Pinocchio (Disney film)/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


General logic-chopping

  • Pinocchio says, "Something supernatural is about to happen to my nose." What happens?
    • His nose becomes shorter.
    • His nose turns green.
  • Pinocchio says: "God does not exist". Would his nose grow? Does his nose grow when he *knows* what he's saying is a lie, or if he speaks a lie, regardless of his knowledge about it?
    • Saying something that you don't know if its true or not isn't telling a lie.
    • People generally lie to cover their own ass, so I agree with the above poster. You can't lie about the existence of God unless you've actually spoken with Him face-to-face in some supernatural encounter and then afterward said he does not exist.
      • In the early chapters of the original novel, Pinocchio's nose grows when he is in stressful situations that do not involve lying. This supports the covering-his-behind theory.
    • For that matter, could you use him to further academic research? Like, if you asked him to say "the Riemann hypothesis is correct" and then checked to see if his nose grew or not. Or, hell, can you use him to help determine policy decisions? "Will policy x lead to desired result y? Please answer yes or no."
    • I imagine Pinocchio's lie-detecting nose is based on whether or not he thinks he's lying. So, if you told him 'Pinocchio, two and two make five', and he believed you, then later on if you asked him what two plus two is, and he said 'five', his nose wouldn't grow because he wouldn't know he was lying. It wouldn't predict the future or anything like that.
    • Depends on if he believes in God.
  • What if Pinocchio says "I am lying"?

Disney movie

  • Pinocchio spends a decent chunk of the movie walking underwater with no ill effects. Then he drowns. What the!
    • He doesn't drown. He died of the fatigue of being CHASED BY A GIANT WHALE. That, and he might have hit his little wooden head on the rocks or something.
      • He did get washed up on the beach, perhaps all the massive waves crashing around and battering his body knocked him out?
        • Warranty of Pinocchio's Magitek Battery expired at that moment?
      • The waves knocked him against the rocks and gave him severe brain damage.
  • I know this is pendanic but...if Geppetto wanted a son, why didn't he just go to a nearby orphanage and request the caretakers to bring him a boy for him to adopt?
    • Two reasons: He was old. And what if said real boy was a brat? Geppetto wanted to make his own son the way he envisioned him. Plus, you don't have to feed and clothe a puppet so there's that bonus!
    • Maybe he wasn't rich enough.
  • Why was the coachman willing to pay so much for Pinocchio?
    • It wasn't Pinocchio specifically; the coachman was using that sack of gold to wow Honest John into finding some boys for him. Sort of a "You think that's good payment? Work for me and you'll get THIS!" deal. Honest John finding Pinocchio for this purpose was pure coincidence.
      • Okay, but then why was he willing to pay that much for anybody? Does selling a donkey really bring him more money than that sack of gold?
        • One possibility is that he is a supernatural figure (which would explain why there are roller coasters in the 19th (?) century), so it's not really about doing business for him.
          • The roller coaster isn't the head scratcher. That would be the Ferris wheel, which was invented after the book's publication. Course, this is the Disney movie we're talking about....
      • There's no reason to assume the offer was a sack of gold for one boy. A sack for a hundred, now that's plausible.
        • You, my friend, are one very smart troper.
  • What happened to all those performers working for Stromboli? You know, the ones controlling the puppets and doing their voices.
  • Why did Geppetto let a naive wooden boy go out on his own when he didn't even know how to get to the school? Seems like he never would have gotten into any trouble if he hadn't have a criminally neglegent parent.
    • The man is pretty absent-minded, so maybe it just didn't occur to him. Also, maybe he assumed Pinocchio would just follow the other kids who were heading off towards the school as well.
  • How can Pinocchio eat/digest food if he has no internal organs due to being a puppet?
    • A Fairy Did It
    • Or wood golems, being plant-based, could digest the same way as the overgrown Venus fly-trap Audrey II: "Feed me, Gepetto!"
    • He has wooden internal organs.
  • Did it bug anyone else when they were under the ocean, Jiminy got caught in a bubble, and tried to keep his head above water as it filled up with water... but they were breathing water the whole time??
    • Rule of Funny . That's literally the only reason for that tiny part of the movie to exist, to make a joke out of the whole breathing underwater thing and to Lampshade it as well. "Yes, we are aware it doesn't make sense for Jiminy to be breathing underwater. Deal with it."
  • This didn't occur to me until many years later. What's with the Blue Fairy lecturing and essentially torturing Pinocchio for "lying" about what how he ended up in Stromboli's cage? On his first day of existence, he had been conned, kidnapped, and sold into slavery. If a, say, 5-year-old child were abducted and put in a similar situation on their first day of school, and in terror made up a story like what he said, would your first inclination be to lecture them about lying, while mutilating their body? Considering Gideon and Foulfellow probably would have used violence if Pinocchio had not consented, what he was saying was not that far off from the truth. Yes, it's meant to be a moral for the audience, but in context that scene is actually pretty disturbing. Unlike in the book, there is no indication that Pinocchio is actually guilty of the vices he has to "overcome", or of anything other than naivete.
    • Pinocchio even refers to Honest John and Gideon as "two big monsters". From his point of view, that could be what they were!
    • She clearly felt she had to get through to him about the importance of honesty somehow, and the growth of his nose isn't shown to be painful, but it is awkward and embarassing, leaving him in tears. She fixes him after he promises to try to do better.
  • How does Pinocchio pick up the ability to speak language from the first minute after he is alive?
    • The same way he picks up being able to move around without muscles, can smoke, and gets intoxicated (and can actually drink period) despite being made of wood. A Wizard Did It.
    • This is a case of something we'd have to set aside. A wooden puppet boy manages to act like a regular human being despite having no muscles or internal organs to help him digest or anything. We may as well argue why in Star Fox, there are humanoid animals piloting starcrafts. It's a part of the story. :)
    • He has a wooden brain and larynx.
  • Really really stupid, but - did Figaro ever get to eat his fish? Geptto says that they won't eat till he finds Pinocchio, after all. It looked so delicious and he was stuck watching it go cold for hours! Poor Figaro.
    • After the movie ended, he got a bigger, more delicious fish.
  • So, after releasing Pinocchio from the cage, the Blue Fairy said she can no longer help him.... then later flies down (in dove form???) to drop him a note that tells him the whereabouts of his father? Wha???
    • Maybe she meant "helping him" in terms of direct supernatural intervention (i.e. her magic). Informing someone where their "father" is (depending) usually is a mundane thing, Voluntary Shapeshifting notwithstanding...
    • Really she was just giving him a tip - after all, Pinocchio had no idea where to go.
  • This may seem really minor, but it just bugs the crap out of me. In the latest release of Pinocchio, during the song "Give a Little Whistle" they cut out certain phrases. Not even dirty phrases, they're Jiminy saying "Right!" and "Look out Pinoke!" Why?! For what purpose, to what end, why would those phrases need to be taken out?!
    • It's probably just a remastering error.
    • It was edited by a chimpanzee.
  • Why did Gepetto bring Figaro and Cleo with him to look for Pinocchio? I can understand Figaro might have followed at his own accord, but why is Cleo there? Wouldn't looking for a kid be hard enough without dragging pets around?
    • Geopetto brought them along because he didn't want them to starve in case he was gone for a month.
    • He didn't want to be alone, I guess.
  • Figaro is a non-anthropomorphic, black and white kitten (normal animal or Intellectual Animal depending on his appearances) and Gideon is a light brown, mute, Funny Animal cat. If Figaro were an adult cat, would he be a Funny Animal like Gideon or Ortensia, a Civilized Animal like Fat Cat, an Animal Talk type Talking Animal with Civilized Animal moments like The Aristocats, a Talking Animal like The Cheshire Cat, an Animal Talk type Talking Animal like Mittens or Si and Am, an Intellectual Animal like Lucifer from Cinderella or a normal animal like Fluffy from Handy Manny?
  • Jiminy Cricket is a cricket, but he looks half like a rabbit (he looks like he has a nose just like a real rabbit) and half like a human (but without the ears of either or the tail of the former).
    • He was originally supposed to look more like a real cricket.
    • Maybe he hated his original appearance, and asked the Blue Fairy for help.
  • Wait a minute... Why can't the Blue Fairy help all those kids who were donkeyfied?
    • They never wished upon a star.
    • They didn't have a conscience.
  • How can Monstro be sleeping at the bottom of the ocean? He's a mammal! Even as a kid that confused me. (For some reason, Jiminy's Super Not-Drowning Skills didn't, though.)
    • He was just resting after a gulp of air (and presumably, a good meal).
  • In the novel, Stromboli was moved by Pinocchio's tears and pulled a Heel Face Turn. Why didn't Disney allow him to do the same in the movie? It would have demonstrate that not every bad guys are unredeemable!
  • This was brought up in a tongue-in-cheek article on io9, but what exactly is the business plan with Pleasure Island? You give kids candy and cigars and all these other temptations, and they turn into donkeys you put to work in a mine. But there are already donkeys that you can buy pretty cheap. And real donkeys are probably better behaved than little boys who were transformed because of their lack of discipline.
    • Judging by the amount of donkeys we see, and boys on the island, they make profit through the sheer amount of donkeys they sell.
    • It's entirely possible that the Coachman isn't even really human, but is instead a demon disguising itself as human. And assuming that's the case, would it be at all reasonable to assume he'd be interested in something as material and easily-lost as monetary wealth when he could get an endless emotional high out of causing misery and pain to young boys just for the pure dick factor? That's right. The Coachman is probably a demon who is psychologically tormenting boys and turning them into donkeys just to be an ass, and any money he could possibly be making is entirely just for show.
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