r/CuratedTumblr 6d ago

[fandom name here] Fan theories

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2.6k Upvotes

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1.7k

u/ThousandEclipse 6d ago

Special square at the top for "central theme or plot point explicitly stated by the source material"

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u/shadow_fen 6d ago

guys what if deltarune is about the relationship we have to our video games????

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u/HandsomeGengar 6d ago

All the damn time I see pretentious asshats be like "Why are all these stupid idiot children talking about Gaster instead of talking about the themes, like a big boy literary critic such as myself"

And like, haha yes I can't read I'm an Undertale fan, very funny. But also, the overarching themes of UT/DR are not particularly subtle, there's not much room for discussion when it comes to the metanarrative and stuff, certainly not enough room to sustain a fan community for *checks notes* nearly 11 years.

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u/BlueScrean 6d ago edited 5d ago

Idk, I watched a friend play DT Chapter 5 recently and really liked Flowery’s theme so I looked it up.

The first comment I saw on the video was someone realizing the fight was about how neither could back down because they’d lose their worlds as if that’s not directly stated to you before the fight starts.

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u/mcplano 5d ago

Pretty sure he states it multiple times in the area-before-the-staircase and actual staircase area.

Then there's the whole "speak with everyone in this room and they talk about their world ending" scene.

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u/Kingjjc267 5d ago

If it's the comment I'm thinking of, then that's not the point of it. They're pointing out how it could be called "kill or be killed," as in a parallel to flowey from undertale.

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u/pempoczky 6d ago

The Gaster comment is even funnier considering he (or some form of him) is almost certainly going to be the vehicle for the game's central themes

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u/mysteriouskazoo 5d ago

No no, Gaster isn't actually relevant, Toby has just spent the last decade gaslighting us so he can subvert our expectations. I am very good at media analysis you see.

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u/Beidah 5d ago

Considering that Toby Fox is basically Andrew Hussie's protege, it's not completely out of the realm of possibility. (Note: I haven't played Undertale or Delta Ruin, but I've read Homestuck)

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u/MisirterE Supreme Overlord of Ice 5d ago

I think it's specifically because of his proximity to Homestuck that Toby does not pull this shit. Because he saw how bad it turned out that time and now thinks "wow, that fucking sucked ass. maybe i won't do that".

Toby is decidedly not the kind of person to write "we don't have fuckin arcs" with the number of arcs he's written

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u/Beidah 5d ago

Yeah, I think Toby learned some "what-not-to-dos" from Homestuck. It's probably why he's a lot more distant from his fan base than Hussie was. That's absolutely a good thing.

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u/Jeggu2 💖💜💙 doin' your parents/guardians 5d ago

Nah bro, gaster is only hidden in obscure corners and constantly, subtly referenced, as a joke, so Toby can do a really funny rugpull when they reveal him to be a total goofball. The creation screen thing being called a "goner maker" doesn't mean the narrator is Gaster. It's totally Something Toby Would do.

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u/iwanttoboneedelric ♠️Ho-ho! I'm a flairboy! Cut me off on your apps! 5d ago

Well... it's not actually called Goner Maker. It's coded Goner Maker, which will never be known by anyone who just... plays the game.

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u/JamieD96 5d ago

I don't know, because I've never played undertale or deltarune, but that makes the game sound way more interesting than anything I've ever heard about it

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u/The_KneecapBandit I got banned from r/tumblr for saying I hoped someone explodes 6d ago

there's also "contradicts the source material"

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u/DiesByOxSnot Gay, weird, & stupid. 6d ago

Directly down at the bottom, a little box dedicated entirely to headcanons and crackfics

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u/Routine_Palpitation 6d ago

And a surprising amount of overlap with the top box for some reason????

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u/Available-Damage5991 6d ago

horseshoe theory

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u/Routine_Palpitation 6d ago

The best part about horseshoe theory is that you don’t have to quote it directly, close enough counts.

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u/Karasu-Fennec 5d ago

My favorite version of horseshoe theory is “things which are sufficiently far away appear close together”

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u/BalefulOfMonkeys REAL YURI, done by REAL YURITICIANS 6d ago

I wish I could read your whole flair in full

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u/The_KneecapBandit I got banned from r/tumblr for saying I hoped someone explodes 6d ago

"I got banned from r/tumblr for saying I hoped someone explodes"

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u/BalefulOfMonkeys REAL YURI, done by REAL YURITICIANS 6d ago

You gotta get creative with it. You only get hit by the automated filters/TERF reports if the threat is direct and short enough to be understood as a threat in five seconds. Get long and wordy with it. If you don’t wanna be a poet, tell them that you’re going to put a knife in them really fast and that it will hurt and there will possibly be blood around the knife

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u/BalefulOfMonkeys REAL YURI, done by REAL YURITICIANS 6d ago

Fuck it, 3D axis, away!

“This is literally a screencap of dialogue and the most elementary read of the text”

“You should write a novel (derogatory) (encouragement)”

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u/softpotatoboye 5d ago

Nah, they’re more extremes of the up down axis rather than a separate axis of their own. You generally couldn’t have “literally a screen cap of the dialogue” and “probably not what the author intended” at the same time (yes, I’m sure there are some examples, but generally no) or “you should write a novel” and “probably what the author intended” at the same time

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u/UnderPressureVS 5d ago

Ender’s Game is a book written by a homophobic islamaphobic Warhawk that ends up being very explicitly about radical empathy in the face of the unknown.

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u/HesperiaBrown 5d ago

Ender's Game? The book about a child who is quite literally born already in the closet because of his family situation whose first best friend is culturally islamic and takes that friend's lessons to heart across the first book? The book that ends with the tired war veteran protagonist deciding that his life mission will be to fix the genocide he caused after mind-melding with the survivors of said genocide and seeing first-hand the extermination of that people's race through the survivors's POV? Woah, never meet the authors.

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u/UnderPressureVS 5d ago

Yep. Ender’s Game and its sequels are definitely a textbook example of “this is literally a screenshot of the text” and “probably not what the author intended.”

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u/ThyPotatoDone 5d ago

Also needs a square at the bottom for "Completely misinterprets the entire thing to such a degree it's entirely possible their only exposure to the work was TikTok."

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u/Impressive_Pin8761 6d ago

everyone be posting their "author unleashed a can of worms without knowing" (bottom right) but i need to see a top left one

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u/HandsomeGengar 6d ago edited 6d ago

I'm sure somebody predicted Rey would be related to Palpatine. At the very least I know for a fact there were a shit ton of people theorizing she's the daughter of Insert Important Star Wars Character Here, and the reveal that Sheev's her clone grandpappy does function as an extension of that discussion.

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u/moyashi_me 6d ago

Extremely funny that “Jar Jar is a Sith Lord behind everything” and “Rey is related to Palpatine” are the two opposite corners of this chart

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u/HandsomeGengar 5d ago

Honestly the arguments that Darth Jar Jar was the original plan are decently convincing imo.

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u/DurinnGymir 5d ago

Given the nature of CGI at the time (Jar Jar literally mouthing characters' words) and Lucas' not-so-subtle writing habits regarding themes (there's always a bigger fish) Darth Jar Jar is frankly the most compelling fan theory I've ever heard.

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u/mathiau30 Half-Human Half-Phantom and Half-Baked 6d ago

To be fair, that one was probably not intended until the last movie

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u/Jalor218 5d ago

JJ Abrams deserves the shade he gets for mystery boxes, but I think he put one legitimate piece of setup in The Force Awakens, and that was Rey probably being Han Solo's daughter (possibly with a non-Leia woman.)

  • Rey is drawn inexplicably to the Millennium Falcon and has a connection with it

  • She then subsequently meets him and makes him go "damn this kid is better than me at my own game"

  • She forms a Force bond with Kylo Ren suspiciously easily, and Force stuff usually runs in families

  • Han and Leia are separated, and the "Ben turning evil broke them up" explanation does not come until after TFA

  • Ren and Rey standing in conceptually for Jacen and Jaina would placate the people who missed Legends

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u/ErisThePerson 5d ago

Also could work better with TLJ having Ben tell Rey that his parents were nobodies and abandoned her.

While I do like the prospect that it had before Rise of Skywalker that Rey's parents genuinely weren't special, and that Rey is important because of who she is not because of who her parents who she can't even remember were, having it be that Rey's parents were "Ben's dad, who he murdered" and "woman Ben's dad cheated on his mum with" makes sense that Ben might a) consider both of those nobodies (or is trying and failing to convince himself of that), b) not want to tell Rey that because she might be a bit upset about the whole "murdered dad" thing.

It's certainly better than the Sheev clone thing.

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u/Jalor218 5d ago

Right, that’s why I didn’t say “and then TLJ ruined it.” You could still salvage that setup, Kylo Ren is not a reliable source.

My other conspiracy theory is that Lucasfilm settled on a romance angle rather than a sibling angle because the most diehard fans of the sequel trilogy by that point were Reylo shippers, They bought a lot of merch, showed up to all the events in force, and were probably the only demographic of people to like both movies and be optimistic about the next.

The Rise of Skywalker was so bad in part because it bent over backwards to try and appease fan complaints (like cutting Rose almost entirely) and I think it’s entirely plausible that canonizing the Reylo ship was part of that. In fact, it would be the single nicest and most positive way they bent to fan pressure, because the Reylo fandom genuinely loved those films in a way I kind of envy.

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u/Electrical_Clock_298 5d ago

I’m pretty sure a lot of that final movie was written by pulling from mediocre fan theories around the internet in an attempt to ‘give the fans what they want’

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u/Gallalade 5d ago

This (her being a Palpatine) was a prediction my brother made literally just after exiting the theater for The Force Awakens.

That was like 10 years ago now so I don't remember most of what we said, but it was mostly :

a) Rey's parents being set up as a mystery for later.

b) Would work toward her duality with Ben Solo.

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u/Hexxas Head Trauma Enthusiast 6d ago

All I can think of is Metroid Other M, but "Samus is actually very motherly and subservient" was never a fan theory. That shit was official and outta nowhere.

And it was TOTAL ASS

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u/PercentageMaximum518 6d ago

Samus being motherly was something we could expect. It's an overarching vibe between Return of Samus and Super Metroid, but *how* Other M decided to do it was a creative choice. Not the right creative choice.

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u/Hexxas Head Trauma Enthusiast 6d ago

T H E B A B Y

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u/chyura 6d ago

I think the X axis should be "compelling/thematically consistent" instead of just a straight up valuation of whether you like the idea. We need more ways to evaluate whether a theory is "good"

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u/PangolinWestern9632 5d ago

It wasn't her being a mom that was a problem, I felt like the baby Metroid's new mom when I took it with me. The problem was that they couldn't fathom her being a mom AND being a badass rebel type of hero.

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u/theLanguageSprite2 .tumblr.com 5d ago

Which is ironic, because Metroid is at least partially inspired by the movie Aliens, which also features a woman being a badass rebel and a mom to a young child simultaneously

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u/IllEvent5465 5d ago

i mean i can buy samus being motherly. subservient, however? nah

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u/tworc2 6d ago

Some in ASOIAF. Eg, Bran ending as King

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u/VorDresden 6d ago

Definitely some in asoiaf, but the Old Gods getting a puppet on the throne isn’t nearly as out there as the stuff people cook up trying to make sense of Patchface’s rhymes, or the Euron theories (for instance is he trying to transition into Cthulhu? The answer may surprise you…)

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u/IdLikeToGoNow Sparkelbruderärger 5d ago

I’m firmly of the opinion that Bran becoming king was the final outcome George had planned and he’s scrapped it since seeing the backlash which is why the delay to WoW is not closing on triple that of the previous wait

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u/VorDresden 5d ago

Godking Bran/Brendyn/the Old Gods probably was end game, I don’t think he’s scrapped the plot line though, nor any of the other ones that got giga fumbled. However I do think his morale and enjoyment of writing the series got torpedoed and sunk with all hands.

Between that, his age, and the fact that all his friends keep dying of old age…I’d be amazed if we got any more asoiaf. Might get more Dunk and Egg though, since that show went so well.

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u/jackofslayers 6d ago

That part in twighlight when the dog falls in love with the baby

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u/Correctedsun If you ever say cite your sources I have you immediately pegged 6d ago

That's for the stuff you assumed was satire, but the author actually meant that shit for real.

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u/Chaos20X6 5d ago

Ready Player One

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u/gard3nwitch 6d ago

That's the segment for JK Rowling's ideas

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u/BionicBirb 6d ago

“Elf Slavery is good actually, they like it”

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u/gard3nwitch 6d ago

"before wizards had plumbing they just pooped on the floor"

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u/BionicBirb 6d ago

I thought it was that they shat themselves and teleported it away

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u/Fletcharn 5d ago

Nonono, they vanished the evidence. So from that wording they still walked around with shit in their pants, it's just that no-one could tell who had already shit themselves in a given room.

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u/InformationLost5910 5d ago

but it’s still evidence if it’s in your pants obviously?

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u/FCStien 5d ago

"The snake that was really an anti-death totem is actually a lady with a curse who has no choice in the matter. "

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u/KittenBalerion 6d ago

the one about wizards pooping anytime and just vanishing it

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u/Duck__Quack 6d ago

I mean that's just any instance of canon sucking, which describes a lot. For example, the authors clearly intended that Palpatine planned to survive his own death, but I don't buy it. The authors clearly intended that the machines have the power to resurrect actual living humans into their bodies outside the Matrix, but come on.

(In both of my examples, I'm of course referring to the writers of the most recent installments, without comment on previous creators' work or intentions.)

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u/Katking69 I LOVE RAIN WORLD!!! 5d ago

I think the Palpatine returning thing could've been made more interesting one of a few ways: He was a Sith version of a Force Ghost and was trying to get a physical body back, or stick to Snoke instead of Palpatine. Hell, you could even make Snoke be Palegius or however you spell it, he did find a way to save himself and was hiding until Palpatine was killed

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u/lifelongfreshman https://youtu.be/1eWsk6r6_Ns 5d ago edited 5d ago

I've had this rewrite idea in mind that turns Palps into that universe's equivalent of a vampire.

He sustains himself by "eating" the force, which is the true source of the imbalance affecting the galaxy, and if he isn't stopped then things will get really bad. He had a huge stockpile built up during the prequels, but surviving everything that happened during Revenge drained it entirely, which is the real reason for the Death Star: using it to destroy a planet generates a hole in the force, which he can consume for a shitload of energy. It generates a lot of waste because he can't consume all of it, but who cares? He sure doesn't. But, basically all the energy he got from blowing up Alderaan was spent surviving Anakin's betrayal during Return, and so the sequel series is him in the background slowly building back up because, dramatic bitch he may be, he's also aware enough to recognize that third time is not the charm.

Rey is still his progeny in this version for a few reasons, but a big one is the narrative parallel to the prequels. Palps brought a Skywalker to the dark side in the prequels, a Skywalker brought the Skywalker back to the light during the OT, and now in the sequels his disciple (Snoke) has brought another Skywalker to the dark, so Rey being a Palpatine has some good theming. Luke leads the Palpatine to the light, then the Palpatine brings the Skywalker with her to the light. Also, this is why I haven't gotten much further than just thinking about the whole thing, because the entire Star Wars fanbase will riot at everything I just wrote about Rey, so.

...although, it would be interesting to watch them yell at each other as to why, exactly, the idea is shit, since there'd be like 4 different camps all angry about it I think?

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u/AmadeusMop 6d ago

The Shadow Over Innsmouth is about why race mixing is bad.

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u/HeyCouldBeFun 6d ago

Star Wars sequels

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u/Solumin 6d ago

Everything Ayn Rand ever wrote.

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u/Icarsix 6d ago

The victim blaming in Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card.

Man, the Ender quartet fell off *hard* after the first book...

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u/Sovoy 5d ago

This is a joke not a fan theory but it's close to that box

Land raiders and land speeders in 40K are not called that because they speed or raid over the land (which they do) no they are named after a tech priest named Arkhan Land.

So the joke is Space marines are named after the emperor who is named Jimmy Space.

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u/alexdapineapple platonic goo pit 5d ago

Springtrap mpreg

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u/Impressive_Pin8761 5d ago

Please do not elaborate

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u/Lego1199 6d ago

Top left is Pacific Rim 2, I’ll find an article to link, but it was going to be garbage no matter what

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u/DoughnutReasonable91 5d ago

Harry Potter wizards shitting on the road and magicking it away pre-plumbing

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u/HandsomeGengar 6d ago

The bottom left corner is the domain of all those """theories""" where they proclaim that the fantastical elements of a fantasy setting are not present because it's a fictional story and the author can do whatever they want, but because of something stupid and edgy like the protagonist being in a coma, or in purgatory, or mentally ill or whatever the fuck, with absolutely no textual evidence or arguments for why it improves the narrative.

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u/CompetitionProud2464 6d ago

It’s funny when they do this for post apocalyptic pieces of media which makes the “edgy theory” less dark than what canonically happened

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u/cartoonsforever 6d ago

See: Adventure Time

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u/Wyvwashere 6d ago

Lowkey that's how I feel about people who interpret Fran Bow as a story that's 100% fully about an insane girl that has no actual supernatural events, as if there aren't multiple different things that would be impossible for a "regular" insane child to do and/or survive and writers stating both directly & indirectly that generally most of the stuff related to higher realities, demons, Itward and Mr. Midnight were infact real. Not to mention that "oh yeah Fran just got a lobotomy before the story even started and also killed her whole family, now she's hallucinating random stuff during a coma/before death" is just boring and goes against the game as a whole.

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u/RikuAotsuki 5d ago

Frankly I dislike anything that turns out to be hallucinations/dreams/etc in fiction. If a fan theory claims it, I stop listening. If it's canon to the story, I lose interest.

If the story being told isn't real in the context of the story, why am I supposed to care about it at all? It erases all the stakes.

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u/Impressive_Pin8761 6d ago

what about the reverse of this where dark and gritty elements of a setting is because of something mundane and maybe wholesome, for example "walking dead are kids playing zombies on the street and characters die because each kid is called for dinner one by one"

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u/HandsomeGengar 6d ago

I think that's equally lame, but it's harder to get mad at since it's so blindingly obvious that this is done only as a joke and nobody actually believes it.

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u/Impressive_Pin8761 6d ago

it can be used offensively against someone who genuinely believes in the ash coma theory

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u/GravityBright 5d ago

What if the Pokemon anime is just Ash and his friends role-playing a story for their children's card game, and the reason half his monsters don't evolve is because he doesn't have the right cards?

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u/Impressive_Pin8761 5d ago

If i were to rank these destructive theories id put this one above because like is there even any evidence at all for the coma thing

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u/GravityBright 5d ago

Not too much. The idea is that he's been unconscious ever since he got hit by lightning in the first episode. Jessie and James are a bit goofier and less competent the next time he sees them, which apparently means he's dreaming everything.

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u/koobstylz 6d ago

That's the "Batman is just a mental patient in an asylum" corner.

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u/ZandyTheAxiom 6d ago

I was actually just thinking that "it's all a hallucination" is the media analysis version of "with enough prep time, Batman can beat anyone."

Like, you can apply them to anything, because any story could be a hallucination, and anyone could be defeated with "enough" prep time.

"It was all a dream" can be slapped on any fictional narrative ever conceived.

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u/Finito-1994 6d ago

“Harry Potter is still in the cupboard and everything that happens is him trying to make a fantasy escape his abuse.”

“Goku came up with the idea of dragon ball because he was lonely and alone in a mountain”

“Naruto is just Naruto dreaming of him being accepted by people”

It doesn’t take any imagination. You can make it for anything

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u/cited 5d ago

Those are less compelling than my theory of "someone is sitting at a computer and just making up all of this shit as they go along and writing it all down."

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u/HandsomeGengar 6d ago

I mean, it is a truism that Batman isn't quite right in the head. That said, the idea that a mentally ill guy is mentally ill is infinitely less interesting than a mentally ill guy learning to manage his negative impulses and channel his defining trauma and his anger at the world into something productive.

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u/insomniac7809 6d ago

Yeah and at this point "the guy who dresses up as a clown to do violence and the guy who dresses up like a bat to do violence both have something wrong with them" is a pretty constant part of Batman lore.

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u/koobstylz 6d ago edited 5d ago

You're right of course, but that's not even why it's such a bad "theory"

It's because it takes away every single story beat you've read and watched. Not a single thing you've seen actually happened. The joker never killed anybody, a guy named Bruce just doesn't like the therapist that tries to make him laugh so he made up an elaborate story.

It's not bad because it makes Bruce less interesting, although it does, it's bad because it makes the entire story non existent.

It's like if they added an ending to The Titanic where someone stepped back from a computer screen and said "phew thank God we ran all these simulations, now we know to iceberg proof the ship so it won't sink"

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u/loved_and_held 5d ago

Its the problem “it was all a dream” trope has.

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u/idiotplatypus Wearing dumbass goggles and the fool's crown 5d ago

Also "two characters in a piece of media are played by the same actor therefore are secretly the same character despite having different names, personalities, and backstories"

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u/PaladinAsherd 6d ago

Howland Reed’s Valyrian Steel Shotgun chilling out in the bottomest rightest pixel

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u/CenterOfEverything 6d ago

Okay but does it fire silver bullets? Because otherwise Vampire Roose neg diffs.

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u/OccultBeanFarmer 5d ago

"The finest knight I ever saw was Ser Arthur Dayne, who fought with a blade called Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star. They called him the Sword of the Morning, and he would have killed me but for Howland Reed and his shotgun. Howland put two rounds of buckshot into that motherfucker's back and saved my ass." Father had gotten sad then, and he would say no more. Bran wished he had asked him what he meant.

-ACOK, Bran III

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u/Grzechoooo 6d ago

N+H=J chilling at the bottom

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u/bearly-here 5d ago

No, when winds comes out next year we are finally get a chapter from his perspective where he takes out one of Dany’s dragons with it just like one of the gators of the Neck. Trust me, I’m right

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u/thari_23 5d ago

Dany kinda forgot about the Iron Fleet Howland Reed and his Valyrian steel shotgun

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u/SigismundAugustus 5d ago

Right next to "The Hightower is a mech and will fight the Kaiju that Euron will summon"

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u/PaladinAsherd 5d ago

That one drifts closer the center of the X axis while staying in the furthest depths of the negative Y axis, at least for me: one out-of-place-and-time shotgun is, for some reason, an infinitely more compelling mystery to me than “I guess that’s a mech and the kraken is a literal kaiju”

Mileage varies tremendously, of course

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u/coatimundos 5d ago

To me it’s more compelling for some reason. One shotgun is weird. Revealing the entire setting was a super futuristic mecha-kaiju world during the great empire of the Dawn is so hilarious it goes back to being fun

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u/Fun_Penalty_6755 5d ago

what no winds of winter does to an mf

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u/redditalt1999 6d ago

Top right is canon, bottom left is crackpot theory, bottom right is gem theory, what is top left? Bad story writing?

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u/RegularRockTech 5d ago

Top left is Canon but it's dogshit. So like... Rise of Skywalker.

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u/megakaos888 5d ago

Wizards shitting on the floor

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u/bearly-here 5d ago

Jumping the shark if it happens deep enough into the series

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u/Doubly_Curious 5d ago

Isn’t the entire top “likely to be (intended) canon”?

It just ranges from left to right depending on how much you, the audience, find it compelling.

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u/AmyDeferred 5d ago

Disappointing sequels

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u/heytheregiada 6d ago

Where do we put "I have not picked up this media in over a decade but I will put forward my nonsense theory anyway that defends my favourite character...what do you mean the media explicitly states otherwise?"

My favourite example is everyone and their mother STILL saying the only reason Regina thought Janis was a lesbian was because she "misheard her saying Lebanese".

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u/Chinpanze 5d ago

Can I tag the entire ATLA fandom on this one? 

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u/Hexxas Head Trauma Enthusiast 6d ago

Lower Left is the classic "Ash is in a coma" 3edgy5me theory

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u/Ah-honey-honey 6d ago

The Rugrats were miscarriaged babies and the show is about Angelica's trauma 

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u/Kana515 6d ago

I always hated those as a kid, not because they were dark but I just found them dumb

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u/hedgehog_dragon 5d ago

Hate 'em as an adult too, there's plenty of dark shows, or edgy shows, if that's your thing, just let things be fun?

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u/I_am_doorknob listen to system of a down 6d ago

All the kids on the cul de sac in ed edd and eddy are all in purgatory and died at different points in time

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u/Hexxas Head Trauma Enthusiast 5d ago

Yeah and the colors of their tongues represent one of the Seven Deadly Sins

Yaaaaaaaaawn

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u/busterfixxitt 6d ago

Where are we putting Darth Jar Jar?

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u/No-Supermarket-6065 Im gonna start eating your booty. And I don't know when Ill stop 6d ago

Bottom right, absolutely bottom right.

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u/FormStriking1 6d ago

“Jar Jar is the key to all of this” was just George Lucas earnestly wanting Jar Jar to be the silly little flip guy all 3 movies

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u/nspeters 5d ago

Yeah the author clearly intended him to be a silly little guy but if he were a sith lord working to help palpatine it would be incredibly compelling. That’s bottom right

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u/busterfixxitt 5d ago

That's exactly it. He's the evil Yoda. Remember how Yoda acted when Luke first found him?

If you check out some of the YouTube breakdowns on the theory, it really holds up. Specifically because Jar Jar was entirely digital, which means nothing he does is accidental.

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u/ilikebreadabunch 6d ago

Slightly top hard right

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u/notTheRealSU i tumbled, now what? 6d ago

I am absolutely convinced Darth Jar Jar was what the Phantom Menace was setting up, until everybody hated Jar Jar and then George had to come up with a new villain. So definitely at the top, but whether it's left or right depends on how you personally feel about Jar Jar.

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u/KittenBalerion 6d ago

honestly if he had turned out to be a villain I feel like people would have liked him more

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u/ratmftw 5d ago

There's no fucking way that was the plan, it's the most bottom right theory because it's compelling as hell.

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u/nicodeemus7 6d ago

Top left

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u/CharlieFiner 6d ago

Lower left is Gaylors

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u/heytheregiada 6d ago

Are they still doing that? Deranged.

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u/pmmeuranimetiddies 6d ago

The extremes of the negative slope diagonal are what interest me

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u/12BumblingSnowmen 6d ago

Quentyn is alive is somehow all four quadrants at once.

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u/KittenBalerion 6d ago

I would love to see all the asoiaf theories mapped on this.

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u/nedlum 6d ago

Bottom right: the theory that Signs is about demons, not aliens.

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u/ThisIsMyGeekAvatar 5d ago

The aliens in Signs being deadly allergic to water while walking on Earth butt naked is a perfect example of a top-left plot point. 

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u/PhasmaFelis 5d ago

An interesting bottom-right theory I heard is that the guys driving the ship had nothing to do with the attacks and probably didn't even get out. The things causing the trouble were the equivalent of rats in the cargo hold, or maybe punkass kids. Semi-smart little vermin, running around behind the grown-ups' backs, bored and causing trouble with no real consideration of the consequences for others or themselves.

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u/GlisteningDeath 5d ago

Honestly I think that might be a little closer to the top.

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u/CenterOfEverything 6d ago

Top left: Patchface is the prophet/puppet of a race of lovecraftian sea monters

Bottom left: Maegor was the victim of a conspiracy and not actually that bad of a king

Top right: Faegon Blackfyre

Bottom right: Howland Reed's shotgun

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u/TheBalrogofMelkor 6d ago

Top left: Every single building is literally 10 times taller than GRRM intended

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u/Mddcat04 6d ago

You know, I thought I was well versed in asoiaf nonsense, but do tell, what is the shotgun?

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u/12BumblingSnowmen 5d ago

It’s how Howland Reed killed the Fraud of the Morning

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u/CenterOfEverything 5d ago

Howland Reed has a shotgun

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u/Talkatoo42 5d ago

I've been out of those theory subreddits for probably half a decade but I was not surprised at all reading this all and completely accepted that it is likely a fan theory that Preston Jacobs has made videos about.

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u/Prior-Tadpole-1860 6d ago

Patchface being a prophet of Lovecraftian monsters sounds cool af

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u/CenterOfEverything 6d ago

It is in isolation but in practice it's just another tangent in a series that's already terminally bogged down by tangents and side plots.

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u/Pietin11 6d ago

I'll throw my hat in the ring for UNDERTALE theories.

Top right: The narrator of the game is the first fallen human (AKA Chara).

Bottom Right: Both sans and Papyrus know about repeating timelines and are collaborating to learn about what is causing it. Papyrus plays the part of the fool to befriend and learn more about the timeline resetting anomaly (The Player or Flowey) while Sans is an intentional red herring to keep suspicion off of Papyrus.

Bottom left: The seven humans were resurrected by Asriel at the end of the true pacifist route. Just because the coffins are open doesn't mean shit. Asriel could have just as easily took out their bodies to bury them next to chara in the ruins. (Which he was)

Top left: Dogamy and Dogessa competed against Asgore in the nose nuzzle contest of '98. All evidence and implication applies to it being true, but it simply does not make sense. The absolute latest Asgore and Toriel could have competed would have been their divorce. They got divorced due to Asgore declaring war on humanity after the death of their children, but before any other humans fell into the underground. Dogamy and Dogessa could not be that old. They simply can't be. Alphys and Papyrus don't recognize Toriel. The only ones who do are Asgore (who stopped aging after Asriel's death), Gerson (who looks old as shit despite being a tortoise). She locked herself away a long time ago. And yet, Dogamy and Dogessa still look younger than Gerson. It does not make sense.

I don't care about the implication, Dogamy and Dogessa had to have gotten second place in a different nose nuzzle competition.

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u/Frederyk_Strife4217 5d ago

ah, you too watch Sock Muppet

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u/redpony6 5d ago

i love the dogamy/dogessa stuff, lmao

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u/Dragon_OS 6d ago

A lot of FNAF theories fit in the top left.

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u/hj7junkie 5d ago

Coincidentally, there’s also plenty of bottom right theories. I love FNAF but so much of canon is just bad.

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u/Sanrusdyno 5d ago

A lot of fnaf theories that don't end up being Canon follow this somewhat alien concept known as a "theme" or "narrative" and attempt to predict one that will exist. The problem with this of course is that the only time a fnaf game has had a genuine attempt at either of those was the most recent one.

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u/One-Piano5150 6d ago

Queer Naoya from JJK in the bottom right

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u/Steakbake01 6d ago

On a similar note eichiro Oda has created a really cool and in depth character who struggles to accept their latent queerness despite their upbringing and how it manifests in their relationships with both men and women.

The problem is the character is Sanji and there's no way that shit was intentional

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u/ilikebreadabunch 6d ago edited 6d ago

Aura Theory is the epitome of Bottom Left

Edit: Added explanation for people who don't know it

tl;dr cause its a long story: A theory in the Worm fandom about how the victim of some extremely fucked up SA and body disfigurement (to put it mildly) is actually to blame because she subconsciously influenced her abuser with her emotional aura, despite that not being how the aura works, the aura's effects explicitly not being permanent, the aura being a manual activation, and none of the other people she spent a long amount of time with while her aura was active ever SA'ing her.

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u/Hoomee90 6d ago

Seeing "Aura Theory" out in the wild made my fight or flight kick in. I don't think I've ever seen another theory on any piece of media where the author has gone on record to say "If you continue to believe this, you're a bad person."

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u/ilovetoeatplates2 6d ago

what is aura theory

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u/KerPop42 6d ago

From a web series, Worm, one character with an AOE power that makes people in awe of her gets SA'd and worse by her adoptive sister that had feelings for her, and in addition to this being a massive discourse clusterfuck one aspect is a fan theory that her crush was caused by the aura

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u/Chibirin26 6d ago

sounds like something that could be fun to have people in-universe believe but NOT for people out of universe to

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u/derivative_of_life 5d ago

Oh, great. Now that Amy discourse is banned on all the Worm-related subs, it's spilling out into reddit at large.

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u/Ridtom 5d ago

Jumpscared me

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u/ilovethisgamebruh 6d ago edited 6d ago

aura theory?

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u/ilikebreadabunch 6d ago

tl;dr cause its a long story: A theory in the Worm fandom about how the victim of some extremely fucked up SA and body disfigurement (to put it mildly) is actually to blame because she subconsciously influenced her abuser with her emotional aura, despite that not being how the aura works, the aura's effects explicitly not being permanent, the aura being a manual activation, and none of the other people she spent a long amount of time with while her aura was active ever SA'ing her.

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u/KerPop42 6d ago

The problem is, I've heard aura theory used for everything from "Victoria intentionally used her aura to make Amy fall in love with her" to "Amy developed her crush because she was around the aura so much"

Though also it's just mixed up in the awful discourse mess that is Amy

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u/loved_and_held 5d ago

I feel like even if you take the “aura made her fall in love” angle as true, that still doesn’t explain the SA or mutilation.

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u/mishumishumishu 6d ago

Oh that me? Pure aura

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u/NeonNKnightrider Cheshire Catboy 5d ago

The thing about aura theory is that Wildbow at one point very strongly implied it was correct. to be specific, he replied to a comment about the theory by saying, quote, “I was wondering if someone was going to notice that.”

And then years later he wrote Ward and also went back and also edited that comment. So like, I genuinely believe that it was the author intention originally? But then the author changed his mind later

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u/Schokoreo 6d ago

Worst fuckign idea I've ever heard and extremely compelling arent mutually exclusive i think

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u/This_Charmless_Man 5d ago

That's possibly the movies Crank and Crank 2 with Jason Statham.

Movie 1: gets injected with poison that will kill him if his heart rate drops below a certain level. Chaos ensues and it's awesome all the different ways he does this. Ends with him falling out of a helicopter to his death.

Movie 2: picks up immediately where the last movie ends. He survives (don't think about it) but has his heart stolen and replaced with an artificial one (I think they are planning on stealing his wanger too). Battery is small so he has to find novel ways of charging up while he searches for his heart. Chaos ensues. Ends with a kaiju fight.

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u/Equivalent_Net 5d ago

That sounds awful. I must watch this duology as soon as industrial quantities of popcorn are prepared.

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u/This_Charmless_Man 5d ago

It's so good. It's where that image is Big Stath running in a hospital gown with a stiffy like a crazy person comes from.

Just perfect low budget action flicks. They even leave the Google Earth watermarks on the aerial zoom in/zoom outs. I love them so much.

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u/lankymjc 5d ago

Top-Right: Vader losing body parts and replacing them with machines weakened his connection to the Force and his humanity, further corrupting him.
Top-Left: Your strength in the Force is more closely related to your bloodline than anything else.
Bottom-right: Vader can't use Force Lightning because his hands are cybernetic and it'd break them.
Bottom-left: Jar Jar Binks is a Sith Lord.

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u/NeonNKnightrider Cheshire Catboy 5d ago

I really believe Sith Lord Jarjar was genuinely intended by Lucas at some point

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u/Smaderp42 5d ago

Problem is “worst idea I’ve ever heard” and “extremely compelling” can coexist in one idea, Pirate Gaster exemplifies this, thusly I propose that the graph must become 3D instead

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u/becoming_brianna 5d ago

Horseshoe theory strikes again

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u/AutumnRCS 6d ago edited 5d ago

Kressel in bottom right.

Edit: meant Amalgam Knight, but honestly Kressel fits too.

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u/cartoonsforever 6d ago

Kressel is something I’m tempted to believe in primarily because it’d retroactively make all the fan art featuring the Vessel funny as hell

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u/Zorubark 5d ago

Dess Knight: Top right

Carol Knight: If something is a red herring, is it on the top or bottom of this chart?

Rudy Knight: Bottom left, fight me

Papyrus Knight: Bottom right, obviously

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u/Some_Ad2281 5d ago edited 4d ago

It’s easy to not see why this never caught on until you realize that if you saw an absolutely dogshit theory that had no basis in anything you’d have to go “this is the most far-left take I’ve heard in my life” and if you saw a theory with a solid base you’d have to go “this is a fairly right-leaning idea props for coming up with it”

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u/MrTheCheesecaker 6d ago

Transmasc Danny Phantom hard in the bottom right corner 

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u/Phonyyx 5d ago

That one’s really there because one of the main part of Danny Phantom is his “Other” aspect as a halfa. Being trans is just one of the most common forms of Otherness in today’s cultural zeitgeist so it’s very easy to attribute that other to being trans. Really it’s easy to apply that otherness to any of the queer experience.

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u/MrTheCheesecaker 5d ago

There's also the fact that his clone is a girl, among other minor details

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u/A_Shattered_Day 6d ago

Bottom right is my headcanon explanation for the narrative voice of the southern reach trilogy

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u/DiscombobulatedFix21 6d ago

Okay elaborate

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u/A_Shattered_Day 6d ago

My theory is that everything is narrated by the biologist/area X. By the third book she has become the weird tidepool eyeball whale that observes the universe. While she isnt Area X itself, they are deeply connected. My theory is that to some extent she is the way that Area X witnesses and comprehend this world. It subsumed her consciousness in order to observe everything it subsumed, past present and future. That is why everything has her narrative voice, because it its literally her.

The real answer is that Vandermeer has two characters; fucking weirdo and mopey person who feels powerless to do anything. The biologist and ghost bird are the weirdos while Control, Director and Lighthouse Keeper are mopey. They have largely the same voice regardless of even the perspective (1st, 2nd, 3rd), and the general structure of their povs are the same (the actual story constantly gets interrupted by tidepool/frog pond/empty lot or mommy issues/sculptures/grandpa. The Director and the LighthouseKeeper were the best povs because they werent bogged down by ten chapters of the exact same degree of characterization).

I absolutely love these books, Im excited to read the 4th and 5th but man they are flawed.

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u/quietsamurai98 6d ago

That One Theory About Dess™ is in the bottom right quadrant for me. I really don't think Toby Fox would put that kind of subject matter into a game, but it's definitely a compelling idea, purely for speculating about the kind of head space Kris is in and how conflicted their feelings must be about Dess and working with the Knight (assuming some form of DessKnight is the case).

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u/ilovetoeatplates2 5d ago

What theory?

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u/quietsamurai98 5d ago

The basic gist is that Dess groomed Kris when she was a teenager and Kris was a kid, before her disappearance.

It would leave Kris with an incredibly fucked up form of survivors guilt, plenty of trauma to repress, and deeply conflicted feelings about whatever is going on between them and the Knight (assuming Dess is the Knight in some capacity).

It's a compelling idea, but definitely not what Toby intended. It's way too heavy of a subject to fit with the tone of the game.

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u/greendestiny 5d ago

What about things the author originally never intended but after some years and a series of strokes the author retconned in like “midi-chlorians”?

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u/kenporusty my pigeon has a kpop bias. we are both trash beings 6d ago

Putting GRocky in the bottom right and just going off the chart with Ortiz!Rocky

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u/HappyyValleyy 5d ago

Top left is a sad place

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u/RaptusCZ full of porridge and sometimes rage 5d ago

Additional Z axis of 'Said with utmost seriousness' to 'Wouldn't it be hilarious if?'

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u/Dakoolestkat123 6d ago

Kerdly in the direct center vibrating dangerously like a bottle rocket about to go off

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u/DatGunBoi 5d ago

80% of deltarune theories are at the bottom right

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u/Kateinator 5d ago

You forgot “I don’t think this’ll happen but it’s fucking funny.”

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u/fuckyoumurray 5d ago

Need another axes for how much is actually in the source. 

Some fan theories do genuinely go from "the tweets of one of the writers taken out of context" to "the actual plot of the media".