Deleted Scenes That Would've Fixed Confusing Plot Points

One of the best things about special features on DVDs and Blu-rays is the litany of deleted scenes in films that we can all now see. But omitting those scenes sometimes creates pesky plot holes that would've been sealed, if only they had just stayed in place:

Aliens is one of the best movies ever made, no doubt, but it does have one weird issue. It seems like Ripley is barely affected by anything. She goes through the whole movie showing about two emotions: kill, and kill with fire. But that's like, weird, right? After all, she comes back after a hundred years of sleep, her whole family and life passed away, and she basically shrugs about it. Okay, she also gets a flamethrower and kills some bugs, but still. Seems like she's being a little too cavalier about it all, no?

But that wouldn't be the case if the deleted scene above was left in. We see here that her daughter's death — her daughter's death of old age, of having an entire life that Ripley missed — had a profound effect on her. In addition to making Ripley not seem like, you know, a robot, it also makes her bond with Newt make a ton more sense: she's trying to replace the daughter-sized hole in her heart with the creepiest child to ever appear in films.

If you've only ever seen the two Deathly Hallows films and never read the books, you probably think it's weird that the Death Eaters managed to always somehow find Ron, Harry, and Hermione. What, were they wearing a tracking beacon? Did they forget to turn the GPS on their wands off? What the heck?

Well, the actual reason is that Voldemort's name is taboo. Yeah, in the film — and the book series; yes, we know, nerds — Voldemort puts a curse on his name so that whenever anyone says it, he and his Death Eaters can detect them and find them. Which isn't a problem for a bunch of people, because they all call him You Know Who, but then there's Harry, who refuses to. So every single time he says Voldemort's name, in an attempt to say "I'm not scared of him," he's actually shining a huge light on himself, saying, "Hey, Death Eaters! Boy Who Lived here, come kill me!"

Of course, eventually he knows better ... because Ron tells him. But they deleted that scene, so it suddenly goes from Death Eaters knowing where Harry is 24/7, to them never knowing, which, to be honest, isn't the weirdest or worst plot hole in the whole series, but it's still pretty bad.

The Lord of the Rings is one of the best film trilogies ever — we're doing our best to forget The Hobbit, and so should you — but there's always been one weird part in it: Boromir. He alternates between being incredibly cruel and incredibly cute. Remember when he wrestled with the Hobbits? Remember when he attempted to kill them? While a lot of this could be laid at the feet of The Ring's destructive influence, there's a much sadder explanation, and it lays at the feet of his horrible father, as the deleted scene above reveals.

As we know from Two Towers, Boromir's father is a cruel, unforgiving man who wants nothing more than The Ring, so that the Kingdom he's the steward of can gain power over all. He sends Boromir to the Council to claim the One Ring. So when Boromir seems lustful over the Ring, when it seems like he's being evil, he's really just trying to be a good son. Which means his dad has been one of the most destructive forces in the entire saga since the first movie. Seriously, he's worse than Saruman.

Groundhog Day is maybe the most philosophical and interesting of all the comedies that involve someone getting a piano dropped on them. Bill Murray relives one day in his life, for seemingly no purpose, over and over. Due to the lack of explanation in the finished film, people have argued for years about what the heck the point of it all is. While that doesn't exactly make it a bad movie, it does make it confusing. What's making Murray so piano-proof?

While still in development, the filmmakers had a simple, and kind of dumb, explanation in mind: an ex of Murray's character cursed him until he could learn how to actually love, at which point the curse ended. Unfortunately, this scene was cut while still in the fetal stage, so we don't have awesome deleted footage of a witch cursing Bill Murray, but we do have the original, with Murray dying, like, a lot. It's just as fun.

The Terminator franchise will long be remembered as the vehicle that propelled Arnold Schwarzenegger to super stardom. But as good as Arnie is in that role, the franchise has always sported one huge unanswered question: why on Earth would Skynet — a sentient computer program originally developed in the United States — build a robotic assassin, one designed to stealthily infiltrate and take out a single target as covertly as possible, with arms the size of a city bus and a thick Austrian accent? As intimidating as the T-800 is, it doesn't exactly scream "subtle," does it?

Well, this is actually explained in far more detail than anyone ever wanted, in a deleted scene from Terminator 3. There, it's established that the T-800 was physically based on an American soldier (played by Arnie, duh) called Master Sergeant William Candy. Sergeant Candy was selected as the model for an experimental robotic soldier designed to take the place of actual troops, so he had his body and face scanned by Cyberdyne systems, to serve as the basic look of the robots. The obvious interpretation of this scene is that when Skynet took over, it used this information as the basis for the T-800 because it's not like the sentient killer computer program that wants to destroy all humanity had many other options.

As for the voice, during the scene Schwarzenegger is dubbed over with a thick southern accent (allegedly provided by none other than Samuel L. Jackson), prompting a member of military brass to quip "I don't know about that accent," to which an unnamed suit replies (in Arnie's voice) "we can fix it." This suggests he recorded all the lines the robot would speak that Skynet similarly used when making the T-800. If Judgment Day happens in real life, our Terminator will sound exactly like Ciri.

The 2014 Robocop remake was, to be as diplomatic as possible, stinky. It didn't have the humor or biting social commentary of the original and thanks the studio inexplicably deciding to make it PG-13, it didn't even have awesome scenes like the one where a guy gets hit by a car so much, he explodes into a cloud of goo. Even the Robocop costume somehow looked worse than the one from the original, in part because Joel Kinnaman's right hand was sticking out throughout the entire movie. You know, the same thing they throw away in the original Robocop, because they realize an entirely robotic hand would be far more durable.

As it turns out, there's a deleted scene that explains exactly why they go to the effort of saving Robocop's objectively less-useful human appendage. In the scene, during a conversation with Gary Oldman's character, businessman Michael Keaton asks if it would be possible to save Alex Murphy's right hand because, to quote him, "my father always said you can tell a lot about a man by his handshake." In other words, he wanted Robocop to be able to shake hands with the public, to convince them he's still a man and not a horrific amalgamation of humanity and robotics, that a human is still pulling the trigger when Robocop shoots someone. But apparently that was too interesting a concept to put in a PG-13 shoot-bang movie, so it was cut. Figures.

After the critical mauling the prequel trilogy got, The Force Awakens was a return to form for the Star Wars series. With a diverse cast of likable characters, the film explored several interesting concepts within the Star Wars universe, one of which was the idea of a Stormtrooper just up and quitting his job after realizing he's working for a bunch of space Nazis. Though the First Order are clearly the villains, what with all the planet-exploding and all, it's still kind of odd that FN-2187 quits on his first day of actual Stormtroopering after seeing a single one of his friends shot. The Rebels shot like eight Stormtroopers in the first-ever scene of the franchise and none of them quit, so what gives?

Well, in a scene cut from the theatrical release it's shown that Finn, shortly after witnessing his friend die (you can tell because he has the bloodstain on his helmet), encounters a woman swaddling a baby, who proceeds to beg for her life. She doesn't verbally beg, but she has a real hard case of the sad eyes, so it's implied. After a brief, silent exchange, Finn lowers his weapons and lets the woman go. This scene helps explain why Finn so readily betrays the only home and family he's ever known — he witnessed firsthand the fear his armor inspired, and became aware of the atrocities he'd be asked to commit on behalf of the First Order. That's kind of dark for a kids' film so we can see why it was cut – we cannot, however, imagine why the scene of Chewbacca ripping a guy's arm off was, though. Kids love that stuff.

So you might not remember who Nero is, so let's catch you up. He's the bald bad guy in J.J. Abrams' 2009 reboot of Star Trek who screams "Fire everything!" Still don't remember? He's the bald guy played by the Hulk from Ang Lee's version? He's the one who kills Kirk's dad and then disappears until he destroys Vulcan? Okay, well, we get it, he's forgettable, but that's who he is.

So, wait, what happened? He kills Kirk's dad — while Kirk is being born — and then we don't see him until Kirk is old enough to be in Starfleet? What was he doing? Taking a vacation? Actually, he was being held prisoner, off in Deleted Scenes Land.

See, the creators of the film thought it'd be a bit boring to see a bunch of toddlers taking on a super enemy — although we think Trek Babies sounds like the best idea ever — so they needed to give him something to do. Their idea was that Nero's incredibly damaged ship was easily taken over by Klingons who tortured and enslaved Nero and his crew for years, until they could finally break free. Since this plot was about as boring as it sounds, it was cut out of the movie leaving a big gaping plot hole that most of us didn't notice because, hey, a Red Shirt died! Look, it's Leonard Nimoy! Scotty! Tribbles!

Alright, you ready? Strap yourselves in, because we're about to tell you about the coolest deleted scene ever. But before we do that, we have to talk about The Phantom Menace. (Now do you see why we told you to strap yourselves in? Because if not, you'd run in the opposite direction.)

In that film, we find out that Anakin has no father, like Jesus. But that explanation is a bit silly. After all, even Jesus had a dad — God. So who was Anakin's? We never find out, technically, but a deleted scene from Revenge of the Sith reveals the truth. See, Palpatine's master taught him how to manipulate midichlorians to create life. In an attempt to create the perfect pupil, Palpatine created Anakin, revealing it all by saying that "from a certain point of view" he was Anakin's father! This not only clears up this plot point, but also makes Return of the Jedi better. Think about it: Anakin tries to draw his son to the Dark Side, just like his father did. While a bunch of people have theorized that this might be true, George Lucas originally planned to spell it out in big bright Sith lightning. Unfortunately, this scene was still in script phase when Lucas deleted it, so we don't have an actual scene to show you, so enjoy this video of Darth Vader screaming.

Remember Independence Day? Of course you do! It was only the most 90s of all sci-fi movies. If you're anything like us, you're watching it right now. It's a great, silly movie about humanity fighting against aliens and defeating them with the miracle of an inspirational speech and also ... hacking? Wait, what?

We can't get our PC and Macs to interact with each other, how in the heck did Jeff Goldblum get a computer virus onto the alien ship? Did he just glower at it until it got so turned on, it went up in flames?

The deleted scene above has the answer: Goldblum had previously decoded the alien's communications. Remember how he found out they were coming in by decoding their messages to each other? He was going to apply that like a Rosetta Stone on the information contained on the crashed alien ship at Roswell. From there, he figured out how to write a virus specifically for the alien's computers. Which still doesn't make a bunch of sense, but it's better than "Mac is universally compatible," which is the message we got from the film.

Here's one for the Goonies fans in the audience. (Hey guys! We hope your hips are still doing okay. Take your vitamins.) This might be hard for you Goonheads, but remember at the end, when the Goonies are screaming at their parents about all their adventures? Do you remember what Data says that makes absolutely zero sense? You can check the clip out above if you don't. We'll wait. Did you get it?

That's right, the Octopus! Data mentions a giant octopus which, no, you didn't forget. There's no octopus in the final cut of Goonies. But there is one in deleted scene above. When the Goonies are swimming through the lake to the pirate ship, they run into a giant Octopus that attempts to eat them all, because what is more pirate-y than an octopus-infested lake, in which sits a treasure chest of fortunes? Nothing.

Ever wonder why Obi-Wan went from being a pretty cool (if a little uptight) mentor to Anakin and Luke, to being a deceitful liar who kept Anakin's identity a secret from Luke, even going as far as to tell him Vader killed him? Well, guess what? It wasn't Obi-Wan's fault! It was that friggin' Muppet, Yoda.

Yep, green Miss Piggy was the one responsible for the deceit, according to the deleted scene above. He purposefully kept Luke from knowing, even forbidding Obi-Wan from telling Luke out of fear of what Luke would do if he knew. Originally, Yoda told Luke this on his deathbed, but the scene, sadly, was cut. Geez, at this point, we're convinced there are good versions of all the bad Star Wars films out there, getting dusty on cutting room floors.