Unanswered Questions

[MoDaD]

With the show lasting just under two seasons, there's a lot of action and adventure crammed in, but a lot of items are left up to the viewer's imagination. From episode-to-episode, and when regarding the series as a whole, there's a lot of questions that are likely to arise that we never got the answer to.

When you watch the show, what are some unanswered questions you wind up having? Feel free to post your own or to provide your own speculation as to what the answers could be. If you can reference someone's story or comic that addressed one of these questions that's also great

For me, one question I've always had was:

Who was the council the Pastmaster briefly referenced when he was inadvertently unearthed and released in The Pastmaster Always Rings Twice?

Pastmaster: Curse the council! My book isn’t where I hid it!

What sort of backstory did we never get to see regarding the Pastmaster's origins, and how did this council play into that?

[Felix Kayne]

I kinda wonder where Burke, Murray and Steele went after the first season. They disappeared after the first season, didn't they? It was never really explained why.

Also what time period Madkat was from when he was imprisoned and vowed his revenge. I don't think it was really stated, but it was a time with kings and queens.

[MoDaD]

Also what time period Madkat was from when he was imprisoned and vowed his revenge. I don't think it was really stated, but it was a time with kings and queens.

I always thought that if the SWAT Kats ever had an excuse to appear in the Dark Ages / Megalith City ever again, it'd have been neat if Madkat had a cameo as a jester in Queen Callista's court

[Mr. Goodkat]

After taking a closer look at Professor Hackle's actions, I started wondering what he did with the bodies of Mac and Molly Mange. (I think this question also came up in one of the episode discussions.)
Did he put them into a cryogenic freezer he's got in his basement?
Did he call 1-800-DISPOSE-A-KATS-BODY (satisfaction guaranteed, no questions asked)?
Did he just throw them back into the sea or into a dumpster? (Thinking of the latter, did he pay Burke and Murray to look away when they collected the garbage?)

Sorry, I hope I'm not getting too macabre here.

Furthermore, why didn't the SWAT Kats and especially the Enforcers care about this at all and why wasn't he convicted for unleashing the Metallikats onto Megakat City?
"Professor Hackle? Oh yeah, sure. He is an old scientist and old scientists do stuff like this. This is absolutely normal and there's nothing to worry about. Also, he's a very nice guy! You can't just throw someone like him into a prison or into an asylum like that."

[MoDaD]

After taking a closer look at Professor Hackle's actions, I started wondering what he did with the bodies of Mac and Molly Mange.

That's a good question. I had always liked to imagine that Hackle had developed a process similar to Roboticization (in the Archive comics universe, developed by Charles the Hedgehog and later misused by Dr. Robotnik/Eggman), where the biological components are transformed into mechanical ones, so there'd be no leftover "body."

But, upon closer examination of Hackle's dialog in that episode:

Hackle: When my robots found you, your bodies were destroyed. The only way to save you was to plant your minds inside my robots....The only difference now is your bodies are steel, instead of flesh...Imagine the great minds that could be saved with this form of brain transplant.

It seems like Hackle's process is isolated only to the "minds," I'm assuming through some kind of brain-to-digital conversion process. I wonder how much memory/storage is needed for that. I also wonder if there's any kind of limitations, particularly if they were written to a FAT32 file format - better not think thoughts larger than 4GB

I've always been curious as to how that whole process was supposed to work, and if there was ever any story potential for other characters getting the same treatment. I also wonder if the process is fatal, and that's why Hackle needed subjects who were already dead to try it on.

"Professor Hackle? Oh yeah, sure. He is an old scientist and old scientists do stuff like this. This is absolutely normal and there's nothing to worry about. Also, he's a very nice guy! You can't just throw someone like him into a prison or into an asylum like that."

I'm not an attorney, but I'm pretty sure Hackle could easily be charged for a number of crimes including felony murder.

[Ty-Chou]

One of my biggest questions is just who/what is Dark Kat. And what exactly IS he trying to do? What's his motivation? What's his end game?

Fanfic authors have come up with interesting ideas to explain Dark Kat, but I'm very curious what the creators were thinking when they created him.

[MoDaD]

I'm very curious what the creators were thinking when they created him.

The idea that Dark Kat was either a corrupt judge who fell out of favor with the justice system OR is still an active judge with a public persona manipulating things by day and is Dark Kat by night to more actively carry out his evil schemes seemed to have been one of the formative ideas that Lance Falk recalled. It also seemed very familiar to Christian. It may have been one of Glenn Leopold's unused ideas, but I couldn't get 100% confirmation on that from either of them.

[Kooshmeister]

I kinda wonder where Burke, Murray and Steele went after the first season. They disappeared after the first season, didn't they? It was never really explained why.

Probably nowhere, really. Apart from them towing a single car (which they abandon) in A Bright and Shiny Future and a couple of scenes in the unfinished episode Succubus! (a.k.a. The Curse of Kataluna), we see little of the civilian side of Chance and Jake's lives in season two, least of all their auto mechanic business. With those scenes went Burke and Murray, since their only real reason for existing was to basically be sitcom archenemies for Chance and Jake at the salvage yard.

As for Steel, he's probably wherever he went between The Wrath of Dark Kat and Enter the Madkat; somewhere in the Enforcer ranks where he was still basically second in command in an administrative sense but couldn't do any lasting damage.

Also what time period Madkat was from when he was imprisoned and vowed his revenge. I don't think it was really stated, but it was a time with kings and queens.

Purely theorizing here, but I think a popular assumption is that it was the dark ages and that the queen he alludes to was Callista, and the knight, therefore, would've been Tabor. This just leaves the identities of the king and jester.

[MoDaD]

Another question I've always had that I don't think was ever explained was why in Bride of the Pastmaster a time vortex opened up that forced the SWAT Kats to travel back in time to the Dark Ages?



It just appears abruptly with no real explanation given:



And our heroes are conveniently transported to where they're needed. I know there was this bit of dialogue:

Tabor: The Dragon Sword! My Queen, could he be the one foretold?
Callista: The warrior who pulls the sword from the stone shall be the hero who saves us from the Pastmaster.

So I guess there's some kind of prophecy in play. Then, there's this line from the Pastmaster:

Pastmaster: The SWAT Kats? What are those pests from the future doing in my past? Alas, disrupting the time stream is so unpredictable. No matter.

Who seems equally confused by their presence. I know he gives that hand wave, but unless I'm mistaken, this never happens any other time in the series as the Pastmaster's time vortexes work exactly as he intends them to (except this one time).

[Cait]

Another question I've always had that I don't think was ever explained was why in Bride of the Pastmaster a time vortex opened up that forced the SWAT Kats to travel back in time to the Dark Ages?

The only thing I can think of is that pastmaster spells are all related to time control, so, when he creates his minions, he in reality is summoning then from another age, needing to open a time vortex.

Pastmaster: The SWAT Kats? What are those pests from the future doing in my past? Alas, disrupting the time stream is so unpredictable. No matter.

As he sais, maybe this time vortex had became unstable and was linked to the SWAT Kats future too.