Jumanji/Headscratchers

• If Alan's father was the guest of honor at an event at the time Alan was sucked into the board game, how could people think he was the killer? Surely that was a pretty good alibi.
  • It was all just twisted rumours and confusion about how a young boy could vanish so completely off the face of the earth, all shifting and changing over the years. Lots of people didn't think anything of the sort, like the old man living in the shoe factory. Doubtless there were dozens of explanations for Alan's disappearance. Alan's father didn't seem to lose his standing... he just lost interest in the company and only paid attention to finding his son, so it went out of business.
• After beating the game, why didn't Alan and Sarah, to say nothing about the brothers in the beginning, think of destroying the game by, say, burning the damn thing to make sure nobody ever finds it? The game was sunken with rocks, and it gets discovered by some girls in France!
  • First of all, it's magical. Best assumption is that it can no more be destroyed than the Lament Configuration. Secondly, the game rewinds time back to the beginning of the game every time people win. It's probable people have tried to destroy it before, but ended up starting a new game. Or players might try burning it, only to find it won't burn.
• When Alan wins and everything is sucked back into the board, why is the bullet (and by extension, the rifle) sucked back into the game? I mean, van Pelt bought the rifle in the "real world"; why would a gun originally from our world by transported back to Jumanji? The whole "because van Pelt was holding it" thing seems like a pretty weak excuse...
  • It probably sucks him and all of his possessions back. So since he considers the rifle and bullet his, they go back with him.
  • Actually, the game resets 26 years of history. Everything that had happened in Bradford for 26 years, including the obvious economic collapse never occurred. The rifle was a part of that future, a future that was being annihilated and was taken along with everything else.
• Did Van Pelt's elephant gun get sucked into the game, or just the one he was using at the end? Well, aside from being in the Reset Button time, of course.
  • The game seems to rewind everything that happened in the game. I expect his elephant gun was returned when time was rewound. As for the sniper rifle, it wouldn't have many supplies for bullets in 1900s Jumanji.
• If a player was killed during gameplay, would the game just keep going forever, or would that one piece just be disqualified? I know in Zathura, which is written by the same guy, the board game got stuck after one of the players died. Does it work the same way in Jumanji?
  • Judy is killed during the game. The game goes on. Admittedly it never gets back to what would be her turn, but given its obvious lethality, if killing players off would make the game unplayable then it'd never have gotten to Alan in the first place.
    • Judy isn't shown to die - but she is shown delirious and close to death. The game ends just before she needs to roll, so we don't see if she's dead, or if she's needed should she be dead. Part of the point of Jumanji is that you MUST finish the game and you must work together. It's only about half a dozen turns, but every one of them is potentially deadly. After all, if you weren't needed to play, only one person would need to be alive at the end, since all else would rewind.
    • She 'is' shown to die - Peter lays her lifeless body down in her brief final shot.
• Why didn't they load up on weapons before rolling the dice? They had all the time in the world at some points. Also, why not seek outside help? I could understand that trying to explain to the cops that the board game is evil would end badly, but why not walk onto a military base or police station, etc. and THEN roll the dice? You have to admit, having Van Pelt pop out of the game only to end up with several guns pointed at him (and subsequently being arrested) would be pretty hilarious.
  • Van Pelt had a sword impaled into him, and he just yanked it out and healed over. Most likely, he wouldn't yield to the guns pointed at him and either a) kill Alan, b) escape.
    • The sword was embedded in the column next to Van Pelt; if he was hit at all, it was only a graze.
  • They also didn't have all the time in the world; they wanted to finish the game before Aunt Nora came home and found out there was a lion in her bedroom (the same roll that freed Alan from the game).
  • The subjects of the rolls typically don't just materialize in the room the players are in. They sneak up on you. It adds to the tension of the game, not knowing where the creatures or whatever will appear. Van Pelt's first shot was from outside the room and Alan was noticeably on edge and preparing to flee the moment he realized what was coming. Furthermore, going to the police or military and playing could cause significant collateral damage that would make the situation worse, or risk the game being confiscated by police before completion.
  • Also, the kids could be Genre Savvy, realizing that no one would believe them if they did say anything, and that they probably wouldn't get the chance to offer proof.
    • Sara actually tries this, but is not believed and ends up in chronic therapy.
• In the beginning, how did the game sit under the couch unnoticed by Alan's parents for several hours? There was at least say, 10 inches from the floor to the bottom of the couch!
  • They have a big house and it's very easy to overlook something you're not looking for, especially if you have other things on your mind or things to do. His dad was working and had the banquet on his mind when he returned.
• Carl Bentley made a prototype sneaker, why did he only make one shoe? Surely it would've made a better impression with a pair of sneakers, and he wouldn't have been without his shoe to present.
  • Maybe he did make two, but only showed one to Alan. After he was fired, it could have been hard for him to pitch his idea to anyone.
  • And it wouldn't matter if he did have another prototype. He was fired because Mr. Parish thought he left a shoe on a conveyor belt and it got caught up in a machine. Not only is that a very dangerous accident, it sounded like it severely damaged the machine when it went through.
  • For the record, after briefly looking around in vain for the first shoe, he turns back toward the box he took it from, but is interrupted by the accident. Apparently, he was going to get out the second shoe.
• If it was such a big deal that all Parish boys go to the same boarding school generation after generation, why did Alan's parents waited with telling him about that until few days before sending him there? Wouldn't it be a lot easier if he grew up knowing it from his earliest days, so going to this school would just seem perfectly natural to him?
  • They probably thought it would be an awesome treat for him to find out as a surprise. Parents can be dumb like that sometimes.
  • Or Alan's mother actually didn't want him to go and had previously put her foot down about ending said tradition, but when Alan got in trouble his father put his own foot down and said "The boy needs the discipline!"
• This is probably the question we asked ourselves twohundred times, but why Van Pelt is so obsessed to catch Alan. Is he bound to the rules of the game to hunt the one who rolled the dice (it's also mentioned by him) or maybe there were some conflict between him and Alan when he was still in the jungle ?
  • Van Pelt actually states it outright that this is the case. "You didn't roll the dice, Alan did!"
• So, what exactly was that huge freakin' rifle that Van Pelt upgrades to? I can't really tell the model, just that it appears to be loaded to the brim with Gun Accessories like a decidedly non-standard looking drum magazine and an over-sized scope.
  • According to the Internet Movie Firearms Database it's a Daewoo USAS-12 automatic shotgun (which come with drum magazines) and then given a scope and silencer to make it look like a sniper rifle. Similarly, his original gun is not actually an elephant gun but a Winchester 1901 with added scope, faked box magazine and barrel shroud to make it look like an elephant gun.
• OK, the quicksand bit. When Alan is sinking into the floor, and Judy takes her next turn, it causes the quicksand to "harden," for lack of a better term. What would have happened had she waited a few seconds longer. Would he have simply fell to the floor below, or would he have disappeared all together? We see him hanging by his armpits in the ceiling.
  • I think that is a pretty clear indication that he would have fallen through. The ceiling was pretty high, though, so falling through isn't exactly no big deal.