Headscratchers / Pee-wee's Big Adventure

• Francis is shown to be very financially well off and offers Pee-wee a large sum of money for his bike. With all that money, why didn't Francis just have a duplicate of Pee-wee's bike made for himself?
  • Because the bike is special and one-of-a-kind. Francis doesn't have its exact specifications and doesn't know how all of its gadgets work. Even if he weren't a Manchild and could actually commission a cool bike to be custom-made for himself, it might end up being an inferior copy. Plus, he's a spoiled brat and wants Pee-wee's bike. When he wants something, he's expects to just get it, not have to work at earning it himself.
• So did Pee-wee's bike actually have a secret compartment containing microfilm? That scene from the movie-within-the-movie in which P.W. mentions the Soviets stealing the X1 potentially discovering such a secret compartment containing microfilm seems to be something of a Brick Joke or payoff to the earlier scene when Pee-wee reports his stolen bike to the police and is asked why he believes the Soviets might have been involved.
  • No, it's just a cool bike with some neat gadgets. Pee-wee thinks the Soviets are involved because he values his bike so much and becomes so paranoid that he begins to believe there's an international conspiracy to steal it. If his bike did for some reason have top secret microfilm, it never would have been in Pee-wee's hands, and the US government actually would take an interest in his bike going missing. The movie-within-a-movie adds government secrets as part of it sensationalizing Pee-wee's big adventure into a Bond-style thriller.

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