Headscratchers / Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

• How does Liar's Dice work?
  • It's a combination of craps and B.S./cheat (a card game centered around bluffing). You roll most of your dice, bet on an outcome which is preferably higher than the other peoples' bets, then go around the table and either roll your last die or reveal your dice. If you say that your dice are a different number from what you actually rolled, your opponents have the option of calling your bluff and disqualifying or penalizing you, but your call is final. Presumably, if someone calls what they think is a bluff and it turns out to be true, the caller gets penalized in some way. This means you could give up a game and take the entire pot of years of service added onto your own in order to let another person win a secondary wager they had on the game, but under normal circumstances, nobody would want to.
  • Everyone rolls all their dice. Then, in sequence, they each look at their dice and guess as to how many of a given number is up out of all the dice that end up showing. From there, it's like a game of chicken: If you get the number right, you win. If you can make the other guy back off, you also win. If you make a wrong guess or a bluff and your opponent calls you on it, you lose and he wins. From the look of it, you only win or lose directly: Bootstrap Bill lost to Davey Jones, but Will didn't lose because he wasn't part of that final bet.
  • Everyone rolls their dice. Each player then takes turns making bets on how many of each dice there are, for example: "Five fours." The next person ups the bet and so on until someone calls liar. The dice are shown. If the person who was called a liar is wrong, he loses. If not, his accuser loses. The game has a Wikipedia page if you want more info.
    • The game is also playable in at least the DS game for At Worlds End.
    • It's actually a real-world Peruvian dice game called Perudo. Nobody in my family could take it seriously seeing as we'd played the same game after dinner with brightly colored plastic cups with llamas on them.
    • Though to add to the confusion, it's also not clear whether the usual objective is to get more or less years. Will obviously has his whole life ahead of him and wants to live it, but the usual wretched pirate scum that the Dutchman dregs up seem to take Davey's bargain specifically to "postpone judgment", as Jones said. Or perhaps it's both - some prefer to stave off fiery damnation as long as possible by doing on TFD what they did to get themselves that verdict in the first place (piracy, murder, etc.), while others realize that it is a Fate Worse than Death and regret making the deal in the first place preferring Hell itself over becoming part of the ship.
    • The last is probably the most accurate thing. Remember, some men regret deciding to try and avoid judgment the moment they see Jones... the praying man wouldn't have been there if he hadn't wanted to seek out a postponement of his judgment, but by the time Jones shows up he's decided to take his chances. After serving under the lash of the quartermaster, Jones' own brutality, the constant discomfort and pain of being transformed into a fish-man, most of them would probably rather face judgment. Besides, they know what happens to those who wind up serving an effective eternity: they wind up mindless and merged with the ship.
  • This video does a good job explaining both the rules of the game and the strategies and motivations behind each of the characters' plays.

• Why would the Kraken follow Sparrow's hat? Shouldn't it be searching for the Black Spot?
  • It was following the Black Pearl. The hat (and the ship it was picked up by) happened to be in the way.
    • The ship was in the way and the Kraken was hungry. Also, let's not forget the Kraken is tracking Sparrow BY MAGIC. Who knows how that works? When the hat became separated from Sparrow it may have put two blips on the Kraken's magic radar.
    • To be fair, Sparrow's ship was also part of the deal with Jones. Jones raised the Pearl so that Sparrow could captain it again. Therefore, the Kraken might have been charged with taking back both Sparrow and the Pearl as it does.
    • The Black Mark would only enable the Kraken to track Jack if he, or any possession he had on himself at the time when the Black Mark was laid upon him, comes into contact with the Ocean. Hence, the hat attack.
    • One possibility could be that one of the identifiers, of several, was "Captain of the Black Pearl," and the hat was an outward mark of the captain. Other identifiers could have been "answers by the name of Jack Sparrow," "has traces of being cured of the Aztec zombie curse," and "has a Black Spot curse mark."
    • The hat is a symbol of position. The ship is a fairly transitory thing, having been stolen from Jack... how many times in three movies? He's really bad at holding on to that thing... The hat, however, is one thing which he constantly holds on to, because it's his symbol of power. And because it's his symbol of power, and because it's such a direct tie to him, to a supernatural tracker that's very important. More important than the ship, and quite likely to throw the trail off because it is so strongly assumed, down to being almost a rule of the universe, that Jack's hat will be where Jack is. It's all to do with magic. And sea turtles, mate. Somehow.
    • It's gotta be a bloodhound kinda thing. The Kraken is hunting for Jack because he's sentenced to the black spot, not because the black spot is what's attracting It, (notice It went after Will in particular on two occasions, somehow finding him in the middle of the ocean the first time, even though Will didn't have the Black Spot?) but anything of Jack's might distract Its senses.
    • The reasons it went after Will are completely unrelated. At the time, Jones had (temporarily) removed the Black Spot from Jack, so he was no longer being hunted by the beast. The Kraken went after Will, though, because Jones intentionally called it (using the giant hammer-like device on the Flying Dutchman) to destroy the ship he (correctly) suspected Will was aboard. And the reason for that was to get back the Key to the Dead Man's Chest.
  • What has been overlooked is Jack's BO. What's easier to smell out? An individual, wooden ship...like most others on the ocean, or the pirate guy who rarely bathes?
  • Don't be silly. Jack's hat is part of him, so much so that it is indistinguishable from Jack himself.
  • The Kraken also followed the possessions of the individual.

• We've seen that Kraken can sink a ship almost instantly. So why did it drag on with the Pearl for so long? Why bother wailing its tentacles over the deck and hitting/dragging people who shoot at it with cannons, instead of just tearing the ship apart under the waterline?
  • That ship was maybe a third the size of the Pearl.
  • Plus, the Kraken may have prolonged the Pearl's fate because, on some level, it knew that Jack was on this vessel and wanted to torment him by making his final moments as pants-wettingly terrifying as possible rather than just snuff him out then and there.
  • Alternately, it's not very smart at the best of times, and it's operating under a mental compulsion to boot. Hardly a state in which you can expect good tactics from a mollusk.

• Why didn't Jack just let Will stab the heart? He wanted to call off the Kraken, but if the person who kills Jones becomes the new captain, couldn't Will just call off the beastie post-Jones murder? Unless the protagonists discovered that part of the curse/story between DMC and AWE, although it's not really discussed how they find out.
  • Perhaps it was unknown whether any FD captain could control the beastie, or just Jones, and Jack didn't want to take the risk. A bereaved Kraken at large could have wrecked all kinds of havoc.
  • The protagonists don't seem to know about the whole "You stab the heart, yours must take its place" thing in DMC- they only seem to learn after encountering Governor Swann's ghost in AWE. He found out from someone in the EITC, and they probably found out between movies (Beckett probably forced Jones to divulge everything he knew about the properties of his heart and the chest, and maybe Swann was told by Beckett's then-Dragon, Norrington). In other words, as far as Jack knows at this point, killing Jones will break the power of the Dutchman and leave the kraken free to continue the rampage its master set it on, with no-one else able to control it.
    • Actually, there's a deleted scene which shows that Jones himself was the one who told Swann about the You Kill It, You Bought It rule. Remember how, when Beckett was scolding Jones about not leaving any prisoners to interrogate, Swann was just sort of standing around in the background looking unhappy? In the deleted scene, Swann brings out his beef with Jones' tactics: Elizabeth might be on one of those ships. Jones tells him that, as far as he knows, Elizabeth died when the Kraken took down the Pearl. Swann blanches, charges the chest, and Norrington holds him back from bayoneting Jones' heart then and there in revenge. Jones strolls in and tells them he "laid a terrible geas" on his heart, so that whoever kills him must take his place. Swann relents, Beckett enters and tells Swann that Elizabeth was seen alive in Singapore, Swann informs Beckett their "association is ended" and leaves. Beckett dismisses Jones (who is ticked off) and Norrington (who gives him the Key back), and instructs Mercer to make Swann dead. That's how Swann found out about the rule, how it became part of the bargain in the first place, and why Beckett decided to just kill Swann.

• Will challenges Davy Jones to a game of Liar's Dice, wagering his soul. His father, desperate to save his son, enters and intentionally loses. Will then rounds on him afterwards and berates him, telling him that he only needed to find the key, and that his father's sacrifice was unnecessary. The thing is, though, Will had not sworn an oath to Jones by that point, he had merely been given to Jones by Jack, and that's not the same. We can see, especially in the third film, that Davy Jones can exert considerable power over those who are sworn to his service. Had his father not intervened, Will would not have been able to escape the Dutchman for long, basically until Jones awoke, and commanded him to return. Will Turner Sr actually did the right thing.
  • Kids are Ungrateful Bastards, who never appreciate their parents' efforts for their sake.
    • It wasn't that he didn't appreciate it. If your dad got himself sent to prison for nothing because he jumped to a conclusion, would you be happy?
    • Bootstrap made his move before the game was decided, true, but it still ensured the safety of his son's soul. His sacrifice wasn't "for nothing", because it practically guaranteed his son's freedom which, as the OP explained, was important.
  • Also of note -though this is never directly addressed in the film itself- was that Bootstrap's sacrifice, noble though it may have been, was also completely pointless and handed victory to Jones. Will had bet eight fives. Jones had five fives, and Will had three. Had Bootstrap not intervened, and Jones called Will out instead, Will would have won.
    • Not quite. The rules of Pirate Dice as explained by the merchandise flat out states you can only call another player a liar on your own turn. You either bet, or you call the last person who bet out. Therefore, Jones couldn’t call Will’s bluff, only Bill could. Will's father wasn't sure whether or not Will could have won with that bet, but it didn't matter to him if he could. All that mattered was making sure Will couldn't lose... Which he did by not calling out his son and instead making such an outrageous bet that Davy Jones had no choice but to call him. As soon as he forced DJ's hand, Bootstrap succeeded in his own way; Will couldn't possibly lose and be forced to pay his bet. And if he'd actually won, DJ would have been forced to hand over the key... Then likely order Bootstrap to hand it right back since he's a member of the crew. So really, this was the best outcome Bootstrap could have hoped for.
    • Also, look again. Jones had four fives and a four. So if Will had been had been called out, he would indeed have lost.

• The three-way fight among Jack, Will and Norrington. Will wants to stab the heart, Norrington wants to give it to Beckett. What does Jack want if he's so opposed to the idea of stabbing it?
  • Jack explicitly says this. He's not opposed to stabbing the heart on principle, but he wants to use it first to force Davy Jones to call the Kraken off him; he's afraid that if Jones dies it will just keep coming until he's dead. Will wants to stab the heart immediately, to free his father's soul from eternal damnation.
    • Bootstrap had already spent years on the Dutchman and wasn't in any immediate danger, surely he could spend there several more days needed to fulfill Jack's wish. On the other hand, Will had already witnessed Kraken's horrible menace first-hand, so wouldn't he want to get rid of the monster just as badly? And united with Jack he would've easily overcome Norrington. Even he didn't think of all this, why didn't Jack try to persuade him?
    • Will's dad is trapped in eternal damnation, Jack's facing either that or being eaten, and Norrington's spent the past several days taking orders from his Arch-Enemy. None of them are all that logical at this point.
    • Will's also impulsive and fiery - we see this in film 1, when he barges into a tent full of soldiers and demands they rescue Elizabeth, and even earlier in the film when he goes rogue to save Elizabeth rather than trying something less likely to kill him. He's also very loyal - if someone he cares for is in danger, he'll do anything to save them and he'll act without thinking. So his desire to immediately stab the heart and not do the more sensible thing - wait until Jack bargains with it, and then stab it and give it to Norrington (because nowhere in the agreement did Beckett say the heart had to be beating) - he wants to just kill it now.
    • Also, last time Will saw Jack was when he effectively sold Will into eternal slavery on the Dutchman to save his own skin. Will wouldn't be in any mood to cooperate with him at that point.
    • Considering the insane number of times the various MacGuffins from these films can slip from hand to hand in even five minutes, Will's desire to stab the heart immediately instead of risking it being swiped out from under him may well have been smart, not obsessive.
  • Seems like the intelligent thing to do would have been for them to offer to return Jones' heart in exchange for, 1. Calling off Jack's debt, 2. Freeing Will's Father and 3. Maybe something nice for Norrington as well. It's kind of weird to assume Jones would only be willing to grant one request in exchange for his little Liche's phylactery.
    • How does it not make sense? Yes, the boys were being stupid, hence Elizabeth's melt-down, but it's not a headscratcher, really, just three grown men who hate each other fighting over something like squabbling children (not exactly unbelievable). If the guys had all worked together, they could've had everything, but Will was dead-set on stabbing the heart, not ransoming it. Plus, he just got through being betrayed by Jack, he won't be playing nicely. Then there's Norrington, who was more than willing to screw over the two people who he figured ruined his life and took turns stealing Elizabeth away from him. Jack's the only one of them who might've gone for a compromise, but there's no way the other two would've trusted him with the heart, which is what they would've had to do. Also, Jack really didn't like Will and Norrington at this point and, considering what he'd just got done putting them both through, it's safe to guess which of them could be the biggest brat when he felt like it — if given the heart, Jack might very well have screwed everyone else over. So yes, they were acting selfish, short-sighted and completely immature, but it does make sense.

• What the hell was a water-mill doing on a god-forsaken island with no river to power it?
  • Let's say it's a sugar mill - An artifact so valuable at the time that the entire island population was living off it. Then, some decades before the movies, a volcano in the island began a mini-eruption and the river was deviated or ceased to surge at all, rendering the mill useless, and forcing the population to abandon the island altogether.
    • In the commentary, they mention that the island's population was killed off by an outbreak of plague.
  • Maybe it was a treadmill, powered by people walking in it.

• How Norrington managed to get out from the said god-forsaken island and back to Port-Royal?
  • Sea turtles, mate.
  • According to Mercer, he was adrift at sea, and one of the EITC ships picked him up. Maybe he built a raft (by roping a couple of Sea Turtles, of course!)

• When Will and Jack meet, and Jack shows Will his "drawring" of a key, Jack goes on to say, "So, you have to sneak on board the Dutchman, swipe the key from this immortal, magical, guardian of the ocean, who will totes kill you dead if he gets any idea what you're up to, all without getting murdered by his immortal, magical crew, and bring it back to me, easy peasy." This is really where Will, at this point, should simply say, "Jack, that's insane and convoluted. I'm a blacksmith. Assuming this is to scale, I'll make you a key and then we can run off and nab this chesty thing of yours, all without once encountering any immortal, magical people." It would have simplified things immensely, and it would have made perfect sense.
  • Will is a blacksmith. Locksmiths make keys.
    • Will also built the metal prison door and its hinges, and thus presumably its lock, in the first film, remember? It'd make sense that he would know to work with locks too.
    • And swordsmiths make swords. Will's clearly a bit more flexible than your average blacksmith. But probably the drawing wasn't accurate enough, or sufficiently to scale, to base a new key off of.
  • The key and chest are probably enchanted so that only the original key works (dunno if Will had any reason to think that, though he might've guessed it just from all the mystical stuff Jack's dragged him into already).
  • Also, there is no mention of how credible Jack's source for the drawing is, so probably neither Jack nor Will (nor anyone else) expects the drawing to look too much like the key itself. Though it eventually ends up being identical, they have no way of knowing that at the time.
  • If the drawing wasn't identical to the key, then why does it even exist? As a clue that you need a key to open a chest?
    • Presumably, so you'd know roughly what the correct key looked like. Presumably it's not the only key in the Caribbean, or even the only one kept on board the Flying Dutchman.
    • There are tally marks on the corner of the drawing, such as might have been made by a man counting off the days 'til he'd see his lady-love again, until it became obvious he wouldn't see her again, and he started designing a key... And then he dropped the drawing somewhere and it ended up in a Turkish prison somehow, idk.
    • Oy oy oy, you can't make an identical key from a scale drawing. It's not a blueprint. It doesn't tell you what materials the key is made of, the thickness, the weight, all that stuff.
    • Locks, specially locks of that era, rely on a key's shape to be opened, not on the key's composition. Weight and materials aren't really a problem, as long as you don't make the key light enough to break under pressure. Thickness could be a problem, though, depending on how big the lock opening is. Still, one would think the solution would be to make several similar keys of varying thicknesses.
    • Did you see how complicated the lock for the chest was? It wasn't a normal lock of that era. It was really complex. A basic replica wouldn't have been able to unlock it, even without the magic.
    • It's a magic key to a magic chest. A copy wouldn't have the magic, and therefore wouldn't be able to open it.
    • They could have tried the easy way of getting the chest and making a key for it, before doing it the hard way of selling your soul to a sea demon, trying to sneak past a crew of immortal fish men, and steal a key to the captain's most precious belonging off of his person, off of a ship that may submerge underwater and kill you at any moment! Or at least do a scene transition to 5 extra seconds of them failing the easy method.
    • They didn't need the key at all! They could simply blast the chest with a cannon shot, exactly like the Brits threatened to do in the third movie! If the chest could withstand that, Davy wouldn't cooperate with Beckett.
    • Jack wanted the key so he could open the chest. He needed to open the chest so he could take the heart. He needed to have the heart itself so he could use it as a bartering tool to get out of his contract with Davy Jones. Blowing up the chest removes the bartering tool he so desperately needs.
    • How is bartering while threatening to stab the heart out of chest any different than bartering while threatening to shoot the heart inside the chest with a cannon? Apparently it differs so little that Beckett doesn't mind putting the heart back into the chest and pointing a cannon at it.
    • There's also no indication that any of the protagonists know the chest can be broken open like that. Beckett could have figured it out easily enough after he'd captured it- just call Jones over to his ship, point a cannon or two at the chest, and watch him freak, and you know that enough mundane force will do the trick. However, if that detail isn't part of the folklore, then Jack, Will, Elizabeth, and Norrington would have no way of knowing.
    • As stated above, they didn't know. Jack, Will, and Elizabeth have all gained a healthy respect for supernatural forces, curses, magic, and the power of the undead. When they needed a magic key to open a magic chest, they attempted to obtain the magic key to open the magic chest. Ignoring the magic for a more practical solution never crossed their minds. Beckett is a much more cynical individual, with absolutely no respect for magic whatsoever. As such, he represents the death of magic and wonderment in the world. Beckett has the Kraken killed unceremoniously offscreen, he makes Davy Jones into his personal bitch, and faced with the magic chest/magic key combo above, he simply responds with, "Why not just blow it the fuck up?" This is what makes him the villain of the film; we see that his cold, heartless pragmatism does, in fact, get results (much quicker and more effective results than anyone else, in fact)...but at the cost of everything that makes the world great to live in, at least for a pirate like Jack and Barbossa. The brief dialogue the two shared, overlooking the dead Kraken, was probably the most easily overlooked yet most important scene in the second and third films.
    • Beckett can hold the heart hostage by pointing cannons at it because he has no use for the chest, itself: he sees the supernatural as antiquated, and as an exploitable tool at best, not something he wants to personally commit himself to. Jack's goal is to stab Jones's heart and replace it with his own, meaning he needs the chest to be intact to receive his; he isn't sure if the immortality he seeks will be guaranteed unless his heart takes the place of Jones's, so he can't risk merely blowing the thing to bits.
  • Even given that it's a magical key to a magical chest that can't be counterfeited or busted open, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to go steal the unguarded chest first, and only then go after the heavily guarded key? So that once the powerful Eldritch Abomination clues into what you're doing, he won't be able to send his unkillable minions to stop Phase 2 of your plan since you'll have already done it and moved on to Phase 3?
    • They didn't know the key and chest were split up and that one was on the Flying Dutchman and the other buried on an island.
    • They've got a magical frickin compass, don't they? If wanting the key points to the ship and wanting the chest does not point to the ship, then you have your heading.
    • The compass wasn't working because it was on a ship, it wasn't working because Jack didn't know what he wanted. Which is why he uses Elizabeth to get to the chest instead.
  • Just wanted to point out: the idea that opening Jones' chest was as easy as turning a drawing into a key probably already crossed the addled mind of one of his damned crew. He makes the drawing, either from memory or a tracing, he escapes, then sneaks off like Will did. He fashions a key, then heads to Isla Cruces. The results were probably disappointing at best (didn't work) and gruesome at worst (and he got caught).
    • That's actually a pretty brilliant theory, the more-so as it explains why a drawing of the key even existed for Jack to purloin in the first place.

• While climbing up the mountain one of the pirates points out that you don't need more than a few of them to crew the ship. So how does that lead both groups deciding they need to race to the top? It isn't as if one group making it to the top will stop the second group, and the odds of one group reaching the ship without the other don't seem that much better.
  • Um...it should be obvious. Each group wants to get to the top first so they can take the Pearl and leave the rest there. They're pirates. They'll take any opportunity to screw each other over for profit.
  • Still not sure what the race was for though. In the time it took to prep the ship for launch the other cage would've had plenty of time to get out, barring any more unfortunate incidents.
    • It's like the old joke about the guy and his friend in the woods and what happens if they see a bear, and the one guy says he'll be fine. He doesn't have to outrun the bear, he just has to outrun his friend. In this case, the second group to the top is the group that's closer to any angry pursuing natives.
  • You guys missed something, that's a bit of Fridge Horror going on here. The pirates were /starving/. First guys up? In a position of strength to kill off the other guys for a bit of a top-up.
  • It's not that the two groups of pirates wanted to abandon each other, they already knew they could. It's the realization for each that the others might do it to them. They were being defensive, not offensive. Pay attention to their facial expressions and it becomes obvious they were just scared of getting left behind.
  • Everyone's missing the point here. Earlier on, it was established that the Pelegostos (is that right?) are conducting a ritual involving eating Jack Sparrow. The actual act occurring "when the drums stop." What the pirate was saying before is irrelevant: what is relevant is that after he says it, they look up and realize the drums aren't beating anymore.

• Will offers Davy Jones a game of dice with the key to the eponymous chest as a bet. So wait, Davy isn't concerned in the slightest that some shaveling is aware of the key's (and, by extension, the chest's) existence? He doesn't kill Will simply for knowing too much, he makes no attempt to elicit the sources of said knowledge, he shows the key to Will?! Does this imply that if Will had somehow managed to win the game Davy would have given him the key? What the hell!?
  • The key and the chest are part of the 'verse's mythology- they're not common knowledge, but it's not that surprising in the long run that Will knows about them. And Will doesn't know where the chest is so the Key is largely useless to him; Jones only goes there himself because he thinks (rightly) that Jack has a {[plan}} going on, not because he's worried about Will.
    • The question is, why was he OK with gambling for the key in the first place? When Jones realized that the key was gone, he spent the rest of the movie chasing the heroes, rightly deducing that their next objective was the chest (well, what else could it be), so what was the point? Furthermore, what would've happened if Will had won? As for Jack's gambit, Jones wanted Jack in his crew. You don't need to be a genius to work out that he will try to weasel out of the deal. Will's interest in the key reinforces that assumption. Why would Jones go along with that?
    • He's not okay with it. He accepts the challenge, perhaps out of arrogance, before the stakes are laid out, and even if there are no rules that say he can't back out, he wouldn't want to look like a pussbox in front of his crew. After he accepts, Will places his soul as his wager, Jones asks "In return for?" and Will says, "I want this," showing him the picture of the key. The look on Jones' face and his tone of voice when he says "How do you know of the key?" makes it clear that he's caught off-guard by this. Will even taunts him with a dare to back out, and Jones' response is to show him the actual key to prove he has the balls to go through with the game.
    • Occam's Razor says that Jones was just overconfident- after all, the implication is that no one has successfully challenged or cheated him in centuries. Under those circumstances, anybody might make a sloppy mistake.
    • The Pirates wiki said that he knows everything that goes on in the ship, which is debatable, but it would explain his bet, in other words he's (as they say in Elf) a cotton ninny muggin.
    • The game in question requires each participant to reveal their wager. Will shows his soul easily - he is there. Jones needs to prove that he is in possession of the key or he is unable to play.

• Following the same scene, isn't a captain's cabin supposed to be guarded, especially when he's asleep?
  • On an ordinary ship, probably. But why would they bother guarding Davy Jones? He's all but invincible, and anything that could kill him would be able to plow through his crew like it was nothing. Besides, nobody is usually aboard but mind-controlled crew members; no reason to even get into the habit.

• What's the deal with the suspended cages the cannibals were keeping the pirates in? First there is a threat that the supporting vines might snap and their dinner will plummet into the bottomless chasm. Next, each time the tribe wanted a pirate sandwich they had to pull a couple centers of weight out of the said chasm. How is that superior to making a durable wooden cage on the ground and keeping the prisoners there Bound and Gagged?
  • Possibly they had a ritual reason? Or maybe Jack ordered it that way, to create an unusual prison that his crew might be able to escape from (and subsequently free him, of course).
  • Well, the chasm isn't actually bottomless. It has a bottom down there somewhere. If the vines snap the cannibals can just climb down and pick up the gooey remains. If they're lucky there might still be some pieces big enough to barbecue. And hanging the cages over a pit makes it (in theory) that much harder for the prisoners to get away. Even if they squeeze through the bars, there's nowhere to go but down.
  • It also resolves the sanitation problem. Would you want to eat someone who'd been sitting around in a cage in his own filth? This way, they can relieve themselves through the holes in the bottom of the basket.
  • Support of two above, the cage is over a pit because it would have been possible for the captives to attack the rope/joints of the cage to get free. No one is really willing to destroy the cage that is stopping them from falling...

• After the Pearl repels the Kraken in round one with a volley of cannon fire, why doesn't the crew bring her about and make for the shallows? Actually, why doesn't the ship move at all when the Kraken lets go? You can see that the sails are full and that the cephalopodian menace has circled around for another pass, so why doesn't the Pearl budge?
  • Perhaps the crew were simply too stunned from everything that had just happened and weren't thinking clearly- not to mention that their captain had jumped ship, so there was no one around to give the order.
  • They couldn't, the Kraken kinda had them over a barrel. Remember, "must've hit a reef"? It stopped them dead in their track and all the sails in the world wouldn't have helped them.
    • The Kraken did grab the ship to make its first attack, but you can see from the giant wake that the beastie's let go and moved a considerable distance away to make the second attack. Unless the Kraken somehow glued it to the bottom, the Pearl should have started moving once it let go.
    • The Pearl is fast, but the Kraken is faster. That's why Davy halts pursuit in the Dutchman and calls the Kraken.

• Davy Jones wears his broadsword at his right hip. WHY? You wear your damn sword on the hip opposite your dominant hand and reach across your body to draw it! Jonesy can't even draw a sword with his left hand, much less wield one! His main gauche is a formidable weapon in its own right, but he still wouldn't be able to draw the broadsword with his right hand from its position on his right hip. Which is probably why he never fights anyone with it, and after he pulls Norrington's small sword out of his shoulder he wears it properly on his left hip.
  • It could be possible that he was naturally left-handed, but his transformation, which rendered his left hand a claw, forced him to master use of his right hand. The sword on his hip is covered in barnacles, so he may have just let it transform as well until it became useless. Given that he's an immortal squid-man, he probably didn't need to use conventional weapons to defend himself and only took Norrington's sword because the situation was becoming dire.
  • It's hard to notice without freeze-frame, but Jones's left knee is sheathed in a lumpy mass of coral with jutting hooked protrusions. It's possible that he did use a left-side scabbard at one time, but it kept getting caught in the coral's branches and tripping him up.

• In the aftermath of the final battle, how does the crew get away? The Dutchman was within the line of sight from the spot where the Pearl sunk, so there's no way Johns could miss several boats slowly rowing away. And seeing how he's just discovered that his heart had been stolen, wouldn't his immediate intent be to capture and torture/murder them all?
  • Someone just stole his heart (no, not like that). He's got a lot of stuff going on right now.
• How exactly did the Pelegostos get William into that cage without anybody escaping?
  • Sharp sticks and the fact that Jack's crew men aren't the most stalwart of companions?

• In the first movie it was originally meant for Jack's compass to point only to the Isla de Muerta. The change in the second movie leads to some fridge logic in that after the mutiny Jack supposedly spent ten years looking for the Black Pearl, when presumably the compass would have been pointing directly at it.
  • The Pearl was headed for Isla de Muerta when Jack was using it in the first movie. To find one was to find the other.
  • Plus he didn't have a ship in those ten years, whereas the Pearl was constantly on the move.
    • And on top of that, the Black Pearl is easily the fastest ship of the Caribbean. Until Jack knew the curse was real and that the pirates were probably hanging around the one place they could break the curse, there would be no way for Jack to catch up with the Pearl without knowing its heading or where it makes port.

• Tia Dalma gave Jack the jar of dirt specifically so that Davy Jones wouldn't be able to board the Black Pearl. However, Jones manages to step foot on the Pearl while he has the jar of dirt on board.
  • The rules are that Jones can step foot on land once every ten years. Him stepping foot on the Pearl while Jack had the dirt was the only time he could have done that, and he couldn't do it again, so the jar worked. This is spelled out at Isla Cruces, when Jones outright says he couldn't go on the shore for another decade to retrieve the Chest himself.
  • Tia Dalma is actually very vague on the purpose of the jar of dirt. She may thought it would be used to spread dirt on the deck to keep Jones away, since stepping on a ship that happens to have dirt aboard without actually touching the dirt doesn't really seem like stepping on land.
  • It seems that the dirt, like the chest itself, muffled whatever capacity Jones might've had to intuitively sense where his heart was located. Dirt/land in general hampers his supernatural powers; him not setting foot on land is merely the most tangible consequence of this. Tia was offering Jack a means by which he could conceal his acquisition of the heart from Jones until he was in the best possible bargaining position.

• During their whole "curiosity" banter, why was Elizabeth trying to seduce Jack to the point they almost kissed (only for Jack to stop when he saw the black mark)? She did it again at the end to trap Jack on the Pearl, but at that earlier moment? Was she really just testing if Jack would "take advantage" of her as she said, and for what purpose? Or was it simply meant as Ship Tease and make you question if she actually had feelings for him? The film seems to drop hints of this with the compass pointing to Jack whenever she holds it (much to her annoyance), but in the third movie (apart from Jack telling her "Once was quite enough") this is never brought up again.
  • Part of it is evidently the writers being coy, but from a more logical standpoint it's brought up Elizabeth needs Jack's cooperation and his accepting of Beckett's letters of marque to ensure her and Will's pardon (as per Beckett's instructions). Moments before she tries seducing him she brings this up to Jack, who more or less shrugs and goes "tough break for Will and you but I ain't got nothing to do with that". Seeing as Jack is completely unresponsive to reason she's trying to seduce him into helping her.

• Why was the monkey still undead? Wouldn't breaking the curse of the Black Pearl affect him too?
  • In the first movie's stinger, the monkey takes another coin and gets cursed again.
  • He presumably does get un-cursed by the end of the fifth movie, though. However, his last scene in AWE implies he probably was un-cursed again beforehand. (he eats a peanut, and seems to have enjoyed it).
• Why does no one seem to care that Pintell and Ragetti are back? No so much as bats an that two members of the cursed crew have escaped jail and found them and the pearl again. They might have been comic but they still took part in the mutiny, spent ten years raiding the Caribbean and killed innocent civilians and Royal Navy Marines. And not one main character even asks them how they found them or asks the others why they’re letting stick around. They’re just suddenly back in the story out of nowhere.
  • Given that most of the crew was killed by the Pelogostos, they need all the help they can get, so they're basically in a "beggars can't be choosers" situation. Word of God mentioned that Jack's choice of who he brought along to dig up the Dead Man's Chest, including them and Norrington, was meant to be him bringing the people whom he wouldn't mind if they got killed.

• How did Bootstrap Bill recognize Will, if the last time he saw him Will was 8 years old or younger?
  • The scene he recognizes Will occurs when he and Will both respond to Jimmy Legs calling for a "Mr. Turner!" to their mutual confusion, so Bootstrap starts off from the knowledge that this stranger also has the surname Turner. Characters in the first movie are always saying adult Will is the "spitting image" of Bootstrap Bill Turner, which by inference means Will looks a lot like Bootstrap did before he was cursed. Bootstrap thus saw someone about the age of his lost son who looked exactly like him before his curse and also responds to "Mr. Turner", from which point he put two and two together. Of course, Stellan Skarsgard and Orlando Bloom don't particularly look (or even sound) alike and never did at any point of their lives so you have to handwave that a bit, but narratively that's the explanation.

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