Headscratchers / Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

• How does Captain Logan’s threat to Ted about getting sent to Oates Military Academy in Bogus Journey hold any weight? The movie takes place 5 years after Excellent Adventure, our most excellent heroes are out of high school and living on their own. Ted’s easily considered an adult in the legal sense by this point.
  • Ted's dad isn't threatening to send him to military school in the sequel. The only time that comes up is when Colonel Oates is at the party and sort of smirkingly suggests that the boys (and girls) could be straightened out by a stint there still. They all (nervously) laugh it off as might be expected. Ted's never under any *threat* of going there, he still just has a bit of a pathological fear of the place because of his father using it as a bludgeon to threaten him with when he was a kid, which is why it winds up as part of his personal Hell.

• Why does De Nomolos pass out revised history books before the timeline has changed? How does he know how history will unfold? Or is he just guessing, or doing it out of ego?
  • Definitely ego, he had it planned so well in his mind that no one could stop him. Of course Bill and Ted foil his plans.
  • He doesn't care what will actually have happened. That's the history he plans to teach when he's in charge, whether it's true or not.
  • He's about to change the timeline to how he wants it to be - as also outlined in those books.

• At the beginning, De Nomolos - who is half a millennium in the future - speaks like he is speaking from B&T's time. e.g. something like "They are about to reach the second major turning point in their career". But the battle of the bands was hundreds of years ago!
  • It's really just for dramatic effect: he's speaking from the perspective of the time frame he's focused on, like a documentary narrator saying something like "and now that Berlin's fallen, the Allies begin to focus their efforts on Japan". Living in a world where time travel is commonplace, people in the future are probably used to talking about the past as though it's another place existing in the present.
  • Couldn't have said it better myself.

• The comic book adaptations depict the Grim Reaper as the traditional skeleton in a robe, suggesting that the Reaper in Bogus Journey is basically a low-rent version of that. That said, how to the boys manage to give Death a melvin when Death has no crotch?
  • Well, the skeletal version of Death can talk without having a throat, so I'm guessing his groin works the same way?
  • Hey, hey, he's a not "low rent" version of a skeleton. He's an extended Shout-Out to the Grim Reaper's appearance in The Seventh Seal. The odd thing isn't that he looks human in the movie, but that they didn't keep that look in the comic book (maybe because they would have had to keep paying extra royalties, or they just thought the joke would be lost in comic-book format).
    • According to the author of the comic adaptation, he was working from the Bogus Journey script and assumed that Death was the traditional skeletal version. By the time he found out it wasn't, he didn't have time to change it. Said author also stated that he likes the skeletal version better, which is probably why that's the one in the comic series that followed.

• Bill and Ted get the idea to possess people to get help in their murder. Bill questions it, and Ted says "Hey, it worked in The Exorcist...1 and 3". What happened in The Exorcist 2?
  • Oddly enough, the demon didn't really possess anyone in the second movie; at least, possession wasn't as central to the plot. Or Ted's just taking a Fanon Discontinuity shot at the first sequel.
  • Plus, y'know... that's the joke.

• In the end credits montage, why as the Grim Reaper wearing a space suit? It's not like he'd need it.
  • Because it's how he acts. "Why don't I get a space suit?" "Dude. You're Death. You don't need it." "But it looks comfy." "It's not, dude, you're not missing anything!" "Oh. Well. Okay. I guess I will be the only one standing there without a space suit. Everyone else will be looking like an astronaut but I will be just-" "DUDES! Someone get Death a friggin' space suit already!"
  • He probably doesn't need to breathe, but he seems to use what is basically a normal human body most of the time. There's no logical way to asphyxiate Death, but there should really be no logical way to melvin him either.
  • Maybe they had him wear one for a good reason. Keep in mind: Death is still a member of Wyld Stallyns, but with what they've gone through together, it's clear they became friends. Good bands and good friends are those who include everyone in everything. Even after Death attempted a solo career that failed, they allowed him back. Friends don't let friends be outcasts or excluded.
  • Also, at least in the third movie, is made clear that people do not really believe that he is the literal Grim Reaper, they think he's just a musician who dresses as such, thus using the suit is necessary to keep the masquerade.

• At the end, when Bill, Ted and Nomolos are setting up the tools to help them win, why does the second gun just appear in Nomolos' hands? Up until now all of the changes they made were basically there all along.
  • He set himself up a teleporting gun so that it would look cool. The man's a disgruntled gym teacher decked out like a cross between Darth Vader and a Doctor Who villain, he's clearly got an overblown sense of style.

• When the Evil Robot Usses reveal the their robotic innards, it causes many people to faint (even the princesses), yet when the robots do this to the real Bill and Ted, the latter don't seem to faint at all. Immunity, perhaps?
  • By this point, Bill and Ted are probably quite used to weird stuff happening to them. Of course, the princesses are technically time travelers as well, but still not nearly as used to weirdness as their boyfriends.
    • Also the boys are probably fans of The Terminator.
• Why would everyone go home before the last band played at the Battle of the Bands? The 'Battle' isn't over until every band plays, but apparently in San Dimas, people are content to see a few bands play, and then read about who won in the newspaper the next day.
  • The same reason why people leave sporting events early. To try and beat the traffic and because they already think they know who's going to win.