Mr. Nobody High Quality

The roots of the character stretch back to the Victorian era. In the popular children's poetry collection A Little Pretty Pocket-Book (1744) and later solidified in anonymous folk rhymes, "Mr. Nobody" was the personification of mishap. He was the culprit who left the door open, broke the plate, or let the bath overflow. He was a convenient scapegoat for children and a humorous way to personify the trivial tragedies of daily life.

Van Dormael uses the character to dismantle the linear narrative of the biopic. Instead of a singular identity, Nemo is a Schrödinger’s Cat of personhood. He is Mr. Nobody because he has not collapsed his own wave function. The film asks the audience: Are we the sum of our choices? Or are we defined by the paths we didn't take? Mr. Nobody