Fan Theories And You...

[Trivun]

This thread is born out of a simple fact - when things gain a following, the fans have theories for everything and anything. Some of these range from the nonsensical (the infamous Pokemon/Ash's Coma theory), to the ultimately true (the eyepatches in Doctor Who allowing people to see The Silence), to the 'unlikely but still possible until proven otherwise' (the Doctor dying being a Ganger all along - wrong, but still close ).

At the moment, I'm playing Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, having not long bought it cheaply from HMV. And something I saw online gave a theory that Lucy Stillman is in fact a Templar, infiltrating the Assassins. I was skeptical at first, but then I remembered the twist at the end, with the event that Desmond performs on Lucy (those who've played it know what I mean). In addition, there's the fact that she disappears from the Sanctuary after Sequence 6, and you can no longer talk to her. The red trail in Eagle Vision in present-day Monterriggioni. And the words of Subject 16 in the Truth segment ("She's not who you think she is"). Could that be referring to Lucy, or someone else? Through thinking of all this, I have to (reluctantly) agree that the theory does make some sense.

So, this thread is for all of you to share the theories you've heard on your favourite shows, games, films, books, concept albums, whatever, and to tell some of the theories you've come up with yourself. Let's see if our combined genre-spanning Wild Mass Guessing turns out to be true then, eh?

 

[Trivun]

So, no-one has any theories they'd like to share? Here are the Pokemon and AC ones, by the way:

Pokemon: http://cartoonoveranalyzations.com/2009/04/09/pokemon-explained/ (Wow, a whole site full of similar stuff! )

Assassin's Creed: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101118143927AADqOcD

 

[HiC]

Big assassins creed fan here and I personally had the same idea when I was playing, guess we'll have to see in revelations

 

[Esotera]

The entirety of the Halo universe is based on the Peloponnesian war. I know the series gets a lot of hate round here, but everything fits; basically it's Athens vs. Sparta. The war was characterised by a superior Athenian naval power (covenant ships) razing farms (agricultural worlds such as Harvest). Also the length of the conflict was 27 years, the same as the Human-Covenant war, and you can even find some of the characters. The arbiter was a guy called Abliclaides or something similar, and he defected to Sparta due to political treachery.

Don't really have any others of my own..

 

[Trivun]

The entirety of the Halo universe is based on the Peloponnesian war. I know the series gets a lot of hate round here, but everything fits; basically it's Athens vs. Sparta. The war was characterised by a superior Athenian naval power (covenant ships) razing farms (agricultural worlds such as Harvest). Also the length of the conflict was 27 years, the same as the Human-Covenant war, and you can even find some of the characters. The arbiter was a guy called Abliclaides or something similar, and he defected to Sparta due to political treachery.

Don't really have any others of my own..

That is actually really interesting, I always thought the whole thing was merely an allegory for the Christian faith (the Ark of the Covenant, seeing Forerunners as 'gods' and the whole Covenant religion, the Flood, the Halo rings themselves, and so on...). Never did it cross my mind that there was more to it

 

[GuyUWishUWere]

I got a theory as to why Deus Ex HR ended the way it did(Spoilers of course).

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.312073-The-Meaning-of-Deus-Ex-Human-Revolution-spoilers#12630624

 

[ZeroMachine]

The entirety of the Halo universe is based on the Peloponnesian war. I know the series gets a lot of hate round here, but everything fits; basically it's Athens vs. Sparta. The war was characterised by a superior Athenian naval power (covenant ships) razing farms (agricultural worlds such as Harvest). Also the length of the conflict was 27 years, the same as the Human-Covenant war, and you can even find some of the characters. The arbiter was a guy called Abliclaides or something similar, and he defected to Sparta due to political treachery.

Don't really have any others of my own..

Awesome, and it totally makes sense.

*The more you know

As for me, Marathon has strange tangent ties to Half Life.

Here's how it happened:

Sometime after Half Life was released, a mod came out called Parallax: Someplace Else. The mod was highly praised and brutally difficult, with an interesting story and as of yet unnamed character other than the player. The creator was a big Marathon fan at the time, so he inserted the Marathon symbol ALL OVER the installation you have to infiltrate in the mod.

But, it's a mod, right? Fanon, not canon?

Jump ahead a few years, after the release of Half Life 2. A new mod by the same creator,a sequel to Someplace Else called Minerva: Metastasis, is released to massive critical acclaim. After the release of the second episode of the mod, Valve approaches the creator and helps him finish the mod's final two episodes, then hires him.

They also canonized Minerva: Metastasis.

The sequel to Someplace Else.

Which has the Marathon symbol all over the place.

There are also many similarities in the story, so it isn't just that. And although it'll probably never be acknowledged, I'm a big fan of tangential crossovers, so that's what I see. I come up with bullshit theories all the time, and I have a blast with it. They can get pretty insane, but if you take the idea that every game is a different dimension, they aren't 100% insane

 

[ZeroMachine]

I hate fan theories that state that a character will SOMEHOW get revived through bullshit reasons.
One theory I came across.

Spoiler: Modern Warfare 2 spoiler

A guy on youtube made up a theory saying that Ghost is not dead because he was wearing a fire proof vest, completely ignoring the fact that he got shot by a revolver. When confronted, the idiot told me that Ghost pretended to get shot. People said Gaz would come back to life, but he didn't, what makes you think the same with fucking Ghost?

Why do people even like Ghost? Is it the skull? He just blended in to me. The only characters I cared about were Soap and Price.

 

[darkcalling]

I heard a theory once that attempted to explain why the Joker's backstory and level of insanity tend to vary depending on who's writing him.

Basically he doesn't have a coherent backstory because he's not really human.

Allow me to explain. Look at all the craziness that happens in the DCU in an average month. Between superpowers destroying your home, the constant threat that the obnoxious guy in front of you in the big hat at the movies is actually a supervillain, regular alien invasions etc. not to mention things like the various Crisis crossovers rewriting the timeline, or things like Blackest night bringing people back from the dead.

Now look at all the so called normal people in the DCU. They're surprisingly ok with all this usually. Unless there's an actual battle going on they seem to just ignore it and live otherwise normal lives just like us. These people should have lost their minds a long time ago. Why haven't they?

The guy theorized that at some point in the past a powerful wizard, probably Merlin or Dr. Fate, created what he termed "an avatar of insanity" to take in the majority of mental instability within the populace. The avatar would then bleed off the crazy in some way that would keep things in relative balance.

This avatar is the Joker and even he doesn't know it. Anytime he begins to see the truth the spell rewrites his past and he starts all over.

This is why Joker's behavior is often a good indicator of the general well being of the DCU at large. When he's a mostly ineffectual joke villain everything's fine. If he starts wantonly murdering people in the street and acts like he does in The Dark Knight the DCU is in real trouble.

 

[Mike Richards]

I've got a Doctor Who one a friend and I worked out.

There were never any Vashta Nerada in the Library, there were Silence ('Silence' in the Library, get it?) The Silence wanted to learn everything they could about the human race before they began manipulating their evolution, so they went to the most logical place to learn about us: the largest library in the history of the universe, built by humans.

They used their hypnotic suggestion powers to convince everyone the Shadows had woken up and overran the planet. Obviously the only one who could be effected would be CAL, the sentient computer core. So they damaged her memory banks so she could never tell what really happened.

Flash forward 100 years to when The Doctor and River arrive. The Silence wipe their memory and manipulate The Doctor into using the TARDIS to take all of them back to the begging of the human race, allowing them to set up on Earth. This also allows them to spend enough time with the TARDIS to learn a few things about it, which is how they start constructing the TARDIS look-a-likes seen in The Lodger and Day of the Moon.

There are a couple of possible variations: River is killed trying to stop the Silence and they invent her sacrificing herself to fix the computer; they manipulate River into sacrificing herself because they need her to for some reason to allow their plan to work; or they did actually load the library patrons into teleporter stasis, and everything about saving them was actually real.


I also had an Elder Scrolls one for a little while where the Numidium survived the end of Daggerfall and was hidden in Skyrim, and you have to reactivate it to reforge the Empire like Tiber Septim did originally.

Neither of these are very likely, but they're cool to think about.

They also canonized Minerva: Metastasis.

They seriously did that? Wow, I knew I loved Valve. Minerva was badass.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I always enjoy making these up. Generally well done universes will have so much info on them you'll be able to provide viable evidence for the craziest stuff. Ok, let's solve two conspiracies with one stone:

The Master Chief is Ash Ketchums father!

Pokemon are artificial lifeforms created by the Forerunner (just like the Engineers) that have taken a selection of the remaining humans (because so few survived the Covenant/Flood war) to live protected in a special hidden Dyson sphere world thing. The older generation know the truth, but the younger kids have been brought up in glorius ignorance of the horrors of the Flood etc.

It takes time for Pokemon to be created by the AI running the world, hence the constant introduction of new Pokemon to the world, until a point where the ecosystems are considerably fleshed out.
It also explains why the world is so highly technologically advanced, yet unpolluted, why Pokemon can be controlled, stored and sent electronically, and why parents are so willing to let their children run about unsupervised when they are only around 10 years old: The controlling AI won't allow any harm to come to them.

But what is a theory without proof, well, if we take this familiar piece of forerunner tech:

Spoiler

And reprogram it to collect the data of a single organism, while changing the colours to give it a more whimsical, light-hearted feel:

Spoiler

Secondly, lets say the more tech-savvy humans would be able to work the consoles in the world, and could even create their own Pokemon designs. Maybe they would model the creature they created on the robots that found them and took them to this safe place.

So this...

Spoiler

Gets a paint job and becomes:

Spoiler

 

[Asita]

Well, there is one little fan-theory I am rather fond of, and I found it on (of all places) the "Wild Mass Guessing" page for Bleach on TvTropes. For those not familiar with the concept, the WMG pages on Tvtropes are where there are no standards for fan theories (including such gems as "The Joker is really Ronald McDonald"). Or to put it another way: Rule of Fun outweighs any need to make sense on those pages. So imagine my surprise when I see a coherent and deep analysis of characters and events in Bleach that actually seemed workable (except for a little detail of Kubo delving into some of the backgrounds of the characters in question). This is quoted exactly from the page...Heavy spoilers involved for anyone who cares:

Spoiler

Theory: The Espada weren't aspects of death, they were aspects of Aizen's Psyche.

That sounds really stupid, but bear with me here.

* Yammy is Aizen's rage and an expression of brute force; for most of his life, Aizen's crushed that down and used his intellect instead of his overwhelming power, so Yammy seemed like the weakest and most ignored of the Espada. But at the end of his campaign, Aizen gave up on subtle plans for overwhelming power and when THAT didn't work, descended into barely coherent rage, which in turn shows Yammy grow explosively. Just as Aizen's anger and brute-force tactics were ultimately much less effective than his intelligence, Yammy was defeated easily by Byakuya and Kenpachi despite his power.

* Aaroniero was Aizen's greedy and manipulative nature made manifest; Aaroniero's desire for power and endless evolution is a mirror of Aizen's own agenda, and playing The Good Captain to manipulate others is a trick right out of Aizen's book.

* Szayel was Aizen's Mad Scientist tendencies manifested, but also his cowardly, slimy side. Szayel shared Aizen's tendency to use science to try and render himself perfect and experimenting on others mostly because he could, but Szayel also relied a lot on underhanded tactics and sacrificing others to keep himself in the game, a trait Aizen shared but did not rely on to the same degree. Being an incomplete fragment of Aizen's intelligence was the reason Szayel was always a Smug Snake while Aizen gradually devolved into one.

* Zommari was the part of Aizen prone to becoming Drunk with Power, initially purged to try and keep Aizen from becoming Drunk On The Dark Side before his master-stroke and to avoid letting his victories go to his head. Aizen did a good job at this for a little while, but ultimately he wasn't able to resist the intoxication of the Hogyoku's power and wound up becoming drunk on his own power anyway.

* Grimmjow is Aizen's destructive and predatory side made flesh; the part of Aizen that reveled in using his power to devastate anything around him. Aizen again manages to repress this for a while, but his obvious glee as he takes on the Gotei 13 by himself makes it hard to hide.

* Nnoitra is the personification of Aizen's self-loathing and despair. Aizen knew on some level he was a Complete Monster and couldn't help but hate himself on some level as his more vile deeds kept piling up. Eventually, this part of Aizen that knew he would never really be anything but a monster was purged and formed Nnoitra, who sought oblivion.

* Ulquiorra was Aizen's nihilism and Evil Cannot Comprehend Good tendencies. Aizen saw himself as an ubermensch, and the thought patterns of lesser shinigami were ultimately alien to him. Given what Ichigo thinks of Aizen's deeds and desires, one could assume that he chose to cross the Moral Event Horizon so many times on a basis no more complex than "why not?"

* Harribel was the last vestige of Aizen's inner goodness and nobility that he used to craft the "Captain Aizen" persona. She held the morals Aizen gave lip service to but had never really believed in and had genuine concern for her followers while Aizen couldn't care less. Aizen judged this aspect of his nature weak and useless despite abundant evidence to the contrary and pointlessly sacrificed it with his equally pointless murder of Harribel.

* Barragan was Aizen's arrogance and god complex, but also a manifestation of Aizen's fears of his own mortality. Aizen pretended to have no fear, but one of the reasons he was so elated when he merged with the Hogyoku was that he no longer needed to be afraid to die; when it seemed like he might be killed even with all that power, Aizen completely lost his composure in fear and impotent rage. Barragan's immense power derives from Aizen's immense arrogance and plans of godhood being such an integral part of his being, and for his fear of death being his strongest, perhaps his only fear.

* Starrk/Lilinette was the manifestation of Aizen's loneliness and resentment of his own power, the side that Ichigo claimed to see but Aizen never really demonstrated. Starrk was incredibly powerful but not evil because, like Harribel, he was manifested from an ignored element of Aizen's psyche unrelated to his Complete Monster nature. If Aizen at his core wanted to be normal, Starrk carried that to its extreme; Starrk wanted to be weak and surrounded by friends and had nothing but resentment and apathy for his immense power. Since this wish to be normal was even stronger than Aizen's desire to be god, Starrk was more powerful than even Barragan.

Again, I love this theory. It's heavily symbolic and acts as an intriguing psychoanalysis of the main villain up to that point. Biggest flaw with it? We're dealing with Kubo here, and by all indications he wouldn't think like that.

 

[chaosyoshimage]

James Bond is a codename, that one's a favorite of mine. There are a ton of great Pokemon ones, too. I can't think of any other ones I lay credence to...

 

[subjectseven]

There's one on Final Fantasy VIII. http://squallsdead.com/

To quote it: "At the end of disc one, Squall and Friends face Edea on a parade float in Deling City. After the fight, when Edea seems defeated, she conjures an enormous ice shard and propels it through Squall?s chest. Squall stumbles back and falls off the platform. He sees Rinoa above, reaching to him as he falls. Squall closes his eyes and dies. The entire remaining game time, from the beginning of disc two to the second half of the ending movie, is a dream."

It's an interesting read, but no thanks.

 

[WolfThomas]

James Bond is a codename, that one's a favorite of mine. There are a ton of great Pokemon ones, too. I can't think of any other ones I lay credence to...

I subscribed to this one, with the addendum that there's been four seperate bonds. Connery, Lazenby-Moore-Dalton (all the stuff his wife and blofield), Brosnan and Craig.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Well, one of the favorites is the old theory that the G-Man from Half Life 1+2 is actually Gordon Freeman from the future. I also think that Adrian Shepard is either trapped in Apeture Science, or in the Borealis, but that is just me guessing (I mean, that is a massive unresolved plot thread and Valve wouldn't just leave it hanging right? RIGHT?!?).

 

[Neverhoodian]

It's the popular opinion of many MLP/Star Trek fans that Discord and Q are one in the same. When he grows tired of trolling Starfleet captains, he goes dimension-hopping to sow some chaos in Equestria. Given how similar they are, I'm inclined to agree:

Spoiler

Here's a personal theory of mine concerning a continuity issue in the Halo universe:

I was a bit disappointed when I finished the campaign in Halo: Reach for the first time, as the events in the game directly contradict the account of how the battle played out in the novel The Fall of Reach. Then I remembered the mysterious crystal from First Strike, so I thought up the following retcon:

When the crystal bent space and time on board the Ascendant Justice, its effects caused greater ripples in the timeline. This resulted in the creation of an alternate reality, where the Battle of Reach played out differently. Both versions of the battle reach (lol) the same basic outcome however (Reach falls, Pillar of Autumn escapes with the Chief and Cortana), resulting in them meeting one another and merging back into a single timeline. So technically both accounts of the battle are accurate, it just depends on which reality you're referring to.

 

[Scrustle]

I've heard that ACB theory before. In fact the first time I posted on these forums I started a thread discussing it. It is an interesting theory.

Another gaming theory, or theories rather, are the ones surrounding Majora's Mask. For example I read that the whole game actually just takes place in Link's mind, and that Termina isn't real. That explains why a lot of the character models are the same as in Ocarina of Time (because Link is using the images of people he already knows) and how a lot of the themes in the story and side-quests of the game are to do with maturing. As Link is getting older he is becoming apprehensive about growing up and the various different stories that people have in MM kind of play out different thoughts Link is having about the subject. There's also a lot of side-stories about loss, which Link has had to deal with in leaving Hyrule and travelling through time. Now I don't really believe that Termina is really just a huge illusion, but I do like the sound of the story of the game reflecting Link's thoughts about growing up. There's also stories about how Majora's tribe might have something to do with the Twili from Twilight Princess, and what exactly the Fierce Deity Link really is. It's implied that you are just as evil, if not even more for using the power of the mask than Skull Kid with Majora's Mask.

I've also read a lot about other Zelda games and a lot of them also have a lot of sub-text to them like MM. It's really interesting stuff.