my point is.... i could jump easily on the team MIB/SMOKEY bandwagon if TPTB had just shown him going in on his own curiosity .... but to be unconscious and tossed in as a punishment... how can that instantly create a smoke monster that never existed before hand?
Whats really funny is, if MIB walked in on his own, I would have an easier time believing he was dead.
Thats because my main sticking point, and the thing that simply is the firewall for me believing MIB died is this.
Jacob cannot kill MIB and MIB cannot kill Jacob. We've already seen the huge Rube Goldberg-esque plan that MIB had to do to kill Jacob, so it's impossible for me to accept that Jacob was able to kill MIB. Now, I've heard it argued that Jacob didn't directly kill him, it was the creek that pushed him in the cave. I'm sorry, but that just doesn't work for me. It's like that Richard/Jack scene back at the Black Rock, it wouldn't have been them killing themselves, it's the dynomite. Or the classic NRA joke, guns don't kill people, bullets kill people.
My point is, thats just splitting hairs. Jacob tossed MIB in the cave, so MIB couldn't have been killed there.
Now, as for Jacob's reactions after that, well, what do you expect. He sees his brother's body and assumes, like some of you, that he is dead. So he gives him a burial. What Jacob doesn't know at that point, but obviously figures out later, is that MIB morphed into Smokey, cast off his body like a cocoon, and that is why MIB needed a loophole in order to kill Jacob.
So, to use a Star Wars analogy (surprise), MIB turning into Smokey, is alot like Anakin turning into Darth Vader. Instead of being more machine than man (Vader), he is more Smoke than man now. He didn't die, he just changed.