5 Fictional Universes That Overlap In Mind-Blowing Ways
Not everyone can write a best-selling novel or a box office success, but even the lowliest of us can interpret our favorite pieces of pop culture in baffling new ways. Usually, this just means disturbing fan fiction, but, as we've shown you before, fans all hopped up on Red Bull and insomnia will rewrite stories in such batshit brilliant ways that you can never look at the original in the same light again.
Willy Wonka Is Secretly George Weasley From Harry Potter
This theory is so seemingly random, yet so full of parallels, that we almost believe that J.K. Rowling slipped in these connections on purpose. It goes way beyond that "they're both wacky characters who can sort of do magic."
Willy Wonka's backstory is purposely vague because there's really no adequate way to explain how one eccentric man acquired all the money and know-how to build and run his incredible chocolate factory. And that's not even mentioning the Oompa Loompas and the insane, body-altering effects of Wonka's candy. How can science even explain that? Well, according to one anonymous theory on TVTropes, it's magic -- specifically, it's the magic of Harry Potter troublemaker George Weasley.
The theory goes that, after the events of Harry Potter, George used wizard time-travel technology (that is, the Time-Turner, a device that is used once and never mentioned again) to go back and start a new life under a new identity. And don't give us any guff about all the Time-Turners being destroyed, Harry Potter nerds -- we both know that at least one is floating around the black market, assuming J.K. Rowling hasn't already retconned a few back in.
Why It's Not That Crazy:
Before George's brother Fred died (uh, spoiler?), the twins opened a successful toy and candy shop called Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes.
One of their most popular items was the Skiving Snackbox, candy that would give you a temporary nosebleed or vomiting fit so you could get out of class. In other words, the Weasleys had mastered magic that lets candy physically alter a human being. Like, say, this:
Aside from their candy-making capabilities, there's also their physical similarities. They're both redheads with a showman's sense of fashion.
And then, there's this little aside Wonka makes to Mike Teavee:
Maybe Wonka's just being snarky ... or maybe it's a reference to the fact that George lost an ear battling Death Eaters. He may have been able to alter one of his Extendable Ears to serve as a prosthetic, but he couldn't repair all the actual hearing damage.
Then, there are the Oompa Loompas, who are basically slaves who work for chocolate. In Wonka's relatively realistic world, they make no sense, and he dodges the question of their origins. But, in George's magical world, such creatures are commonplace. Hell, little orange men who work their hearts out for no reward are basically creepier house-elves. A resourceful wizard such as George could certainly rustle up a few magical followers.
Now, here's where it gets both oddly convincing and extremely sad. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is such a weird film that you probably just took this in stride, but wasn't it creepy that everything in Wonka's office was chopped in half for no apparent reason? Well, maybe that's because George only considers himself half a man without his twin.
Wonka's motivations look heartbreaking now. He's not just searching for an heir to his business -- he's looking to replace his dead brother. That's why he hates every kid except Charlie -- they're rich, stupid, and cruel, three qualities that members of the Weasley family don't share. The only reason Wonka doesn't show up at the Battle Of Hogwarts with an army of Oompa Loompas to "Avada Kedavra" Voldemort in the dick is because he found peace in his relationship with Charlie. We'll consider that happy and not creepy.
The Joker Is Tyler Durden
Part of what made Heath Ledger's Joker so effective was his mystery. We still don't know a damn thing about where he came from or what his motivations were. All we can say for sure is that he had facial scars, a tremendous knowledge of demolitions, and the ability to build an army out of people who weren't concerned if their boss burned their paychecks. But, wait, we just described someone else you know: Fight Club's Tyler Durden.
Josh Campana Sr. of Moviepilot proposes that after Fight Club's narrator shot himself in the face, he ended up spending some time in Arkham Asylum. While in that less than therapeutic environment, his second personality re-emerged, but in a much more ominous form.
Why It's Not That Crazy:
It's never explicitly stated that the majority of Fight Club is set in Wilmington, Delaware, but that's where the zip code on Tyler's business card places it. And the location of Gotham City, according to most maps of the DC Universe, is pretty darn close to Delaware.
And while Fight Club ends on a happy note, there's no way the narrator isn't going to super jail for committing a massive act of terrorism that almost certainly killed a bunch of people. And where but Arkham would you stick such a dangerous psychopath? That also gives us a simple explanation for the Joker's scars.
Way more gangster than "Daddy did it."
Both Tyler and the Joker recruit weak-minded, aimless people into a pseudo-cult that commits incredibly precise criminal operations. They both have a penchant for "mischief." It's not hard to imagine the Joker splicing frames of porn into kids' movies on his day off, right? And then, there's the Joker-esque smiley face that Tyler fire-paints on the side of a skyscraper.
That's why the Joker can shrug off vicious beatings from Batman despite being a scrawny little mofo -- he used to get punched in the face by big, angry men every night. Hell, this even accounts for the look of Jared Leto's new Joker in Suicide Squad. In Fight Club, Leto played Tyler's protege, and the two were so close that it made Tyler's other personality jealous to the point where Leto's character was beaten so badly ...
... that he became disfigured and probably needed some surgery and freaky steel teeth. And those go perfectly with the brain trauma that inspired him to copy his idol's second persona.
The only difference is motivation -- Tyler hates consumerism, while the Joker wants to prove that, deep down, everyone is as crazy as he is. But, it's not hard to imagine that, after some time in Arkham, Tyler's beliefs went down an even darker path. Tyler wanted the world to reject capitalism by wiping out America's credit card debt. The Joker just went a step further by burning actual money.
The Home Alone Kid Grew Up To Become Saw's The Jigsaw Killer
Saw's The Jigsaw Killer has murky motivations -- we're told his cancer diagnosis spurred him to action, but you don't see grandma ripping people's faces open with bear traps because she regrets never seeing Paris. We have to wonder if he got an early start ... possibly while protecting his family home from a pair of murderous yet inept burglars with a series of fiendish traps.
Grantland's Jason Concepcion conceived the idea that Kevin McCallister, with all his Rube Goldberg machines, repressed anger issues and parental neglect, eventually became emotionally twisted, and, upon learning that he was dying, built complex traps to test and punish people he deemed unappreciative of their lives. You know, kind of like he was already doing in Home Alone.
Why It's Not That Crazy:
Young Kevin is supposed to be cute and likable, but he's a lonely, isolated child who is either ignored or bullied by his family. He hears the voice of his furnace, Son Of Sam style. And he fantasizes with morbid glee that his elderly neighbor is a serial killer. With the exception of torturing small animals, Kevin ticks all the warning sign boxes. Hell, in Home Alone, Kevin didn't go to the police like a normal child, even though he knew the Wet Bandits were coming back. He wanted to punish them like the filthy animals they are.
Then, there's the traps. The ones Kevin and Jigsaw use are sometimes nearly identical (taking into consideration the fact that the adult Jigsaw creates much more vicious ones). Both like making people in bare feet walk on glass or expose themselves to fire, and, in Saw II, there's a furnace trap inspired by the furnace that haunted Kevin's childhood. Both Kevin and Jigsaw have an obsession with video recordings and use avatars to communicate with outsiders (Jigsaw's puppet, Kevin's cowboy movie). There's even a physical similarity, as Jigsaw looks like an older Kevin right down to the eye color, skin tone, jaw line, and "I'm picturing you suffering unfathomably" expression.
The traps Kevin set for the Wet Bandits were rigged up in a single night. Imagine what he could do after decades of resentment and months of planning. As for why he changed his name to John Kramer, well, maybe his family left him alone once too often.
E.T. Is A Sith Lord
E.T. is the charming story of an alien who looks like your grandfather's swollen testicle arriving on a hostile alien planet and refusing to wear pants while hanging out with a small child. But, at least he was harmless, right? Yeah, except for the little fact that he was a goddamn Sith Lord.
Why It's Not That Crazy:
We know members of E.T.'s species exist in the Star Wars universe because we see them in the Galactic Senate during Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, assuming you can bring yourself to watch it again and have enough money in the scotch budget.
When E.T. sees a kid in a Yoda Halloween costume he gets excited, as if he recognizes Yoda from, say, the Senate (as to why a kid would be wearing a Yoda costume if Yoda was a real creature from another galaxy, we'll get to that in the next entry).
We also know that he has powers suspiciously similar to those displayed by Force users -- such as levitation ...
PODRACING BIKE RIDING."
... and healing.
But, E.T. also demonstrates one power that goes way beyond what a goody two-shoes Jedi can do -- he brings a flower back from the dead and later revives himself. Jedi can only kind of make like Casper and haunt their students, but Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge Of The Sith told us that at least one Sith mastered death.
So, E.T. is from the Star Wars universe and demonstrates a power that only the Sith have, making our conclusion foregone. He must be an extremely powerful Sith, too, albeit one that's severely weakened by his time on Earth. You can leave it to yourself to determine what he was doing on our planet, but E.T. has a very different tone when you consider that, rather than helping a kindly lost spacefarer home, Elliot was actually helping a Sith Lord get back to murdering the galaxy.
But, none of that really matters, nor does anything else in our lives, considering that ...
In The Empire Strikes Back, the twin forces of evil and contract uncertainty led to Han Solo being frozen in carbonite. He was eventually rescued in Star Wars: Episode VI - Return Of The Jedi, but Adam Wears asks ... what if he wasn't? What if Return of the Jedi never happened, and Han was never unfrozen? He was just left in carbonite for eternity, but he wasn't quite asleep -- he dreamed. He dreamed he was an adventurer named Indiana Jones on an imaginary planet called Earth in a galaxy far, far away.
Why It's Not That Crazy:
Han and Indy have almost identical personalities, but, if the Indy movies were only taking place in the mind of a sleeping Han Solo, there would have to be more clues. Like, say, his subconscious inserting little reminders of who he really was into his dreams -- such as the plane that rescues him at the start of Raiders Of The Lost Ark being labelled "OB-CPO," an amalgamation of the names of two of his comrades.
Then, there's the pictures of C-3PO and R2-D2 in the hieroglyphics of the Egyptian tomb.
The Nazis are obvious stand-ins for the Empire, with their soldiers serving as Stormtroopers and the black-clad Gestapo agent Arnold Toht representing Darth Vader. He even earns a scar in the exact place Han shot Vader before his carbonite bath.
3PO and R2 pop up again in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull ...
... there's Club Obi Wan in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom ...
... and there are barrels of "Carboneto" in Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. Every single one of "Indy's" adventures has at least one reference to Han's reality.
The most logical explanation is that these are just Easter eggs inserted by the filmmakers ... but that's exactly what Han's brain would want you to think. Consider this: There are no explicit references to Indiana Jones in Star Wars because why would there be? That's the real world, and Indy only exists in Han's head. As far as we can tell, you, us, and everyone you've ever loved are just synapses firing in Han's mind.
The existence of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back in our "reality" can be explained by Han's memories occasionally surfacing. Return Of The Jedi, however, is wish fulfillment -- his desire to be free manifested itself into a story that's pretty damn convenient for him. Lando goes back on his betrayal and redeems himself by saving Han. Han gets to romance Leia, because, suddenly, she and Luke are siblings. Despite being frozen for a year, Han immediately is asked to lead a crucial Rebel Alliance mission that's won with the help of sentient teddy bears. It's ridiculous because it never happened. Hell, this even explains the shoddiness of the prequels. We doubt history was Han's strong point in school (if he even attended), so the history he's remembering is a muddled, goofy version of the truth.
According to this theory, Han's still in Jabba's palace (or buried deep beneath the ancient ruins of it), and our whole reality hinges on the hope that he never wakes up. Oh, fuck, is that why the new movie's called Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens?
Think it's crazy that we might be some dashing smuggler's dream? If so, maybe the scientific probability that we're actually living in The Matrix might be more your speed. See what we mean in The 6 Most WTF Scientific Theories About Existence. Or check out 6 Movie And TV Universes That Overlap In Mind-Blowing Ways to see how the X-Files and The Wire are in the same universe.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out The Horrifying Secret The Matrix Reveals About Humanity, and watch other videos you won't see on the site!
Also, follow us on Facebook so we can practice our kung-fu moves together.
