Line #36 Headscratchers/Snowpiercer


1	!!!'''Film:'''
2
3	* How have the Snowpiercer's tracks held up for eighteen years without maintenance? Train tracks need regular maintenance to stay in good order - and the faster the train, the more work is needed. Plus, the ground itself will shift over time from the weight of trains, meaning more and more ballast will have to be added to keep the rails level. Unless the rails were made of adamantium, ice flows, avalanches, and the cold itself would have probably warped the tracks after a few years and made them impassable. It's hard to believe that huge structures like the Yekaterina Bridge could still take the weight of the train after standing in such harsh conditions for 18 years without maintenance.
4	** Well, we are talking about a future where a perpetual motion train is a possibility. Physics-defying tracks aren't terribly far off from that, surely.
5	*** Even the "eternal" engine needed replacement parts, though.
6	** To be fair, the tracks on which ''Snowpiercer'' travels only have to bear the burden of one train per year. Much of the reason why rails need such frequent repair in real life is that multiple trains traverse them every ''day''. I got nothing to account for why weather, erosion and earthquakes haven't taken out the tracks, though.
7
8	* If the train needed to keep the tailender population under control, why not just distribute birth control? They didn't seem to be worried about running out of anything else.
9	** If they had done that, then there wouldn't have been any children for them to use as replacement train parts. Forcing the passengers to take or use birth control wouldn't have helped the elite class's image any and would have caused further resentment, and there are probably some that would have found ways to make it look like they were taking or using it but really weren't. Administering it secretly through the protein blocks would have been figured out eventually, because you'd have to give it to everyone, and since birth control pills have female hormones in them changes in the men would have been noticed eventually.
10	*** And this would stop the front-enders from dosing the protein bars why, exactly? Unless they want to go back to cannibalism, the tail-enders wouldn't have any alternative but to eat the doped blocks anyway.
11	*** Wilford essentially spells the situation out to Curtis: he didn't want the tail-enders on the train in the first place but once they were aboard, he realised they could be useful; the train simply ''can't'' go on forever without breaking down, so he needs a steady supply of children under 5 years old to maintain the parts that do break down. Little Timmy and Andy weren't always going to be the right size to stay in those cubbyholes, after all... And the front-enders sure as hell weren't about to start volunteering their little darlings for the job, not to mention the cult that had formed around Wilford and the engine - the illusion needed to be maintained for the front-enders that the engine could last forever, thus the tail-enders were the perfect source for the children that would be needed to replace the extinct machinery and also presumably replace each child once they became too big/too injured to keep working. Plus, the adults in the tail-section could be used to regularly revolt whenever the train's population was in danger of becoming unsustainable or in case any of the front-enders started getting restless. To put it bluntly, Wilford needs the tail-section to exist ''and'' to keep regularly producing children; dosing the food with birth control would do nothing but ultimately harm his goal of keeping the train running ad infinitum.
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13	* Considering the higher-ups assign no value to their lives anyway, why do they have such a large tailender population at all? We finally get a justification for keeping them around at the very end of the film (breeding stock to work the engine), but they'd really only need a dozen or so women and a handful of men at the most to supply that. The rest of the tailenders are not a working class, nor are they used to produce anything other than a few babies every other year. The vast majority seem to be there just so [[ForTheEvulz the bad guys can have someone to oppress.]]
14	** Possibly there ''is'' one more thing the tail-enders provide, that isn't stated outright in the film, but could have value nonetheless: the chance for adding actual ''new faces'' to the front-ender community. For all their comparative luxuries and elitism, the front-enders are just as trapped in the train as the tail-enders, seeing the same few hundred faces and the same twenty or so upper-class train cars every day of their lives. Their cage is still a cage, however gilded; sooner or later, they're going to get bored out of their minds. By conscripting an occasional tail-end adult to serve the upper classes, whether as a menial servant or as entertainment like the violinist, Wilford can provide a little variety in the front-enders' lives - new faces and voices to establish a relationship with, even if it's that of a superior with an inferior - without them ever realizing he's psychologically manipulating ''them'' as much as he does, the underclass.
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16	* Where do all of the upper class people even LIVE? We saw a bunch of train cars that seemed incredibly inefficient, such as restaurant, sauna, and nightclub cars. The train doesn't seem long enough to have more cars than what we've seen, and the population toward the front seems to have as many people as the tail end has, just dispersed more.
17	** Make that a question about the upper-class logistics in general. Are we really supposed to believe that one greenhouse car, one aquarium car and one slaughterhouse car (and mind you, we haven't seen any warehouse cars ''at all'') were sufficient to keep what appears to be, at the very least, several dozen individuals living in opulence for 17 years? Even assuming they had access to unlimited amounts of everything ''but'' food, there's still no way the train could produce enough to keep them all alive, much less with enough to live like kings.
18	** This Troper assumed that the cars are double- or triple-decked, and we only saw one level of the operation. Perhaps the top deck is for recreational areas, the middle for living quarters, and the bottom for support facilities. Still, given the number of passengers at the rave and the number of mooks involved the bridge battle, it would take some seriously efficient design to feed them all.
19	*** This partially confirmed, as we see the tail-enders ascend at least one staircase as they move forward.
20	** They pass through more cars than explicitly shown in the movie; see for example when Franco the Elder shoots Curtis through the windows. There are about a dozen cars between Franco and Curtis, while we've only seen them passing through about four since they left the teaching car (from which Franco shoots). Note also that one of first cars the tailenders pass through is empty and has plenty of living space (Tanya even says "Look at all these beds! Where is everybody?")
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22	* The way things were going, how much longer could the train have operated? Wilford can't [[spoiler:replace every mechanical part with human labor]] - eventually, a drive shaft, flywheel, or similar component would have gone down. What would he do then?
23	** Wilford's motives are easier to understand if you assume that [[spoiler: he really couldn't care less if ''humanity'' survives, only if his ''train'' does. And only for as long as he, himself, lives: once he's dead, he'll have achieved his personal dream of lifelong rail travel, and what happens next is somebody else's problem. Keeping the population stable and the social hierarchy intact is just another aspect of keeping the train's components - whether tail-born child cog or front-end elite - in working order to him.]]
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25	* Was using children to solve mechanical problems always part of Wilford's plan? Or did he bring what he thought would be enough space parts, run out, and go to Plan B?
26	** Presumably even Wilford didn't know the world was going to freeze when he'd first dreamed up the idea for a world-encircling train, and he initially planned for a perpetual-motion engine as an ideal to aim for, not something he'd actually believed it would ''need''. When the Ice Age struck, he'd have loaded it with as many replacement parts as were available at the time, and hoped like hell the climate would revert before anything irreplaceable ran out.
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28	* What did the axemen in the Yekaterina battle normally do? The other sections all seemed normally staffed. Did Wilford just have them on call for 17 years?
29	** This troper assumes they're usually the butchers from the empty meat locker boxcar they go through several cars later. Hence the fish and axes.
30	** The tailenders pass through a few deserted cars before the battle happens. Presumably the axemen normally resided there.
31	** Night shift, possibly? Even the [[spoiler: child "replacement parts"]] weren't expected to work 24-7; that's why [[spoiler: Timmy and Andy were taken at the same time]].
32
33	* Okay so if we believe Wilford, Gilliam is working for him the whole time, but what exactly did he get out of that arrangement. He lost a leg, an arm, had to live in the back of the train and he was forced to live off bug bars for 18 years. Unless he was getting secret food packages, late night gab sessions with Wilford don't seem like a fair exchange.
34	** The continued supply of protein bars to the survivors, making sure that the world didn't descend back to the hell he sacrificed his arm to stop the first time.
35
36	* Can the train stop? I mean I know it's some sort of perpetual motion engine so does that mean it always has to be moving? I'm just wondering because if can stop what's the advantage of trapsing all over the world over ever more fragile tracks and bridges as opposed to finding a secure location to stop and live in?
37	** From the stories of the frozen escapees (and the hordes of snap-frozen bodies clambering to shelter), being outside the train at the beginning of the great freezing sounds like a recipe for instant death. It's also mentioned that the train collects water through the engine by breaking up ice and snow and transferring it inside, while a self-sustaining, perpetual motion train running over a global network of indestructible train tracks and bridges is definitely a symptom of RuleOfCool; the outside world seems to be far, ''faaaar'' too inhospitable for human life until [[spoiler:at least 17 years after the fact, when it's observed that "the snow is melting!"]].
38	** I'd guess that the train has too much momentum to ever stop under its own power. And the engine that keeps the train running seems to be the same engine that keeps the train warm and hospitable, but given that the bonkers Teacher told us that, that could be BS.
39	** If the engine were disconnected from the rest of the drive train, or simply switched off, then presumably the Rattling Ark would expend its formidable kinetic energy in the process of clearing the tracks of snow and ice. Or if the snow does melt and the climate become livable again, then internal and external friction would do the job over the course of many, many miles.
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41	* I get Wilford is meant to be crazy/evil but what are his reasons for keeping everyone in the rear so miserable? If he'd just treated them with a bit of fairness and gave them a fair share of the resources, they wouldn't constantly need to revolt. It's seems strange that he's so indulgent with the first class passengers, they have a whole cabin devoted to a steamroom for pete's sake, but he crams everyone else into a steelbox. So why the big difference in treatment?
42	** Wilford is the [[spoiler:mastermind behind all the revolts, to keep the population in balance]]. A resentful underclass serves as a breeding ground for exactly the kind of attempted revolution he wants.
43	** As pointed out above, though, tailenders aren't being put to use for anything in the meantime aside from making an occasional baby. If [[spoiler:population control is really the aim of his "revolution"]] and not just [[ForTheEvulz shits n' giggles for the sake of villainy]], then it would have been just as evil but much more pragmatic of Wilford to not even ''have'' an underclass to begin with, and instead simply keep a handful of women around for breeding purposes. Of course, [[AnthropicPrinciple if he did that, there'd be no movie]].
44	** Given that [[Series/PlanetEarth the only ''other'' closed-system human civilization traveling through a freezing void, making one complete circuit a year, that we have first-hand experience with]] works the exact same way, with many rich people revelling in nauseating amounts of decadence and waste without a second thought, and many poor living in unimaginable squalor and misery, instead of everybody just sharing resources fairly, is it really so hard to believe that a bootstrapped American entrepreneur like Wilford would give himself and the upper class much more than they need while neglecting the third-class ghettos?
45	*** '''Yes''', because it makes no sense to keep them around in the context of the story and it seems to exist solely to feed into an extremely childish, simplistic, and reductive "The rich harm the poor simply because they're evil and they like to" narrative.
46	** The film makes it clear that tail-section inhabitants aren't even passengers. They are free-loaders. They weren't included in the original plan and Wilford keeps them alive just in case he ever needs them, but does so in the lowest possible effort, because he has no real resources to do so - or so he believes, as they weren't part of his "great plan". Wilford is not stupid in sense of StupidEvil. But he's delusional about own greatness, thus absolutely unable to reconsider his plan could be wrong or things should be done differently. It has nothing to do with being evil for the sake of evil. It's about his inability to accept that he might be wrong. Hubris at its finest. WordOfGod is all about this approach.
47
48	* If Edgar was raised by Gilliam and Curtis, how did he acquire an Irish accent?
49	** He may have been given to an Irish woman on board whose baby had died or already been butchered. Babies need milk, after all.
50
51	* On a similar note, if Edgar's mother was killed trying to protect her baby, why didn't the cannibal youths just eat ''her'' and leave the baby alive? At best it'd be a concession to lingering humanity, at worst it'd keep Edgar's flesh fresh for later.
52	** The tailenders were almost feral at that point and, as noted towards the end of the film, babies taste the best. They weren't thinking. They just wanted what they considered to be the tastiest thing to eat at that moment.
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54	* How on earth are [[spoiler: children a practical replacement for parts?]] There's a lot of extraneous things on this train, including extra cars. Considering heavy machinery is present in board, why didn't Wilford apply his intelligence and convert some of it into milling equipment, and scrap the superfluous things to make replacements- even ramshackle versions. [[spoiler: even rough attempts at parts should be more effective than trying to tell a kid how to preform this stuff. Kids tire easily, and are very clumsy. PLUS whatever he is replacing with kids isn't that advanced, considering small children can preform their functions. So the parts are likely very simple.]]
55	** [[RealityIsUnrealistic It's easier to use manual labour than trying to manufacture even the most primitive machinery when you lack means and tools to do so]]. And making new pistons isn't an easy job either. On the other hand, imagine the ending without the reveal. The only reason why Yona was able to convince Curtis into any form of cooperation at this point was showing him the machine in action. Without it, Wilford would just win by talking Curtis down.
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57	* Geography doesn't stick on two different levels. During the classroom scene, we are shown the map of the entire railway. While it's simplified and as part of an advertising cartoon, it still provides a lot of information and is more than confusing.
58	** The animation shows the train passing in specific order, over specific tracks, bumping specific labels on the map. This way we know the train goes south after crossing the Yekaterina Bridge, passing through Central Asia. [[CaptainObvious There are no shores in Central Asia]], thus it would be impossible to watch a destroyed port through the window in the sushi bar, especially a one with huge tanker crashed on the shore. And given the speed of the train and other details sprinkled throughout the film, they end up crashing somewhere in northern Iran. This would made a LOT more sense if the label was just mistaken in the production and the train would actually be moving around the north-most parts of Russia, thus an area which not only is an arctic region even now, but has a sea-shore and a population of polar bears.
59	** The train moves between 70-80 km per hour, which is brought up numerous times. That means making between 600 to 700 thousands kilometers a year. There is no way the whole route is that long, especially as it cuts through polar region.
60	** The map presumably ''is'' propaganda. If Wilford ''didn't'' claim that the train goes all over the planet, people might start wondering if there's a habitable belt near the equator that they should try to re-direct their course towards, which could get everybody killed if they're wrong and wind up on a dead-end track to nothing but more ice.
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62	* The story makes far more sense if you assume Wilford is also Clairvoyant and has been since he was a kid. Its how he knew that the violin string would snap seconds after the bullet note saying 'blood' was opened. When Wilford was a kid he had a vision that the world would freeze and he loved trains so he made a train that couldn't be frozen. That is why he built a train designed for frozen terrain (why go there) and called it The Snowpiercer (as opposed to The Globe Trotter), it has a water filtration system (the train would most of its time in unfrozen areas and it can just pick up water like normal at a train stop), and why the train has a prison section (unless its for pets?), has crazy high security (its a train, not a bank vault), and why the engine is a perpetual motion machine (why not just have a regular engine). He is not a perfect Clairvoyant though. Let's see how the prequel rolls with it.
63	** The "blood" note was probably more likely referring to the imminent gun massacre of Curtis' group and the Tail-Enders left with Gilliam. The violin string snapping was just another way of building tension in the scene as being the first sign of something going wrong.
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65	* How exactly did they manage to [[spoiler: brainwash the children in the space of less than a day?]] When Curtis arrives at the engine, [[spoiler: Andy and Timmy already seem to be completely uncaring about who he is]], despite very little time having passed since.
66	** [[spoiler: The boys]] were probably drugged into near-zombiehood. And the interval between [[spoiler: them being taken away]] and the revolution was probably longer than it looked like, given that one of the characters had time to recover from [[spoiler: having his arm frozen off]].
67	** It definitely wasn't "less than a day". At the very least there's clearly two days ''minimum'' between [[spoiler: the boys being taken and Curtis reaching the engine]], and very likely even longer considering the length of the train and the obstacles they're put through. The whole thing is probably closer to a week. [[spoiler: Considering the boys' heads had been shaved within that time and there appears to be a scar across Andy's chest, [[FridgeHorror it's highly likely there was drugging and/or some kind of medical procedure involved]] too]].
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69	* [[spoiler: Bugs]] may be a very good source of protein, but you can't survive on pure protein for seventeen years. Every one of the tail-enders should be dead of scurvy.
70	** That's assuming the food bars don't contain anything ''other'' than [[spoiler: cockroach mash]]. Could be that's what happens to potato skins, fruit rinds, and other vegetable refuse from the other cars' kitchens, too.
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72	* If panicked, desperate people were willing to charge heavily-armed Wilford Industries security forces to try to get on board ''Snowpiercer'' at its point of departure, why didn't a bunch of equally-desperate people try to pile up a bunch of cars, trucks, or heavy construction vehicles ''on the tracks'' in front of the train, a short way ahead of its departure point, to try to force it to stop again and let them on board just outside the trainyard...? It'd surely seem like the only possible hope for people who heard about the train but were too far down-rail to get there by its departure time, and it's hard to imagine how Wilford could convince his security people to go ahead of ''Snowpiercer'' and keep the tracks clear if it meant forfeiting their ride, themselves.
73	** The train is strong enough to break through walls of solid ice, so presumably it could just cut through anything set on the tracks.
74	** That would also require far more organisation and co-operation than it sounds like anyone was capable of at the time. To come anywhere close to causing a pileup big enough to stop the train would require all the potential Tail-Enders to work together to acquire and then move the vehicles necessary - from the various descriptions we're given of the boarding, it was more of a sheer-blind panic with people literally fighting not just Wilford's security forces but each other to get on the train before it began moving and being given very limited advance notice to do so.
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76	* There's no explanation for why Gilliam worked with Wilford all along, especially given that he sacrificed his limbs for none of the comforts Wilford had. An one-off line implies Gilliam may have been a zealot about the plan to sacrifice the tail enders to keep balance.
77	** It makes perfect sense if Gilliam believes the speech Wilford gave Curtis.
78	** Or he may have reasoned that the likely alternative was Wilford simply ordering the ''entire population'' of tail-enders killed all at once, and recruiting future menial workers entirely from demoted front-end criminals. At least a revolution spread the mortality out a little more fairly around the train, and the rebels who died would do so believing they were accomplishing something.
79
80	* When Wilford states that Curtis is the first person to have ever traveled the entire length of the train, he somehow forgets that the kids he has as replacement parts were taken from the tail end to the front as well.
81	** Answered by more Fridge Logic. Given how he treats the children as spare parts and not ''people'', he's entirely right in his thinking Curtis is the first ''person'' to have traversed the length of the train.
82	** Or he's being nitpicky about how the children didn't ''walk'' the entire length: they were picked up and carried. It's a long train, and little kids who've spent their whole lives stuck inside a dozen-odd cramped boxcars aren't going to have much stamina.
83	** What about the people who took the children? The blonde woman with the measuring tape is actually coming out of the front of the train, inviting Curtis inside. What was she, climbing through windows in a narrow turn?
84	*** The tail section has more than one car to it. The blonde woman, Mason, and the guards don't go any further into the tail than the feeding car, so technically they've never been all the way to the ''back'' end. Curtis presumably has.
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86	* The front-enders are ''way'' too indoctrinated in the Wilford cult, aren't they? Mason reacts to the schoolchildren's hymn like it's a childhood favorite, but it's only been 17 years. And no parents are objecting to the cult? Everyone converted religions in less than two decades? The movie seems a bit at war with itself; it wants its characters to remember the outside world and simultaneously act like they all grew up on the train.
87	** Wilford himself suggests that everyone aboard is at least slightly mad. The front-enders are over-indoctrinated because they're trying to cope with both the end of the world and being intentionally kept in terror of both the tail-enders and the possible failure of the engine.
88	** We only know that the tail-enders originally fought their way onto the train, not how the rest of the people on board were admitted. Could be that Wilford selectively recruited a bunch of fanatical devotees ''before'' the world froze, gave them all tickets, and then had any of them who might have developed second thoughts about his dogma tossed out into the snow.
89	** As far as the frontenders were concerned, Wilford was basically the sole person responsible for saving them from a (probably) slow and agonising death being frozen with the rest of humanity. Not to mention that as soon as they got on board and the caste system was being established, Wilford probably made it clear that those who showed the most devotion to him would be likely to become one of his "inner circle" as it were, which they'd probably assume would mean more luxuries. It's actually hardly surprising that such a cult around him had been established within 17 years, particularly when there seemed to be a population which appeared to be mostly around 30-45 (for reference, Curtis is 34 and it's hinted quite a few times that he can't remember much of life before the train). People are inherently fairly adaptable; since the frontenders' experiences of life on the train seemed to be quite pleasant, why would they even bother trying to remember what was likely a very panicked and stress-filled life before that instead of just accepting that yes, Wilford chose to save them and they therefore owe him everything?
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91	* How did Timmy find a fur suit, complete with boots that fits him perfectly? Was there a stash of them in one of the first few cars?
92	** There were furs in the luxury-cars where the drug party was going on. Presumably everyone who boarded the train originally had been bundled up in thick coats in order to survive the journey to the station, and discarded their outerwear once they got inside where it was warm. The furs weren't thrown away - Wilford's preaching aside, many people would've still been hoping the planet would thaw or the equatorial regions would prove habitable once the train got there - and were eventually placed in the party/orgy room as a bit of decadent decor. There'd be some child-sized coats among these, as the front-enders presumably brought their own kids with them; note that there are people in their 20s among the party crowd.
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94	* How on earth did they have enough food and water? The entire movie breaks down if you just look at what they would need to have ''cattle'' available to provide those delicious steaks for the frontenders.
95	** Tropers, math was never my strong suit so please review my math and update/edit as you see fit, but here goes. Let's say they have a cattle population of 10. That's pushing it, because 10 is way below the number needed for a healthy breeding population, but it's a start. Two bulls and two females for breeding, and six cattle being fattened up for slaughter. Of course, you need to allow some cows to live to replace those age and die, but let's keep it simple. Let's also remember that cattle are an ''open-range'' species, they need room to move around to be healthy. Keeping them penned up in a tiny stall for their entire lives won't work. How much water a cow needs per day depends heavily on temperature, activity, whether on not they're lactating to provide milk, etc. On the low end, let's say 10 gallons of water per day per cow. That's 100 gallons a day for ten cows, or over 36,000 gallons of water per year. A cow requires roughly 25 pounds of hay per day. For 10 cows, that's 250 pounds of hay per day, or 45 tons of hay per year. An acre of land can grow roughly 15 tons of hay per year (with four cullings annually). So best case scenario, you'd need three acres of land to grow enough feed just for the cows. Let's not get into the need for crop rotation to avert soil depletion. An acre is about 60 feet wide by 660 feet long. It's another matter how many cars they would need to have that much acreage. You'd need about five inches of rain per year (that's on the ''very'' low end) per acre to grow those crops. Enough rain to cover one acre to a depth of one inch is about 100 tons of water, or about 25,0000 gallons of water. So for five inches of rain per acre, you'd need 125,000 gallons of water. For three acres, you'd need 375,000 gallons of water per year. All told, you're talking about over 400,000 gallons of water annually ''just to provide those delicious steaks for the frontenders.'' No way are they getting that much water scooping up ice from the tracks and snow from the air.
96
97	* Really, just pumped all the CW-7 into the atmosphere at once? No one thought to actually run some experiments and figure out the rate of cooling per density or even just launch it gradually?
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99	* Why didn't Minsoo use a small Kronol bomb to just blow out one of the windows? Instead, he journeys all the way to the front of the train to a door that requires so much explosive to blast open it derails the train and kills nearly everyone.
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101	* If the population within the train has to be reduced to keep it “in balance” to avoid overpopulation for the sake of everyone’s survival, then why doesn’t Wilford have a lottery with the names of everyone on the train instead of making tail-enders and front-enders brutally slaughter each other in revolts and then just spread the resources and luxuries amongst everyone equally?.
102	** If he did that, everyone on the train would be united in their hatred of him for killing people. By dividing the passengers into two classes and disguising population culls as revolts, he ensures the front-enders at least have their hatred directed at somebody else.
103
104	* Just what the heck is meant to be going on with the hidden messages in the food anyway? Sure, they're part of the whole plot to carefully encourage and engineer revolts when necessary - and [[spoiler: Gilliam]] presumably knows that - but where does Curtis think they're coming from? There's never any suggestion he thinks anyone in the front-end is secretly working to help them, but just accepts the messages appearing as if by magic for some reason.
105
106	* All the supposed rich and elite in the front of the train are ''just as poor as those in the back''. Whatever money, companies and resources they had would have been lost to the global ice age, and all that is left is within the closed ecosystem of the train, meaning that there is nothing to justify providing luxuries and comfort to only those in the front of the train who cannot provide Wilfred with anything in return any more than those in the back.
107	** That's the point of the movie, yes. It's a closed system where all the good stuff is in the front and nothing good makes it to the back, the only reason the good stuff never makes it to the back is because the people at the front refuse to share. That's what the "hat on head, shoe on foot" speech is about; I am superior, you are inferior, and that's the way it is because I say so, and I won't acknowledge the power I have to say otherwise because if I changed it so that you are not my inferior, I wouldn't be superior to you anymore.
108
109	!!!'''Series:'''
110
111	* Spoilers for season 2 onwards. But one thing really bothers me about the ruse that Wilford is on the train is the characterisation of the man and his relationship with Miss Audrey. Season 1 we're lead to believe he's a reclusive shut-in who wouldn't want to be disturbed. Come season 2 and Wilford is an out-going socialite who revels in attention and Miss Audrey doesn't seem confused that he hasn't visited her once in eight years despite the fact she's his own personal concubine.
112	** Likely EarlyInstallmentWeirdness. However, is likely she simply assumed he was busy with the going-ons of the train.
113	** For eight years!? I mean the obvious answer was [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants it wasn't written yet]] and you've got to give you lead characters something to do, but still it is aggravating that characters flip-flop across multiple seasons for the sake of drama.

Context Headscratchers / Snowpiercer