These fan theories will have you rethinking everything you thought you knew about your favorite movie, television show or comic book character.
1. Rick and Morty.
I like the Rick and Morty theory that the evil Morty we see in Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind is actually Rick’s original Morty, but Rick thought he died in the scene from the opening credits. So Rick searches the multiverse for a family situation with a good Morty and jumps universes. This would explain why Beth is always talking about how her father suddenly came back into their lives.
Henchman4Hire
2. The Matrix.
The “real world” outside of the Matrix (Zion and all the weird tunnels) is actually another matrix. The people Mopheus unplugs are actually in a matrix inside the Matrix. Everything with Neo, Agent Smith, the war with the machines in Zion… it’s all fake. It was made so that the humans who find out about the first matrix can have a false sense of victory over the machines, keeping them happy and docile inside the bigger matrix.
Dudebroman_5000
3. Harry potter.
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, there’s the story of the Three Brothers.
During Harry’s time, they are represented by Lord Voldemort (the brother with the Elder Wand, who dies), Snape (the brother with the resurrection stone, who also dies) and Harry himself (the brother with the invisibility cloak that hid from Death itself and survives)
Albus Dumbledore represents Death.
He gives Harry the invisibility cloak, then the resurrection stone, and he ultimately has the Elder Wand too. He also briefly greets Harry in the afterlife.
JK Rowling liked this theory enough to approve it, in fact.
Aeon_Mortuum
4. A horse walks into a bar and…
The one about bojack horseman just being a long setup to a horse walks into a bar joke. Everyone he loves will die and then in the final episode he will walk into the bar he always goes to and then the guy will ask why the long face? It will then go into the outro music which perfectly explains why he would have a long face if you listen to it.
Anarchojoe
5. Futurama.
Bender from Futurama wasn’t a criminal until he met Fry.
When we first meet Bender, he’s ready to commit suicide because he found out he was helping to make suicide booths. This doesn’t tally with the Bender that we get to know throughout the course of the series. In fact, nothing he says before they run from Leela in the first series suggests that he’s nearly as bad as the Bender we love.
When they try and escape from Leela in the head museum, Bender gets shocked via an old light fitting. My theory is thus; in doing so, it caused Bender to reboot. In the penguin episode, we see that Bender resets into a mode relevant to his surroundings – he sees penguins, he boots into penguin mode. Therefore, since he rebooted in the hall of criminals, the first thing he sees is the heads of famous criminals, and therefore reboots into the lovable but highly-illegal rogue.
THE_LOUDEST_PENIS
6. Terrible parenting.
The Eds from Ed, Edd, & Eddy are victims of parental neglect.
Ed – Favoritism, his sister is in a 2nd floor room with toys, a plush bed and other amenities. Ed is in the basement with a tv, vcr, and old out of date toys.
Edd (double d) – Neglect, follows parents orders through sticky notes, implying they’re not home often.
Eddy – Expectations, always looked up to his brother, preserved his brothers room after leaving, never seems to escape the shadow his brother left him.
therecordplayer
7. Pokemon.
Ditto is the first attempt to recreate mew. Ditto is the same color and weight as Mew. It is also the only other Pokemon (in the original 150) that can use any move in the game. Mewtwo was the second attempt to recreate Mew but Mewtwo went berserk and destroyed the lab.
Sworl
8. Jurassic Park.
Jurassic Park never had any dinosaurs, just genetically modified creatures designed to resemble them. The flea circus scene in the book and movie, the dwarf pygmy elephant scene in the book, the admission that most sources of dinosaur DNA are too degraded in the book and movie, there’s a lot of hints that Hammond is continuing his huckster style. The main plot has them visiting the island for a safety check, but what do a paleontologist and paleobotanist know about safety checks? If Hammond can fool them, he can fool anyone.
Not to mention the real-world problems with using preserved mosquitos as a DNA source and the changing nature of dinosaur knowledge (no feathers, when we now think they did have them).
peelee_
9. Parks and Rec versus Stanger Things.
Steve from Stranger Things is Jean-Ralphio’s dad.
ricky_lives
10. Star Wars.
The one about Darth Sideous stealing Padme’s life force to keep a fatally injured Vader alive at the end of Revenge of the Sith.
Basically Padme doesn’t die of a broken heart, but rather Palpatine used his mastery of the dark side, which he learned from his Master, Darth Plagueis, to sap her life force and transfer it to his new apprentice Vader after his defeat on Mustafar. The opera scene in Episode 3 tells how Plagueis taught his apprentice everything he knew and that he has discovered how to create life. With that knowledge, Palpatine he was able to save Vader from otherwise lethal wounds.
EZ19
11. Jetsons and The Flinstones.
Surprised I have not seen the one about the Flintstones and the Jetsons actually taking place at the same time.
Due to war the surface of Earth was decimated (back to the stone age) so The Jetsons (and all the people they know) live high up in the sky where things are clean and new. Whereas the Flintstones live on the surface where everything is made of the remnants of society. It also explains why the Flintstones have technology that seems to be out of place (like record players and cars).
watdafug
12. Gotta catch em all.
Ash’s Pikachu is actually a Ditto that’s in too deep and is worried Ash will reject him if he told the truth. Going into a Pokeball would reset him back to a blob, and he can’t actually evolve, which is why he has always refused to do so.
AtomicWalrus
13. The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
I made a fan theory about Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
Toodles is a time machine. Toodles lives a day with Mickey and the gang, find out what type of problems they encounter, then travels back in time to find the type of tools that would help them, and re-lives the same day. That’s why Toodles always has the perfect mousketool to solve the problem!
Toodles also has the Secret Mousketool, which is Toodle’s way of solving a new problem that may arise as a result of the butterfly effect.
Dudebroman_5000
14. Event Horizon.
The movie Event Horizon takes place in the Warhammer universe and is a story about early early humanity faster than light. Everything that happens in the movie is reminiscent of when a spaceship travels through the Warp without an anti demon field called a Geller field.
Fumblerful-
15. It’s… Batman?
My personal favorite is the one where Bruce Wayne gets sent back in time and ends up killing his own parents. He then has a mental breakdown and ends up becoming the Joker (story continued on the next page…).
Continue onto the next page for more!
It’s a couple years from now, the chips are on the line, the multiverse is at stake, again… only this time it all comes down to Batman.
He defeats the ultimate evil of the DC universe, only to find himself launched through time… into a strangely familiar city.
Scrambling to find some clothes after his costume got destroyed by Z-rays in the epic final battle, he nabs some threads off a low-hanging clothesline. He leaves his bat-wallet full of cash on the windowsill… he’s not a bad guy, after all.
Just then, he sees a family of three emerge from the alley nearby. With a strange sense of deja vu, Bruce recognizes… his mother and father, and his childhood self. This is the night Bruce’s parents were murdered! Bruce whirls around, looking for the culprit, “Joe Chill,” but the only people there are himself and the Waynes. They barely glance at the ragged figure as they start to walk past.
With a spike of cold horror, Bruce realizes that in its final death throes, the ultimate evil he had faced in the future sent him backwards through time for a very specific reason. Color draining from his face, Bruce reaches a hand into the borrowed coat’s pocket… to find a dense, metallic lump. Drawing it out of the pocket, he comes face to face with a snub-nosed revolver.
A flash of terrible insight comes to Bruce along with an iron certainty. Without Batman, the universe would never survive the ultimate evil. Without this night, there is no Batman. This is his only chance… he must choose: break his one rule (to never kill), or be complicit in the assured annihilation of the universe. There is no real choice.
With tears streaming down his face, he remembers with trained photographic memory the hollow words the mugger spat at the elder Waynes. They turn, startled. As if his hands had minds of their own, he feels the pressure on his fingers as he slowly and inexorably… pulls the trigger.
Bruce Wayne has killed his parents in order to save everything else.
In a blind haze, Bruce the elder stumbles from the alley as Bruce the younger wails into the night. Nearing the Narrows Bridge, Bruce’s mind begins to crumble under the weight of what he has just done to himself. Unable to bear the maddening maelstrom of conflicting grief and certainty, he climbs to the highest point of the Bridge, looks out over the long-suffering city, and jumps without looking into the icy depths a hundred feet below.
Later that night, dockworkers pull a body from the water. No ID, no wallet. Nothing in the pockets but a gun and lint. Broken, deathly pale… but alive. As the foreman hangs up the call to the cops, he almost swears he hears something from the body. It sounds almost like… laughter.
It is the laughter of a man who knows the funniest joke in the world, but just can’t quite remember the punchline.
Citizenbushido
16. The Mist.
“The mist” – The lady was right, when David shot his son, the blood sacrifice was made and the mist ended.
MomoBR
17. All you have to do is ask.
I feel that Harry Potter fans tend to overdo it with fan theories, but there was one I especially like: That the three lead characters represent the other three houses (Harry Slytherin, Ron Hufflepuff, and Hermione Ravenclaw), and that the Sorting Hat puts those in Gryffindor who have the courage to ask for it.
Unabombadil
18. Game of Thrones.
The entire world of Game of Thrones exists in the eye of a blue-eyed giant.
Nan tells the Stark boys this, and Nan’s stories have been proven right literally every single time.
bl1y
19. Mass Effect.
The Shepard is indoctrinated theory is one I think still holds out fairly well.
That there are a number of subtle signs that Shepard in Mass Effect 3 is actually being indoctrinated (mind controlled) by the Reapers over the course of the game. Lot of fans latched onto the theory after the rather mediocre ending to the trilogy.
Kii_and_lock
20. Signs.
SIGNS FAN THEORY.
When I first saw this film, I didnt realize that it wasnt about aliens at all. Its about the return of demons. Notice its all about a priests resurgence of belief, and a preordained moment of redemption-if-dared-and-attempted. There is no alien technology or weaponry or clothing of any kind, only a clawed, naked beast creature and lights in the sky (story continued on the next page…).
Continue onto the next page for more!
Furthermore: The running joke throughout the movie is that people see these invaders in a way thats related to their particular frame of mind: The cop sees them as prankster kids, the bookstore owners see them as a hoax to sell commercials, the Army recruitment officer sees them as invading military, the kids see them as UFOsand the priest sees them as test of faith. This understanding of the film removed my hatred of the Youve got to be kidding me; they were killed by WATER! concept. In fact, the priests daughter had been referred to as holy (as revealed during Mels key monologue)recognized by all who saw her at her birth as an Angel; and her quite particular relationship to water is shown to be very special and spiritual: In other words, she has placed vials of what are, essentially, HOLY WATER all around the house. (And the creatures reaction when coming in contact with this blessed liquid is EXACTLY like monsters/vampires being splashed by spiritual acid.)
This view of the movie also explains the creatures actions: They act like superior tricksters, are not able to break in through closed doors, can be trapped behind simple wooden latches all mythological elements of demons and vampire-like creatures of lore. It also explains the news over the radio at the end of the movie that an ancient method of killing the creatures has been found in three small cities in the Middle East one would suspect the religious hubs of the three main Abrahamic traditions, each discovering the mystic methods of protection-and-dispatch that Ive noted earlier.
Note also: All the Christian iconography throughout the movie, the references to Signs and Wonders (the true meaning of the title), the crucifix shapes hinted-at everywhere (check out the overhead shot, looking down on the street driving into town) and the ultimate fact that the entire movie is built around a Priest rediscovering he is not abandoned to a random, Godless, scientifically-oriented Universe but, rather, is part of a predicted and dreamed-of plan.
Now these creatures may for all intents and purposes be some sort of extraterrestrial or inter-dimensional aliens but the point of the movie seems to be that they are, in the ACTUALITY OF THE FILM WORLD, the dark stuff from which all the characters tales of devils and night-creatures were born.
ZorroMeansFox
21. Han Solo.
I still think Han Shot First is a beautiful commentary on winners re-writing history.
So long as The Empire was in control, all the video evidence showed Han shooting first.
After the Empire fell (after RotJ was released), evidence was tampered with in a way that makes 1984’s Ministry of Truth’s censorship look like amateurs.
mxz
22. Spongebob Square Pants.
Spongebob and his friends are different from other fish/can talk because of radiation mutations. Bikini Bottom is Bikini Atoll, where the US did a lot of nuclear testing during the Cold War.
EnigmaticSquidd
23. Never Neverland.
Neverland is heaven, and Peter Pan is an angel bringing all the dying children there.
perfectvelvet
24. Neo is not “The One”.
By the end of the movies it’s pretty clear that Neo is The One foretold by the prophesy. But I don’t think that he was always The One. Neo wasn’t born The One. In fact, he wasn’t The One for most of the movie.
For most of Neo’s time on the Nebuchadnezzar, he’s pretty unremarkable. And the crew knows it. Even by normal standards, Neo is disappointing.
During Neo’s visit to the Oracle, he is told, in no uncertain terms, that he is not The One. We are reminded repeatedly that the Oracle is never wrong. Maybe the Oracle was motivating Neo by telling him that he is not, in fact, special. Maybe she was trying to calm him down by letting him know that it was alright to suck. Or, maybe she was right. Maybe Neo wasn’t the One when he visited the Oracle.
Fast forward to the heart pumping climax of the movie. Agent Smith and Neo are kung fu-ing it throughout the city until, finally, Neo is shot and killed by Smith. Bummer.
But this is critical. Trinity said that the Oracle told her that she would fall in love, and that the man she fell in love with would be The One. She tells his dead body that she loves him and seals the deal with a necrophilic kiss. That’s it. Bam. Neo is resurrected with a whole new skill set, a new swagger, and gosh darn it a personality. Neo becomes the One because Trinity loves him. Had Trinity fallen in love with Morpheus, or Tank, or the Janitor that sweeps the floors in Zion, that man would have become the One.
SoupyWolfy
25. James Bond.
James Bond is a codename given to multiple people. The first James Bond was captured by the USA and held at Alcatraz, then later pressed back into duty when a rogue general is holed up in Alcatraz and threatening San Francisco with chemical weapons and someone with a knowledge of the prison needed to help Nicholas Cage stop him.
SoupKnotSeer
26. Haunting Horcrux.
The Dursleys were so cruel to Harry because they were under the influence of the Horcrux in his head. We’ve seen that even short exposure to the locket Horcrux messed with your head, so why couldn’t the piece of Voldemort’s soul in Harry be affecting the way the Dursleys perceived him? Especially since they were exposed to it over the course of years.
This can also be used to explain; why the entire school/ wizarding world turned their back on their hero several times (heir of Slytherin/ Voldemort isn’t back) melarchies. And why Ron was so quick to abandon him in Goblet of fire. And basically any other time anyone is unnecessarily mean to Harry; the Horcrux did it.
27. The Prestige.
The Prestige is really a documentary about Christian Bale’s life. How is he able to drastically transform his body from role to role, often going from deathly skinny to a beef cake back to deathly skinny in just months? Not through diet and exercise.
He has a skinny twin brother he keeps hidden away. They each share one life. When a role requires a skinny Christian Bale, his brother fills in. Remember when he blew up on the set of Terminator and got into a fight with his mom and sister? That’s not the same guy who visited victims of the Dark Knight Rises theater shootings and took families to Disney.
YounomsayinMawfk
28. The Incredible.
InsuriCare, where Mr. Incredible worked, made it so hard to make a claim on their policies because the company was founded in a time when supers were causing massive amounts of public damage fighting crime.
Exploding_Antelope