History Headscratchers / Gremlins

** You think them driving off is bad? Originally Frank (the sheriff) was supposed to say "The hell with him!" as he rolls up the car window and speeds off. Spielberg objected to this, and so the line was cut, although you can still see the actor mouthing the line.

**** ''Caffeine'' is dehydrating. Carbonation doesn't add to or reduce a drink's hydration effect.

** Oddly enough, this troper has never been annoyed by this at all. I have always assumed it meant "don't feed him in ''the hours after midnight and before dawn'' ", according of course to the '''local''' hour and not to what time is it in another hemisphere or somewhere else (?). It was never literally explained, true, but considering the fact that the movie is basically a (dark) fairy tale, these weird and vague rules were kind of appropriate, I felt. I guess "Never feed him after midnight!" just sounded cooler than "No late night snacks after dinner and before breakfast!".

*** Which is why those novelizations have always been incredibly stupid to this Troper. Everything makes so much more sense if the mogwai are magic; the rules punish you for being irresponsible with them. The sheer amount of convoluted logic you have to invoke to explain them by any means other than magic is just mind-boogling.

*** Really? Well, then, why did they not include that rule? Sure, it has no place in the movie because it cannot be used dramatically. However, if they said this, it would have at least shut up the doubters like ThisTroper.

** It was still Billy who fell for the "stopped clock" trick pulled by the other mogwai, and unwittingly fed them after midnight. He clearly underestimated that most mogwai actually want the rules to be broken, so they can be transformed into their more powerful forms. He also underestimated how dangerous they can be even in mogwai form, since he never suspected that they might be responsible for the attempted murder of his dog (though to be fair, at least one other character in the film had explicitly sworn a death wish on him). Mr. Wing did at least acknowledge the bond that Billy had formed with Gizmo, and that he might be ready "one day". What always bugged this troper regarding Wing's speech was his attitude toward television...given that it was inspiration from characters he'd seen on TV which enabled Gizmo to save the day in both movies. Wing doesn't know that, I suppose, but I'm not sure what point the movie's making.

** Here's a thought: After midnight means "after midnight". You know, after twelve pm? Seriously, when somebody tells you "We'll meet at five pm", do you fret about which time zone they're talking about? No, of course not, because it's obviously the one you're currently in! Why start wondering about that here? Unless the movie takes place right on the border between two time zones, there's not much to ask about. Of course, you have to wonder if this is adjusted to fit daylight savings whatsits, but apart from that it seems pretty clear.

* Just ask any adult {{Transformers}} fan. [[BrokenBase Just don't go into any specifics.]]

* Here's an interesting question on what would happen if you were to bring a mogwai beyond the polar circle. [[hottip:*:On par with how do Muslims follow the Ramadan in the polar regions.]] On the second thought, just don't.

<<|ItJustBugsMe|>>
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*** Supported by the novelization: Less than 1% of Mogwai are good-natured. "Bad" mogwai are mischievous, and even potentially harmful, but still less dangerous than gremlins (in the novel, mogwai are genetically hardwired to be incapable of even ''contemplating'' harming another of their own species). And Gizmo tells Stripe that he'd be as violent and short-lived as the others if he exploited "the third secret".

*** Why would Billy have any reason to think the Mogwai would actually want to break the rules? Since the rules themselves are rather vague about the consequences of breaking them, (Sure, tell us that exposing it to light may kill it, but don't tell us feeding it after midnight may kill us), you couldn't really expect Billy to be on guard for that. Yes, Billy was essentially raising an animal he had no way to understand, but that was his dad's fault, not his. If Mr. Wing had shown up a few hours earlier, I don't think we'd have seen him driving a VW into a bar, blowing up a movie theater, or tracking a homicidal gremlin through a department store. And, while we're on the subject, Gizmo's kind of a slacker in this regard, too. He knew what Stripe and the other Mogwai were up to, and didn't try to warn Billy at all. And in Gremlins 2, if Gizmo had just stayed put like he was told, none of the events of the movie would have happened. Every character in the film is just asking for gremlin anarchy * except* for Billy.

** [[KillBill Silly Rabbit]], lectures about nature are from asians, elves, aliens and indians only!

** This is discussed in the WMG section: the popular theory is that if a mogwai is exposed to water against its will, their offspring will be AlwaysChaoticEvil. If the mogwai willfully exposes itself to water, it can choose the GridAllignment of it's offspring. What a good mogwai morphs into if it eats after midnight is beyond me...
** I always saw the reproduced Mogwi as just bad seeds but not nearly as bad as the Gremlins, and that being transformed into a Gremlin brings out the bad side. Gizmo would turn evil if fed after midnight, but he might be less evil than the others.

** By drinking orange juice, Coke and Pepsi. As I said before, the comic books and novel explictly demonstrated that only clear, pure, liquid water works on mogways.