Line #30 Headscratchers/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory


1	''For the 1971 film, see [[Headscratchers/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory here]]''
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6	* Both movies show that millions of people were buying Wonka at a very fast rate, which made lots of shops run out of candy very fast. Anyone who understands the 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.
7	** 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.
8	** 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.
9	** The 70s film does go into this somewhat. It's mentioned that while Wonka is cranking out Chocolate Bars, they aren't coming out quickly enough to meet demand. Also, while Wonka can control the amount of money he sells the bars to the distributors too, he likely can't control the price they choose to sell them for. The bars likely ranged in price from ten bucks to fifty apiece depending on the store (that auction had British aristocrats buying a single case for hundreds of pounds). Assuming the guy who owned the shop Charlie bought the ticket from was a nice guy and didn't try to stick it to the kids in the neighborhood by raising his prices.
10	** The reason the Wonka craze was dying down was that 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 over; Charlie heard them and went into the candy store, which is where he finds the last ticket.
11	*** Indeed, if the candy shop had just received a fresh shipment of Wonka bars when the news broke that the bogus ticket had been found, thus eliminating the chief driver for demand, he might've been ''glad'' to unload one for a dollar. By now, his usual customers are probably so tired of chocolate that he'd be better off selling lollipops and jelly beans for the next few months.
12	** Well, that answers the question regarding the 2005 movie, "If Charlie found a ten-dollar bill on the road, why could he only buy ONE chocolate bar with that ten dollars??"
13	*** Well, the guy behind the counter was in the process of getting change from the register, was he not? He would've forgotten about it when he realized Charlie had gotten the last Golden Ticket.
14	** 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 who found the golden ticket because he suspects Charlie has needed some good fortune. In the original movie, where this scene doesn't take place, the shopkeeper has already been established as a rather likable 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 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.
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16	* What would Willy Wonka have done if he had gotten two or more well-behaved children out of the test? Have them fight to the death?
17	** In the book, he said he'd just pick the one he liked the best. And since there was no "YOU LOSE" contract plot device, it'd still be a happy ending. But then you'd have two characters who didn't do anything in the factory and miss out on an extra Oompa Loompa song and some good ol' Dahl NightmareFuel.
18	** Or they could share the prize. Wonka wants a child to take over for him once he's gone, but that doesn't it only has to be ''one'' child.
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20	* Also, what would have happened if an adult had gotten one of the tickets?
21	** He'd find a child to take with him. The tickets were transferable--that's why Veruca Salt had one.
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23	* What was Wonka planning to do if ''all'' the children were rotten?
24	** If all the kids turned out to be rotten Wonka could simply uphold the ''official'' terms of the Golden Ticket contest. ''Officially'' the kids were there to have a fun tour through a candy factory and then they would each receive a lifetime supply of chocolate. A lifetime of chocolate multiplied by five people would be a lot, but nothing Wonka couldn't handle. Then wait a few years and run the contest again.
25	*** This theory is supported by his initial press release about the contest: "I, Willy Wonka, have decided to allow five children -- just ''five'', mind you, and no more -- to visit my factory this year." So he might indeed just run the contest again next year if things didn't work out the first time.
26	** Though this does create something of a plot hole in the 2005 film, where Wonka makes known from the start that he has a special prize for one of the five children who find the tickets.
27	*** If they'd ''all'' been little creeps, the "special prize" might've been something else, even something as bland as a second lifetime's chocolate supply for their adult escort.
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29	* How is Wonka not the most hated man in town? Think about it. First, he 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.
30	** Ask Steven Jobs. He probably has some haters, but he is bloody freaking rich and immeasurably brilliant.
31	** Probably because the chocolate is Just. That. Good. Or possibly contains euphoriants.
32	** In the book, the layoff happened a long time ago. It could be that most of the people who remember it clearly in that town have died off or moved away.
33	** Also because it's a kid's book set mainly from the point of view of children. Even a precocious child like Charlie Bucket is only going to be at best vaguely aware of the societal effects of a factory layoff that likely occurred long before he was born.
34	*** 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.
35	*** I read the question thinking of the layoffs at the ''factory'' because of internal spies but that's just me.
36	*** The factory layoffs ''and'' the reopening both occurred well before the Golden Ticket craze; Grandpa Joe reveals it in his story to Charlie about the factory. In any case, while you might have some adults grumbling about Wonka, remember that this story is still told from the point of view of children; all but the most precocious and politically active children are going to focus on the "chocolate" aspect of the situation before the "social and economic impacts" aspect.
37	** In Wonka's defence, he only shut down the factory down and replaced all the workers in the first place because the people he was employing kept selling his industrial secrets to his competitors, putting his whole business at risk. It's a bit of a "this is WhyWeCantHaveNiceThings" situation; they can resent it all they want, but it's their own fault Wonka won't hire them, because they made themselves untrustworthy to him.
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39	* How did Willy Wonka prevent health and safety inspectors from coming into the factory, since it's stated that no one has come into the factory in years?
40	** Probably bribes. Wonka seems the type to pull that off.
41	** We also don't know that he doesn't allow safety inspectors. When they say "No one goes in", what they probably mean is "no one who's in a position to tell us what it's like has gone in."
42	** The novel was written at a point where OSHA was less of a prominent force in business and industrial life than it currently is today (it was published in 1964, six years before Richard Nixon signed the Occupational Health and Safety Act and ten years before the British parliament passed the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974). Willy Wonka likely wouldn't have had to deal with much in the way of outside government inspection.
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44	* Mike running into the teleporter seems completely out of character. I know, we never actually got to see much of his character beyond "obsessed with TV and guns", but he'd clearly been shown to be quite intelligent. You'd think he would stop to think before running into a teleport machine that makes things smaller. Also, I can't help but feel that he'd have been better off if they'd left him as a tiny person (it's made worse by the fact that in the book his mother thanks Wonka when he says he can get him back to normal size). At least he'd have been able to fit in his house then.
45	** In the RD book and Wilder movie, I think Mike just got overexcited about appearing on television (or doing some sort of out-of-world activity) and forgot about the fact the teleporter shrinks people. In the Depp movie, Mike is somewhat of a smart-alec and thinks he knows more than the average person. His ego drives him to subject himself to the teleporter. (said Mike to his father before he teleported himself, "You think [Wonka]'s a genius, but he's an idiot. But I'm not.")
46	** In fiction (and real life) there are plenty of very intelligent characters known for being at least someone lacking in common sense.
47	** The real discrepancy is that he's so hyped up about being transmitted ''across a room'' by television, yet had been too hooked to the boob tube during his prior news interview to care that he was ''appearing live'' on global TV.
48	** Mike isn't really shown to be ''that'' intelligent. He's actually a bit of a snotty know-it-all who likes to ''act'' like he's intelligent, and part of this is badgering Wonka with irritating fun-ruining questions. But he's actually kind of KnowNothingKnowItAll who thinks he's cleverer than in fact he is. So the fact that he's shown to be utterly lacking in common sense with regards to subjecting himself to experimental shrinking technology isn't really that surprising.
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50	* Wonkavision- Assuming Wonka can magically teleport tangible chocolate to your TV, and isn't selling you some kind of device to do it, how does he expect to make any profit when millions of people just need to wait for his commercials to get free Wonka bars?
51	** ItOnlyWorksOnce. Remember, 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 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 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=].
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53	* Is anyone else worried that Wonka may have damaged or even destroyed the food chain of Loompaland?
54	** Some species don't eat just one thing, they may have other food sources.
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56	* Most of 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 coloring 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.
57	** Taffy pullers are hardly gentle nor precise, as I remember.
58	*** 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 of taffy tearing or leaving lumps if not done in one go.
59	** I don't think it ''was'' an accident. They probably did it on purpose because he's a jerk.
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61	* 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 it needed to be cut with a lawnmower, and 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?
62	** I'm not sure about the sucking on candy, but the rest were their fault presumably knowing the risks and Wonka even warned ''against'' the one that became like Violet.
63	** 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.
64	*** 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.
65	** Taking their chances with being test subjects for weird candy is still about a billion times more attractive than being eaten by a vermicious knid. Besides, you're just doing an AccentuateTheNegative and ignoring all the candy they'd get to test that would have awesome and wonderful effects.
66	*** There is also how the Oompa Loompas would have a very unique society where the side effects could be seen as badges of honor.
67	** 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, and 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?
68	*** Who says he didn't? We've no real knowledge of what Wonka did or did not do or consider before he announces the factory tour; perhaps he did look among the Oompa-Loompas for a successor, but couldn't find one suitable. They're good workers and have a knack for a tune, but that doesn't mean they can come up with great ideas for candy.
69	*** There was a possibility that by "heir", what Wonka means is more like a "spokesperson" or "face of the company".....The Oompa-Loompas are the ones who will keep the business running, but he also needs an heir for tax and marketing purposes.
70	** In the 2005 movie, it's been a while 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''.
71	*** 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) which 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.
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73	* 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 simpler solution.
74	** Wonka is probably too insane to give his formulas to a patent office and let a bunch of grown-ups see them.
75	** 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 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.
76	** To patent something, you have to reveal how it works, and the patent only lasts 20 years. After it expires, anyone 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).
77	*** Yes. You patent things that you expect someone to be able to reverse-engineer quickly after release. If you're certain it can't be (barring espionage), you stay far away from the patent office. Hence the Coke formula and eleven herbs and spices.
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79	* If Wonka could make ice cream that never melts, why couldn't he make chocolate that never melts, especially when he made the chocolate palace?
80	** The chocolate palace incident was mentioned to have taken place a ''long'' time ago. Quite possible before the business with the un-melting ice cream started.
81	** Building on that, perhaps Wonka got the idea for "un-melting" ice cream from the failure with the prince.
82	** Or Wonka just wanted to teach him a lesson. That's perfectly in character for him.
83	** You might be forgetting that Wonka built the palace thinking the prince was going to '''eat''' it. He didn't reveal he wanted to ''live'' in it until after it had been built.
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85	* 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?
86	** Process of elimination, same as in the book.
87	*** I don't think so. In the Wilder movie, resisting the candy temptations wasn'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.
88	*** Giving back the gobstopper was A test, not THE test. All the children faced various tests, which they all failed except for Charlie.
89	** 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, but 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.
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91	* I don't know if anyone knows how the physics of the scene would work, but Augustus's pipe seems... impossible in all versions. Not to mention the fact that he's described as becoming thin afterward, which seems bizarre, unless his stomach was stretched out by the tight squeeze (which would be almost as much of a physical deformity as Mike or Violet).
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93	* Why do the Oompa-Loompas seem to hate Augustus Gloop so much? He's a greedy pig, sure, but the lyrics to his song are almost all personal insults, while the other songs are much less personal and more along the lines of warnings. The kid doesn't get nearly enough "screen time" to show he's nearly as bad as the Oompa-Loompas describe him- revolting, vile, greedy, foul, and infantile, to name a few adjectives.
94	** He was the only one not using a swim cap in the river.
95	** Because while Wonka was warning the other children to not play with the devices or squirrels for their 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.
96	** 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 gotten sucked into the pipe, someone would have had to go into the river after him.
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98	* Mike Teavee's whole schtick is watching a lot of television - [[JustForFun/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?
99	** 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 favorite celebrity. It's one of those situations where common sense just goes completely out the window.
100	** In the 2005 film, at least, Mike has clearly ''had it up to here'' with Wonka and his insanity by that point, and isn't thinking straight at all. It comes off less like {{Genre Blind}}ness, and more like [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E23HomersEnemy Frank Grimes grabbing the high-voltage cable mid-breakdown]].
101	** Who says he even watches science-fiction shows, to begin with? He watches a lot of television, but 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.
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103	* Why is it called a ''[[NonIndicativeName chocolate]]'' factory? It's a ''candy'' factory. (If the reason was alliteration, Dahl could've named the hero Carl or Christopher or you get the idea.)
104	** Not sure about the meta reason, but the in-universe reason is probably that chocolate is the most notable and famous stuff that comes out of it, and that's what people know Willy Wonka for the most.
105	** The meta ([[WatsonianVersusDoylist Doylist]]) reason is that Dahl lived and wrote in the United Kingdom, where 'candy' is not 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 Sweet Factory'' or ''Charlie and the Confectionary Factory''.
106	*** Note also that Dahl's specific inspiration for the story came from his own young life, where as a boy at the [[UsefulNotes/BritishEducationSystem private school]] Repton he and other pupils were occasionally used as beta-testers by the chocolatiers Cadbury (still the UK's best-known confectioners even today) -- they would be sent boxes of prototype new chocolates to taste and rate. This sparked a lifelong love of the stuff, and made him dream of inventing his own chocolate bar that would win the praise of Mr Cadbury: an idea that ultimately provoked the book. And Cadbury's real-life works is very definitely a ''chocolate factory''.
107	** 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 a restaurant (they do have freezer desserts you can buy at Target), but when they first started, they were a wholesale bakery that made desserts for other stores, a "factory" in a sense (Fun fact: Cheesecake Factory started in 1972, a year after ''[=WW&tCF=]'' was released).
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110	* 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.
111	** In case a disobedient child needs to be hoisted through.
112	** Serious answer: presumably because there was a point once where adult humans might have needed to enter the chute for whatever reason (such as maintenance). When Wonka transferred to a squirrel-sorting department, the chutes remained because it would have been too costly or he didn't feel like replacing them. Besides, the Oompa-Loompas might still need to have access to them and, while smaller than an average adult human, they're still bigger than nuts.
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114	* 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.
115	** Yet another example of someone not understanding the NoodleIncident trope.
116	*** Seems more like HandWave, to me.
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118	* When Charlie finds the golden ticket, after he gets back home, he discovers that the visit to the factory is going to be the next day. What would have happened if the fifth golden ticket had not been found by that date? Only four kids would have gone to the factory or the visit would have been postponed?
119	** I've sometimes wondered the same thing. It surely would have made more sense to wait until all five tickets had been found before announcing the date. It's also lucky that Charlie happens to live right on the doorstep of the factory; what if he'd had to fly in from the other side of the world? He wouldn't even have had time to make the arrangements. But Wonka might have just expected that all the tickets would have been found by that date at the rate they were being bought, and with his wealth and influence would probably have had the means to get the makers of any last-minute discoveries there on time.
120	** Going off the above question of "What would happen if all the children on the tour were rotten?", I'd assume that if the fifth ticket hadn't been found, Wonka would just hold the tour with the four children who'd already found their tickets, the fifth one would effectively be recalled, and then he would send out five more tickets the next year to continue his secret search for an heir.
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122	* 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 file a lawsuit against them? It seems obvious that they copied him if only Wonka was known for producing those specific sweets, like the "un-melting" ice cream.
123	** 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" "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.
124	** Could also be that if he did file a lawsuit, they either wouldn't quit or find their ways of covering up their tracks by eliminating their proof of spies.
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126	* Why does Wonka even let the Salts into his nut-sorting room, in the first place? Isn't he, at all, concerned about his trade secret? And, for that matter, why did Mr. Salt think Wonka would be just fine with him offering to buy one of those squirrels?
127	** The nut-sorting squirrels are really no different than the chocolate waterfall in terms of being secrets; they're just another one of Wonka's crazy methods that he's clearly proud to show off. Just looking at the squirrels and hearing a brief explanation about them doesn't equate to the visitors now having the knowledge and resources to acquire and train their own nut-sorting squirrels. As for Mr. Salt trying to buy one of the squirrels, with the amount of wealth the Salts are implied to have, he's likely never encountered someone he couldn't bribe with the right amount of money, hence why he tells Wonka to name his price: He assumes that anyone can eventually be bought.
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130	[[folder: Book]]
131	* 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 to three at a time in Apollo capsules?
132	** That is what the Great Glass Elevators are used for.
133	** 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.
134	** A lot of people in the 1960s assumed that spaceflight technology would keep right on developing, and did not foresee the long periods of stagnation we've seen since. If they'd been right, it would have been at least possible to get tourists into a space hotel using reusable [=SSTOs=] or something by the late '70s or early '80s. Tickets might have been a hundred thousand dollars a person or more, but it would have been ''possible''.
135	** The ship they sent the staff upon had 150 people on board.
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137	* Augustus is described as being very thin after being squeezed into 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?
138	** 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 Website/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.
139	** 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 ' senses of childlike wonder' things that Wonka's 'fairyland' expects you to accept.
140	----
141	* What if someone fell into the chocolate lake, but they were just clumsy and not actively trying to drink the chocolate? Would the Oompa-Loompas still write a diss track about them?
142	** My theory is that they will diss-track the child for being clumsy.
143	----
144	* 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...
145	** Given that the tour itself was just a front for Wonka's search for an heir, and Augustus had proven himself to be a highly unpleasant and greedy little twit, I'd be more than willing to assume that he didn't get to rejoin because 1. Augustus was now out of the running to inherit the factory and 2. Wonka seems the type to be more than happy to revoke the "prize" of visiting the factory now that Augustus essentially messed it up for himself by not listening. Sort of like a parent confiscating a new toy from a child who is misbehaving with it.
146	** 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 did take that long to fish him out of the mixing barrel.
147	** It's also worth noting that Augustus still gets the "official" reward of a lifetime supply of sweets; considering what almost happened to him, his parents probably agreed that it was safer to leave before their son's greed got him into worse trouble.
148	[[/folder]]
149
150	[[folder: 2005 film]]
151	* 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 good. What gives?
152	** The exit song was transferred word-for-word from the original book. Mike Teavee's character was not. So it could be blamed on Danny Elfman for not writing modified lyrics to go with the character change.
153	** It could be seen as Mike 'saw' that he could use the thing as a teleporter but didn't 'think' further than that.
154	** Playing video games (on a console, and hence on 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.
155	** 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 concerning the character. Considering the ending, they seem to be working on the assumption people haven't read the book, so might either not notice.
156	** 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 allow him to learn. He'd lost a sense of wonder and curiosity - he wanted to be told, not taught.
157	*** 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 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.
158	----
159	* Is this version set in Britain or America? Charlie's family is British, but they all use American grammar and slang. Willy Wonka is American, but his origin story is British, and everyone eats ''candy''... I can't remember what currency they use.
160	** Artistic combination of both, I think, so it can appeal to either side of the pond.
161	** Carried over from the book, which used British idioms, and yet Charlie found a dollar...
162	*** This troper never noticed this until he read this. (Facepalm)
163	*** It's not 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.
164	*** In my version, Grandpa Joe gives him six pence, 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.
165	*** 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 to no end as a kid.
166	*** To be fair, I'm sure that even in Victorian Britain the news of the assassination of the President of the United States would make it across the ocean eventually.
167	*** 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 (regarding "the dirty British"), the Civil War, and then the death of Lincoln.
168	*** That must be the American edition. In the British edition, the War of Independence isn't mentioned. She does, however, excitedly tell everyone that Nelson has beaten the French at Trafalgar.
169	*** I'm pretty sure the 2005 film was set in America. My reasoning for this is that 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.
170	** The older film also is vague in this regard, which is addressed by Creator/NeilPatrickHarris in the Rifftrax. "Maybe this takes place before the American Revolution."
171	*** Maybe it makes sense in context, but it's about a chocolate factory and features television news prominently. Did pre-revolutionary Britain, or America use...? No. I'm completely stumped.
172	*** That's the point. It's Podcast/{{Rifftrax}}. ''Neil was making a joke.''
173	*** 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 be one of the characters.
174	*** 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.
175	*** He'd still speak American English or a mid-Atlantic sound.
176	*** This troper assumes that Charlie (in the book and movies) was from an imaginary country in North America that had some British influence.
177	*** ...Canada?
178	*** Well, CanadaDoesNotExist, after all...
179	** There's an interesting combination of factors at play here:
180	*** Most cases of US tropers' confusion in this thread are from not considering the CulturalTranslation already applied by their country's publisher before their version of the book reached them. As noted above by a previous troper, in the British version there's no "dollars" in sight, Charlie is finding coins in British currency. It's a "chocolate factory" because Brits have ''chocolate bars'', not ''candy bars'' -- any mentions of "candy" are essentially going to be an American 'translation'. Similarly they travel around the factory on the Great Glass Lift, not Elevator. And Mike Teavee is returned to normal(ish) size on "a special machine... for testing the stretchiness of chewing-gum", not a "taffy puller".
181	*** There's an odd bit of transatlantic fudge[[note]](no pun intended... mmm, fudge)[[/note]] going on for the location of the sequel book, though. At some point between the two books, Dahl (and/or his publishers) seems to have 'leaned in' to this business of cultural translation, and appears to have shifted the setting canonically Stateside. The second book's titular device is named the Great Glass '''Elevator''' even in its UK version. The super-aged Grandma Georgina has also sailed on the ''Mayflower'', and although her spiel about "the dirty British" etc is not present in the British text, she flips straight from exclaiming "Did you hear the news! Admiral Nelson has beaten the French at Trafalgar!" to "Gettysbury! General Lee is on the run!", to lamenting the death of Lincoln.
182	*** As a spin-off from the above, certain sections of the text will have been updated over the years, in either market, to keep things like the amounts of money mentioned relatively up to date -- for instance, as also noted above, a 1970s/'80s UK version of the first book will have Grandpa Joe slipping Charlie a [[UsefulNotes/OldBritishMoney pre-decimal sixpence]] but Charlie subsequently finds a (decimal) 50-pence piece... which would not have existed when the book was originally written in the early '60s. Meanwhile, doing the arithmetic with the numbers the characters use in the second book to calculate Georgina's suddenly incredibly advanced age in the aforementioned scene (they work out she was now born about six years pre-''Mayflower'', i.e. 1614, and is thus "358") places their 'present day' at c.1972.
183	*** The film takes a book by a British author (but also widely loved in America), but the movie is made in the US and is aimed perhaps primarily at the lucrative domestic Stateside market... and in a nod to all of that casts predominantly British and Irish actors alongside an American Wonka, while having the ostensibly British characters use oddly American terminology. It therefore ends up plonking its locale down squarely in the middle of Transatlantica, where the contradictory elements of the setting seem to say it's 'either' -- or, perhaps intentionally, an [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield impossible-to-resolve]] 'neither or both'. Even the vehicles leaving the factory in the opening scene pull out onto neither the left nor right side of the road but straight down the middle!
184
185	----
186	* When Violet becomes a blueberry, how come her clothes didn't split from the strain?
187	** 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.
188	** Her clothes are made from the same stuff The Incredible Hulk buys.
189	** You can see the juice soaking into her clothes, so presumably, that's how the transformation also affected the clothes.
190	** Probably the same reason her skin didn't rip open.
191	** [[MagicPants There's a trope for that.]]
192	*** Violet was shown to be a gymnast in this version and gymnasts do wear clothes that are made to stretch. Maybe her clothes are those?
193	----
194	* So, uh, why didn't either Charlie or Mike, who both were small enough to fit through the gate as Veruca did, do anything to save her?
195	** Maybe because they spent a few seconds in shock first. Then when they got out of it, she was already down the chute.
196	** 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.
197	*** Why didn't her father just climb over the gate? Oh, no, Mister Wonka has to open the gate first...
198	*** Maybe they were too initially shocked by what was going on to react in time.
199	** I honestly think they were being smart. Think about it. If they ran down to save this witchy girl, she might have just pulled them into the mess while she escaped and not bothered going back to save them.
200	*** The same would have happened with Charlie for whatever happened. Try swimming after Augustus 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. Violet? 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.
201	----
202	* What was up with that part with the sheep?
203	** The implication seems to be that they're the source of Wonka's cotton candy, but if you knew that cotton candy came from sheep, would you ever eat it again?
204	*** Considering that lamb chops are a fairly popular food... and the whole role of wool in clothing production...
205	*** But I've never eaten a jumper before.
206	** I'm to understand it was a reference to Johnny Depp's previous role as Ed Wood in the film of the same name.
207	** To me, it's a reference to an obvious (though typically British) joke about shepherds using their sheep for... um... certain purposes. So Wonka keeps them around to... yeah...
208	** I thought it was a very sneaky little joke. Cotton candy is also called candy floss. Floss is a type of yarn, and the yarn is made from wool.
209	----
210	* The chocolate river is explicitly stated to be "hot melted chocolate of the finest quality." Think about how hot chocolate has to get just to melt, let alone keep such a gooey-but-thin liquid consistency. Surely Augustus should be covered in at ''least'' second-degree burns under all that fudge-coating, shouldn't he?
211	** What, 45 degrees celsius?
212	** Thinking too hard again!
213	*** What?
214	*** Put some chocolate squares in a metal cup. Go sit in a hot tub with the cup floating beside you. When you've had a good soak, get out and drink the chocolate.
215	** Because they're not going to show a small child ''covered in second-degree burns'' in a family-friendly movie. Had they shown Augustus looking like a [[BodyHorror burnt chocolate hominoid monstrosity]], the movie would've been thrown in the scrap heap.
216	----
217	* Before moving on from the chocolate river, why does 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?
218	** Probably, yes.
219	----
220	* 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.
221	** The [[SchizoTech SchiZtation]] [[OverNineThousand 9100]], which was made by an obscure Ameritish company back in 19exty2. I'm not surprised you haven't heard of it.
222	*** That company was [[Film/BatmanForever Nygmatech]].
223	----
224	* Why was Veruca's father the only parent that got a punishment? He sure was taking her to be 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.
225	** 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.
226	----
227	* 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.
228	** The shrinkage was a side-effect of transmitting things via TV. He wasn't transmitting them ''to'' shrink them, he was shrinking them to transmit them.
229	*** 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...
230	*** Probably because two-metre-long chocolate bar/[[NightmareFuel boy]] + transmission = Six-inch-long bar/boy. Six-inch-long chocolate bar + transmission = 1.1 centimeter-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.
231	*** Yes, Wonka points out that things appear vastly smaller on a TV screen than they are in real life. Therefore, by the irrefutable InsaneTrollLogic apparently at work in his world, you have to start off with a ''gigantic'' chocolate bar if you want it to (literally) come out at the receiving end 'normal'-sized. A normal-sized one going in would come out absolutely miniscule.
232	*** This above. The book explains that a giant size chocolate bar is necessary to become the correct size of an average chocolate bar on someone's television screen. These days, you'd probably need a much bigger bar.
233	** Due to resolve 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...]]
234	** [[ForScience For (confectionery) SCIENCE]]!!!
235	** Because close-ups don't exist, silly!
236	----
237	* Why does Veruca Salt's song end more abruptly than the others?
238	** They didn't want to tip off Mr. Salt about what was coming behind him. When he was gone they had no more reason to sing.
239	----
240	* Why did they insert the bits about Grandpa Joe being one of the Wonka employees laid off to make way for the Oompa-Loompas and the link between Mr. Bucket being fired from the toothpaste factory and the Wonka chocolate craze? They set it up so that Willy Wonka is either directly or indirectly responsible for all of the Bucket family's misery and then didn't do anything with it.
241	** The former so that Grandpa Joe could narrate what working under Wonka used to be like and the latter so that Mr. Bucket could get his job back later because of the same craze. Narrative reasons.
242	** Also, Wonka wasn't 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.
243	----
244	* Did anyone else feel that Veruca's punishment is ''far'' too light? She is arguably the most obnoxious child in the group, yet she is the only one whose punishment doesn't leave drastic, lasting effects. To wit: Augustus gets (presumably) turned into ''living chocolate'', and will have to spend the rest of his life trying to keep from eating himself or melting; Violet is left blue-skinned and freakishly flexible (and permanently doing cartwheels, it seems); Mikey is turned into a freakishly tall [[NoodlePeople noodle person]]; Veruca...gets a stern look from her father and has to take a bath.
245	** Perhaps for the same reason Mr. Salt was the only parent who was punished directly? The other parents are certainly guilty of criminal neglect to allow their children to reach the horrible state they were in by the time of the book/movies, that neglect was not straightening out their children's innate nastiness. Augustus Gloop was a greedy little shit without prompting, his parents just enabled him. Veruca's brattiness could be argued to be completely a creation of her father telling her to act that way to get what she wants. So she gets off light, while her father gets punished as well.
246	** 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.
247	** What makes her the worst in the group? I don't think she 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 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. Wonka agrees- Veruca and her parents are both punished, which doesn't happen to any other family.
248	*** 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 the bad habits their parents allowed them to keep.
249	** The scene seemed to be implying that her dad was going to stop spoiling her, which is a long-lasting effect.
250	** What?! I think Veruca's got it worse than the others. It'll be fun to be stretched out or purple and extremely flexible, but being dumped down a rubbish chute? Ew. (Being carried by squirrels is probably fun, though, but the others get to do fun weird stuff too!)
251	** I always imagined that being manhandled by a group of squirrels would be quite painful, what with the scratching and constant grabbing, etc. Of course, scars couldn't be shown in a children's film, but it would still be a pretty harsh side effect.
252	** Probably Veruca wound up with lifelong squirrel and/or garbage phobias.
253	** Veruca's punishment was the blow to her ''pride'' - humiliated by rodents, dumped in the 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.
254	----
255	* 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 in this film, no one bats an eyelid at someone being creepily long and PURPLE.
256	** Who says he doesn't? But Wonka's got plenty of money to throw around. Plus, Mrs. Gloop is the only one who 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.
257	*** 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, having 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.
258	** All the money he made from the Golden Ticket frenzy was used to settle the suits.
259	** 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 them, at least.
260	** The 1971 film has the children and their parents signing a waiver (that [[RefugeInAudacity tapers down into microscopically small print]]). Couldn't they at least have thrown in something like that?
261	** 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. You're meant to [[MST3KMantra shut up and not think about it]].
262	** 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, at that point, can we blame him for not giving too much of a crap?
263	----
264	* Mr. Bucket gets laid off from his job at the toothpaste factory after the factory replaces him with a machine, then he later gets rehired to repair said machine. Either the machine breaks down constantly and Mr. Bucket is hired to fix it each time, which would make having the machine in the first place seem like a pointless waste of money; or the factory paid Mr. Bucket to fix the machine the one time, which would still leave him without a constant job.
265	** I'm guessing what they meant was that Mr. Bucket was rehired to ''maintain'' the machine.
266	*** 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 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.
267	** 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 has 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.
268	----
269	* If Wonka's factory officially has no workers, who drive the delivery trucks with Wonka logos in the beginning? Unless they're operated by a subcontractor, of course.
270	** This is likely the case -- and it follows the book's explanation for how the candies are distributed fairly closely: According to Grandpa Joe, "[The candies] come out through a special trap door in the wall, all packed and addressed, and they are picked up every day by Post Office trucks."
271	** We also don’t know that Wonka doesn’t have official workers. He had Mr. Wilkinson in the 1971 film, and considering this Wonka is considerably more childish and immature, it makes sense that he would have other employees to help him with things like advertising and distribution.
272	----
273	* Why did Mike Teevee go to the chocolate factory in this version? He said himself he hated chocolate and he didn't 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.
274	** 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.
275	*** He only said he hated chocolate.
276	----
277	* If Wilbur Wonka has an entire wall covered with photos and newspaper clippings detailing his son's accomplishments as a chocolatier, how did he not recognize Willy when he and Charlie showed up on his doorstep? Even if a lot of his photos were outdated since Willy hasn't been out in public in several years, his appearance shouldn't have changed much in that time
278	** Wilbur Wonka was a consummate professional, and he was in full 'dentist' mode when Willy ostensibly came in for a check-up, so his entire focus was on the dental rather than the facial aspects of his patient. Of course, he finally recognized Willy anyway after taking a good, hard look at his dental assets.
279	----
280	* 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. (This 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?
281	** Considering how short-sighted and immature Wonka is demonstrated as being elsewhere in the film, I wouldn't put it past him to not have considered the ramifications of destroying the roof of his house. He also might've assumed that Charlie was more well off than he turned out to be, and thought that such property damage wouldn't be such a big deal to his family. Being such a famous chocolatier, it's not as if he'd know what it's like to be so destitute.
282	----
283	* Who were those guys putting up the golden ticket posters, anyway? From what can be seen of their features (granted, only for a few seconds), they don't appear to be Oompa-Loompas.
284	** 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 for my factory tour!" and lets them get on with it.
285	** We don’t know that Wonka doesn’t have workers besides the Oompa-Loompas. He had Mr. Wilkinson in the 1971 film, and considering this Wonka is considerably more childish and immature, it makes sense that he would have other employees to help him with things like advertising and distribution.
286	----
287	* "We need the money more than we need the chocolate." But going already guarantees a lifetime supply of chocolate even before the special prize is revealed. They can still sell the chocolate after the factory tour. (Of course, they don't know yet what the tour will involve.)
288	** 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 premises in which to sell the chocolate both cost more money than the Buckets presumably have on them at this point.
289	** 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 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.
290	** Also, the ‘05 movie doesn’t mention the lifetime supply of chocolate in the same terms that the book does. The tickets in the movie say that the kids will be escorted home with a several truckloads of chocolate when they leave the factory, but they don’t say anything about being able to go back to the factory to get more. Even if the Buckets weren’t prohibited from selling the chocolate, they still would probably get more money by selling the ticket itself, and in less time.
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292	* 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 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.
293	** 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.
294	** When I watched both films, I got the impression that Wonka ''was'' planning to get into the TV manufacturing business. The [=TVs=] you can reach into and grab stuff from are the product he was testing in the Television Room, but the only stuff you can take from inside them are those transmitted via the teleporter inside Wonka's factory.
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296	* If Wilbur Wonka was so opposed to his son eating candy, why did he let him go trick or treating in the first place?
297	** 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 afterward.
298	** 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 be like that sort of persnickety busybody.
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300	* 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.
301	** 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 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.
302	** Willy may have assumed the Prince intended to share the chocolate with his household servants, staff, bodyguards, and ministers.
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304	* During the song about Veruca, how and why do 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 for Veruca's brattiness, but 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?
305	** Everyone who found a ticket appears extensively in the news, apart for Charlie (since he finds it the day before). Photos of the parents of all the other kids were likely featured in plenty of magazines and papers, so they knew what Mrs. Salt looked like and prepared a suitable portrait.
306	** But why didn’t Mrs. Salt go to the factory? I mean, was there a “one parent per kid” rule in place, and if so, why? I get that Gene Wilder version had the bratty kids only accompanied by one parent, but this was based on the book, not that film.
307	*** Yes, when the five kids are reading the text on the golden tickets, one of them mentions that they’re allowed to bring one family member with them, but no more. From a filmmaking standpoint, they probably kept it to one parent each so they could keep the tour group from seeming too bloated.
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309	* When Mike attempts to send himself through television, why didn't the Oompa Loompas nearby push the button again to cancel the teleportation?
310	** How do we know the button works that way? Maybe pressing it a second time wouldn't have done anything.
311	** The question might then become why something that complex didn't have some sort of Kill Switch, but it's not like anything about Wonka's factory in any version [[NoOSHACompliance is OSHA-Friendly]], so that's probably the least of the problems.
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313	* How did Wonka manage to build the palace for the Indian prince without it melting away before it was even finished?
314	** According to sources, the melting point of chocolate is between 86 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. There are parts of the year in India with average temperatures well below that threshold. Wonka probably just arranged to have the palace constructed at a time of year when it would withstand the local temperature.
315	** Chilled thermal blankets laid over all exterior surfaces right up until the moment of unveiling probably helped.
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317	* Why was Violet flexible when leaving the factory?
318	** The gum probably made some major changes to her skeletal and muscular system 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.
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320	* At one point in the movie, Grandma Georgina says things are going to get much 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.
321	** "Nothing is impossible" might have just been nonsense that just happened to be accurate by chance, without any more thought behind it than "I love grapes". By contrast, when she said "Things are going to get much better", she meant it in earnest.

Context Headscratchers / CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory