21 Mind-Blowing Fan Theories That Will Change The Way You See Your Favorite Show

Or movie, or book. Courtesy of Reddit.

1. FrancisDollarHyde

I like the one about Rugrats.

Ever wondered just how Angelica could talk to the babies? Angelica is the only one who can talk to the babies because they are a figment of her imagination. She is spoilt, sad and lonely, because her Mother is constantly working and has no time for her. Her relationship with her Dad is superficial and unsubstantial, no real love is ever shown to her.

So how did it come about that Angelica would have to imagine these babies? Tommy died soon after child birth, a fact reflected by Stu never leaving the basement, inventing toys that his son will never play with. Chuckie died in the car crash along with his Mum, also reflected in the actions of his father; the crash has made him a pathetic nervous wreck most of the time.
Most interesting is Phil and Lil. There never where any twins, there was just one baby. However this baby was a still born, and Angelica never knew the sex of the still born, so she invented twins of different genders.

Sadly, Angelica never uses her imaginary friends to comfort or entertain her, instead she is mean and nasty to them. She has invented this relationship with these babies so she can vent her frustrations of being a spoilt, lonely brat who has seen much hardship from these unfortunate parents; frustrations that can’t be satisfied by a typical childhood relationship with a doll, albeit a Cynthia one.

2. DiggaDug742

I read a theory about Courage the Cowardly Dog that said that Courage is actually a normal dog and he sees the world through a dog’s eyes. All the villains in the show are just normal people, but to a little dog they seem scary. They don’t actually live in the middle of Nowhere, but since his owners are too old to take him outside for walks, he only knows what’s around his immediate property, and everything beyond that is nothing because he’s never seen it.

3. shatonamime

Reading about Rugrats made me think of that episode where they think the world will end. They make a shelter and plan to survive. Except there’s only enough room 4, not 5. So, they have to pick between Tommy, Chuckie, Angelica, Phil and Lil. They actually make a logical choice for repopulating the earth. You would take both girls. Chuckie has different family from either girl, so he’s accepted. The choice would be between Tommy and Phil. Phil has redundant DNA with Lil, Tommy, while a cousin of Angelica, still brings more diversity. Leaving Phil out was the logical choice, if they truly had to. It’s not broken down this way in the show, but they still reach the same result.

4. Stockpotty

The story of Aladdin is made up by the salesman at the beginning to persuade you to buy the lamp.

5. neverbinkles

A bit late for this, but Willy Wonka knew those children would die in his factory. After Augustus gets sucked up the shoot, they all hop on board the boat through the tunnel of doom. The boat doesn’t have two extra vacant seats though. It was designed with prior knowledge that they would lose two participants before that point. Later they drive a cream spewing car with only four seats. Did they have another car waiting in the garage in case the others made it? Of course not. Willy Wonka uses children to make candy.

6. [deleted]

Doctor Who. The Doctor’s name is a word of power, something that was introduced to the series in Moffat’s series 3 episode “The Shakespeare Code.” What does the Doctor’s name do? It unlocks the time war. This is the reason he trusts no one but himself to know his own name. During the ending of “Forest of the Dead” the tenth Doctor also states to river that there could be only one way she could have known his name. This is also the reason why The Silence are terrified of the Doctor’s name. And why not? It would release the Daleks and the Timelord from the locked time war. It’s speculated that this is the premise of the 50th anniversary episode.

7. [deleted]

The original Scooby Doo series is set after a horrible economic depression. Everything is abandoned and falling apart, and all of the villains are people who would normally be really respected (professors, museum curators, celebrities) who have fallen into hard times just like everyone else. How many times have the gang helped someone NOT go out of business?

8. ProfessorLaser

My favorite Star Wars conspiracy is that the Emperor wasn’t spending all those resources creating crazy superweapons like the Death Star and the Sun Crusher and putting together gigantic fleets of Star Destroyers wasn’t to stop the Rebel Alliance, but rather in preparation of the Yuuzhan Vong Invasion that would happen about a quarter century after RoTJ ended.

Now the Emperor is a pretty smart guy. I mean, he got himself elected to Chancellor of the Republic, started a war, earned himself absolute control on both sides of the war, then managed to turn the galaxy against the guys who for a millennium had served as icons of peacekeeping, justice, and democracy. And that takes some serious strategizing! But here’s the thing:
At this point, the Republic was falling apart, with or without a Sith-led Separatist movement to nudge them in the wrong direction. The senate was a clusterfuck where nothing ever got done. Corruption reigned supreme. Even the Jedi Council wasn’t doing its job properly. Ideally, Jedi are supposed to act as bastions of compassion and moderation. The way the Jedi would be tasked to deal with a situation is as a balancing influence between, say, two conflicting nation-states, or a particularly quarrelsome trade agreement. Everyone respected and would listen to a Jedi, and even without acting on behalf of the Republic, they should be able to arrive on a scene and be able to allow discussion and bureaucracy to flourish. Instead, the Jedi Council of the waning days of the Republic had grown inward and conservative, spending all their time meditating on the state of the galaxy and not enough time heading out there and fixing shit. This held throughout the war, when Jedi were surprisingly quick to jump to open combat as opposed to discussion.

In short, the Republic was completely and utterly unprepared for a real invasion, from a force that wasn’t being controlled by a puppetmaster who was preventing either side from gaining an advantage until the moment was right. The kinds of fleets that were commonplace in the Empire would have been impossible for the Republic to even agree to create, let alone have the wherewithal to actually build. What Palpatine did was take a failing system and tear it out by the roots, replacing it with a brutally efficient, military-industrial focused society — one that could adequately prepare for an invasion of the scale of the Yuuzhan Vong were already beginning.

Second of all, if you think about it, creating a weapon that can destroy planets doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you’re fighting a war against a well funded, but decentralized and scattered rebellion. The Rebel Alliance wasn’t fighting a war of planets or borders or resources, they were fighting a war of attrition. What good is the ability to destroy a planet when your enemy doesn’t even officially control any? The destruction of Alderaan, the only notable use of the Death Star, was a move made by Grand Moff Tarkin, whose Tarkin Doctrine, though it heavily influenced the way the Empire kept a tight grip on even the furthest systems, was not the ultimate purpose of the “ultimate weapon”. Tarkin was convinced that the Death Star was his tool, one of intimidation and despotism, that he could use it to keep the Alliance, the biggest threat to his power, at bay. And we all know how that venture turned out.

No, the real purpose of the Death Star was to be able to fight a force that could completely terraform an entire planet into a gigantic, organic shipyard in a matter of months, and was backed by dozens of 100+ Kilometer across worldships. In fact, without the timely arrival of the seed of the original Yuuzhan Vong homeworld, Zonama Sekot, and a Jedi-influenced heretic cult that spurred a slave uprising, it’s very unlikely that the denizens of the galaxy could have survived the war at all under the leadership of the New Republic. In fact, it’s not really even fair to say that they “won” the war in any sense, with a sizable portion of the population of the galaxy eradicated, Coruscant, the former shining jewel at the heart of every major government for millennia, captured and terraformed beyond recognition, and the New Republic forced to reconstruct itself as the Galactic Alliance. Undoubtedly, for all it’s flaws, the Empire could have hammered out a far less Pyrrhic victory over the Vong. And if Palpatine hadn’t underestimated the abilities of both the rebellion he never considered a comparable threat, and one young Jedi, perhaps the galaxy could have avoided the deaths of uncountable sentients during the Yuuzhan Vong war years later.

9. [deleted]

In the Haunted Mansion at Disney World/Disneyland, “you” commit suicide during the course of the ride and become a ghost.

At the beginning of the ride the ghost host (the narrator) says the only way to escape the mansion is to die, and he shows that he hanged himself. Near the end of the ride there’s a moment where the ride vehicle turns around backwards and you go off a balcony, which according to this theory represents you jumping to your death.

Before this part of the ride the ghosts are all trying to scare you, but afterwards they sing excitedly and invite you to party with them. (The Grim Grinnin’ Ghosts song.) The only human character in the ride, a groundskeeper, appears after the balcony drop. He faces toward the riders and seems terrified of you.

Could be totally accidental, could be an intentional subtlety by the designers, but either way I’ve never looked at that ride the same way since.

10. butterflypoon

Samurai Jack takes place in post-apocalyptic Townsville. (Powerpuff Girls)

11. Mr__Zaphon

http://i.imgur.com/owmWC.jpg

12. guisado

This one is my theory: That 70’s Show, is a vague sequel to Happy Days. At the end of Happy days, Richie and Ralph go off to the Korean war (or at least they are training for it). Fonzie stays behind. At this point you must remember that the Fonz was always the person who kept Richie ‘cool.’

Flash Forward 20 years, Richie, (now ‘Red’) Has become bitter after the war, and without the catalyst that was Arthur Fonzerelli, his friendship with fool neighbor, Bob (Ralph) has fallen apart.

Happy Days was made in the 70s and set int he 50s. That 70’s Show was in the 90s and set in the 70s.

13. Capmaster

The existence of Spongebob and his strange friends is the result of radiation from nuclear arms testing that was performed on the Bikini Atoll in the late 40’s and early 50’s. Since they live under the atoll, the town is known as ‘Bikini Bottom’.

14. thetermite

In the beginning of 2001: A Spacy Odyssey, a black screen is displayed while music plays for a few minutes before the film starts. Its believed that this is the monolith tilted 90 degrees and taking up the entire screen, as if the entire film is a technological and evolutionary advancement that Kubrick is bestowing us.

15. Dookiestain_LaFlair

Sean Connery’s character in The Rock (John Patrick Mason) is actually James Bond. He got caught spying on America and was hidden away in various prisons. “This man does not exist not in the United States or Great Britain” says FBI Director Womack. This ties in with the theory of James Bond being a code name for different agents.

16. Steeze_McQueen

The Jetsons and The Flintstones are two portions of the same society. The people living in Bedrock are actually members of a far future (one may say post-human) society that have rejected the day to day electronic assistance to live like their long-dead ancestors did (or at least what they think they lived like; history has lost a bit in translation). This explains the talking animals: They’re just synthetic creations. It’s been so long since any actual animal lived that didn’t have human communication bred/written into it that the “ferals” don’t realize how silly it is to be talking with creatures that didn’t even exist alongside early humans.

17. Paraptorkeet

Rufus, the mole rat from Kim Possible, is a phallic symbol. He lives in Ron’s pocket and his favorite food is tacos.

18. lusciouslou

How Garfield is actually dieing of starvation, and just imagining Jon and Odie. There was a reference to this in a Halloween themed comic. Garfield woke up in a condemned and abandoned house. He calls out for Odie and Jon, but there is no answer. He then wills the illusion back on himself, and continues his delusions about his ‘family’.

19. darklighter5000

In the beginning of Finding Nemo, the father imagines one son survived when in reality his whole family was destroyed.

The movie is an allegory of the father’s journey through the stages of grief:

Denial – he won’t let his son go to school because it’s not “safe”

Anger – he scolds his son for venturing out of his control

Bargaining – he puts up with an amnesiac travel buddy to help him find his son

Despair – he sees his son flushed down the drain

Acceptance – he learns to “let go” and let things be the way they are

Almost everyone in the story tells the father he has to “let go” of his son. His travels takes him to the Land Down Under (aka Underworld). The movie ends with him saying goodbye as his son visually disappears into the void.

And the kicker? “Nemo” means “nobody” in Latin (in 20,000 Leagues, Captain Nemo is messing with people who ask him what his name is)

20. flutefairy96

My history teacher believes that in Inception, the whole film is really a plot by the dead wife to get Leonardo DiCaprio out of the dream, a plan which fails.

21. yarbles108

That isn’t Forrest’s son. Jenny just takes advantage of him after she learns that he’s a shrimp tycoon. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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