Headscratchers / Help! I'm a Fish

• Joe is seen having spread the potion that grants intelligence to fish by giving them drops of it one at a time. They're at the bottom of the ocean, how does the potion bottle not fill up with water immediately when it's opened?
  • The potion was an original creation made by the scientist. He may have been able to manipulate the potion's chemistry so that it can avoid getting diluted with water.
• Joe and his selected fellow fish get smarter when they drink the "No Fish" potion. Shouldn't Fly, Stella and Chuck all have gotten dumber if they took the "Yes fish" potion? Stella and Chuck respectively both turn into animals that lack a brain.
  • I don't even know.
  • Both the original potion ("Yes Fish") and antidote ("No Fish") are meant to turn a human into a fish and vice versa, so intelligence would be irrelevant. But because Joe and his fellow fish are not human by origin and the potion was likely intended for human consumption only, it's possible that the antidote wouldn't have the exact effect on the fishes as it would have on a human-turned-fish. Basically, instead of just becoming humans, the fishes experienced just a slight shift towards being human-like, thus making them "get smarter", which is especially evidenced with a fish drinking the antidote bit by bit and becoming more and more human with each sip.
• Who's in charge of Joe's empire now that Joe's dead?
• What's with those strange shapes, lights thingies and getting knocked unconscious when Stella accidently drank Mackrill's yes fish potion? Any medical explanations?
  • Possibly an acid trip-like side-effect or even just a visual representation of what Stella is experiencing after drinking the potion. After all, she's going through the process of physical transformation, not to mention she's little compared to Fly and Chuck - there's a good chance that she would be feeling all woozy and strange before fainting, because the potion is doing things to her body. It can happen in real life too; things like alcohol and medication can and do have an (adverse) effect on a person when consumed, especially in larger quantities.
• Related to Stella's hallucination during her transformation above, how does the fish potion affecting her brain during her transformation, thus causing visual hallucinations?
  • Most likely the chemicals involved in the process are messing with her brain by interfering with its sensory inputs and functioning, therefore causing hallucinations. Long story short, it is quite possibly similar to consuming a psychedelic substance but with the body transforming as the end result instead of simply hallucinating.
• If the "No fish" potion stops working on someone after they've been a fish for forty eight hours, then how does it have any effect on Joe, who's been a fish his whole life?
  • Again, possibly because it was only intended for human consumption and is known to have these effects on humans that have used the other potion. Perhaps the reason it stops working after 48 hours is due to the consumer's body adopting the new genetics and gradually developing antibodies after taking the initial potion that nullify the effects, becoming immune to the antidote as a result (assuming they have a similar chemical composition to begin with). A fish like Joe, on the other hand, was never exposed to either potion prior to consuming a bit of the "No Fish" potion, not to mention he was an actual fish instead of a human turned into a fish, so chances are the potion simply had some unforeseen effects on non-human organisms. Either that, or there was no actual time limit; the professor was either telling the truth, or making it up in hopes that it would motivate the kids to seek out the antidote and turn themselves back as soon as possible.
• So, how did Joe and his followers create an entire industrial empire in just a few hours? The buildings seem way too clean, too intact, and way too deep in the ocean to have been swept away from land, too modern to be ancient ruins, and a lot of the buildings and infrastructure seem to be designed to have fish in mind, not to mention the antidote's insignia left all over the place, so it's likely not some outside force that made it. While Joe has been given intelligence, he's small, scrawny, and dumb enough to be fooled by a teenager, so it's unlikely that he'd be the one to build all that intricate machinery by himself. While he did give a lot of fish the gift of intelligence, most of them aren't as smart as Joe, and they've only been around for less than a day, so it's unlikely that Joe made enough workers that are capable of building the massive sprawling city that's seen in the movie.
  • After watching the movie again, several scenes indicate that the main bulk of the city is inside or around a ship, which still begs the question as to how the fish got the place up and running in the first place.
  • Joe wasn’t outwitted due to him being stupid, he was outwitted because he was too narcissistic to accept that there were things beyond his knowledge. And it’s abundantly clear that the fish to whom Joe grants intelligence are smart enough for grunt work.