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In Game Night, there was one aspect of the plot that left me scratching my head.

So we know that Kyle Chandler's character Brooks hires a murder-mystery company to fake "kidnap" him, as part of a murder-mystery game night.

However, before the fake kidnappers show up, "real" thugs show up and kidnap him instead, an event the other characters (including Brooks brother Max - Jason Bateman) initially believe is fake, but end up finding Brooks anyway.

Eventually, this causes Brooks to reveal that he is in fact a criminal smuggler, who backed out of a sale of a Fabergé egg to a criminal called "The Bulgarian", so that he could sell it to another criminal for more money. He believes The Bulgarian hired the thugs to kidnap him in order to the Fabergé egg back.

All well and good so far. Except that it is revealed that the thugs were not hired by The Bulgarian, but in fact by police officer and Max's neighbor, Gary Kingsbury, who staged his own "fake" kidnapping of Brooks to prove he is "worthy" of Game Night, after they stopped inviting him.

What doesn't make sense to me is that the group gets called by somebody (who I can only presume was Gary or his thugs using a voice changer) who says he'll kill Brooks if they don't deliver the Fabergé egg to a bridge by midnight.

The rest of the gang, after retrieving the egg, then meet the thugs who kidnapped Brooks at the bridge to exchange him for the egg, only to be "saved" by Gary, who gets fake shot, and then makes them promise to include him in Game Night if he survives (which of course he does, as he wasn't really shot), then reveals he hired the thugs.

Finally, after Gary reveals he is fine, he seems to have no knowledge whatsoever about the Fabergé egg. Immediately thereafter, The Bulgarian shows up to kidnap Brooks for real (which he does), and shoots Gary.

So

  1. how could Gary tell them to deliver the egg to the bridge if he didn't know anything about the egg? Even if we presume the Bulgarian made the call, how would he know Gary and his thugs would have Brooks at the bridge?
  2. Futhermore, Shouldn't Gary have figured out that real criminals were involved by the fact that Max searched real criminal names on his police computer? Not to mention the real blood all over his computer room.
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    I purposely avoided this question because I didn't want read spoilers, but if I had known your question I would have paid attention to the dialog on the bridge more carefully. The best I can say is, Gary had the voice changer, it's shown at the end during the credits when it shows his basement and how he planned everything, so it was him that night. Another question too, he never directly answered how he found them on the bridge. All he said was that he found the searches on the computer and the blood, but never says how that pointed him to the bridge.
    – user62053
    Feb 24, 2018 at 15:00
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    He didn't know about the list inside the egg. Not sure how he knew about an egg at all, but (if I remember correctly) it was the list that he had no clue about.
    – sirjonsnow
    Mar 12, 2018 at 12:19

2 Answers 2

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This exact question bothered me for months and I was glad to see someone else wondering about it. Hopefully you’ll still care to see the answer I figured out.

“says he'll kill Brooks if they don't deliver the Fabergé egg to a bridge by midnight.” He doesn’t. When Gary calls with the voice changer, Max is the only one who mentions the egg, and Gary just tells him to shut up and meet him on the bridge by midnight.

I had to rewatch to prove it. As for question two, I guessed Gary thought he must be doing a good job making them think the game was real since they were searching real criminal names and getting bloodied, but it wasn’t clear to him (as many things aren’t) that they were actually onto something.

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  • Thanks! Yes, I do still care, and was pretty sure it would be solved by a rewatch, but haven't had the opportunity. :)
    – Tronman
    Nov 12, 2018 at 0:56
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My gf makes a good point (I was thinking the same thing) behind the scene Brooks could've been whining the the fake kidnappers that he can get them back the egg. The kidnappers call Gary and tell him "this idiot won't shut up about a fabrege egg" Gary calls the others to amp up the "game"....

Makes sense

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    Do you have anything to reference to back this up, or is it just speculation?
    – Gnemlock
    Mar 11, 2018 at 1:11

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