Headscratchers / The Pumaman

• Why is the Aztec superhero white, and, apparently, clueless about his heritage?
• Martin, in a scene cut from the MST3K version, tells Tony that the four Americans who were tossed out of windows were sons of doctors whose parents were killed in plane crashes. Okay, so...
  • 1. London is pretty big, but even so it's unlikely there are even two people living there who fit that very specific description, but the movie expects us to believe there are at least seven! Kobras killed four, Tony himself makes five, and Kobras said he hoped Tony was the Pumaman "if only for the sake of the others" implying that he knew of at least two more (since "others" is plural) that he planned to kill if Tony wasn't the right one.
  • 2. How is it possible that Kobras knew such specific information as where Tony lived, what nationality he was, what his father's profession was and how the man died... and yet they didn't just know who Tony was?
    • Was it not Vadinho who was throwing people out the windows? I always thought it was.
    • Nah. Apparently Vadinho already knew he had the right guy, and just pitched Tony out the window to make a point that he was the Pumaman.
    • This is pointed out (not very well) when Vadinho confronts Tony in his apartment, shows him a picture, and says "I did not need to kill to find you." He doesn't explicitly say "those other deaths were the bad guy, not me" but it's implied. He just threw Tony out the window to be a jerk.
    • You can see when one of the earlier victims gets thrown out the window, and it's two people doing it, one of whom appears to be the bearded henchman who looks like Eddie Rabbit.
• Why would the gods, who supposedly value free will so highly, give mankind a mask that allows one person to control another? And for the matter, why isn't the Pumaman, the direct descendant of the gods, immune to the effects of the mask?
  • Perhaps the mask is for some Godzilla Threshold, such as stopping a deadly tyrant or a berserk Puma Man. Alternatively, Puma Man isn't immune because both powers come from the same source.
  • Kobras had to try twice to finally break Tony because he was putting up an "unexpected resistance." Pumaman might actually have some level of protection, just not immunity.
• So if Kobras already controls the people in power and the police, why would he need his henchman to make Pumaman's "death" look like suicide? Anybody who might investigate it is already in Kobras' garish, patent-leather pocket anyway.
  • There's also the beginning of the movie, when Kobras' goons are roaming London, killing Americans with all the subtlety of... well, of a pack of goons chucking people out of high rise windows in broad daylight. We even see a newspaper with a front page article about the murders, questioning who will be next, so we know that the public is well aware of what's happening. What's more, this is before Kobras invites the entire government to his mansion to brainwash them! So he had no problem murdering openly, has even less reason to care now, and yet still thinks he needs to disguise this one very specific murder for no reason. The only logical explanation is the one given by Mike and the Bots: "That would be cheating."
    • Either cheating or Kobras was paranoid that PM told anyone else where he was going. By this point, Vadhino was unaccounted for, and he was the just the one ally PM had that he knew about. A murder could've been incentive for said ally(ies) to go vigilante and attack him when he didn't have the mask to hide behind. Vadinho almost got lucky with a stick of dynamite when Kobras tried to use the mask on him. Last thing Kobras needed was some schmuck with a sniper rifle aiming at him when he's on the can.
• Why is flight one of Pumaman's powers? Since when do pumas fly?
  • The film does call it "jumping", as if he has infinite double jumps rather than true flight. The Aztec god closest to a puma god, Tezcatlipoca, was the god of hurricanes among other things, so it's possible the idea was that he was borne on the winds. (Though it's more likely nobody did any research at all and just said "Superman flies, our hero will fly, too!")