Why does Jane have long hair while her brothers don't? Simple- Mrs. Willoughby cuts the boys' hair every time it gets long. She didn't cut Jane's hair yet because she had forgotten about her existence.
Tim is the one with the neat, rigid bowl cut (he might have been given it shortly after birth) he's the one the parents interact with the most, as he takes charge of the kids and is often blamed for things that aren't his fault. And Mother is shown to be scared of the twins. So of course if she needs hair harvested and can't get it from her husband, she'd go to Tim.
It's actually been confirmed in Netflix's "14 Facts You Didn't Know About The Willoughbys" video that Tim cuts his hair himself, using his World War 1 helmet as a guide. This actually makes a lot of sense- his parents certainly don't care enough about him to make sure he's well-groomed, but Tim would care.
The husband has a thin, tint mustache due to his wife using the hair for knitting. Is it possible this is a metaphor for his wife/love for her taking over his life?
His thin moustache can also be seen as symbolic of his failure to uphold his family legacy. Despite being a family of inventive adventurers, him and his wife are implied to rarely if ever leave their old fashioned house and didn’t even know how to use the internet. Showing how the Willoughby family has stagnated compared to their past glory. The children (besides Tim) growing moustaches in the end is in turn symbolic of them returning to their family’s roots. Linda and Commander Melanoff may not be Willoughbys by blood, but the Commander’s impressive factory and both of their abilities to take action makes them more true to the legacy of the family than Mr. and Mrs Willoughby were.
The mustache might even have been a (horrible) Freudian Excuse: He probably noticed his ancestors’ mustaches, too, and thought he could never live up to them, so he didn’t even try.
In that regard, Mr. Willoughby is his son's Shadow Archetype: unlike Tim, who kept on trying his best to uphold the Willoughby legacy even when he still hasn't grown into his moustache, the husband doesn't even bother being a true Willoughby.
Nanny's favorite food is oats. The Orphan Services primarily serve oats to children, so she probably picked up her love for them there.
Oats seems like a rather random food for the Orphan Services to serve the kids, but it makes sense both from a practical and a symbolic standpoint. Oats are a healthy food lacking in flavor complexity, which means that children who are incredibly picky will likely be able to eat it with little issue, and it's too soft to choke on, which means it's safe to consume for most ages. In the US, it's also rather easy to buy in bulk if you have to feed a large group of kids at once. At the same time, it's also a very bland food and certainly not for every kid, as Tim refuses to eat them at nearly every turn. It represents how the Orphan Services truly do mean well and want to help the kids to thrive, but have some blind spots to nuance and are so practical that they struggle to understand how to make the kids happy.
Another prominent food in the film is candy, which symbolically represents the opposite of oats. Captain Mel is heavily associated with candy and sweets, and he clearly is feeding Ruth a diet solely of candy, and while candy is something you give to people you adore, its also unhealthy in large amounts, especially for kids. This symbolizes that, while Mel cares for Ruth, he clearly has no idea what he's doing and needs assistance from Linda. Later, Linda gives Tim a candy bar, and he shares it with her, displaying that his animosity towards her is waning and he's starting to open up.
Notably, Nanny Linda feeds the kids oats when she first meets them, and later gives Tim a candy bar. This demonstrates that while she cares for their needs in a practical sense, she's not devoid of fun and knows when to loosen up.
Meatloaf is another prominent food, though we only see it sparingly. Meatloaf could be seen as symbolic of love. In the beginning of the film, Mr and Mrs Willoughby selfishly hoard it all to themselves, much like how they exclusively love each other but not their own children. Jane steals it from them and her and the Barnabys eat it, but Tim gets none and is promptly blamed for the missing food, demonstrating that, while Jane loves her siblings, her actions inadvertently throw Tim under the bus. Near the end of the film, we see meatloaf again, but it's when the Willoughbys have been adopted by Captain Mel and Linda, and Mel is happily serving it to his new family albeit, with candy corn stuck in it, showing that, while it's not perfect, it's still a gesture of love.
The parents don't remember Jane's name or just call the twins creepy. It's possible that Tim actually named his siblings.
This is supported by how quickly Tim was able to name Ruth.
It could also be why both the Barnabys have the same name. A child as young as Tim would've had to be at the time they were born likely would have a difficult time distinguishing the two of them.
Alternately, Tim named Jane and Jane named the Barnabys. After all, the name that Jane wanted to give Ruth, "Taffeta" is a somewhat fancy three-syllable name, similar to Barnaby.
When the kids devise the plan to orphan themselves, they specifically mention books such as James and the Giant Peach and Oliver Twist as ways how it was done successfully by fellow children. It turns out that this is much easier said than done, as, once child services is alerted that children have no parents, they are immediately taken and placed in foster homes. This is probably due to the fact that these books did not set realistic ideas for the kids, but it may go deeper. Considering how the Willoughbys' household in general is incredibly isolated and outdated, (with the Willoughby parents freaked out by a mere brochure) and the kids never having stepped beyond the front yard. It's highly likely that the kids never considered their being a legitimate network in place that could apprehend them in such an encompassing way.
Also, it's quite possible that, given how their parents treat them, they may assume that other adults naturally don't care about them much anyway.
Jane tells the Barnabys to run in zigzags when presented with something dangerous. Running in zigzags is common advice for when you are confronted by someone with a gun aiming to shoot you (as it makes you harder to target and less likely to be shot). This isn’t necessarily bad advice, but it’s usually unhelpful as it’s only used when the Barnabys believe they are being approached by a monster, and it’s as hilariously ineffective as you’d think.
The Barnabys also run zigzags in the exact same motion (as in, they run at the same speed next to each other), which ironically would make them an even bigger target to a gunman.
Fridge Horror
The Willoughby children start showing a few signs of Troubling Unchildlike Behavior as a result of Parental Neglect. For instance Jane devouring a roast whole and Tim's bossy behavior and paranoia due to his fear of their parents' cruel punishment.
To add another example, Tim becomes immediately distrustful of Nanny despite her being genuinely nice because she works for his parents, but it runs a bit deeper than that. For all of his life, Tim has had to rely on himself to keep his younger siblings out of trouble, both because his parents didn't care enough to do it themselves and because he'd inevitably be blamed for something going wrong. In other words, his distrust of Nanny is likely because his parents have taught him that he can't actually trust anyone. This is also likely part of the reason he doesn't stick to a single family when he gets separated from his siblings.
Jane blaming things on Tim to avoid punishment is also reflective of living in a toxic environment. In abusive households, the abuse tends to be disproportionately enforced, with one kid getting the brunt of it and the others either being ignored or treated better in comparison, which naturally causes the kids to clash. Tim seems to be this family's scapegoat, as the parents blame him for things that are not his fault, and Jane mimics this behavior both to avoid their wrath and because she subconsciously picked up the habit from them.
‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ both share the red/pink hair that is stated to be a Willoughby family trait and they look almost exactly alike, which led me to question if they are related. Which would make their children the products of incest.
The kids interpreted Linda wanting to "take care of them" as trying to get rid of them. Let's just pray they got that idea from books.
That actually is what the book implies. They spend a lot of time talking about the tropes and cliches found in 19th to 20th century children's books (their fate once they are orphans.)Assuming them as facts of fate. It's mentioned they spent time in the library a lot to avoid their parents.
Tim’s relationship with food throughout the movie is quite concerning. When Mr and Mrs Willoughby were around, the kids were only given leftovers to eat, and sometimes not even that, so they are quite used to food insecurity and going hungry. After their parents go on the trip, the kids quickly realize that they don’t know how to cook and don’t eat for about another two days. Then, Nanny shows up and gives them bowls of oats, which all of them eat except for Tim. But we know from a previous scene that Tim is hungry, but he's just refusing the food in order to spite Nanny. We don’t see Tim near food onscreen again, until, later on, after being separated from his siblings and locked up in a cell, we see that he has refused dozens of servings of oats, implying that he hasn’t eaten a full meal in days, if not weeks. If Tim’s life hadn’t eventually changed for the better, he very well could have developed an eating disorder, which are quite common in abused children.
