History Headscratchers / PacificRim

** If your brain's motor cortex is processing all necessary "move right arm" information to initiate motion, then unless you're asleep or unconscious, your real flesh arm is going to move. It's possible that the rigs from which the pilots are suspended aren't receiving information except perhaps as a secondary motion-capture backup: the ''real'' purpose of the suits and those clamps their feet lock into is to simulate sensations of traction/pressure proportionate to what the external environment would offer, so the proprioceptive feedback from the neural link will compensate for terrain on land or water resistance at sea.

** Some of it probably already is with The Wall, no way you could build something that size and length so quickly without considerable technological advancement somewhere along the line. Either in the RnD, logistics, or industrial output even if not the building itself. I bet some spin-off technology is in place there somewhere.

** Experience has taught humanity that neutralizing a beach head and destroying the materiel of an invading force can deter future attempts at invasion. Or at least slow it down enough for us to mount an effective defense. Now that the Rift will need time to restabilise, the Kaiju will be fighting against Mark [=VIs=] right off the bat that are designed to combat Category 5 Kaiju ''and we will only keep improving them from there''. Instead of hastily cobbled together war machines and similarly trained crews, humanity now has the experience necessary to effectively fight the Masters. If a Rift (or many Rifts) opened the next day, nations around the world would go back to war footing, build Mark-6 Jaegers, and expect that Category 6 or higher Kaiju will arrive eventually if they cannot close the Rifts.

** They are not idiots, they were saving time. Stacker trusted Hermann's predictions (how refreshing is that for once, the high ranking military does listen to the scientiests?) that the odds were about to get desperately against the PPDC. They were testing both the compatibility of the Rangers AND the systems of the newly reffited Gipsy Danger, and if everything went fine (and Leatherback and Otachi hadn't attacked), Stacker most likely would have deployed the four Jaegers to assault the Breach that very same day. They were racing against a doomsday clock, don't forget that.

[[folder:KAIJU IN SPAAACE!!!!...or, KillSat the basterds!]]
* Depleted economies not withstanding, why the hell wouldn't you launch a bunch of satellites into geosync orbit, tip them with as many nukes as you can afford and rain down unholy nuclear fire on the rift anytime those little basterds reared it ugly head? Yes, I know this is a Mecha/Kaiju movie...so parking a ton of KillSat satellites wouldn't add to the theme of the movie. I'm just saying that it'd be awesome as hell seeing a salvo of nuclear missiles flowing down from space to nuke the kaiju. Also dropping kinetic projectiles from low-earth orbit would put quite a dent into most anything.

** Rewatching that scene, its clear that Pentecost is not giving the Jaeger pilots actual tactical orders. He's giving them their roles in the battleplan. Once the battle begins, he gives them tactical orders to hold position. There is no contradiction there, just the difference between pre-battle planning and mid-battle orders.

*** It's very bizarre that a being that can withstand a nuke somehow ''can't'' withstand the sorts of things that Jaegers do. Nobody seems to grasp the sheer destructive power of nuclear weapons. And if Kaiju ''are'' mysteriously vulerable to Gypsy Danger's sword and whatnot, the obvious answer is to build a bunch of autonomous sword-arms and put ''them'' underwater right above the rift, and then just program them to instantly skewer anything that enters the area. The whole idea of defending cities, rather than guarding the rift itself, is pure RuleOfCool. If the writers had wanted this to make slightly more sense, they shouldn't have had a singular "rift" in the first place. It should have been that Kaiju simply teleport into our dimension and they keep showing up in different places. That would help explain why you'd want to build mobile Jaegers that can potentially be deployed anywhere.

* I notice Wiki/TVTropes makes special mention of Mutavore being one of the only confirmed female kaiju, but there are no sources and I can't find anything else to substantiate this. Where is their gender specified?

*** Oh noes! Thousands or maybe millions of tons of seawater?? Whatever shall we do? There's only (*checks*) ''1.45 QUNITILLION tons of seawater in the ocean!'' We can only nuke ''several billions or trillions of Kaiju'' before we run out of water!!! Quick! Build a bunch of Jaegers! I mean seriously, man. We've had underwater nuclear tests IRL, and they didn't cause any sort of large-scale damage to the ocean. The ocean is too big for that! Even if they were worried about irradiating the water they could just build a giant wall ''around the rift'', rather than around Australia, which is a MUCH larger target, and they could have that wall at a radius of 10 miles from the rift itself so it won't get nuked, and then you can just re-radiate the same chunk of sea water over and over without affecting anything else, and no civilians will ever be at risk. Let's just admit it: This entire thing is based on RuleOfCool. There's no good reason not to just put all your resources on the rift instead of trying to defend each and every city that the Kaiju might attack.

*** Oh noes! Thousands or maybe millions of tons of seawater?? Whatever shall we do? There's only (*checks*) ''1.45 QUNITILLION tons of seawater in the ocean!'' We can only nuke ''several billions or trillions of Kaiju'' before we run out of water!!! Quick! Build a bunch of Jaegers! I mean seriously, man. Even if they were worried about irradiating the water they could just build a giant wall ''around the rift'', rather than around Australia, which is a MUCH larger target, and they could have that wall at a radius of 10 miles from the rift itself so it won't get nuked, and then you can just re-radiate the same chunk of sea water over and over without affecting anything else, and no civilians will ever be at risk. Let's just admit it: This entire thing is based on RuleOfCool. There's no good reason not to just put all your resources on the rift instead of trying to defend each and every city that the Kaiju might attack.

*** Oh noes! Thousands or maybe millions of tons of seawater?? Whatever shall we do? There's only (*checks*) ''1.45 QUNITILLION tons of seawater in the ocean!'' We can only nuke ''several billions or trillions of Kaiju'' before we run out of water!!! Quick! Build a bunch of Jaegers! I mean seriously, man. Even if they were worried about irradiating the water they could just build a giant wall ''around the rift'', rather around Australia, which is a MUCH larger target, and they could have that wall at a radius of 10 miles from the rift itself so it won't get nuked, and then you can just re-radiate the same chunk of sea water over and over without affecting anything else. Let's just admit it: This entire thing is based on RuleOfCool. There's no good reason not to just put all your resources on the rift instead of trying to defend each and every city that the Kaiju might attack.

* The entire world is facing gigantic monsters. Completely new creatures with unheard of capabilities and strength. Now, I get that humanities first scientists would be focused almost exclusively on stopping them, and since they decided to do that with giant mobile weapons platforms, fine. What ''drives me up the wall'' is that apparently after designing all these robots, the scientists of the world just... Stopped. No, seriously, there is a period of time in the movie where we are stated to be easily beating Kaiju left and right to the point of merchandising, and humanity stops advancing. Gets complacent. And by the end, there are exactly two knuckleheaded scientists left in the world who apparently care enough about the Kaiju themselves and the Rift -- which even by the end is mostly unexplained -- to continue researching them. ''No. Damn. Way.'' What happened to actual research? Why didn't humans try to capture one of these things alive? Send probes down into the Rift? Or even better, try experiments?! '''All''' it would have taken to reveal the secret barcode nonsense about how only Kaiju can go through the Rift would be something as simple as one guy going "Hey, these giant monsters can go through the Rift. Let's try dropping one of their carcasses down it, see if it goes in!" Then humanity could have even gone on the offensive, or just launched a nuke strapped to a Kaiju corpse. But no. Out of the entire world, the only two people left to care are a Kaiju {{Otaku}} and a HollywoodNerd. [[OhMyGods And by]] [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion Anno]] they are terrible at their jobs.