I recently rewatched The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and found myself thinking about Shmuel again. I’ve seen an older theory saying that he deliberately planned Bruno’s death. I don’t really buy that. My interpretation is different: what if Shmuel wanted Bruno to experience, even just for a moment, what life was like on his side of the fence but never imagined that both of them would end up dead?

There are a few details in the film that make me think about this.

First, Shmuel had a reason to feel some resentment. Bruno denies knowing him when a soldier confronts them, and soon after Shmuel turns up beaten, with a black eye. He does forgive Bruno, but is it really impossible that some anger stayed behind?

The second point is the one that matters most to me: Shmuel knew where he was. He lived inside the camp. He knew the guards were violent, he had already suffered at their hands, and he understood that prisoners were treated terribly. Bruno didn’t. He was the sheltered son of the camp commandant. He had no real idea what was happening behind that fence.

When Bruno suggests coming inside, Shmuel gives him a vague warning, saying something like “you wouldn’t want to come over here.” But he doesn’t really explain what the soldiers do to prisoners. It’s like knowing a boat is sinking and just telling someone who wants to get on it, “I wouldn’t come over here,” without saying that the boat is sinking.

Then there’s the business with Shmuel’s father. He tells Bruno his father has disappeared, and Bruno offers to help search for him. But think about it: Bruno had never been inside the camp. He didn’t know the place, didn’t know where things were, didn’t know the prisoners. What could he realistically do in a search? Maybe Shmuel was simply desperate. But it’s also possible that the search was a way to persuade Bruno to come inside.

And then there’s the striped uniform. Shmuel gets Bruno a prisoner’s uniform so he can blend in. But it also erases the most obvious difference between Bruno and the people being persecuted inside. If Bruno had been discovered in his normal clothes, maybe someone would have noticed he was an outsider, maybe even the commandant’s son. In the uniform, he becomes almost indistinguishable from the prisoners. And Shmuel knew how badly people wearing that uniform were treated. Bruno didn't.

The scene that bothers me most, though, is when Bruno wants to leave. Once he’s inside the camp, he becomes uncomfortable and says he wants to go home. Instead of encouraging him to leave, Shmuel reminds him that his father is still missing. Bruno feels obligated to keep helping. To me, that’s the strongest part of the theory: Bruno finally realizes something is very wrong and wants to escape, but Shmuel persuades him to stay.

So my idea is this: maybe Shmuel never meant to kill Bruno. Maybe he was still hurt about being betrayed and beaten. Maybe he wanted Bruno to experience, even briefly, what life was like on his side of the fence. Maybe he wanted to frighten him, humiliate him, or make him feel trapped and powerless. But things spiraled completely out of control, far beyond what either child could have anticipated, and both of them ended up dead.

I’m not saying that’s definitely what happened. Shmuel was also a traumatized child desperately searching for his father, and that alone could explain his actions. But the revenge interpretation seems worth discussing, especially because of the uniform and the moment when Bruno tries to leave.

There's also something else about the ending that bothers me, and it's the contrast between Bruno and his sister Gretel. Throughout the film, Gretel becomes increasingly influenced by Nazi ideology. She replaces her dolls with Nazi propaganda, admires the German soldiers, and seems to accept what she's being taught. Bruno, meanwhile, rejects those prejudices through his friendship with Shmuel. Yet by the end, Gretel is alive and Bruno is dead. I know that doesn't mean the film is endorsing Gretel's beliefs, but isn't there a strange irony here? The child who follows the ideology survives, while the one who befriends someone persecuted by it dies. I wonder if the filmmakers realized how differently some viewers might interpret that ending.

What do you think? Is there a scene that clearly contradicts this theory? I’d genuinely like to hear the strongest arguments against it.

This is a theory not really related to the main plot or main characters.
But I have recently rewatched Bourne Identity and noticed that the Professor (Clive Owen) drives BMW.

Now, I must disclose that I am a BMW fan since I watched The Hire. I know I am getting sidetracked but for those who don’t know, the Hire is a series of short films made by BMW as a promotion campaign in early 2000s (and later a single episode was released in late 2010s for BMW G30 5 series). The main character is a nameless driver who is a professional driver who will deliver anything, no questions. This series basically inspired Jason Statham’s the Transporter series. And this nameless driver is portrayed by none other than Clive Owen.

Anyways, as I was watching Bourne Identity, and how the Professor expires, I had a thought.
What if the Professor fakes his death ( as he was already skeptical and tired of his life as a Treadstone assassin) drives off with his BMW and becomes the Driver in the Hire?
That tracks in my head; the man had skills, resources, prob some underground connections, and some money he stashed, and not to mention the right car, to go off the radar and become someone else entirely to use his skillset for something other than just taking orders and killing.

It made total sense to me as I was listening to Extreme Ways.

TLDr: I think the professor could be the Driver in BMW short film series The Hire.

Africa by Toto is the extraordinary tale of a mournful werewolf's spiritual redemption and the discovery of the purpose hidden within his curse.

Once a deeply religious man, the narrator is afflicted with lycanthropy. Horrified by what he has become and unwilling to endanger the woman he loves, he leaves her behind and journeys to Africa in search of forgotten words, ancient melodies, and the knowledge that might cure him.

Instead, he discovers an ancient order of werewolves who teach him that the wolf is not merely a curse, but a sacred calling. They are guardians of the wild, defending humanity's ancestral homeland against a far older enemy: vampires, creatures of death, domination, and endless consumption.

His search for a cure becomes a struggle to protect the land and its people. He comes to understand that the wolf has changed his body, but neither destroyed his humanity nor severed his connection to the divine.

Then comes the miracle.

He blesses the rains of Africa.

The rain becomes holy water, sanctifying the land against the vampires while the storm clouds conceal the full moon, offering the wolves refuge from their own transformations. What began as an affliction becomes an extraordinary instrument of protection.

And the blessing works. The man who feared he had become a monster discovers that he was never beyond grace.

He came seeking a cure, but found a calling. The wolf is not destroyed; it is redeemed. The frightened exile becomes a shepherd, a guardian, and the protector of a land that has become his second home.

He did not find the magic he sought. He found the magic he needed.

Listen to the song again.

We've all heard the theory that Eat it is the prequel to Fat, but have we properly considered the in between? What happens after Fat? What about before Fat?

Eat it begins his obsession, but at the time he was still healthy, engaging with his hobby in a positive way, a light snack here and there, and a big dinner, bananas here and there. He eventually discovers Bologna (My Bologna), which he eats far too much of, and continually spends money buying more on food he throws up, never satiating his hunger. Eventually he goes bankrupt, leading to the events of "Whatever you like." During this time, he discovers his budget is an egregious amount of just bologna, however unwilling to put down the habit, he attempts to play Jeopardy to recover, but he loses. He has a messy breakup right as he starts getting off his feet, realizing that his girlfriend is poisoning his coffee a little each day, the events of "You don't love me anymore" then finally discovers he doesn't need to eat his bologna in one sitting, he can use foil and save it for later.

In order to recover from his financial instability, he gets a marketing job, being a telemarketer, he agrees to market foil, but also decides it's finally time to reveal his conspiracy theories he had heard from other financially struggling people. This leads to the events of "Foil" in which afterward he has his mind wiped and personality reset, the black ops however reset him too far, and over correct. He gains a hyper-fixation on food again, but specifically discovers Rocky Road this time (I love rocky road). And he eats so much rocky road that he becomes Fat, leading to the events of Fat.

Because of his health problems from being Fat, he develops a Hernia (Living with Hernia), and while trying to get it removed has to pay for the cheapest doctor, who barely made it through medschool. Thus leading to his heart beating for the very last time in "Like a Surgeon.

Therefore, the full timeline is Eat it -> My Bologna -> Whatever You Like/Lost on jeopardy -> You don't love me anymore -> Foil -> Rocky Road -> Fat -> Living with a Hernia -> Like a Surgeon.

This theory has been around for a while but wanted to get others' input on the likelihood of this theory being true.

We know that in the episode "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz", we see that Bender "reboots" after suffering a blow to the head and his operating system initialized in "Penguin Mode" after scanning the environment and only seeing penguins.

In the first episode "Space Pilot 3000", Bender is introduced as a diligent, hardworking bending unit designed to bend girders for suicide booths. While we are never told exactly why he attempted to kill himself, I always imagined it was due to remorse and a crisis of conscience after learning his job directly contributed to manufacturing suicide booths. He even tells Fry, "But I couldn't go on living once I found out what the girders were for... suicide booths."

When Fry and Bender are being pursued by Leela and law enforcement, the two hide in the "Head Museum", a museum filled with the heads of famous people throughout history, kept alive in jars. Eventually, they lock themselves in a room called "the hall of criminals".

When Fry is trying to convince Bender to bend the bars on the window so they can escape, Bender objects, saying that he is "only programmed to bend for constructive purposes. What do I look like, a debender?" and turns to leave. He then hits his antenna on a low hanging lightbulb and is shocked, rebooting his system. There is a dramatic shift in his personality and choices from this point on. He proceeds to bend the bars on the window and says, "From now on I'm going to bend what I want, when I want, and who I want. I am unstoppable!"

The theory goes that Bender's operating system scanned the environment, which at the time was filled with famous criminals, which should make him an absolute villain. However, Fry was also in the room, so that could explain why, despite being a hedonistic, narcissistic, and unapologetically criminal robot, he's also a "loveable rascal" that cares deeply for his friends.

I don’t think Jack was hiding his writing from Wendy because all he was writing was “All Work and No Play Make Jack a Dull Boy”. I think he was just possessive (heh) of his relationship with the Hotel which he really thought was inspiring him to write a great novel. In reality, the hotel was just tricking him into writing the same sentence over and over while it worked over his brain until it was mushy and he couldn’t think straight. The ghosts were probably talking amongst each other about how shit his writing was too.

Omni Corporation in TISW, Vance Kramer is an advertising executive for Omni Corporation living in Tasty Meadows with his wife and children. He brings home prototype consumer samples. His wife Pat Kramer is exposed to a cocktail of these experimental chemicals from Omni Corp.

The products contained a highly unstable and crude elements of the reverse engineered Pym Particle. Pat begins to shrink rapidly as a result of unique combination of chemicals.

Hank Pym hears about this as the phenomenon goes public.

Pat becomes a global media sensation, threatening to expose Omni Corporation and SHIELD. They stage Pat's death and abduct her. She is then taken to Omni’s ultra classified biological testing wing.

This is the exact facility where Omni is running parallel cross-species trials, using replicated and unstable Pym formulas on primates in effort to weaponize the Pym Particle despite Hanks refusal. Sidney the silverback gorilla has already developed hyper-intelligence from Omni's testing. Sidney understands human speech and recognizes that Pat is a victim of the same science that altered him and so he uses his advanced intellect to short-circuit the facility's security.

Sidney frees Pat Kramer and orchestrates a massive prison break, freeing himself in the process. Pat escapes directly to a massive public gathering, exposing Omni Corporation's dark experimentation to the world before going quantum before their eyes.

In attempt to avoid Hank Pym or the World Security Council from tracing Omni back to SHIELD, Mitchell Carson orders the immediate scrubbing of Omni Corporation. Documents are shredded, laboratories are burned, and Omni goes completely bankrupt. Sidney slips into the wilderness, carrying the mutated, altered genetic sequence responsible for superintelligence, inside his DNA. Years later Sidney is captured by poachers no idea he is an engineered weapon because Omni Corp was completely wiped from existence and he is sold to a biotech firm called Gen-Sys.

At the beginning of Ant-Man, Hank Pym slams the vial of replicated serum onto the table in front of Howard Stark, Peggy Carter, and Mitchell Carson in 1989, his dialogue directly references the human testing failure at Tasty Meadows. When Hank says, "It depends, if you think it's a poor attempt to replicate my work. Even for this group, that takes nerve," his hidden meaning ties entirely to the public relations disaster that SHIELD is actively trying to sweep under the rug. Hank is furious about the blatant, dangerous instability of the counterfeit formula. Hank spent decades perfecting a formula that safely compresses the space between atoms while preserving human mass and sanity. SHIELD, through Omni Corp, completely bypassed safety protocols and mass-distributed a diluted, volatile version of the particle elements into household consumer goods. When Hank says it's a "poor attempt," he is referencing the fact that their formula doesn't work on command, it contaminates. It leaked into the civilian sector and caused an ordinary housewife to shrink uncontrollably. Hank says that he "took a detour" through their defense lab on his way back from Moscow.

The defense lab is the centralized command hub where SHIELD could be receiving real time data feeds from Omni Corporation’s testing facility. Hank hacked or physically bypassed their security and saw that they were tracking the ongoing televised fallout of the Tasty Meadows incident. When Hank stands in that room, he is looking at Mitchell Carson, the man funding the Omni front, knowing that SHIELDs sloppy science just caused a massive domestic incident in Tasty Meadows. He takes his serum back because he realizes SHIELD will eventually cause a global disaster if they keep trying to reverse engineer his particle without him.

I have not seen this fan theory anywhere, but it seems so obvious to me. Would love to hear the thoughts of other fans.

So Queen Elinor tells Merida Mor'du's backstory as a cautionary tale of how Merida not wanting to be forcibly married to one of three suitors is equivalent to Mor'du bringing about the downfall of his kingdom by murdering his younger brothers and conquering their holdings after their father evenly handed down authority over his kingdom to his sons.

We aren't going to be discussing whether or not that was a false equivalence. Let's talk about if this was a direct parallel.

Given the context of the setting, let's imagine that Mor'du wanted to rule his holdings without getting married to a princess. But the monarchy system forces him to be a suitor to princesses (or just marry a princess) he wants nothing to do with. Then things go from bad to worse when the relationship breaks down upon them getting to know each other, he kills her, and either gets imprisoned or has personal guards that help him turn his holdings into a totalitarian dictatorship so nobody can arrest or stop him. Then the other kingdoms attack his to depose him.

This would be a far more direct parallel, but it would also be tricky to tell the story in such a way where the takeaway isn't "and that's why forced marriage is actually a good thing". Merida not wanting to get married and essentially restrained by a loveless marriage she doesn't consent to being in is an understandable motive, but what if Mor'du was put in a similar situation? And in the words of René Belloq, "a shadowy reflection" of Merida of what could happen if the way she goes about it takes too many wrong turns?

What do you think of my alternate plot idea so far? Where could the story go from there?

I really believe that all the Asgardians in the MCU know Allspeak and that’s the reason they can talk to anyone. If you go back through the movies the only people that Hulk ever talks to/can understand him at all are Asgardians. The first and only words we heard him speak for years was “Puny god” after slamming Loki. Then he goes to Sakaar and the only friend he makes while he’s been there for years is Valk,another Asgardian who isn’t even an arena fighter. Then he actually spends some time with Thor and they talk. The funny thing about Allspeak is that it’s magic that makes you “talk with the heart,not the tongue” and Hulk was really really talking about his feelings most of the movie. And then in Endgame we get Thor who understands Groot,while the universal translators that everyone else has seemingly don’t have enough info on his language to make a translation,while Thor understands him instantly. I think when he said “it was an elective” he was literally talking about learning how to use Allspeak when he was a kid.

The Na'vi have the three laws of Eywa. You shall not set stone upon stone. Neither shall you use the turning wheel. Nor use the metals of the ground. The first law is interpreted as no building permanent structures with non renewable resources. The other two are pretty straight forward, no building devices with wheels and no using metal tools. It's all about living harmoniously with nature instead of fighting against it to extract resources. But wouldn't the Na'vi need to be familiar with these concepts in order for them to make laws banning them? They would need to know what a wheel, metal, and permanent structures are. My theory was that some time in the distant past the Na'vi had a more advanced civilization, something equivalent to our Bronze age or even more advanced. But then they had some kind of societal collapse, also like our Bronze age, and instead of trying to rebuild they dedicated themselves to a simpler way of life. They came up with the three laws as a guide to avoid redeveloping into a technologically advanced society.

Other people have noticed that the Na'vi are different from other complex lifeforms on Pandora. Only one set of eyes, no separate breathing holes, four limbs vs six limbs, and only one Queue instead of two. This alone dose not mean much. The Na'vi evolutionary line might have split away very far back so they developed these differences over a great span of time. But then in the third movie is where things get interesting. We see Spider get infected with a strange local fungus and start to develop Na'vi like traits. He gains the ability to breath Pandora's air and starts to grow a Queue similar to the Na'vi. If this could happen to a non native species like a human could it happen to others? So if we take this new development and combine it with the observations that the Na'vi are dissimilar to other Pandora lifeforms and with the theory that they once had a more technologically advanced society we come to a new conclusion. The Na'vi are not native to Pandora. They arrived on Pandora from somewhere else like the humans, some got infected with the strange fungus, and they decided to go native. This event happened so far back in the distant past that their true origin has faded into myth or has been completely forgotten.

I don't think James Cameron was planning that far ahead when he made the first Avatar movie. He probably just wanted some sexy blue alien people to help sell his film. But I think it would make for an interesting twist.

Spoilers for the whole series (and the film) abound herein.

The single most destructive, dangerous cohort of people in the world is the ultra-rich. I don't think this is a particularly contentious claim; literally anyone with access to the internet or a newspaper can see the havoc they wreak on just about everything normal people care about, from sports teams to the media to infrastructure to our political systems to our very way of life. We are all, in some way, subject to the capricious whims of a group of people with more money than God and far, far less self-control.

In many ways, your average billionaire (or, sigh, trillionaire) has more in common with your average toddler than they do with you or me: enormous willpower, no impulse control, astonishingly short attention spans and, above all, the total conviction that the world revolves around them. A toddler lacks the ability to consider the ramifications of their actions; a billionaire is so insulated from the ramifications of theirs that consideration is no longer necessary. Once you have enough money, no one says no to you any more. The normal structures that govern society and temper our worst instincts cease to exist, and doing whatever you want, whenever you want, no matter how utterly insane or destructive, becomes normal.

What I think is particularly telling about the current crop of IRL billionaires is the extent to which they all seem to be possessed by some misbegotten sense of higher-order purpose. Silicon Valley tech types seem especially prone to this. Now that earthly pleasure and pain have become meaningless to them, they all seem to have adopted some variety of utterly bonkers world view or mystical belief to give their lives meaning; the kind of views and beliefs that can only come from huffing your own farts for too long and forcing everyone around you to huff them with you. Thiel and the Antichrist, Elon and Mars, Amodei/Altman and the AI apocalypse; effective altruism, accelerationism, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, etc. etc. All of them, in some way, fervently believe they're saving the world from something, often a something of their own invention.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I'm sure that at least some people in our respective governments are aware of this utterly insane state of affairs and its potential for catastrophe. I'm also sure that the corpses of Milton Friedman and trickle-down economics are a stumbling block to real action like, I dunno, proper taxation or meaningful regulation. So what can you do? How do you deal with a group of all-powerful toddlers looking for something to do with their hands?

Well, how do you deal with an actual toddler? Anyone who has ever looked after one knows you can't win by fighting them head on; you redirect. You give them a play kitchen so they leave the real oven alone, and a wooden spoon so they can "help" with dinner and feel important. But distraction on its own only buys you about ten minutes. What actually keeps a small child settled is purpose: a job, a role, some rules to follow and a story in which they're the hero. And, crucially, they can never find out the kitchen is plastic, because the moment they do, they'll lose interest and make a beeline for the real oven. So imagine you had to do that for the ultra-rich. You'd need to build them a play kitchen big enough to lose themselves in, complete with a dressing-up box, nemeses, a rulebook and a sense of cosmic destiny, and you'd need to make absolutely sure none of them ever twigs that it isn't real.

Which brings me to The Venture Bros.

the OSI and the Guild of Calamitous Intent are an elaborate plan to give billionaires a sense of purpose (and something to spend their money on) that is structured, contained and, most of all, separate from the real world.

The damage they do is limited, orchestrated with strict rules and boundaries, and managed by a government agency; think of it as a larger-scale, sci-fi, government-mandated version of David Fincher's The Game, combined with Ankh-Morpork's legalisation and regulation of crime via the guild system.

There are a few main points that have led me to this conclusion.

1. Arching as a ruleset

You can't just go after someone in the world of The Venture Bros. You have to be a card-carrying member of the Guild, and you have to be assigned an arch; there's paperwork, there are permits, there are levels, and there's an official Guild rep who turns up to make sure you're doing it properly. Villains get told off for unsanctioned attacks in exactly the way a LARPer gets told off for hitting someone in the face with a foam sword. The whole organisation is built around the performance of wanting to do evil, not actually doing any; whenever someone does try to use the toys for real power, the system comes down on them like a ton of bricks (Phantom Limb's attempted coup against the Council of 13 being the obvious example). The OSI is exactly the same in its bureaucracy and paperwork, with the same habit of shuffling people between "sides" whenever the story needs it. Sgt. Hatred going from approved arch-villain to the Ventures' bodyguard is an awful lot like a GM reassigning an NPC to keep a struggling player's campaign going.

2. Your arch scales with your bank balance

For most of the series Rusty is skint. He's coasting on his dad's name, the compound is quite literally falling apart around him, and his arch-nemesis is the Monarch: an obsessive, disorganised orphan heir burning through the family fortune on butterfly-themed nonsense. Then JJ dies, Rusty inherits his brother's company, moves to New York and he suspiciously and immediately gets a bigger, scarier, more professional arch-villain. Rusty presumably takes this as a sign that he's finally important. To me it seems pretty clear that more money means a more dangerous toddler, and a more dangerous toddler needs a more absorbing distraction. Your threat level is pegged to your net worth.

3. Rusty

Jonas Venture Sr. and Team Venture were the golden generation: the jet-set gentleman adventurers who played the game better than anyone and never once suspected it was a game. The Venture Compound always felt more like a theme park than a laboratory, and Rusty's childhood adventures were turned into a merchandising franchise, like he was some sort of tie-in product. Rusty is simultaneously the closest anyone in the show comes to seeing through the facade and the most gullible person in it. On the one hand, he's spent his whole life sensing that none of this adds up to anything; the adventures are hollow, the science goes nowhere and the triumphs never stick, though he draws the wrong conclusions about what this means. On the other hand: Spanakopita! There is an entire episode devoted to the ways in which the wool is pulled over his eyes; an entire Greek island has been putting on a fake festival for his benefit every year since he was a boy, and he still hasn't twigged. That feels like a clue.

4. The rest of the world

There's a giant flying cocoon over the suburbs. There are death rays, giant robots and a necromancer living next door, and the rest of the world just... carries on. The police are basically nowhere to be seen, and civilians barely look up. In a world with cloning, teleportation and ray guns, nobody has cured anything or fixed anything, and society looks exactly like ours with a sixties retrofuturist coat of paint slapped on top. Why? Because none of it is ever allowed to leave the play kitchen.

*Conclusion *

Is this real? I have no idea. I wish it were. Our billionaire toddler calss would be a far less destructive force if, instead of buying up social networks and governments, they each get a flying cocoon, a costume, a nemesis and a stack of Guild paperwork, and the only people who have to deal with the consequences are the other players (and, admittedly, a few unlucky henchmen). The damage is contained, the rules are clear, and somebody vaguely responsible is keeping an eye on the whole thing.

A lot of people have been wondering how they will introduce Mutants in the MCU. Many thought it would have been after Secret Wars but considering that Jean Gray Is in the MCU already and that Ms. Marvel and Wonder Man (and Namor I Guess) are also technically Mutants it seems to imply that Mutants already exist in the MCU but how they will explained?

I honestly feel like that is weird that we have already Mutants while it doesn’t seem to be huge as a species like in the comics but Here’s the thing: What If this is not as casual as it seems.

I want to re-propouse an idea that I already pitched two years ago (Here) about years ago about Doomsday and Secret Wars potentially revealing that the main 616 Earth has been stripped of the Fantastic Four and Mutants existence. This was an attempt by He Who Remains to stop the rise of Doom and the existence of Franklin Richards with the First Multiverse War being secretly a War revealed Also to have involved Doom and Franklin Richards and with He Who Remains erasing Latveria, FF and Mutants while re-organize the Seacred Timeline to assure himself to reing supreme and keeping the truth a secret.

This brings us to the events of Loki and the death of He Who Remains caused the Multiverse to be repristinated as well as Realities where Doom and Mutants exist in other realities. Then Loki became the new God of Stories and took over the role of He Who Remains.

My theory is that in Doomsday or Secret Wars, Doom is going to reveal this but also that Loki was in fact trying to undo what HWR did by trying to bring Mutants and what he erased back into the main Earth. Jean Gray, Ms. Marvel and The events of Eternals that brought Adamantium into the main Earth are all attempts by Loki to give the main Earth a part that they lost due to HWR.

As it is heavily rumoured that Sadie Sink Will Return in SW think this is where the reveal is going to happen. Jean will meet the Fox X-Men (if Some will survive Doom’s Carnage) and Doom Who is going to find out Loki‘s attempt to bring Mutants back into the main universe. Ultimately they’ll be back thanks to Franklin Richards Who is able to merge elements from 616, 828 and 10005 leading to Mutants and FF being represtinated into the main timeline with most of the MCU happening the same way but with FF Be a part of the 1st age of heroes fighting with the Avengers in Infinity War and also the X-Men being a new team formed in response to years of Mutants being feared in the new universe.

i have a theory on why lex luthor is such a goofy twitchy and chaotic villain in batman v superman and acts so out of character for someone who is supposed to be lex luthor the stoic, serious and calculating business man. well what if he was never even supposed to be lex luthor? let me explain. picture this: the justice league died in a final battle pretty early in their careers. with his ultimate adversary batman, gone the joker saw no point in continuing his villainy and retired. after their secret identitys where revealed at the funeral, a bored joker began experimenting on himself so he could live a normal life. reversing his bleached skin and leaving his hair a bright ginger. however the empty feeling of having noone left to foil him drove him to keep experimenting until one day he discovered the multiverse. he found a universe whose lex died during an attack of someone named general zod leaving a massive corporate vacuum. he also noticed this universes batman was brutal, branding and killlling criminals and most importantly had no robin meaning he would have batman all to himself. it sounded to good but the problem was this universe already had a joker. but it no longer had a lex. becoming lex luthor and claiming he survived would have been too complicated. instead he claimed to be lex luthor junior lex luthors son. that way he would get the company from lex and with that a bunch of money so he can pull of a scheme to play with batman. this perfectly explains several in universe details that the fans have complained about for years. first: it explains why lex acts completely like a manic high pitched clown rather than the stoic business man we know him to be. second his wardrobe: on the helipad he literally confronts superman while wearing a classic joker purple shirt under a green jacket. third it explains why he has a weird obsession with targeting batman sending bruce wayne blood red notes like you let your family die depsite lex usually hating superman more. he treats superman likea fun toy but his ultimate chess match pushes batman over the edge. he insnt a traditional business man: he is a visitor from another universe who put on a suit just to get his favorite playmate back. i mean he litterally creates genius yet chaotic plans, acts unhinged and targets batman it looks like he is hiding that he is supposed to be the joker.

I’m not kidding, when I talk to people about this show it is fully canonical to me that those kids lose that battle to Vecna and that’s it.

Like, the events and the way they play out is so strongly textual and imbedded into how it reads, whether intentional or not ny the show creators there’s almost no way to seriously read the events and not take it that way With a straight face.

The kids storm in to this supreme Dark Warlocks realm his homeworld where he expects them.

They attack and within seconds he is “impaled” and just goes limp and croaks. No second act, no “they always come back” Michael Myers finale, just gone.

Cue the music. And now the kids are in a perfect dream world where everyone is dressed up and nice, they all magically graduate including Max which literally does not work in the logical timeline of her events given she was in a coma.

No longer are they dressed up like the oddballs they were all dressed up in clean nice clothes, fitting in perfectly.

Mike who now wears glasses is writing about their adventures And they all move on to different colleges.

How nice.

And also how completely ridiculous. Everything about this screams they are still stuck in some perfect little construct that Vecna created just like the perfect little mansion he made up where he ALSO trapped all those kids.

Yeah I just wanted to refresh everyone that YES indeed Vecna did win against those children.

Recently rewatched Coraline. I watch it pretty often and I have to say, I’m so confused about Wbyies. I love him in the movie but he’s so suspicious. I wish they went into his backstory a bit more. I’ve heard he wasn’t an original character to begin with but, it’s still intriguing.
Wybie found the coraline doll in his grandmas trunk then gave it to Coraline and that’s how the Other Mother spied on her. His full name is “Wyborne” and it’s very mocking. Even in the other world, it seemed as if the other Wyborne was trying to “warn” Coraline. Which he did end up helping her in the end.
I just look at it as Wyborne and “The other Wyborne” are the same person. Thoughts??

It’s fun having James Spader on in visionquest obviously he voiced Ultron in the Movie but as an actual avatar it makes sense why he looks like James Spader also, specifically an older one.

James Spader experienced a TV renaissance late stage in his career. He kind of became “Mr. TV” in a way taking Audiences by storm with The Blacklist, a smash hit series. Then also as The hilarious Ron California in The Office. And other appearances.

Vision and even Tommy and even Ultron himself have themselves expressed in their muddled memories TV is a core reference point, they learn much of humanity through it. Classic TV, modern and the flux of humanity through time. I believe vosion based a visual reference of Ultron from James Spader as a perfect blend of those later TV shows.

I remember watching the animated short Shooting Star when it first came out and there is a flashback that is 3 seconds that is perfect it’s execution of story telling, I think the reason why it was so good. Is because it told you everything you needed to know about that fight in 3 seconds.

It also made it clear that Hana has developed PTSD, the way she stares off for a few seconds while her friend is talking to her before answering. After her mind remembered a battle they almost lost. But what if I told you theres two great details, that I’m not sure if it was intended by the animators?

A year ago I visited my brother in Portland, I went to hang out with him and some of his friends. We’re chillin at this bar and one of his friends starts recounting a story. Where the base they were staying at in Iraq was being droned. His friend told us that is was raining really heavily that day and he was running to the barracks from the canteen when a drone landed a few feat away and exploded, which knocked him to the floor. He laughed it off saying it was the closest he ever came to dying. My brother was stationed at that base with him during this attack and was confused, because he didn’t remember that it was raining at all.

They discussed it for a bit, but it caused me to remember a an article I read all the way back in college.

The effects of trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on the emotion-induced memory trade-off

TLDR: This is a 2012 study that examined how trauma exposure and PTSD affect memory for emotional events. Researchers found that people with PTSD remembered emotionally important objects better than the neutral backgrounds around them, but this pattern was largely the same as in people without PTSD. The findings suggest that PTSD does not necessarily cause unusually distorted memories of emotional events; instead, people tend to remember the central, emotionally significant parts of an experience more strongly than surrounding contextual details. This helps explain why peripheral details, such as weather, lighting, or other environmental conditions; may be remembered differently than the core event itself.

After going back to read this study, I realized that dude may have been having some kind of an episode. When I talked to my brother about it, he told me his friend had been going to therapy.

If we apply what we learned from this study, theres a chance that thunderstorm never actually happened. Her mind is just recalling all of the negative details and filling in the blanks on the neutral details with negative ones. Plenty of cultures associate thunderstorms negatively, which maybe why she saw that.

There is another auditory detail that to me is definitive that she is misremembering this event.

During this 3 second flash back, we hear her mech’s alarm ringing over and over again. This alarm is seems to he trigger if her mech suffers major damage. In that flash back there is no visual damage on that mech at all.

We only hear that alarm again, later in the short. When the robot completely disables her mech suit and she’s forced to solo ult on it. If we take all of this into consideration, she’s heard that alarm before and it didn’t actually ring the way she remembered in that specific flashback.

A lot of her character is just about hiding behind a mask. Dva is the was only tank that has a second phase where she’s highly vulnerable, the mech serves as a metaphorical mask that shields this otherwise vulnerable physically unremarkable person from all of danger she puts herself in.

To conclude Hana’s ptsd is at the point where it’s causing her to not remember things clearly as they happened.

Aran Ryan appears in both Super Punch-Out and Punch-Out on the Wii. His first appearance has him as a pretty normal opponent (for that game, anyway) where the only thing he has that is a cause for concern is his temper, caused by him being teased at school for his first name.

In Punch-Out for the Wii, Ryan's behavior is extremely unsportsmanlike, as he exhibits behaviors like headbutting, elbowing, taunting, and even loading his gloves with horseshoes. And that's just scratching the surface. So not only is this guy probably gonna get banned for life in the boxing ring, he might get a homicide charge too.

So, what's the cause for this sudden change? Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE for short. Anyone involved in contact sports such as American football, boxing, MMA, and more has a chance of getting CTE. Some of the symptoms include emotional irritability (explains Ryan's temper getting out of control, as he yells at the audience and gets held back by the referee), increased aggression (explains Ryan's taunting of Little Mac both in and out of the match) and his overall low impulse control (explains loading his gloves with horseshoes, him stealing Little Mac's gloves in Title Defense, his demeanor as a whole).

"But why is he still in the tournament?"

This is the same boxing organization that has Little Mac, a guy who's not even an adult yet, fight magicians (Great Tiger, Don Flamenco) guys WAY above his weight class (Disco Kid, King Hippo, Bear Hugger) and literal animals (Bear Hugger's squirrel, Donkey Kong). Do you really think they'd say no to a guy with possible mental issues?

Similarly to Clyde Wyncham) from Earth-1219 (see Marvel 1985 comic series) Tommy is one of if not the ONLY Mutant on his Earth. He conjured the St. Elsewhere show inspired by the snowglobe he had at the end of St. Elsewhere. All the shows who are connected to it are all shows who Tommy watched or people he knew watched when he was a kid or while growning up, this is the reason why the Tommy Westphall universe kept growing through the years after the show ended.

Okay so I love TKWNKM.

Love isekai/ portal novels because I get to learn about entirely knew worlds. I love learning the mundane stuff, the weird and wild animals, probably my favourite part of fantasy books is the world building tbh. The characters are a part of that I promise 😂

Please feel free to let me know if I should post this somewhere else, just not sure where to post rants about plot theories.

Anyway on to my theory portion, I have two main ones:

○ Maggie is the Scholar aspect or possibly has a blessing from that aspect.

○ Silveren is another aspect and similarly got transported and also doesn't die. I haven't quite figured out which aspect, but it's possible.

The Maggie being the scholar aspect and reasons:

- Her power to recall everything in the book; she even admits that she doesn't have an eidetic memory and thinks it's superhuman/unnatural.

- Knowledge of all languages, including the language of magic.

- When she was picking up the lady Mage and the temple reacted to her presence.

- If she's an aspect she's technically not human so the dying then living again thing tracks.

- Probably the reason she has a lot of magic.

Silveren also being an aspect:

Not really related but another Silveren theory.

I think he was the one who chased Maggie into the garden after the scene where she first sees the Duke. That's why I think he knew she was playing a part when she first saw him but i don't think that's when he first saw her.

Which leads me to question if he was following her long before that, or maybe he's the reason she ended up in Kair toren in the first place. Could just be a coincidence but I doubt it.

Whilst I can't figure out if he is an aspect I can say that when Maggie 🔪 him it was somewhat brutal and even if he used some healing I doubt he would have been able to heal that well that quickly.

He was walking around seemingly fine very shortly, hours not days, after nearly being unalived by Maggie (or possibly coming back from it, hence the aspect theory). I mean yeah people get up after being 🔪 and I know it's reasonably hard to be unalived by 🔪 alone.

I don't think it's one of those things where you should think "magic heals all and suspend reality, for fantasy worlds" is because in the writing they went out of their way to debunk the fact that the 💀 people in the Derog Olgren scene weren't heavy. The writing showed that Maggie and the Duke struggled equally when they were getting rid of them.

Also the book mentions Silveren surviving after falling from a tall building, where he sustained injuries to both of his legs as a kid. So it could have been then when he learned about it and actually 💀 in that house.

Now he publically uses his legs as a reason to fiegn a weakness strategically.

I thought maybe he might be the warrior aspect or blessed by it. Possible some sort of animal keeper aspect but I think that just might be the power he inherited not the aspect blessing.

Anyway rant over.

Also comment anything I might have missed or alternative theories because I'd love to hear them.

Edit: noticed in a reread that Silveren, likely thought she was interesting because she resisted his Exaltant call, the power of the Savarics. I think she notices his voice is sweet and velvety but doesn't react to it.

Has anyone considered the historical significance of the name Cold Harbor and the fact that Lumon was founded in 1865, the same year the American Civil War ended and slavery was abolished?
I have a theory that Lumon’s ultimate objective may be much older than severance technology itself.
What if Lumon represents a multigenerational effort to restore the slave-based economy that the South lost after the Civil War?
Consider the following:

1. Cold Harbor — 1864
2. The Battle of Cold Harbor was one of Robert E. Lee’s last major victories against Union forces, despite the Confederacy ultimately losing the war.
3. Why would the writers choose the name of this particular Civil War battlefield for a major Lumon project?
4. Lumon was founded in 1865
5. That’s the exact year the Confederacy collapsed and the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery.
6. Coincidence? Maybe. But the timing seems worth investigating.
7. Severance creates a new form of slavery
8. Think about what an innie actually experiences.
9. They never go home. They never enjoy weekends. They never receive a paycheck. They have no independent lives outside their workplace.
10. Their entire conscious existence consists of working for Lumon.
11. Meanwhile, their outies believe they’re freely choosing employment.
12. In other words, Lumon has potentially developed a system in which the person consenting to employment isn’t the same conscious identity performing the labor.
13. The perfect slave is someone who believes they’re free
14. The show repeatedly explores the relationship between freedom, obedience, and control.
15. What if severance is the ultimate solution to the problem of controlling human labor?
16. Instead of physically imprisoning workers, Lumon imprisons their consciousness.
17. Kier Eagan and the ether factory
18. Kier reportedly met his wife, Imogene, while working at an ether factory.
19. Ether is associated with anesthesia and unconsciousness.
20. Could the Eagan family’s fascination with controlling consciousness have roots in its earliest industrial history?
21. And could Kier’s experience as a laborer have influenced his philosophy of absolute employer authority?
22. The Eagan dynasty may actually be declining
23. Something else bothers me about Lumon.
24. Mark lives in a company-owned neighborhood where many houses appear empty.
25. Lumon’s security operations seem surprisingly understaffed for a corporation supposedly controlling revolutionary technology.
26. And the CEO’s own daughter, Helena Eagan, undergoes severance as part of a campaign to convince the public that the procedure is acceptable.
27. Why would such a powerful corporation need such an extraordinary publicity stunt?
28. What if Lumon isn’t expanding successfully but struggling to achieve the objective its founders established generations earlier?
29. The ultimate contradiction: freedom means death for the innies
30. If the innies succeed in shutting down severance, they may effectively end their own conscious existence.
31. They must choose between continuing to exist as captive workers or potentially disappearing to secure freedom.
32. That’s a disturbing moral dilemma.
33. Lumon = Light On?
34. Another possible piece of wordplay: Lumon sounds like “light on.”
35. Could this relate to activating consciousness, switching identities on and off, or the company’s supposed mission of enlightenment?
36. I’ve also been paying attention to names like Mark Scout, the recurring colors, and apparently insignificant details such as trash collection schedules.
37. The show seems unusually deliberate about its symbolism.
38. My larger theory
39. Perhaps the Eagan dynasty isn’t simply another corporation pursuing power.
40. Perhaps it represents an ideology that survived the Civil War, adapted through generations of industrial capitalism, and eventually developed technology capable of restoring an entire system of involuntary labor.
41. The South lost the Civil War, but what if Lumon represents an attempt to win the economic struggle generations later?
42. I’m not claiming the show has confirmed any of this. I’m wondering whether these historical connections are intentional.

Don’t forget the battle cry after the South lost was
“the South shall rise again”

So I’ve been cooking this theory for a while and I think it actually holds up pretty well across the books, games, and all the old forum threads.
The Elder Blood isn’t a straight bloodline that starts with Lara Dorren. It’s a closed time loop that Ciri herself keeps creating. In at least one timeline she fails to stop the White Frost (or loses control of her powers) and the catastrophe flings a child of that bloodline, Alvin. Back through the spheres.

That’s why Alvin has such similar abilities, why he becomes Jacques de Aldersberg, and why he’s obsessed with the Frost and “saving” humanity the wrong way. He’s the failed version of the chosen one, the dark mirror.

The Law of Surprise keeps yanking Geralt into the loop because the blood itself is entangled across realities; Geralt’s repeated “I claim the Law of Surprise” moments aren’t coincidence, they’re the mechanism. And the only reason our timeline works is because Geralt keeps choosing Ciri as “something more” than destiny. That free will choice is what finally lets her succeed instead of becoming the Destroyer.

It also lines up with all the recent Witcher 4 speculation about her taking a version of the Trial. She’s not just becoming a witcher for the aesthetic — she’s deliberately dulling or corrupting the Elder Blood so the loop can’t restart and produce another Alvin. The seed that “will not sprout but burst into flame” is Ciri… and she’s the one trying to make sure it never has to bloom again.

Now this may seem far fetched, But I promise it makes COMPLETE sense and fits within the stories themes.

Now I started thinking about this when I learned that bears are extinct in the FNAF universe. This is confirmed in a throwaway piece of cut dialogue called LOC_Subtitle_DREAD_00067

"Did you know that bears like pizza sauce more than honey? It's true! Before their extinction, bears were well known to attack pizza delivery trucks more than any other food service vehicles. This has been another Faz-Fact!"

Reddit thread with Source

Now many fans were confused why bears would be extinct. They very clearly existed at somepoint in the FNAF universe, so what happened to them? Well introducing project 2025.

Project 2025 is a policy blueprint book for some conservative politicians in the United States. It called for a series of government reforms and policy changes. With one of their main points being to delist the Grizzly Bear.

"Delist the grizzly bear in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide Ecosystems and defend to the Supreme Court of the United States the agency’s fact-based decision to do so."

This can be found on page 534 on Project 2025

So if Project 2025 went through completely, it could be assumed that all bears would die.

And Project-2025 has many more policies that would explain the strange and nightmareish creations found in the PIzza-Plex of security breach.

Besides killing all bears, another one of Project 2025's main goals is to "Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people." Page 3.

This can explain many of insane things found with there being drastically reduced safety regulations from the CPSC or OSHA.

For example. Here are some quotes from Project 2025.

"But executive reforms and actions, while vital, are not enough: Congress also must act. The next President should work with Congress to pass significant regulatory policy and process reforms, which could go a long way toward reining in the administrative state."

Page 50

“EPA’s structure and mission should be greatly circumscribed to reflect the principles of cooperative federalism and limited government.”

Page 420

This is my thesis: The insane construction and reckless safety of the Pizza-Plex could only arise from deeply reduced safety measures.

This is a video of all OSHA violations of the Pizza Plex. They found numerous offenses.

Some highlights include:

• VIP only emergency exits
• Weaponized animotronics with powerful lazers
• The toddler daycare is run by a robot that becomes malevolent and deadly if a child flips off the light switch
• The laser tag arena uses fog machines that cause respiratory failure
• The building automatically locks down at midnight by trapping customers inside

But there is also one final piece of evidence.

The Fnaf community is very left leaning. But what you might not know is Scott Cawthon's, the creator of FNAF, political leaning. He is a Republican. He has made this clear in both public announcements and donations to Donald Trump's Political Campaign.

Here is the Megathread outlining proof he is republican.

Now since he created FNAF, it would not be too far-fetched to assume that he would base the world off of what he wants from the real world. Which could include Project-2025 coming to fruition.

TLDR: Bears in fnaf are extinct and project 2025 calls for the delisting of the grizzly bear. The PIzzaplex has insane safety flaws and reckless construction and this comes from deregulated safety requirements. Scott Cawthon is a Republican.