How Is Santa Real?? 6 Movies Where No One Notices Anything

6

What Do The Parents Think Is Going On In Santa Claus Movies?

Every Christmas, Santa sneaks into our homes, eats our cookies, and leaves presents for all the good boys and girls. This continues right up until parents decide it's unethical to lie to children. The point is, there aren't a lot of mysteries on Christmas morning. Not only did your parents already know "Santa" got you a GI Joe Mobile Command Center, they stayed up all goddamn night helping "him" put it together. So what the shit do the parents in Santa Claus movies think when completely unexplained presents show up under the tree?

There are lots of examples of this bizarre paradox, in which every single adult refuses to believe in Santa Claus despite the fact that in the universes of these films, Santa does huge, public, magical things every Christmas. Presents appear in their homes, addressed to their children, and they're okay with having no recollection of buying them? It's like they're trying to not believe in him at any cost. Take, for instance, The Santa Clause. Scott Calvin loses custody of his children because the other adults think he's insane for telling kids to believe in Santa. And yet in that same universe, here's what one family got for Christmas:

Walt Disney Pictures "This will come in real handy in the middle of Tucson."

They got a fucking kayak. Moving beyond the fact that no little kid wants a kayak, where do the parents think this thing came from? Do they brush this off as a gift from one of the kid's friends or something? Something they ordered on Amazon while they were drunk? Who do they think is buying their children water sport equipment, and why don't they care?

It gets weirder. In Elf, adults themselves apparently receive gifts from Santa. When Michael reads Santa's big list on-camera, it includes the names of adults ... like a day of pampering at a spa for this guy:

New Line Cinema "They used the joke I pitched about a hard biker guy wanting like a really girly gift? It's a Christmas miracle!" -- an assistant story editor on Elf

How was Santa going to give him that present? Does he sneak coupons into this guy's junk mail? Fake a sweepstakes win? That would never work -- he would absolutely think it was a police trick to bring him into custody.

Actually, why would a real Santa want to cover up his own existence at all? This one needs magic for his sleigh to run. He should be airing commercials about how real he is. Think how many charity organizations would pitch in to spread Santa awareness in a world in which magic is a real thing you can witness. It's as if everyone in a Christmas movie is willfully denying Santa's existence for no reason but to spite wonderment. And that's fine, but then why is nobody concerned when they and their children receive expensive, unmarked presents from a stranger?

New Line Cinema "Looks like another present for Cousin eBay!"

5

People Should Be Terrified Of The Terminator Even If They Don't Know It's A Cyborg

The conceit of the Terminator franchise rests on a triple-legged stool of concepts: time travel works if you're nude, predestination is a thing, and robots are so persistent it's kind of silly.

Tri-Star Pictures That's what he does. That's ALL he does.

One thing the series also relies on is that when encountering a massive wall of muscle and flat dead eyes, nobody gives a shit. After all, if you didn't know a 270-pound bodybuilder with murderous intent was a robot from beyond Judgment Day, why would you be scared of them?

Tri-Star Pictures "Psh. Nice gorilla-like physique, cupcake."

4

Only Pervasive Incompetence Or Lack Of Curiosity Could Let Vampires Stay Hidden

With each passing year, the likelihood that we have immortal beings in our midst decreases. This isn't just because advanced technology makes it easier to mass-produce silver bullets and sacred daggers, but also because it takes so much paperwork to be a human. In a first-world country, everyone is massively on the grid -- especially, let's say, a wealthy person who somehow never ages.

Let's take Edward Cullen, the pale, malnourished sex god of the Twilight series. He has been dabbling in statutory rape for well over a century. To that end, Cullen enrolls in local high schools and keeps his pleasure mansion sufficiently stocked with hair gel and rouge.

Summit Entertainment "It took me 100 years to nail this look."

The obvious question here -- and with every modern vampire -- is how long is he planning to attend that high school? After a certain number of failed senior years, they almost certainly stop holding you back and just declare you somebody else's problem. The books say their little family moves every six to seven years, but how do they manage to continually enroll him in high school without a real birth certificate? Do they not notice that he was born in the early 1900s? And more importantly, why would he bother? Does he really love Earth Sciences? Can he not think of anything better to do with his time than hang out with people 90 years his junior and watching them learn the three classes of rocks over and over and over?

3

Armageddon Astronomers Don't Notice A Moon-Sized Asteroid Until About Three Weeks Before It Hits

If there's one thing we expect NASA to be good at, it's looking into space. NASA has optics pointed in every direction to get pictures of planets, stars, and nebula for the worst people's Facebook cover photos. NASA is funded by a culture desperate to find new things to be afraid of, and space is truly the undiscovered frontier of terrifying danger. For instance, here's an entire galaxy being eaten alive by a supermassive black hole. So how the hell do the scientists in Armageddon manage to miss a world-destroying asteroid hurtling toward our planet until it's a mere couple of weeks away?

Touchstone Pictures Maybe they were busy with animal cracker foreplay?

2

Back To The Future's Biff Has The Most Amazing Lucky Streak in History, And No One Thinks That's Weird

In the cosmology of Back to the Future, the darkest timeline is a completely unrelatable world in which a cruel idiot billionaire rises to absurd levels of power.

Universal Pictures "Hi, viewers of Back To The Future Part II. This is a reminder not to attempt to imitate anything you see in this movie."

It's a world which Biff Tannen, high school bully and attempted rapist, has reshaped in his image. Hill Valley has become a chaotic dystopia and George McFly was shot to death in mysterious circumstances. And it's all thanks to a handy almanac from the future used by 1950s Biff, or Biff Classic, to cheat at gambling.

Universal Pictures "Don't bother being subtle about it, Past Me. Win every goddamned longshot bet for years and years."

1

No One Ever Remembers That Transformers Level Cities

In Michael Bay's Transformers movies, giant robots come to Earth to slug it out over vaguely mystical MacGuffins, and despite the tagline, they're not really in disguise. They pretty much walk around and do stuff, seemingly under the impression that nobody will find this terrifying. And you know what? They're right.

Paramount Pictures "Hey, what's that undisguised space robot doing over there? Standing where everyone can see it, clear as day?"

In the first Transformers film, the alien robots go on a murderous rampage across the globe, from the United States to Yemen. It's the largest global catastrophe since WWII. But then by the second movie, Revenge Of The Fallen, everyone has simply forgotten about it. It's as if that one time there was a world crisis that coincided with first contact with extraterrestrials slipped everyone's mind. In fact, the only people who seem to remember it are treated like weird conspiracy theorists.

Paramount Pictures"The government doesn't want you to see the 50 BILLION HOURS of video shot by people as alien car-bots stomped their homes and families to rubble. But it's out there!"

Later in the series, in Age Of Extinction, people still haven't adjusted to a world with destructive space robots. A ship appears above Chicago and they keep going about their daily lives as if things from space usually turn out great for everyone. Then, sure enough, robots come pouring out and destroy the whole goddamn city. How many times do cosmic monsters have to destroy their homes before they think to put on hard hats? By the time the eighth sequel comes around, it will be called Transformers: At This Point, Anyone Standing Under Us Deserves To Die.

Nathan Kamal lives in Oregon and writes there. He co-founded Asymmetry Fiction for all your fiction needs. Jordan Breeding has a blog, a Twitter, and thinks Santa should stand trial for his crimes.

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