In the movie: Margo and Quentin do find the dead man, but the scene and the subsequent research Margo does into his death, is more about how she thinks, with no mention of pseudovisions. In the book: Quentin thinks abandoned subdivisions (housing developments that were never fully completed) are what Margo means by ‘paper towns.’ When Quentin and Margo were little, they discovered a dead man in a pseudovision, so now Quentin thinks Margo is hiding in one, and leaving him clues. Both would have shown the beloved characters simply staring at screens. In the movie: No IMing that we see, which makes sense, considering the Fault and Paper Towns screenwriters took out most of the video game playing in Fault. Radar goes by OMNICTIONARIAN96 and Ben’s reads ITWASAKIDNEYINFECTION, in reference to the “Bloody Ben” nickname he earned from a disturbing kidney infection that left him peeing blood. In the book: We get to see the characters’ instant message (IM) conversations, including their screen names. In the movie: We see Radar and other characters using Omnictionary, but there’s no mention of Radar’s involvement, and the shot is so quick that it just looks like Wikipedia. His knowledge comes into play when researching some of Margo’s potential whereabouts. In the book: Radar spends a ton of time editing an “online user-created reference source called Omnictionary,” noticeably similar to Wikipedia. In the movie: We see a Detective Warren, nearly exactly as Green describes him in the book, but that’s the last we see of him. In the book: Quentin meets Detective Warren 48 hours after Margo’s disappearance, admits he was with her Wednesday night, speaks privately with him and later calls him after he’s discovered the mini mall. In the movie: SeaWorld is never mentioned, which Green acknowledged on YouTube, saying “no one was anxious to pay Sea World for the chance to give them good publicity.” Margo gets bit by a snake, leading Quentin to try to suck out the poison.

In the book: Margo and Quentin break into Sea World, the only theme park Margo says she’s never broken into. He’s right-but now there’s just enough to make it relevant and also help find Margo. In the movie: “There’s significantly less textual analysis of Walt Whitman in the movie,” Green said in his April video.

In the book: Margo’s Woody Guthrie poster on the back of her curtains leads to a song called Walt Whitman’s Niece, which leads them to highlighted text in the poem “Songs of Myself” in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which Ben finds wedged between two yearbooks in Margo’s room.

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