What if he had killed Ned or actually raped Nancy in the belief that he wouldn’t have to live with the consequences?
You know I don’t think I’ve ever had deja vu before.
We heard you the first time.
I have my own question about this movie. On the first day, he takes his time getting up, goes downstairs and has breakfast and talks to the innkeepers, and then goes outside and runs into Ned. On the second day, he runs straight outside and runs into Ned again at the exact same place…is this a big plot hole, or was Ned standing on that street for 20 minutes?
I think it’s actually the third day when he’s rushing around. On the second day, he’s befuddled and irritated, but is still going though the day’s events the same way, more or less, as he did on the first day.
But to answer your question — yes, I think the writers made a little mistake here. When Phil is rushing around on the morning of the third day, he shouldn’t encounter the fat guy at the same place on the stairs (or even encounter him at all), and similarly he shouldn’t encounter Ned in the town square in the same place (or at all).
Another nitpick: he wakes up at 6:00 and it’s light outside! It’s always pitch dark at that hour on February 2.
A wizard did it.
What if he had? He did lots of things because he was pretty certain he wouldn’t have to live with the consequences. Like getting thrown in jail for example.
Well, he wouldn’t have turned out to be a saint, as the previous poster suggested. And since his release from the cycle seemed to depend on his finding love and redemption, could he have ever found either after such acts, and thus would he have ever gotten out?
Has anyone ever read a back story or behind-the-scenes story that says how many times Bill’s character was to have relived Groundhog’s Day? (Yes, I know that the movie doesn’t say.)
I read the original script in some magazine some time ago…there were scenes in it in which he measured his days by going to the public library, starting at the very first shelf, and reading one page a day. Throughout the movie there would be glimpses of him standing in the shelves reading a page, moving further along the shelves, and by the end of the movie, he was near the back of the library.
The implication of that is far, far more than 10,000 years, though.
That’s 7,300 500-page books. Perhaps it’s a small library. 
Is that all?
There’s a scene where he repeatedly gets his face slapped, each one on a different day. Are those included in the 34?
I think he went through all the books in the hotel, not the public library.
I realize I’m overthinking it way too much, but it occurred to me (after the first few times watching it), that Phil’s body restarts itself the way it was almost identically to the way it was on the first February 2.
Almost.
While he can’t hurt himself, kill himself, age, etc. – he retains the memories from all prior days. I’m no brain expert, but that’s got to mean that something is different with his brain structure. Neural activity, patterns, whatever. I’m also pretty sure that whatever the brain’s capacity for information storage is, it isn’t infinite.
No one’s ever lived 10,000 years, so it’s not clear what would happen to his memory, but it’s entirely possible he would have forgotten everything about the 40-odd years prior to his 10,000 year exile. Including why he was there, what a groundhog was, and even the fact that what was happening to him wasn’t completely normal. When he finally got out of the loop his first thought should have been WHAT THE CRAP IS HAPPENING TO ME?
Not to mention every repetition of that particular sequence of events (his “perfect date”). First he has to finesse every detail of the day (he even learns French, for Og’s sake!), to get to the point where the date is perfect. It’s only after that that he gets his face slapped during about a year.
I could have sworn that we’ve discussed this before.