The film's script emphasizes that the public is kept in the dark about the conditions in which the Precogs are housed, with their only connection to the outside world being a monument that looks "nothing like the creatures we've seen floating in the tank" and a diorama exhibition.[1] To further push its propaganda, government sponsored tours are held for a public of "mostly children", in which the mysticism surrounding the trio is made obvious, as evident when the guides promote the idea that they live a relatively normal life.[1]
Precogs, or officially known as Precognitives, are individuals that possess a psychic ability to see events in the future, primarily premeditated murders. There are currently three Precogs, Agatha, Arthur, and Dash.
Early Life[]
The tenets of PreCrime began when Dr. Iris Hineman led an inquiry on a fictional neurological condition known as Renning's Syndrome (which presents morbidity in the cerebral cortex as the result of maternal addiction), which was generally fatal with most subjects dying before reaching adolescence. While working with abandoned children at the Woodhaven Clinic in Rhode Island, she noticed that they would score perfectly on guessing games. With the collaboration of then-district attorney Lamar Burgess, more children from broken families and those of convicted criminals were assigned to the institution, in the process replacing the high rate of fatalities. The collaboration between both Hineman and Burgess continued for years, with them self-refereeing as "the mother and father of PreCrime". Eventually, Hineman noticed that those that survived longer than usual began uniformly experiencing nightmares about murders, and soon discovered that the events that were being seen were actually real.
The actual living conditions of the Precogs during their time under government custody. Wally is seen tending to them in the photon milk bath.
It was during this time that she also noticed that occasionally, one of them would present a different interpretation of the visions, and offer the glimpse of an alternate future (the titular "minority reports"). Burgess was made aware of this fact, but decided that the benefit outweighted the negatives, being of statistical insignificance. Despite this, doubts began creeping in Hineman's mind and she decided to make sure that the minority reports were preserved within the dissenting Precog (which was noted to usually be the "more gifted of the three", Agatha), without being formally noted, as a safe guard against manipulation. After the federal government learns about the Precogs, they were moved to a secret location. During a conversation between caretaker Wally and a unnamed federal agent, the agent informed him that they were approved for long term stay. Wally asked for how long, and the agent replied, "60 years". Wally, in disbelief, questioned the agent in regards to what would happen to them, but the agent replied that they would be saving thousands of lives at the sacrifice of three.
PreCrime and isolation[]
The logo of the PreCrime Division references the Precogs as its central element.
After Wally put the three into the Photon Milk Bath, they remained there for over a decade, watching hundreds of murders, but saving thousands of lives in the process. The PreCrime Division was set up around this and as an experiment, it was limited to Washington D.C., and eventually created a system to stop murders before they happen. The PreCrime Division was able to stop all murders from happening. Their success led to the anonymous Precogs gaining a significant amount of celebrity. The trio was exalted by the public to the point of being seen as a sign for the existence of the divine. This admiration was illustrated by a large monument depicting the Precogs located at the judiciary plaza, which depicted them as larger than life figures. This monument also served as the basis for a tour where its guide alluded to the fact that they received over 8 million letters per year and suggested that they lived a life of luxury, clearly showing his lack of knowledge about the real nature of their existense. An obscure reference was made in the logo of the PreCrime Division, which featured a silhouette in the shape of the photon milk bath.
Now in charge of the PreCrime initiative, Burgess began taking increasingly immoral decisions in order to guarantee its continuation, gathering public acclaim as the success of the program became evident. Afterwards, Hineman grew bitter with her role in the project, scoffing at the notion of "inventing" PreCrime and describing her involvement as the "unintended consequences of a series of genetic mistakes and science gone haywire"'. But, she had since concluded that it just "didn't work" and pointed out that the introduction of "any suggestion of fallibility" would compromise the entire Justice system and bring an end to the project. Despite this, Hineman acknowledged that the end had justified the means early on and that she had initially agreed with Burgees when assessing that the minority reports were an "an insignificant variable". However, by 2054, the relation between both had grown cold, with her assuming that he had grown into an old man that only wanted to "hang onto what he's created". Hineman was the first to insist that Burgess was not to be trusted.
Downfall of PreCrime[]
Agatha Kidnapped[]
In April 2054, the Attorney General ordered an investigation on the reliability of the PreCrime system and the ineffability of the Precogs' visions and placed Danny Witwer in charge of identifying any flaws within it. Following a sucessful demonstration that led to the arrest of Howard Marks, the setup was explained to the federal representative by PreCrime Chief John Anderton, but he remained convinced that there was still a predisposition for human error in the system. This theory was put to the test when Anderton himself was momentarily addressed by Agatha, who attempted to show him the details of a case from the past, the murder of Anne Lively. Shortly after discovering a series of irregularities, the PreCrime Chief himself became the subject of the Precogs' premonitions, being the central suspect of case 1109, the murder of one Leo Crow. On the run and unable to figure out why he was supposed to kill a man that he had never met, Anderton visited Hineman and learned that occasionally, one of the Precogs (Agatha as the dominant one) disagreed with the assessment of the others regarding the future actions of a suspect, opening the possibility that several innocent suspects were placed in custody. These "Minority Reports", as they were called, were deleted as part of a protocol to protect the PreCrime initiative, but Hineman made sure that Agatha would be able to recall them.
Armed with this knowledge, Anderton replaced his eyes by getting an illegal surgery in the black market and infiltrated PreCrime's headquarters, with the intent of extracting Agatha from the vicinity, but his mission was interrupted when Witwer identified the face of the Precog barely discernible in a reflection within the case recording, directing the entire department to the Temple in order to apprehend Anderton. Despite this, the former Chief managed to escape trough a piping system designed to flush the photon milk from the bath along the Precog. After escaping, Anderton took Agatha to a mall where they visited an acquaintance of his named Rufus T. Riley, a hacker with technology capable of creating an interface with the user's mind. It was there that he discovered he did not possess a minority report and that the Anne Lively case had been manipulated, but the revelation of the murderer's identity was interrupted by the infiltration of PreCrime agents into the mall. This led to another chase, where Anderton was able to escape with the help of Agatha, who employed her precognitive abilities to devise a successful escape plan. Bothered by the previous revelation and seeking answers, the former Chief infiltrated a hotel where Crow was and found himself confronted with a scene where the latter confessed to murdering his lost son, Sean Anderton, but quickly discovered that it was a setup after refusing to commit the predicted crime. Despite this, Crow commited suicide by forcing Anderton's gun unto himself.
Examining the scene, Witwer began to suspect that it was a setup based on the disproportionate amount of evidence present. Still suspicious, he reviewed the recordings recovered from the mall and compared it with the original ones recorded from the twins, discovering that they were staged so that the real murder was dismissed as an echo by the technicians. Witwer confronted Burgess, but the latter took advantage of the Precogs' inability to predict the future without Agatha to kill the federal agent and frame Anderton for the murder. Meanwhile, Anderton and Agatha drove to the house of his divorced wife, Lara Anderton, where the Precog narrated the visions of an alternate future where Sean grew up to make both of his parents proud. However, just as he figured that Lively was the Precog's mother and that he was setup by Burgess himself, PreCrime agents cornered and arrested him. Agatha was placed back into the bath and resumed her work, while Anderton was locked away in Containment. However, Burgess accidentally slipped suspicious details during a conversation with Lara, who managed to free her husband. Afterwards, John revealed to the other PreCrime agents that Burgess was guilty of the murder of Anne Lively. As the head of PreCrime was celebrating the expansion of the initiative to the national level, the recording of the murder was played over prominent screens, precipitating a chase. Parallel to this, the Precogs experienced another precognition, the murder of Anderton at the hands of Burgess. However, ridden with guilt the head of PreCrime decided to commit suicide, in the process changing his future and making the existence of the minority reports public.
After PreCrime[]
After the revelations of Lamar Burgess's murder of Anne Lively in order to set up his PreCrime Division, the federal government distanced itself from the experiment. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, and eventually, the Division was dismantled, and the Precogs were set free. However, numerous organizations sought to utilize the Precogs in order to fulfill various agendas. Most notable was the Assistant Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Henry Blomfeld, who stated that his agency had "plans" for them. The Precogs were given a large sum of cash and were told to fend for themselves. The agents said that they needed to go underground and didn't want to know where they go. Apart from the clothes and the cash that they had, they had no other support from the federal agents.
The Diner[]
Within the first few hours of their new lives, the Precogs arrived at a diner.