Headscratchers / G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero

• Why does Cobra always surrender in those shootouts with the Joes? It's been a while since I've seen the cartoon, but I always remember these scenes where they would just fire at each other from behind crates and crap, and in spite of NO ONE ever dying, one side just decides to surrender? Did they not bring enough ammunition or just get bored with looping animation frames of shooting lasers at walls?
  • Been a while since I've seen it too, but generally I think Cobra surrendered when either the Joe reinforcements arrived, their scheme finally went down in flames, or both.
  • While we obviously have a problem reconciling real combat and surrender behavior with the Never Say "Die" attitude of the cartoon, real warfare troops surrender when they think they are all going to be killed if they don't or when their commander decides any further fighting is unlikely to achieve their objectives (thus leading only to more casualties) and retreat isn't possible. Now, while the Cobras and the Joes never kill one another, they certainly make headway maneuvering into certain positions and forcing each other into various places and situations. So the Cobra officers probably order their troops to surrender when the scheme du jure can no longer be attained and the Joes have cut off their escape routes, so they feel further fighting will only result in their own men being killed or hurt without accomplishing any objectives for Cobra. Think of it like a chess player resigning when he sees his opponent can force a mate in 3 moves, regardless of lost pieces.
  • In universe, I doubt that they feel like "no one ever dies" or gets hurt. Plus lots of the firefights get solved by Quick Kick running up and "karate-ing" them or Bazooka tripping and blowing something to hell and that's gotta suck to be on the receiving end. Plus, why would you "fight to the death" for a jerk like Cobra Commander? I suppose it's also to help teach kids watching that it's okay to surrender your entrenched positions to achieve a common peace, lol.
  • One episode had Cobra run out of money. Cue a shot of dozens of Cobra troopers standing in a line outside the unemployment office. Simply put, working for Cobra is just a job to them, hardly something worth dying over.
• Why does Cobra use their amazing devices to attack G.I.Joe? They could make trillions using them for relatively peaceful purposes. Sure, not as evil as blowing stuff up, but with the trillions you could more efficently blow stuff up.
  • There are probably laws against trading with a terrorist organization. Also, maybe whatever their political manifesto is prohibits this kind of thing.
  • They're terrorists, not businessmen. They spend money to get weapons (or materials for making weapons).
    • Honestly, I assumed they *DID* do this and that's how they afforded all the crap they used to try and kill G.I. Joe.
  • The comics sometimes shows Cobra selling armament and weapons to other nations, usually of the third-word banana republic dictatorship variety. One story arc in the Marvel Comics run included selling Cobra Terror-Dome bases, which were secretly equipped with paranoia-inducing subsonic waves to stir up civil unrest (and thus encourage more sales).
  • As a group, Cobra's goal is to Take Over the World, not make money. Moreover, the backstory of Destro, and, if you let the movie into it, Cobra Commander reveal very specific long-term goals.
• There's one episode in which Cobra steals a Joe laser guidance device thing, and as it turns out, rather than using the damn thing to, like say, blow up Washington D.C. or something like that, Cobra Commander uses the device to carve an image of himself on the flipping moon? Yeah, CC was a bit of an incompetent nut in the cartoon, but come on! You've got something that'll make your deadly laser even more deadlier by enhancing its aiming capabilities, and rather than holding the world ransom and blowing up a monument or something of importance, you use it to simply deface the moon? No wonder the Joes beat their asses so easily.
  • Indeed, in that particular case, even Destro was angry that CC was using so powerful a weapon for something so petty.
• The theme song to the "Operation: Dragonfire" five-part episode that served as the beginning to the DiC Entertainment continuation is the same as the theme song used for the original Sunbow series, except "A real American hero" is changed to "An international hero" and all mentions of Cobra are removed so that it seems like G.I. Joe's main enemy is a nameless and generic terrorist organization (e.g. "It's G.I. Joe against Cobra the enemy" becomes "It's G.I. Joe against the ruthless enemy"). This comes off as puzzling because the show is still titled G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero and Cobra were still the Joes' central threat, so why were those lyrics even changed? Were there rights issues that made altering the lyrics necessary in order for the original theme to be used at all?
  • Since they switched animation companies either it was a trademark issue or DiC wanted to put their own spin on the theme song.
• Why would the president send a strike force of elite anti-terrorist operators to stop three rowdy teens throwing tomatoes at a candidate?
• In the Captives of Cobra arc, Cobra sends Storm Shadow to infiltrate the Pentagon and steal the names of seven GI Joe operatives, including the locations of their families. He proceeded to do so with ease, only stopping because one of the personnel hit the alarm and because the files had a failsafe that didn’t let him copy any more files. My question is; if this was so easy for them to do, why the hell didn’t Cobra do it sooner?! Cobra Commander might not have thought of it, but Baroness or Destro absolutely would have.
  • Building off the above, how on earth can the government assure that the events of the episode can never happen again? Cobra has the names of seven GI Joes, and can easily backtrack their histories in order to find THEM, even if their families are safe (which I sincerely doubt)!