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[RedKing]

Turns out Santa Claus is just a holding company based in the Caymans. The elves and North Pole stuff is just for PR.

[Neonivek]

Yeah, something like that, giving parents false memories that they actually went shopping for their kids. The awful implication tho would be that parents are horrible because they never buy the presents themselves, and then who are all those people crowding the malls during the holidays? It could be all robot decoys and in the end everything is a massive conspiracy.

Well does he take the money out of their account too?

[Sergius]

With cyberpunk hacker elves of course!

[Dutrius]

Whilst on the topic of Santa, here's something my head of 6th form sent our school last Christmas:

Spoiler: quite long (click to show/hide)

In a strangely paradoxical piece of news, Father Christmas has been fired for telling children that Father Christmas doesn't exist.
 
It seems a bit harsh to fire an elderly man just for having an existential crisis. Do I exist? Do you? Is the external world real, or merely an illusion brought on by too many sherries? Is sherry itself an illusion?
 
But the truth about Father Christmas is far stranger, far more incredible, than a mere ontological problem. I happened to do some hard-hitting investigative work, a few years ago, into the life of Saint Nick, and learned a few facts about his difficult Christmas Eve. (Note: if your children are reading this, while I can reassure them that Father Christmas is of course real, you might want them to stop reading just before the end.)
 
For a start, he works harder than most. Assuming that he visits the homes of all the Christian children worldwide, that each household has three children, and that those households are evenly distributed around a 2D Earth's surface, Big Poppa C will have to travel a total of 212,030,000 miles*. Since he has 32 hours to do it (travelling east-to-west with the Sun, and assuming children sleep eight hours a night, he's got 24 hours plus eight), that works out as a nippy 1,800 miles per second, near enough. That is, for comparison, about 41 times faster than the Helios 2 space probe, the fastest man-made object ever, and we're not even taking into account toilet breaks. He will be a tired, confused man by the end of that. Who can blame him if he doesn't know whether he's real anymore?
 
And it's not as if that's all the poor chap has gone through. Every household, in a spirit of misguided kindness, will leave him a mince pie and a glass of sherry. His calorific intake is bad enough – I worked it out as more than 71 million calories, assuming Co-Op Own Brand mince pies and standard sherry, which would require a 450 million mile walk on Christmas day to burn off. But he'll also consume a not unimpressive 233,000,000 units of alcohol, putting him more than 58 million times the Department of Health's legal driving limits. Not only will he be he extremely drunk by Christmas morning, he'll probably be quite worried about losing his sleigh licence.
 
His financial woes are presumably getting to him as well this year. When I first looked into it, he had spent £30,093,000,000 on 700 million brand new Optimus Primes, which in 2009 was what all the kids wanted. (He couldn't get his elves to make them, obviously, because otherwise Mattel would sue the red fur-lined pants off him.) But this year it's all about the Wii-U, I gather, which at £250 a crack pushes his outlay up to £175 billion. It's more than the GDP of Qatar. In these financially straitened times, that will surely sink the fragile Arctic economy. It's also twice as heavy: 3.41lb per Wii-U, instead of 1.45lb for Optimus, so a grand total of 1,193,500 tons of presents. Not only will that strain his back loading the sled, he'll have to hire more reindeer as well: each is capable of pulling about 330lb, so he'll need about seven million – four million more than he used in 2009, each of which he'll have to train to fly at nearly one per cent of light speed. It's a stressful process. No wonder he drinks.
 
The whole thing will weigh about 3.3 million tons, assuming sled and Santa are weightless. (In fact, the mass of the whole reindeer-sled-presents-Santa system will be around 1.0000467 times that, as it gains weight through the workings of relativity, but let's not get pedantic.) The energy required to get that amount of mass up to the hypersonic speeds required would require about 1,400 trillion gigajoules of energy, or 388,888 terawatt hours, assuming they're travelling in a vacuum (it would make sense to be travelling in space, to avoid atmospheric drag). For comparison, the total worldwide fossil, renewable and nuclear energy use in 2008 was about 143,000 terawatt hours.
 
I was considering working out what the carbon footprint of seven million reindeer passing wind would be, but there's really no need. According to this space-object impact calculator I found online**, within milliseconds of the sled re-entering the atmosphere to deliver its first present, it would explode in a nuclear fireball the equivalent of three million tons of TNT, and would knock down major buildings and give people third-degree burns 60 miles away. Any reindeer flatus that may or may not have built up is not going to significantly affect the environmental damage caused by what will probably amount to a fairly major global extinction event.
 
No wonder, then, Father Christmas is having a tough time at the moment. He's facing the very real possibility of being blown to plasma in a few short hours' time. Really, the last thing he needs is to lose his job as well.
 
*This was back in 2009, obviously, and I've just realised I haven't updated the figures for the extra children in the world now. It was around 2 billion then; I think I saw an estimate of 2.2 billion for 2012. If you can face going through all the working for me, I'll update it. Probably.
 
**I've assumed, on no real factual basis, that reindeer and Wii-Us have roughly the same density as ice and the whole thing would hit the atmosphere at 45 degrees. Also, it's a spherical sleigh. Look, I'm doing what I can here.
 
Merry Christmas

[Akura]

Not quite ruined it, but...

Spoiler: At the end of the first Toy Story (click to show/hide)

Buzz separates himself and Woody from the rocket by opening his wings. If Buzz's wings were sharp enough/shot out with force enough to cut through several layers of electrical tape(at least I think that was the kind of tape used), shouldn't the Buzz Lightyear toys be recalled? Some kid's gonna lose a finger to that.

[LordBaal]

That do not ruin the movie. It just made it more the awesome with the expectation of children with severed fingers!

[Urist McScoopbeard]

The lack of continuity between all four Mad Max movies, I REALLY WANT THERE TO BEA VERY ENGROSSING STORY BEHIND MAX, but it really just isn't there. The world is great and so are all the characters, but there's no really timeline or map. I guess in some sense that's what helps create the feeling, but I just want there to be MORE to fanboy over.

[Starver]

The lack of continuity between all four Mad Max movies, I REALLY WANT THERE TO BEA VERY ENGROSSING STORY BEHIND MAX, but it really just isn't there. The world is great and so are all the characters, but there's no really timeline or map. I guess in some sense that's what helps create the feeling, but I just want there to be MORE to fanboy over.

The continuity between the first Mad Max (the one that has a sort of recognisable civilisation, albeit gone rotten after an unspecified global disaster) and the second (the one where either civilisation has gotten somewhat worse or he's moved even further away from the last vestiges of law and order) is pretty much all there if you want to see it.  There's been a tipping-point and Max is forced to tip over with it, losing his anchors to the old 'real world' (his family) along the way.

Around my way, #2 (The Road Warrior) is the Max Max film, if you don't specify the numeric or subtitle element, of course, and it can be viewed as self-contained.  Things are terribly, terribly wrong (at least in this particular part of the world, but then one must assume all over the place; at least enough so that nobody cares about the automotive carnage going on in these wastes) and you've got people trying to drag the world up, others trying to drag it down and this guy who is not so altruistic as the former, but he's certainly not so nihilistic as the latter.  If you'd never seen #1, where he was an actual highway patrol officer who lost everything he loved, you might wonder as to why, but it doesn't hurt or hinder things.

#3 (Thunderdome) sort of carries on, in a 'not as good a sequel' way.  It's no Highlander 2 (a.k.a. the one they completely ignore when developing Highlander 3, the TV series, etc) but it always seemed to be a sequel-for-sequel's sake, to me, in the typical '80s manner of jumping on (if not downright jump-starting) a bandwagon.  But it still, at its core, has the same mentality.  There's attempts at civilisation (separate from the Petroleum People's efforts, presumably successful if the end-narration of #2 is to be believed) at Bartertown, and the Oasis kids and at least one other 'unaligned good-to-neutral party' (the gyrocaptain, and his kid) surviving, and if it weren't for politics and other practicalities it's quite possible that Bartertown would be a virtual nirvana, compared to what's around.

#4 (Fury Road), just released, certainly is disjointed to canon, but then you can probably argue where it differs it's more a reboot than direct sequel to its 30yo predecessor.

We know from #3's closing narration that the Oasis Kids made themselves a colony, too, certainly lasting beyond the timeline for #4, and presumably whatever happened to Bartertown, Max hasn't stuck around in the same area because despite Auntie's eventual mercy he's probably not very welcome.  So it's not surprising he finds himself in a new dystopian territory where there's been a fusion between the ethics and cult-of-personality of the Humungous gang from #2 with the principles of establishing a (now multi-noded) barter society from #3.  (It seems perfectly attuned to the creation of a trade and combat and exploration computer game, with a massive 'sandbox' environment to roam around in.  Reminds me a lot of the web-game Minethings and the flash-game Caravaneer and could probably use a GTA3-like game-engine on ... or GTA4, but I'm a bit out of date with that game series.)

Anyway, for the engrossing story behind Max, look no further than film #1.  Then take the 2015 maybe-reboot with a small pinch of salt.  Although I do like a number of the touches to it (underspeed camera/overspeed projection thing) that links it with the original(s), there's a lot of "awesome but impractical" to the whole local geopolitical system it depicts, as I recall.  Still, as almost pure petrolpunk-porn, I'd say it works.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I enjoy all of them except Thunderdome (which I still don't think is bad), but really Fury Road is a reboot of Road Warrior with some of the original mixed in. I really like the original Mad Max, but they do so little to continue what they start in that film. First of all the MFP has a cast of wonky characters that i'd love to see in the wastes that just vanish, and the world ending isn't really explained other than that it's nuclear and that governments totally suck. Secondly, i'm just not sure what Max is after anymore. The first film he's got it all, loses it, and kind of avenges himself. In the second, he's lost it all and is just surviving. Same for the third and fourth and each time he appears to reach some sort of catharsis he just goes back to being depressed. Like, he's a hero, but no one knows who he is. At least the theme of The Hero/The Road Warrior is repeated through each film. Even then, though what does he change? Nothing really. I'm always surprised at how the formula engrosses me, but I know that there's SOMETHING behind Max, and I just can't figure it out. Is he The Road Warrior? or is he just some poor sap out to survive a fate worse than death? Is he a Batman figure, in that the world will always need a Road Warrior? Or is he a just trying to make his way?

I like his lonesomeness, but I want to see how he got to this point. What's there is a good action story, but I feel like the journey to get to where he is in Fury Road is just as interesting.

[Fniff]

The director also had this problem. He decided to interpret the films as being the stories of Mad Max in the mythology of post-apoc Australia. So, the Mad Max in Fury Road might not be the same police officer from the first.

It could be believable that it is the same person who is increasingly distorted by the legend built around him. For one thing, he probably looks much older then Mad Max Fury Road depicts him.

I don't mind there being no story, timeline, or map behind Mad Max. I like a lack of coherence; it builds a great atmosphere and I can fill in the details based off of that.

[PTTG??]

The lack of continuity between all four Mad Max movies, I REALLY WANT THERE TO BEA VERY ENGROSSING STORY BEHIND MAX, but it really just isn't there. The world is great and so are all the characters, but there's no really timeline or map. I guess in some sense that's what helps create the feeling, but I just want there to be MORE to fanboy over.

That's actually not a problem. The basic assumption is that the "apocolypse" happens everywhere at the same time; this need not be true. I think the most reasonable situation is this:

In the mid-'80s, the USSR and USA get into a war in the middle east. It starts out as a proxy war but gradually ramps up to a full-on conventional war. NATO and Friends join in, including Australian forces. Max is born.

The middle eastern war continues to burn for four or five years. Furiosa is born.

Somebody sets fire to the oil wells. The light sweet crude stops flowing, and the global economy collapses. There are too many fires and too little civil order to extinguish them, and the Mjuhadien are determined to maintain the fires idealistically.

Four or five years later, massive oil deposits are discovered under the North Pole. Furiosa currently lives in a "Green Place." Fuel-starved USA and USSR both claim the oil. Neither side is remotely interested in a prolonged conventional conflict which could eat up any profit to be had from extracting the oil. Four years of massive petrochemical fires have increased temperatures substantially and introduced impressive quantities of mutagenic chemicals into the atmosphere. China steps in, claiming that the oil must be split fairly... three ways.

USA moves a fleet into the arctic. Russia puts up an armed satellite. China shoots the satellite down, claims USA did it. Russia demands USA turn over access to arctic oil. China moves a fleet into the arctic. USA attacks the chinese fleet. Russia nukes the battle. USA nukes chinese and russian ports.

Then things get heated.

In the midst of the ramp-up, Furiosa is taken into the desert by a road gang not unlike the ones depicted in later films.

Command and control break down in the northen hemisphere; after decapitating strikes, both sides become, effectively, failed states with armed nuclear bombs. Over the next 10-15 years, bombs go off throughout Eurasia and North America as broken arrows end up in warlord's hands. Max is now in his mid 20 and working as a the highways of Australia, which sat out the initial war and maintained a great deal of structure. Mad Max 1, A New Hope, takes place.

As radiation, fuel shortages, and migrating Northern Hemisphere warlords make their way south, the films record the gradual decay of Australian civilization.

[Starver]

That's actually not a problem. The basic assumption is that the "apocolypse" happens everywhere at the same time; this need not be true. I think the most reasonable situation is this:
<snipping the interesting stuff, I like it...>

I do! I like that.  It's a slightly-less-apocalyptic On The Beach scenario, whether or not that was part of your initial inspiration.  Slower burning, less "utterly doomed anyway" (at least from the radiation, compared to the more obvious possibility of irrevocable/irrecoverable societal breakdown) but obviously with problems.

(And in the start of MM4, there's that mutated lizard.  Never mind the problem that afflicts... Nix?  Nux?  That guy, and probably the rest of them.  Mind you, that could have been wossisname's work, using something handily chemical/radioactive in the whole ritualistic building up of his death-driving 'boy-cult' thing.... perhaps related to whatever injured him, whilst he was still in the army...  hey, I wonder if he fought alongside/against both Lord Humungous and the Petroleum People Leader from MM2... they were supposed to be in the same unit Before The Fall, as I recall, unless that was added fanfic/RPG backstory that was just conjured up out of nowhere by someone else, back in the day...)

[Sergius]

More of a general movie/TV nitpick.

Have you noticed the "plot device" or whatever it's called when someone wants someone taken out, they cut the brakes on their car. This always 100% results in the driver losing control of the car at top speed in a winding road or even dying. It's like, people just take their cars out of their driveways and just hit the gas until they reach maximum death speed. Not a single time they brake the car to turn around a corner, or at a red light, or just generally to keep the speed down: they wait until it's Crashy Time and they're like "OMG the brakes aren't working!".

I'm pretty sure anyone cuts your brakes and the odds are that you're just going to run the first red light you find or just bump into a car in front of you or into a dumpster, than reaching a high speed road in the middle of nowhere.

[Starver]

I'm pretty sure anyone cuts your brakes and the odds are that you're just going to run the first red light you find or just bump into a car in front of you or into a dumpster, than reaching a high speed road in the middle of nowhere.

I think occasionally they explicitly make it a slight puncture (or near-puncture) in the brake-line, or an initially non-severing nick in some vital cable or other.  Thus they start out on their customary high-speed journey along the bendy and precipitous mountain road with nary a suspicion, only for the mechanical defect to become obvious as the stresses in the system empty the pipe of enough liquid or further fray the cable so as to convert the braking system into as much fully-realised uselessness as the plot demands¹.  An then there's the "a dab of acid on the steering column", or similar variants, which suddenly delinks that method of control, and I'm sure I've seen that applied to the braking system too.  When it finally happens it leads either to an unavoidable doom, given the situation (e.g. being pressured by some 'random' road-hog) at the moment it occurs, or to a long enough amount of disorientation that using the perfectly workable brakes isn't the thing the shocked driver immediately does and there's a few more moments of helpless peril (before fiery death or a Hollywood escape).


Or you can rely upon the way the car is being driven.  Something I saw recently involved an accident (staged, as it happens, but with this methodology as what was intended to be detected!) with a sports car being used in an uphill road-trial.  After being brought to the line (pushed by hand, or on-the-clutch?), the car was now always going to be driven overwhelmingly with the accelerator, until a not-so-high-speed bend further up the course where suddenly the brakes were required to safely negotiate the bend and it ended up with the hypercompetent driver being killed.  (Or, rather, that's how it looked.)


Yes, sometimes it's just "the brakes have been cut".  No explanation.  But would the first investigators at the scene, or the lucky near-victim always want to fully qualify their statement with the fact that precision sabotage had rendered the vehicular retardation systems vulnerable to a time-delayed failure mode?  Perhaps that'd be skipped over (unless the method used is a good clue as to did it/is supposed to have done it, as a stepping-stone to the next phase in the drama!), but could still have been valid information to mentioned at some point prior to the conclusion of the subsequent court case/inquest/whatever, should summary justice or revenge not already put paid to the more official outcomes one might expect...


¹ Also, the sabotage is obviously always just obvious enough to be spotted by a designated mechanically-wise individual who does detect it², on examining the crashed or nearly-crashed vehicle, after the fact, otherwise the plot would involve a strange never-unexplained mechanical failure such as hardly actually happens in fiction, where explanations are pretty much always available, at least after enough plot-twists. 

² Whether it's the crime-scene accident investigator (or, occasionally, he/she misses it but the Columbo character happens to spot the anomaly and bring it to attention of the 'expert') or the driver him/herself once they've miraculously survived their fate and now know that they've annoyed someone...

[Sergius]

Damn, Starver, I read all that and all I could understand was "well maybe the brake malfunction wasn't immediate and didn't fail until the critical moment" but the rest just seems like a lot of trope gibberish that makes my eyes glaze over. Or maybe it's just late and I need to go to bed.