Film / Men in Black II

All spoilers for Men in Black will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Jay: You don't remember me, but we used to work together.

Kevin Brown/Kay: I never worked in a funeral home. Something I can do for you, slick?

Jay: Okay, uh, straight to the point: you are a former agent of a top-secret organization that monitors extra-terrestrials on Earth. We're the Men in Black, we have a situation, and we need your help.

Men in Black II (stylized MIIB) is the 2002 sequel to Men in Black and the second film in the Men in Black series. It is directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, with the screenplay by Robert Gordon and Barry Fanaro and the story by Gordon. It was released on July 3rd, 2002.

With K (Tommy Lee Jones) officially retired (with his memory wiped and civilian identity restored), J (Will Smith) has been working overtime as the top field agent of MiB. A powerful and malevolent alien named Serleena (Lara Flynn Boyle) returns to Earth looking for "The Light of Zartha," which is tied to a case K was involved with back in the '70s. To get the information they need, they reinstate K and get back to business.

The film also stars Johnny Knoxville as Scrad, Rosario Dawson as Laura Vasquez, Tony Shalhoub as Jack Jeebs and Rip Torn as Zed.

Much like the first movie, Will Smith released a tie-in music video entitled "Black Suits Comin' (Nod Ya Head)".

Its story was followed by Men in Black 3.

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This film provides examples of:

Tropes # to F

• 30-Second Blackout: When J has to use Jeeb's illegal deneuralyzer to make K remember, a big part of NYC has a blackout because of it.
• Actionized Sequel: The first film had some chase sequences, a little bit of gunplay and brief physical engagements, but was more of a sci-fi procedural. This film triples down on the action quotient, with the main characters getting into extended fight scenes and wrestling large aliens in a much more over-the-top manner (Zed somehow floats in mid-air repeatedly bicycle kicking Sarleena, to no effect).
• Actor Allusion
  • Know that weird language J speaks in to the guy in the mail room? Well, the mailman is actually Biz Markie, and that "weird alien language" is actually beatboxing. Smith' had previously used that particular beat in two episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (one of which, hilariously, saw him doing this in front of a man dressed similarly to an MIB agent).
  • Patrick Warburton plays a not-too-bright agent who joined MIB because he wants to be a hero. His codename? "Agent T."
  • A lot of mentions were made of Serleena's ravenous appetite. One scene shows her scarfing down a massive burger. At the time the film was released, Lara Flynn Boyle was in the tabloids a lot because of her emaciated appearance, with a lot of gossips claiming she was starving herself. Like most starlets facing similar accusations, Boyle deflected it by claiming she was actually a Big Eater and just had a superfast metabolism.
  • When Kay sees the photo of himself at the restaurant, he says "That is a hell of a fish...". Tommy Lee Jones delivered the same line as Gerard in The Fugitive as he sees a picture of Sykes.
• Adam Westing: Michael Jackson desperately wants to be an Agent. "I could be Agent M!"
• Air Quotes: Peter Graves in the z-movie.
  Narrator: Here's one of their stories that "never happened", from one of their files that "doesn't exist".
• Amnesia Missed a Spot: Kay neuralyzed his own memories about his run in with Serleena and Lauranna, but watching the "reenactment" causes some of the memories to come to the fore.
  Kay: (softly) ... no. It was night...
• Anal Probing: Sci-Fi nerd Newton, upon finding out what J and K actually do, raises the question, "What's up with anal probing?" J isn't having any of it.
  J: BOY, MOVE.
• Apathetic Citizens: J is thrown through the window of a New York subway train shortly after attempting to sedate Jeffrey with a tranquilizer and immediately starts shouting at everyone to evacuate to the next car. The passengers ignore him until Jeffrey bites a chunk off the car. Once the crisis is resolved and the train limps to a stop in the station, he neuralyzes them and starts subliminally calling them out about this by pointing out that in an actual emergency, they would have been eaten. He is then forced to reneuralyze them once he realized that he was accidentally violating MIB's misinformation campaign to hide signs of aliens on Earth, now with a hilarious story requesting that they enjoy using new space-efficient, energy-saving cars.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • Serleena murders Ben after he refuses to divulge the location of the Light of Zartha. She also steals some of the pizza from his restaurant.
  • Jay tells Jaara he's under arrest for, among other things, "being that ugly" and making too many copies of himself.
• As Himself: Peter Graves as the conspiracy narrator.
• Ascended Extra: Frank the Pug and the worms from the first film, having gone from bit characters to supporting ones. This is likely because of the cartoon having given them more popularity.
• Balloon Belly: Serleena gets one after swallowing the mugger in the park whole, which she manages to get rid of by spitting him back out.
• Balls of Steel: K is trying to fight off an alien with little success until J points out that that particular alien is impervious to groin attacks...because his balls are on his chin instead.
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't pull on Jeff's flower head, or else he will go into an immense rampage across the city and the subway system.
  • Don't mention to K that his wife left him because he spends most of his time stargazing and wondering if there's more going on out there. Also something of a Callback to the first movie where he mentions how he left his girlfriend to become MIB.
• Big Bad: Serleena.
• Big Eater: Serleena. And not just a fully grown human. Numerous scenes have her carrying around fast food of some sort.
• Big Little Man: Serleena's spacecraft, which flies around blowing up planets turns out to be smaller than a dog. And let's not forget how our entire universe is inside an airport locker.
• Big Red Button: Don't press the one in J's car if you don't know what a PS1 controller is, and your mother never gave you a Game Boy...
  K: WHAT IS A GAMEBOY?!
• Big Shadow, Little Creature: Serleena landing in a B-movie sci fi spacecraft, which is revealed to be the size of a styrofoam cup.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: When J sees the intro of the Z-movie about the light of Zartha, he says, that it "Looks like Spielberg's work." Doubles as Self-Deprecation, since he's also the producer of MIB 2.
• Black Comedy: Kay and Jay neuralyze the video store owner and his girlfriend, and one of their suggestions is for him to move out of his mom's attic. The scene ends with the store owner calling out for his mom after picking up a shovel he just happened to have...
• Black-Hole Belly:
  • Serleena swallows a man at least a foot taller than her. Subverted in that she does gain a pretty large gut from doing so.
  • Towards the end of the film, after Serleena is consumed by Jeff, she devours him from the inside out and grows to a large size in mere minutes.
• Booked Full of Mooks: J tracks down the now-retired and neuralyzed K, who works as a small town postmaster. In order to convince him that the Men in Black do exist, J reveals that every other worker in K's post office is an alien in disguise.
• Brick Joke:
  • Early on, Zed has to deal with Michael Jackson pestering him to be an agent. After being taken hostage by Serleena, he tries distracting her by calling up Michael, who still wants to be an agent.
  • At the video store, the co-owner rambles about her theories, including one about how Caribbean resorts charging crab meals for $5 is a conspiracy. Once she and Newton are neuralyzed, Kay instructs them to go on vacation, buy a crab meal and pay more than $5.
• Burp of Finality:
  • It's a little hard to hear amidst all the other sounds going on, but when Serleena swallows the mugger alive she gives a slight, low burp as she finishes.
  • Jeff, after eating Serleena. Turns out to be slightly less 'final' than Jay presumed.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Lampshaded by Serleena:
  Serleena: Silly little planet. I could rule the place with the right set of mammary glands.
• Bystander Syndrome: MIB headquarters is taken over, all the agents are tied up, but the guy reading the newspaper remains completely apathetic.
  Man reading newspaper: it's 'bout time you guys got here. That pretty lady in there's causing all kinds of hell.
• Call-Back:
  • After K regains his memory, the constellation he stares at is Orion.
  • The diner J and T go to has a UFO in it. Word of God says it's the same UFO that belonged to "Edgar" before it got taken by MIB.
• Casually Powerful Giant: When a still amnesiac K is being given a tour of MIB headquarters, he pokes a curious finger into a floating sphere about the size of a golf ball. Inside the sphere, we see the tiny civilization inside panicking as a tsunami is about to come crashing down on them. J then scolds K to not touch anything.

Tiny Alien: "All hope is lost!"

• Canon Immigrant: Among other shout outs to the cartoon, the deneuralyzer.
• Ceiling Cling: When J, K, and the worm guys take the elevator down into the MIB HQ after Serleena takes it over, the elevator is met by a gun-toting robot that pumps dozens of bullets into the elevator as the doors open. It then turns out that the elevator's occupants are all doing a ceiling cling to avoid being hit.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The dodgy z-movie that begins the film, which Kay and Jay later use to find clues about the Light.
  • The watch from the locker that Kay mentions he's been looking everywhere for seems to serve little purpose other than to inform our heroes how much time they have left to solve the case. At the end of the movie it turns out it's also the activation switch for the giant neuralyzer in the Statue of Liberty's torch. Jay immediately declares that he wants one after seeing it in action.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Jeff, who gets an action sequence devoted to him at the beginning of the movie, and comes back at the climax.
• Consuming Passion: Serleena, full stop. Every time she brings up eating someone (and that someone is always a member of the opposite sex) there is always a sexual edge to it. A couple parts that stand out in particular are when she licks K's face and the mugger scene. The way it starts with her in barely there lingerie and high heels. The mugger telling her she tastes good, and the way she turns the tables on the guy and eats him before shooting back with a "yeah, you too" are all played for Fanservice as well as horror and humor.
• Creator Cameo:
  • Barry Sonnenfeld (with his wife and daughter) as the family in the apartment K and J raid for weapons.
  • Rick Baker, the special effects artist for these films, has a cameo as an MIB agent at immigration. He's the one with a ponytail who's helping explain an alien's disguise.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • Serleena devouring the mugger alive is a pretty horrific sight by itself, but then you stop and imagine what exactly is happening to the poor bastard inside of her stomach.
  • Serleena uses one of her tentacles to slice through the skin suit of another Alien and apparently vaporizes him, leaving nothing but the two halves of his Human disguise.
  • Seerlena kills Jeff by eating him from the inside after she gets tricked into getting Swallowed Whole by the latter.
• Cut the Juice: J orders the power to the facility be cut in order to cancel Serleena's flight with Laura and the light of Zartha, but the plan ended up proving to be unnecessary after J managed to stop the launch sequence at the last second.
• Deadly Upgrade: Serleena, after she infected Jeff.
• Death by Gluttony: Jeff swallows Serleena toward the end of the movie, but she devours him from the inside out and bursts from his belly as a gigantic worm shortly after.
• Disney Death
  • Variation. When J attempts to establish a communication channel with Frank, he gives Frank an order, but his transmission was cut inexplicably, leading the worms and Frank (and initially the audience) to think that J and K were shot down and killed by Serleena. However, it later becomes apparent that J and K survived, but the earlier shot only disabled their communications, thus explaining why the transmission ended.
  • Serleena herself gets a pretty notable one too. During the chase at the end she flies into the giant alien worm Jeffrey's mouth and she gets eaten. It seems like this will be the last we see of her. Unfortunately she comes bursting out of Jeff's body and is now as big as he was.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The beginning of the film shows Serleena destroying planets as she passes by. Even more amazing when the viewers find out that the ship is only a foot tall.
• Eaten Alive: Serleena is capable of eating other lifeforms twice her size, and she even swallows a Human whole in the intro. Towards the end of the film she is herself swallowed by a giant worm named Jeff. It only stops her temporarily, as she devours him from the inside and becomes a giant worm herself.
• Eldritch Abomination: Serleena's true form. Well, a very small one, but still... She becomes gigantic at the film's climax.
• Empathic Environment: It begins to rain at the end of the film, as the Light of Zartha begins crying as her ship leaves. It always rains when she cries. Or more accurately, it rains because she's sad.
• Establishing Character Moment: Serleena's introductory scene features her shapeshifting into a gorgeous lingerie model, devouring a man alive, then making a pithy comeback to a comment the man had made about her "tast[ing] good." All this 1. Establishes her shapeshifting powers, 2. The fact that she's a Proud Beauty, 3. How dangerous she is and her big appetite, especially for human males, 4. Her Deadpan Snarker tendencies.
• Evil Is Petty: The opening credits show Sarleena destroying planets she passed by.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Takes place mostly in one night.
• Fake Faint: Scrad and Charlie pretend to collapse after seeing Serleena flash her bra in order to create a distraction while she infests MIB headquarters.
• Fan Disservice: Serleena in just her underwear, right after she's eaten someone alive, leaving her stomach unrealistically bulging out.
• Fanservice: Rosario Dawson's presence, though it's kind of dwarfed by having Lara Flynn Boyle playing as an alien that disguises herself as an underwear model in leather.
• Fisher King: Laura is a mild example. When she is sad it starts raining. At the end when she leaves Earth for good we see her spaceship is full of rain.
• Forgot the Call: K got tired of working, and asked to be neuralyzed. The first half of the second movie is spent trying to get his memory back due to him knowing a Plot Coupon he also forgot.

Tropes G to M

• Gaia's Lament: Jarra was arrested by Jay for trying to steal Earth's ozone. He treats this like a hysterical overreaction.
• Getting Eaten Is Harmless: Serleena. At the climax she accidentally flies her ship into Jeff's mouth and he eats her. In spite of the giant worm having rows of teeth running all the way to the back of his throat and devouring her with lots and lots of chewing, she winds up eating him from the inside out, allowing her to become a giant version of her true form.
  • Averted at the start of the film when Serleena swallows a mugger alive. She regurgitates him shortly after, but it's made clear that he didn't survive.
• Ghostly Glide: The tall, conical alien Jarra moves like this, though more for extraterrestrial reasons.
• Gory Discretion Shot: When a mugger grabs Serleena in Central Park, he drags her behind a bush with pretty obvious intentions. Said bush ends up obscuring what happens next, when Serleena devours the Human alive, although how she does it is assumed to be extremely horrifying. All that we do see are his legs helplessly kicking as he's swallowed whole.
• Great Offscreen War: It was mentioned that the Kylothians and the Zarthans have been at war for over fifty years but it was unknown if the war resulted in victory or defeat for either side.
• The Greatest Story Never Told:
  • J tells K that MIB work is not for people who want to be a hero, as the inherent secrecy of the job means that no recognition will ever come. He makes a point of mentioning James Edwards (his now-erased civilian identity), who saved dozens of lives in the subway that night and will never be thanked for it because nobody remembers that he even exists.

  • The aliens living in a locker in Grand Central Station. Somehow, a race of small aliens built an entire town inside a locker in the terminal, and they view Kay as The Messiah who left his watch and a business card from a video store with them, and they turned its words into religious gospel. Nothing about this is explained, Kay just takes his stuff from them and leaves, and even he has no idea who they are, how they know him, or what they're doing living in a locker in the middle of Grand Central Station. But apparently they've been there for thirty-five years waiting for him to return.

• Groin Attack:
  • "K, he's a Ballchinian!"
  • Also heavily implied to be what Frank the Pug (then known as Agent Eff) attempted to do when he was laughed at by a fellow agent.
• Growling Gut: Serleena's stomach can be heard noisily churning and sloshing with each step she takes as it digests the mugger she's just Swallowed Whole.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: One of the Worms gets sliced in half by Serleena, but he's fortunately able to reattach himself with no problem.
• Happy Ending Override: In between movies, K's wife left him and L went back to her old life.
• Hilarious Outtakes: Particularly an extended outtake in which director Barry Sonnenfeld keeps calling a stand-in by the wrong name, much to the amusement of the actors.
  Barry Sonnenfeld: Derek, can you try to—
  Will Smith: Who the fuck is Derek?!
• How Did You Know? I Didn't: After being put in the deneuralyzer, Kay blasts Jeebs with the Noisy Cricket. He hasn't gotten his memory back yet. Good thing Jeebs' head regrows...
• Hypocritical Humor: Serleena's thugs giggle when Jay insults one of their number for looking like crap. They're much less amused when he says they look like crap as well.
• Idiot Ball: A few people pick it up throughout the movie. Agent T seems to be stupid personified, at least by MIB standards.
  • Serleena seems to play sports with it; she takes a long ass time talking to K, whom she has at her mercy, instead of killing him. Oh, and when she finally has Laura in a spaceship ready to go, what does she do? Set it at a conveniently long countdown instead of just 3,2,1 blast off.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Serleena seems to enjoy eating human males, just ask that poor guy who saw her in her underwear.
• Jump Scare: The abrupt way Jeebs' head explodes after they de-neuralyze Agent K feels like this.

  Jeebs:(in a high pitch voice when his mouth grows back) Real nice.
  (His voice grows deeper as his face turns back to normal)
  Jeebs: Okay, that's the last time I help out a friend!
  

• Just Desserts:
  • During the climax, Serleena gets Eaten Alive by Jeff the Worm.
  • This happens earlier in the movie where Serleena eats a mugger who tried to mug or possibly rape her.
• Karmic Death: The mugger who attacks Serleena gets swallowed alive by the very woman he tried to sexually assault.
• Killer Rabbit:
  • Frank.
    Frank: Got kids?
    Agent: [who was laughing at him] No.
    Frank: Want 'em? [growls]
    [scene switches to J as frank mauls the other agent off-camera]
  • Serleena's true form is pretty tiny (heck, even when she takes on human form, she's only 5'6). Doesn't stop her from being dangerous, though.
• Kill It Through Its Stomach: Poor Jeff...
• Lamprey Mouth: Jeff has a huge one, while Serleena's got hundreds on her individual tendrils.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Kay, having been neuralyzed. And in the past as well, to hide the truth of the Light even further.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Agent J says, “Looks like Spielberg’s work”, it’s a shoutout to Spielberg, who is an executive producer in this franchise.
• Lecherous Licking:
  • A mugger licks Serleena's face before she swallows him.
  • Serleena sticks her tongue in Agent K's ear.
• Lighter and Softer: To the point of parody. The original comic was much, much darker. It is also lighter than the first film.
• Literal Man Eater: Serleena. The "man" part is particularly emphasized because she seems to express interest in eating the male characters the most.
• Living Macguffin: Kay, since he's the only one who knows the details of the Light's location. And Laura, being the Light itself.
• Loud Gulp: Among the many sounds accompanying the scene of Serleena devouring her would-be mugger alive and whole is a heavy swallowing sound, which is presumably her finishing up eating him.
• Losing Your Head: Jeebs.
• Low Clearance: Played for laughs when Jay is trying to subdue the giant worm alien in the subway tunnel. He's riding along on top of it and having to duck light fixtures and various other objects.
• Luke, I Might Be Your Father: It's heavily implied K is Laura/The Light of Zartha's birth-father.
• MacGuffin-Person Reveal: Most of the movie is spent looking for the Light of Zartha, which turns out to be a Human Alien (and J's Love Interest).
• Mandatory Unretirement: Kay gets called back because he has information even he doesn't know he has.
• Memory Wipe Exploitation: After Agent J saves the subway passengers from being eaten by a giant worm and the train stops at the next station, he neuralyzes them and starts chewing them out for ignoring his warnings and only evacuating to the next train car once the worm had started eating the train. He then reneuralyzes them once he realizes that he's carried on for far too long and tells them a story requesting that they enjoy using new space-efficient, energy-saving cars.
• Morton's Fork: Jeebs doesn't want to deneuralyze K because if it doesn't work, they'll blow off his head, and if it does, K is back and will probably blow off his head for the fun of it. He asks why would he risk either option, which is answered with a gun to his head.
• Multi-Armed Multitasking: The mail-sorting alien. He also appears in the music video for "Black Suits Comin' (Nod Ya Head)" by Will Smith, where he is seen transmitting the show all across the galaxy.
• Mugging the Monster: Serleena is attacked by a mugger just one second after she takes on the form of an underwear model. Somehow, he managed not to notice the underwear model was a mass of worms and ivy, presumably because he was offscreen. Or, since the rest of her scantily clad form was finished, and only some of her face and hair were unfinished right before he attacked, he most likely wasn't looking at her head. As a reward for his ignorance, he gets eaten.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The diner J and T go to has a UFO in it. It's a mythology gag to the animated series, where a UFO crashed into a diner, and after neuralizing the owners, J congratulated them on their new decoration.
  • When the man reading the newspaper expresses his gladness about J and K returning to the MIB headquarters after Serleena locked it down, the headlines state that Satan has returned to Earth. In the original comic of the Men in Black, besides tracking aliens, the MIB also tracked down demons and supernatural entities.

Tropes N to S

• Naïve Newcomer: K, when J tries to bring him back. J gets exasperated when he keeps poking everything.
• Nasal Trauma: Serleena tortures Scrad and Charlie for information by threading her tendrils into their noses - in one nostril and out the other, from one head to the next. In an amusing twist, this doesn't just cause them significant pain, but it actually makes them speak in Helium Speech.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: J neuralyzes Newton in his mother's attic, and gives him an instruction to not live with his mother, as he was a middle-aged man. It is heavily implied (by him calling for his mother while brandishing a shovel) that he kills her to follow this instruction from J.
• Non Sequitur Environment: The film ends with K opening a perfectly normal door in MIB headquarters (on Earth) and inviting J and Frank to take a look: on the other side of the door, they're seen to be standing in a locker high above a massive spaceport concourse dominated by giant aliens.
• Noodle Incident:
  • J saved the world from a Crelon invasion. K isn't impressed.
    K: Oh, please, Crelons are the Backstreet Boys of the universe. What'd they do, throw snowballs at you?
  • MIB Customs ends up with an alien corpse in it because of something a rookie agent did.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Jay has gotten a reputation of neuralyzing people on a whim, and Zed won't stop chastising him for it.
• One-Winged Angel: Serleena's final takeover of the subway alien.
• Orphaned Punchline:
  • "Rectum? Damn near killed 'em" by the worms.
  • When J is attempting to establish a channel with Frank during their chase with Serleena, Frank the Pug says to the Worm with a cigar in his mouth "So I said 'Listen, bitch! If you don't want me to kick your skinny, zone-diet ass, I suggest you turn tail and leave the planet!'"
• Pin-Pulling Teeth: While K is doing a Ceiling Cling in the MIB headquarters elevator, he uses his teeth to pull the pin from a grenade and drops it beside the combat robot that is trying to kill him. He swings out of the elevator and, after the door closes, the grenade destroys the robot.
• Product Placement: Burger King and Ebay are prominent.

• Pre-Mortem One-Liner:
  • J to Serleena: "Your flight's been canceled," although she gets better... temporarily.
  • A mugger gives one to Serleena in the form of "Hey pretty lady, you taste good," right before dragging her behind a bush. She throws it back at him after easily overpowering him and ravenously swallowing him alive.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  • When J asks K if his mother ever gave him a GameBoy:
    K: WHAT. IS. A GAME BOY?!
  • J also has his moments:
    J: WE GOT A BUG! IN THE ELECTRICAL SYSTEM!
• Race Lift: Happens in-universe, oddly enough; the Lauranna seen in the "Mysteries in History" segment that opens the film is depicted as a blonde-haired Caucasian woman, but the real Lauranna seen in K's flashback looks like an Asian woman.
• Recursive Reality: The film shows a world inside a locker where K's watch is a symbol of worship, then at the end, K shows J that their world is also simply inside a larger locker. An alternate ending has J going on vacation and ending up on the world inside the locker and the size of its inhabitants, implying some sort of change in size when you go through the locker door, or that the lockers are more of a Portal Network.
• Red Herring: J (and the viewer) are led to believe that the Light of Zartha was Laura's bracelet. Actually, the bracelet was a time bomb activated to blow up with enough explosive power to destroy the planet (presumably as a means to avoid the villain from gaining it on Earth). The real Light of Zartha was actually Laura herself.

• Rubber Orifice: While not directly shown on screen, it's implied this is how Serleena is able to swallow men whole judging from some of the sounds during the mugger scene and her bulging belly after dining on him. Storyboard sketches show that this would have originally been more explicitly shown before they decided to obscure her eating him behind a bush.
• Rule of Perception: The ropey alien disguises are supposedly Invisible to Normals, but MIBs are fully able to spot them. Lampshaded in this movie when freshly deneuralysed K starts seeing them for himself. We see even more in the third movie.
• Same Plot Sequel: J recruiting K was largely a role reversal from the first film of a veteran trying to bring a new recruit up to speed, while also trying to repeat similar gags like the noisy cricket and give larger roles to Frank and the Worms. The main villain is also a shapeshifter with a monstrous One-Winged Angel form, looking for a MacGuffin that is not as obvious as we think it is.
• Sand Worm: Jeff, though he uses tunnels which are already built (the NYC subway).
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Arguably averted. Serleena at one point asks for a spacecraft that can travel 300 times the speed of light. To put it into perspective, this speed would get you to Proxima Centauri, our nearest star (after the Sun, of course), in 5.13 days. Still hardly the instant travel across the universe we always see in sci-fi, but at least the writers made an effort.
• Sequel Non-Entity: Laurel gets mentioned once just to "explain" why she isn't with them.
• Sequel Reset: The first movie ended with K happily retired, all MIB memories erased and given a chance to start things over with the love of his life. J, meanwhile, became K's replacement and got a new partner of his own in Agent L. The sequel drops L (her absence is merely Hand Waved) and brings back the amnesic K. Thing is, once his memories are restored, the same character dynamic from the first movie is repeated, despite J having five years of experience.
• Sexy Coat Flashing: Serleena really wants to become an underwear model (but not before infesting MIB headquarters).
• Shout-Out: In the beatboxing scene, the second of Agent J's beatboxes is from "La Di Da Di" by Slick Rick.
• Speed Demon: One scene has an alien in a post office sorting out the mail very quickly while "Speed Demon" by Keel plays in the background.
• Spit Out a Shoe
• Starfish Language: J communicates with an alien played by Biz Markie with beat-boxing.
• Stylistic Suck: The 'movie' that begins the film is intentionally as crummy as humanly possible, right down to poor editing and overly dramatic narrating, with Serleena being portrayed as an actor in a costume subdued by the MIB using butterfly nets.
• Summon Bigger Fish: While being chased by Serleena, J leads her into the subway tunnels and straight to Jeffrey, who swallows her whole. It only works temporarily.
• Super Multipurpose Room: K hid a stash of alien weaponry in his old apartment.
• Swallowed Whole:
  • Serleena to a would-be rapist.
  • Jeff to Serleena and her ship.

Tropes T to Z

• There Are No Therapists: Apparently Newton is seeing a therapist for his conspiracy theorising. According to his girlfriend, it's not helping.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Jay's reaction to being bent is less "I'm gonna be killed" and more annoyance.
  Jay: Naw, man, don't bend him!
• To Serve Man: Serleena's preferred way of killing people, although she has other methods, like using her tentacles. She can swallow a man-sized victim whole even though she isn't much bigger.
• The Napoleon: Serleena, technically, given her true form is a little worm.
• Toilet Humor: The deneuralyzer room in the MIB HQ is shaped like a toilet bowl. When Serleena attacks MIB HQ, they are literally "flushed out".
• Toilet Teleportation: Parodied when Jay and Kay have to be "flushed" from headquarters. They're not flushed out through an actual toilet... just something that looks like one.
• Too Much Information: K, Frank, and Zed all talk about their own sexual experiences with aliens at the end to cheer J up after his Love Interest was revealed to be one and forced to return home, much to J's disgust.
  J: [pointing at Frank] No advice. [pointing at K] No talking. [pointing at Zed] ...HELL no.
• Transformation Discretion Shot: A triple dose of this occurs in the intro: Serleena initially starts out as a small green plant/worm creature that landed in the middle of Central Park; then, after she encounters a discarded magazine with a Victoria's Secret advert, countless little tendrils start to pour out of her mouth and take on new shapes until they all but envelop the screen - before we cut back to the magazine. Then we cut to a Feet-First Introduction and slow pan up her new form, a woman in high heels and black lingerie based on the model in the advert. Then a rapist makes the mistake of dragging her behind a bush, only to be brutally eaten alive before he can even try anything; seconds later, Seerlena walks back into view with a huge Balloon Belly. Quickly realizing that her new disguise is causing problems, she walks back behind the bush, audibly pukes up the dead rapist, and walks back into view with her belly normal-sized again - only this time she's carrying her victim's clothes.
• Unexplained Recovery: Newton, the secretary for the city morgue from the first movie, appears in the sequel as a video store associate, despite seemingly dying in the previous one.
• Unstoppable Rage: After J's new recruit foolishly tries to pull on Jeffrey (the subway alien's) flower, to put it simply, he's extremely P.O.'ed, and starts lashing out at everything, including J, and then rampaging across the Subway tunnels. He eventually calms down after J attempts to threaten to blast him if he doesn't calm down, and presumably also due to the tranquilizer that he injected earlier finally going into effect after the slight delay.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
  • J can't clear a subway car he just crashed into because everyone dismisses him as just a New York nut. At least they get moving when a giant worm starts eating the car.
  • The mugger/would-be rapist doesn't find anything odd about a beautiful woman hanging around Central Park in the dead of the night, by herself, wearing nothing but her lingerie and high heel shoes.
• Villainesses Want Heroes: Serleena flirts with Zed while she has him at her mercy, and apparently has had a crush on him ever since the last time she was on Earth. Tellingly, she didn't kill him after he called her "a squirmy pile of crap in a different wrapper" and trying to attack her, and only gave him a swift knock out.
• Villainous Crush: Serleena has a thing for Zed, which might explain why she didn't try to kill him during their fight. Unfortunately for her, the feelings aren't mutual.
• Villainous Glutton: Not only does Serleena kill most victims by eating them, she eats any leftover food she finds at the scenes of her kills, including hamburgers and pizza. Clearly, she's Obsessed with Food, as her entire species are implied to be.
• Weaponized Landmark: The Statue of Liberty. Sort of. There's actually a giant neuralyzer in the torch. Also a nod to the animated series episode "The Fmall, Fmall, Fmall World Syndrome", which showed the Empire State Building has a neuralyzer, dubbed "the Big One", built into the lightning rod.
• What Does This Button Do?: In the original, K's car has the little red button. In this one, J's car has two - one that turns it into a jet, the other deploys a dummy to look like the car is being driven by someone. Used to hilarious effect twice:
  K: That come standard?
  J: Well, it came with a black dude, but he kept gettin' pulled over.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Scrad and Charlie kind of just... disappear halfway through the film.
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve: If the Light of Zartha is not removed from the Earth by midnight, it will self destruct and destroy the planet.
• White Void Room: The Deneuralyzing Room.
• Why Am I Ticking?: The Light of Zartha's bracelet.
• The Worm That Walks: Serleena, at least while in human form.
• You Taste Delicious:
  • While the villainess was talking to K, she stuck her tongue in his ear.
  • These were actually the first words Serleena heard after landing on Earth and assuming a human form, when a would-be mugger licks the side of her face. Her reply?
    Serleena: Yeah, you too.
• You Were Trying Too Hard: At the pizzeria, when J realizes the photograph is pointing at something, which seems to be another photo pointing at something, which was ultimately... a cabinet full of sardines. K, however, sees the first photo is pointing at a key hanging from the wall.
  K: I hope I'm not slowing you down, partner...
• Zeerust: Jeebs' de-neuralyzer is distinctly less advanced than what was previously shown.

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