WMG / The Brothers Bloom

Bang Bang is working for the Diamond Dog, and keeping tabs on the Brothers for him.

Think about it. How else would the Diamond Dog know the brothers were on a train to Prague? We're led to assume that Stephen tells him(at least part of) the plan at some point, but it's never clear how he tracks them down in the first place.This would also explain her sudden appearance in the brothers' lives.

Everything is controlled by Stephen.

Stephen controls everything, he is conning everyone, but his main focus is conning Bloom into becoming a self sufficient person. Bloom wants to lead "an unscripted life", so Stephen creates a caper that is absolutley full of "off script" moments, from Penelope's seizure during the accident, to the explosion, the car crash that goes horribly wrong. Even the moments with the stealing of the apple and the near stabbing of Diamond Dog are planned. The apple is the only red one in the pile, Diamond Dog's mannerisms are perfectly calculated so that if Bloom stabbed him it would be in the hand, the same hand that Stephen glasses with the bottle, perhaps it was fake? Diamond Dog is a utterly outrageous character who appears more fiction than reality. It is clear from the very begining that Stephen invented his cons as a way to get Bloom to interact with the world. He failed at first, getting Bloom to talk to the girl, getting the money and ensuring the kids get a worthwhile experience (so they think) is not enough, but he ends with his ultimate con where he succeeds totally. Bloom gets his unscripted life and learns to live, and he gets his con so perfect that it becomes reality. Diamond Dog really becomes The Brothers Bloom's adversary, Bloom really gets the girl, and Stephen really gets the perfect con, he is in danger, safe, alive and dead. Fooling them all the time.

It's the spinning top at the end of Inception falling over. Everything is changed.

• How is this a WMG?
  • Because some of the stuff mentioned in the WMG is directly contradicted by the film (or appears to be), Diamond Dog, while looking like an invented person whose every move is planned, is actually a real person, real people die at the end. If it was all faked then why did Stephen die? Who killed him? Some scenes only works if a person is in on the con, while others only work if that person isn't in on the con.
    • Unless you take into account that the con was trying to give Bloom exactly what he wanted, and that everything, including his Stephen's own death, was planned as a means of not only getting Bloom out of the con life, but getting him to permanently stay out of it. That means Stephen knew that Diamond Dog would be looking for revenge, which is why Stephen invited him in on the last part of the con (because he knew that the Diamond Dog would betray them and try to kill them), just as much as he knew that the only way to allow Bloom a new life was to sacrifice himself to keep him out of it. That also explains why Stephen's insistence of the last con be with Penelope, because he knew she would be the right kind of girl for Bloom (and it also explains why Stephen chooses her, where as before the Brothers Bloom and Bang Bang's past cons were all male, going from Bloom's own words when he discovers that Stephen picked Penelope as the mark). The whole film is a con, but its not a con on Penelope for her money. It's a con on Bloom to give him the life he wanted, and at the sacrificing of Stephen's own life.

Bloom has an Embarrassing First Name we never learn about.

This is why he goes by Last-Name Basis.Or his name is Bloom Bloom. Which is still pretty embarrassing.