Several characters in Fury Road have obvious disabilities but seem to have been granted or found a niche even in their post-apocalyptic societies. For example, the blind Doof warrior plays music, a wheelchair-bound bandit is a lookout. This is part of an established trend in the Mad Max series. The Mechanic in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is wheelchair-bound but serves an important role in his community. Master Blaster is a pairing of two people with disabilities who work together to become an integral part of their community.
During most of the story, Max goes to great lengths to avoid any personal connection, even refusing to give his name, apparently because of losses that he's experienced in the past. Near the end, he finally tells Furiosa his name after he's connected his IV to her; because he's opening up his heart to her, both literally and figuratively. In addition, it's the first time he's said his own name out loud — he's reminding himself, that yes, he's not an animal. He's Max.
The title of the film is Mad Max: Fury Road. Max narrates in the moment that he's not sure if he's crazy or if it's the rest of the world (Max believes he's mad). Furiosa helps him recover his humanity if not sanity - the Fury Road.
Immortan Joe's past as an Australian Army colonel isn't just evident in the medals he incorporates in his armor. Not only did his military background help him see the strategic value behind using the Citadel as his base of operations, but it also gave him a working knowledge of logistics, which would be instrumental in creating the system of trade between Citadel, Bullet Farm and Gas Town, each dependent on the commodity the others provide. It forces all three factions to work together to maintain their own power and security against outside threats, as opposed to warring amongst themselves.
The Vuvalini reveal that the Green Place has turned toxic, and the trees have died for no immediately obvious reason. Ecologically speaking, the Citadel, the Bullet Farm and Gastown are only a day's drive away from the Vuvalini's location over well-aired sand. According to the comics, Gastown was originally a refinery, not an oil well; the only way they could be drawing oil is by fracking - detonating explosives underground, flooding the cracks with water, then drawing the mixture and separating the oil. The Bullet Farm is a lead mine, which also uses water as part of refining the lead, as well as playing with sulfur and saltpetre. And of course, the Citadel draws water from an aquifer regularly for drinking and agriculture as well as supplying the industries of the other two towns, further depleting the ground water in the area. Any one of those is bad enough, but in light of all three it should be no surprise that the land became poisoned, as referenced by the Vuvalini who say that everywhere they plant seeds, they do not take because the land has turned sour.
Nux wants to "die historic," but we know that Immortan Joe's death cult is just a ploy to recruit loyal soldiers who will throw themselves into anonymous deaths for his empire. But in the end, Nux gives his life to block the mountain pass against Immortan Joe's horde. Not only is it a real cause, but it's a death that will actually be remembered.
Joe's sons, the Dumb Muscle Rictus Erectus, and the intelligent dwarf Corpus Callosum, recall the pairing of Master Blaster from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. While Master Blaster work together and ultimately prove to be an Anti-Villain, Rictus and Corpus do not work together and remain villains throughout their film. Both Dumb Muscle characters die, and both intelligent characters survive to the end of the film, but Corpus's fate seems quite dim, while Master escapes with the heroes.
The last plan:
During the night before Furiosa, the wives, and The Vuvalini ride off into the salt plains and Max stays behind, briefly, you can see Max drawing the map which leads back to the Citadel. In the morning, Furiosa takes off and Glory the Child's ghost gets Max to follow after her and tell her his plan to charge through Joe's forces and eventually liberate the Citadel. Since Max already had the map before the others left, he was going to take the War Rig, charge through Joe's forces and liberate the Citadel alone.
Alternatively, you could read that scene as Max making facing the choice between returning to how he existed at the start of the film, "running from both the living and the dead" as he always does, or doing something better and not just leaving the others to their fate. The temptation to just run and live for himself is so strong, it's actually personified in the first (and only) hallucination that isn't frightening to him.
The War Boys cover their entire upper bodies in some sort of thick white pigment, and smear their eyes and (sometimes) foreheads with black grease or paint. This makes sense considering their job is mostly to run around on the outside of vehicles for hours on end in the desert sun—the white pigment would protect their skin from the sun and dust without the chafing or waste of resources that would occur if they all wore shirts, deflect heat from the environment without trapping their own body heat close to them, and likely keep them relatively clean by letting them scrape off dirty paint instead of bathing. The black around the eyes deflects glare, much like football player's eyeblack. In short, the body paint isn't just a cool and creepy uniform for Joe's army—it's another way that the ultra-utilitarian Citadel gets jobs done efficiently while wasting as few resources as possible. Doubly brilliant when you consider that this is similar to the use of otjize paste by the Himba people of Namibia—where Fury Road was filmed.
Slit is healthier, more daring, older and stronger than Nux, so it doesn't make much sense that he would be ranked below Nux. Until you get to a close-up of his face and notice Slit's deformed right eye. It's likely that Slit isn't a driver because he has bad vision that prevents him from even being useful as a driver (you need functioning depth perception and peripheral vision to drive safely), and it's not until they're running fairly low on War Boys that he gets behind the wheel. And immediately dies.
Nux's war paint, combined with the scarring on his lips, is intended to make him look like a skeleton. Taken together with the engine-block scarification on his chest it reveals his ultimate fate: he's going to die behind the wheel. Note that this imagery might be completely intentional on Nux's part, considering that that's exactly how he wants to die.
The long, spindly, thickly clustered spikes on the Buzzard pursuit vehicles aren't just for show. The primary anti-vehicular weapons that Immortan's Warboys use are those grenade-spears. Long spikes have a chance of causing them to detonate prematurely away from the hull of the vehicle and damage the spikes rather than directly against the surface. And of course they also do a good job of stopping anyone from jumping onto their cars.
When Morsow looks to be gearing up for his Heroic Sacrifice, Nux seems particularly invested in his ability to pull it off. It makes sense when you realise that he probably sees himself in Morsow. If Morsow, in his injured state, can go in a Blaze of Glory, that is a good sign for Nux who could barely stand upright earlier that day.
Armor: The plastic armor that Immorten Joe wears is transparent and has muscles sculpted into it. Joe's ailing body is flabby and riddled with tumors, but the armor makes it look like he has a healthy, muscular physique from a distance, which hides his dying state from his followers.
Nux's Failed Attempt at Drama, where he falls off the rig after Joe gave him a personal mission and a revolver, makes the swelling music come to a sudden stop. But we later hear the same track, or something similar to it, in full when Nux makes his true Heroic Sacrifice. It also plays earlier in the sandstorm, while Nux is witnessing a lighter car and the War Boys on it go out in a spectacular fireball, which inspires his first attempt at a suicide attack.
Given how Immortan Joe has bastardized Norse Paganism, Nux's scarred lips evokes Loki. And sure enough, he betrays Immortan Joe.
What do the War Boys shout when one of their own martyrs himself? "Witness!" What is the original meaning of the word "martyr" in Greek? That's right, "witness".
When Furiosa shouts "Fool!" to signal Max to start the War Rig moving, the rig growls to life and begins to roll barely before she even finishes the word. Max had been crammed in the crawlspace beneath the cab with one of the wives when Furiosa got out to detach the fuel pod. This means that in the time she yelled the word (which could not have spanned longer than 3 seconds), Max had to shimmy his way out of the crawlspace, get seated in the driver's seat, perform the six-step start sequence (which he had committed to memory after only one demonstration), fire up the engine, and get the rig into gear and rolling. Talk about otherworldly skills.
Or. . . Furiosa said she was supposed to be alone, so Max and Anghara were hiding. Anghara made some choked squeals of pregnancy pain. One might go overlooked, the second was louder and much less likely to be. Max knew the deal was already blown and about to go sideways, so he took it upon himself to be ready to move the instant Furiosa gave him the word.
At first the creepy Dark Crystal-esque things on stilts seem like pure atmosphere, adding to the bizarre madness of the world. Then you start Googling the Stilt Walkers of Landes, where in the 19th Century the land became a bog every time it rained and people, especially shepherds, had to use stilts to get around. It's not hard to see the Fury Road guys as crow-shepherds: they're not just for flavour, they've adopted a supremely practical method of transport for their swamp environment.
Though there's no shortage of speculation about where Fury Road might be set, right down to east coast vs west coast of Australia, consider the geography we're given: a lone mountain, a line of mountains to the east, then more flat plains before you come to the salt plains where the oceans used to be. That matches up fairly well with the east coast of Australia, with the Great Dividing Range only a day or so inland from the Pacific beach. Which could make the Citadel the remains of Mt Panorama at Bathurst - you know, where Australians worship V8s.
The People Eater was right all along in thinking they should have just let Furiosa and the Wives go. Turns out they'd have either been forced to travel through an endless salt expanse or return to the Citadel. Either way, Joe would have won, though possibly at the cost of a healthy son.
Coma the Doof Warrior's bungee harness isn't just for Rule of Cool, it's the only way to stop a blind guy with his hands full standing on top of a speeding vehicle from falling off it every time it stops.
The cords also secure his guitar and help compensate for the weight. The actual prop weighed 132 lbs., the equivalent to carrying a small man. Playing it for any extended length of time without the cords would have KILLED the actor's arms.
Seeds. Splended Angharad calls bullets anti-seeds: plant one to watch something die. Later, The Keeper of the Seeds says that she has head-shot everyone she met out in the wasteland, but only after the ground soured and plant seeds would no longer grow. She stopped planting seeds and started planting anti-seeds. She kept her seeds, in part, inside salvaged animal skulls. Later in the movie, she "plants" a bullet by hand into someone's skull to kill them. Further, the seeds she kept are taken up by The Dag, who is pregnant, thus carrying a different kind of seed that IS growing....
Along with Joe's medals on his breastplate, there is a stick of DIMM computer memory on the right side, where a nametag would usually be on a uniform. This is perhaps a memento of his past life as an Australia Army Colonel, maybe a memory stick taken from a computer involved in the nuclear launches that destroyed the world, perhaps even containing the launch codes.
Of course it would be nonfunctional and corrupted after all this time, but the prospect of what is actually on it is intriguing. After all, all the other decorations on the breastplate are actual medals, not just throwaway junk. There must be a significance here.
Mounting the blood bags on the front of the pursuit vehicles doesn't just turn them into terrifying living hood ornaments. Being tied to the front of a scrapheap car in explosive high-speed chases would send your heart rate and adrenaline skyrocketing - making 'high-octane crazy blood', as Nux puts it, that goes straight into the driver behind the wheel.
Furiosa wears what amounts to a back-support brace. In real life, back issues are a real problem for long-haul truck drivers.
The death cult Immortan Joe has built up is full of awful, horrible brilliance:
The War Boys all appear to have assorted medical conditions which will dramatically shorten their lifespans, and this appears to be very common among the general populace (since, you know, post-apocalypse). Promising eternal rewards for a glorious death will keep them from giving into despair over their terminal conditions, keep them productive and interested in serving the cause, and you don't need to bribe them with actual resources or privileges to keep them loyal.
You don't just need to die, you need to die awesomely to reach Valhalla. Encouraging a competitive spirit as to who can kill themselves in the most over-the-top fashion. And these deaths must also be useful, defending the Citadel or killing its enemies, essentially invoking Suicidal Overconfidence in all Joe's soldiers.
You must have a witness to your death. This encourages you to be a witness, so that when your turn comes others will witness you. Enticing the War Boys to watch all the insane violence and death that will be undertaken, thus desensitizing them to death and killing. It also encourages holding rank and formation... go off on your own, you may die gloriously, you may accomplish much with your death, but you'll have no witness, and holding rank and formation is the most basic building block of any effective army, something an ex-Army Colonel would damn sure understand.
"Ride shiny and chrome." Whether it's just regular silver spray paint or something else, whatever they spray on their mouths before the intent to make a Dying Moment of Awesome almost certainly behaves like any number of substances that impair brain function but give off a "high." Essentially, telling the War Boys to huff paint before their "heroic sacrifice," making them far more likely to actually do it without self-preservation holding them back, and even perhaps be successful, if things like fatigue or pain are ignored or forgotten for a few critical seconds.
And this all plays into a truth about this style of post-apocalypse: humans are easy to replace, resources aren't. Every War Boy who gleefully offs himself to McFeast in Valhalla is one less soldier to provide food, clothing, housing, and (very limited) medical care to. And with all the above enticing them to spend their lives for something, you've not only cut down a drain on resources, but gained whatever that War Boy's death bought you.
Furiosa's obvious Improbable Aiming Skills aside, there's likely another reason she's able to hit the Bullet Farmer's spotlight while Max fails twice: The rifle, as her personal weapon, has been customised and zeroed with her in mind. There's an extra large foregrip to accommodate her prosthetic and she would have used it seemingly quite frequently. Max, on the other hand, is shown to be more familiar with close range weapons, and wouldn't be familiar with Furiosa's specific rifle regardless.
The gas pedal in Furiosa's rig is a Brannock Device, typically used to measure feet for shoes. When she wants to put it on cruise control, she just extends it fully and jams it into place.
When Max attempts to escape in the opening scene, he bursts through a pair of doors that lead to a Bottomless Pit. Looking closely, these doors have a medical Star of Life indicating they were scrounged from an ambulance. The place Max just left was probably a medical facility used to assess the health of newly captured slaves.
Immortan Joe's wives are all of above-average height, with the exception of Toast (5'2). The Dag is 5'11, Cheedo is 5'10, Splendid is 5'9, and Capable is 5'7. This actually makes pragmatic sense when paired with the idea that he specifically chose them as breeding stock. He cultivated a culture that exalted physical strength, and taller people (all else being equal) are stronger and more physically adept than shorter ones. He probably wanted his heir to be physically imposing. On that some note, they're all healthy and at least reasonably intelligent in a setting where physical and mental disabilities are common.
When the Dag is told that her baby might be a girl, and won't have to be raised as a warlord she doesn't reply anything. Immortan Joe clearly sees women as nothing other than livestock to be milked and to be reproduced with. Furiosa is the only woman shown for him to have any respect for. He also clearly has had many children, but only two are shown (both male). Who knows what happens to the girls? Are they just discarded? Are they raised for milking? Are they raised to be his wives? After all, the population of young women must be receding, and after a while they simply wouldn't find any girl to kidnap...
According to interviews about the movie, Furiosa managed to become an Imperator because she is infertile, and therefore of no use as a "breeder". And according to meta text from the artbook of the movie, Immortan Joe gives his "wives" three chances to produce healthy offspring. If they fail, they are cast out. This gives an ugly context to Furiosa's up-close and personal "Remember me?". Furthermore, in the beginning of the movie, when Immortan Joe notices that Furiosa is turning rogue with her war-rig, he immediately guesses that she's fleeing with the wives. If Furiosa is indeed a former wife, this sudden guess makes a lot of sense.
The dialogue makes it clear that the characters don't just think Furiosa is sterile, they know she is. Such certainty in a world without advanced diagnostic equipment makes it sound like she never started menstruating. Possibly she'd been earmarked as a potential bride as a young girl due to her apparent good health, but when Nature failed to take its course Joe lost all interest in claiming her.
It's unclear exactly how old Rictus is, but he's clearly an adult. It's also possible that he's Joe's son from a previous Wife, which implies that Joe's been keeping Wives for a very long time. It is at least implied that the tattooed older woman who used to take care of the Wives was originally a Wife, herself, and possibly mother to some of Joe's children. It would explain why he didn't kill her for letting the current Wives escape.
Given how old and decrepit she is, and the fact that Joe hasn't gotten rid of her long ago in spite of his obsession with a healthy heir, it's even possible she's not a former Wife (i.e. post-apocalyptic breeder-slave), but his actual wife... as in, the woman he'd been married to before the world got nuked.
The women who are being milked are implied to be former breeders, providing another layer of horror to Joe's use of them. Some of them are also cradling baby dolls, rocking or stroking their faces as if they're real. Possibly Fridge Brilliance, as lactation can be prolonged through such means.
As pointed out on the Nightmare Fuel page, a lot of the implied horror in Furiosa's backstory comes from all of the atrocities that she would have to have committed in order to have risen up the ranks to become an Imperator. At one point, when referring to the Green Place, she even says that she's "been that way many times" during her time living at the Citadel; those times couldn't have been escape attempts, or Joe probably wouldn't trust her enough to let her drive the War Rig to neighboring towns. Also, consider that she seems to have a personal fixation with freeing the Breeders, even though (by all appearances) they seem to live in much more luxurious conditions than the rest of the people under Joe's thumb. The implication? She may have played a role in kidnapping them as children, and may see this as her chance to atone.
According to Furiosa, she's been in the Citadel and away from her birth tribe for 7,000 days, plus the days she doesn't remember. 7,000 days is a bit less than twenty years, so considering Furiosa was a young child when she was kidnapped, this means she'd be less than thirty years old and yet she acts at least a decade older—meaning she had to claw her way up the ranks when she was a teenager.
Characters mention a plan to drive for 160 days across "the salt." There's nowhere on Earth you could drive 160 days in one direction without reaching the ocean, unless the oceans themselves dried up (or partly dried up) leaving nothing but salt. This was indeed shown to to be the case at the end of Beyond Thunderdome (a result of the nuclear war). That's right, the shithole setting the movie takes place is is likely the garden spot of the planet.
Furiosa said that they could drive for as long as 160 days on the motorcycles. She didn't specifically state that it'd take that long to get across the salt: presumably, they'd still want to remain mobile once they'd reached the other side. Indeed, as it's implied that nobody's ever crossed to the other side before, there's no way that she could know how many days' travel it is.
It's been pointed out that Nux's lip scars look a bit like sutures—given that Joe apparently prefers his Wives to resemble his War Boys, chalk and all there might be a whole host of Unfortunate Implications to his mouth having been stitched closed...
It's stated in the film that at least one of the Wives (The Dag) is pregnant with Joe's child. Assuming that she decides to go along with the pregnancy, and without the influence of Joe and his followers, the child will likely grow up to be innocent. The Fridge Horror aspect comes from the fact that said child is eventually going to get old enough to start asking questions about his/her father. Which means mommy is eventually going to have to explain to them that daddy was a monstrous tyrant who kept her and the other Wives (who the child may have come to regard as aunts) imprisoned as Sex Slaves, that they are a Child by Rape, and that Auntie Furiosa eventually killed him by ripping his face off. Even if the kid takes it well, that's still going to be an awkward conversation.note Although she could just lie to the kid; it's not like anyone would think the worse of her for it under the circumstances.
Maybe she'll tell the kid that Max or Nux is the father, as both will likely be remembered as heroes for their part in deposing Joe.
The Citadel draws water from an underground aquifer. The Citadel is in close proximity to Gas Town (an oil refinery and probably the site of a petroleum deposit) and the Bullet Farm (an industrial center where bullets are manufactured). With an oil field and an industrial zone sitting so close to an aquifer, and no EPA regulations to keep them in line, how long will it be before the aquifer is contaminated?
And even if the inhabitants dodge the pollution bullet, it's an aquifer. Sooner or later, it's going to run out.
Some aquifers, especially shallow ones, do refill from groundwater and rainwater. That said, it's still dependent on the local water ecology. Since this is in a desert after a nuclear apocalypse, it's not likely to be one that can refill.
When Immortan Joe is screaming while holding Angharad's body, you can briefly see into his mouth from the mask. his teeth are blood red. And not dried blood either, bright crimson. Despite everything he did, he must have one hell of a monstrous disease if it turns his teeth red.
The fact that the Citadel has resorted to milking human women implies that there are no other mammals left alive in the region, either domesticated or catchable from the wild. Indeed, the only animals seen on-screen are a mutant lizard, a few crows, and an insect.
While a bit more on the side of Fridge Sadness, the War Boys from the beginning of the movie are shown to trust Furiosa without a hint of question and follow her orders to the letter, even when her taking them off the pre-planned course gets them killed or thrown off one by one. Even with her vicious fighting her way to the top, all the War Boys are shown to be incredibly familiar with one another and value camaraderie above almost all else. Who knows what the last thing on their minds was as they came to realize (if they did before they kicked the bucket) that Furiosa was driving them to their deaths with no regard for any of them no matter how they viewed her?
Had the Organic Mechanic successfully delivered Angharad's child in the post mortem C-section, chances are good it wouldn't have made it: not in a world without electricity and incubators.
Or even basic sterilization.
Just to heap a little more horror onto this one, it's worth noting that after delivery - particularly an early c-section - the baby can [i]appear[/i] to be dead but isn't. No breathing or activity until the proper procedures are carried out to induce responses. It's possible that the baby [i]had[/i] survived but the Organic Mechanic was too stupid or incompetent to recognize that and save it.
—where Fury Road was filmed.
Unfortunate Implications to his mouth having been stitched closed...