10 Horror Movie Secrets They'll Never Tell You

Anyone who's seen the original Gremlins will of course remember the three crucial rules for looking after a mogwai: don't expose it to sunlight, get it wet, or feed it after midnight.

The first two rules seem simple enough, but what precisely does "after midnight" mean? When in a day is it no longer after midnight? And moreover, what if, hypothetically, you took a mogwai on a plane across time zones and fed them - what's the guidance there?

Evidently director Joe Dante and writer Christopher Columbus didn't expect audiences to spend too much time scrutinising that rule, but in the years following the movie's release that's basically all they did.

And so, when Gremlins 2: The New Batch was finally released in 1990, Dante decided to poke a little fun at, in his estimation, over-inquisitive fans.

When Clamp Tower is besieged by gremlins, Daniel Clamp's (John Glover) goons ask about the plane hypothetical and also what would happen if a mogwai accidentally swallowed a seed in its teeth from a meal eaten before midnight.

But before Billy (Zach Galligan) can even attempt to answer, gremlin Stripe bursts out of a TV screen and attacks them.

It's basically Dante's tongue-in-cheek way of telling the audience, "Stop asking for answers, because I'm never giving them to you." Brilliant.