*Spoilers* question about logistics

[u/Moist-Illustrator-57]

Can anyone explain to me if for instance the bullet hole in the opera had been there since the opera house had been built?

Or had Robert Pattinson’s body been in front of the missile silo for eternity and the goons had simply been working around him?

Or the mirror on the car, had it been broken since it came off the assembly line?

Never understood the logic.

I know I know, “don’t try to understand it, just feel it”

[u/CobaltTS]

The short (and honestly unsatisfying) answer is entropic wind. This is the concept that basically says inverted objects and effects slowly revert to forward. It is unclear how exactly this works or how long it takes, but it's related to Neil saying how inverted objects are "always swimming upstream." The bullet hole in the Opera chair likely formed over the months or so leading up to the shot

[u/Moist-Illustrator-57 → u/CobaltTS]

Thanks, yeah it’s a tough concept to grasp. I’m all for forgiving many leaps in logic but something like the goons just working around Pattinsons body even for a day just doesn’t work for me. Still love the movie but a more consistent logic would’ve been nice

[u/CobaltTS → u/Moist-Illustrator-57]

For his body specifically I think Tenet probably retrieved it soon before the events of stalsk-12

[u/Alive_Ice7937 → u/CobaltTS]

Welby came up with a cool alternative theory. Vulkov arrives at the hypercentre and sees a body lying precariously over the edge of the platform. He goes over and pulls it in to have a quick look at it and then continues on with his business. So from Neil's body's inverted perspective, Vulkov pushed the body out over the edge of the platform where only a minor shake would be enough to send it into the dark pit below. Some of the explosions during the battle were enough to shake his body off

[u/cdh31211811 → u/CobaltTS]

There are leaps in logic in this movie, but this concept is not one of them. This concept can be illustrated by thinking about all the particle interactions that an inverted action causes. Watch this short excerpt from a documentary.

If you have all forward moving objects, and you decide to drop something onto a surface, the kinetic energy of the object becomes scattered all over the place (in the surface, in the object, and in the air). The only way for this event to be reversed is for all that energy, scattered in countless many directions, to all just happen to point at exactly the right direction and arrive at exactly the correct time. In principle, this is entirely physically possible.

The only reason we don't see the reverse event happen is because the reversed event is very unlikely to happen - so unlikely that it simply doesn't happen. Inversion causes these unlikely things to become likely to happen. However, once the influence of the inverted particles wears off, the normal unlikeliness takes over again.

(Btw, this "likeliness" business is the only law of physics that requires time to move in one instead of both directions. This law is called the second law of thermodynamics, and it is different from a lot of laws of physics because it is just statistics. I recommend watching the entire episode of that documentary I linked to get a better understanding.)

u/Moist-Illustrator-57

[u/InaccessibleRail70 → u/CobaltTS]

Omg I love this term. entropic wind.

[u/doloros_mccracken]

The inverted damage, like the broken forward concrete at the Opera, or the exploded building in Stalsk, could revert at some moment in the past to how they were originally installed..  Not gradually fading/appearing from the entropic wind, but spontaneously which would be more realistic.

However, what happens to those inverted objects that get lost?  That’s an unsolved mystery.

The only thing that really makes sense to close the loop is that they are collected and reverted in a turnstile by Sator or Tenet.

While this seems logistically impossible, it would explain why Tenet has a giant warehouse full of inverted material.  It could be a warehouse where it’s all waiting to get reverted.

[u/FrankFrankly711]

Damage from inverted objects seems to appear only minutes before the impact. I can only guess that n the inverted dead bodies, but if they take a long time to un-vert and disappear, perhaps the Tenet team inverts to a time “after” Neil dies and retrieves his body

[u/ImWalterMitty]

Here are are rules.

1. An inverted object/stays stable for as long.
2. The physical effects of inverted objects/ppl on uninverted objects slowly fade out (towards the Past), due to dominating entropy.

So ppl in the opera house, yes they would have seen a bullet hole. It probably appeared minutes before the inverted round was shot, and it closed after the round was shot. I said only about the damaged on the uninverted seat. But the bullet is inverted. ---- yes, I think the inverted bullet would have stayed in the concrete, it probably got in when the concrete mix was made. And the bullet travelling backwards in time. . We don't know, that's why we don't try to understand, but feel it 😁

in the Freeport glass, the bullet hole started appearing a few minutes before the Protagonist and Neil entered the vault. It is shown that the crack is forming as the Protagonist is watching. No they didn't install a glass pane with a bullet hole when they built the Freeport.

Same thing in the red room blue room scene.

A short but good one. Cracks begin appearing on BMW's rear view when P and Neil wait for the trucks to be in place. And the damage is reversed when Sator's Audi makes the UTurn hitting the BMW.

---------The stab wound is a good one. Because it explains your question in the reverse time, brilliant thinking eh!

Protagonist stabs Inv Protagonist's arm with the lock pick tool. -In inverted protagonist's time, the wound appears when they are about to be dropped outside the Oslo freeport. He starts bleeding, and when the Protagonist stabs (in reverse in Inv P pov) the wound would be closed. And once he uninverts, there was never no injury.

So the 2 rules again.

[u/Alive_Ice7937 → u/ImWalterMitty]

But the bullet is inverted. ---- yes, I think the inverted bullet would have stayed in the concrete, it probably got in when the concrete mix was made. And the bullet travelling backwards in time. . We don't know, that's why we don't try to understand, but feel it 😁

I think we actually can say that we do know. From the bullets perspective it was inverted, loaded into the gun, shot into the concrete and then eventually folded into the concrete manufacturing process. There's no convoluted process required to get the bullet into that manufacturing process.

[u/Such_Bread_9575]

The logic behind this is explained in the film itself:

In the scene where the inverted Protagonist and Neil are trying to save Kat and enter the shipping container, they’re moving backwards in time toward Oslo airport. During this journey, the Protagonist starts to feel pain in his bicep because his uninverted self is about to “un-stab” him at the ROTAS turnstile. As they continue, the pain gradually intensifies, and the Protagonist begins bleeding, but once he is about the enter the turnstile, the un-inverted Protagonist un-stabs him and he’s fully healed.

So yeah, the bullet holes probably started forming just a few months ago at the Opera house.

The mirror of BMW started cracking few days before the actual heist.

The bullet holes at ROTAS also started forming probably a few months ago.