Film and TV Conspiracy Theories

There are some bad conspiracy theories (Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon synced up with Wizard of Oz), and then there's some good ones that are really interesting and sometimes improve the product.

These are completely plagarised from Cracked (but edited a bit).

WALL-E is a serial killer

The WALL-E we know tells the heartwarming story of the destruction of Earth. When mankind goes off to travel the universe and get fat, they leave a bunch of robots behind to clean up the mountains of garbage that now cover the planet. Seven hundred years later, only one of those trash-compacting robots is left: the adorable WALL-E. He (it?) falls in love with a space-traveling robot called EVE, and together they bring the humans back home.

And then presumably have robo-children that look like dongs with wheels.

The Theory:
But wait, back up: What happened to all the other WALL-E-type robots that were left on Earth? We see their broken bodies scattered here and there -- why is WALL-E still functional when all of his brethren are broken down robo-corpses?
Easy: According to this theory from Reddit, WALL-E destroyed them over a 700-year-long murder spree. That's why there's still so much garbage covering the planet after so long -- there was just one robot to clean it, and he's a psychopath.

Why It's Totally Possible:
Look at how casually WALL-E cannibalizes the parts of the deactivated units at the beginning of the movie -- he remorselessly rips the treads off of another robot to replace his own and hoards other spare parts in his trailer.

 

WALL-E is clearly a sentient being, capable of pain and emotion. He recognizes fellow robots as living beings (and of course falls in love with one). And yet, he doesn't appear to give the slightest crap about desecrating the scattered corpses of his robotic kin. He's playing music from Hello, Dolly! as he tears their parts off. Apply the same thinking to human beings and picture a man who collects human body parts to wear and dance around in. Congratulations, you just imagined Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs.

 

So WALL-E is a disturbed individual. But why would he kill the other robots? Maybe, as the fan theory points out, it's because his objective and their objective weren't compatible. The entire purpose of these robots was to gather the trash and compact it -- and yet WALL-E, no doubt as a result of some fatal flaw in his programming, actually takes some of those worthless artifacts he's supposed to be destroying and keeps them to himself, just to stare at them.

They're basically his robot serial killing trophies.
 

Or maybe he just wanted to be able to use their parts to live forever. Either way, at the end of the movie, the humans don't even suspect that they're now stuck on a planet with a remorseless mass-murdering machine, surrounded by the grim evidence of his madness.

Thomas the Train lives in a Totalitarian Dystopia

Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, a story about sentient trains learning about responsibility, friendship and all that noise, might possibly be the most sickeningly wholesome children's show in existence.

Shauna Wilton, a professor of political sciences at the University of Alberta, argues that the world of Thomas the Tank Engine is in reality a fascist, racist hellhole where dreams go to die and where only "useful" elements are allowed to continue to toil away in pointless misery.

Oh yeah. Stick more proles in the carriage and it would totally be 1984.

 

Or maybe ... maybe someone switched Wilton's Thomas DVDs with Schindler's List.

Why It's Not That Crazy:
Here's a totally hypothetical question: What if one of the trains on the show decided that he wanted to do something else with his life, like travel or star on Snakes on a Train 2: Snake Harder? He'd probably get yelled at and told to get back to work.

 

You see, on the island of Sodor where the show takes place, there is only room for really useful engines. That's not only the show's catch phrase, but also the basic summary of every episode in the series. That is, the engines are either trying to prove themselves or worrying that they aren't working hard enough (see "James and the Coaches," "Thomas, Percy and the Post Train," "Tender Engines" and many more).

This totalitarian obsession with usefulness is instilled in the engines by the iron fist of Sir Topham Hatt, aka the Fat Controller, who swiftly punishes all those deemed as "useless."

Look at his hands. There's no way this guy has ever contributed anything to society.
 

In the episode "Break Van," Hatt has two twin engines, Donald and Douglas, compete against each other to determine which one he will send back to Scotland to be destroyed. In "The Sad Story of Henry," when an engine refuses to go out of the tunnel because of the rain, Hatt actually gives orders to brick him alive in the tunnel.

 

You can't really defend any of this by saying that the trains are Hatt's property. They are obviously sentient beings capable of emotions ... one of which unfortunately happens to be racism. In the show, there is a clear feud going on between the steam engines like Thomas and Percy and the diesel engines, who are depicted as stubborn, lazy and shifty.

In the episode "Daisy," a diesel named Daisy arrives on Sodor and flat out refuses to do chores. In "The Diseasel," a diesel called BoCo is accused of stealing trucks. In "Thomas's Day Off," a new, lazy diesel, Dennis, tricks Thomas into doing his work. Even the closest thing the show has to a villain is a diesel named DIESEL.

James Bond isn't a man, but a code name

When the 007 franchise launched in 1962, Sean Connery was 32 when he received his license to kill. That was almost 50-years ago, and James Bond has aged like a fine Beaujolais spiked with antifreeze. How is the same 30-something special agent who fought the Cold War-era Russians now taking on post-9/11 terrorism?

The Theory:
There has been a theory among fans that there is no one single James Bond, but that "James Bond" is a codename passed on from one agent to the next as each retires (just as the titles of M and Q pinball from agent to agent). The theory explains the agelessness of Bond--note that Daniel Craig's Bond became 11 years younger whereas Judi Dench's M aged by four years.

 

This also explains how James Bond's personality changes dramatically from actor to actor. For example, in one film you have Timothy Dalton's Bond burning a man alive (around the 9:00 mark). Pop in another DVD and you see Roger Moore's Bond is doddering around in a clown costume.

The more you look into it, the more it makes sense. George Lazenby's Bond had his wife murdered in the last film he appeared in, so fans could assume that his 007 retired out of grief. Timothy Dalton's Bond went rogue and was kicked out of MI6. Pierce Brosnan's final outing ended with Bond being abandoned by British intelligence.

Next movie, there's a new Bond in the tuxedo and the old one is presumably on a beach somewhere collecting a government pension.
Even the guy who directed Die Another Day believed this theory.

Why Does it Make the Film Better?
We like the realism that this theory gives the Bond franchise, particularly since 007 movies have the propensity to fly off the rails every few years (see: Moonraker, Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist, that invisible car).

Zion is part of the Matrix

Do you remember The Matrix: Revolutions? No? It was, like, the final film in the trilogy? Still no? Hey, we haven't watched it since 2003 either.

 

The Theory:
In Revolutions, Neo's powers from the Matrix have seemingly transferred into the material world. For instance, he can "see" (despite having charbroiled his eyeballs) and also manifests the power to blow up machines with his mind. This has been a pet peeve with fans who note that this makes absolutely zero sense in the context of the Matrix universe.

But one theory posits that Neo's sudden, convenient-to-the-plot superpowers were possible since he never left the Matrix at all.

These fans figure "Zion" and the whole world Morpheus and the other "free" humans lived in was a separate Matrix unto itself, a second layer of the computer program to let some people think they had escaped. Thus it makes perfect sense that Neo would have magical powers in what he thought was the "physical" world.

 

Why does it make the film better?
The theory keeps the sci-fi film sci-fi and not heavy-handed messianic fantasy. Neo's new powers are never explained in Revolutions (hand-waved away by The Oracle in one sentence) and therefore seem like a cheap cop-out tacked on simply to end the movie. This explanation also prevents the now-tarnished Wachowskis from looking like a bunch of hacks who are still cruising on the first Matrix film.

"From the team who brought you Speed Racer and Ninja Assassin!"

The theory gives a somewhat credible explanation instead of a deus ex machina plot device. Interestingly enough, deus ex machina literally means "god from the machine." Double whoa, brah.

Whew. Lots of plagirism there. All from cracked.com. Good theories? I think they're really interesting. My favorite is Zion being a part of the Matrix which makes the trilogy so much better.