6 Dark Details Of The Star Wars Universe (You Never Noticed)

Considering that travel-borne disease and antibiotic resistance is a major problem on just one planet, places like that dank cantina or Jabba's palace are -- at best -- diarrhea farms. And when you think about it: Is this really the kind of place you want to take a harrowing shit?

Lucasfilm

Jabba's stank-castle doesn't even exclusively cater to humanoids, making the idea of bathrooms and sanitation some sort of twisted riddle. After all, we see many of these creatures eat -- Jabba included -- so it stands to reason that their bodies eject waste. Are they shitting on the floor? Is that pig-man dropping a deuce over the rancor grate when everyone's asleep at night? It's not like they can build one toilet to accommodate every single alien body type in the joint, so where does all the poop go?

Lucasfilm

If you're thinking that they must have some kind of futuristic laser waste vaporizer or advanced turd teleportation device, consider that the technologically cutting-edge Death Star had a fucking trash compactor in it:

Lucasfilm

You're looking at the pinnacle of waste management in the Star Wars universe: a big ol' soup of crushed garbage that doubles as a terrarium for a periscoping slug beast.

Lucasfilm

And since we know that the Star Destroyers eject their waste into space, it's safe to assume the Death Star also does this, considering that we see these chutes and compactors at work. So let's crunch the numbers: Expanded Universe lore puts the population of the Death Star at a little over a million -- but even if it's half that, the average person poops roughly one pound of waste a day, making the amount of feces alone a solid 500,000 pounds slowly trailing behind the Death Star like a comet's tail. Lord help them if they stop moving for a day, creating a Saturn-like ring of orbiting sludge. And, again, this is the most advanced thing ever. Mos Eisley wishes it had a dirty trash compactor that gets inexplicably jammed by small metal objects.

Speaking of which ...

Along with a trash compactor that belongs on a rickety barge, the Darth Star also comes with a computer interface that hasn't improved since the prequels. In fact -- it appears to have gotten worse:

Lucasfilm

Lucasfilm

And before you accuse me of making fun of A New Hope's understandably lower budget and '70s disadvantage, take a look at this shot from the Force Awakens trailer:

Lucasfilm

It's the same blinky-light panels six decades after the prequels. To put that in perspective: Sixty years ago we were computing and communicating with freaking punchcards and switchboards. In 60 years, we went from burning light onto a chemical slide and flip-booking them through a flashlight to watching Hee Haw reruns on a magic pocket screen -- and meanwhile Han Solo has been watching porn via the same fuzzy blue holograms his whole life.

Lucasfilm

You could argue that decades of intergalactic wars have stunted society's drive for innovation, if it weren't for the fact that wars actually cause the opposite thing to happen, which is why we can credit so many major inventions to them. For instance, if all of your major computer systems could be hacked by a random astromech droid, you might invent some kind of security measure to make sure that doesn't happen again, right? Like a password, or some kind of wireless connection? You wouldn't just continue to allow that technological loophole to exist for 30 more years.

Lucasfilm

Lucasfilm

Or not. Instead they hold onto that steel-dildo socket technology that allows ancient bipedal trashcans to casually haunt ships. How is Artoo still even operational in the new film? Has Luke been repairing him all these years? He's the robot equivalent of the '78 Pontiac Firebird your neighbor keeps on his lawn ... and is yet continuously compatible with a technological world where digital information is still hand-delivered by robots. Hey Rebels, you know that important Death Star schematic you need to deliver? How cool would it be to just electronically mail that data? After all, you guys could beam images across space 30 years ago.

Lucasfilm

Look, I'm no conspiracy theorist, but it almost seems like we're dealing with a world run by some dark force willingly preventing any and all innovation. But who would stand to gain from such a scheme? Who would shy away from technological evolution, while maintaining access to all manufacturing, communication, and service jobs to perpetually stack the intergalactic deck in their favor?

Lucasfilm

On the other hand, maybe the reason technology never advances is simply because no one in this universe bothers to write anything down or keep any records ...

In one of the new Force Awakens trailers, Rey says to her probably-father, Han Solo, that there are "stories about what happened" -- referring to the existence of the Jedi -- to which Han offers a sobering confirmation. In fairness, we don't know how much trailer-editing-voodoo is at work here, but the idea that a recent and massive space war would somehow be shrouded in legend is ridiculous, just like the idea that people would debate whether the Jedi, a council of mystical warriors who used to sit at the highest level of government a few decades earlier, ever existed. Surprisingly, this fits the entire series' drunk-uncle lack of recollection. Take this faithless dupe:

Lucasfilm

Prior to being choked by a guy wearing a respirator, Admiral Motti was verbally dismissing the Force as ancient magic ... despite the fact that the Jedi ran the clone army in a war against robot separatists a mere 18 years prior to this moment. That guy was in his goddamned 20s during the Clone Wars. There's no fucking way he doesn't remember that shit. That's like if people today regarded 9/11 as some kind of Druid legend -- as if the primary way of recalling historic moments was done exclusively over flamboyant campfire chants.

In Phantom Menace, Padme has to physically go to the Senate to insist that her people are being invaded, because there's apparently no other way to prove it. Later, in the third prequel, Palpatine gets up in front of the same Senate and tells them that the now-exterminated Jedi are suddenly evil ... and everyone just takes his word for it. This happens, mind you, in a speech that is being recorded by a tiny drone.

Lucasfilm

But when all the Jedi are murdered and their temple is burned to the ground, we see Padme nervously watching it happen on the horizon and not from a news hologram telling her exactly what's going on.

Lucasfilm

So where the hell is the media in these films? We see evidence of record-keeping all the damn time, like in the fucking Applebee's where Obi-Wan and Anakin chase Zam Wesell ...

Lucasfilm

... or when we see sportscasters during the podrace scene in Episode I. This implies that they at least understand the concept of providing commentary about an important event.

Lucasfilm

Later in the series, Obi-Wan goes to the Jedi archives to look up a missing planet. Only we never see evidence of a single written word in the entire scene.

Lucasfilm

Lucasfilm

Hey, silly question, but does anyone in the Star Wars universe even know how to read? Messages are translated via video or droid, and the only possible text we see is on blurry war consoles that could very well be symbols. In an environment oversaturated with foreign languages where most tasks are carried out and spoon-fed by robots, the literacy rate has quite possibly plummeted faster than a handless Mace Windu.

It would certainly explain a lot, including why all the politics in these films are done by rabble-rousing speech and not written proposals or bills. But that's just one of many reasons why being a Star Wars senator is like winning a sweepstakes where the prize is continuous panic attacks ...

Considering all the varying cultures and species, it would stand to reason that the Star Wars universe handles its politicking with even more veiled xenophobia than we do on Earth. We see evidence of this in the prequels, when the Gungans show their distrust and lack of interest in the goings-on of Naboo. In the end, it takes a robot war to unite this world of Hunger Games cosplayers and racist amphibian caricatures.

Lucasfilm

So clearly it must be that every planet marches to their own weird-looking drum while occasionally half-assing peace in some sort of space version of the United Nations. Only that's not what we see in these films at all, which instead feature a labyrinthine Galactic Senate founded on an impossible constitution in charge of the military and trade routes ... all run by an elected chancellor overseeing a political stadium of Frisbee-riding alien delegates. Because these films were written with all the legislative understanding of a child's puppet show.

Lucasfilm

Let's break down the insane career of just one of these senate-goers: Padme Amidala.

Lucasfilm

Right away we see that nothing about this lady Lo Pan makes sense -- as her title in Phantom Menace is the "elected queen" for a planet that apparently has no idea how a monarchy works. From there she travels to the senate and uses her confusing sway to call for a "vote of no confidence" against the currently sitting chancellor. And despite having no authoritative status besides being the sovereign leader of an alien nation, for some reason this works, causing the current chancellor to step down and the soon-to-be-revealed-as-evil Emperor Palpatine to take his place. Also, she does all this while occasionally letting her assassination decoy call the shots for her.

Lucasfilm

Already we're balls-deep in arbitrary titles and crazy-pants power dynamics. Then, between the first and second films, Amidala is elected as a senator and is allowed to continue using an assassination double in the process. After a few attempts on her life, she goes into hiding and inexplicably grants Jar Jar Binks senate powers in her place, which is not a thing you can do. This elected official just fucking points at some crab-eyed jabber-box, says "You're the senator now," and then bounces to hay-roll under waterfalls and eat magic pears. And as if to ignite our white-hot rage, Jar Jar actually uses his new position to propose giving Palpatine his own grand army -- effectively dooming the entire galaxy.

Lucasfilm

This is how the evil Emperor comes to power. Not from some House Of Cards master manipulation, but rather an unelected dildo abusing randomly granted powers without any legal backlash. But before you point out that this was supposed to be the hubris in which the Empire was born, remember this guy?

Lucasfilm

That's Lando Calrissian -- a character who is either a promoted general for the Rebels or hated traitor for the Empire, depending on which film you're watching. In Empire Strikes Back, he sells out Han and his buddies to Vader in exchange for protection -- and even oversees his carbonite dip. Then, one film later, he manages to somehow be given ranking command over the pivotal squadron responsible for blowing up the new Death Star.

And while we know that Lando was coerced into betraying his friends and has since atoned for it, that in no way validates giving a known traitor a major command in your intergalactic rebellion. So between the Senate's clusterfuck rules and the Rebel's dogmatic hiring system and faith-based military strategy, the scientifically advanced Empire somehow comes out of this as the downright sensible option.

Of course, it's hard to imagine any form of government even communicating with a galaxy of planets considering that doing so would be a physics shitstorm ...

One of the few things we know about the physical Star Wars universe is that it takes the use of hyperspace to traverse. We know this because we actually see it happen:

Lucasfilm

It's not far-fetched to assume that things like speed, distance, and time exist in a fictional universe, especially when (according to that blue text at the beginning of each film) this isn't some Middle-earth realm where dragons fart blueberries and time is a magical construct, but rather our universe in some different time and place.

So it stands to reason that this galaxy of mobster slugs and prissy robots still adheres to Einstein's theory of relativity, right? That means if a person were to travel from Earth at light speed, they would return significantly younger than those they left behind. This is known as time dilation, or a major "fuck you" for anyone looking to visit a friend light-years across the galaxy expecting anything other than a pile of 600-year-old ash.

Lucasfilm

Consequently, everyone in the Star Wars universe is a bona fide time demon.

Remember Interstellar? When Catwoman, Mud, and that American Beauty guy touch down on Planet Wave Pool, they experience something called "gravitational time dilation," wherein objects closer to gravitational mass experience time significantly faster. In this case, that insane mass is a black hole causing them to experience 23 years in a matter of hours. With that in mind, let's talk about Coruscant -- the galactic capital in the Star Wars prequels -- which was chosen to be the capital because it's located at the center of the galaxy. You know what else is usually located at the center of galaxies? Fucking black holes. For all scientific purposes, the Clone Wars should have been over in the time it took the Jedi council to put on their fancy robes. And all of this is ignoring the already insane odds that all of these sentient species evolved at a perfectly aligned pace with each other in the first place.

Lucasfilm

What are the ballshit odds that so many intelligent humanoids would come together at once in a single galaxy? To put that into perspective -- human life has existed for only 190,000 out of the 4.5 billion years that Earth has hung around, making the act of finding one intellectually equal species a dick-twirling miracle.

So either the entirety of the Star Wars universe is populated by ageless super beings who came into existence on a wave of impossible coincidence, or we're dealing with a world where time and distance are somehow interchangeable. But, of course, that would be stupid.

Upon observing the bone-chilling conditioning of an entirely new race of artificial people, the Jedi council is so tickled that they completely forgo investigating this mysterious slave army and simply start tossing them into battle.

Lucasfilm

This is the giant dick-shaped pill that George Lucas expected us to swallow in the prequels. And as if to pound the stake deeper into our childhoods, he added the extra tidbit that all clones were based off of Jango Fett, father of Boba Fett, who is revealed to also be a clone himself. That means any shot in the original where Boba stands next to a stormtrooper is a possible family reunion photo op.

Lucasfilm

This also brings up a particularly disturbing question: If all of the clones are just one guy's DNA, exactly how many of them are there? Based on the canon from the Clone Wars TV show, there are at least a million of them ... and at least one of that million decided to start a family.

Lucasfilm

That is Cut Lawquane, a disillusioned clone who gets married and adopts children in the Clone Wars TV show. This confirms that the clones have the ability to love, which means that out of the millions of clones that were mass-produced, there are potentially others who share the same thirst for boneration. How many others up and left to start their own family through desertion or injury? Jango Fett's DNA is quite possibly a goddamn incestuous pandemic slinging across the galaxy like an arms race with the gene pool.

And this isn't a fluke -- each of these "mindless slaves" appears to possess individual personalities and habits.

Lucasfilm

The guy on the left is Rex -- an exceptionally loyal clone who, in the Clone Wars movie, is forced to lead Anakin Skywalker into a trap by a Sith lord's mind trick. Anakin spots the trap by recognizing Rex's unusual behavior, implying that the Clones have distinct enough personalities to act out of character.

This also means that when the Emperor orders all the Clone Troopers to suddenly turn on the Jedi in Episode III, their brains are so hardwired that these commands take over whatever individuality they might have gained during the war. This is actually the final plot point of the TV show -- the clones begin to see signs of brainwashing, but are unfortunately too late to do anything about it. Instead, these once-loyal friends are switched to "evil mode" on a whim, putting into question the very nature of their souls. This dystopian arc eclipses pretty much every other plotline in the show, which is a series that attempts to explore an existential betrayal of the human condition in half-hour blocks aimed at children.

It's almost like this series deserves a whole other layer of games and books devoted to ironing these insane details out.

Tell David how excited you are for The Force Awakens on his Twitter.

There's a lot of crap that enrages us about these films. Find out what else in 7 Classic Star Wars Characters Who Totally Dropped The Ball and 6 Reasons The Jedi Would Be The Villain In Any Sane Movie.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out The Terrible Truth 'Star Wars' Fans Can't Admit , and watch other videos you won't see on the site!

Also, follow us on Facebook, and let the nerd rage flow through you.