Film / They Cloned Tyrone

A hustler, a pimp, and a pro walk into a conspiracy…

"I don't wanna be the drawers that's climbin' up the crack of yo' ass, but listen, there's one important detail that you leavin' out... We ain't no goddamn detectives! Let's cut it out, let's be honest with each other: you's a ho, I'm an entrepreneur - "fuck me" if you want to - and he's a goddamn drug dealer!"

— Slick Charles

They Cloned Tyrone is a 2023 Black Comedy Conspiracy Thriller directed and co-written by Juel Taylor (Creed II, Space Jam: A New Legacy) in his directorial debut.

Our story unfolds in the Glen, one of the most miserable, crime-ridden ghettos in the United States, where local drug dealer Fontaine (John Boyega) survives through a tight daily routine that he never deviates from or thinks too hard about. One night, while collecting money from washed-up pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), a rival dealer ambushes him as he leaves and shoots him to death.

Charles assumes this is the end of his trouble with Fontaine... only for the dealer to turn up at his apartment again a few days later, completely unharmed and seemingly unaware that anything strange has happened. With the help of one of Charles' hoes, Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), they track an SUV that collected Fontaine's body to a seemingly-abandoned house with a hidden elevator, and wind up discovering a Government Conspiracy that threatens the entire Glen...

The film released on July 21, 2023 on Netflix following a limited theatrical run.

Previews: Teaser, Trailer

This film contains examples of:

• 10-Minute Retirement: After the enforcer demonstrates that he can take control of them at any time, and that they're all expendable clones, Fontaine and Slick break down in self-loathing and give up, intending to just go back to their preordained lives, and leaving Yo-Yo to fight back alone. Fontaine is unable to go back after everything he's learned, however, and the both of them break out of their depression in time to save Yo-Yo and win the day together.
• Actor Allusion: Both Yo-Yo and Charles refer to their "Spidey sense" when they first begin to investigate things early in the film. Both Teyonah Parris and Jamie Foxx have appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and in Foxx's case, played a character who actually fought Spider-Man on two separate occasions.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Played with. When Yo-Yo and Slick Charles start poking fun at how ridiculous the mystery they're dealing with is (namely, how they're conversing and working with Fontaine even though they saw him die yesterday), Fontaine himself starts bursting into giggles, seemingly breaking down after trying to remain serious and focused all the time. However, it later becomes apparent that he's only doing this because the chicken he's eating is laced with a drug that's causing him to laugh in the first place.
• The Aggressive Drug Dealer: Fontaine. It's intentional; he's a clone employed by the conspiracy to keep the Glen from gentrifying.
• All There in the Manual: Nixon, the name of the conspiracy's enforcer, isn't spoken in the movie. It's only revealed in the credits.
• Almighty Janitor: Played for at first comedy and then drama with Yo-Yo. Yo-Yo's introduced as one of Slick's flighty hookers who just happened to see what happened to Fontaine, but as the story goes on she shows a competent Nancy Drew-esque knack for investigating. It eventually becomes clear that she's an incredibly talented intellectual with strong moral fiber who had dreams of becoming a reporter but was tragically unable to escape her environment. She spends a good chunk of the movie as a mix between Token Good Teammate and Hypercompetent Sidekick, before she starts forging out as The Hero in her own right in the second half as Fontaine and Slick face an existential meltdown at the revelation that they are clones.
• Ambiguous Time Period: It's unclear what specific time period the movie takes place. The decor and technology appear to be from the '70s or '80s but some characters have cell phones, late 90s and early 2000s media like Spongebob Squarepants and Hollow Man are referenced, and Yo-Yo references Bitcoin at one point.
• Ambiguously Brown: Discussed and Played for Drama. Many of the conspiracy's cover operations are manned by ethnically ambiguous people described varyingly as looking mixed-race or even like "white boys with afros." It's heavily implied that these people are either proof-of-concept clones or gene therapy test subjects for the conspiracy's plan to engineer an American Master Race.
• And the Adventure Continues: The film ends with Fontaine, Slick Charles and Yo-Yo deciding to travel the country taking down the conspiracy's other operations in major cities, starting in Memphis, Tennessee.
• Anti-Hero: The main trio consist of a grouchy drug dealer, a self-centered pimp, and a prostitute who had abandoned all her ambitions.
• Blaxploitation: The film deliberately throws back to the genre, as well as modern parodies of it such as Undercover Brother and Black Dynamite, interpreting their themes and archetypes through a more serious lens while still maintaining a sense of pulp action and campy comedy.
• Big Damn Heroes: the united gangsters of The Glen driving their lowriders down the street to rush the secret facility.
• Bland-Name Product: A fair number of these are scattered throughout the film in addition to real brands, with the strong implication that these are products developed by the conspiracy as part of their experiments. Examples include Somaah! lemon-lime soda, Samford & Hodges menthol cigarettes, Got'Damn! Chicken, and Anaconda Malt Liquor.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Slick and Yo-Yo use gold-plated revolvers.
• Brick Joke: Early in the movie, Fontaine takes all of Slick Charles' savings after the latter misses a drug payment. A little over an hour later we get this exchange while the two are asking around for Yo-Yo:
  Biddy: I mean, the bitch been scarce. I figured she was waitin' out the clap or some shit. But maybe I seen't her, maybe I ain't...
  [Beat as she looks at Charles expectantly]
  Charles: ... Well you know where my money at!
  [Fontaine rolls his eyes and digs for his wallet]
• Celebrity Paradox: Kevin Bacon is mentioned multiple times and his Hollow Man character is compared to Kiefer Sutherland's character. Bacon appeared with Sutherland in Flatliners and A Few Good Men.
• Chekhov's Gun: Early in the film, Slick Charles accuses Yo-Yo of wearing a wig in an argument. Later in the film, when the scientists attempt to use a mind-melting perm cream on her, her wig protects her, allowing her to fake being brainwashed and escape.
• Clone Angst: A major part of the story is Fontaine's growing existential crisis over his status as a clone programmed with the memories and personality of the "real" Fontaine. The matter only gets more complicated with The Reveal that there is no "real" Fontaine, as he was cloned from the head of the conspiracy and most of his memories are outright fabricated.
• Clones Are People, Too: The clones are embraced by their friends and in the ending, the Glen as a whole. It's portrayed as a liberation.
• Cool Car: Fontaine's 1976 Pontiac Grand Prix, modified in the "Donk" style, with raised suspension and large rims.
• Confused Bystander Interview: After the clones are set free from the underground lab, news crews come cover the commotion, and there is a flurry of funny soundbites from bystanders as well as the gangsters who took part in the raid. When the LA lab is liberated, one reporter tries to get comments from the escaped clones who have no idea who and where they are.
• Conspicuous Trenchcoat: Yo-Yo mails a manuscipt detailing what she knows about the conspiracy while wearing a beige trench coat and a fedora, which doesn't do much, as Biddy immediately recognizes her and tries to call out to her, which leads to the agents of the conspiracy to grab Yo-Yo off the street.
• The Conspiracy: The teaser shows a secretive organization recording people's conversations and tracking the trio.
• Decoy Protagonist: Played with example. The film begins with Fontaine going about his daily routine as a tough as nails drug dealer in the dangerous community of Glen. However, he's later gunned down by rival drug dealers. It's the second Fontaine that appears the next day the movie focuses on, after Slick Charles reveals to Fontaine that he should be dead, as he saw him die yesterday.
• Despair Event Horizon: Realizing that their memories are fake and they were created for the sole purpose of making the Glen as miserable, uninviting, and inescapable as possible sends Fontaine and Slick Charles over the edge, leading them to temporarily abandon their efforts to shut down the conspiracy.
• Dragon Ascendant: The Big Bad of the film is a scientist intending to do this: while his bosses intended to quash discord in America by mind controlling everyone, and only used the clones to drive down property values around their bases and keep people from investigating, the scientist - also the original version of Fontaine - wishes to go further and actively genetically erase race as a concept entirely. The heroes caught him as he was on the cusp of having his vision take over the plans of the entire organization.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: When the gangsters go to the liqour store to get into the underground lab, as the elevator door opens, several shotguns are cocked.
• Drinking the Kool-Aid: The trio notes that the Mount Zion church has a very cult-like attitude, and refer to the drug-laced Grape Drink as Kool-Aid.
• Elaborate Underground Base: The conspiracy has their entire operations hidden under the Glen, with select locations, like churches and abandoned houses, having elevator entrances.
• Evil Knockoff: While Fontaine is also a clone, there is a Fontaine clone that works as security for the conspiracy, who has short cropped hair and a full beard and wears a black suit.
• Expendable Clone: the reason the conspiracy makes multiple copies of gangbangers and pimps, to have a steady supply of new ones to replace them if they get killed.
• Failed a Spot Check: The final infiltration of the conspiracy's Glen facilities hinges on this. Fontaine and Charles get Isaac in on shooting Fontaine non-fatally in order for Fontaine to get hauled off to the lab, which he would then infiltrate once the coast is clear. Charles correctly surmises that the staff have become so complacent with their operations that they won't bother to make sure he's dead before hauling him to the morgue.
• Fake Rapper: Ruckus, the artist credited for the Mind-Control Music.
• Fake Memories: the clones are given fake memories to make them think they are real. Fontaine thinks he has a dead little brother who got killed by police, and Slick has a memory of winning Pimp of the Year at the 1995 Player's Ball. Fontaine's memory is based on the real Tragic Backstory of the original Fontaine.
• Fingertip Drug Analysis: Slick tries what he thinks is cocaine in the Trap House lab, which causes him to start laughing uncontrollably, and later it's revealed the powder is used on the chicken at GotDamn chicken.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Our main three characters, Fontaine, Slick Charles and Yo-Yo, are initially only hood business associates at most, with Charles pimping Yo-Yo as a prostitute and doing business with Fontaine on the side. As the movie's events play out however, the three of them begin to genuinely care about one another, with Charles and Fontaine even getting out of their mutual Heroic BSoD to rescue Yo-Yo at the film's climax. By the end of the film, the three of them are inseperable, with Fontaine accompanying Charles and Yo-Yo to Tennessee.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Early in the film, while driving to the place where the dead Fontaine's body was taken, the trio hears a song on the radio called "So Tired," and Slick Charles complains that it always makes him feel sad and sleepy. It later turns out that hypnotic, mood-altering music is one of the many things the conspiracy is experimenting with in the Glen.
  • Also early on, Charles threatens to slap off Yo-Yo's "fake ass wig." Near the end, Yo-Yo is able to avoid the mind control hair product being forcibly applied to her because she is, indeed, wearing a wig.
  • One of the slogans plastered throughout the secret lab, and repeated over their loudspeakers, is "Winning the race of the future!" The specific syntax of this sentence becomes relevant when it's revealed that their ultimate plan is to slowly erase racial minorities' cultural and physical differences from white people, to create a "race of the future."
  • When the trio locates the cloning lab, they find that the Fontaine clones are from batch A-0-0-1. Sure enough, the final twist reveals that Fontaine and his clones were based on the conspiracy's leader and top geneticist, and were likely his first creations.
  • Similarly, the conspiracy's top enforcer at one point says that his boss is a lot like Fontaine, and that the two would "really hit it off." Because the latter is a clone of the former.
  • Fontaine's crew are havig a Seinfeldian C Onversation about clones at the beginning of the movie.
• Fresh Clue: While investigating the trap house, Yo-Yo notes a cup of coffee in the break room is still warm.
• Freudian Excuse: The original Fontaine is where every Fontaine clone got their memory of losing their younger brother to a racist officer from, except in the original's case, it was ten-times worse because he can also recall how long it took his brother to die and the fact that he had to clean up the blood himself after he was shown his body at the morgue. Afterwards, he dedicated his life to erasing the concept of race so that no one would die from discrimination ever again.
• Funny Afro: Besides Charles' stereotypical pimp 'fro, all of the conspiracy's operatives working their cover businesses in the Glen are ethnically-ambiguous men wearing small afros. It's implied they're products of the original Fontaine's experiments to create a single Master Race.
• Gangbangers: Fontaine and Isaac both have their own gangs, and in The Stinger, Tyrone is shown wearing a blue flannel shirt and grabbing a blue bandana, before driving by a memorial of a dead Blood gang member, with another passing by flashing him a B sign.
• The Ghost: Fontaine's mom appear to be this, as she never leaves her room, only talking to Fontaine when he asks her something. She doesn't actually exist, and there's just a speaker in the empty room giving one of a handful of canned answers.
• Heroic BSoD: After barely surviving Nixon's Breaking Speech and learning that they're both clones, Fontaine and Charles end up clamming up inside their houses, completely despondent about their ultimate fates. We primarily see it from Fontaine's perspective though, as when he breaks out of it to find Charles to convince him to rescue Yo-Yo, the latter has pulled himself back together as well.
• Hidden Depths: A part of Fontaine's general routine is to pass Frog, an older (implied to be homeless) man who sits outside the liquor store with a Styrofoam cup in which Fontaine will share part of whatever bottle he buys. His knowledge of the church along with several comments he makes, particularly to the third cloned Fontaine we see ("Got that new-car smell, youngblood") all but states that he's deduced at least part of the conspiracy himself, but is powerless to really do anything about it and just drinks instead.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Fontaine uses the trigger phrase meant to keep him and all his clones in line by the conspiracy to take control of Chester and kill the original Fontaine, the one behind the experiments.
• Human Shield: when Fontaine sees his Evil Knockoff clone in the secret base, he tries to shoot him, but the clone pulls an escaping scientist in front of himself to take the bullets.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Charles accidentally shoots the tech in the trap house because he is high on an unknown substance and Yo-Yo accidentally makes a loud noise while Charles is holding the man at gunpoint, which in turn puts the base on high alert.
• Ironic Nickname: Yo-Yo had a regular client she called Thursday Tony, who she would see on Tuesdays.
• It Was Here, I Swear!: Fontaine, Yo-Yo, and Slick Charles first find the secret elevator to the lab in a house that’s completely empty except for a break room. After accidentally killing a scientist, the trio are forced to flee. Fontaine returns the next day with his gang only to find the house completely furnished and the elevator and break room gone. His gang attributes this to Fontaine being stressed.
• Jive Turkey: To the point of actual parody, where every character is throwing out outdated slang in nearly every sentence, especially the three leads, who represent broad black stereotypes. Just like with everything else that's wrong with the Glen, it's a result of the conspiracy experimenting on the community.
• Laughing Gas: During their first visit to the lab, Slick Charles samples a white powder that causes him to have an uncontrollable giggling fit. Later, while discussing the mystery in a fried chicken restaurant, Charles notices him and his companions launching into similar fits before realizing the conspirators are putting the laughing powder in the chicken.
• Left the Background Music On: While Fontaine, Yo-Yo and Charles are investigating the St. Zion Church after hours, a groovy church organ is heard as Fontaine is examining the main hall. Once he figures out where the key card scanner is, he promptly asks Charles for the card he swiped from the van. We then see Charles himself was the one playing the organ, and he gets up and hands Fontaine the key card.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Fontaine is a very intelligent person and is usually the Only Sane Man, but his Fatal Flaw is his impulsiveness: once he finds a problem his immediate reaction is to barge in and get rid of it as hard as possible, damn the consequences. This is what gets the first Fontaine we see killed: upon finding out someone else is selling drugs on his turf, he immediately drives into the guy and breaks his leg, earning the ire of the dealer's boss. Later, when he finds out about the existence of the lab, he's driven to rush in and storm the place to get the answers he wants even though the others note they have no idea what they're walking into.
• MacGuffin Girl: Yo-Yo becomes one as she turns out to be one of the only characters we meet who ''isn't' a clone, meaning the conspiracy cannot (yet) control her - an advantage she uses to try to fight them, only for them to kidnap her and Fontaine and Slick to come to her rescue.
• Malaproper Slick, who for example calls Patagonia "Baconia".
• Mandela Effect: Obliquely referenced in universe by Slick Charles when he mentions The Berenstain Bears in the same breath as other conspiracy theories.
• The Man Is Keeping Us Down: The conspiracy of the film is made up of white scientists running mind controlling experiments on the black population of the Glen with the ultimate goal of spreading their products nationwide and, over generations, suppress the physical attributes of black people. They use cloned pimps and drug dealers to keep the neighborhood in squalor so that people do not come investigating.
• Mind-Control Conspiracy: The entire Glen is being used as the testing ground for mind controlling products aimed at the Black community, with select individual clones like Fontaine and Slick Charles used to spread violence and drugs to keep people from investigating.
• Mind-Control Music: One of the conspiracy’s methods of mind control is music that can alter moods or hypnotize people into doing their bidding.
• Modern Minstrelsy: the GotDamn chicken advertisement features some over the top chucking and jiving from the black customers at the restaurant, and fittingly, the food is laced with a chemical that makes people very easily amused.
• Monochrome Casting: Almost all of the principle cast is black, with the exception of The Dragon Nixon and the various Ambiguously Brown clones.
• Mugged for Disguise: On their second trip to the underground base, Fontaine corners a trio of scientists in the bathroom to get their hazmat suits for himself, Yo-Yo, and Slick Charles.
• Neighborhood-Friendly Gangsters: while the conspiracy keeps the gangs around to lower the value of neighborhoods, and they are shown to squabble and use deadly violence, at the end, they are united in fight against the conspiracy, as they are the ones with weapons to fight back.
• Never Trust a Title: The name of the main character being cloned is Fontaine, not Tyrone. Tyrone doesn’t show up until The Stinger, and he's also a clone.
• Non-Action Big Bad: The original Fontaine, being a fairly old man and just a scientist, relies on the lab's overseer and his specialized clone, Chester, to physically deal with intruders.
• Not So Stoic: The most emotion Fontaine demonstrates most of the time is simmering Tranquil Fury. Then he finds out that he's a clone created and controlled by the conspiracy to keep the Glen a ghetto and is left visibly shaken. And then he outright breaks down sobbing after finding out that the mother he's been taking care of never even existed.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Slick Charles begins to realize something's wrong with the fried chicken they're eating when he notices Fontaine laughing alongside him and Yo-Yo, as he verbally acknowledges that he's never seen Fontaine laugh or smile in the years he's known him.
• People Jars: During their second visit to the underground base, the trio happens upon a room full of pods containing the conspiracy’s various clones.
• Pimp Duds: Slick's get-up.
• Plot-Triggering Death: The story is set in motion when Slick Charles witnesses Fontaine’s death outside his motel room… only for Fontaine to show up alive and well the next night.
• Power Trio: Consisting of a humorless and driven leader who is only out to get his own answers, a finnicky Cowardly Lion who is (at first) only out for himself and his own safety, and a resourceful idealist who corrals the other two to act for the good of everyone. Also doubles as a Freudian Trio.
• Retraux: The film has a grainier look with occasional “cigarette burns” to make it look like it’s playing on an old film reel.
• The Reveal:
  • Slick Charles is among the people the conspiracy cloned.
  • The mad scientist behind all the cloning and mind control is the original Fontaine.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Slick and Yo-Yo use gold-plated snub noses and Nixon uses a long barrel single-action revolver he at one point uses to fire a quick volley by fanning the hammer.
• Rivals Team Up: After discovering the conspiracy, Fontaine and Slick hatch peace with Fontaine's rival dealer Isaac, and all the gangsters of The Glen roll up to invade the underground lab.
• Running Gag: Every time Fontaine shows up at Slick Charles' place, the pimp finds he's fresh out of orange juice. Apparently one of his girls, Citrus, keeps drinking it all.
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: Yo-Yo initially believes this is what is happening, but quickly comes to accept something truly unusual is happening in the Glen.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: the movie opens with Fontaine's friends talking about one of them spotting someone he thinks is a clone of Michael Jackson.
• Shout-Out:
  • The boy Fontaine speaks with at the beginning of the film talks excitedly about SpongeBob SquarePants, even comparing Fontaine to Squidward.
  • A Freeze-Frame Bonus in Fontaine's daily routine shows that he's a fan of Anaconda Malt Liquor.
  • Yo-Yo mentions that a suspicious client caused her "Spidey Senses to tingle."
    • Charles also refers to Spider Senses later in the movie.
  • When meeting the man for the first time, Nixon refers to Fontaine as Captain America.
  • She also worries he's "on some Hannibal shit."
  • When Yo-Yo decides to quit hoeing for Slick Charles early in the film, she angrily refers to his manipulations as "Jedi mind tricks."
  • Slick Charles refers to Fontaine as a grinch at one point.
  • When Slick Charles freaks out at the sight of the still-living Fontaine, he exclaims that he "pulled a 50 Cent" to refer to the shooting and calls him a "Ghost of Christmas Past-ass nigga."
  • The film Hollow Man is brought up several times through the story, with the lead enforcer of the conspiracy being compared to Kevin Bacon’s character.
  • The DJ on the radio calls himself DJ Strangelove.
  • Charles describes Fontaine as having a "Rambo-esque look about him" before they enter the secret lab for the first time.
  • Yo-Yo describes their situation as "X-Files shit" at one point.
  • The television in the break room of the trap house entrance is playing Bloodsport.
  • Yo-Yo has a large collection of Nancy Drew books from her childhood, which she uses as a guide to help her and her companions solve the conspiracy.
    • Fontaine refers to Nancy Drew as "That Scooby-Doo bitch."
  • Yo-Yo refers to the underground lab as "Dexter's Lab" at one point.
  • When Fontaine and his crew break into the now furnished trap house, Big Moss says they have a "Goldilocks situation."
  • Yo-Yo has a sex move she calls "Shalamar".
  • Charles mentions The Berenstain Bears in relation to other conspiracy theories.
  • Frog refers to Yo-Yo as Foxy Brown.
  • When the strip club DJ plays the brainwashing trap music midway through the film, he announces "This is a world premiere!" in the same style as Kendrick Lamar's intro to his song "i" and the end of "Momma" from To Pimp a Butterfly.
  • Slick Charles calls the brainwashed dancers at the rave "Thriller-looking motherfuckers".
  • When the main trio head down to the underground lab through the elevator, Slick Charles and Yo-Yo make up lyrics to the tune of Rose Royce's "I'm Going Down."
  • A prisoner in the underground lab has her eyes forced open and is forced to watch footage with subliminal messages, which Slick Charles outright describes as them "Clockwork Orange-ing niggas."
• Song Parody: As the credits roll, Erykah Badu sings a remixed version of the classic "Tyrone" with remodeled lyrics that better fit the movie's themes.
  Them mothafuckas cloned Tyrone
  (Cloned him!)
  Hell going on?
  I don't get this shit
  (Come on, come on, come on)
  Somebody cloned Tyrone
  (Cloned him!)
  And they tapping our phones...
• Spanner in the Works: The events leading up to the entire operation of the clones being made public were caused by Isaac shooting Fontaine for beating up his dealer and another person who Fontaine just happened to see get picked up by the scientists for acting out of line.
• The Stinger: The film ends with another clone, this one actually named Tyrone, in a West Coast town with a routine similar to Fontaine’s, seeing the news report about the clones on TV.
• Storming the Castle: Mentioned word-for-word by one of the thugs on the news.
• Tainted Tobacco / Tampering with Food and Drink: Methods of delivery for the mind control drugs include Laughing Powder in fried chicken, a tranquilizer in hair relaxing cream, and some unmentioned substances in grape drink and cigarettes.
• Third-Person Person: Slick has a tendency to substitute "I" and "me" with "a pimp".
• Trailers Always Spoil: One of the trailers for the movie spoils that the cloning operation is revealed to the public, by showing pieces of the last news report and showing Slick Charles and crew forcing someone to open the door to the underground lab.
• Two Scenes, One Dialogue: Fontaine and Isaac set up Fontaine's fake death through both visiting Biddy supposedly for sexual favors, but actually she is acting as intermediary between the two.
• Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: The teaser opens with the trio waiting idly in an elevator. Subverted as Slick Charles begins to sing, which helps them unwind.
• Van in Black: the black SUV Fontaine spots grabbing someone off the street is also parked outside the Trap House, sparking Fontaine to jump out and investigate it.
• Vehicular Kidnapping: the abovemnetioned black SUV grabs someone off the street early in the film, and later, grabs Yo-Yo after she mails her manuscript about the conspiracy to The Washington Post.
• Water Source Tampering: The investigation into Fontaine’s cloning leads the group to discover that the conspirators are putting mind altering substances into products - namely fried chicken, hair products, and “grape drink” for communions - widely used by their community.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The conspiracy is experimenting with mind control in hopes of using it to quash discord all across the country, only preventing the Glen and other similar ghettoes from gentrifying so that they can maintain their operations. The original Fountaine is also this, hijacking his bosses' plans in order to erase the very concept of race on a genetic level and bring an end to prejudice.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Played for laughs. The final plan to sneak into the facility involves pretending to get Fontaine "killed," and then having Fontaine infiltrate the complex once they bring his "dead body" in to dispose of him. Since this plan means the conspiracy will release a brand new Fontaine with fresh memories into the Glen, Slick and the others kidnap the new clone and tie him up in a warehouse, where they intentionally leave him behind and never come back to deal with him, leaving the movie with an extra Fontaine. When the option is raised at the end of the film to check up on him, Slick dismisses it because he's pretty sure the clone would just try to kill them.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The movie leaves it deliberately ambiguous what city the Glen is in, though it's implied to be somewhere in the Deep South based on Yo-Yo's desire to move to Memphis, Tennessee. In the final scene, where Tyrone sees the clone story breaking on national news, one of his friends starts loudly coughing right as CNN's reporter starts to mention where it is. The film itself was shot in Atlanta.
• Will Talk for a Price: Biddy, the street walker with a pink wig maybe knows something, maybe doesn't.
• Wrong Side of the Tracks: The Glen is a largely dirty and rundown neighborhood full of drug dealers and prostitution. This is by design. The conspiracy uses clones like the drug dealer Fontaine and the pimp Slick Charles to keep the streets full of violence and misery so that outsiders don’t come poking around and the locals are too poor to leave.

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