Screen Junkies dipped back into the past for their latest Honest Trailer. The Sylvester Stallone movie Demolition Man was released in 1993. It was a dystopian time travel action film that was also somewhat of a comedy as the future is painted as pretty weird. You could describe the film as over-the-top, but intentionally so. Demolition Man's legacy includes the style inspired by the villain Phoenix that made Dennis Rodman famous outside of basketball. Its other legacy is the subject of a separate featurette. The Honest Trailer is only four minutes long, then they spend two minutes on the three seashells.
One scene in Demolition Man shows John Spartan (Stallone) confronting a toilet in 2032. There is no toilet paper, but there are three seashells for his convenience. This baffles Spartan, and he is ribbed for not knowing how to use them. It's a throwaway joke to illustrate how we can never predict what the future will be like, but the audience never finds out how the shells are supposed to be used. That unanswered question haunts us to this day. The concept was brought back as an internet meme in 2007, but really took off during the great toilet paper shortage of 2020. The various explanations are never satisfying because there really isn't one. But anyone who hasn't seen the movie or heard of the meme is a target for ridicule over not knowing how the shells should be used. -via Digg