Judd Apatow Created A Weird Knocked Up Inconsistency 5 Years After The Movie

Summary This Is 40, a spin-off of Knocked Up, focuses on Pete and Debbie exploring the challenges of turning 40 years old amidst their complex lives.

Despite Knocked Up being a critically acclaimed hit, This Is 40 was not as successful and ignored the main characters of Ben and Alison.

Apatow cut out original references to Ben and Alison in This Is 40, explaining they are only dramatized versions of himself and his wife Leslie Mann.

There's one major inconsistency between Judd Apatow's critically acclaimed Knocked Up and its 2012 spin-off. After making two of the most celebrated comedy movies of the 2000s The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) and Knocked Up (2007), Apatow partially extended the universe of Knocked Up with his 2012 comedy-drama This Is 40. Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann were two of the main characters in Knocked Up who took center stage in This Is 40 alongside Apatow's real-life daughters, Iris and Maude Apatow, who play their daughters in the film.

Jason Segel is the only other character who starred in Knocked Up that reprised his role in This is 40, which is interesting considering just how many popular comedic actors and celebrities there were in Knocked Up. While Knocked Up was a box office hit that made roughly $219 million at the worldwide box office in 2007, This Is 40 was not as critically acclaimed or successful with audiences, earning just over $88 million worldwide. Rudd's Pete and Mann's Debbie explore the intricacies of turning 40 years old while being deeply ingrained in the responsibilities of marriage, work, and raising children.

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This Is 40 Completely Ignores Knocked Up's Alison & Ben (Despite A Huge Focus On Debbie's Family)

Alison is Debbie's sister in Knocked Up, which makes her absence in This Is 40 questionable

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If Debbie and Alison were so close and inseparable as sisters in Knocked Up, then why wasn't Alison at Debbie's 40th birthday party in This Is 40?

Knocked Up is often considered one of Apatow's best films, which makes it surprising that This Is 40 was not more influenced by the 2007 comedy classic. The protagonists of Knocked Up, Seth Rogen's Ben Stone and Katherine Heigl's Alison Scott, are surprisingly not mentioned once in This Is 40 despite the fact that Alison was living with Debbie for almost a year in their guest house in Knocked Up. This Is 40 places a significant focus on Debbie's family backstory, so the complete disregard of both Alison and their shared mom is pretty odd.

The lack of Rogen's Ben and Heigl's Alison characters in This Is 40 appears to be Apatow's way of demonstrating that his 2012 film is not a true sequel to Knocked Up. The fact that they're not even mentioned, however, raises all types of questions for audiences who were fans of Knocked Up. For example, if Debbie and Alison were so close and inseparable as sisters in Knocked Up, then why wasn't Alison at Debbie's 40th birthday party? This is just one aspect to consider in the context of Knocked Up and This Is 40's shared universe.

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Judd Apatow Cut His Original Explanations For Alison & Ben's This Is 40 Absences

Apatow originally had written a line of Pete's dialogue that referenced Ben

Apatow explained that Ben, Alison, Pete, and Debbie were all dramatized versions of himself and his real-life wife Leslie Mann, so it didn't make that much of a difference to him what the protagonists' names were in This Is 40.

Upon the initial release of This Is 40, Apatow was asked about Ben and Alison's complete absence from This Is 40. Apatow revealed that he had originally included a brief reference to Ben in a line of Pete's dialogue, but that was the extent of it. The line ended up getting removed from the film, which is why there is oddly no mention of Ben and Alison whatsoever. Apatow explained that Ben, Alison, Pete, and Debbie were all dramatized versions of himself and his real-life wife Leslie Mann, so it didn't make that much of a difference to him what the protagonists' names were when writing the script for This Is 40.

"I shot some stuff, in case the audience demanded to know,” Apatow said. “I shot a version where Pete talks about how Ben and Alison live in Atlanta where she works for CNN. But when I was conceiving the movie, my interest wasn’t in what happened to Ben and Alison, because Pete and Debbie in a way are Ben and Alison. They were always meant to be the future for them, and in a lot of ways in ‘Knocked Up,’ Ben and Alison and Pete and Debbie are meant to be the same couple. They’re a fabricated, exaggerated version of Leslie and myself at two different ages.” (via IndieWire).