Yona was right. They are fucked.
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
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The Film
- The animated prequel
is packed with horrible images:- The hope of the chemical ending global warming giving way to despair when the new ice age hits.
- The fact that the freezing hits so fast that people are frozen solid like statues instantly.
- The brutal, bloody race by people to get on board the train with horrible fighting, mass chaos; nothing but people at their most desperate dong anything to survive.
- The train finally taking off and smashing into the now-frozen corpses, shattering them like...well, ice.
- Near the beginning, Mason gives a laborious speech to the tail section, the gist of which is "I am a hat, you are a shoe, you will be exploited forever because that's your place in life", while Andrew's arm is hung outside of the train to be frozen and then smashed off with a massive hammer. In case you were wondering what kind of world this is, Andrew's crime was throwing a shoe at Claude, a front-section passenger, and the only reason he threw his shoe at Claude in the first place is because she took his son, Andy, away from him.
- Paul's solitude in the protein bar manufacturing car. Both Curtis and Edgar note that Paul looks and acts very different from how he used to be before he was taken from the tail section.
- After getting to the kitchen car, Curtis finds out what the "protein bars" are made out of: ground-up cockroaches. After throwing up in his mouth a little bit, he quickly decides it'd be better not to tell the rest of his people, likely to prevent a massive freakout that could break the spirit of the revolt he's started. What's even worse is that right before this, everyone had gotten excited about having unlimited access to their only source of food and started chowing them down.
- Especially nightmarish when you consider they've all been eating nothing but the shit for seventeen years. It might have been preferable to keep eating each other's limbs.
- Hardly. Insects and arachnids are a good source of protein and people eat them in real life. If you're ever stuck in the desert, eat spiders. And ants. And grasshoppers.
- Especially nightmarish when you consider they've all been eating nothing but the shit for seventeen years. It might have been preferable to keep eating each other's limbs.
- The Axe Gang scene. The music helps the freakiness level.
- Before the fighting begins, a few of the axe-men show their enemies a large fish that they proceed to gut and use its blood to paint the blades of their axes. It is never commented on, but it's definitely a scare tactic that unnerves the tail-section fighters as well as the audience.
- The fight stops prematurely as the train is about to collide with a wall of ice on the tracks. Everyone gets down low and braces for the impact. There's a very freaky moment when Curtis looks beside him and sees one of the masked axe-men smiling at him with bloody teeth. It turns into a Moment of Awesome after they've passed the ice wall and the fight continues, with Curtis immediately killing that man.
- How about when the Axe Gang puts on their night-vision goggles as the train goes into the dark tunnel? Seeing the heroes getting butchered as they stand blinded in the dark is horrifying. Meanwhile, Mason is gawking at the slaughter with a big smile on her face, and her men are frantically taking count of everyone who dies.
- The classroom car. The young schoolchildren give no regard to the tail-section passengers, to the point where they cheerfully tell Tanya and Andrew that their sons were crying after they were taken, and their pregnant teacher sings a song with them that glorifies Wilford and the "sacred Engine."
- "Rumble! Rumble! Rattle! Rattle! The Engine will never die!"
- The pregnant teacher pulls out a gun from her basket of eggs and repeatedly shoots at the heroes, successfully killing Andrew by shooting him through his head. It turns into a Moment of Awesome when Grey avenges Andrew by throwing a knife at her neck, killing her almost instantly.
- Franco the Elder's Roaring Rampage of Revenge. This Mook Lieutenant gets pretty terrifying after Yona kills his brother. He fires indiscriminately through the windows of the train and at front-section survivors trying to get at Yona. This is taken up to eleven in the sauna scene, where Franco executes one of his own men for questioning his killing of a front-section passenger (and would have done the same to another had he not run out of ammo). He then takes on Curtis and his team by himself, and proves himself quite the Hero Killer when he's able to shrug off every wound they inflict on him, beat Curtis into unconsciousness, easily subdue and shoot Tanya, and overpower and kill Grey. It's unsettling to see him stand triumphantly over these Badass Normal characters, calmly smiling and trying to fix his messy hair.
- Franco's absolutely insane Slasher Smile after Curtis shoves a knife into him. Considering he had been The Stoic thus far, it's quite freaky.
- The fact that he's still alive after all this.
- The first months of living in the tail section of the Snowpiercer. Everyone had to cut off their limbs to feed others, because the alternative was killing children and the weak to sustain themselves, while cars away there are people who are eating steak and having tailors sew them a custom suit.
- Egghead smiling pleasantly as he cuts down screaming tail-section passengers with a submachine gun.
- Wilford, and everything he represents.
- Realizing that Gilliam did and endured the hell that was the early tail section as part of a plan to intentionally cull excess members of humanity, and no other reason.
- When the garish, spoiled, tweaked-out front-section masses converge on the engine antechamber, trying to kill Curtis, Minsoo, and Yona.
- Yona tries to get the matches from Curtis so that Minsoo can blow up the door to the outside, using his hoarded Kronole as the explosive. However, thanks to Wilford nearly convincing Curtis to take his place and lead the train, Curtis pushes Yona away and glares at her. Just a few scenes after he adamantly refused to take over Wilford's place, Curtis' change in attitude due to Wilford's manipulation is frightening to both Yona and the audience.
- Yona suddenly senses something below her, and she scrabbles at the floor tiles to uncover Tanya's son, Timmy, beneath the floor.
- The way Andy moves to his "post" and does not respond to Curtis, who's pleading for him to stop operating the Engine. In merely a few days since he and Timmy were taken, young Andy has become Brainwashed and Crazy thanks to Wilford.
- Just the concept of children being taken away from their parents and becoming parts in an engine that never stops, like they were just bits of machinery and not actual human beings.
- Near the very end, when an avalanche completely destroys the train, killing all but a very small few on board. Unless you're very optimistic, it looks like the human race is at an end. But don't worry, the director is here to clear things up! Yep, they're all dead.
- Many believe that this film is a sequel to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and that Wilford is a grown up Charlie Bucket, and have given evidence to support this theory. If you believe this, then it means not only did Willy Wonka get a severe Happy Ending Override (albeit many years in the future), but also Charlie Bucket, who along with his mother is the only truly good character in the film, somehow becomes the cruel tyrant that is Wilford.
The Series
Season 11 - First, the Weather Changed
- The sheer chaos at Snowpiercer's departure. Hordes of desperate people attempt to force their way through highly armed security for their only chance at salvation.
- Melanie casually reminding Layton that the strawberry plants on the train are more important than the human lives of those in the tail.
- The desperate fight between the rebels and the jackboots, with mass bloodshed and children getting into the fight.
- Just the cold way Ruth converses with the mother of a child who's offering herself up in place of her daughter's punishment.Ruth: Where’s the logic in that?
Suzanne: She’s just a little girl.
Ruth: Yeah, a little girl who helped to kill six men.
Suzanne: I’m her mother, it’s my fault, I let her help the rebellion.
Ruth [coldly smiling]: Finally, someone with the moral fortitude to take responsibility for their actions. - First class passengers hear about the murder in thirdcClass, and former lawyer Mrs. Folger offers her insight in exchange for more information.LJ : I didn’t know that Finkelstein, Branxom and Folger did murders, mom.
Lilah: Go ahead and laugh. My family may not think I’m capable, Melanie, but the Freeze taught us all we have the capacity to kill. - Layton has to tell Till and Pelton that the rumours about cannibalism in the tail were actually true. He was in a group that killed the cannibal leader, and they all ate a piece of his heart so none of them could claim innocence.
- The series shows just how unforgiving temperatures are when an avalanche slams into the train. When the cattle car's window breaks, it takes seconds for the herd to expire, and the head butcher is frozen so quickly that when the thermal-suited engineers investigate, his corpse is still standing upright.
- A bloody fight, then an equally bloody riot, breaks out while first class passengers watch the whole thing from above, laughing.
- The killer brutally murdering others before making his way to Nikki, who is still recovering from the drawers. The way he stares back at Nikki and his sheer brutality in how he disposes of his victims is spinechilling.
- Jinju skinning the fish for a beautiful sushi meal is cut together with the bloody scene of Nikki’s murder.
- Osweiller rightfully points out the horror that is two unarmed brakemen going after a man skilled in using firearms. Sure enough, the presence of the gun frightens the passengers, who haven’t seen one since boarding the train.
- With both LJ and Melanie, there’s a sense that Layton is Alone with the Psycho in this episode, twice.
5 - Justice Never Boarded
- The steadfast ethos of the train, summed up nicely by Ruth: “We don’t have will, we have order”.
- The flashback to Layton’s experience with the kill cults that used to occupy the very back of the train.
7 - The Universe Is Indifferent
- Melanie brutally torturing Josie by freezing one of her fingers and smashing it.
10 - 994 Cars Long
- One of Snowpiercer's supply trains, the Big Alice, survived. It latches on Snowpiercer and immobilizes it. The train bears Wilford's symbol, implying he managed to survive the world's freezing and now has his own train.
- Melanie's daughter, Alexandra, is not only still alive, but she's now Wilford's Dragon.
- Wilford is alive, and he's furious at Melanie due to her betrayal. Now he wants the Snowpiercer back, or he will decouple the Big Alice and leave everyone inside to die, as the Snowpiercer no longer has enough power to move on its own. If it wasn't for the fact that Melanie placed an explosive in the decoupling system, Alex would've doomed everyone to die, and her mother would've been forced to compost every last corpse inside as punishment.
- One of Wilford's men is Icy Bob, a tall and muscular man with a bald head and a body covered in scars. It's uncertain if he's fully human anymore, as he single-handedly repels Layton's attack, and doesn't react at all to the influx of freezing air used to repel the Tailies. He's so strong he kills a man with a single blow.
- To deal with the threat of Wilford's arrival, Layton declares martial law. He's coming dangerously close to a Full-Circle Revolution.
2 - Smolder to Life
- We see just how much control Wilford has over his people, as he makes Kevin slit his wrists in the bathtub for failing him.
- Lights, one of the Tailies, is ambushed by Wilford supporters, and has two of her fingers cut off.
3 - A Great Odyssey
- Josie's face (and the rest of her body) after suffering extreme frostbite.
4 - A Single Trade
- The titular trade — back before the Freeze, Miss Audrey secured her ticket by letting Mr. Wilford watch her as she opened up her wrist and bled out in a bathtub, entirely trusting that he would actually bring her back.
5 - Keep Hope Alive
- Layton staples the back of Pike's head back together after he gets a blow to the head.
- Josie undergoes heavy debridement without the benefit of anesthetic so that she can listen in on the Headwoods and find out what they're discussing. We thankfully don't see what the Headwoods are doing to her, but from her facial expression, it looks like it hurts.
- It turns out that Wilford's secret plan was to launch a systematic attack on all the breachmen at once. Not even his most loyal subjects are safe from his paranoid machinations.
6 - Many Miles from Snowpiercer
- Melanie spends a month inside a freezing station where the food is nearly non-existent, there are dead bodies in the snow, and there's an arm in the refrigerator. All the while, she's being tormented by hallucinations of Wilford, taunting her that she'll never survive.
- In flashbacks, we see why Melanie chose to abandon Wilford — in the last chaotic moments before Snowpiercer launched Melanie arranged for the team of geneticists Wilford had previously rejected to make more room for his jackboots to come to the station anyway, hoping he would see reason and let them board. Wilford orders his jackboots to gun them down on the spot to punish her for attempting to undermine him.
7 - Our Answer for Everything
- Enraged by rumors that the Tailies murdered the breachmen, the Wilford loyalists riot, roaming the train in search of Tailies to kill and mutilate. Pike is captured and dragged out to the tail, where the rioters intend to stick his arm out of the port until it freezes.
- Till determines that Pastor Logan was Wilford's man on the inside of Snowpiercer and confronts him. Faced with imminent arrest and probably interrogation, he kills himself by putting a bag over his head that's connected to a tube leading outside. By opening a valve, the cold air rushes in and freezes his head solid.
- Kevin turns out to be alive, but is nearly insane as a result of Wilford's "care". Audrey is tasked with breaking him, and succeeds; at the end of the episode, he is so docile that Audrey can order him to lick Wilford's slipper.
- The final shot of the episode sees all the Wilford loyalists on Snowpiercer lighting red lanterns as a sign of fealty. Almost every window on the train has a lantern in it, and the resulting red light resembles a massive flowing bloodstain on the snow outside.
Season 3
1 - The Tortoise and the Hare
- As Layton searches the abandoned power plant, he gets ambushed by a lunatic in a full radiation suit. The sudden shock of it is jarring.
2 - The Last to Go
- Wilford's deranged laughter as he realizes that the pirate train is closing in on him.
3 - The First Blow
- Kevin freezes and smashes Strongboy's fingers and tongue.
4 - Bound By One Track
- Virtually everything we see of Wilford's cull. If it wasn't established he's the series' biggest monster, it certainly is now.
- We see what actually happened; after checking the crew for intellect, physical and mental prowess, he simply detached three cars worth of people, letting them freeze in their sleep.
- Alex and Ben finding the bodies is particularly grim. Every single one is bundled up in their bunks, fully clothed — obviously trying to escape the terrible cold as the cars progressively froze.
- There's also the fact Wilford knowingly split up families and loved ones before it happened. Many of the survivors must have lived with the fact their loved ones were saved from the Freeze only to be murdered by a sociopath for being deemed useless. It's no wonder that Big Alice's crew seem so demoralised and hopeless in season 2 when we see them.
- Finally, the room Wilford takes Alex from just before the cars separate is clearly a designated children's room. Given that the previous season established Alex is the youngest on Big Alice, the awful implication is that Wilford killed nearly every child on Big Alice to ensure his own survival.
8 - Setting Itself Right
- The train spends much of the episode dealing with a massive orange sulfuric cloud that envelopes the entire train.
- In order to get an invitation to join Wilford's new secret group, LJ agrees to let Mrs. Headwood scrape some of the skin off of her leg. Without anesthetic.
- Till spends most of the episode stuck with Audrey, who appears to be deliberately using her manipulative talents to break Bess' will.
9 - A Beacon For Us All
- Melanie spent six months crammed inside a tiny car, constantly dosing herself with suspended animation drugs to keep herself asleep for days on end. By the time Snowpiercer find her, she's so weak that she needs stimulants to bring herself out of suspension, and she's just about run out of those.
10 - The Original Sinners
- Boki turns out to be alive, having survived the breach of the aquarium way back at the end of season 2, but not only is he horribly scarred, he's also been turned into a Coldman, and Wilford and Headwood have adjusted the process that made Icy Bob so that not only is Icy Boki impervious to cold, but he's also nearly impervious to pain of any kind. He's also cruel and nearly feral; asked to escort Oz out of the Night Car, he gleefully picks Oz up and hurls him over the barricades.
- Big Alice makes a harrowing run over an old trestle bridge. At top speed. The outside shots of the train show the wheels are all on fire, and when the train finally stops, it's very clear that Big Alice has been derailed.
- In the final scene of the season, Melanie is driving Snowpiercer along a track and sees a massive explosion in the distance, with what looks like a train car being tossed into the air. Whatever this is, Snowpiercer is headed right towards it.
The Comics
- The ending of the Escape, wherein the entire train is dead, except for one.
- This especially became worse during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- There can be something unsettling about seeing people in a perfectly functioning (albeit corrupt, and very exploitative) society worshipping the engine itself as a God.
- In "Terminus", the last shelter is basically leaking radioactive snow onto everyone. One character is revealed to have cancer, and is the only one to stay behind, knowing he does not have long to live.
