What is your favorite inconsequential fan theory?
What is your favorite inconsequential fan theory?
I'm talking about a fan theory, that if true doesn't drastically upend the fundamentals of the fiction it is set in.
Mine is that in the American Dad episode 'Can I Be Frank With You', that Snot's uncle is actually just another Roger persona. He appears suddenly and conveniently to pitch a bizarre scheme, he loves hanging around with teen boys and doing drugs, and the very instant that the plan has a setback he kills himself out of sight of everyone else. That's just Roger in a suit and glasses.
Edit: Ok, so, people are having trouble with the word "inconsequential".
In Buffy season 5, I'm convinced there's a connection between Ben and Glory.
James Bond is actually a time lord. It explains why he changes how he looks every few movies. This is backed up by the fact that Timothy Dalton played a time lord once in Doctor Who.
And then he became a SLASHER... of prices.
I wouldn't call this "inconsequential", but not only is Deckard a Replicant, he's a very specific Replicant.
Gaff (played by Eddie Olmos) was the original officer assigned to hunting down the escaped replicants, before Holden and before Deckard. When the escaped Androids originally tried to storm the Tyrell corporation, one of them got "fried" going through an electric fence. And it was either there, or in another encounter, that Gaff was wounded in the leg, forcing Holden to take over the case, and we know where that ended up...
I posit that the android that got "fried", didn't actually get fried. In concert with the Tyrell corporation, they programmed him with Gaff's memories in order to finish the job, which is why Gaff is chaperoning him, driving him around; to make sure the memory implant holds. It's why Gaff seems to know what he's thinking and can make origami to give him hints. It's why Gaff at the end of the movie says "You've done a man's work". And it's why Gaff is such a dick to him. Imagine chaperoning your artificial replacement around that everyone thinks can do just as good a job as you...
I always watch Blade Runner from that perspective. At least until the sequel came out and ruined it for me.
The dwarves from deep rock Galactic are part of the warhammer 40k universe.
This is my favorite fan theory, originally created by the Four Finger Discount people, I'm told, but I can't find it on their site:
In Simpsons episode 9F10, “Marge vs. the Monorail”, the town meeting is interrupted by a mysterious character named Mr. Snrub. It’s a strange scene, because we never actually find out who Snrub is, and he doesn’t show up again in the rest of the episode, or indeed, in the rest of the series. However, I think I might have figured out why: Mr. Snrub is actually Mr. Burns in disguise.
I know it sounds implausible, but here is my reasoning:
Notice that “Snrub” has the same number of letters as “Monty”, Mr. Burns’s first name. Coincidence? Maybe, but there’s more.
Notice how quick Smithers is to agree with Snrub. I think the writers added this line as a subtle hint to the audience that there is some connection between Snrub and Burns. It also explains why Smithers was so willing to help Snrub in his time of need; because Snrub reminds him of Burns in some deep, ineffable way. If you listen closely to Snrub’s voice, it sounds an awful lot like Harry Shearer. Harry Shearer does the voice of many characters on The Simpsons, including Reverend Lovejoy, Seymour Skinner, Ned Flanders, and… Mr Burns. This doesn’t tell use for sure that Snrub is Burns, but it does narrow down the possibilities considerably.
When Snrub stands up to speak, he mentions that he comes from “someplace far away”. The writers of The Simpsons have always said that they consider Springfield to be somewhat flexible in its reality. For example, in one episode, Moe’s Bar is a short walk from the Simpsons’ house, but in the movie, it’s right next to the church. It is quite possible that, for the purpose of this scene, the writers wanted Mr Burns’ home to be “far away” from the Town Hall.
Notice that, in the above scene, when everyone in the Town Hall starts to get angry, Snrub instinctively tents his fingers, not unlike Mr Burns’ signature gesture. Now, to be fair, we occasionally see this gesture done by other characters, such as Homer, Bart, and even Lisa. But, I mean, still.
I will admit that this theory has some flaws. For example:
If Snrub is Burns, how did he grow the moustache so quickly? We saw Burns earlier in the episode dumping nuclear waste in the park, and he didn’t have a moustache then. This could partly be explained by the fact that, strictly speaking, we don’t know how much time has passed between that scene and the scene in the Town Hall. Perhaps this was enough time for Burns to grow the moustache that would disguise him as Snrub?
We all know that Smithers is in love with Burns, and that Burns doesn’t return Smithers’ affection. So, why is Burns so quick to embrace Smithers and hang on to him as they escape the building?
Look at this comparison of Snrub and Burns. They look almost nothing alike. For one thing, notice that Snrub has an extra wrinkle under his left eye. His face also settles into an expression that is open and happy, in contrast with Mr Burns’ scowl. In addition, Snrub has a more prominent overbite, the three liver spots on his head are further apart. I haven’t even gotten started on the colours: Snrub wears a dark blue suit with a black tie, and has light blue hair. Burns, in contrast, wears a teal suit with a pink tie, and has gray hair.
If Burns really was at the Town Hall, then who was running the nuclear plant? The lights are on in the building, which clearly means that the power is working. Snrub’s suggestion is that the city give the two million dollars to the Nuclear Power Plant. Why would Mr. Burns do this, since Burns already knows that the power plant is where the money came from? This leaves us with the possibility that Snrub was just an innocent person who spoke at the town meeting without being fully informed about the background details (hence why everybody was so mad at him for being so ignorant and unprepared).
So, at the end of the day, it’s hard to say who Snrub really is. It’s even more difficult to say why he showed up in only that one scene, and why he never showed up again — perhaps he was a character the writers wanted to introduce to the show, but could never find a good enough story for.
Like many fan theories, it’s probably not true, and I’m probably over-analyzing it, but it’s sure fun to think about!
Is he Mr. Burns exact double like Guy Incognito to Homer Simpson?
Uh, whenever you notice something like that- a wizard did it.
But...
Maybe I'm just not quite awake yet and am missing the joke... but did you seriously miss the fact that "Snrub" is just "Burns" in reverse?
Yes, I think you are missing the joke. I'll explain it, because that can only make it funnier.
In the show, it's quite obvious that it's just Mr. Burns with a fake mustache. He apparently didn't even think of a fake name until he's called upon to suggest what to do with the money, because he says, "Mr....Snrub. Yes, that'll do."
The writeup is ignoring that and writing out the theory, with supporting evidence, as though realizing Mr. Snrub, is, in fact, Mr. Burns would be a major revelation to everyone. (Also it's not my theory, I just reposted it, as noted at the top of my comment.)
I very much enjoyed reading this, thank you.
When drinking with Zefram Cochrane, Deanna Troi had no idea what tequila was. She went to Star Fleet Academy in San Fransisco, and even without warp drive and transporters, that's not far from the major agave growing regions on Earth. Cadets gonna drink whenever they have the chance, and they'll seek out non-synthehol stuff if they can.
Agave isn't being farmed sustainably right now. It could also have been hit hard by Star Trek's WWIII. It's possible agave didn't survive into the 22nd century. Zef may have even been going through the last bottles of it.
I’ve always liked the idea that Kevin from Home Alone grew up to be the Jigsaw killer…
Throughout the Solo movie, Han tries to thread the needle multiple times and fails. In the end of the movie he finally succeeds but only after plugging Lando's robo girlfriend's brain into the Falcon. After that point they never suggest that they remove her from it. They never need an astromech to calculate jumps again and almost every single person that pilots the Falcon threads the needle at least once, including ray who has literally never flown before when she does it.
Han isn't the pilot. He's the captain of a ghost ship. Every mistake he's made since then has been expertly corrected by the ship itself, now given a mind and one of the longest running navigation databases in the galaxy.
See, this one I like, because it's one of those "man, I know the writers didn't mean it that way, but it makes sense... and it's horrifying!" theories.
The Falcon is so good, because for decades it has essentially had the crippled, half-dead "ghost" of a droid locked inside its computer systems, unable to fully die yet clearly devoid of her true consciousness.
In Empire, Han tells 3PO to "talk to the Falcon" and later 3P0 comments on the ship's "peculiar dialect." Obviously at the time those lines were written it was just a half joke half figure of speech, but you could argue in universe it implies Han knows the Falcon is conscious and 3P0 was referring to the fact that the Falcon was actually communicating with him, rather than just giving diagnostic data.
The Teletubbies are the Elois from HG Well's The Time Machine.
In Stargate SG-1 — spoilers — the last season they're stuck on the ship stuck in time for a long time. I listened to the director's commentary on it, and the actors themselves talked about how there was supposed to be a Carter and Teal'c romance. You can still see it in some of the looks they give each other and whatnot, but it was cut.
So not "fan theory" as such, but something not usually considered part of the canon but which definitely has credible support for it. (Amanda Tapping, the actor for Samantha Carter was talking about it on the commentary track.)
Doesn't really change much, as all of them but Teal'c forget what happened after the conclusion.
SG-1
wow. that definitely adds some layers, considering Sam was the one who figured out how to fix the timeline and Teal'c was the one who executed it. and that he doesn't tell the others anything that happened. poor guy :(
Right?
And I even think he gives Carter a look after the reset that plays a bit different with this plotpoint in mind.
I feel this gets hated on a fair bit but I enjoy it, just a bit of fun
Holy fuck that was mindblowing!
Even if it turns out to be false, I applaud their effort in making this up.
Exactly! To link all of these great & unrelated pieces of cinema together into a somewhat believable overarching storyline is pretty cool.
I don't believe there's any intent from the creators there at all but it's an awesome little exercise if nothing else.
Jar Jar the sith lord
I reckon it's legit but they decided not to reveal it because they sold Jar Jar toys to too many kids.
He was the Phantom Menace
Wonka Piercer. It’s so implausible it just might be true.
My personal favorite fan theory
So Blade Runner, Alien, and Predator franchises are linked, but I also a believer that the Terminator franchise is linked into the same, shared universe. Obviously Terminator has many different endings depending at which film you look due to timey wimey shenanigans, but if you pick one of the ones that the war is averted (I pick T2 as the sequels are not my favorite), it kinda makes sense. In this universe Dutch is the special forces ace that is picked (probably unknowingly) to be the model for the T800.
Terminator, the Matrix and Dune are all the same universe at different points in time.
I don’t buy this one for the single reason that time travel is never a thing in the Dune universe and their tech is astronomically better than the other two.
Not necessarily, people don't travel through time in Dune but they do see through time, and Spice specifically enables humans to see the past and future. I can theorize that actually traveling into the past is something only intelligent machines were able to facilitate. It could also be a situation where the high tech solution (lasers) has already been countered (shields) so the low tech solution (swords) becomes the better weapon. It could also be by a mutual agreement, or simply lost tech.
In the Wizard of Oz, Glenda the "Good" Witch is actually a ruthless drug kingpin.
She used her magic powers to summon a tornado and then merks the Wicked Witch of the East with Dorothy's house. She then puts WWotE's shoes on Dorothy in order to make her a target for WWotE's sister, the Wicked Witch of the West. Glenda then uses Dorothy as a stooge to bump off WWotW, thereby putting herself in control of Oz's vast fields of opium poppies, and cornering the entire opium trade.
It doesn't make sense any other way. Glenda could have told Dorothy to use the ruby slippers to get home at literally any point, but instead sends her on a wild goose chase, and uses her as a blunt instrument to take out the only other bases of power remaining in Oz: the WWotW, and the Wizard, who Dorothy exposes as a fraud. Only then does she tell Dorothy to click her heels, and poof: everything is all wrapped up with a bow, and Glenda's hands are clean. Her two main rivals are dead, and the Wizard is fleeing Oz in disgrace.
It's some fucking Kaiser Söze level shit.
This but she's not a drug kingpin and didn't do the Tornado.
A weird weather event drops a house on one of your 3 rivals and some farm girl steps out. Either it's a bizarre coincidence or she's an equally powerful if not more powerful mage. Either way, you don't want her on your turf so you put a bright red target on her feet and send her after your next rival, who you think may be a fraud. Either she houses more people or she dies, either way it's not Glenda's problem.
In the end, she destroys a government, literally melts Glenda's political and magical equal, and comes back like a lost puppy and Glenda can't risk Dorothy accidentally melting her so age sends her home.
It wasn't a pan, it was cleverly using your windfalls.
In the musical wicked which I suppose is canon and happens at the same time, Glenda reveals to Madame Morrible that the wicked witch of the west will probably show herself if her sister (the wicked witch of the east) is in danger. So Morrible summons the tornado to threaten the sister which coincidentally brings along Dorothy. Glenda secretly was good friends with Elphaba (WWotW) so wouldn't have intentionally gotten her sister killed. There was a lot of politics and propaganda and stuff, but Glenda wasn't really a villain, just a vain person who found it easier to support an autocracy. Someone who has read the books could probably explains it all, sorry if I've ruined your headcanon!
On the American Dad theory, there is a long-running theory that Roger's ultimate goal is to replace all of humanity. The start of the show is just him, and then "learning" to put on disguises, but he's become more and more people over time, to the point where it is hard for almost everyone (except the Smiths, who he trusts) to know it is him.
It isn't inconsequential, but an interesting theory on whether the finale of American Dad will either be finding out that Roger IS everyone, or if Stan saving Roger actually saved humanity by allowing Roger to see humanity.
Not exactly "fan" theory since I hate that show, but Caillou is bald because has cancer, and he's allowed to be a little shit because he's dying.
Clearly true. And yes, he IS a little shit.
Snowpiercer is the sequel to Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
https://nerdist.com/article/willy-wonka-chocolate-factory-snowpiercer-sequel-fan-theory-dan-cave/
The funniest thing about watching Snowpiercer in 2023 with people who’d never seen it before was after the big reveal about what the protein bars are made of, and how horrified the characters were, all my friends were like “oh, is that it? That makes sense actually. We thought it was going to be the missing children or something terrible”
Elsa used ice crystals at a nanoscopic scale to alter her dress during the Let It Go sequence.
Is that not exactly what we see in the movie?
Isn't this kinda implied?
The Lion King is an experiment being run by the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The music is diegetic and is used to modify behavior.
We know they can implant images and subconscious commands, and that this is perceived through music. That's why they can coordinate musical numbers on the spot, and why sudden changes in behavior and attitude are accompanied by music.
In particular, the most critical character change comes when Simba wanders off to be alone, sees a vision in the sky, and the soundtrack kicks in with an extended version of the alien music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Suddenly he's doing a 180 and running back towards his assigned role in the story.
That's fucking crazy and I absolutely lovd it! 🤣
Mine is that in Star Trek, at least all the computers advanced enough to be used on a starship are actually sentient. At some point you have enough self aware hologram programs and rogue AIs that you should start to wonder if they’re actually anomalous.
My take is that a true AI would be so far ahead of the humans that it wouldn't want to slow down enough to interact with them. The AI would treat the humans the way we treat intestinal bacteria; we want them healthy and thriving, but don't really care much about them day to day.
This was somewhat of a plot point in a season of Discovery.
Sisko was killed in TNG's universe. Sisko survived in DS9's universe due to the prophets saving him. The Trek universe diverged at Wolf 359.
The Dominion War has drastically different outcomes. Existential crisis in one universe where Sisko does a lot of meddling; barely mentioned in the other.
The biggest change to the cast is that Worf marries Jadzia Dax and becomes Ambassador to the Klingon Empire in one universe; in the other universe, he does a brief inconsequential stint at DS9 (without Sisko), never marries, then returns to the Enterprise E as pretty much the same character from TNG, and at some later point, he gets the Enterprise E destroyed.
The Picard timeline is set in the universe where Sisko died at Wolf 359.
I have a theory that Mr Monk was a serial killer who framed people
I always thought that about Jessica Fletcher. Too many people dying around that woman.
Why do the people confess?
People do false confessions to the police literally all the time. You should never talk to cops, and you should never trust a confession
Jonathan Coulton's the future soon and the Doubleclicks' lasers and feelings talk about the same characters from two different points of view.
I have no proof of this, but the artists are friends, so there is that.
Deku's quirk is having an extra bone in his pinky toe
That Crocodile is Luffy's mom. Gender Bent by Emporio Ivankov's devil fruit power so he can hide his true identity.
He does say that "everyone has one persona they don't see through"...
Maybe that's the audience's.
That is the only way it works.
Celery Man takes place in Pierce Brosnan's basement.
Char Aznable's wild shift in character between the end of Zeta and the beginning of Char's Counterattack can be directly pinned on Kamille Bidan's mental crippling at the end of Zeta and Haman Karm's actions in ZZ.
Char, who always had a rather strong protective streak, more or less pinned his hopes on Kamille as a key to the future. Instead he directly experienced the Newtype backlash of Kamille being mentally crippled, and subequently could no longer sense him. This convinced him that humanity was doomed to eternal conflict, unless it was forced to advance.
Still unable to get over his protective streak, Char then manages to extricate Mineva Lao Zabi, the last remaining Zabi and perhaps the only one who he doesn't actually seem to harbor any hatred towards, to Earth. But Haman just creates a double, which she uses to drag Neo Zeon into yet another war for personal power. This convinces Char he cannot trust the future to anyone else, even after protecting the ones he cares about.
Thus, we reach CCA with a Char who is fixedly convinced of both the need for forced human advancement, and that he alone must be that leader.
The one that says the amazing digital circus is an artificial purgatory made by Kinger and that all the characters are people who have killed someone in their past. I just hope it's not like Drawn to Life 2.
