- In the first film, the Venture Star is shown gently entering Pandora's orbit. In this film, multiple ships of the same class are shown burning hard enough that their engines look like supernovas from the surface. RDA was probably so infuriated by the Na'vi's actions that the company had the reinforcing expedition travel faster than usual to get its operation back up and running at the soonest.
- The "immune response" around the Hallelujah Mountains (i.e. Eywa sending hordes of Ikran and who knows what else to attack any human vehicles besides the ones directly aligned with the Na'vi that spend too much time there) is obviously the reason why the RDA doesn't attempt to bomb the Tree of Souls this time around. On the other hand, why wouldn't they simply use an ISV's exhaust plumes to burn the Tree off the map, as they did with the landing site for Bridgehead City? It's likely because of the risk to the ISV itself. The Hallelujah Mountains are made of huge chunks of superconductive Unobtanium ore, held aloft by insanely powerful and sometimes unpredictable magnetic fields (noted in the previous film to wreak havoc on instruments). Unobtanium-focused magnetic fields are also the very thing used to direct the antimatter-fuelled plasma streams in an ISV's drive. If there were even a chance that the mountains' magnetism could twist or redirect the plumes of a landing ship - which would unbalance the ship and have disastrous consequences - it stands to reason that the RDA's spacefaring department would nix any such attempt.
- The story of the Outcast Tulkun Lo'ak befriends is basically Moby-Dick, if the whale was Ahab who led others on a quest to their death and destruction, and the humans didn't even know they offended it and were symbolic of greater forces. Apparently the whale Moby was based on wasn't aggressive, and was killed trying to protect other whales.
- Appropriately, Scoresby meets the same fate as Ahab: caught on his own harpoon line and dragged to his death. He even loses a limb in the process.
- Kiri is played by Sigourney Weaver because Kiri isn't just Grace's daughter, she IS Grace reborn. Grace uploaded into Eywa but didn't have time to complete the transfer, so Eywa picked the next best thing. This could explain why Kiri has such a deep voice for her age.
- And the Eywa connection is, what, Eywa hedging her bets, and deciding the planet needs a "field commander" (or metaphorical T cells for the "immune response"), given the increased potential threat of sky people? Could be.
- At first glance, Kiri's affectionately mocking nickname of "Monkey Boy" for Spider is nothing remarkable. This is hardly the first work in which humans have been compared to monkeys. However, Pandora doesn't have monkeys, and the closest equivalent - the Prolemuris - doesn't appear to be referred to as one. This would seem to imply that Kiri, having her mother's passion for biology, learned about monkeys from human scientists and/or educational material about Earth, and decided that Spider was a dead ringer for one. This also furthers how in touch Jake and Neytiri's children are with their human roots as much as their Na'vi lineage.
- Furthering the "Kiri is Eywa's Messiah" angle, if you mix around "Eywa", you get "Yawe", which sounds like "Yahweh".
- Quaritch does so well fighting underwater because he also knows breath-holding techniques. The colonel is shown to exert himself while holding his breath several times in the first film. The human Quaritch got good at holding his breath because he knew that an exo-pack wouldn't always be at the ready, something he likely learned on his first day on Pandora, since whatever clawed his face clearly would've ripped his mask off.
- In its appearance, the Sea Dragon is a grim mirror image of the Tulkun it hunts. The craft has a similar sleek yet square and looming profile, with "horns" protruding on top. Its bow, like a Tulkun's mouth, slides open in multiple sections to swallow its prey. The bottom of its keel has streamlined striations on it, like the pleats on a cetacean throat. It's massive and tough, and is only mortally "wounded" by a crippling strike from the inside. And when it sinks, the metal groans and screeches like a dying beast.
- Of course the Metkayina favor elaborate tattoos over the war paint of their arboreal cousins. With their aquatic lifestyle, all but the hardiest of paints would be washed off with ease.
- This moreso applies to any Avatar-related media, but I think it would make sense why Eywa or any Na'vi wouldn't have a problem with using the weapons and equipment of the RDA other than because of pragmatic reasons: because their use technically doesn't break any of the three laws. None of the equipment involve wheels or stone, and they're not digging iron out of the planet to get any of this stuff (since it's all stolen or left behind).
Fridge Horror
- On a world where all living things are connected, and both the Na'vi and their kindred sentient beings take great care to return their dead to Eywa's loving embrace, there is something deeply unsettling about Quaritch simply being left to rot right there in the pilot seat, abandoned by both Pandora and humanity. His dog tags were still around his neck, and his corpse has not been disturbed by predators or scavengers — unthinkable on a Death World like Pandora.
- A retroactive one for the first movie; whatever slashed Quaritch's face actually gouged into the bone.
- On a related note, it's implied that the fateful outing in the movie wasn't the first time the Sully kids and Spider went out looking at the remains of the old battleground around the Tree of Souls. Paz Socorro, Spider's mother and a pilot, was killed in action during that battle. What are the odds that Spider unwittingly passed the wreck with his mother's corpse during one of their outings?
- The Tulkuns' nigh-impenetrable armor plating is quite advantageous for them when dealing with human whalers, but humans are obviously not the evolutionary reason for that armor developing in the first place. Just what the hell kind of predators (or other natural enemies) do Tulkun need to deal with, that would put selection pressure on having such a heavily-armored body?
- It was most likely the Great Offscreen War between them that led to them becoming pacifists. Think of the armor plating as a result of a possible evolutionary arms race between opposing factions...
- In the first film, it was all but stated that many humans on Earth were sympathetic towards the Na’vi, hence the RDA’s efforts to negotiate with them through the Avatar Program and Selfridge outright saying that killing them without justification (which they later manufacture) would “look bad”. Now, however, given that the RDA had been forcibly removed from Pandora and have since returned in full force to set up a permanent colony to provide a new home for humanity as Earth’s situation gets worse, it’s possible that much of that sympathy has dried up, and the majority of humanity has given the RDA their blessing to wage a Guilt-Free Extermination War on the Na’vi if need be to guarantee their own survival.
- There are implications that the RDA has even more of an incentive to get things into gear other than a perceived mandate. On top of being one of the most "economical" options, it also has the first-mover advantage of already having some idea of what to expect on Pandora...albeit, an advantage that's bound to dry up as conditions on Earth worsen. Which coincidentally also explains why the company's so keen to lay the groundwork as quickly as possible (even expanding into extracting Amrita from the Tulkun) - there are more coming, and the RDA wants to get their piece of the pie while it still can.
- Spider was never sent back to Earth because babies couldn't be put in cryo. That goes both ways; the RDA cannot send children over to Pandora, which means that they will be among the many left behind on a dying Earth.
- Mitigated, perhaps, by governments likely encouraging people to hold off on having kids until after leaving Earth once mass migration becomes possible (and the fact that even if Pandora were immediately habitable, getting enough spaceships to enable said mass migration wouldn't be an overnight process).
- With Quaritch et al being able to be "resurrected" via brain uploading using what seems to essentially be a high-capacity USB drive, if RDA were able to "mass produce" compatible Avatar bodies (probably easier than having to totally sync two brains, and likely to get cheaper/easier as techniques are revised), just how many peoples' memories, etc. could RDA send over per ship?
