Fans of hit TV shows love coming up with theories that change the way people perceive the show. Anyone can theorize that a TV character was dead the whole time — it’s commonly suggested that Will was killed in that playground fight inThe Fresh Prince of Bel-Air— but a thoughtful fan theory takes some real creativity and mental gymnastics.
There’s the famousGilmore Girls/Sopranosparadoxthat points out that both shows exist in each other’s universes. It takes a lot of solid evidence to come up with a convincing fan theory. Has Homer Simpson been in a coma for 30 years? Is Toby Flenderson the Scranton Strangler? These fan theories will change how you watch your favorite shows.
10Ted Is Exaggerating Barney’s Womanizing
How I Met Your Mother
All throughoutHow I Met Your Mother, Barney Stinson is shown to be a sociopathic monster in his interactions with women. He keeps a list of the hundreds of women he’s slept with, he rarely presents himself honestly when he’s trying to pick up women, and he even confesses that he once sold a woman.
By any metric, Barney would be considered a terrible person. But since the entire series is being narrated by Ted Mosby, it’s possible thatTed is exaggerating Barney’s womanizing.Ted is shown to embellish things to make the story better, and he admits that he resents Barney for marrying Robin, so there’s precedent for this.
9Jessica Fletcher Was The Real Killer
Murder, She Wrote
InMurder, She Wrote, Jessica Fletcher is a mystery writer and amateur detective who solves murders in her town. There were an awful lot of murders for such a quaint little town, so there’s a theory that Jessica herself was the one killing everyone. She had the literary know-how to construct elaborate whodunit scenarios, andamateur sleuthing was the perfect cover.
8The Flintstones & The Jetsons Take Place In The Same Dystopian Future
The Flintstones/The Jetsons
The FlintstonesandThe Jetsonsare two of Hanna-Barbera’s most iconic cartoons. They seem to take place at opposite ends of humanity’s timeline;The Flintstonesis about a family of cavemen living in prehistoric times, whileThe Jetsonsis about a typical suburban family living in a floating city in the distant future.
The haves (the Jetsons) live in high-tech luxury in the clouds and the have-nots (the Flintstones) live on a wasted Earth.
A curious fan theory suggests that the two shows take place in the same dystopian future, where the haves (the Jetsons) live in high-tech luxury in the clouds and the have-nots (the Flintstones) live on a wasted Earth.The connections are subtle, but noticeable: the Great Gazoo appears in both shows, and the Flintstones celebrate Christmas and other modern holidays.
Another theory connecting two otherwise unrelated shows is the assertion thatBreaking Badis a secret prequel toThe Walking Dead. There are a few subtle connections that tie the two shows together. A bag of Walter White’s blue meth can be spotted among Merle Dixon’s drug stash. Gale Boetticher’s coffee machine can be spotted in the Governor’s lab.
The two-year timeline ofBreaking Badmore or less lines up with when the zombie outbreak happens at the beginning ofThe Walking Dead. Gus Fring’s bizarre death scene suggests he could be the first zombie. If AMC wants to do something really cool, it could make aWalking Deadspinoff about Jesse Pinkman fighting zombies in Alaska.
6Dawn Inadvertently Killed Joyce
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Joyce is killed by a mysterious complication with her brain tumor in one ofBuffy the Vampire Slayer’s saddest twists. But according to a popular fan theory, it might not be so mysterious. Joyce’s death happens shortly after Buffy’s younger sister Dawn showed up and everyone strangely acted as if she’d always been there.
The monks had to fabricate 14 years’ worth of fake memories in Joyce’s mind; maybe her mind just couldn’t take it.
The theory supposes that the magic used to transform Dawn affected Joyce. The creation of brand-new memories caused so much strain on Joyce’s brain that it gave her a tumor that would ultimately kill her. The monks had to fabricate 14 years’ worth of fake memories in Joyce’s mind; maybe her mind just couldn’t take it.
5Dale Knew About Nancy & John Redcorn But Pretended He Didn’t
King of the Hill
One of the funniest running gags inKing of the Hillis that Nancy is clearly having an affair with John Redcorn — and they barely put in the effort to hide it — but Dale remains blissfully oblivious to it. A fan theory suggests that Dale isn’t oblivious after all; it proposes a different reason for Dale ignoring his wife’s blatant unfaithfulness.
The theory suggests that Dale knows about Nancy’s affairs, but pretends he doesn’t, both so he can continue to raise Joseph as his own son (despite the fact that Redcorn is clearly the biological father) and so he can avoid disrupting the stability of his home life. Either that, or he’s just deep in denial.
4Westeros Is A Westworld Theme Park
Game of Thrones
In the third season ofWestworld, we’re introduced to Park Four at Delos Destinations, which is modeled after a fantasy version of medieval Europe (it’s never named, but it’s assumed to be called Fantasyworld or Questworld). There, you can see a dragon-shaped host that looks exactly like Drogon fromGame of Thrones— it’s an unmistakable similarity.
It was just an Easter egg for eagle-eyed HBO viewers, but it led to a theory that the entireThronessaga exists in a theme park in theWestworlduniverse.Game of ThronesshowrunnersDavid Benioff and D.B. Weiss cameoed inWestworld, so the thinking is that they simply acted as the showrunners of the Fantasyworld park.
The theory suggests that the only real person inGame of Thronesis Ser Bronn, and every other character is a host going through scripted scenarios. This would explain why Bronn is so laidback, has unbreakable plot armor, and gets whatever he wants: he’s just a rich guy on vacation.
3Toby Flenderson Is The Scranton Strangler
The Office
ThroughoutThe Office’s run, the people of Scranton were terrorized by a notorious local serial killer dubbed “The Scranton Strangler.” A man named George Howard Skub was convicted of being the strangler and sent to prison, butToby Flenderson — who served on the jury — maintained that he believed Skub was innocent.
Based on the fact that Toby was certain Skub was innocent, had a long history of writing his own murder mystery stories, and was generally an all-round creepy guy, someOfficefans havetheorized that Toby is the real Scranton Strangler.
2The Tommy Westphall Universe
St. Elsewhere
The series finale ofSt. Elsewhereshowed that St. Eligius Hospital was sitting in a snow globe owned by Tommy Westphall, suggesting that the entire series had taken place in the boy’s imagination. SinceSt. Elsewhereis connected to other TV shows through crossovers and spinoffs, it led to the invention ofthe Tommy Westphall Universe.
This theory found that, through various direct and indirect connections between shows,hundreds of shows exist in Tommy’s imagination. This shared imaginary TV universe supposedly includesThe X-Files,Homicide: Life on the Street, and the entireLaw & Orderfranchise.
1Homer Has Been In A Coma Since Season 4
The Simpsons
In The Simpsons season 4, episode 3, “Homer the Heretic,” God told Homer that he would die in six months. Exactly six months later, in season 4, episode 18, “So It’s Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show,” Bart’s April Fool’s prank inadvertently puts Homer in the hospital, where he’s left comatose by a vending machine.
That’s around the time the show shifted its focus from Bart to Homer, and around the time the humor got less grounded and more absurd and far-fetched.
A popular theory suggests thatthe entire show since then has been Homer’s coma dream. That’s around the time the show shifted its focus from Bart to Homer, and around the time the humor got less grounded and more absurd and far-fetched. It would also explain why time seemingly stands still in Springfield.
