Question: If Meatloaf is shot in the head, how would they get him back to the house and why would they bother? Did the security guard just leave after he shot him?
Question: What exactly is the significance of the narrator calling all the addresses that are in the information folders from his house after Tyler leaves? Was he trying to warn them of an impending danger?
Answer: After he realized Tyler's true nature at the hotel, Tyler made many phone calls. Jack called the same phone numbers and realized that they corresponded to the buildings mentioned on the Project Mayhem folders. He had to confirm this, so he called a couple different buildings. He tried to tell the building operators that something was up, but they're already assisting Project Mayhem and could not be dissuaded. In desperation Jack went to the police...
Question: What is the meaning of the penguin and Marla saying 'Sly' in the cave?
Answer: The penguin says "slide" and then slides on its belly. Marla repeats it later. I believe they are telling him to let go and be Tyler.
Answer: Penguin is a manifestation of the "happy place" in his head. He seeks comfort in others grieving and this is what is helping him feel again. As someone else stated "slide" is the statement that is uttered. Marla is invading his grieving time and this is a manifestation of it. He can't even get away from her in his meditation, so he ends up leaving it altogether.
Question: When Jack is beating himself up in front his boss, what's going on? I get that he is reminded of his fight with Tyler because he's beating himself up, like when he 'fought' Tyler, but I don't understand why? Is Tyler controlling him in order to get the Flight coupons etc. so Fight Club can grow, or is Jack trying to frame his boss?
Answer: Your second guess is correct - the Narrator (his name is never stated in the film itself - although promotional material refers to him as "Jack", the closed captioning calls him "Rupert") is framing his boss so that he can leave work and still get paid, get the flight coupons and so on.
Question: At the end of the movie, just before the casting comes up, there is a flash and they show something for fraction of a second. What is it ?
Answer: It's a picture of a penis. It reflects how Tyler used to slice in frames of "adult" material into children's movies, to give people a little shock without them really knowing what it was had happened.
Question: Why does the narrator say, 'Tyler, listen closely, my eyes are open' just before he shoots himself?
Answer: Tyler says that he was created because there were issues in Jack's life that Jack could not resolve. Revealing that Jack was capable of everything Tyler did, Jack realized that he didn't need Tyler at all anymore. He assimilated Tyler's teachings and knew that he was strong enough to stand and figure his way through life on his own. Therefore, he symbolically eliminated the Tyler personality.
Question: At the end of Fight Club, when Edward Norton shoots himself in the mouth, how does it kill Tyler Durden and not Edward?
Answer: Edward Norten actually fully intended to kill himself, failing only accidentally. But the definite desire to kill himself/Tyler resulted in the "death" of Tyler.
Question: What did Edward Norton mean when he said "My eyes are open" before he shot himself?
Chosen answer: He had been living in a deeply schizophrenic world, living two lives, but not remembering one of them. When he realised that he was actually TWO people, he realised that he could kill them both with one shot. So, his eyes were finally opened to the truth. As it happened, he didn't actually kill himself, but the dark side accepted that he had.
Question: Near the beginning of the film when Edward Norton and Meatloaf are hugging Edward's character says something along the lines of "things like this make me grow a big rubbery one". What does he mean by this, exactly?
Answer: Sharing of feelings and hugs and crying are the antithesis of arousal. While something erotic or bad-ass might cause him to have an erection, this scene causes the opposite: a rubbery one would be a flaccid, unexcited penis, flopping around like rubber (not stiff). A mood killer.
Question: What does the Environmental Protection Agency billboard say before they paint it black?
Question: In the very first scene in the movie, Brat Pitt says something like, "Any last words?", to which Ed answers, "I can't think of anything". At the end of the movie, you see that scene again, but this time Ed answers, "I still can't think of anything". Why is this? Weren't the scenes supposed to be exactly the same?
Question: What is the significance of the penguin as Ed Norton's "power animal"?
Answer: If you listen to the commentary the producer explains that the whole ice cave scene is himself reminiscing about some childrens' book series.
This is simply wrong. What the answer may be referring to is the director's instructions to make the penguin move like the ones in Mary Poppins.
Answer: Author Chuck Palanuik (who wrote the book) stated that he did a similar meditation practice where he was supposed to picture a "power animal," and a penguin popped into his head and told him to "slide." People have theorized that a cute, innocent animal telling him to "slide" in a childlike voice was meant to symbolize the narrator's (and presumably Palanuik's if his story is true) need to let go and relax and not let things get him down so much. (Represented by the penguin gleefully sliding away giggling like a child with not a care in the world).
Answer: Very good question. I was wondering that myself. Here is how I see it, and maybe I am not really right. But the one word used by his power animal was 'Slide'. It was repeated again when Marla Singer 'invaded' his conscious and unconscious manifestations as we find her in the cave. The movie is all about ripping him from ideological assumptions of the things Tyler wants his to see doesn't really matter in life. So here is the line of the movie: The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide."Here the word slide again.
Question: In the scene after everybody gets their "homework assignments", what are they doing in the video store?
Chosen answer: They are using an electromagnet to erase VHS tapes.
Question: When the Ed Norton character is searching for Tyler Durden in the multiple cities, he runs into a man in a bar who has had facial surgery and tells Ed that he had been in that bar last week. I know that Tyler supposedly had facial surgery every three years, but who is the guy in the bar and what is the significance behind him?
Answer: First, the idea of Tyler having facial surgery every three years was just one of many (untrue) rumors - fight club hadn't even been around three years. And I assume you mean the bartender because he is the only one who says that Ed Norton was there last week - he was just talking about how "Tyler" had started up a fight club in his bar last week, spreading his army across the country - and he hadn't had facial surgery, it was just busted up from fighting.
Question: In the scene in the car just before the car crash, we see Tyler driving and the Narrator in the front passenger seat. Since we know that they are the same person, we know that the Narrator must be driving, with no-one in the passenger seat. However, during the conversation between the two of them, the crew members in the back seat seem to be reacting to the questions that the Narrator is asking Tyler by repeating "The first rule of...", and the Narrator keeps telling them to shut up, which they do. If the crew members only see the Narrator driving, with nobody in the passenger seat, how is it that they are taking part in a conversation that is not even happening, except for in the Narrator's mind?
Answer: The Narrator when talking to Tyler in the film is obviously talking to himself out loud, so the crew members would know that because he talks to himself that if they are asked a question they must answer. Also the conversations he has could not be in his mind as they would not answer his questions unless he said it out loud. The image of Tyler is in his mind, but the conversations are real. Like a schizophrenic talking to himself.
Question: How does Tyler know where Marla lives to save her from killing herself, if both Tyler and Edward Norton have never been to her apartment?
Chosen answer: She had to have told Tyler after he picked up the phone. After all, she wasn't surprised when he showed up.
Question: Why did Edward Norton beat Jared Leto so brutally?
Chosen answer: A simple question with a complex answer. When Ed Norton's narrator character mercilessly beats Jared Leto's Angel Face to a pulp in the film, Norton only explains that he "wanted to destroy something beautiful"; in the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, however, he gives a more psychotic reason: "What Tyler says about being the crap and slaves of history, that's how I felt. I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I'd never have. Burn the Amazon rain forests. Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone. Open the dump valves on supertankers and uncap offshore oil wells. I wanted to kill all the fish I couldn't afford to eat, and smother the French beaches I'd never see. I wanted the whole world to hit bottom. Pounding that kid, I really wanted to put a bullet between the eyes of every endangered panda that wouldn't screw to save its species and every whale and dolphin that gave up and ran itself aground. Don't think of it as extinction. Think of it as downsizing. For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every drop of used motor oil. And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born. I held the face of Mister Angel like a baby or a football in the crook of my arm and bashed him with my knuckles, bashed him until his teeth broke through his lips. Bashed him with my elbow after that until he fell through my arms into a heap at my feet. Until the skin was pounded thin across his cheekbones and turned black. I wanted to breathe smoke. Birds and deer are a silly luxury, and all the fish should be floating. I wanted to burn the Louvre. I'd do the Elgin Marbles with a sledgehammer and wipe my ass with the Mona Lisa. This is my world, now. This is my world, my world, and those ancient people are dead." - Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.
Answer: The simpler answer is: from the Narrator's point of view Tyler appeared to favoring Leto, since the Narrator hadn't come to terms with the split personality yet he obviously felt deep seated jealousy. It says right in the scene beforehand that "I am Jack's inflamed sense of rejection."
Question: How did the other members of "project mayhem" distinguish Tyler Durden from the "normal" protagonist? Because they were stopping him from sneaking around on those files about the credit card buildings on the wall (that means they could somehow tell it wasn't Tyler), but the bartender couldn't and asked if it was a test... Was is just the way he presented himself (confident, superior) or did he also told them (when he was Tyler) to be aware of him changing his character from time to time?
Answer: Tyler apparently warned members of Project Mayhem that he would change his demeanor/opinions/decisions in order to test their loyalty (Tyler did this to cover the fact that Jack had a deeply-psychotic split personality). So, when Project Mayhem members noticed him behaving oddly (as Jack), they immediately assumed that Tyler was testing them, and they would refuse to obey Jack.
Question: Why do all the members of Project Mayhem chant Bob's name after "Jack" says he has a name?
Chosen answer: Because they interpret what he's saying as Bob being elevated to a place of honor. Since none of them have names and now Bob has one, he must be special.
Answer: Most likely they either went back afterwards or chased the security guard off somehow. It's also possible with all their inside connections that they stole the body from police custody.
Greg Dwyer