It appears that the weaponry that the vehicles use are hidden behind panels. So does that mean that Mater, Shiftwell and McMissile have been surgically altered into fighting machines?
More like the spy genre and the cyberpunk genre are the same thing in their world.
Fin, Holly, Rod, and Turbo investigate international, organized crime. Does that qualify them as law enforcements?
The main page says that Mater's aptitude for tall tales has key importance for the plot. Where is that?
Mater causes Lighting to lose a stage in Grand Prix. It's only loosely related, but Word of God is that Mater tries to explain all the weird Espionage Tropes that are occurring to Lightning. Lightning, who's been told all of Mater's tall tales before, doesn't believe him.
How come the World Grand Prix allows all cars to participate, from open wheels to sports cars to rally cars? Shouldn't they be split according to type so as to make things more fair and balanced? There was even an attempt at justifying it, saying that the race tracks have various parts, like strips of dirt-track where rally cars would be able to gain an advantage.
Having bits of track where different cars have an advantage does solve this issue, although in real life a car would probably just fail to gain traction and constantly spin out. Luckily, Cars cars seem to be able to adapt themselves to conditions.
In the scene where McMissile and Holly are outfitting Mater with spy gadgets, they offer to repair him, as his less-than-perfect paint job interferes with their state-of-the-art holographic camouflage. Mater refuses, the reason given is that all these dents and scratches were received during his adventures with Lightning. Only... he totally was looking exactly like that when Lightning first met him in the original film.
Mater's a really rusty car that looks broken already, new dents wouldn't exactly stand out.
How did Holly manage to get the holographic camo to work like a charm on top of his rust without ever shorting out like it did the first time, anyway?
Holly mentions that she'll 'work around the dents' at the end of that scene, so that's your latter question answered. One could assume it was just easier to fix the dents than to have to edit the complex software to disguise it. Holly would've preferred to not have gone to effort of doing something she saw as unnecessary, and only agreed otherwise when she understood how important it was to Mater.
How did the spies get a computer like that to work away from the spy base (or plane, wherever they were)? Even in the bad guy's meeting place?
The costume-shifting imagery was embedded in the new siren light they installed on top of Mater's cab. And given that Mater could get detailed information on the various villains, it probably included a high-speed wireless data link.
In all of the Japan scenes, how the heck did Kabuto get his modifications back? He should've stayed naked because of Mater the last time they met!
Mater's tall tales are just that - tall tales, ie made up. That would mean that Kabuto can still exist, but he just never ran in with Mater. Besides, even if they were, getting new mods isn't that out of the question; in fact, given it's Mater we're talking about here it's perfectly in-character for him to give them back afterwards.
Worth noting is that "Tokyo Mater" is the only Tall Tales short that doesn't end with confirmation that the story really happened.
How does that one female car have her eyes in her headlights? What is that supposed to represent?
Word of God is that it was a Take That! against previous attempts to make anthropomorphic cars. Before Pixar, the most popular place to put the "eyes" was in the headlights which isn't exactly anatomically correct to where human eyes should be.
Judging by Mater's reaction of shock at first, followed by nervous politeness, it could be the Cars version of a physical defect or disfigurement.
All right, in Cars 2, Sarge reveals that, before the last race, he switched Lightning's alternative oil with his own organic fuel, thus explaining why he wasn't affected by the EM pulse. But why would Sarge take such a precaution, since at that time they had no idea of the devious plot?
He didn't know specifically about the danger per se; Sarge just plain didn't trust Axelrod on general principles, and that was before the incident at Porto Costa. So McQueen has been running on organic fuel this entire time; it was switched before the first race.
What's with the ladder during the scene where Mater and the other two are driving through the airport?
Possibly it's not a ladder, but rather an extensible appendage of the boarding gate. Boarding gates have motors, after all, so they could be intelligent (albeit sedentary) and would need some way to manipulate their surroundings (e.g. baggage hung from its rungs to be hauled up or lowered down).
Why was there a need to cook up such a complicated plan to discredit Allinol (and, by association, other alternative fuels)? Why not simply announce that, sadly, Allinol doesn't live up to its promise when that new oil field is found, and then own the market more-or-less legally without any shenanigans? True, there's Fillmore's homemade organic biofuel, but really, that's barely going to be a market threat.
Remember that in the end the plots of these movies have parallels with our world. As global supplies dwindle and the adverse effects of relying on oil is known we are desperately trying to find alternative fuel sources, and so are the cars in the Cars universe. It's the biggest threat to oil companies, and Axlerod wants to put a stop to that.
The climax... even for a Batman Gambit this one's pretty ridiculous. Consider if Mater didn't figure out how to escape from the Death Trap - then there wouldn't have been a bomb to blow up McQueen with, considering the bomb was attached to Mater directly. Then McQueen likely wouldn't die, considering the bomb in question would be nowhere near him, and the earlier EMP camera plan failed spectacularly. The only other plan - taking McQueen out in a fight - wouldn't play into the "alternative fuels are evil" message their plan hinges on. They couldn't really have put all their eggs in those two baskets, could they?
Two secret spies, and something of a Genius Ditz, imprisoned together with an obvious means of escape... it'd be unlikely that neither of the three of them would have come up with it. The villains probably left all of Mater's weapons intact in order to make it all the more obvious.
Maybe they had some other plan for how to plant a bomb in case Mater didn't escape, but we didn't get to see it since the Mater bomb plan worked.
At the very end we get told that Allinol is just normal gas with something added to make it go ballistic when exposed to an EM ray. But we get told earlier that it had been analyzed by an independent scientist. How did this scientist not notice that it was gasoline with something added to it?
Nothing really needs to be added to make gasoline dangerous. It's already rather flammable. The pulse emitter camera, being a laser gun, just needed to heat the gasoline way beyond a safe level.
The independent study could also have been a lie or paid off. It might even have been the Professor.
How exactly was pretending to create a completely new and highly dangerous alternative fuel supposed to discredit existing alternative fuels, which are still unpopular anyway and have no known history of causing damage anything like Allinol? Surely the most damage lasting done by Axelrod's plan (apart from the victims of Allinol) was to his own reputation. Furthering that, will the public really want to buy oil from him after the disaster he was responsible for, even if they didn't know it was all a setup?
Public opinion is, sadly, easily swayed by one or two flukes. Consider when a new self-driving car crashes, or a new electric car catches fire, it tends to make national news, even though when you look at the numbers it pales in comparison to how many traditional (human-led) car crashes happen daily. Regarding Axlerod, there was never any warranty that Axlerod would be the face of the new oil empire, just like he rarely ever made personal appearances at his crime syndicate's meetings. A large portion of the winnings could still go to him without the public knowing he was behind the whole operation. Likely he'd hoped that after the Allinol fiasco, he'd be allowed to fade into obscurity as a celebrity, with people thinking he was too ashamed to show his face in public when he'd actually be rolling in riches.
When the main cast finds out that Mater is missing, they all come to London to search for him. Why? They should be going to Tokyo, the last place anyone has seen him.
Mater wrote in his note he was heading back to Radiator Springs so he wouldn't be a nuisance to Lightning. While a more thorough or professional search would've had them starting in Tokyo, they probably figured there would've been no reason for Mater to have stayed in Japan this long and that if he's anywhere besides Radiator Springs, it would most likely be one of the locations of the other two races.
There's a glimpse of statues of car angels in one of the London shots when Holly is flying past the cathedral. Why, if there are no non-vehicle animals in the Cars world, do they have feathered wings? Wouldn't airplane wings be more appropriate?
How does one "fatten" a car, as Mama Topolino apparently wanted to do with Lightning?
Fills up their gas tank with too much gas?
Why would Miles Axelrod have the bomb that he had strapped to Mater refer to him directly by name when it was deactivated? It strips him of really any viable defense that could otherwise be offered.
Maybe it was a holdover from the testing? A voice-activation program that advanced would need to be tested out fairly thoroughly so they could make certain that only Axelrod's voice would deactivate it. So, either to underline that it had worked, as a cute little greeting to their employer, or just as a joke, the programmers added the personalized message "have a nice day, Mr. Axelrod." Since Axelrod wasn't planning on being anywhere near the bomb when it exploded, he likely just rolled his eyes and said "okay, very funny" without considering it might backfire on him.
In London Mater asks why everyone's on the wrong side of the road. Makes sense, since the United Kingdom drives on the left and Mater who is from the States would be used to driving on the right. But before they went to London they went to Tokyo, and Japan is another country that drives on the left. So why is Mater confused about driving on the left when he should have already experienced something similar in Tokyo?
Maybe since he first saw it in Japan, he assumed it was just a Japanese/Asian thing. America and Britain are both in the western world, so he might’ve expected the latter to operate more similarly to his home country and was confused to see that it didn’t.
Why did the bad guys bother planting the bomb on Mater? He was already trapped in the clock tower by the time they had to resort to using it, and the fact that Zundapp only had one detonator hints that there wasn't a second bomb in the pit and that they were counting on Mater being able to escape. But why bother? Why not just let Mater get crushed by the clock's gears and actually put the bomb somewhere in the pit like they said it was? If Axlerod was sponsoring the race, it can't have been that hard to arrange.
Simple, Batman Gambit. They knew Mater would escape and try to make his way to McQueen; why else would they gloat about it before leaving him in a position way easier to escape than the other two? Besides, if they really did plant a bomb in the pit and it went off, it'd be hugely noticeable by everyone in the race and make it clear to the authorities that it was an orchestrated murder, and all they need to do is trace the activity in the pit from there. This would completely ruin their whole goal of pinning the deaths on Allinol, while Mater's suicide bombing could be written off as a singular crazy car or terrorist.
How did Mater put 2 and 2 together and figure out that Axelrod IS the bad guy? He pined the Whitworth bolts that used on the bomb to Axelrod, but TONS of other cars also use those bolts (assuming the cars in this world match their Real Life equivalents, anyway); for example that one E-type(David Hobbscap) who is a commentator at RSN, the Royal Guard ('Sgt. Highgear'), and the guards for "The Queen".
He didn't connect the bolts to Axelrod directly. He didn't even know that he uses the bolts, he knows that the boss of the lemons caras was. The point isn't that he realize that the one that set the bomb was the same car that uses them in his engine, he already knows that. The point is that the bolts makes him think of the engine, witch in turn makes him remember the old saying about cars with that engine "if they doesn't loose oil it means they doesn't have it in" or something on those lines, wich makes hi remmember fhe killer spelling inciden. At that point he realize that since he never lose oil it has to be Axelrod who did that, wich means that not only he isn't an eletric car, but he has an engine that lose oil frequently like the one in the video, witch he has no reason to hide unless he is the bad guy (i would say that there could be other reason, in fact i always found that reasoning pretty flimsy, is maybe enough to raise the suspect and maybe open an inveatigation on Axelrod but not to be so sure that he would litteraly risk his life and those of everyone aroud him to prove his point). In conclusione the bolts wasn't really clues in the traditional sense, just what triggered his "Eureka!" Moment.
Couldn't they just cut or drill out the bolts to remove the bomb in Mater's air filter?
It's possible the bomb was hooked up to detonate as soon as it detected tampering as a failsafe. Mc Missile as a spy probably assumed this from his previous experiences.
The Pope as a car (albeit a fictional one, not Benedict XVI) makes a brief appearance. As people have pointed out, that would imply that there's a car version of Christianity, with its own Jesus Christ (or "Jesus Chrysler"). How would he even have been crucified? How do cars pray? Was there a car version of The Crusades or The Spanish Inquisition? Given that the Popemobile has a glass shield, did a Pope in that world also suffer a murder attempt?
Video game adaptation, including the Nintendo DS version and other versions:
In the "Hidden in Plain Sight" mission (or maybe that's what it called), you control Finn to meet Holly Shiftwell while avoiding security guards (which are the tough-looking jet black cars actually) and if you touch a security guard or get spotted by them, the game is over. Now there's one thing I don't get: How and why a spy like Finn would get in trouble with security guards? I'm honestly confused by this. I thought if the guard knew Finn is a spy (as in a good guy spy, ya know?), they would let him in and there would be no trouble with him but this mission says otherwise.
Finn is a British agent, the guards were probably Japanese, and since the public at large seems to be unaware of Finn's mission, chances are Japanese government and law enforcement weren't either, and he would get in trouble and most likely imprisoned and tried for espionage. And that's assuming the guards weren't Axlerod's paid goons who would just "disappear" him if they managed to catch him.
