20 Secret Movie Sub-Plots You Didn't Notice

13. The Lost Art of Farming - Idiocracy (2006)

For a silly movie about a futuristic world populated by idiots, Idiocracy is often quite clever, evident when you notice its most subtle piece of worldbuilding. 

In the distant future, anti-intellectualism is rife, meaning many aspects of society have come to a grinding to a halt, chief amongst them farming. 

Without farming, humans are left without a number of items and materials we take for granted, like wool, which is why throughout the movie everyone is seen wearing polyester clothes. Due to crop shortages and a lack of land cultivation, people have to make do with other means of creating clothing. 

It's a clever bit of storytelling that brings up more questions than it answers - how do they make these clothes, then? - but it does add a real-world element to its silly but horribly prophetic vision of a world doomed to slide into anti-intellectualism from the top down.