The Actual Answers To 6 Famously Unsolved Movie/TV Mysteries

6

Why Was A Camera Crew Filming A Regular Office In The First Place?

Did you ever wonder why, throughout all nine seasons of The Office, there was always a documentary crew present? Just ... filming a paper company forever, for ... compelling TV? Why would they be doing that?

NBCUniversal Television Distribution

The Explanation:

Shortly before the events of The Office, a Dunder Mifflin employee committed suicide. This was revealed during the show's second season. In the episode "Performance Review," Michael Scott cleans out a suggestion box that's been gathering dust for years. In the box is a suggestion from a man named Tom that the office should provide better counseling for depressed workers. Michael doesn't know who that is, and so another character mimes blowing her brains out.

NBCUniversal Television Distribution

That's why the camera crew is there: A man killed himself, and the filmmakers wanted to document how his friends were dealing with it. The really sad part is that no one really seems to care. According to the writers, Ryan the temp was hired almost immediately after Tom's suicide, because death or no death, Dunder Mifflin is a business that cannot shut down, or even slow down, just because someone lost a battle with depression. Huh, you know, maybe The Office was more realistic than we gave it credit for.

NBCUniversal Television Distribution

5

What Was Up With The Ape Lincoln Statue?

In the 2001 remake of Planet Of The Apes, Marky Mark lands on an alien planet populated by intelligent apes, where he dang-near bangs Helena Bonham Carter in sexy simian make-up. It invented more than a few fetishes, we're sure.

20th Century Fox

4

How Does Cypher Get In And Out Of The Matrix Alone?

In the first Matrix movie, Cypher, the guy played by the guy who always plays traitors, decides to betray his friends. Shocking! But first he must discuss the plan with Agent Smith inside the Matrix. But ... how? As we've seen in the movie, you need someone by your side to jack you in and out, and probably jack others things in different directions as needed.

Warner Bros.

The Explanation:

Check out this scene:

3

What The Hell, Lost?

So ... Lost, huh? What was the deal with that show? Were they time-travelers, incompetent aliens, sexy magicians -- or wait, does Lost take place in the afterlife? Is everyone on the show dead? Was it all the dream of an autistic child?

The Explanation:

We've already answered the 108 most pressing questions about what happened on Lost, which basically boil down to: It's not the afterlife, and the island is magic. As for every other question, some were answered in an epilogue on the Season 6 DVD set, though they too can easily be summed up: It was an experiment by DHARMA, Lost's mad science research project.

2

Why Didn't The Good Witch Simply Tell Dorothy That The Slippers Could Take Her Home?

In the 1939 The Wizard Of Oz, Dorothy is transported to the magical land of Oz via a tornado. Her house crash-lands on an evil witch, killing her instantly and horribly, because that's how you used to start children's movies back in the day. Dorothy soon comes across Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, and she gives the girl the dead witch's shoes as some sort of sick trophy. Then she tells Dorothy that to get home, she must find the Wizard.

And that's a dirty damn lie. It turns out Dorothy could have returned home anytime she wanted, thanks to her magical shoes. When asked why she didn't say so from the start, Glinda explains that Dorothy wouldn't have believed her. So Dorothy was willing to go look for a wizard, but could not have been convinced to tap her heels three times? Is that what we're going with?

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

1

Why Did Mobsters Send Their Victims To The Past To Be Executed?

In the future, mankind has finally mastered time travel, which the mob now uses to send their enemies to the past to be executed by assassins called Loopers. That's obviously the best -- nay, only -- use for such technology.

But let's ignore pretty much everything else and focus on the smallest problem here -- mainly, why can't mobsters murder people in the future and then send their corpses to the past? For one, paying folks in the past to bury a body must be way cheaper than assassination. Plus, then you wouldn't have to worry about some of your victims escaping, which happens TWICE in the movie.

TriStar Pictures

The Explanation:

Admittedly, this never made it into the final cut, but Looper's director/writer explains that in the future, people have nanobots inside them that monitor their vitals. So if you kill someone, a signal is instantly sent to the local cops, and minutes later you have a future-SWAT team three-quarters of the way up your future-asshole. But, for whatever reason, if you send someone into the past, the Murder Alarm won't go off. But why then (SPOILER ALERT) was Bruce Willis' wife murdered in the future by the mob? It was a mistake. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, which in a Bruce Willis movie is "anywhere near Bruce Willis" and "at all times."

Nathan is a Christian and says things like, "Good news! Your sins are forgiven!" He is also called Treegnome, and is hilarious, usually here, on his website. Abraham is a Mexican lawyer, and he likes "Pan de muerto." You can say hi to him on Twitter here or laugh at his attempts at drawing on his DeviantArt here.

For more plot holes that have been addressed, check out 7 Famous Movie Flaws That Were Explained in Deleted Scenes and 6 Baffling Movie Moments With Really Logical Explanations.

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