Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension/Headscratchers


 * So, according to the creators, the cap age is fifteen, which Candace is. And yet here she mentions that Jeremy is a year older than her, and thus will be off to college soon. What's wrong with this picture?
 * Maybe the movie takes place 2 years after the series or something? Idk.
 * Jeremy's dad seemed crazy obsessed with his college, so it is possible he would take Jeremy to see it way early. It is Candace, so it is probably that she just took that out of scale.
 * Isn't Vanessa 16 though? I know the younger kids are stated to be "less than 15", but I wouldn't assume that applies to the older kids. And anyway, 16 isn't really all that young to be looking at colleges, depending on how interested he (or his father, like mentioned above) is. And Candace always overreacts.
 * They said they've owned Perry for 5 years, not that 5 years have passed in the series.
 * Candace is 16. The cap age was only referring to the kids, and they actually claimed Candace was 16.
 * Huh? There is an episode in which she turned 15, and it didn't get a sequel yet, so we should probably assume she is still 15.
 * What if Jeremy just skipped a grade? We don't know how he is during school days, but he seems to be the only teen character with a job right now and of the little we can tell so far he is not dumb. More so, many in his family are a bunch of crazy competitive people, including his mom. So I would say that it could happen.
 * It could also be that Jeremy is not a whole year older, but his birthday is earlier in the year, meaning he gets into the previous school year to Candace, so he would be going into his final high school year after the summer while Candace has two years left, and candace just exagerated it for dramatic effect.
 * "Soon" doesn't necessarily mean "in a few months". Candace is probably just saying that she'll be separated from Jeremy instead of playing out her elaborate fantasy scenario throughout high school. As for Jeremy's dad looking for colleges: it's a good idea to start looking before the senior year of high school. It gives you more options and a better idea of what to do for to prepare when the time comes. It's not like the colleges themselves wait for that one year before shoving advertisements down your throat.
 * Why is Olivia Olsen credited for voicing Vanessa if Vanessa wasn't even in the movie?
 * If I remember correctly, she sang backup in one of the songs.
 * Apparently, there's at least one or two deleted scenes with her.
 * Vanessa's scenes are on the extended home video version.
 * So the movie ends with  But... what about everyone else who witnessed the whole robot thing? I can't imagine something like that would just go away, people would be talking about it, and the main characters would be wondering what they missed.
 * Why would they be talking about it? People don't seem to talk about the rollercoaster, or the treehouse robots, or the flying kiddie rides, or anything else weird that happens. So yeah, robots, just another day in Danville.
 * Well, typically they just kinda go along with everything, but this time they seemed legitimately freaked out.
 * No need to erase their minds unless they actually got to see Phineas fighting alongside with Perry, but by the time that happened, all the adults in town seemed missing.
 * My point is, wouldn't the characters be wondering why there was a big hole in their memories of the day before?
 * It was not implied they were going to use the amnesia-inator only on them, anyway.
 * Also Monogram said that they had to program the amnesia-inator so presumably they only removed the memories if Agent P, and not the Robots.
 * The deleted scenes included in the DVD include one in which a newscast announces that what looked like a robot invasion from another dimension, turned out to be a weather balloon, so Danville's people are going to be fine with what happened...
 * Why did Isabella finally decide to make a move on Phineas right before they got their memories of the day erased!? Isn't being in a relationship with him something she wanted all along? Why in the Hell was she okay with kissing him, seeing him excited, and then forget all about it? Don't tell me she just gave up since the last TV movie, when he was obliviously more interested in his inventions while they were travelling all around the world!
 * I don't know about you, but if I knew in a few moments no one would remember what just happened, I would do whatever the heck I wanted. So if a girl I like was with me I would totally make out with her. It's not like she stopped trying, it's that she knew she could do that one thing, whether Phineas liked it or not.
 * But then, immediately after she kisses him, he seems pretty damn happy about it, and she enthusiastically orders Monogram to flip the switch. Wouldn't she want to remember that just kissing him might actually work?
 * Who would she have to tell to remind her? Major Monogram? If it goes as planned, they're never supposed to see each other ever again. Anyway, I do see your point, and I may be a little off on what you actually meant, but I digress. They can't only erase the part with Agent P, they have to erase the whole day.
 * She is smart enough to know about her subconscious. She knows that if she can test Phineas' reaction, she can expect her subconscious to remember whether Phineas would like it or not the time she is about to decide whether to do it or not for real.
 * They wiped her memory, her subconscious isn't going to remember anything, that's kind of the point.
 * They used an amnesia-inator. Amnesia does not wipe subconscious. And even if that was the case, how could Isabella know?
 * As said below, that machine was named by Doof, who probably wouldn't take the time to look something up to make sure his invention name is accurate. Also not even people talking about it reminds him of the amnesia-inator, implying that it completely wipes your mind. And Isabella would know because I'm pretty sure they say they're going to wipe their memory, which usually implies completely wiping your memory, not letting you vaguely remember stuff.
 * Isabella was probably getting Phineas back for being so oblivious to her feelings so often. Besides, she knows that she'll eventually gather enough courage to make another move on Phineas later, even after losing the benefit of knowing for sure that he'll reciprocate. She's been (mostly) patient throughout the entire course of the series thus far.
 * Phineas may not necessary return Isabella's feelings, but liked the kiss. That can pretty much happen with some people. This Troper watched a show where a girl kissed her male crush and he really enjoyed it, but later in the series, he dated someone else. By the way, anyone noticed Phineas didn't react any different to Isabella after the movie, as fans thought? (still platonic).
 * Frankly This Troper is DISGUSTED with the kiss scene. Isabella WASTED their very first kiss over something they'll forget a seconds later. And fans "approve" of this!?? Phineas must've been thinking while shouting wait,'WTH, Isabella! You gave us our first kiss only to have us forget it?! You KNOW we have to have our memories erased for Perry's sake!!' For someone "too scared" to tell how she feels, Isabella's always giving out obvious hints to him instead telling him directly......Why the hell is "Phinbella" so popular?? It's just about some fickle-yes, fickle girl who likes to mess with Phineas.
 * Why is there a ginormous debate about this? It seems straightforward enough. People who are in love often keep it a secret because of the possibility of rejection (or other humiliating consequences). They use subtle flirtation so, if the object of their affection catches on and doesn't share their feelings, they can deny that they really meant anything. But if the other person realizes their feelings and feels the same way, they can achieve their goal without the risk of openly confessing their feelings to someone who may not feel the same way. Now, if nobody is going to remember it, there are no consequences, so why hold back? No, neither one of them is going to remember the kiss (unless some glitch or loophole comes into play). But for that one moment there is pleasure for her, so there is a motivation to act. Why is this so hard for people to comprehend?
 * Isabela is, at most, barely into double digits age-wise. Of course giving the first kiss before being mind-wiped was childish, Isabella's a child. A little girl stole a kiss with her crush in a completely safe arrangement (the only one with no possibility of complications), and people are ready to call her manipulative for that? Seriously, lighten up people. Shipping cartoon children should not be taken this seriously.
 * No kidding. The whole "she wasted her first kiss" argument is particularly sad. We're not talking about virginity here or anything; her first kiss after that scene is not going to be any less special just because there was prior one that she can't remember. After this, it's clear why Phinbella is so popular; in order to not like it, you apparently have to take everything way too seriously and go way too far to find Unfortunate Implications in things.
 * Why was Jeremy shot by the amnesia-inator? He wasn't even in town during the invasion.
 * Maybe, in-between the invasion ending and the main characters finding out that they needed to have their memories wiped, he came back and Candace told him everything? (Or she called him?)
 * Jeremy randomly appears next to Candace when Doof-2 is just starting the invasion at the park. Yeah. He just appears out of thin air right next to her. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKPDV 9 Ysb 0 c Skip to 11:41.
 * Wow, I am going to say that they were deliberately trying to make us think about change blindness.
 * So, how is not knowing Perry's a secret agent more safe than them knowing but him being elsewhere?
 * More to the point, how does not knowing protect them? I can see why it's important for Doofenshmirtz to forget the events of the day, but the only thing that might make life more dangerous for the boys is that, if they knew, they might try to interfere.
 * It's probably a necessary security measure. Imagine little Billy finds out his puppy is an agent. He tells all his friends and now they frequently interfere trying to catch puppy on his missions. Then he tells his new pharmacist friend, who happens to be puppy's nemesis. Now Billy is puppy bait. Or something. Point is, bad stuff can happen. Sure, Phineas and Ferb are responsible, but do big agencies ever address things like that individually?
 * The annoyingly boring answer is "there wouldn't be a show". Or at least that's what my mom said. Or was she talking about Phineas and Ferb getting busted resulting in that?
 * It's an amnesia-inator, that doesn't necessarily imply permanence. Does that mean that they'd eventually remember? Seems like a less viable way to protect Agent P's identity.
 * It's Doof, I doubt he looked up what amnesia is before he named the invention, so he probably just went with what TV said and named a machine that wipes your memory after something that doesn't always do that. Also notice how even when people brought it up Doof still doesn't remember the machine, it seems pretty obvious it completely wipes your memory.
 * Why did they get the terminology wrong in the movie? there is a difference between Another Dimension and an Alternate Universe and the movie takes place in the latter.
 * The difference is semantics at best. They are just different names for the same thing.
 * The title was a shout out to The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, but, beyond that, Doof's the one who named the otherdimensionator, so the above argument can be applied here. After he started using 'dimension' instead of 'alternate universe', the rest of the cast probably saw no reason to be nitpicky.
 * There is no difference. Alternate Universe is just a flashier but less precise way of saying Another Dimension.
 * More specifically Alternate Universe is a subtrope of Another Dimension, so since it's an Alternate Universe, it is by definition also Another Dimension
 * If agents aren't allowed to let their owners know who they are, why do they even have owners in the first place? In The Movie, we see Perry is a member of the agency before he's adopted, so what's the point of having him live with any family?
 * To let him have a more enjoyable life.
 * Note that assigning this family to Perry was a very convenient idea budget-wise as it spared them travel tickets to London twice, to Hawaii once and space travel once.
 * How come the people in the 1st dimension are so scared of the robots? They're perfectly fine with everything Phineas and Ferb do, and had no way of knowing the robots were from a bad guy in another dimension, so wouldn't they just assume they were Phineas and Ferb's?
 * IIRC the sky went red when the robots took over. If any of the citizens are Genre Savvy they would know what's happening, and P&F don't seem the type to make red skies, although they surely could.
 * The sky color is irrelevant, it looked that way because it was sunset. Anyway, the robots freaked people out because they are big and evil looking, they were doing threatening stuff like throwing cars, knocking over flag poles, forcing people into dooferalls, and, you know, there were hundreds of them filling the sky. Also, Phineas and Ferb's inventions are usually colorful and fun looking.


 * Where was Other Dimension Stacy?
 * She was probably hiding at home during Doof's reign, practicing conforming. Other Dimension Candace didn't give herself time for friends or fun, so they probably haven't even met.
 * How come there weren't any other second dimension agents shown? It would've been pretty awesome to see Perry the platyborg be the general for the agent animal-borgs and Doof-2's robot army.
 * Doof-2 had enough of an army with the Norm-Bots. He eliminated the other agents because they were not worthy of him, it is just a way to establish some implicit Foe Yay.
 * Also remember that the other animal agents are just barely a step above useless. In the scene where all of them working together attempt to take on a small group of Norm-bots, they utterly fail to do any noticeable damage to even a single one of them. It simply wouldn't have been worth the effort.
 * Where was Second Dimension Vanessa? As Doofenshmirtz's daughter I would assume she would either be forced to serve by his side or be a key member of the resistance.
 * Actually considering how different Doof's life was in the second dimension I'd imagine he never had her, but apparently he did and there's deleted scenes on the DVD about her.
 * Basically, Vanessa-2 has the same stance towards Doof as Vanessa-1: she ignores him as much as possible.
 * Very minor, but why is it that when Bufford-2 asked the Phineases and Ferbs who they were Phineas-1's first reflex was to say that they are Candace's brothers? How did he know to use Candace as reference?
 * Phineas already knows that the alternate Phineas and Ferb don't associate with their neighbors, and the other kids probably wouldn't know who the alternate Linda or Lawrence were either, so Phineas probably just referenced the one member of his alternate family the other kids actually have a chance of recognizing.
 * Why did there appear to be children happily riding the rollercoaster during the midst of the final battle? Maybe they were moving too quickly for me to see how they were contributing if they were, but if not then it's rather strange.
 * At least the rollercoaster's rails were useful during the fight, they gave mobility to the tree house robots.
 * That they did, but the presence of children riding the rollercoaster and (seemingly) not doing much is still perplexing.
 * Well, an online game had Ferb riding in it using the Baseball Launcher (although it's true he wasn't in the rollercoaster). So they might have used that.
 * A decoy, perhaps?
 * Maybe the scanner scanned and rebuilt the Rollercoaster passengers.
 * Though possible, that raises the question of why none of the passengers from any of the other inventions were rebuilt. Also, wouldn't that mean there are now clones of the original passengers running around in Danville?
 * When watching Dr. Doofenshmirtz and the boys putting the otherdimensionator together, Perry accidentally plays a message from Monogram about having to leave the boys if he is ever discovered. Why didn't he just show that to Phineas and Ferb when they were mad at him?
 * He probably had remote hopes that he could figure out a way to hide what happened from Monogram.
 * Well, yes, but wasn't that a pre-recorded message he had saved on his watch? It seems kind of random to call in the middle of a mission for something like that (then again, it is Monogram.)
 * I always figured that Monogram did just randomly call in the middle of the mission. That is the kind of thing he would do, after all.


 * If Season 3 is supposed to take place in a different summer than Seasons 1 and 2, why does Phineas begin his spiel about what he and Ferb did this summer to Second Dimension!Phineas and Ferb with "We built a rollercoaster, we became one-hit wonders..."?
 * It's never been specifically stated that Season 3 comes in the next summer. The creators have said that they could go into the next summer if needed, but it was more of a Shrug of God than anything.
 * If Season Three isn't in the next summer, the show tends to run into some serious discontinuity in places. Such as the fact that that they haven't hit 104 episodes yet (and they're close) but some episodes take place over a few days. I'm almost positive they've hit 104 days of summer in-universe.
 * They have hit 104 days of summer, and even lampshaded it in "The Curse of Candace." But it's pretty clear they're still in the same summer. Do you really think 8½ months could go by without any verbal references to the events in that gap, or any of the kids growing noticably, or the status quo changing in any way?
 * Was there a good in-universe reason why Monogram didn't consider letting the kids join the OWCA? I know the real reason: it would have completely changed the show, made it into something it's not, and I'm glad they didn't do it. But these are two kids who took out an army that his own agents were barely making a dent in using an army's worth of machines that they built themselves over the course of a summer vacation, and most of them weren't even meant for combat. You'd think Monogram would want them working to invent things for their agents or something. And if they're too young, why not let them keep their memories to prepare them for the day they are old enough?
 * He said something about their insurance not covering it.
 * Possibly because their insurance doesn't cover human agents.
 * One of the episodes showed that they had Norm as an agent for a while, but kicked him off the team: "Y'know, Carl, it's kind of weird that he isn't an animal. We should fire him." So my guess is that they just don't like having non-animal agents, regardless of caliber. (Besides, the kids are kids. It might get the O.W.C.A. into legal trouble to secretly hire them for semi-dangerous tasks.)
 * What is that clip of the Doofs on a couch in a desert a reference to?
 * Why does Phineas call Dr. Doofenshmirtz "elderly"? We know from flashbacks that he's mid-40s tops, and about the same age as Phineas' mom.
 * Rule of Funny and the fact that, looking at the rest of the movie, Phineas is a pretty bad judge of character.
 * Well, he does slouch.
 * It's all perspective. When you're ten, anyone over 30 is elderly.
 * Major Monogram says this in the movie: "...every operative is equipped with an auto-scan replication device, just like the one in your hat. We've been using the information you've gathered to replicate each and every one of Dr. Doofenshmirtz's inators." So why did Perry have to trick Doofenshmirtz into remaking his inator in "Phineas and Ferb Interrupted"? Why couldn't his agency just duplicate it?
 * We don't know how long that would've taken. Yes, the replicating device was able to recreate all of Phineas and Ferb's inventions in a matter of seconds, but for all we know, actually converting Perry's scan data into something the replicating device can use might've taken a great deal of time that he didn't have. We just don't see the entire process from start to finish, and thus don't know all of the steps involved.
 * Because he didn't need a new Dull-and-Boring-inator. He needed a Dynimic-inator
 * At the very end he needed another Dull-and-Boring-inator. Also, you'd think it would be easy to engineer the one once you had the other.
 * Why did Phineas not sound remotely serious in this movie? He sounded happy and teasing whenever he said anything.
 * When does Phineas ever sound serious ever?
 * Well, he sounded more serious than he ever has been. It must be his voice...
 * A very minor problem but... Why is a Romantic Comedy in 3-D?
 * Rule of Funny. Or Rule Of Giving A Take That To 3-D.
 * It's not a big one, but I'm confused about the time in this movie. Phineas, Ferb and Perry woke up at 7:00 AM and since they usually start their projects right away it would mean that they started this movie's project around 7:30 AM. That would also mean their mom and dad went to movies around same time. But later in the movie it's said that the clock is 3:30 PM...that would mean they would've been in Second Dimension for around 7 hours. Also later Linda and Lawrence are seen still watching the movie even though they went there in the morning...Of course this is all solved if Phineas and Ferb started their project later than I thought.
 * The movie could very well have been a double or triple feature.
 * Or they just did some shopping and maybe grabbed a lunch before the movie.
 * I'm probably forgetting a detail, but is there a reason why they couldn't use the Memorydeletinator (if that's not the exact name, the helmet from the Aglet episode) to just make the characters forget only Perry's secret identity, and let them remember the rest of the events? I think there's a problem, but I can't remember what. Don't say "it would wipe all data everywhere", that only happens in combination with the universal delete button.
 * It only deletes things the person wearing it is currently thinking about. It'd be much easier to just delete the entire day than use that. Besides, it lets them use a subtle joke.
 * In the Doofenshmirtz's Villain Song, Doof asks Doof 2 "Do Llamas weird you out?", to which Doof 2 replies "Yeah, are they camel or sheep?" only to be corrected by Doof saying he was referring to Lorenzo Lamas. Well, what did he expect Doof 2 to think he meant: he asked "DO Lamas weird you out?" instead of "DOES Lamas weird you out?" Is Doof just that much of an idiot?
 * Uhhh... yeah. What show have you been watching?