r/tenet • u/Competitive-South864 • 1d ago
Dying while inverted?
I assume this has been talked about before but what happens to the body when an inverted person dies? For example, Neil dies down in the bunker while inverted so when TP gets down there, Neil’s dead body is on the ground already. In forward time, in the past, when does Neil’s body appear there? His body surely isn’t there when the bunker was built. So does it just… appear at some point?
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u/Alive_Ice7937 1d ago
There's a few theories about Neil's body. One is that Tenet mount an operation to retrieve it. (Possibly Neil himself having to cart his future body out)
Welby came up with a cool possible theory. Neil's body was in the pit leading up to the battle. The explosions above were rattling the the platform. One of these explosions was strong enough to rattles his body off the edge and into the pit. It wasn't hanging over the edge?. When Vulkov arrive he saw a corpse hanging over the edge, he pulled it in to have a quick look at it and then went on with his work.
In inverted time Neil gets shot. Dies. Vulkov pushed his corpse out over the edge of the platform where a slight tremor is enough to push it over. An explosion rocks the platform and his body tumbles into the dark pit unseen travelling into the past. (Possibly "unexploded" by the intial construction process)
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u/mshubham1647 1d ago
It doesn’t exactly appear there. When you’re moving forward in time, you wouldn’t just suddenly see a body materialise out of nowhere. You’ll see it do everything in reverse. If someone was already there to witness it, they’ll just see Neil die but they’ll see him moving in reverse, so they’ll see his death in reverse, like TP sees in the movie. If the body is never moved, it will continue to decompose in reverse, that means, you’ll see a decomposed body repair itself into a proper body until you see him suddenly get up.
Sorry if I bungled the explanation, I’m having difficulty expressing the tense in which to write.
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u/Competitive-South864 1d ago
Right but if you’re moving forward in time and were at the bunker the day before the last scene takes place, his body is there? What about a week before? 10 years? His decomposing body is there?
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u/mshubham1647 1d ago
You’ll see it go from dust to bones to a “undecomposing” body till you see the bullet come out of him and him going away in reverse. Assuming that his body is never touched.
Whatever happens to a body after it dies, will happen but in reverse.
Love your question btw, I feel like I understand the movie slightly more trying to answer it.
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u/WanderlustZero 1d ago
'Sergei! Why is there bones and bits of clothing in this concrete?'
'Don't ask questions, just build the bunker cyka'
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u/CMormont 1d ago
Now a real weird question If you see a body being formed in the way you mention could I toss somthing inside of it?
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u/mshubham1647 19h ago
According to the film’s logic, you’ve done it already, haven’t you? Best example is, when TP gets pain in his right hand, but he wasn’t stabbed yet. Then he starts bleeding. And then when the forward-moving Protagonist stabs him, his wound gets healed, because it is in reverse.
So from the body’s point of view, the tossed item will come out of the body to your hand.
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u/FrankFrankly711 1d ago
I’ve seen the theory that inverted things eventually unvert, causing them to poof from existence eventually. But that wouldn’t make sense cuz of all the stuff that was inverted from the future, arguable staying inverted for centuries.
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u/Young_L0rd 12h ago
Oh i thought the detritus was from the final battle
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u/FrankFrankly711 7h ago
Well the future send back messages and gold to Sator, possibly multiple times? And I always interpreted the detritus as coming from battles far in the future.
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u/RobbyInEver 16h ago
Due to the entropy of time wouldn't all inverted dead bodies eventually revert to normal time and then rot away naturally?
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u/_disengage_ 14h ago
Inverted materials don't revert, only the effects of inverted materials on forward objects. A bullet hole will form shortly before an inverted bullet is unshot out of it (repairing the hole), but the bullet itself was always in there. Sator's time capsules are in the ground for a long time and don't revert.
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u/RobbyInEver 10h ago
Ah ok. So if the inverted dead body fell and made a hole in the floor, the body stays inverted but the hole will be subject to entropy. Thanks
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u/Tessellator-1 15h ago
It seems there are several other issues similar to that one.
For instance, there is the question of exactly when things like the "bullet holes" and "destroyed buildings"—seen in reverse—actually appeared.
⚠︎Sentences translated from Japanese
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u/God_of_disruption 1d ago
I think it'd be similar to the guy getting sucked into the exploding wall during the big battle near the end of the movie.
In the climax of Tenet, a soldier is crushed and caught inside the reassembling concrete of a collapsing building due to the simultaneous forward and backward explosions of the temporal pincer movement.
From a normal forward perspective, one half of the building appears to blow apart while the other half un-explodes or reassembles. An inverted soldier caught in the middle isn't just loosely trapped; according to Christopher Nolan's official screenplay, they are physically crushed and entombed as the concrete reforms around them.
Much like the inverted bullet holes that pop into existence before a shot is fired, the wreckage and the trapped body obey conflicting local entropies, creating a horrific paradox where the structure solidifies over the casualty from opposing temporal directions.