These Wild Fan Theories About Films Will Throw You for a Loop

Movies can take us on wild adventures and to places you’d never imagine. Still, fans often dream about what’s happening just off the frame, and love to theorize about plot threads, secret sequels, and connected universes. Here are ten of the coolest fan theories about movies!

Stan Lee Is a Watcher

Stan Lee made numerous cameos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, always as a different character. Sometimes he was a rich socialite, other times he was a bus driver. Fans theorized he must have been portraying a Watcher, an extraterrestrial who watches over reality. Marvel themselves acknowledged this theory in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, with Lee’s cameo including him telling a group of actual Watchers some of the unexplainable things he’d witnessed.

Inception and Totems

Inception is a mind-bending movie about plunging into other people’s dreams. The only way to tell if you’re in a dream or not is by consulting your totem, a special object that can take a different form for each person. Cobb, the protagonist, carries his wife’s spinning top totem. However, he must have his own totem—likely his wedding ring, which isn’t seen in the film’s closing shot. This suggests he finally made it back to reality.

Donkey is a Kid from Pleasure Island

In the classic tale Pinocchio, children on Pleasure Island are turned into donkeys in order to be sold off. In Shrek, Eddie Murphy’s character is the only talking donkey around. So, is it possible he was once a Pleasure Island kid who was turned into a donkey and never reverted to his human form?

Mad Max is a Folk Tale

A screenshot from Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior — Warner Bros

What’s going on in the Mad Max franchise? Each movie is so wildly different from the one that precedes it that it’s hard to tell, exactly, what Max Rockatansky’s timeline is. One fan theory eschews any attempts to tie the four versions of Max together and instead suggests that he’s a folk hero, like John Henry or Paul Bunyon, and that each movie represents a different retelling of his myth by a group of survivors in the wasteland.

Skyfall and the Bonds

The 2012 film Skyfall reckons with the legacy of James Bond. In the climactic scene, Bond reconnects with his housekeeper, Kincade, who was at one point meant to be played by Sean Connery. Fans think this could mean that Connery’s version of Bond and Daniel Craig’s exist in the same world, and that “James Bond” might be an MI6 codename for whoever is in the current role of 007.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Rold Dahl’s beloved story, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, has been interpreted on the big screen numerous times. One fan theory posits that Wonka’s decision to give the factory to Charlie was more of a punishment than a reward, as it essentially curses the boy with a lifetime of looking over the bizarre, fantasy-tinged factory as a recluse like Wonka.

The Snowpiercer Connection

This theory pushes further out into the 2013 sci-fi film Snowpiercer, with fans claiming that the film’s antagonist, Wilford, is actually Charlie Bucket as an adult. After inheriting Wonka’s factory, he supposedly changed his name to Wilford Wonka, and used Wonka’s inherited technology to create the train that allows humanity to survive the endless winter.

The Tarantino Theory

Quentin Tarantino’s films are clearly connected in some way, with characters Vic Vega from Reservoir Dogs and Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction being brothers. Fans have been trying to properly tie these films together with a unifying theory for decades.

The “Real” World and the “Movie” World

Tarantino himself has stated that his movies actually inhabit two different shared universes. Theres’ the “real” world, where movies like Django Unchained and True Romance take place, and then there’s the “cinema” world. Basically, movies like From Dusk Til Dawn and Kill Bill are movies within Tarantino’s shared universe.

The Pixar Theory

This all-encompassing fan theory posits that all of Pixar’s films take place in the same continuity. This is supported, fans say, by the numerous easter eggs suggesting these disparate films are all aware of one another. Pixar offers a few sly nods to this theory with each movie, though the timeline gets more convoluted with each new entry.