6 Kids' Movie Fan Theories That'll Blow Your Adult Mind
Fans taking time to come up with theories about what really took place in a movie or TV show seems like the most pointless activity, even if they had literally nothing else going on in their lives. But we've always loved them for two reasons: A) It basically creates a brand-new story if you revisit it with the theory in mind, and B) the theory is sometimes a lot more clever than what the original writers came up with.
So let's once again indulge the fans' craziness and consider the possibility that ...
Jessie From Toy Story Was Owned (And Abandoned) By Andy's Mom
Toy Story is an entire film franchise devoted to making us feel retroactively guilty about the toys we've lost/given away/melted with blowtorches over the years. Toy Story 2, for instance, features the sad story of Jessie, a happy-go-lucky cowgirl doll abandoned by her once-loyal owner, a girl named Emily, whom she never saw again ... or did she? This viral fan theory set out to prove that Emily grew up to be none other than Andy's mom.
Why It's Not That Crazy:
Look at Andy's cowboy hat above, aka one possible reason why he's so sad in the image, since it looks nothing like his favorite toy's hat. Now look at Jessie's hat:
And look at the hat on Emily's childhood bed (in the '60s or '70s):
It's the same freaking hat -- passed to Andy from his mother, who apparently misplaced the white lace in the middle at some point, possibly after running out of TP in the bathroom one time (you can still see the faint imprint where it used to go, though). While we're at it, look at Andy's mom and Emily side-by-side:
True, Jessie and Andy's mom don't recognize each other, but it's been a long time. There's no reason Andy's mom would realize Jessie was her exact same childhood toy, and there's no guarantee Jessie would recognize Emily as an adult. She's used to living life as an immortal, unchanging plastic being, so the idea that her old friend could morph into an even bigger giant with increasingly decaying flesh on her face must seem pretty bizarre. Finally, as you may have guessed from the fact that we keep calling her "Andy's mom," the character's name is never mentioned in the movies, so it could easily be Emily.
Sure, the creators themselves have seemingly shot this theory down, but this is Pixar we're talking about -- they could simply be lying to try to maximize the amount of emotional damage they'll do to us with the next movie.
There Are No Parents In
The Pokemon franchise is fairly creepy as-is, since it focuses on taking cute, cuddly creatures and having them beat each other until they pass out, sometimes in front of large crowds. It's basically dog-fighting, if dogs could shoot lightning bolts. If this persistent theory is to be believed, though, the original games are even more fucked up than we thought: They take place after a horrible war that killed pretty much the entire adult male population in the region, leaving the kids tragically free to go on dangerous journeys.
Why It's Not That Crazy:
It's not just the suspicious lack of adults who aren't super old and thus not fit to carry a rifle -- it's that those you do see in the game are either in organized crime (a sector of society that's kinda difficult to draft) or the military. Like Lt. Surge, who at one point says:
"I mean, it could get pretty cold and lonely out there in the trenches every night ..."
Considering that Pokemon takes place in a fictional universe, it's clear he's not referring to a war from our history. In fact, his specific mention of using Pokemon in war -- probably as tools of war -- kind of adds another creepy aspect to these young children training to fight each other with Pokemon. Are they training for another war? Is the war still going on? Have we been playing child soldier training simulators all these years?
Some fans have gone so far as to analyze the sociopolitical situation shown in the games to determine the reason for the war: Your region, Kanto, must have tried to annex the neighboring one, Johto. After all, what kind of country goes out of its way not to mention a war that just ended? The kind that tried to do something awful and lost.
Harry Potter's Friend Ron Can Predict The Future With Eerie Accuracy
Because even the most useless characters in fiction have armies of devoted fans these days, this long-standing theory posits that Harry Potter's ass-clown friend Ron Weasley has fantastic future-predicting powers. Technically, the theory says Harry has the powers too, but we're more surprised at the Ron part. Because, well, look at this little shit:
Why It's Not That Crazy:
Unlike most Harry Potter fan theories ("Harry eventually comes to our dimension and becomes my husband!"), this one is actually in the books. In Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, Harry and Ron take an elective class about divination (seeing the future), which is basically the astrology of the wizard world: Everyone treats it as a joke, and the lady who teaches it almost definitely gets flaming turds on her doorstep on a regular basis. So, in order to pass the class, the bored Harry and Ron just make up some random predictions on the spot ... all of which happen to come true.
For instance, Ron correctly predicts that he'll almost drown and that Harry will be stabbed in the back by someone he thought was a friend (Harry is betrayed by Doctor Who, posing as someone else). It's pretty clear that Rowling just did this as a fun bit of foreshadowing, but there's way more: In the second book, Chamber Of Secrets, Ron dismissively tells his worried mother, "D'you honestly think 's going to be hiding behind a bookshelf in Flourish and Blotts?" Well, yeah. Part of Voldemort's soul happens to be hidden in a diary that is given to Ron's sister in that same bookstore.
"This is my math notebook."
Also in Chamber Of Secrets, Ron and Harry come across an award dedicated to a student called Tom Riddle. Ron jokingly suggests that maybe Tom murdered the girl whose ghost haunts the school's bathrooms -- which is exactly what happened. Later, in Prisoner Of Azkaban, Ron interprets some leaves to be prophesizing that Harry might join the Ministry of Magic and will get a sudden influx of gold. Both of these come true. So Ron is either clairvoyant or is the all-powerful God of the Harry Potter universe and all reality bends to his will.
There Are Actually Four Triforce (Tetraforce?) Pieces In The Legend Of Zelda
Most Legend Of Zelda games revolve around the legendary Triforce, three incredibly powerful golden triangles that the inhabitants of Hyrule Kingdom somehow keep misplacing over and over. Well, the popular Tetraforce theory claims the Hyruleans are even more scatterbrained than we thought, because there are actually four Triforce pieces -- it's just that no one's found the fourth one yet. This started with the fact that there's an extra yellow triangle on Link's shield in Ocarina Of Time. Then fans just took it from there.
Supposedly, that empty space in the center of the Triforce is where the fourth piece would go. After all, it's not like "Triforce" has a word that means "three" in it or anyth- oh.
Why It's Not That Crazy:
Actually, the "tri-" in "Triforce" refers to their triangular shape, not the fact that there are three. We know this because the original Zelda game had only two pieces. It wasn't until Zelda II that they said, "Yeah, sure, there's a third one also." The manual even seems to mention a mysterious "Triforce of the Future," though something tells us that might have been a mistranslation.
Consider, too, that these games have a weird fixation with the number four: There are four Light Spirits in Twilight Princess, four elements in The Minish Cap, four freaky-ass giants in Majora's Mask, four swords in ... Four Swords, etc. Four Triforces isn't that far-fetched.
Now, according to Hyrule's creation myth, the Triforce pieces were created by the three Golden Goddesses: Farore created the Triforce of Courage, Nayru created the Triforce of Wisdom, and Din created the Triforce of Power -- you know all this already, of course. However, in Majora's Mask, Princess Zelda mentions a Goddess of Time. Could she be a fourth Triforce-creating deity who got left out of the religious texts because her symbol was a limp dick or something?
Other proponents of the Tetraforce theory claim the fourth goddess (and creator of the fourth Triforce piece) is Zelda herself. This makes no sense until you remember that 1) Zelda is a reincarnated goddess, according to Skyward Sword, and 2) in Wind Waker she went by the name ... Tetra.
Needless to say, Nintendo made sure there were never any extra triangles on Link's shield after this game, because holy shit, people.
Samurai Jack Is Set In The Same City As Powerpuff Girls ... After The Apocalypse
Powerpuff Girls is a fun show about little superhero girls made with sugar, spice, everything nice, and whatever the hell Chemical X is supposed to be (steroids, probably). The Girls' mission is to defend the imaginatively named city of Townsville -- which, according to this theory, they kinda suck at doing, since the place eventually becomes the desolate, ravaged land seen in the seemingly unrelated show Samurai Jack. To support this theory, the Internet has produced this widely shared image ...
is the fact that he turned his eyes around 180 degrees.
... which conclusively proves that, yes, Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack aired on the same network and shared animators. Good job, Internet. And yet ...
Why It's Not That Crazy:
In the creepiest episode of the series, we actually do find out what a future where the Powerpuff Girls failed would look like, and the answer is: a whole lot like the world of Samurai Jack. Not only that, but the villain who rules that future, Him, is basically a more fabulously dressed version of Aku, Jack's shape-shifting, world-conquering nemesis.
Also, despite being a post-apocalyptic world and all, this scenario is still preferable to the other possible future for the Powerpuff Girls: turning into anime characters. It's worth noting that both Powerpuff Girls' and Samurai Jack's creators have unequivocally said this theory is full of shit, but that's never stopped fans before. Fan on, you crazy diamonds. And, on a similar note ...
Aladdin Takes Place In The Distant Future (Hence The Genie's Pop Culture References)
Everyone loves a dark, gritty futuristic movie, like Blade Runner, Total Recall, Disney's Aladdin ... wait, what? Yep, according to this easily meme-able theory, Aladdin takes place not in, you know, some previous century we can't name without checking Wikipedia because the American education system failed us, but in the distant future. At some point, modern society collapsed and now everyone lives like insane people in the desert. Aladdin was Mad Max: Fury Road before Mad Max: Fury Road was Mad Max: Fury Road, basically.
Why It's Not That Crazy:
It all hinges on the fact that, in one scene, the Genie tells Aladdin his clothes are "much too third century" ... but if he's been trapped inside a lamp for 10,000 years, how does he know what the third century looked like? This means the movie must take place in at least the year 10,200 -- or much later than that, since he keeps making references to early 1990's pop culture.
The Genie is basically an extreme version of a former coma patient who keeps asking where the beef is. The world around him is strange and unfamiliar, and he's coping with it by latching onto the long-dead society he remembers. Also, this theory says Jafar's parrot talks like Gilbert Gottfried because of centuries of genetic experimentation, which, hahaha, sure.
Apparently, even the people who made the Aladdin video games were on board with this theory. The Sega Genesis version includes a modern-day stop sign buried in a sand dune, while the Super Nintendo one eerily features what looks like an atom bomb:
If you still think this theory is too crazy to be true, consider the fact that the last Aladdin fan theory we talked about was recently confirmed by the movie's director. Never doubt Cracked again.
When CJ Rigdon isn't working on her novel or writing articles like these, she's blogging about feminism and fandoms on her Tumblr.
Who doesn't love fan theories? While most of them are pretty worthless, there are still a few gems worth picking up. See those in 5 Horrifying Fan Theories That Make Way Too Much Sense and 5 Movie Fan Theories That Make More Sense Than The Movie.
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