Another Battlestar question: what took that chunk out of Caprica’s moon? (Visible IIRC for about 5 seconds at the beginning of the miniseries and then never mentioned again. Still drives me nuts. I kept hoping Caprica would address it, but … oh well.)
Seeing HIMYM referenced makes me believe that extant shows are fair game, so here goes: On The Big Bang Theory, what is Penny’s last name?
Also, on Malcolm in the Middle, what is Malcolm’s last name?
On the REAL Battlestar Galactica (with toaster Cylons), the Cylons’ ultimate goal (as I understood it) was the extermination of ALL organic lifeforms in the universe. What made Baltar think they planned to make an exception for him?
More importantly* than why Mr. Ed could talk, why was Wilbur Post so easily manipulated into doing whatever Ed asked of him?
*more puzzling, anyway.
“God did it.”
Dylan didn’t write that song, he channeled the music of the universe and some mystical link to the past by giving us a modern incarnation.
Or “God did it.”
What happened to the Russian guy was, he went up a tree and stayed there until Paulie and Christopher left. Done. The camera angle made that pretty clear. Now if you’re asking, why was there never any fallout from P&C not whacking him like they were supposed to, I don’t think that was the purpose of the episode. The focus was on P&C not getting along, not knowing what to do in an unfamiliar environment, and having to admit to Tony that they failed.
Mad Men has another non-mystery that grinds my gears to hear people ask about it. "When is the other shoe going to drop with Peggy’s baby?" And the answer is, it has dropped. Granted, Weiner spent a lot of time misdirecting the audience, but we got an answer in the season 2 finale. She put him up for adoption. A closed adoption. Which means he is not going to “turn up” like some people anticipate. Besides the fact that he’ll only be 8 years old when the series ends, a closed adoption means he’ll never know who his birth mother is. He is not going to go looking for Peggy, and that’s assuming he even knows he’s adopted. Closed adoption also means Peggy wouldn’t be able to find him if she wanted to. So it’s done. No other shoe. When people ask that, I like to say “He’ll turn up the same time the Russian guy from the Sopranos does.”
That crazy God, always doing inexplicable things!
From Game of Thrones: Where the hell is Nymeria? And what’s the deal with the wacky seasons? How does that work, exactly?
Cheers series finale: Who were that last phone call, which Sam didn’t pick up, and that last patron, whom Sam turned away, saying that the bar is closed?
In Lost, who was in the outrigger canoe firing at Sawyer? It was during the season when they were jumping through time so it was probably someone from the future but they never revealed who or what.
Their planet must spin in an odd way. Either that or a wizard did it.
I don’t know about the phone call, but, IIRC, the last patron was played by one of the show’s producers.
Didn’t you watch the finale? It’s FEEDBACK SQUEAL.
Actually, two different names have been used. In the pilot, Malcom’s father has a name badge with the last name “Wilkerson” (there was a bit of dialogue that was cut, along the lines of:
“What’s your last name?”
(Malcom) “Wilkerson.”
“Oh. Then, who are the Pariahs?”)
However, in the finale, Frances’s work badge has the last name of, wait for it, “Nolastname”.
Probably the same thing that happened to Betty Jo’s second pregnancy announced in the next-to-last season finale of Petticoat Junction.
The same thing that happened to the youngest daughter on Family Matters.
Here are some more:
The Partridge Family - how did Chris go from brunette to blonde without anybody noticing?
King of the Hill - while “nobody ages” applies to pretty much every cartoon series, this is different; how did Luanne age from 18 to 21 while Bobby (and Connie, so don’t say “Bobby kept being left back in school”) never get any older?
Fame - why didn’t Danny (the comedian) graduate with the rest of his class? He was there for five years.
Chuck Cunningham is the most famous example of a character just disappearing, but there’s one that I find more disturbing: Judy Winslow on Family Matters. It’s one thing for an adult offspring (like Chuck) to disappear and have little contact with his family, but Judy was a minor–presumably she couldn’t live on her own, and the Winslows had no reason to surrender her for adoption. So what are we supposed to believe happened to her?
The backstory of the title character on Ghostwriter. Apparently, funding for the series was cut before the writers were able to delve really deeply into it.
[Edit: Judy Winslow was mentioned just as I was posting this.]
The whole John Doe plot. The whole Pretender plot. And so forth. In other words I am now not watching any new “mystery shows” until the producers have shown that the BIG FINAL dénouement is sealed in a mayonnaise jar left on Funk & Wagnall’s porch.
Star Trek: The Next Generation - the s.1 bug-like things that crawled into people’s mouths and then mind-controlled them. After killing off the small infestation that infiltrated Starfleet, it’s said at the end of the episode that they were sending a homing beacon signal out to some distant point in the Delta Quadrant. Everyone looks gravely and somber and there’s the “Dun-Dun-DAH!!!” incidental music to indicate that more will be coming! But none of them ever came to my knowledge.
Lost: Why was the song “La Mer” (“Beyond the Sea”) significant? It was a big Oh Wow mystery in Season 2.
Was it? I don’t remember it being anything other than the writings of Rousseau as she slowly went insane. Sayid thought it was important, and then Shannon revealed it was just a song.
I recall (and my memory is admittedly getting hazy on things related to Lost) that at the time, the song came up in unexpected, unrelated multiple contexts. Weird coincidence, unexplained mystery stuff, like The Numbers.
GoT spoilers:
A couple of characters make references later to a giant she-wolf leading a pack of wolves and attacking primarily Lannisters. I think we’re supposed to assume that is Nymeria, and if Arya ever makes it back to Westeros, they may reunite.
What is the Janitor’s real name?
Glenn Matthews
This was confirmed by Bill Lawrence.
How can the answer be anything other than “Heaven” and “through the intervention of Athena (or, as the vulgar call her, God”)", respectively? I understand why you don’t LIKE the resolution of the series – I don’t either – but the whole set of mysteries is pretty nakedly divine design/intervention.
We don’t know. But in the Russian version, Ted is seen naked on stage holding the pineapple to hide his privates.
She was an angel, it came from heaven.
A major theme of the series is that similar things keep happening, history repeats themes and forms. It’s just the nature of reality in the series. Same reason they speak English, have Greek gods, similar vehicles, etc.
Lily saved it from a butcher. It attacked Ted on his birthday.
Peanut butter
No one else seems to have noticed. Maybe it was just a shadow. The moon is probably Gemenon.
The people the writers originally intended it to be, they had mostly killed off by the time they got back to addressing so they dropped the matter, but they decided to change it to a shore boat from The Black Rock for a DVD Easter egg.
Never addressed on the show, but in the novels they turn out to be an offshoot of the Trill.
It was just a clue that there was a French woman involved.
That was originally supposed to be foreshadowing for the Borg, who were originally intended to be insectile. But they found they couldn’t make non-stupid-looking insectile baddies, so they went with the cyborg Borg we all know, and the mysterious signal just ended up as an unresolved plot point.