History Headscratchers / JumanjiWelcomeToTheJungle

** Russell Van Pelt was influencing various animals of Jumanji throughout the movie. Presumably he had the monkeys and pelicans and zebras and giant bugs and killer plants searching for the heroes in other locations which they never happen to have gone.

** Russell Van Pelt was influencing various animals of Jumanji throughout the movie. Presumably he had the pelicans and zebras and giant bugs and killer plants searching for the heroes in other locations which they never happen to have gone.

* We see the green glow indicative of the "Jumanji" game/entity taking up residence in Alex's game console, but the last we know of the original Jumanji ''boxed'' game is that Alex set it aside on a shelf. So did the old wooden box just vanish, or was a de-magicked copy of the old game sitting around in the attic of the Vreeke house for twenty years? Or has Jumanji - yikes! - actually '''reproduced''' rather than evolved, so there's now a board game ''and'' a console game edition?

** Considering the original Van Pelt only carried the firearms and gear of a Victorian-era hunter, it's likely that ''everything'' settled or of 20th-century origin seen in the game - not just the village, but the vehicles, weapons and equipment - were grafted onto the setting when the board game became a video game.

* What if a Game Genie or similar device was used?

** We already knew that people had to relieve themselves in Jumanji, because of Alan's "no more banana leaves" crack in the original film.

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** This makes sense. After finishing the game at the end of the first movie, Alan wrapped up the game and dumped it in the river — it'd get washed out to sea and maybe make it all the way to France in a few months. But Alan did that in '''1969''', and we see the game at the start of this film in 1996. It's been moving around the world a lot in those 30 years; think of how many games would've been played in that time, and how many times it could have been beaten.

** This makes sense. After finishing the game at the end of the first movie, Alan wrapped up the game and dumped it in the river — it'd get washed out to sea and maybe make it all the way to France in a few months. But Alan did that in '''1966''', and we see the game at the start of this film in 1996. It's been moving around the world a lot in those 30 years; think of how many games would've been played in that time, and how many times it could have been beaten.

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*** Nothing happened to the Parrishes. When Alan and Sarah first started Jumanji, it was 1969 and Alan got out in 1995. And they beat Jumanji and went back to 1969 then to 1995 normally. One year after in 1996, Jumanji was found by Alex's father and the rest is history.

*** Jumanji even seems to be able to change its own rules between games. Remember that the Jumanji cartridge allowed five players to choose from. And Alex was able to start playing the game as a single player, with no indication there would be a second player, but that unfinished single-player game was turned into a multi-player game when the other kids picked up the controllers. On top of everything else, Alex only spent a few months in the game, while Alan spent 26 years in it. It's possible that the game, being sentient, doesn't mind whether it wins or loses as long as it is ''played,'' and tweaked the rules to allow this since Alex wasn't showing any signs of moving on alone.
*** Alex was excited to see the other players in the marketplace, stating he didn't believe it at first, so the remaining 4 characters were always supposed to be a part of the game and were always needed to complete it. Alex was also inside of Jumanji for 20 years, but only thought it was a few months because time passes differently in the game's world.
*** Time may pass differently, or it may not pass at all when someone stops trying to progress, effectively being on pause.

*** It's a stretch, but Alex would have chosen single-player mode (pretty much the only mode for such a game in 1996). When the others started playing, he was shifted to the multi-player version.
*** Actually that's not a stretch - lots of the older games allowed a multi-player mode to kick in automatically if you just picked up the second controller and pressed Start.

** Dr. Smolder Bravestone has climbing, strength, speed, weapons, etc. as his strengths and no weaknesses.
** Ruby Roundhouse has various forms of fighting as her strengths with venom as a weakness (this is actually the only one that makes sense, as her strengths and weaknesses are pretty balanced).
** Franklin "Mouse" Finbar has zoology and carrying weapons as his strengths, while speed, strength, and cake are his weaknesses.
** Professor Shelly Oberson has cartography and code-breaking as his strengths, with endurance as his weakness.
** Seaplane [=McDonough=] has his aviator skills and margaritas (really?) as his strengths and mosquitoes as his weakness.
*** Jumanji just likes to troll its players, I guess. Plus there are such things as {{joke character}}s in games.
*** It's another layer of difficulty. As mentioned above, you need to use all five characters to complete the game. Smolder Bravestone and Ruby Roundhouse are overpowered, but the only time they are essentialy interchangeable (their main utility is destroying enemies, which they both can do, and while some [=NPCs=] only talk to Bravestone, due to Martha's nature, we never actually see Roundhouse try to take the leading role, so it's possible they would have answered to her as well). But the other three have necessary and specific utility skills that cannot be replaced by others, so you'll have to keep all three of them around, and having limited strengths and excessive weaknesses makes it much more difficult. It's not particularly subtle or fair to the players, true, but Jumanji took the form of a videogame in their early years, so it isn't really refined, and it doesn't really care about being fair to its players.
*** It's probably worth mentioning that Bravestone and Mouse were probably ment to be a team, since one carries the other's weapons (the boomerang specifically), while Shelly's paleontology never came up and Seaplane doesn't seem to be able to read a map. So having five players with all specialities made for a very different situation.
*** It is possible that the game alters the conditions depending on which players are active. So the party gets handed out a map which only one of them can read, only because Dr. Oberon is an active player — otherwise that would be an unsolvable problem. Alex on the other hand, being a single player, has no map but navigates just fine — the crucial obstacle for him is the transportation shed.

*** But it's not the fall that would have killed Fridge. When the characters respawn, they fall from the sky with no injury, but Fridge would have landed back in the canyon (harmlessly) and would have again been killed by the rhino stampede.

*** Yes, but again, during the canyon level, Fridge died by the stampede in the canyon, and if he wasn't intercepted by the helicopter, he would have landed in the canyon again. Right next to the rhino stampede.
*** [[spoiler:According to Bravestone, the Rhinos are guarding it. That may not mean anything, but it is acting like a puzzle. Just like Alex, Fridge/Mouse will not be able to do it alone, especially with one of his weaknesses being lack of speed.]]

*** If we consider the sewers level as an Indiana Jones type of game, the archaeology skill can come into play, since you would recognize that the different patterns could mean trap, or reading a warning in some ancient language. So Dr. Shelly Oberon could be this character, since Dr. Smolder is the action archaeologist and his strengths does not include archaeology.
*** There is a skeleton exactly where the flying spikes go, so someone obviously died before in that trap.

*** It's likely that the game had an ideal course of action that didn't involve following the path (probably more an idea than all the details being determined). When Spencer tried to climb, he didn't follow it, so it was punished, then they guessed the correct way to do it and won.

* When the gem is lying on the ground with charging rhinos circling it, no-one thinks to use the chopper's weapons to dispatch the rhinos before safely retrieving the gem.

** Adding to the above, it seems the game itself is not evil at all, and does not truly try to kill the characters, instead giving them difficult challenges in order to develop them into well-functioning adults. The game seems to change its own rules in order to help the stuck characters by drawing in more players who compensate their weaknesses, both here and in the original. It may be that the semi-sentient game is actually beneficial and benevolent by giving the players a chance to improve.