Fridge / The Incredibles

Fridge Brilliance

• Super-Strength? Rubber Woman? Bob and Helen's sex life must be incredible!
  • Why do you think they have three kids? As Syndrome said, they got BIZZAY!
    • Fridge Logic implies that Helen's powers may make her the only woman in the world capable of even surviving sex with Bob, a la Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.
• Why was Violet's super suit trickier to make than those of the rest of the Parrs? Unlike her family, Violet doesn't perform a physical act when using her powers. To further explain, she doesn't do anything with her body. Look at the family: Bob has Super-Strength, Helen has her elastic powers, Dash has Super-Speed and Jack Jack has metamorphosis. Which adds even more brilliance when you realize that that's another subtle reason why she's the "black sheep" of the Parrs.
  • Violet turns invisible. Bullet-proof, stretchy, and fireproof materials are real things, and conditions that are always "on". Invisible material? Not at the time of the movie, so Edna has to have a major scientific breakthrough to MAKE said suit, let alone do it quickly enough to make Violet's along with the other Parr suits. On top of that, having a suit where the cloth not only has two states (invisible and visible) but is able to sense which state the wearer is in and react accordingly?? "Tricky" is a massive understatement.
    • Especially considering that the suit had to do all this without disrupting her force fields, either. Edna is completely justified in being smug while showing this one off.
• As pointed out by CinemaSins, it seems rather improbable that a suburban home would have a fire sprinkler system… until you remember that the Superhero Relocation Program is government-sponsored. The government knows that families with powers are more likely to have a fire (say, for example, Dash starts a fire with friction heat while running, or Violet makes a force field in the wrong place and cuts a gas line, or Jack-Jack hiccups and combusts involuntarily), so of course they'd install a sprinkler system!
• Remember when Helen told Edna that Jack Jack didn't have any superpowers. Her statement heavily implies that most children of superheroes show their powers as an infant. A Fridge Funny moment when you realize that Bob and Helen had to deal with one baby who could turn invisible and another baby that had super speed. Now they have a baby that can turn into steel, burst into flame, or become a monster.
  • This is actually dealt with in the Alternative Opening sequence where we see a invisible baby-Violet crying, though it saves Violet's life in this case since Syndrome got irritated by not seeing a baby which distracted him enough to get everything else work out fine.
• Less like Fridge Brilliance if you've actually watched the DVD extras, but the Parrs are all stereotypical for their positions within the family, and their powers coincide with it: Bob is the family's strength, being the protector; Helen is flexible, as busy mothers need to be; Violet is a self conscious teenager, wanting to be invisible at times and putting up barriers; Dash is a young kid, full of energy; and Jack-Jack is a baby, full of potential, still undefined. It's intentional, as Word of God states; the true brilliance kicks in when you realise how generic the classic superheroes tended to be in personality.
  • Not sure whether Pixar ever covered this, but Frozone fits in that regard, too. During the scene where he interrupts the Parrs' dinner, it's heavily implied that he and Dash are on good terms, and have a sort of Intergenerational Friendship going on. The way he does this strikes me as fairly similar to the way a surrogate "uncle" would bring presents for the kids, or otherwise behave in an endearing fashion. Tie that into his previous (and current) connection with Bob, and he almost sounds like an old college roommate or something. In terms of family archetypes, he's basically the father's cool old friend.
• The scene with Frozone and his wife arguing has somewhat deep implications when you think about it. Depending on what she is, it could either be a Deconstruction of the super-marries-normal trope (Superman × Lois Lane, Spider-Man × MJ-pre-Quesada), or a take on the Super Couple thing that Bob and Helen have. Either way, it shows how much depth Pixar puts into their work, when even little scenes like this are more than meets the eye.
  • In the same vein, Syndrome deconstructs the superhero without actual powers himself and who uses technology to achieve this status, a category made of Badass Normal superheroes like Batman. They are brilliant inventors, they have the budget to create all sorts of machines and weaponry, and use that weaponry themselves against their opponents. The difference is that Batman uses it for the greater good and to serve a cause that goes beyond himself, while Syndrome used his creations to enact revenge on all the super heroes of his world, all because of a personal feud against supers. This leads to horrifying implications when we realize that, in the end, Pixar's most dangerous villain and one of DC's greatest superheroes are not so different, and if Bruce Wayne's life had sucked more, who knows if he hadn't turned into a supervillain instead, like Syndrome, and had started taking down every superhero bases solely on the fact that they have superpowers.
    • And then a movie where Batman does exactly that becomes a thing.
  • Syndrome's final plan even invokes Batman and Robin — Syndrome plans to take Jack Jack hostage, be a "good mentor" and then make him a sidekick, just like how Batman takes kids in bad situations (Dick Grayson just losing his parents and Jason Todd living on the street) and mentors them into becoming Robin. Syndrome's final plan is essentially what would happen if Batman turned evil and found out a superhero had a child. Frank Miller's Batman run even had Batman straight up kidnapping Dick Grayson just like Syndrome does, and the results are not pleasant.
• Though at first the U.S. government's decision to shut down supers seems to be directly caused by the damages supers tend to inflict on the urban landscape and the resulting lawsuits, keep in mind two things: supers work very closely with the police, as shown when Mr. Incredible gives a police officer an order to take Buddy home and it's carried out, meaning that supers are considered a government agency of higher rank than local law enforcement (note: this also explains why the government knows every hero's secret identity). Also keep in mind that the appearance of supers is not a new occurrence, and has been around for presumably at least a decade; so why didn't the government shut down supers far earlier? Simple: Mr. Incredible was sued in 1947 (1962, the date on Bob's paper, 15 years later). Initially, one could not sue a government institution except for cases of negligence or discrimination (referred to as "Sovereign Immunity"), then the Federal Tort Claims Act, which pretty much did away with sovereign immunity, came into effect — in 1946. Good Samaritan Laws, which make it illegal to sue someone for attempting to prevent harm to another, weren't enacted until the 1970s. In other words, suddenly it was possible to sue the government and supers were part of the government, and the wave of lawsuits frightened the federal government right into shutting the entire project down. Way to show your work, Pixar.
• Mr. Incredible and Incrediboy/Syndrome have the same initials: Bob Parr and Buddy Pine.
• Why did Syndrome choose the name 'Syndrome'? According to dictionary.com, syndrome can mean "The pattern of symptoms that characterize or indicate a particular social condition." Keep in mind that Syndrome is Incrediboy and he pretty much had his hero tell him he was useless, and that he has shut himself off from the world to get revenge. Syndrome has ASPD.
• How on earth Helen wasn't injured when she shielded the kids from Syndrome's missiles? Edna made her supersuit virtually indestructible. Her suit acted as a built-in shield. This was purposely foreshadowed in the scene when Edna shows Helen the supersuit in the testing chamber: she fires rockets into it and the suit is fine.
  • It's also possible that, like Mr. Fantastic and Plastic Man, Helen's Required Secondary Powers for her elasticity make herself Nigh-Invulnerable.
• Syndrome's death by propeller. He meets his biggest fan.
• Both Dash and Violet have names that match what their powers are: Dash has super speed, and Violet can create forcefields and become invisible. So when Jack-Jack was given his name, it was an indicator that he was a jack-of-all-trades, because of his myriad of powers that he demonstrates in the short and at the film's end.
• Syndrome's speech about how he'll sell his inventions to the people, and make everyone heroes, and then there won't be any. This is analogous to super heroes being special, and being better, so the phrase could mean equality. This phrase takes on a new meaning when one realizes that Syndrome's a weapons contractor/arms dealer, and this would elevate wars to immense scales and there wouldn't be any real heroes in a world like that, and his foreboding tone indicates that he knows this.
• The scene where Dash drops down from the cliffs into the forest and stops on a vine before saying with disbelief "I'm alive!". At first it seems like Not the Fall That Kills You… is in full effect but then you look at Dash's power. Being a super Speedster, he has a Required Secondary Power of being able to stop quickly without breaking anything!
• Violet's hair is a huge topic of discussion in the WMG section, but it works as a perfect metaphor for her personality. She's the "black sheep" of her family, feels isolated and insecure, which is represented by her black hair, which contrasts sharply with that of the rest of her family. It hides her face, but her eyes peek through, which represents her desire to be noticed despite her insecurity. In the end, she has it forced back with a hairband, showing her newfound control over her emotions and therefore confidence.
  • Also, she's an invisible girl that has the most common hair color, which 70% of humanity has. She is made to blend in.
• Compared to everything else, this is small potatoes, but this is the only Pixar movie NOT to have the Pizza Planet truck in it. Why? It's set before that model of truck was made.
  • This theory has officially lost its merit now that the truck has had a cameo in the very pre-truck era of Brave. Keep working, tropers, we'll find an excuse eventually.
    • It was a carving by a weird forest witch. Who knows how she knew about it? It could be that she has the ability to see the future (she knew Merida would try to come back to find her and left a message) or time travel powers. Literally A Wizard Did It.
    • Something we start seeing in later Pixar films shows the Pizza Planet truck taking different forms for its surroundings, such as a small, three-wheeled version in "Luca", which is set in a small town with narrow roads not meant for four-wheeled vehicles, or "Lightyear," where the truck has a design more fitting for operation on a futuristic space base. Compare this to WALL-E, where the truck is identical to normal despite being many, many, many centuries into the future. Heck, even "Incredibles 2" does this, as when the truck appears, it's a completely different model to the typical truck, resembling a 1950's Ford or Chevrolet than a Toyota. Plus, it's been stated by Brad Bird that the only reason the Pizza Planet truck wasn't in the first "Incredibles" movie was only because they forgot to add it in.
• Look at the 'i' on Bob's costume throughout the movie. In his first costume at the beginning, it's massive, covering his entire chest — symbolic that Bob works alone and that it's all about him. In the second costume — the one that matches with his family's — it's much smaller and surrounded by a circle. It symbolizes that Bob can't just think of and work by himself anymore; he has a family to consider, and he's ultimately stronger with them.
  • Going by the above logic, the 'S' on Syndrome's costume covers the entire front of his torso, even dwarfing the 'I' on Bob's first costume. The size of the 'S' is a clever way symbolize Syndrome's It's All About Me attitude and not having a single bit of care to those around him.
• In a deleted scene, Syndrome mentions that supers "aren't supposed to breed". This might explain why Thunderhead has five adopted children. (Well, that and the fact that he's apparently really good with kids.)
  • His NSA profile indicates that he was raising the kids with his male "roommate", so it may be that the restriction isn't really a concern for him.
• In the opening interviews, Mr. Incredible claims that he would like to settle down and start a family some day, but has trouble adjusting when he actually does so. Elastigirl, on the other hand, doesn't want to stop being a superhero, but copes with the situation in a far more mature manner. What did she tell Mr. Incredible in their first scene together? "You need to be more flexible". It highlights the Personality Powers aspect of the characters that the Rubber Man character is better able to adjust to a new situation, while the Nigh-Invulnerable guy is more set in his ways.
  • There is also an observation of context. Bob said he'd be fine with raising a family before superheroing got banned. He was probably imagining a slow-down of his work, not a complete ceasing of it, with visions of 'take your kid to work' days involving his kids getting cats out of trees while he punches bank robbers, and being able to have days off to take the kids to the dentist while another hero saves people. That was what he was fine with, not being suddenly made to perform office work with no hero work at all.
    • It's also important to consider what Bob's definition of "raising a family" probably was. He didn't assume he would just have a normal family life, he probably expected a family of superheroes. He expected to raise them to follow in his footsteps and fight together as a crime-fighting family. This was probably his expectation when he proposed to Elastigirl, a fellow superhero. He expected they would continue their careers as superheroes and also bring up their children to follow in their footsteps. That was what he wanted and eventually got when the ban was finally overturned.
• At the beginning of the movie, Bob runs into Helen both in their superhero outfits and then later it's revealed that is their wedding day. It's tradition that the groom is not allowed to see the bride before the wedding. It's only after the Parr's wedding that things start getting difficult for them with Bob's endangerment lawsuits.
  • It's usually only bad luck if the groom sees the bride in her wedding dress before the wedding. Helen wasn't wearing her Elastigirl costume in church.
  • Also, those that married were Bob and Helen, NOT Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl. Nobody, not even Syndrome knew that the two were in any way connected other then both being super, their super-personas didn't have any kind of relationship. So in theory, Bob didn't see his bride before the wedding, they didn't meet in civilian mode on that day yet.
• As pointed out in the DVD Commentary, Edna begrudgingly gives Helen some toilet paper to dry her tears when she believes Bob is cheating on her because someone with Edna's self-confidence would be the last person who'd need Kleenex in their house. As Brad Bird put it (in Edna's voice, no less) "There's no crying at Edna's house!"
  • Also, it's unlikely she would need ordinary tissues to mop up a spill or stain, either. Given all the superpowered gadgets in her house, she probably has a cleaning robot or something similar.
• Mirage is Ambiguously Brown and has an accent which is difficult to place... because her ethnicity, like everything else about her, is a mystery.
• Violet's height is around 5'2, and she's very skinny, being 40kg. This would seem odd, but she is carried multiple times in the film, by her mother and at least once by her ten year old brother. The only way this works is if she is petite enough to be carried. Plus, her being petite ties into her Shrinking Violet nature.
• The Parr family's name is a pun on the term "par", meaning "average" (most commonly used as a golf term, meaning "the average number of strokes needed to complete a course"). While this might just seem like a clear-cut case of an Ironic Name, it grows another layer when you remember the title of the movie. It's a movie called The Incredibles, about a family called "The Averages".
• The whole 'No capes!' business and Syndrome's death were foreshadowed early on in the movie, when the whole fiasco with the train happened because Bomb Voyage stuck a bomb on Buddy/Incrediboy's cape. Syndrome later died after another thing- a jet engine this time- caught on his cape and exploded.
• Syndrome's Self-Serving Memory to the incident that caused his rise to super-villainy has two major details changed: Bomb Voyage is completely absent, while Bob's posture and tone is far more condescending. Remember, Bomb Voyage was the one who attaches the bomb to Buddy's cape in the first place - the same bomb that Mr. Incredible has to detach and the same one that blows up the train tracks, creating the chain of events leading to the Super Registration Act. As narcissistic as Syndrome is, at some point he made the connection that the supers going into hiding was largely his fault, and to prevent himself from having to face that fact he blocked Bomb Voyage from his memory entirely. Also in the actual events, Bob was struggling against Bomb Voyage while trying to keep Buddy safe. His transformation into the man known as Syndrome is encapsulated by how he only remembers the "insult" done to him by Bob, not the danger he was in or what arose from his impulsive attempt to be a hero.
• Fridge Heartwarming: it is often questioned why no supervillains took over the world once the heroes went into hiding. Simple: the vast majority of powered individuals were good guys. In fact, there is not a single powered villain shown in the entire film, they always rely on weaponry. The guy with the rocket, Bomb Voyage, Syndrome, the Baron with the death ray Frozone talks about... and while the Underminer may look a bit odd, it seems that most of the heavy lifting will be done by the huge diggy thing he sits on. Generally there is lots of talk about villains, we actually see supers helping with lots of mundane stuff, robberies, fires, express elevators, cats... So yeah, supers are generally decent people, that's why there are no supervillains.
  • Fridge Logic: While there are no known naturally-powered supervillains, there's no explanation given for why super-class villains simultaneously disappeared for fifteen years and failed to exploit the superhero suppression.
    • Supervillain tech is expensive. Without any superheroes to stop them or any revenge schemes to enact, most villains would find conventional crime (though with slightly better tech) more profitable than full-blown supervillainy. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Aaron Davis complains to the Vulture's underlings that he doesn't need a time-travel gun to hold up a bodega; a similar thing likely happened on a massive scale when the superheroes were outlawed. This also explains why crime rates are at an all-time high, as if villains are selling their specialised tech on black markets (such as bespoke explosives created to order by Bomb Voyage) then normal criminals would be harder than ever for the police to deal with.
    • On the topic of supervillain technology being expensive, as soon as he knew Syndrome was a supervillain, Mr. Dicker immediately froze his assets. Probably this is another duty of the NSA: not only hiding Super activity, but also stopping any kind of Super villainy, whether performed by proper Supers or by normal human scientists (like Syndrome or Von Ruthless). This can be confirmed by the close surveillance on Gamma Jack, since his racist views, jerk attitude and powers could make him dangerous in the future.
    • The simplest answer is that supervillians were rare because Jails weren't made of cardboard, and Supers primarily acted as volunteer first responders. If the kind of world-ending catastrophes that struck Marvel or DC occurred as often in the Incredibles, it may have also been much harder to force the Supers into hiding.
  • Adds further Fridge Heartwarming, when the authorities decided to cover for the supers, they meant in every regard. Despite no supers around to help, the world is still inhabitable and pleasant for the large part if you exclude the high crime rates, showing there are genuinely heroic non-powered humans around that benefit the world and not all of them are villains or greedy immoral dicks.
  • The idea that there are practically no superpowered villains around also lends credence as to why the public is so willing to get the Super Registration Act passed in the first place despite knowing that criminals will exploit this. Without them around to balance things out, the supers are more trouble than they are worth. No civilian with half a brain cell would lock away their heroes if there really are superpowered villains running amok on a daily basis.
  • An alternative, alternative idea is that the supervillains had more of a comic book way of approaching things (ironically opposite to what Elastigirl notes about bad guys), in that they view themselves as the opponents of the super heroes, and act accordingly. But what happens if there are no super heroes left to oppose? A la Megamind, they might just decide that there isn't any enjoyment in continuing ''being'' super villains without their counterpart to fight back.
• The futuristic aesthetics of the movie were intentionally a bit Zeerusty. Out of universe, it was to make the movie seem timeless. But in-universe, there are definitely several super-geniuses like Syndrome operating, and the movie (probably) starts in the sixties. The society of the Incredibles thus had the resources to make the future seen in the 1960s happen.
• An irony with Syndrome? Despite all his hatred of Supers he more or less is one when you consider he does have a genuine superpower: he's a super genius. With everything he's created, he's clearly immensely intelligent to a superhuman degree. It's just even Buddy didn't recognize it as a power because no one else did.
• Doubling as a Call-Back: When Mr. Incredible meets Syndrome for the first time, the villain goes on a rant about how all he wanted to do was help his childhood idol and how Mr. Incredible kept saying all those inspiring things but wouldn't let Buddy do anything - and Mr. Incredible chucks a boulder at Syndrome, who barely blocks it, remarking how he was caught monologuing. At the end of the film, Syndrome goes off on his "I'll be back" rant, only to have Mr. Incredible throw the car at him - he catches Syndrome monologuing again. This time, Syndrome pays for it.
• When Incrediboy shows up in Mr. Incredible's car, Mr. Incredible struggles to remember his real name before Incrediboy irritably says, "My name is Incrediboy." Years later, when confronted with Syndrome, Mr. Incredible remembers his name immediately. Meaning that Mr. Incredible not only remembered his shameful treatment of Buddy, but that he recalled it often enough for Buddy's features to remain sharp. His actions had haunted him for the past fifteen years.
  • Considering that night led to the first lawsuits against supers, the rise of anti-super sentiment and the government pushing the supers to go into hiding, it's no wonder that Mr. Incredible remember all of this; what happened that night had major consequences, and not only for Mr. Incredible and Buddy. Of course his action haunted him. It's not like he could predict what would happen following that disastrous night.
  • When Incrediboy shows up at the bank, Mr. Incredible is fighting Bomb Voyage, a Mad Bomber with no qualms against murdering children. Mr. Incredible telling Buddy that he works alone could be seen as Mr. Incredible trying to protect Buddy from the kinds of villains that usually only someone like Mr. Incredible can survive fighting. Mr. Incredible getting angry at Buddy for interfering was Anger Born of Worry.
    • All the same, Mr. Incredible in the present feels he might've been too harsh not following up his one-liner ("Fly home, Buddy, I work alone") with a more sound explanation on why he didn't want a sidekick. He immediately apologizes for his behavior when called out on it years later, though he doesn’t get the chance to explain himself.
• Ironically, Mr. Huph's speech about how a company's like a clock with perfectly meshed cogs fits with the movie's theme on teamwork and family. This may imply why Bob still doesn't like working with others (aside from Frozone) in the present. This just drives home the point that concepts like "teamwork" are just stuff that guys like Mr. Huph make up in order to make everybody all the same.
• Both kids are like their parents, but with the negative traits enhanced, with Dash ending up like his father and Violet ending up like her mother. To start, let's focus on the conflicts that both parents face. Mr. Incredible is left bored and miserable in his current life as a meager salary man, desperately wanting to be a superhero again and help others but being stopped either by his jerkass boss or his own family life. On the other hand, Elastigirl is always working hard to avoid the old life as a superhero, to the point of holding back her family. Then, there are the kids. Dash acts out in school and his homelife life because he is held back from showing off how fast he is by joining the track team. Violet, on the other hand, is meek, shy, pessimistic, and utterly miserable as a super powered girl, wishing that she was completely normal and had no powers, to the point of having a breakdown at the dinner table when her mother talks about what is "normal". Going even further with this, the movie ends with Mr. Incredible realizing he can still be super but needs to think of his family first and be careful while Elastigirl realizes she doesn't have to be cautious 24/7 and allows her family more room to be themselves. In turn, Dash is able to join the track team and becomes happy with taking 2nd place, while Violet opens up and accepts herself for who she is, becoming much happier as a result.
  • A small heartwarming fridge: each kid is complimented by their opposite parent for their best quality. During their mission, Elastigirl tells her son how proud she is of what a trooper he is. And later, Mr. Incredible tells his daughter she looks good with her hair out of her face, encouraging her to come out of her shell.
• Whether intentional or not, Syndrome's method of luring retired supers out to his island to fight his Omnidroid, then upgrading it whenever it got destroyed so that the upgraded Omnidroid would kill the super that bested its precursor, was killing two birds with one stone. Along with perfecting his robot for when he would unleash it onto the city and defeat it as part of his Engineered Heroics plot, he was also killing off heroes who might have a Spanner in the Works by beating him to the punch in stopping the robot before he arrived on the scene, or showed up during the confrontation to provide assistance he didn't want. The only ones spared from this are the ones that successfully flew under the radar, the Parrs and Frozone.
• When Bob manages to get access to Syndrome's computer mainframe and finds out he's been working on multiple prototypes of the Omnidroid against various supers, he also looks up "Elastigirl" AKA Helen, and finds that her whereabouts are unknown. Considering how frequently they had to move (remember, Helen considered it an "official" move-in only when she had finally unpacked the last box), it's no wonder Syndrome couldn't locate her. It's likely the only reason he knew where Mr. Incredible was, but not Elastigirl, was because Bob kept getting into his heroic hijinx while Helen kept a low profile, focusing on her family.
  • Syndrome never actually knew where Mr. Incredible lived after the supers were shut down. When Mirage contacted Bob, it was only because she realized who he was while she was following Frozone. She saw them escape the burning building together and connected the dots on his powers. She also knew Syndrome had been wanting Mr. Incredible as a primary target. Despite Bob always messing up with revealing events that could expose him as the former Mr. Incredible and having to move repeatedly, Syndrome never found him. Though the Parrs constantly having their identities scrubbed might have helped since there would never be any history to connect them or the time for anyone to start noticing.
• Syndrome's descent into villainy most likely went beyond simply being rejected by his idol. The lawsuit against Mr. Incredible for the train wreck was largely a result of Buddy's overzealousness and recklessness in trying to prove himself as Incrediboy, and realistically Mr. I would have been obligated to disclose this fact while recounting the events that led to the disaster. Once this was made public, Buddy's classmates, whatever friends he had at the time, and especially his fellow superhero fans presumably were furious at him and deemed him a pariah for starting the cascade of mishaps that led to Supers being banned from hero work. Buddy's pride made him unable to take responsibility for his actions, instead constantly believing that none of the trouble would've happened if Mr. I had accepted his offer to let him be his sidekick. While this was technically true, Buddy really didn't do himself or Mr. Incredible any favors by being exceedingly pushy, refusing to take his idol's concerns seriously, and throwing caution to the wind by trying to prove himself while Mr. Incredible was facing down Bomb Voyage. In other words, Buddy's refusal to take no for an answer ended up costing him his dream and his social life due to his peers blaming him for getting superheroes banned, and their ostracizing of him drove him to seek revenge on Supers.
• The story seems to take place around the late 1960s/early 70s or so, but there's quite a bit of Anachronism Stew in terms of the technology level and culture. Why? Because, in a universe where there are people with Tony Stark-like intelligence (ex. Syndrome), of course people would have access to better technology by the sixties.
• The third Omnidroid would have reverted back to tracks if Plasmabolt took out the second version. We don't see which Super defeated the second version of the Omnidroid, nor do we see if Plasmabolt was a victim of Operation Kronos. Her powers are electromagnetic, which could easily shut down a robot, immobilizing the machine when it relies on legs for movement. But if the robot supports itself on tracks, then it can still move even after it's deactivated if it's on a slope. There likely would've been a room on the base that served that function; the robot would grab hold of Plasmabolt, and she would deactivate it with her powers, but it would keep a grip on her as it rolled into the room and rammed her through the wall at the bottom of the slope, killing her.
  • It's also possible that it used the terrain to its own advantage by throwing stuff towards her, then simply rushed towards her as she was in a tight pinch, crushing her under its own weight. Even if Plasmabolt stopped its functions, she has nothing to help stop the Omnidroid's inevitable impact.
• Helen is shown to have highly sensitive vision, given that she noticed a piece of rubble on Bob's shoulder from across a room, a hair on one of his suits, and saw a monopod coming from a long distance away. The eye focuses on objects by adjusting the curvature of the crystalline lens, and it's not much of a stretch (no pun intended) to assume that Helen's superpower also applies to the parts of her eye, giving her much better vision than the average person.
  • Mr. Fantastic has used this on multiple occasions; stretching the elements of his eyes, collecting more light, altering his focal length.
• Both of the times the Omnidroid is destroyed on screen it's caused by it being punctured by its own claws. But since Syndrome updated it between V9 and V10, it seems strange that he didn't fix that flaw... except it's a Logical Weakness of Nigh-Invulnerable materials; the all-piercing spear and the impenetrable shield. The only options he had at that point was to either use a softer material for its claws, or to increase its sense of self-preservation so that it wouldn't stab itself, and to a weapons designer like him, the former would represent an unacceptable loss of offensive capability when considering its claws were by far its most effective weapon against Mr. Incredible. That would explain perfectly why the V10 rebelled against him.
• Why did Syndrome make the Name of his master plan KRONOS? Because he wanted to be the father of gods, to create a new generation of tech-powered superheroes.
  • Oh, no, it's even better. Kronos learned that he was destined to be overthrown by his own sons, just like he did to his father. So he ate all his kids as soon as they were born. When it came to baby no. 6, Cronos' wife/sister Rhea secretly gave birth to Zeus in a cave and gave her husband a rock wrapped in swaddling clothes, and Cronos ate it whole. When he grew up, Zeus overthrew his father. Syndrome doesn't see himself as Kronos, he sees himself as Zeus, slaying the Titans and saving his "father" - who held him back and rejected him - for last.
  • Another interpretation comes from Edna's statement about how she used to work for gods (superheroes). What did Kronos initially do to the gods? He ate them.
  • On the other hand, Syndrome made the same mistake what Kronos did. He tries to harm his "child" who then lashed back with the powers he granted him.
• This troper recently watched the film again and, during the scene where it's shown that the bird is a camera, made a reference to Saruman's birds. Except that's not the only similarity between Syndrome and Saruman: both have an army of mooks - Saruman's Orcs and Syndrome's henchmen; both have the main characters captured at some point (first Gandalf then Merry and Pippin, the Parrs); both want to use a powerful villain for their own gain (the difference being that Syndrome created his) and consider themselves better than the wizards/heroes of old; both overlook the fact that they can't control the villain they're trying to use (doesn't backfire on Saruman as hard as it does on Syndrome, though); both are betrayed by their second-in-command (Wormtongue for Saruman, Mirage for Syndrome). And how does Saruman's story end? After Sauron is defeated, the Hobbits find that Saruman has attacked their home, but Saruman ultimately dies due to his own mistakes (abusing Wormtongue too much). And what happens to Syndrome? He attacks the Parrs' home after they beat the Omnidroid only to die due to his own mistake (monologuing near a plane turbine while wearing a cape to a guy who can throw cars).
• The principal let Dash go because if Bernie's claims were correct, then his video tape reveals that Dash has Super-Speed. Mr. Dicker mentions paying to keep witnesses quiet and erasing memories among the absurd lengths the government's been going to censor Bob and his family from public knowledge. That might include paying the faculties of the schools super kids like Dash and Violet attend to ignore their superpowered antics, lest they inadvertently out them as supers and open them up to the same public backlash that forced their parents into retirement.
  • Of course, this would also mean that poor Bernie might have been scheduled for a visit from Mr. Dicker and his memory-wiping machine.
• Every time Helen punches someone out, look closer at her technique. She's hitting them straight and using her elasticity to piston her fist into the victim's face. A couple of scenes show her doing the same thing with her kicks.
• Crediting Cinema Wins for this one: Edna Mode mentions how she "used to design for gods", and has Greek carvings on the walls of her house. Syndrome's password is "Kronos", the father of most of the Greek gods, highlighting how he considers himself to be above supers. If you know your Classical Mythology, you'll recall that Kronos was ultimately overthrown by his children, much like Syndrome is eventually defeated by a family of actual supers, making the dialogue and password subtle Foreshadowing.
• Why did it take Syndrome 15 years to find Mr. Incredible? The family was moving around a lot due to Bob's superhero antics, which also required them to change their identities every time they moved to a new place.
  • Not to mention that Mirage was shadowing Frozone, not Mr. Incredible. She has a discussion with an accomplice regarding changing the target.
• Mr. Incredible is the last super to fight the Omnidroid before it's launched into the city. The fact that Syndrome seemed to save Mr. Incredible for last to fight the droid at its most powerful implies that, even after denouncing and growing to hate him, he clearly still holds a great respect for his powers. And consider that when they meet again for the first time, he says "After all, I am your biggest fan," not "I WAS your biggest fan."
• Mirage’s story for the Omnidroid was that it got smart enough to wonder why it had to take orders. This story ends up becoming true in the climax, when it ultimately turns on Syndrome and destroys the remote he's using to control it.
• Buddy has clearly already been rejected several times by Mr. Incredible by the start of the movie, but it doesn't deter him from trying again and again and again. So what was so final about the one time we saw Mr. Incredible telling him 'I work alone'? Well, what was Mr. Incredible also doing that day? Getting married. Syndrome, at some point, found out that Bob Parr was Mr. Incredible, as he sent Mirage to track him down... maybe it wasn't so much Mr Incredible telling him 'I work alone', but the sheer hypocrisy of him saying this on the day he got married, or in other words, joining up with a PARTNER. Granted Syndrome doesn't know he married Elastigirl, but listen to how he says the line "You married Elastigirl", it sounds more like he was surprised at who he married, not at the marriage itself.
  • It's more likely that what made that attempt at being Mr. I's sidekick the last was that heroes were outlawed immediately after, as a direct consequence of that night, in fact.
• Bob gets in trouble at work for helping people navigate Insuricare's obstructive bureaucracy to get money. He thinks he's doing a good thing and being a hero. What he's actually doing is distributing information fraudsters can use to push fraudulent insurance claims through the system and steal money from the company. Just like how Bob trying to be Mr. Incredible again ended up helping Syndrome's plans come to fruition.
  • Not really. Bob is giving very specific instructions for a particular case, it's unlikely that a loophole can be exploited just as efficiently in a different set of circumstances, and it's also unlikely that the insurance company would let that loophole go unpatched (which would probably create some more loopholes that Bob would be able to exploit in a similar manner).
• Universal Man was the first super to be killed by the Omnidroid. The NSA bonus features reveal that he hated having a secret identity and probably did not take the Registration Act well. That would explain why he was the first one to answer the call to get back in the game.
• Why did Edna plant a homing beacon on Mr Incredible and not tell him?
  • It is very likely that he wasn't the first super to take up Syndrome's offer and subsequently came to her for "a patch job" aka damage from the earlier Omnidroids over the years. Edna herself most likely saw through it but couldn't get them to spill the beans. When they eventually disappeared shortly afterwards, she became rightfully paranoid and wanted to figure out what is causing all this.
  • The fact that Mr Incredible managed to get his old suit damaged in the first place. The same suit that went through all her military-grade testing unscratched. As far she could tell, someone or something out there is strong enough to injure and kill the most powerful individuals around and she would like to know what exactly is it.
• Listen carefully to what Bob says to his client at work. He's telling them to go to the company's legal department and fill out a WS-2475 form, after which somebody would "get back to you quickly to resolve the matter." By which, he means his clients should sue Insuricare to force the company's lawyers to give the client their money in the form of a settlement.
• Plasmabolt is notable for being one of the few Supers from the golden age outside of the core cast who doesn't fall victim to an Omnidroid or a Cape Snag. Syndrome (presumably) being unable to track her down and lure her to his island makes sense given that 1) her secret identity is as a forest ranger, far from civilization, 2) she's described as being pretty adamant about keeping her Secret Identity separate from her life as a hero, and 3) she wears a mask that makes it hard to pick out any identifying features on her face.
  • On a related note, the Super with X-ray vision from the prologue also isn't shown in the Operation KRONOS database. Assuming that X-Ray vision was his only superpower, then it's possible that Syndrome did track him down but decided his powers weren't useful for testing the Omnidroid's combat capabilities.
  • Another possibility for the X-Ray Super is that given he's mentioned in a newspaper accusing him of realizing its Power Perversion Potential, to see people naked. He could have very well been in jail, and thus out of Syndrome's reach.
• Why would Edna, a top class fashion designer, with the latest technologies, leave minor but still noticeable stitching on Bob's old Supersuit when she patched it? Maybe to give a hint to Helen that something is going on with Bob.
  • Another likely story: she clearly disliked it at that point in time and didn't want to fix it while making new suits instead. She gave it a rush job to focus on the new and advanced suits.
• The Omnidroid v8's tactics versus Mr. Incredible make even more sense when you realize this was the version made when Frozone was still Syndrome's next target. It chases Mr. Incredible into a volcano and coats its claws with lava, tactics which would have melted Frozone like an ice cube.
• Mr. Incredible wasted no time in throwing his car at Syndrome's plane and killing him. He saw first hand how remorseless he truly is when he almost killed Helen and his kids, and came dangerously close at kidnapping Jack Jack and made promise to try again, so in his mind, he was not taking anymore chances and knew he had to deal with him immediately by personally killing him.
• It's obvious that Syndrome has killed well over a dozen Supers before Mr. Incredible in the process of improving his Omnidroids, and it's seen that sometimes the prototype Omnidroids would take out multiple Supers before being defeated. Considering that Supers have been in forced retirement for fifteen years by the time of the main story, it's likely many of them were defeated so easily because of how out of practice they were when Syndrome contacted them.
• It's hinted at in the movie and confirmed by DVD extras that Mr. Incredible has the ability to sense imminent danger. This paints his dissatisfaction with a mundane life, and his secret heroics with Lucius, in a new light. He can't possibly be happy when every day he can tell that people are in trouble and he's bound by the law not to intervene, and going out to secretly fight crime is the only way to relieve that sensation.
• Mr. Incredible instantly realizes that the device that Syndrome drops into the water he's hiding in is a bomb. How? Because it bears a close resemblance (small, round, blinking light) to the ones used by Bomb Voyage, one of his old foes. In fact, Bomb Voyage could very well have been Syndrome's inspiration when creating it.
• If you think about it, Mr. Huph exists as Foreshadowing to the identity of the film's Big Bad. At the beginning of the movie, Bob's nemesis was a short man with lots of money, power, and a petty grudge against the world. All of which describes Syndrome to a T.
  • Even the plot points about his relationship with Mr. Huph could be seen as a mirror of Bob's own predicament with Syndrome later on:
    • Bob tries to repeatedly do something heroic under the nose of a disapproving authority (Bob sneaking behind Mr. Huph's back to get his clients what they deserve/the numerous times he's gone out moonlighting against Helen's wishes vs Mr. Incredible sneaking out under Helen's nose to Nomanisan to fight the Omnidroid.)
    • Bob succeeds in doing so, but ends up overtime running the risk of getting into trouble (Bob being chewed out by Mr. Huph for the payments/Helen catching him moonlighting hero work vs Helen thinking he's having an affair while working under Mirage, and later finding out the truth about him being fired.)
    • Bob eventually overstretches himself and gets into serious trouble that ends up causing him a lot of problems and has to get bailed out by another group (Bob harms Mr. Huph and gets fired as a result, with Rick Dicker having to bail him out vs Bob finds out who his real employer is and nearly gets killed, with Helen and the kids dragged into his mess due to the above).
• A bit of an obvious one, but the upgrades Syndrome gave to the v10 Omnidroid are directly tied to how the v8 performed against Mr. Incredible. Mr. Incredible was able to punch and throw around the v8? The v10 is made to be much bigger and heavier. Mr. Incredible throws the v8 by the claws into lava? The v10 can fire off its claws on command. Mr. Incredible rips off the bottom "head" of the v8 to access its vulnerable interior? Only one "head" at the top of the v10 where it can't be easily reached.
  • But there is one upgrade that didn't relate to that combat at all: When v8's core is ripped out, it simply stopped working. When v10's core is ripped out, it EXPLODED. Because v10 is the version that is "publicized". Syndrome obiviously didn't want anyone to copy his design (after all, he intended to sell that product later), so v10 is designed to be self-disposed, therefore keeping secret about its construct.
• In the scene where Mr. Huph is asking Bob to sit down, we see a scene before where Mr. Huph is sharpening a pencil. The inscription on it says "Your life is in our hands." And it's becoming shorter. A perfect explanation of Insuricare in a nutshell.
  • Another great detail is how Mr. Huph is aiming these pencils at Bob. We see that it is Bob that is actually trying to help people, while Mr. Huph wants to protect the bureaucracy that allows the company to make money off people without actually helping them. It's only when you realize that these are the shareholders that Bob is being targeted by. Either that or it's a symbolic gesture of how Bob is in a no win scenario. If he accepts his new life, he's basically becoming a slave to the system or a "cooperative cog" as Mr. Huph phrases it. And if he protests, trying to stand up for people... well, we know how that turned out.
• Throughout the film, Helen is the most adamant about the importance of the Secret Identity, telling her kids that "your identity is your most valuable possession. Protect it." Yet during the final battle against the Omnidroid, she repeatedly yells out the real first names of everyone involved ("Lucius, try to buy us some time!"). This makes total sense: Helen's spent fifteen years trying to bury her life as a superhero, and probably trained herself to never use code names when referring to her old colleagues as part of that effort. Contrast that to Bob, who easily slips back into calling Lucius Frozone and never uses his kids' names during the fight—he's constantly longed for the superheroic life and still remembers how to interact with allies even in deadly situations.
• Given how quick the government was in freezing Syndrome's assets after the Omnidroid fight (suggesting that this isn't first time it had to deal with supervillainy), it can make you wonder why they didn't do it sooner, especially given his weapons-making shenanigans on the side. Simply put, they didn't expect Syndrome and Buddy Pine, arms dealer, to be one and the same. Unfortunately for him, though, said secrecy doesn't extend to keeping his money trail hidden, which made it much easier for the NSA to make the connection.
• The Parr family's powers are reflections of both their personalities and their roles in a typical suburban family:
  • Bob has super strength, which reflects his straightforward machoism and his big heart, plus the fact that he does all the "heavy lifting" in supporting his family (especially financially).
  • Helen has super elasticity, which reflects her quick thinking and adaptability, but also her tendency to over-extend herself for the family as a housewife.
  • Violet has invisibility and force fields, which reflects her insecure desire to appear invisible and her anti-social tendency to push others away, but also her intelligence and her capacity to protect others like her little brother.
  • Dash has super speed, which reflects his competitive side as well as his mischievous habits as the troublemaking child that gets away with everything.
  • Jack-Jack's bizarre shapeshifting reflects the unpredictability of an infant's behavior. Or rather, there's no telling what the baby of the family would grow up to become yet.
• When Syndrome tries to kidnap Jack-Jack and is then attacked by him, he makes no attempt to retaliate against the baby. Yes, Syndrome tries pulling demon Jack-Jack off of him when he's being strangled, but he's not trying to hurt him. While it's possible that this is so he would have him alive to make his prodigy, Jack-Jack was asleep when the Parrs got home. I think there's a possibility that Syndrome actually cares about Jack-Jack to a degree (though I could be wrong).
• In the video "The Incredibles As Told By Emoji," Bob defeating the Omnidroid v.8 is represented by a round of Temple Run. Fighting the Omnidroid is supposed to have no "win condition"; either it kills you, or you defeat it but Syndrome upgrades it to make it stronger and smarter until it kills you. Just like Temple Run, which is an Endless Game that only ends when you run into a hazard.
• From a certain POV, the Omnidroid is actually ThreeLawsCompliant. It didn't kill anyone on-screen (when it's not under the control of Syndrome, it only tried to neutralize any threat coming at it. Once the threat is no more, it didn't try to continue to kill the enemy). It obeyed orders (but only from the remote). It protected its own existence, as long as such protection did not conflict with the order.

Fridge Horror

• Remember that person who was mugged outside Bob's workplace? The mugger was beating him pretty hard, it was dark and Bob couldn't save him. We never found out if the victim was still alive.
  • It was broad daylight; Bob was being lectured by his boss when he saw the mugging. The scene was also followed by a time-skip; viewers might reasonably guess Bob explained the situation when his boss was taken to the hospital.
    • Later in the hospital while Bob is discussing his newest predicament with his handler, a man is being wheeled in on a gurney behind him. Looks pretty beaten up....
• If one pays attention to Mirage's dialogue when she's spying on Bob and Lucius, she mentions that "the fat one is still with him", implying that Frozone was the initial target for the next KRONOS project. What would have happened if the plan went through?
  • Lucius probably would have died. Isn't it a bit odd that Mr. Incredible was lured to a volcanic island, which doesn’t really give the Omnidroid an advantage over him? For an Evil Genius like Syndrome, that seems like a pretty glaring oversight... until you remember that the original target was Frozone. And if he can't create ice in a burning building, he's definitely not going to be able to create it in a volcanic environment. He would have been totally helpless and likely been killed in short order. Even worse, Bob would never find out the truth about what happened to his best friend until he was discovered too, by which point it would probably be too late.
  • Mirage was pretty obviously stalking Lucius in her first appearance, and when Bob's going through Syndrome's computer later in the movie, he finds that Frozone's identity and location is known. If it hadn't been for Bob revealing himself as Mr. Incredible and causing Syndrome to instantly switch targets, then Lucius would have been his next victim. Basically, if Bob had relented and agreed to actually go bowling that night, Lucius would have vanished soon after. Bob would never know what happened to his best friend... until he was inevitably found and lured to the island himself.
  • Bob and Lucius were close enough that he probably would have gone to Bob to talk to him about it. "Freaky lady approaches me after work last night, and she's got an offer..." And as soon as Bob heard the offer, he would have immediately ignored any suspicions and told Lucius to leap at the chance, and may have even given him permission to tell her that Mr. Incredible was available and interested. And one day Bob gets a phone call telling him that Frozone went missing on their island and he rushes to the rescue... it would have turned out even worse.
• Stratogale was only in high school when she got sucked into a jet turbine. Imagine that funeral, with an empty casket because there wasn't enough of her left to bury (although to be fair, they may have cremated whatever was left of her remains.)
  • It's not clear what happened to the passengers on the plane either. An alarm go can be heard going off in the plane just as the scene cuts, cuts. At best, an emergency landing, at worst...^note Planes can still glide and it appeared very high in altitude, meaning that on top of make a kid tragically killed in a freak accident, you also have maybe a hundred people or more dead in a plane crash.
  • Imagine that story on the major news networks and the viciousness people would be hurling at Stratogale for inadvertently causing the accident (assuming Stratogale caused such an accident.)
    • Unlikely, airliners are designed to be capable of a controlled reasonably safe emergency landing even if one of the all their engines has failed, and that's just a two engine jetliner, Stratogale was sucked into a quadjet a la the Boeing 707. The reason international and Hawaii fights used quad-engine planes up until the mid-1980s was so even if one engine failed the fail, as long as there's somewhere to land. This plane could keep flying three thousand miles to reach land.
    • Agreed - when ETOPS (Extended Operations) were introduced for twin-engine aircraft, civil aviation authorities' gallows humour acronym "Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim" was commonplace.
    • The film appears to begin in the 60's, at about the height of the Supers' golden age, so Stratogale probably died at around that time. Is it possible ETOPS hadn't been invented yet?
    • Quite likely. looks like a Boeing 707? Had four engines.
    • ETOPS as a concept (allowing properly equipped twin engine aircraft to travel further then 60 minutes travel from an airport) has been around since the mid 1930s though it wasn't until the mid 1980s and the arrival of the Boeing 767 and Airbus A300 that twin engine aircraft with ETOPS ratings of more then 90 minutes start to become more common.
    • You can also take solace in basic mathematics. The average subsonic jetliner has a lift/drag ratio of about 20 - for every 20 feet of horizontal travel it will lose one foot of altitude, so jets have much more ability to glide than most people credit them with. Several multi-engine jetliners have made successful emergency landings on zero engines (such as the Gimli Glider), and there's no such thing as the "dreaded three-engine approach" - with three engines turning, you're still in great shape. In all likelihood, the plane itself was fine. Feel bad instead for two people: the kid saw Stratogale go into the mincer...and whomever was on the ground below.
• Edna Mode was probably the person who designed those caped suits. Meaning her designs led to the death of innocent superheroes. She probably had to deal with a lot of guilt. "I never look back, darling."
  • Considering the fact that she permanently discontinued capes and seems to see them as a Berserk Button...one can only imagine the "My God, What Have I Done?" reaction she must have had.
  • Going by Brad Bird's statement, "There's no crying at Edna's house!". One wonders if that's not because she's done her share of it already...
  • Someone on Tumblr said Syndrome probably contacted Edna for a suit design. And he was an obvious villain. And she gave him a cape.
    • Although Syndrome, with all his genius and delusions of grandeur, might have designed that costume himself. After all, why should Edna Mode design the costume of a supervillain?
• Thunderhead was a single father of five adopted children, helped by his roommate, Scott. What happened to those five kids after he died? Were they put back up for adoption? Did Scott somehow manage to keep them?
  • Or what about Scott himself? Imagine him looking at the news, hearing that his lover/roommate died in a terrific accident. And then having to explain this to the children...
  • During his attempt to make a stay-in-school PSA (included on the special edition DVD), Thunderhead mentions that he can't read and that he hopes the kids have "better teachers than I had." Thunderhead isn't stupid; he's severely mentally disabled and his teachers just gave up on him rather than trying to help him.
• Mr. Incredible saves Oliver Sansweet from falling off a building but later sues Mr. Incredible because he was committing suicide and didn't want to be rescued. One could only imagine what Oliver Sansweet had been through to drive him to commit suicide so badly that he didn't want to be rescued.
  • The odd truth about suicide is that a lot of people that do go through with it, but are saved, later regret their decisions and are glad that they were saved. It's entirely possible that the same thing happened with Sansweet, who then took the second chance he was given and used it to make himself rich.
  • It's also entirely possible that it wasn't even Sansweet's own idea; an ambulance chaser of a lawyer probably saw how injured Sansweet was and just started whispering in his ear.
  • At least in the US, a lot of suicide attempt survivors end up with serious medical debt. He possibly wanted Bob’s money for his hospital bills.
  • And with the release of the second movie, the incident with Sansweet not only caused Buddy Pine's fall to villainy as the evil Syndrome, it also indirectly caused the fall of Evelyn Deavor as well (as the incident caused Supers to be illegal which caused the Deavors' parents' deaths), creating the Screenslaver. Mr. Incredible is responsible with creating not one but two supervillains.
• The audio files in the NSA files detail certain quirks about the supers, plus a few that were unrecoverable, and it shows that the heroes were quite normal people, with a lot of common quirks and neuroses, which leads into Fridge Horror because the government was keeping track of them, most likely these weren't super heroes to the government or even people, but rather super soldiers!
  • The supers seemed more or less unrestricted in their activities, as long as they kept their identities secret. Frozone, Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl, in the intro, are all just doing their own thing, and Bob even bows out of a police issue that he more or less directly caused. It seems that, while the government keeps tabs on supers, fixes the damage their battles cause, and generally endorses them, they don't control them in any way.
• We know that the government's NSA was keeping tabs on superhero secret identities. In that case, you'd think they would have noticed when supers started suspiciously dying or disappearing around the same time, thanks to Syndrome's little genocide project. But no one at the NSA ever noticed or thought to start an investigation? This could be read as the government being complicit with letting supers die out, as it would let them spend less money on keeping old shame hidden.
• It almost goes without saying that Syndrome is a straight example of creating your own villain, but this seems to be a semi-rare case where it takes multiple aspects of the hero's character to pull off. If Mr. Incredible wasn't famous, Buddy never would've become his fan, if he hadn't made it clear that he worked on his own, Buddy wouldn't have the grudge he had, and finally, if he'd been any less heroic and allowed Buddy to leave with the bomb attached to his cape, he wouldn't have survived the encounter and gone on to be a villain. Interestingly enough, these qualities exist in every adult super shown in the movie (and most that weren't, but are only known by the files in the DVD extras), which would imply that Syndrome's rise was an eventuality, not an accident; and given how long he went unnoticed, one has to wonder if there aren't more like him.
• Gamma Jack's mentality. It speaks for itself, and it could not have helped the anti-super hysteria if that ever came out. Also, how common is the belief among supers?
  • The scary thing is that Jack kind of has a point. Unlike racism in our world, there really is a genetic difference between supers and “normal” people. Theoretically, Supers could actually do whatever they want, and there isn’t much normal humans could do about it. Even the Ban on Supers and the Super Relocation Act only really worked because the Supers themselves consented to it. Jack’s beliefs are pretty close to those of Magneto from the X-Men universe, and this would have made him extremely dangerous if he ever turned evil, especially if there were other like-minded supers out there (and honestly, I doubt it’s just him. Even Mr. Incredible in the glory days displayed some light shades of this)
  • Also, the fact that Gamma Jack nonchalantly talked about "killing supervillains". Let's remember, the most common superhero trope is Thou Shalt Not Kill, and Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl seem to adhere to it (Mr. Incredible arrested both a burglar and the super villain Bomb Voyage, in spite of how dangerous the latter was). Gamma Jack instead kills, even if the supervillain happens to be a sexy lady, something that he really appreciates. What if he indeed turned bad as the government feared?
    • It seems that while in the the Incredibles universe most heroes don't have much problem with killing villains, none of them ever say they don't and at the end of the movie Bob straight up kills Syndrome by throwing a car at his plane. Dash even killed a few guards himself, at least inadvertently. Elastigirl put it best when she explained it to her kids, they need to use their powers to defend themselves by any means necessary, the villains will kill them without a second thought.
• A small Easter egg found on the Bonus discs and in the movie. Notice the order in which all of the supers Mr. Incredible finds out about die. First is Universal Man, and this would make sense as he's the only super who doesn't have a "Secret Identity." Then comes Psycwave. How and why did these two supers die first? They were probably in a relationship. Afterwards comes Everseer, Macroburst, and Phylange. All of them part of the same team with each other along with Psycwave (As confirmed via Bonus disc). It can only be assumed that these three supers all went into some sort of Roaring Rampage of Revenge after learning their former partners had been killed, only to be killed themselves. Which goes to show how deranged and insane Buddy has become.
• When Mirage frees him, Mr. Incredible nearly kills her in a rage at the, assumed, deaths of his entire family. While terrifying in and of itself, do remember Mr. Incredible is explicitly one of, if not the most powerful Supers on the planet. Now imagine if he really did snap like that and knowledge his family still lived wasn't made known to him. The possible ending outcome of that, aren't pretty to think about.
• Likewise, considering that Bob only used a fraction of his strength against Mr. Huph and got him in traction, the latter was very lucky that the former didn't use all of it.
  • Not only that, Mr. Huph is very lucky Bob decided to throw him through the wall and not out the window. That drop is a least a few stories. Even with only a fraction of his strength, it’s doubtful Mr. Huph would have survived the impact.
• When Syndrome's telling Mr Incredible about what made him become a villain, we see a brief flashback from Syndrome's point of view of Mr. Incredible telling the boy that "[he] works alone". However, this flashback doesn't in the least resemble the actual scene shown at the start of the movie, the biggest difference being that the villain (Bomb Voyage) whom Mr. Incredible was primarily focusing his attention on when he made the statement is completely absent from the flashback and all of Mr Incredible's attention is focused on him instead. This all implies that this was the exact moment Buddy made up his mind that he was destined to become Mr. Incredible's official nemesis. All that from one single offhand comment made by a frustrated preoccupied man... While supporting the theory that Syndrome has some sort of narcissistic personality disorder, this also disturbingly reflects the mindset of many deranged "fans" who see themselves as being rejected by their idol and later attempt to "punish" their idols for it...
• At first glance, the security setup for Edna's home seems excessive, even if she is a celebrity fashion designer. Then you realize that her work creating suits for superheroes means there are probably multiple supervillains gunning for her, either to get revenge on her for helping their enemies or to force her to give them similarly advanced suits. Suddenly Edna seems Properly Paranoid.
  • Not to mention that her database contains the vital statistics, exact power quirks, and, most importantly, secret identities of every super she designs for, plus who knows how much else in the way of useful information.
    • Furthermore, her designs and patented technologies would certainly be coveted.
• Was cancelling the comic an abrupt interruption of the series, or was that Xerek's plan all along? Remember that Xerek's power was that he always won, no matter what, and that his plan was to end himself along with the world. So the comics Downer Ending and cancellation could both be seen as their world ending in two ways (with the comic cancellation being one way to ensure that he never comes back (see: Metaphysical Annihilation).
• In a way, it was a good thing Kari was gullible enough to buy Syndrome’s lie about being a replacement sitter. We know the guy has zero problem hurting kids as seen with his henchmens’ clearly lethal methods when dealing with the Parr children. So if Kari did see through his lie and refused to give care of Jack Jack over to him, it’s not hard to imagine him resorting to more harmful, possibly lethal measures to get him, keep in mind, Kari's around the same age as Violet, whom lacks superpowers.
  • Kari survived everything Jack Jack threw at her. My guess is that she would be able to at least stall Syndrome as well (maybe even weaponizing Jack Jack, something that wouldn't happen until the sequel).
• When one considers that one of a Superhero's primary responsibilities is saving lives, the true cost of banning supers may be staggering. The mugging that is seen is just a small sample, with the rest left to the imagination.
  • If you look closely at the newspaper Bob is reading when he finds out about Gazerbeam, it even has a headline that says "Crime rates at an all-time high". So yes, it is confirmed to have been detrimental to the city's safety.
• Helen's talk with her children in the cave about how the villains will show no restraint against them just because they're children and will kill them if they get the chance seems just like a mother looking out for her children. But then realize how young Helen must've been when she became a superhero. She's only around 40 tops after 15 years of retirement and had a long-standing career by the time she had to retire in her mid-late 20s. It is more than likely Helen was around the same age as her children when she became a superhero. There's even a book on her origins that states Rick Dicker recruited her as a teen (likely implied to be around Violet's age). She saw how the criminals did not hesitate to try and kill her even though she was a kid. She isn't just speaking from instinct, she's speaking from her own experiences.
• Dash survived the fall off the cliff by landing on a Velocipod. He was extremely lucky that he didn't land on its propeller blades.
• It was surprising to see how many strong, powerful superheroes were killed by the Omnidroids. But then, it made more sense. Not just because it was a learning robot but because of the distance between the superheroes after the ban. Since they all split up and most did not have any contact with each other anymore, it was easy to lure them in alone. Mr. Incredible was an independent superhero but plenty of others belonged to superhero groups. But it does not seem like most of them stayed in touch. Bob was only able to beat the final Omnidroid because he had help from his family and Frozone. If superheroes had come in groups, more than likely they wouldn't have been killed.
  • It probably also didn’t help the dead Supers that many of them were, unlike Mr. Incredible and Frozone, largely inactive during their retirement. Despite his weight gain and weak back, Bob’s instincts and skills were as sharp as ever due to his regular “workouts” helping people in trouble. Very few of the dead Supers had that kind of advantage, or enough sheer power to compensate. Thus, most of them did not survive their first encounter with an Omnidroid and almost none of them walked away from the second.
• Buddy didn't just want to be Mr. Incredible's sidekick... he wanted to be his ward. That is, to be adopted by Mr. Incredible, as Dick Grayson and other Robins were adopted by Bruce Wayne. What does that say about his family life... that he'd rather live as someone else's ward than with his own family? (Apparently his mother, at least, is still around.)
  • It's possible that Buddy didn't have a bad home life, and just thought that living with and being adopted by his favorite superhero would be cooler than his ordinary life, without considering what that would actually mean for him. He was a child at the time, and children usually don't think things all the way through.

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