this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2024
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Worst fan theory on a show/movie etc you have heard/seen circulated?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 hours ago

That kamala would win xi

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

My ex was weirdly convinced that Idiocracy was actually secretly about how Brando (and all energy drinks by extension) cause massive IQ drops in people.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 hours ago

That would have been better than eugenics

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago

Any and all Undertale theories. Gaster is just Toby Fox nerdsniping.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

This is kinda an answer to this I suppose?

I've been trying to figure out the indie horror game Fran Bow, it feels like there's meaning to it but it's so deliberately obtuse that I haven't been able to decipher what it's actually saying. And the thing is, it seems like nobody else has either. There are so many "theory" and "analysis" videos on it and they are all dogshit. I'll give you an example:

This is a FIFTY-SIX minute video making the bold statement that Fran Bow is "about lobotomy" and their evidence for this is that Chapter 1 takes place in a 1940s mental asylum and that there are indeed lobotomized characters in that asylum. The game has 5 chapters, by the way, and lobotomy or any other mental health practices never come up again.

The game is full of random shit and it's really hard to tell what parts of it are obscure metaphor and what parts are just shock factor or pure vibes, so this clown doesn't even try and pretty much all he even attempts to analyze are the freaking chapter titles. (Woah dude, chapter 3 is titled "vegetative state", what if that means Fran is like, in a vegetative state) This video has nearly 800k views and all the comments are like "Wow, you're cooking" and "Great insight" when he doesn't even mention the journal.

For reference: At the very end of chapter 2, a giant toad hands you a journal from a character named León Castillo. León Castillo never appears in the game in person, is only mentioned one other time and is depicted on a hidden photo in chapter 5. The journal itself serves no gameplay purpose, it's never used to progress anything nor does it contain any information that helps you progress, it serves purely as a vehicle for exposition and... artistic expression of the writers, I suppose? To illustrate the point further, every other item you are given is used for gameplay progress at some point, there are no other books or anything like that in the game. The 40-page journal is the only exception to this, therefore I am very certain that its contents are essential to understanding what the game is actually about.

Anyway, I have watched quite a few "analysis" videos about Fran Bow now and less than half of them even acknowledge that the journal exists. Nobody has an explanation for all the obscure and weird parts of the game, so they just pretend those don't exist and only talk about the parts that they can interpret, like the chapter titles. The theories in the comments are also bad and wrong, but at least they're trying to be creative. Most videos only come up with "it was all in her head" (it wasn't).

Subscribe for more fun facts about why Fran Bow is so indecipherable and why I am Sisyphus, my boulder is the severed head of Lucia Dagenhart and my hill is a 2015 point-n-click horror game made by some Swedish tumblr couple who probably just put some monkeys at a typewriter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Anything that goes "This character is having a dream and all of the show is fake!" is terrible. It can barely be called a theory. There are some specific media where it makes sense to speculate what was real and what wasn't but "Ash is a kid in a coma and is dreaming up Pokémon" no you wanted to post an edgy thing and couldn't get better material.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 hours ago

The theory is barely more than saying "Teams of writers and animators created this cartoon world in order to sell and make money."

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 hours ago

SpongeBob is dead and in purgatory stuff

[–] [email protected] 29 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

That Jar Jar is a sith lord. He's the cartoon bunny that steps in the poop and is a racist caricature. Stop trying to say that George Lucas is some kind of mastermind.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 hours ago

I want to say it'd be funny to bring him back for The Rise of Skywalker instead of Palpatine, but Ahmed Best deserves better than that

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Lots of people will tell you that the whole prequel trilogy was preplanned despite all of the evidence in the films and the making of docs that they were made up on the spot and the scripts never even got a second draft.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Wasn't the first one at least basically the original draft of the Star Wars script rewritten to fit into the established canon? I remember that script being found/leaked and it seemed to hit a lot of the same specific story beats that Phantom Menace did in a way that the original Star Wars did not. If nothing else it clearly reused ideas that George Lucas had that hadn't made their way into his other movies yet.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I don't remember the specifics, but that much is plausible - George himself said that ANH was only 40% in line with what he originally had in mind.

it clearly reused ideas that George Lucas had

My favorite example of this specifically is that an early treatment of ANH had a scene with Luke and co racing in Beggar's Canyon, which was cut early in production and never filmed. But George really likes racing and he got to make the scene he always wanted to be there in TPM.

The original Beggar's Canyon scene survives in the BBC Radio Play version of Star Wars!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Game of Thrones had really wild ones, personal favourite is that via some kind of magic the embryo created from Jon and Dany having sex would be transported back in time into Joanna Lannister's womb and it became Tyrion, who is the real chosen one

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 hours ago

The time traveling fetus was always funny to read.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 hours ago

Fuck I remember either seeing that one or at least seeing it mentioned.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Pretty much any of the ones that are like "Grumblesmatch secretly takes place in the the Pooburger universe"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago

The only one like that I like is Event Horizon depicting an early experiment with Warhammer 40k Warp travel.

I dunno if that counts as a theory because I think I've read before that the filmmakers had it in mind but I can't find the article at the moment

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

The three seashells. All of them.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

What are the seashells for?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 hours ago

Very brave to post such embarrassing ignorance.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 hours ago

Jon Snow's twin sister being Meera Reed. Pretty much only a theory because they're the same age and both have black hair, and cuz Howland is so mysterious I guess.

Come to think of it ASOIAF has a lot of "secret Targaryen" theories and they all suck. It's fine if there's one, it's fine if their extended family has a lot of bloodlines connected to it, but there are not a zillion potential azor ahais running around just waiting to be discovered.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 hours ago

anything on jujutsufolk

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 hours ago

"Javi is Pit Girl" or "Callie is Pit Girl" for Yellowjackets. Stupid time travel nonsense often accompanies the latter.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago

"Tabitha is Eloise" she is clearly Miranda.