always imagined that being manhandled by a group of squirrels would be quite painful, what with the scratching and constantly grabbing, etc. Of course, scars couldn't be shown in a children's film, but it would still be a pretty harsh side effect.

** Maybe that's why Wonka had the parents accompany them, to divert some of the liability away from him. Not making the factory safe enough for them is one thing, but if they go out of their way to get themselves in trouble and their parents don't do anything to stop them, it won't come down as heavily on him, at least.

** Mr. Bucket may have just gotten a job as a maintenance man for the entire factory, or at least a part of it, but still a larger role than just fixing the machine - whether it constantly breaks down or not, a company hiring a man for the sake of upkeep of ''one machine'', especially one with such a minor purpose overall, wouldn't seem like a job that would be capable of supporting a family of a child, two adults, and four elderly bedridden grandparents. Mr. Bucket fixing up the machine as was shown in the film could've been an entry-level performance test, for the company executives to get an idea of what he was capable of.

** 2005 Mike strikes me as proactive enough to not ''need'' a Slugworth to come to him. He probably thought he'd just take a look around and maybe get a few secrets he could sell. Either that or the neener-neener privileges of visiting The Forbidden Factory outweighed his dislike of chocolate...Speaking of which, did he say he hated ''all'' sweets or just chocolate? Wonka makes a lot of other stuff in there besides chocolate, which may include the soft drinks that gamers today love so much?

* So what was the point of the great glass elevator ride and Wonka asking where Charlie lived in this version? In the book (and ostensibly the 1971 film), it's because they used the elevator to pick up the rest of Charlie's family and bring them all back to his new factory. (Which also explains why they destroyed the roof of his house in the process.) But in this version, Wonka tells Charlie he can't bring his family back with him, so why did he bother taking the elevator? Was it just a more exciting way of taking Grandpa Joe home?

** It could also be argued that that's the entire flaw of Charlie's character in this version: he's too precocious and dedicated to doing right by his family to think of pursuing another option, like retaining something that's truly one of a kind and will grant him an enriching experience with or without the chance to make more money through it. It's like when he turns down Wonka's offer to inherit the factory. Rather than try and negotiate something or work out precisely why Wonka feels this way, he declines on the spot, ignoring the notoriety that would probably come to his family once news of Charlie's prize became public or the fact that he could probably welcome them all into the factory once Wonka officially retires.

* When Willy Wonka made the giant chocolate palace for the Indian prince, he tells him to "start eating it" before it melts. Exactly how are a single person and his family going to eat all of ''that'' in a short amount of time? I'm sure even the biggest chocolate-lovers wouldn't be able to get through a quarter of that without getting sick and eventually turned off from the candy. Willy Wonka may be a chocolate-selling businessman on the extreme level but he should know better.

** That pipe is not the only physics-defying object owned by Willy Wonka: the elevator that goes to space is another. If we don't want to apply thought-stopping mantras like AWizardDidIt or the MST3KMantra, we could infer that Willy Wonka possesses SufficientlyAdvancedTechnology. As to ''why'' he does, it could be that he is an alien. In keeping with the spirit of Wiki/TVTropes, we could guess that he is a JustForFun/TimeLord, and the factory is his [=TARDIS=]. From this, we could even understand how he deals with workplace safety and food health regulations: the inside of his factory actually ''does'' conform to safety and hygiene rules, but whenever children come to visit it, he activates a combination of holograms that make it look like a crazy theme park. In other words, nothing of what the children see is real.

** Also, why would he need to rename the main character? "Charlie" is just as alliterative with "candy" as either "Carl" or "Christopher".
*** Um...no it isn't. "Ch" isn't alliterative with "c" (hard "k" sound). They're completely different.
*** I was thinking of alliteration in terms of the letters, not the sounds. Thanks for putting me straight (though the tone of condescension was probably not necessary).
*** Hark who's talking. Alliteration is extremely clearly defined as consonant sounds, not the letters themselves.

[[folder:General]]

** Well, that answers the question regarding the 2005 movie, "If Charlie found a ten-dollar bill in the road, why could he only buy ONE chocolate bar with that ten dollars??"

** In line with the RewatchBonus entry in the other mediums they wanted to make Charlie's "test/s" bigger for the sake of drama. As in the book his test is rather low-key. Whether Wonka chess mastered the whole thing or not, each kid had something put in front of them that played at their temptations and vices. Four of them all fall victim to it, Charlie does not. The ever-lasting gobstopper is his, for someone who was poor and had little money, the ultimate never-ending candy was his bait. He didn't do anything about it. While not every action friendly realistically this would no doubt be the moment Wonka realized Charlie was a candidate, he would just need to see if any of the others would resist too, and none of them did.

** Who says he even watches science-fiction shows, to begin with? He watches a lot of television, that doesn't translate to watching all of the television and knowing the ins and outs of every story ever told. And even if he does, let's not oversell Mike here; he's a dumb TV addict with little common sense and an over-inflated opinion of his intelligence, he's no genius. It's entirely likely he'd foolishly blunder into some dangerous situation and come out poorly out of over-confidence.

*** A lot of businesses follow this naming scheme, as it's a holdover from ''when they started'', an ArtifactTitle if you will.For example, we have Cheesecake Factory, which is mostly restaurant (they do have freezer desserts you can buy at Target)but when they first started, they were a wholesale bakery which made desserts for other stores , a "factory" in a sense (Fun fact: Cheesecake Factory started in 1972, a year after ''[=WW&tCF=]'' was released).

** I think it's because Wonka's competitors aren't stealing anything from him that can be legally protected. There is no way to obtain a patent or copyright protection for an ''idea'', like "ice cream that never melts" or "super-inflatable candy balloons" or "gum that never loses its flavor". He can't prove that their imitations of his products are anything more than that, in the same way, that [=PepsiCo=] and the Coca-Cola Company can't sue each other over both selling their versions of lemon-lime soda.

[[folder:Book]]

[[folder:2005 film]]

*** Like was mentioned earlier, if you consider how Mike calculated the "code" to only purchase one Wonka bar which contained the ticket (instead of buying as much as he could like the others) it would have been more in character if he at least tried to figure out how the "teleporter" worked in more depth than Wonka's demonstration. Not only that but I would assume with all the NightmareFuel-filled videogames and television he's implied to see, he'd be wiser than to jump into a teleporter that hasn't been tested.

** I'm to understand it was a reference to Johnny Depp's previous role an Ed Wood in the film of the same name.

* Why was Veruca's father the only parent that got a punishment? He sure was taking her to the person she is, but every other parent was that to their kids too and the punishments for them were running after their kids. Also, he didn´t even mean to make her obnoxious and dominant, he just wanted to make her happy, although he did it in the wrong, material way. Violet's mother was far worse, probably forcing her daughter to that hobby.

** Probably people working for an advertising agency Wonka contracted to advertise the factory tour. He produces all his chocolate in-house, but he doesn't necessarily need to do his in-house marketing; he just contacts an advertising agency or printing house, tells them "make up some posters my factory tour!" and lets them get on with it.

** Or he was using Willy's trick-or-treat excursions to survey what sorts of goodies the neighbors were giving out, so he could spend the rest of the year criticizing the ones providing candy while voicing his approval of any that gave out healthy snacks or inedible goodies (e.g. crayons or spooky plastic toys). He seemed to like that sort of persnickety busybody.

* At one point in the movie, Grandma Georgina says things are going to get a lot better, and the narrator says that for once, she knew what she was talking about, but earlier in the movie she told Charlie that nothing is impossible, and she knew what she was talking about then.

*** If you think about it, his concern for the the Oompa-Loompas might be FridgeBrilliance. His concern for the Oompa-Loompas gives us into ''why'' he decided to test the kids. The other kids were greedy (Augustus), overly demanding (Veruca), overcompetitive (Violet), and arrogant (Mike) that would make them really bad heirs and even worse business leaders. Since Charlie was the only good one by being well-behaved, honest, and polite, so it'd made perfect sense to have him as an heir.

** In the 2005, it's been awhile since I last saw the movie but Wonka said that he was worried about who would look after the Oompa-Loompas (and the factory), so anyone else getting the factory might not guarantee the Oompa-Loompas have a job or a home anymore or even know how to keep the factory successful enough to keep running. I mean, he can't just leave it to ''anyone''.

*** A lot of businesses follow this naming scheme, as it's a holdover from ''when they started'', an ArtifactTitle if you will.For example, we have Cheesecake Factory, which is mostly restaurant (they do have freezer desserts you can buy at Target)but when they first started, they were a wholesale bakery which made desserts for other stores , a "factory" in a sense (Fun fact: Cheesecake Factory started in 1972, a year after ''[=WW&tCF=]'' was released).

* Mike Teavee's whole schtick is watching a lot of television - [[TVTropesWillRuinYourLife you know, like some other people we may have heard of.]] Wouldn't years of gorging himself on science-fiction shows where [[TeleporterAccident Teleporter Accidents]] are a dime a dozen make him more GenreSavvy than that?

* Both movies show that millions of people were buying Wonka at a very fast rate, that made lots of shops run out of candy very fast. Anyone who understands economy would very well know that the price of the candies would skyrocket. How did Charlie buy a chocolate bar with a dollar? It would be impossible for him to buy candy with that amount of demand with just a dollar.
** In the first movie at least, the chocolate craze had started to die down when he bought it. Perhaps by then prices had also begun to go down.
** Wonka has a monopoly on Wonka bars, so he can sell them to select distributors and, just like any real life promotional contest, place strict validation rules on the golden tickets to make sure the chocolate bars aren't getting scalped. The real question is why the stores didn't run out, but Wonka's got enough crazy technology and production methods that we can assume he actually ''can'' keep up with that level of demand.

** The reason the Wonka craze was dying down was because the final ticket had been found in South America (Russia in the 2005 version), so the contest was considered finished. ''Then'' it was revealed that the ticket was a fake and the 5th was still out there. Some people were crowded around a newsstand talking about the fake and how the contest wasn't actually over; Charlie heard them and went into the candy store, which is where he finds the last ticket.

** Well, that answers the question regarding the 2005 movie, "If Charlie found a ten dollar bill in the road, why could he only buy ONE chocolate bar with that ten dollars??"

** I suspect we might be overthinking this a little bit. In the book, at least, once Charlie's found the golden ticket the shopkeeper makes a point of saying that he's glad that Charlie was the one found the golden ticket because he suspects Charlie has needed some good fortune. In the original movie, where this scene doesn't actually take place, the shopkeeper has already been established as a rather likeable fellow who shows generosity to children. So if we assume that chocolate was being sold for inflated prices due to the golden ticket hunt, the most likely explanation is that this shopkeeper was simply a kind-hearted person who saw a child who was clearly rather poor and hungry-looking and decided to cut him a break by letting him buy a bar of chocolate for what little money he had on him, even if it wasn't the full price. A one-off price cut on a single bar of chocolate for a poor kid is unlikely to ruin him, after all, especially if he's coming off a windfall like a major rush on chocolate.

* How is Wonka not the most hated man in town? Think about it. First, opens a big factory providing lots of people with jobs. Then, he shuts it down, leaving all those people without jobs. Then, a few years later, he reopens the factory, but none of the former workers gets their job back. When he gives the tour, he tells everyone how he smuggled a bunch of immigrants over to work for him. I don't see any of the laid-off former workers caring whether Oompa Loompas have the proper documentation or not. ''And'' if the Johnny Depp movie is to be believed, Wonka was also responsible, in part, for a big lay-off at the toothpaste factory.

*** I read the question thinking of the lay-offs at the ''factory'' because of internal spies but that's just me.

** In fiction (and real life) there are plenty of very intelligent characters known for being at least someone lacking in common sense.

** ItOnlyWorksOnce. Remember, in order for ''you'' to take it, ''he'' has to send it. After he sends it, the commercial carries the ''image'' of the bar, but not the bar itself. Not to mention, he's only sending out one chocolate bar at a time, so only one person in the world actually gets the chocolate bar. In effect it would be like a free chocolate lottery. Whenever a Wonka commercial comes on tv every viewer has to rush to the screen and grab for the chocolate. One person will get it, the rest won't. It's basically like Wonka is selecting one random child on Earth to receive a free chocolate bar. Even if he did it every day, the expense of giving away one free chocolate bar per day would be massively outweighed by the spectacular publicity this would generate for [=WonkaCorp=].

** Some species don't eat just one thing, it's possible that they have other food sources.
* Most the kids brought their fates upon themselves, and Wonka cured them as best he could; Violet, for instance, was purple as an aftereffect of being a blueberry, and there was nothing they could do to get her regular colouring back. But Mike... how can you overstretch someone by like six feet? Why couldn't Dahl just have had him walking out looking ridiculously thin? Seriously, I can't believe the oompa loompas overstretched him by accident.

*** There is a scene in the second film showing just how much taffy gets pulled and to be fair, the Oompa Loompas would only have Willy Wonka as a model for how humans should look. Given that they they are the size of dolls, they probably just kept pulling when trying to get Mike to be as wide as a normal person. That or there may have been a risk with taffy tearing or leaving lumps if not doing in one go.

** I'm not sure about the sucking on candy, but the rest were through their own fault presumably knowing the risks and Wonka even warned ''against'' the one that became like Violet.
** In Violet's case, she took it when she wasn't supposed to. The Oompa Loompas ''are'' supposed to and test out Wonka's candy for him on a regular basis. Even if they're given informed consent, forcing your illegal-immigrant scab-workers to taste potentially-deadly candy to see if it's safe has some weird implications, Mr. Wonka.
*** This Troper believes Wonka was testing the children and intentionally made the candy flawed. Come on, this guy made the elixir of life, flew into space on a magic elevator and built a teleporter. Methinks it would be a doddle to make a blueness-antidote.

** Never mind their working conditions: why are the Oompa Loompas so mellow about the fact that Wonka seems never to even have considered '''them''' as potential heirs to the factory? They're professionals, they know how the factory works, they support his business philosophy. They're the only reason he still ''has'' a working chocolate factory in the first place, and have been proving their competence for many years. And they're sufficiently devoid of the very character-flaws Wonka was determined to screen out of the child candidates - gluttony, bad manners, self-centered attitudes, addiction to mindless entertainment - to perform freakin' ''musical numbers'' about their own comparative virtue. So why are they so content to be passed over, one and all, no matter '''how''' much they've done for Mr. "I Can't Bring Myself To Trust A Successor Among My Hundreds Of Capable Employees" Wonka, for some random twelve-year-old paper boy?

*** There was a possibility that , by "heir" ,what Wnaka really means is more like a "spokesperson" or "face of the company".....The Oompa-Loompas are the one who will keep the business running , but he also need a heir for tax and marketing purpose.

** A patent can only go so far. You can patent the first design for a cell phone, but then other people can go make their own cell phones. His rivals might have to make slightly different recipes, but a patent wouldn't give him a monopoly on the candies he invented.
** In order to patent something, you have to reveal how it works, and the patent only lasts 20 years. After it expires, any one can then copy it. If you want a permanent monopoly on a recipe, you can't patent it - you need to keep it a secret, and hope no-one manages to find it out (and none of your workers leaks it).
*** Yes. You patent things that you expect someone to be able to reverse-engineer quickly after release. If you're absolutely certain it can't be (barring espionage), you stay far away from the patent office. Hence the Coke formula and eleven herbs and spices.

* I watched a DVD of a middle-school production of ''Willy Wonka Junior'' last night. In that version, Charlie faced temptation in the room with the Fizzy Lifting Drinks. At the end of the play, Wonka told Charlie that even though he failed to resist sneaking a drink, he still won the factory by admitting his mistake, and offering to make up for it by declining the lifetime supply of chocolate. If Charlie just decided not to take the drink at all, how would Wonka know that he passed his test?

*** I don't think so. In the Wilder movie, resisting the candy temptations weren't the real test. The real test was giving back the Gobstopper, and that's what made Charlie a winner. If he'd kept it, Lifting Drinks or not, Wonka probably would've either run the contest all over again or figure out something else.

** In line with the RewatchBonus entry in the other mediums they wanted to make Charlie's "test/s" bigger for the sake of drama. As in the book his test is rather low-key. Whether Wonka chess mastered the whole thing or not, each kid had something put in front of them that played at their temptations and vices. Four of them all fall victim to it, Charlie does not. The ever-lasting gobstobber is his, for someone who was poor and had little money, the ultimate never ending candy was his bait. He didn't do anything about it. While not very action friendly realistically this would no doubt the moment Wonka realized Charlie was a candidate, he would just need to see if any of the others would resist too, and none of them did.
* I don't know if anyone knows how the physics of the scene would ACTUALLY work, but Augustus's pipe seems... impossible in all versions. Not to mention the fact that he's described at becoming thin afterwards, which seems bizarre, unless his stomach was actually stretched out by the tight squeeze (which would be almost as much of a physical deformity as Mike or Violet).

** He was the only one not using a swimcap in the river.
** Because while Wonka was warning the other children to not play with the devices or squirrels for their own safety (especially Violet), Augustus was "dirtying" his chocolate by lapping it from the river. The other children were looking at inventions that hadn't been released or squirrels that never left their Nut Room. Augustus wasn't listening to anything except his cravings, which was selfish and inconsiderate since he had a "nasty cold" to boot that could be spread to the entire country.
** And there were plenty of treats in the chocolate room but Augustus had to go for the river. And when Wonka told him to stop, he didn't listen and fell in. And as said above, the other children were only putting their own safety at risk but Augustus was putting everyone else's - if he hadn't got sucked into the pipe, someone would have had to go into the river after him.

** Honestly, the fact that he's watched so much TV is probably the exact reason ''why'' he wasn't more GenreSavvy than that. It would probably be like a big Doctor Who fan suddenly seeing a real-life TARDIS, or a Lord Of The Rings fan meeting a hobbit. Or heck, anyone meeting their favourite celebrity. It's one of those situations where common sense just goes completely out the window.

** Who says he even watches science-fiction shows to begin with? He watches a lot of television, that doesn't translate to watching all of the television and knowing the ins and outs of every story ever told. And even if he does, let's not oversell Mike here; he's a dumb TV addict with little common-sense and an over-inflated opinion of his intelligence, he's no genius. It's entirely likely he'd foolishly blunder into some dangerous situation and come out poorly out of over-confidence.
* Why is it called a ''[[NonIndicativeName chocolate]]'' factory? It's clearly a ''candy'' factory. (If the reason was alliteration, Dahl could've named the hero Carl or Christopher or you get the idea.)
** Not sure about the meta reason, but the in-universe reason is probably because chocolate is the most notable and famous stuff that comes out of it, and that's what people know Willy Wonka for the most.
** Also, Dahl lived and wrote in the United Kingdom, where 'candy' is not really used frequently as a term for confectionary (in Britain they tend to be called 'sweets'). Presumably he thought 'chocolate' worked better in the title than ''Charlie and the Sweets Factory'' or ''Charlie and the Confectionary Factory''.

*** Hark who's talking. Alliteration is extremely clearly defined as pertaining to consonant sounds, not the letters themselves.

** In case a disobedient child needs to be hoisted through, clearly.

* When Fickelgruber, Prodnose and Slugworth stole some of Wonka's recipes through their spies, why instead of closing down the factory, Wonka just didn't fil a lawsuit against them? It's really seems obvious that they copied him, if only Wonka was known for producing that specific sweets, like the "un-melting" ice cream.
** I think it's because Wonka's competitors aren't stealing anything from him that can be legally protected. There is no way to obtain a patent or copyright protection for an ''idea'', like "ice cream that never melts" or "super-inflatable candy balloons" or "gum that never loses its flavor". He can't prove that their imitations of his products are anything more than that, in the same way that [=PepsiCo=] and the Coca Cola Company can't sue each other over both selling their own versions of lemon-lime soda.

* In the sequel- which is set in the 1970s, as the characters mention- they're building a space hotel, and ordinary people are going to stay there. Um, how are they going to get there? Send the guests up three at a time in Apollo capsules?

** Perhaps we should assume space travel is more advanced in their world. In reality we don't even have space hotels...well not smart ones like in the book anyway.

** The ship they sent the staff up on had 150 people on board.
* Augustus is described as being very thin after being squeezed in the pipe. How is that possible?? Is his flesh just hanging off him loosely? And for that matter, how do the physics of the entire pipe scene work?
** That pipe is not the only physics-defying object owned by Willy Wonka: the elevator that goes to space is another. If we don't want to apply thought-stopping mantras like AWizardDidIt or the MST3KMantra, we could infer that Willy Wonka possesses SufficientlyAdvancedTechnology. As to ''why'' he does, it could be that he is actually an alien. In keeping with the spirit of Wiki/TVTropes, we could guess that he is a JustForFun/TimeLord, and the factory is his [=TARDIS=]. From this, we could even understand how he deals with workplace safety and food health regulations: the inside of his factory actually ''does'' conform to safety and hygiene rules, but whenever children come to visit it, he activates a combination of holograms that make it look like a crazy theme park. In other words, nothing of what the children see is real.
** The pipes work in the same way that the taffy-puller can restore Mike Teavee to human height if not human proportions; the juicing room can 'fix' blueberrification; and the Television Chocolate device somehow renders TV screens insubstantial as a side effect of its teleportation power - ''they shouldn't.'' But they do. This is one of those 'sense of childlike wonder' things that Wonka's 'fairyland' expects you to accept.

* After Wonka sends the Gloops with an Oompa-Loompa to retrieve Augustus, why they didn't rejoin the group later on? I understand that the other kids likely didn't rejoin the group because the visit had surely ended once they got squeezed, taken from the trash and stretched, but if Augustus was the first boy to be eliminated, he had plenty of time to rejoin the visit...

** Plus, in the book and the 2005 film, Augustus is only shown leaving the factory after the tour is already over. (And he's still covered in chocolate, too.) It's possible it really did take that long to fish him out of the mixing barrel.

* Mike Teevee's "exit song" chides him for becoming mindless due to watching television, with lyrics such as "He does not think, he only sees!" However, Teevee's flaw in the Burton film is that he seems a bit too smart for his own good. What gives?

** Playing video games (on a console, and hence on a television) has given him a false sense of invulnerability, so he doesn't appreciate the consequences of turning himself three inches tall through a one-way teleporter.
** It doesn't make sense to portray TV-obsession as being a hideous flaw when your target market is children who have been raised on 24-hour TV and movies. They changed the character of Mike to be more relevant to today, and either forgot to change the song or decided people would interpret it in relation to the character. Considering the ending, they seem to be working on the assumption people haven't read the book, so might either not notice.
** The idea seems to be not that TV is bad or he's too smart but rather that his limited knowledge and lack of experience is a bad thing to have combined with arrogance. Yes, TV can teach you a lot of things... but it's not good to rely solely on it to teach you everything or assume that it's the one true holder of all useful knowledge. Similarly, his flaw was that his smarmy knowledge did not actually allow him to learn. He'd lost a sense of wonder and curiousity - he wanted to be told, not taught.
*** Like was mentioned earlier, if you consider how Mike calculated the "code" to only purchase one wonka bar which contained the ticket (instead of buying as much as he could like the others) it would have been more in character if he at least tried to figure out how the "teleporter" worked in more depth than Wonka's demostration. Not only that but I would assume with all the NightmareFuel-filled videogames and television he's implied to see, he'd be more wiser than to jump into a teleporter that hasn't been tested.

** Carried over from the book, which used British idioms and yet Charlie found a dollar...

*** It's not actually wrong -- "dollar" was slang for the British coin called a crown, or five-shilling piece, worth one quarter of a pound. The slang expression originated in the 19th century, fell into disuse, and was then revived during WWII by the presence of US troops in the UK and the fact that a US dollar was worth about five shillings at the time. The book was written in 1964 and the UK didn't move to decimal currency until 1971, so Charlie probably found a crown/five-shilling piece.

*** In the second book when one of the grandmothers regresses backwards through her life the historical events she remembers - the major one is the death of Abraham Lincoln - seem to imply they're in America. It confused this (British) troper no end as a kid.

*** Nope: I've checked the book and the events described are definitely from an American perspective, starting from crossing on the Mayflower, the War of Independence (with reference to "the dirty British"), the Civil War and then the death of Lincoln.

*** This troper always saw the characters (all of them) as being intentionally vague as to where they came from, to let the reader feel like they could possibly be one of the characters.
*** Perhaps Charlie grew up in a community of recent American immigrants to Great Britain, or vice versa. Ethnic neighborhoods are common on both sides of the Pond.

** Probably because people would complain if the movie showed an expanding naked girl. Or maybe the gum makes your clothes expand too, since it's supposed to be magical.

** You can see the juice soaking into her clothes, so presumably that's how the transformation also affected the clothes.

* So, uh, why didn't either Charlie or Mike, who both were small enough to fit though the gate as Veruca did, do anything to save her?

** Would '''you''' run down into the midst of a bunch of apparently intelligent, acting-rabid squirrels to save some witchy girl who stupidly put herself into that position whom you didn't even like? No thanks, I like my knees very much where they are.

*** The same would have happened with Charlie for whatever happened. Try swimming after Agustus despite probably having no swim lessons? He would have been likely pulled under by the fat boy or would have been sent up the pipe (in the book version) and processed quickly. Veruca? Might be tossed into a table or experiments, caused her to swallow the gum, or be bitten as the Oompa Loompas add verses to their song about not sticking his hand where it shouldn't belong. Mike? Only part of them are sent over or they are fused together. The book mentioned that he avoided playing to preserve what little energy his body had and it does him well here. Naivety or white knighting might be his fault otherwise.

** I'm to understand it was a reference to Johnny Depp's previous role a Ed Wood in the film of the same name.

** I thought it was a very sneaky little joke. Cotton candy is also called candy floss. Floss is a type of yarn, and yarn is made form wool.

* Before moving on from the chocolate river, why when Augustus falls into the river he gets immediately covered with chocolate but when the Oopa-Loompas jump there to swim while they sing Augustus' song they didn't get covered at all? Because they wore swimsuits or what?

* What kind of game system was Mike playing in his introduction? Or at least what was it based on? It looked similar to an ''Atari 7200'' however the graphics was more [=PS2=] or Xbox like.

** Violet was shown to be very competitive, Veruca was a spoiled brat who probably didn't like the idea that other people were sharing the prize with her. They didn't like each other in the first movie either. As for the rest of it... I don't really know either.

* Why was Veruca's father the only parent that got a punishment? He sure was making her to the person she is, but every other parent was that to their kids too and the punishments for them were running after their kids. Also, he didn´t even mean to make her obnoxious and dominant, he just wanted to make her happy, although he did it with the wrong, material way. Violet's mother was far worse, probably forcing her daughter to that hobby.
** It's something of an artifact of the adaptation process. In the book it was only Mr. Salt who bore any direct responsibility for his child's behavior, hence why he received a punishment. The other parents' flaws of being doting (to Augustus), overcompetitive (to Violet) and cluelessly ineffectual (to Mike) were added to the movie, without adding any notable retribution apart from the shock and public embarrassment of facing what their children have become after the tour.
* Why did Wonka use the TV machine to shrink giant-ass candy bars to normal size when he could've, ya know, made normal sized bars in the first place? Seems wasteful.

*** I still don't see the problem with using regular bars. Hershey's Minis are big business - if he did the regular-bar to mini-size then he'd use less chocolate for a bite-size chunk to simply whet people's appetites..

** Due to resolution problems with the camera/transmitter. If you sent a normal bar, important molecules may be lost due to resolution and fail to make the right taste and structure. [[NightmareFuel What this says of Mike, however...]]

** Because close-ups apparently don't exist, silly!

** Also, Wonka wasn't really responsible for the family's hard times, as Grandpa Joe had believed himself too old to find work anyway by the time of the story, and the family was incredibly poor even before Mr. Bucket lost his job.

** I didn't think Augustus was turned into chocolate, he was just covered in it, they probably got it off after several washes,and Violet seemed quite happy with her situation (she wasn't doing cartwheels because she had to, she was showing off). I did think it was unfair that they didn't all get lasting effects, though. It should have been all or none of them getting permanent side effects.
** What makes her the worst in the group? I don't think she really came off as any more bratty than Mike or Violet, it's just her brattishness was demanding presents, while the others were obnoxious in different ways. I'd say she was actually the least deserving of punishment out of everyone. Her parents are as much to blame for her personality, which can't be said for the other families really. Wonka clearly agrees- Veruca and her parents are both punished, which doesn't happen to any other family.
*** The bratty qualities of the other children can be blamed (well, partially) on the parents, too, though. If the Gloops made sure her son knew how to control himself and enjoy a healthy diet, he wouldn't have practically dived into the chocolate lake; if the Mike's parents actually raised their child instead of letting him become obsessed with television, he just would have just been in awe of Wonka's invention instead of rushing to use it and the same for Violet and gum/winning. And the other parents are punished as well because they have to deal with a stretched out son or a purple daughter; in other words they have to deal with the mess they themselves created. The children were all brats because of their awful personalities and because bad habits their parents allowed them to keep.
** The scene seemed to be implying that that her dad was going to stop spoiling her, which is definitely a long lasting effect.

** I always imagined that being manhandled by a group of squirrels would be quite painful, what with the scratching and constantly grabbing etc. Of course, scars couldn't be shown in a children's film, but it would still be a pretty harsh side effect.

** Veruca's punishment was the blow to her ''pride'' - humiliated by rodents, dumped in garbage, and told off six ways from Sunday by a father who's finally reached his limit once they get home - rather than her body. Given how overwhelmingly arrogant she'd been, that's a pretty dire wound.
* How does Wonka not have a massive lawsuit on his hands after the factory tour? I mean: almost being burned to death, shrunk, turned purple and almost killed by a chocolate river, someone MUST have raised something. In the other film they sign a contract that probably covers that. But it this film, there is no one who bats an eyelid at someone being creepily long and PURPLE.
** Who says he doesn't? But Wonka's got plenty of money to throw around. Plus, Mrs. Gloop is the only one who really becomes furious at Wonka. Presumably Mr. and Mrs. Salt would be as well, but it seems like it would be hard to make charges stick in these cases, when each child was repeatedly warned against the action that got them karmic punishment.
*** Oh you bet the charges would stick. A half-hearted "Little girl/boy, please don't do that" doesn't cut it, especially since it's ''kids'' on a ''candy factory'' tour. The owner of a multi-million dollar franchise would have the burden of creating a safe environment with proper railings, warning labels, have them sign liability waivers etc, especially since all the yummy candy and fuzzy animals are enticing to kids. Just the fact that he's ''exposing'' them to some of the dangers in the factory would be grounds for a lawsuit.

** The 1971 film has the children and their parents signing a waver (that [[RefugeInAudacity tapers down into microscopically small print]]). Couldn't they at least have thrown in something like that?
** Basically, it's a kid's story. Now, maybe when you were a kid you eagerly sat through books and movies involving litigation for negligence as a result of a zany children's hero's madcap adventures. But I feel safe in assuming that 99% of kids (and the parents watching them for that matter) probably weren't interested in a thorough exploration of the legal and OHS implications of Wonka's tour, so they left it out. Basically, you're meant to [[MST3KMantra shut up and not think about it]].
** Also, "half-hearted" is a little unfair to describe Wonka's attempts to stop the kids from doing what they shouldn't do. Initially, at least, he's quite forceful and rational in pointing out to the kids how what they're doing is dangerous and they should stop right now. He only gets all "Stop. Don't. Come back." with Mike right at the end, after an entire day of snotty kids arrogantly disregarding his urgent warnings and blundering foolishly into dangerous situations, and really, at that point, can we blame him for not giving too much of a crap?

*** The Buckets were probably news in the papers for a while, considering that their son was seen flying above a crowd and ended up as the only one not horribly disfigured (Or humiliated, unless Veruca got a stench of rotting that wouldn't go away) so people would wonder about what made him so different.
** Mr. Bucket may have just gotten a job as a maintenance man for the entire factory, or at least a part of it, but still a larger role than just fixing the machine - whether it constantly breaks down or not, a company hiring a man for the sake of upkeep of ''one machine'', especially one with such a minor purpose overall, wouldn't seem like a job that would be capable of supporting a family of a child, two adults, and four elderly bedridden grandparents. Mr. Bucket fixing up the machine as was shown in the film could've been an entry-level performance test, for the company executives to get an idea what he was capable of.
* If Wonka's factory officially has no workers, who drives the delivery trucks with Wonka logos in the beginning? Unless they're operated by a subcontractor, of course.

* Why did Mike Teevee go to the chocolate factory in this version? He said himself he hated chocolate and he didn't really seem interested in the wonder and splendor of the factory. Yet he went as far as hacking the factory to get the proper codes to find the golden ticket and there was no Slugworth in this movie to bribe him.
** 2005 Mike strikes me as proactive enough to not ''need'' a Slugworth to come to him. He probably thought he'd just take a look around and maybe get a few secrets he could sell. Either that, or the neener-neener privileges of visiting The Forbidden Factory outweighed his dislike of chocolate...Speaking of which, did he say he hated ''all'' sweets, or just chocolate? Wonka makes a lot of other stuff in there besides chocolate, which may include the soft drinks that gamers today love so much?

** Probably people working for an advertising agency Wonka contracted to advertise the factory tour. He produces all his own chocolate in-house, but he doesn't necessarily need to do his own in-house marketing; he just contacts an advertising agency or printing house, tells them "make up some posters my factory tour!" and lets them get on with it.

** Aren't there laws and health codes and such that keep you from just selling food all willy-nilly to people? And for all the Buckets knew, the lifetime supply of chocolate could come with some sort of “no resales” clause to keep the kids from competing with Wonka. And even if it didn’t, obtaining a business license and building a premises in which to sell the chocolate both cost more money than the Buckets presumably have on them at this point.

* Sorry to be a Mike Teavee here, but the Television Idea wouldn't work because you can't reach into a TV: Televisions are solid boxes, not portals or gateways, and trying to put your hand through the screen will either result in hurting your hand or literally breaking the TV itself. So unless Wonka gets into the Television Manufacturing Business, this idea collapses, even if it succeeds in his Factory. Also, couldn't they technically take out the actors from the Commercials instead of the Bars, or would that still be Radio Signals that you couldn't interact with? Mike seems to be interacting with the Actors and Items in the Commercials, at least in the Tim Burton Film.
** It's fantasy. You also can't get stretched seven feet tall like taffy after going through a stretching machine, suck on a gobstopper that lasts forever, and swim in a chocolate river either. And yet. I know this is Headscratchers and all, but frankly if anyone's unable to [[WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief suspend disbelief]] and [[MST3KMantra just relax]] to ''this'' extent over a kid's fantasy story, the problem's with them not the story.

** He tasked him with going out and collecting candy so that he could lecture him personally about how unhealthy all of it is. Or he’s still a reasonable parent who is okay with his son dressing up in costume and spending the night having fun with his friends, but just doesn't want him eating the unhealthy candy he brings home afterwards.
** Or he was using Willy's trick-or-treat excursions to survey what sorts of goodies the neighbors were giving out, so he could spend the rest of the year criticizing the ones providing candy, while voicing his approval of any that gave out healthy snacks or inedible goodies (e.g. crayons or spooky plastic toys). He seemed like that sort of persnickety busybody.
* When Willy Wonka made the giant chocolate palace for the Indian prince, he tells him to "start eating it" before it melts. Exactly how is a single person and his family going to eat all of ''that'' in a short amount of time? I'm sure even the biggest chocolate-lovers wouldn't be able to get through a quarter of that without getting sick and eventually turned off from the candy. Willy Wonka may be a chocolate-selling businessman on the extreme level but he should know better.
** His warning was meant to be taken as “This palace won’t last long, so I’d recommend you eat what you can before it all melts away,” not “If you start eating now, I believe you can definitely finish eating this entire palace before it melts away.” Even if we look beyond that, it's not really up to Wonka what the prince does with his palace, whether he eats it all up or lets it melt away into nothing. He was just giving him a warning out of human decency.

* During the song about Veruca, how and why the Oompa-Loompas have a portrait of Mrs. Salt to begin with? I get that its presence symbolically represents Mrs. Salt's fate in the book and that she is responsible as well of Veruca's bratiness, but she doesn't go to the factory and the Oompa-Loompas didn't know Mr. Salt until he and Veruca arrived with the other winners. Do they have portraits of all other parents?

** The gum probably made some major changes to her skeletal and muscular system in order to blow her up to such an enormous size and make her perfectly spherical. By the time the juice was squeezed out, she no longer had proper bones or muscles.

* Why was the father of the spoiled brat the only parent that got a punishment? He sure was making her to the person she is, but every other parent was that to their kids too and the punishments for them were running after their kids. Also, he didn´t even mean to make her obnoxious and dominant, he just wanted to make her happy, although he did it with the wrong, material way. The competetive girl mother was far worse, probably forcing her daughter to that hobby.
** Mr. Salt is also shown to be an asshole to his employees, forcing them to spend hours opening chocolate bars just so his daughter can get the golden ticket. While the other parents were unlikeable, none of them did anything like that. Personally, I think the audience would have felt cheated if Veruca's dad ''didn't'' get punished.
*** I don't see what's so bad about this. They are paid to spend hours a day shelling nuts. That's their job and having them do their job doesn't make him an asshole. He puts the nut-shelling on hold and has them unwrap chocolate instead for a few days because of the contest. Surely unwrapping chocolate isn't harder than shelling nuts all day. You could say that it's unfair that he has his employees open the chocolate and then takes the ticket but he's the one who bought it.
*** He's basically cheating (and one could argue that he's encouraging Veruca to cheat as well). All the other kids ultimately found their own golden ticket whereas Veruca's was effectively stolen from the worker who actually found it; and maybe the worker had a kid of her own or knew of one who would have wanted to go. Mr Salt in the 2005 version (and the book) isn't nearly as weak-willed as the 1971 version; he could very easily have just straight-up told Veruca "no" at any point during her childhood or else given her a carload of money and encouraged her to just find the ticket herself like everyone else. But no, he merely encourages and exacerbates her SpoiledBrat tendencies. ''That's'' why he's the only parent punished; he's actively encouraging her to expect everything to be handed to her on a silver platter regardless of who gets screwed over to achieve it. The other parents are shown to be more weak or misguided, even Violet's StageMom (and she does get a comeuppance too in no longer being comfortable with showing off her now-blue child) but Mr Salt is both main enabler '''and''' the direct cause of his child's poor behaviour.
*** This doesn't respond to anything in the entry directly above it. Mr. Salt didn't steal the ticket from anyone; he paid for the chocolate bars with his own money, and then repurposed his nut factory for the purpose of opening them all. It's never mentioned that he stopped paying his employees during that time, so it's not that different from hiring a bunch of people to find the ticket for him, which anyone with a bit of money could've done. It may not be entirely fair, but from a legal and even moral standpoint, Mr. Salt isn't the one stealing anything. It's the worker who found the ticket that was in the wrong.
*** The point is that the intent was clearly to have everyone find their own golden tickets because it's something that's priceless - the scene between Charlie and his family when he suggests selling his ticket and they all convince him not to is essentially dedicated to driving this point home; no amount of money is equal to these five tickets. The tickets even address themselves specifically to "the ''lucky finder'' of this golden ticket"; not the buyer of the bar containing it but the person who actually found the ticket. And no matter how one tries to spin the situation, the fact remains that neither Veruca nor her father found the ticket themselves; they just took it from the woman who '''did''' find it. The issue isn't that Mr Salt repurposed his factory from shelling nuts to unwrapping chocolate bars, it's that neither he nor Veruca really put in any substantial effort to get the ticket in the first place and then reaped the benefit.
*** Again, they only ''took'' it from the woman who was being paid by Mr. Salt to find it; this is worded as though she found the ticket in a bar she'd bought herself, and then Mr. Salt confiscated it to give to his daughter. And the contest was never mentioned as forbidding people from finding the ticket via another party. Mr. Salt using his wealth to purchase a supply of Wonka bars and then paying a bunch of people to open them isn't that much different from Mrs. Gloop indulging Augustus by buying him so many Wonka bars to eat or even Mike running the numbers (or whatever he did) to narrow down where to find his ticket. Neither of these are entirely fair to other children who don't have such luxuries, but no one ever said the terms of the contest had to be fair.
*** As a better analogy to the female worker's situation, imagine if Mr. Salt went to the effort of acquiring heaps of scrap metal and then paid a bunch of people in a factory to sit and sift through it in search of valuable items, like jewelry and the like. One of the workers comes upon an extremely valuable gold ring, and decides to pocket it. That's theft, pure and simple. The worker is perfectly entitled to feel disgruntled over searching for something that ultimately is going to be turned over to her boss. But that doesn't make it legally justifiable or morally correct to pocket the thing he's looking for. If she doesn't want to subject herself to that kind of labor, she's well within her rights to quit working there and find a job somewhere else.
** While the other parents might have been able to straighten their kids out but didn't feel like it or were just as bad, Mr. Salt was the only one the book ''directly'' linked to his kid bring a brat. In the movie they did the storyline with Veruca's mom being a Sports-Mom, but in the original book, I think it was only Salt who could be blamed the most directly for what she did. While we're on the subject, look at the difference in reaction to Violet turning blue between her mom and Violet herself. Mrs. Boulregard got her own, subtle, punishment.
*** It must be a book / film disparity then, because Mrs. Beauregarde, Mrs. Gloop and Mr. Salt were all almost certainly directly responsible for the way their kids turned out in the 2005 film. Violet's mother was a parody of a StageMom-like personality, pushing her daughter to succeed so she could live vicariously through her. Augustus's mother (and father probably) encouraged him to eat and eat out of some kind of misguided idea that it was good for him. Mr. Salt.. well you all know what his problem was.. To me the oddest thing was that Burton didn't make the Teavees more culpable for Mike's problem. His father seems like the only one who is kind of disappointed / embarrassed about his kid's behavior from the beginning. It would have made more sense to make Mike's parents aloof or lazy to make a point about how it's bad to be a "hands-off"-style parent who lets pop culture do all the heavy child-rearing.
*** Mr Teavee is culpable for his child's problems because he's ineffectual and pathetic. You're meant to see him as a loser who can't even stand up and discipline his own child. He's not as obnoxious as the other parents, but he's still as much of a failure in that he's raised a nasty child.
*** Exactly. The bratty kids' flaws are all due to being brainwashed into doing nothing but win, encouraged to do overeat, indulged, and lacking any source of serious authority.

*** He's basically cheating (and one could argue that he's encouraging Veruca to cheat as well). All the other kids ultimately found their own golden ticket whereas Veruca's was effectively stolen from the worker who actually found it; and maybe the worker had a kid of her own or knew of one who would have wanted to go. And his expression when he takes the ticket from the worker is as much of a nonverbal "you're fired" as you can get. Mr Salt in the 2005 version (and the book) isn't nearly as weak-willed as the 1971 version; he could very easily have just straight-up told Veruca "no" at any point during her childhood or else given her a carload of money and encouraged her to just find the ticket herself like everyone else. But no, he merely encourages and exacerbates her SpoiledBrat tendencies. ''That's'' why he's the only parent punished; he's actively encouraging her to expect everything to be handed to her on a silver platter regardless of who gets screwed over to achieve it. The other parents are shown to be more weak or misguided, even Violet's StageMom (and she does get a comeuppance too in no longer being comfortable with showing off her now-blue child) but Mr Salt is both main enabler '''and''' the direct cause of his child's poor behaviour.

* Why was Violet so flexible when leaving the factory?