A man who is miserable kills himself only to find that his life on Earth was a reward - since Earth is much better than the life on the alien world on which he's from.

When Harry arrives at the mirror, Quirrel and his passenger stand before it, frustrated. Given the nature of the spell explained by Dumbledore, they were seemingly doomed to remain frustrated indefinitely, or perhaps until Dumbledore turned up. Harry's arrival seems, superficially, to make the si...

Early in the film Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), in the blast chamber of the Death Star, we learn how, after Vader orders to "Commence primary Ignition" to destroy Leia's homeworld Alderaan, the Imperial gunners begin the ignition sequence by pressing buttons with switches on a panel of lights and...

My girlfriend vaguely remembers reading a book when she was in elementary school about a boy and an animal (she thinks it’s a donkey or a horse) traveling through the layers of an unusually shaped world (she thinks like a diamond or a spinning top). In addition the world is separated by wealth, s...

Artemis Fowl blackmails a fairy, in the first book, by giving her "holy water" and offering her the antidote in exchange for 30 minutes of access to the fairy book. What is holy water? I haven't been able to find an explicit explanation in canon.

Let's say, a wizard, a very powerful one, wishes to kill more than one person at the same time. Is it possible to do it? Does he/she have to say just "Avada Kedavra" or does it need to be changed a little? Again, if this spell doesn't work that way, is there any other spell that can do it?

I've recently listened to the 6th episode of The Magnus Archives (Squirm), and the narrator mentions Prentice (?) in the closing statement. The way it's phrased made me think they'd already been mentioned in the podcast, but I can't recall any mention. Is this the first reference? Or should I hav...

Trying to remember a movie I watched as a kid probably around 2005-2007 which had a scene of flying gargoyles or mutated monkeys trying to get the survivors inside a building in apocalyptic New York City. I can't remember 100% or not if it also involved time travel or not, I feel like it did with...

Spoilers ahead for 'Terciel & Elinor' and the wider 'Old Kingdom' series... I've just finished listening to the audiobook version of 'Terciel & Elinor' by Garth Nix, the 6th part of the 'Old Kingdom' series. At the end of the book Sabriel is mentioned (the daughter of Terciel & Elinor). In the au...

In X-Men 2 (2003) Magneto flies by standing over a piece of metal, something that leads me to believe he couldn't actually fly in that version of the X-Men universe. In the former movie, he flied when facing Wolverine, but that could be he was repelling the metal in the subway train or something....

Looking for a short story about a seemingly superhuman person on a clandestine mission. We find out that he isn’t a superhuman but is well-trained and conditioned to perform the mission; he can see in the dark, can read minds (but this is his ability to hear sub-vocalized thoughts) along with gre...

It's well established in canon that the Enterprise-D has schools for civilian children on board as they are shown in episodes such as "The Offspring," and a recurring character is even a teacher in the school aboard Deep Space 9. In 21st century Earth schools we have drills for potential hazards ...

I'm not sure if this type of question is allowed here, so sorry if I am overstepping the rules. I've got a quote rattling around in my head that I am trying to identify. Unfortunately, I don't know the exact wording. The scenario is the "narrator" commenting on on a character's run-on sentence ...

I’ve seen many, many SciFi TV shows and movies over the years, and one of the most enduring motifs is the usage of “lightspeed” or “warp speed” in spacecraft. The standard animation technique used when showing a craft jumping in/out of light/warp speed can be lightly characterised as the followin...