History Headscratchers / Coco

* There’s another thing that has always bothered me, however, and that is why it was even necessary for Ernesto to kill Héctor at all. Mexico has hundreds, thousands of songwriters, any of whom would dream to be paired up with a man as charismatic and vocally talented as Ernesto De La Cruz. Why kill Héctor, and not just buy the rights to perform his songs? And when those run out, he could hire another songwriter and probably be just as successful as he was before. Then Héctor would have enough money to support his family, as he would continue earning royalties from the songs, and Ernesto would get the fame he always wanted without having blood on his hands. All of this could have been resolved rather easily if both Ernesto and Héctor had stopped to think it through.

** Well... Miguel would've died. More specifically, he would've been trapped in the Land of the Dead for good, meaning Coco would've forgotten her last memories of Héctor without anyone there to rekindle them. And Miguel may or may not be able to cross the marigold bridge from then on, depending on whether his family chooses to include him on their ofrenda or not. The only thing that wouldn't change was Ernesto's fate (whatever it was), since his crimes had already been exposed by the time he threw Miguel to his death. Even if the living world never finds out what he did, it just means he's immortalized himself in an afterlife where the majority of its residents will forever hate his guts. ([[IncrediblyLamePun If he had any.]])

** I think there might be some very slight implication that "Remember Me" might be what sparked the murder. It's possible Héctor would have sold the rest of his catalogue to Ernesto but he very specifically states that "Rembember me wasn't written for the world, it was written for Coco", implying it wasn't intended for public performances at all. If Ernesto fixated enough on wanting to get the rights to Remember Me ''specifically'' and Héctor kept on insisting it was a personal song for his family, enough arguments over that might have made any sensible negotiations fall through. Especially with how angry Héctor is throughout the movie with the popularity of the song.

*** ^Miguel suggested this with Chicharrón but Hector explains it doesn't work that way, so that prolly wouldn't have helped either.

** In the 1920s, they didn't have the record-keeping to keep track of anyone (especially travelers) and, back then, when people came up missing or dead, you'd shrug, mourn, and keep it moving, after all, if your loved ones disappeared that was just the end of it. On that subject, even if you did report your relatives missing, the police probably wouldn't have been able to do much of an investigation anyway.

Playing an instrument requires muscle memory. How are the skeletons able to still play after they no longer have muscles?
* The same way they're able to breathe without lungs. The Land of the Dead doesn't exactly follow the same laws of physics as our world.
* [[LampshadeHanging "Dante doesn't have hair."]] [[HandWave "And I don't have a nose, and yet, here we are."]]
* On the other hand, maybe their "muscle memory" comes from the memories that keep them alive in the Land of the Dead. When Chicharrón is on the verge of being forgotten, he claims that he couldn't play his old guitar, even if he wanted to.

* Maybe I'm missing something here, but muscle memory despite the name has nothing to do with muscles. It's actually the cerebellum (part of your brain) that handles everything.

** Imelda is heavily implied to have been older than her brothers when they were alive. They may have only appeared closetr in age or even older because the novelization mentions that she was the first member of the family to pass on after Héctor died.

** I just assume that it's something like AllMythsAreTrue -- if you're Mexican, have an ofrenda, and/or celebrate Dia de los Muertos, then the Land of the Dead is your afterlife and your soul works according to all the rules in place there. Whereas if you abide by another culture or tradition, then your afterlife works according to the customs of that culture. With that said, the Day of the Dead isn't strictly a Mexican thing -- the Italians have a holiday with a similar concept and on the same date, with deceased family members coming to visit you in the world of the living.

** Or, [since Héctor spent the majority of his time in the place of the nearly forgotten and almost was completely forgotten himself, he keeps these clothes as a reminder of how precious memories are, and perhaps even as a gesture of respect for those he has seen fade to the final death... Who weren't as lucky as he was.

** Possibly the apparent age of the deceased reflects how the living remember them looking? 'Usually'' that would be the same as their age at death, but not necessarily always. Imelda's descendants might remember her looking younger than her actual age at death, because the ones too young to have met her personally have mostly seen photos of her as an entrepreneur in her prime. It's the memories of the living that keep the dead embodied at all, so the nature of those memories might affect their skeleton-bodies' appearance.

[[folder:Enforcing the music ban]]
* How exactly was the family able to go without hearing music for this long? Doesn't the Mexican education system have a required musical education class in order to graduate. Or movie and television have music in the background. Then of course the people that married into the family have heard music themselves growing up.
** Unless of course they banned movies and TV as well.
** Is is something that's enforced only in the house and not in places like school

** This is also the the time when Héctor '''really needs to cross''', since he feels that Coco is dying and he thinks it will be his last opportunity to see her. In previous years he might have made a desultory effort but let it go once he couldn't pull it off since "I can try again next year". Now he doesn't have that luxury so every roadblock is more heartbreaking than it might have been in the past.