Things Only Adults Notice In The Boss Baby Franchise

Right at the top is a premise only most adults would understand. The entire basis of "The Boss Baby" is a metaphor, one that youngsters may not grasp. Sure, they're able to put themselves in seven-year-old Tim's shoes and see a silly baby acting and talking like a grown-up. Tim is an energetic little squirt whose imagination knows no bounds. He's purely innocent and hasn't reached the age of truly understanding the harder realities of the life of working-class parents who also have to care for young children. It's a tough job to maintain all of that. 

But really, the entire idea of a baby being "the boss" reflects on the idea that infants are all-consuming and totally domineering in young parents' lives. Sure, Ted's greatest threat to Tim is that he sucks away all the time their parents used to spend with Tim. Now, the brothers have to share. But Tim sees it as a total invasion of his world and acts like he'll never get any attention from his parents ever again — which is not the case. Still, the dramatic view here is to showcase that when a baby demands that it's hungry, the parents feed them. When a baby soils itself, the parents change its diaper. When a baby is fussy, the parents know it's time to put the infant to sleep. You get the picture. The baby calls the shots, hence the "Boss Baby." Of course, Ted takes his position of boss in a wholly different light. He directs an actual business operation for a company that lives in the clouds.

The first "Boss Baby" film starts off with Tim on a wild adventure. The narrative establishes that he has a rather overactive imagination. So, when Tim's parents ask him if he'd like a baby brother, he cheekily replies, "No thanks, I'm enough." Tim's adult narration then later claims he remembers exactly how his brother arrived: in a taxi. We see Ted exit the vehicle decked out in business suit attire complete with a briefcase as he waltzes up to the house and takes control. Here's where things get a little ... foggy. Given the premise, we could easily assume that everything about "The Boss Baby" storyline is just Tim's wild imagination. The sequel film, however, posits that, perhaps, Baby Corp. and everything about Ted's little adventure down to Earth was actually real given that they experience it all over again as adults.

Regardless, of whether Baby Corp. truly exists or not, there's one thing we can't deny. Tim's mom is pregnant. Of course, Ted was born into the family, as one would expect. There are no storks or magical baby companies in the sky. We can see this at the moment when Tim's father asks him about his baby brother. When Tim replies in the negative, his mom looks down at her pregnant belly. It's a quick detail, that many children might actually miss given the premise of the film which doesn't actually focus on any kind of birthing process.

Tim and baby Ted finally learn that they're going to have to work together in order to meet their goals. The boss baby who's ruling the roost agrees to leave Tim and the rest of the family should Tim help him accomplish his goal of thwarting Puppy Co. In the meantime, Tim comes to the realization that the pair have to put on a show for their parents. They have to act like they love each other, an L-word that is hard for either of them to stomach. So, the brothers begin showing that they're bonding. Tim feeds the baby while his parents look on awkwardly. Later, Tim attempts to prepare baby Ted for family pictures by dressing him in a sailor outfit. Baby Ted angrily states, "I don't wear nautical. It's not even Friday!"

For young kids, this is a throwaway line. But parents fully understand the meaning behind it. Often many places of business have a dress code. But that dress code is traditionally nullified on Fridays in favor of casual attire. That's why Ted refers to Friday. He always wears business attire, but Tim is attempting to put him in another outfit that Ted would traditionally only reserve for casual Fridays. It's a fun reference to not just corporate culture, but working-class traditions all around.

Baby Ted is always ready to get down to business. He's got a managerial attitude and the ego to accompany it. When Tim first sees him step foot out of the taxi, he has no idea what to expect. He just knows that this baby is wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase like he's ready to go to work with the rest of the adults. But "The Boss Baby" and its sequel, "The Boss Baby: Family Business," thematically adapt corporate culture for laughs. But who's laughing? It's probably only the adults in the room familiar with the staples of white-collar attitudes and traditions. Often, working for a big mega-corporation is seen as a soul-sucking endeavor, considering a solitary worker is simply one cog in a grand machine that ultimately doesn't respect or truly value them above profits.

Right from the start, as babies come off the conveyor belt line, they are tickled to see if they'll laugh. Those who do laugh are sent to families, while those who don't laugh are given a management position at Baby Corp. The idea that management is only for those who lack joy or have a propensity for total seriousness is a joke young minds wouldn't yet understand. Throughout the film, other corporate tropes are used such as the boss baby's staff meetings with the other babies in the neighborhood. When Ted and Tim take their pacifier-induced trip to Baby Corp., Ted mentions vying for the corner office, and we see rows of cubicles and babies in business attire. This is a world entirely foreign to kids, but we adults know this setting all too well.

Once Tim reveals to Ted that his daughter, Tabitha, is a boss baby from Baby Corp., the spunky little infant invites the two of them to revisit Baby Corp. to see what it has become in the present. A lot has changed in Ted's old stomping grounds since he became a full-fledged member of the Templeton family. Ted quickly learns that the new generation of babies has adopted a more modern way of thinking. Unlike the corporate culture that fostered the bold and competitive atmosphere in Ted's day, Tabitha explains that the new model is for babies to strike a healthy "work-life balance" and cultivate an atmosphere where all ideas are valued.

Tabitha then takes the pair to the Crisis Center, an operational space where babies can monitor threats to the company from all over the world. In the center is a giant globe. Instantly, Tim reverts to his child-like behavior of imaginative play and begins acting like a giant kaiju-sized creature terrorizing humanity. Though, if viewers pay attention to the style of the buildings he's hovering over, he's clearly in Japan making this a reference to "Godzilla." Sure, the big lizard has received a reboot of sorts in the modern age, but it's still not something young kids might be fully apprised of. For the rest of us, "Godzilla" is several decades old and well-known across the world for the classic monster film series that it is.

Armstrong is quite the megalomaniac. Tim and Ted attempt to expose him for what he really is, a genius baby in disguise. He fled his parents and now seeks to rid the world of domineering parents once and for all by turning them into mindless zombies with his newest phone app. In an attempt to thwart Armstrong, the villain takes two lollipops and sticks them to Tim and Ted, and then plants them firmly on a tree in the center of his headquarters before attempting to stop Tabitha and Tina from shutting down his server.

Meanwhile, Ted and Tim watch as all the parents emerge from all corners of the headquarters toward them like zombies. Tim says that maybe if they don't move, they won't see us, much like the T-Rex from "Jurassic Park." Armstrong — erm, Jeff Goldblum — might get that loose reference. However, Ted yells that being still doesn't work, as the parents clearly see them and are honing in to hug them to death. Ted then shouts, "It's night of the living Boomers!" There are, of course, two references in that statement. One refers to famed horror director George Romero's classic horror film, "The Night of the Living Dead." Then there's the "boomer" term which has become a modern slang reference to someone who is deemed old and outdated. It's derived from the Baby Boomer generation, but is commonly used to describe anyone who's potentially a senior to the younger generations. Thankfully, Ted and Tim survive the zombie boomers to see another day.