30 Wild Theories That Completely Change These Classic Movies

Over the many years since it was first released, there have been many theories surrounding 1939’s classic adventure flick The Wizard of Oz. Some have claimed that the movie is a parable for a variety of themes such as feminism and populism.

Arguably one of the wildest theories though revolves around Dorothy’s life in Kansas. Apparently, the female protagonist is supposed to be the Wicked Witch of the East in Oz because her farmhouse crushed her at the beginning of the novel…

One of the most heavily debated parts of Pulp Fiction is undoubtedly the golden briefcase. When Vince Vega opens it up and stares at it in awe, the viewer is dying to know what’s inside.

Some have speculated that whatever it is might be the soul of the crime lord in the movie, Marcellus Wallace. However, Quentin Tarantino has often debunked any wild theories, simply suggesting that the case is a McGuffin that drives the plot along.

It’s impossible not to stare in awe at the prehistoric wonders in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. But there is a theory out there that makes the original movie extremely disturbing. In short, the theory suggests that the “dinosaurs” that we see in the movie are not brought to life with dinosaur DNA.

In fact, they are actually an amalgamation of different animals, with the end result being what humans believe would look, sound and act like a dinosaur. Pretty freaky stuff.

Many fans of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off have suspected that his sidekick Cameron may have actually been the main character of the movie. In a similar twist to Fight Club, Ferris is actually an imagination constructed by Cameron due to the possibility that he has multiple personality disorder.

This would ultimately explain some of the stranger things that happen in the movie, most notably – the parade. At the end of the movie, Cameron finally realizes he no longer needs his alter-ego in his life.

While his origins aren’t exactly spelled out in the movie, one person theorized that The Dark Knight‘s Joker might have military roots. Not only could it be that the Joker’s insane behavior is a bi-product of PTSD, but the villain has all sorts of surprising skills that soldiers are often equipped with.

Not only is he capable of holding up a fight with Batman, but he is extremely calculated when it comes to planning huge operations like bank heists.

This seems like a long shot, but someone theorized that The Hunger Games is part of a timeline in which Britain ended up winning the Revolutionary War. According to Reddit user TheMartianManhunter, Britain defeated America and destroyed District 13 to intimidate the 12 other colonies.

The Hunger Games was then part of Britain’s plan to instill fear into all of its civilians. This “revisionist historical account” certainly changes the way we look at this film franchise.

Sean Connery’s character in 1996’s The Rock, John Mason, is a British ex-intelligence officer who is the only person ever to have escaped Alcatraz prison. However, one of the wildest theories on this list is that the character is actually James Bond who ended up in prison and is brought back out in his old age to perform one last mission.

The character’s identity no longer exists in the movie, so this theory checks out!

When The Fast And The Furious came out nearly two decades ago, no one expected it to evolve into one of the biggest film franchises in all of cinema. Ever since filmmakers started making sequels to the 2001 car action movie, many fans have theories as to what makes the series so successful.

It is believed that the franchise models Dungeons and Dragons in that the same characters “level-up” at the end of each movie.

While the M. Knight Shamayalan movie Signs is obviously about aliens, the following theory portrays the extra-terrestrials in a very different light. Why would the aliens arrive on a planet full of oceans if they can be killed by water?

What if they are actually demons? This is backed up by the fact that Mel Gibson’s character, a former priest, turns on the taps. Moreover, he considers his daughter’s birth to have been holy and she plants glasses of water around the home.

When Marty McFly and Doc first test the DeLorean in Back to the Future, the latter gets it to drive directly towards him. However, there are some theories that suggest that the mad professor is actually extremely depressed at this point in the story – so much so that this experiment is a last-ditch attempt for something meaningful in his life.

If it works, he lives, and if it doesn’t, he dies. It sounds like a suicide mission if you ask us.

The Star Wars film franchise is a hotbed for fan speculation and wild theories. However, probably the craziest theory of the entire saga revolves around one of the series’ most hated characters – Jar Jar Binks. One fan theorized that the clumsy Gungan is in fact, a Sith Lord.

Some of the clues include the fact that he spends a lot of time close to the evil Senator Palpatine and his incessant use of Jedi hand gestures.

One of the strangest theories in film history is connected to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. A theorist believes that the eccentric man uses children to make his iconic candy. The reason for this suspicion is because Wonka supposedly knows which children will meet their demise, and when and how they will.

This also explains why Wonka always seems to have the perfect number of seats for his guests, even after losing victims along the way…

In one of the most blatant thematic crossovers in cinema, good friends George Lucas and Steven Spielberg provided each other with their most iconic alien characters – Yoda and E.T., respectively.

Firstly, a child dressed up as Yoda for Halloween in Spielberg’s movie, while the species of E.T. made a cameo in The Phantom Menace! However, someone proposed the theory that E.T. is, in fact, force sensitive. Seeing that the alien can levitate objects and do some sort of Jedi mind trick, the theory does carry some weight!

At the end of The Dark Knight Rises, Batman takes an explosive device away from Gotham City and supposedly dies in the process. In the closing scenes, Alfred Pennyworth sees Bruce Wayne in Florence, putting his mind at rest that he survived the explosion. However, a fan theorized that Alfred simply imagined that Bruce was there, explaining that he would never walk away from being Batman.

This would also explain why the movie is called The Dark Knight Rises.

Anyone who is a fan of the 1989 film Field of Dreams remembers that farmer Ray Kinsella envisioned building a baseball field. Specifically, this was for the ghosts of the former Chicago White Sox players who had passed away. During these visions, he encounters the hermit writer Terence Mann (played by James Earl Jones) who ends up helping Ray out.

It should come as no surprise that the theory related to these scenes is that Mann is also a ghost…

So many film critics are able to make theories that compare popular movies with stories from The Bible. However, the following reference from Mad Max: Fury Road is too blatant to ignore, from a Biblical point of view.

One Reddit user suggested that the titular character, Max, is ultimately Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This would then mean that the other horsemen are the Bullet Farmer (War), Immortan Joe (Pestilence) and the People Eater (Famine).

When you break down the plot of the original 1980s movie RoboCop, it actually sounds very familiar – especially if you are well-versed in The Bible. After all, the character is killed at a relatively young age and is brought back “to life” in order to rid the world of all sins.

As a result, critics and fans alike have described RoboCop as some sort of Messianic figure and even director Paul Verhoeven subscribes to this theory!

If you are a fan of comic book movies, you are probably aware that most iconic characters find a way of being brought back to life. Take Deadpool, for example, who literally has regenerative powers, which pretty much makes him invincible. In his cinematic debut in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, he gets decapitated. However, X-Men: Days of Future Past brings a number of dead mutants back to life, with Deadpool not being one them.

Yet many believe this explains why Ryan Reynolds’s character ended up getting his own movie.

One of the longstanding theories connected to the Coen brothers’ classic comedy The Big Lebowski revolves around the popular character Donny. Many have speculated that Donny isn’t actually real. In fact, he is simply a figment of imagination that Walter has conjured up in his mind.

One piece of evidence for this is that Jeff Bridges’s The Dude never actually interacts with Steve Buscemi’s character. Some even believe that Donny was one of Walter’s fallen comrades in Vietnam.

Any James Bond fan is aware that the iconic British spy worked under the secret code 007. However, movie fans have long theorized that the actual name “James Bond” is a code name, in itself. This could explain why the character is recast every few decades to keep Bond young and able to do all sorts of crazy missions.

Instead of inexplicably never aging and changing appearance after every five movies, maybe there are multiple spies who call themselves Bond…James Bond.

While this is one of those theories that many Harry Potter fans will probably violently oppose – bear with us. Apparently, the reason that the Dursleys are so mean to Harry is due to the fact that he is a Horcrux.

The theory suggests that the evil poison that he emits has been corrupting the family for years. When you take into consideration how cruel Ron became after wearing a Horcrux for a few weeks, this kind of makes sense!

Unfortunately, Jared Leto’s Joker is between a rock and a hard place, having inevitably been compared to both Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix’s epic portrayals of the iconic villain. Although the Joker from Suicide Squad is pretty forgettable, for the most part, there is a pretty neat theory surrounding Leto’s version.

It suggests that the character is actually Robin and that the real Joker kidnapped him, tortured him and brainwashed him to become a psychotic apprentice.

It’s generally accepted that Iron Man 2 isn’t the strongest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, theorists believe it did sow the seeds for one of the most important character inclusions in the saga so far – Spider-Man.

Long before Spidey made his long-awaited MCU debut appearance in Captain America: Civil War, fans believe that the mask-wearing kid who Tony Stark saves in this movie is, in fact, a very young Peter Parker.

There is a wild theory that late filmmaker Stanley Kubrick helped fake the first moon landing. Some theorists even believed that Kubrick apologized for taking part in this conspiracy by dropping subtle references in his classic movie The Shining. When Danny Torrance first finds Room 237, he is wearing a sweater that has an illustration of a space shuttle, with the words “Apollo 11 USA” on it.

Moreover, 237 could allude to the supposed distance between the moon and Earth (237,000 miles).

While it’s certainly not the most famous movie on this list, sci-fi flick Ex-Machina was generally well-received by critics. Although Ava (played by Alicia Vikander), is believed to be a perfected form of AI, she doesn’t really show signs of emotion.

However, another AI character in the movie, Kyoko, often displays human emotions and even helps Ava to kill her master, played by Oscar Isaac. While it’s not explicit, it is heavily implied that Kyoko is the perfect AI.

It is established in Ghostbusters that “crossing the streams” is a really dangerous thing to do. By the time the second movie came along, some believed that Venkman and co. had already died and were stuck in purgatory.

This also explains why it seems like no one recognizes their heroic efforts from the first installment. By this logic, it also theorized that the celebration is actually a posthumous party to honor the Ghostbusters for their martyrdom.

Aladdin takes place in the ancient Middle East — or at least that’s what we’re led to believe! One theory says that the events that unfold in Agrabah actually take place in a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland, thousands of years in the future.

When Genie comes out of the bottle, he claims he’s been imprisoned for 10,000 years, but he’s so well-versed in pop culture that he had to have been around today. In the Aladdin video game, furthermore, you can see stop signs buried in the sand, apparently leftovers from our bygone age.

The Prestige is a really awesome magician movie that brought stunned viewers back for a second viewing, so if you haven’t seen it, stop reading because there are spoilers ahead. The movie revolves around the Transported Man trick, which Angier and Borden, two rival magicians, attempt to perfect.

One theory says that Angier always used a double instead of a clone, as is seen in the movie, and only introduced the drowning part of the trick when he knew Borden would come snooping around, thus framing him for murder.

The Hobbit trilogy had many fans of J.R.R. Tolkein scratching their heads. After doing such an amazing job on The Lord of the Rings by staying largely true to the books, director Peter Jackson gratuitously expanded on Tolkein’s phenomenal, but short, first book.

One theory explains this away by claiming this isn’t exactly what happened, but the embellished version that Bilbo Baggins liked to tell other people. It’s not out of character for him to try to make an awesome story more fantastical.

Peter Pan is allegedly the Angel of Death who takes children from their homes and leads them to the afterlife, which he calls Neverland. Ever wonder why you never age there? This theory says it’s because these kids are no longer living.

Consider the fact that J.M. Barrie, the writer of Peter Pan, bequeathed the royalties of the book after he died to Great Ormond Street Hospital, a children’s hospital where he allegedly used to tell his stories to terminally ill children and lift their spirits. It makes sense, doesn’t it?

Jane from Tarzan is allegedly the great-granddaughter of Belle from Beauty and the Beast. This one sounds ridiculous, but an analysis of the two films might give it some credibility. Both women are attracted to wild men, have similar faces, and love yellow-colored dresses.

In fact, Mrs. Pots also makes a cameo appearance in Tarzan, although this might have been missed by those who weren’t expecting to see her when the gorillas enter the humans’ camp. It seems odd that the exact same tea set would be found in both movies…

The evil queen in Snow White, according to some fans, didn’t die at the end of the movie as we believed. This makes sense when you consider her magical powers.

She could have faked her death and moved somewhere else instead of sticking around for the dwarves to ensure she was no more. She became a new villain – Mother Gothel from Tangled. This isn’t just a physical similarity because both wear dark cloaks, as they’re also both motherly figures who are obsessed with youth.

One bizarre theory brought forward by journalist Mary Katharine Ham says Frozen is just a Disney remake of the Shining. While this seems really contrived, there are a shocking amount of similarities between the two movies, including scenes that are apparently the same and character parallels between the movies.

Elsa and Jack, for example, both carry inside them something that can hurt their loved ones, while other characters correspond between the films. The plot also has a lot of parallels, leading people to conclude that Frozen is a remake.

In Toy Story 2, cowgirl toy Jessie explains that she was abandoned by her cold-hearted former owner, Emily. One fan theory says this is actually Andy’s mom, which explains why Andy has a hat like Jessie’s in the first movie, even if she hadn’t been introduced yet.

The ages fit, and it’s kind of odd that they never give a name for her. Unfortunately, this was actually debunked by Peter Docter, a Pixar executive, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good one!

There is a popular fan theory that all of Pixar’s movies share the same universe, which is quite troubling when you consider the movie Cars. Apparently, the movie takes place in a future so distant that the events of Wall-E are ancient history.

While this interconnectedness is just a theory, Jay Ward, the creative director behind Cars, confirmed that there are no humans because the cars took over and eradicated the human race. Thanks to advanced AI, cars have gained sentience and adopted the personalities of their previous owners.

A theory about Forrest Gump says that Forrest Jr. is actually not Gump’s son at all. He is revealed to be intelligent and smart, while his father is a simpleton. Not quite the chip off the old block?

That’s because Jenny, the theory says, lied to Forrest and told him another man’s son was actually his own. She knew Forrest would believe her and take care of the boy, and it’s well established in the film that Jenny is untrustworthy.

While it seems that J.K. Rowling intended for the classic Harry Potter series to actually have taken place in the universe she created, there is a theory that Dumbledore, Hogwarts, and magic is a psychological response to the terrible conditions and cruelty Harry is forced to contend with in the first book.

After all, being trapped with nasty relatives like the Dursleys and having to sleep in a cabinet under the stairs seems enough of a trauma to lead a boy to imagine a fantasy world and magic.

Do Alien and Firefly share a universe? One theory says they do, but take place centuries apart. Joss Whedon wrote both Firefly and Alien Resurrection, and the latter takes place in the 24th century when humanity is colonizing other planets.

About 200 years later, these colonies are engulfed in a war referenced in Firefly. The proof? The Weyland-Yutani logo, belonging to the evil military/industrial conglomerate from the Alien series, appears in a display monitor for a turret used in Firefly.

All of Pixar’s movies are really good, but Up may be the greatest. One fan theory says that Carl is actually dead, and his arrival at Paradise Falls is actually an arrival in the afterlife.

Little Russell is actually an angel-in-training trying to earn his wings, not a boy scout trying to get his last Wilderness Explorer badge for helping the elderly. Charles Muntz, for his part, is actually a fallen angel intent on pulling Carl down to the bad place.

While a lot of these theories are debunked or laughed at by the creators, Quentin Tarantino did confirm one theory about his movies being set in the same universe. “There is actually two separate universes,” he clarified regarding the odd connections in his movies.

One of them is “realer than real,” while the other one is like a movie universe inside the movie. “So when all the characters of Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, when they go to the movies, Kill Bill is what they go to see,” he explained.

In Toy Story, we see the evil neighbor Sid get what’s coming to him when the toys come to life, which terrifies him. In Toy Story 3, we see a garbage man wearing the same shirt that Sid wore years earlier.

Instead of being a punishment, as garbage work isn’t the most desired profession, fans see it as Sid’s redemption. After torturing toys he discovers are alive, Sid spends his time seeking broken toys that were discarded and fixing them.

An alternate reading of Home Alone has the real villain being Kevin’s uncle, Frank. He orchestrates everything, from Kevin getting sent to the attic to being left behind while the rest of the family go to the airport.

Then, the theory says, Frank sent burglars Harry and Marv to steal from his rich brother. This brother is Kevin’s father, Peter, and another fan theory down the rabbit hole says that Peter is actually in the mafia. This explains the family’s unexplained wealth as well as their odd behavior.

The movie Blade Runner is based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? While the book maintains Deckard’s humanity, the question of whether he is an android remains unanswered in the movie.

There’s a theory that the character, played by Harrison Ford, is actually a replicant made to take over Gaff. Deckard’s manufacturers implanted Gaff’s memories in his brain, allegedly, which explains why Gaff seems to know about Deckard’s unicorn dream — it is, in fact, his own dream.

Star Trek fans might be fascinated to know that there’s a theory out there that Spock is actually a descendant of Sherlock Holmes — or, as a variation says, a descendant of Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

This theory originates in a quote from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, where Spock quotes “an ancestor”: “If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played Spock, made a notable appearance as Sherlock Holmes in the 1970s.

It’s a Wonderful Life is one of the most heartwarming feel-good movies ever, but one theory says that it’s actually a horror movie. The scene where George and Mary throw rocks and make wishes is interpreted to liken The Monkey’s Paw story, where a whimsical wish is granted that has terrible, unforeseen consequences.

While George wants to explore, Mary wants George to remain with her in Bedford Falls, which is what happens. All the bad things in the movie are a result of Mary’s wish to have him stay.

Another popular theory based on the classic film Home Alone says that he grows up to be the sadistic bad guy from Saw. This may seem far fetched, yet the case becomes increasingly strong once you notice similarities between Kevin and Jigsaw.

It’s surmised that the basement monster in Kevin’s imagination becomes the inspiration for Jigsaw’s furnace, for example, which he uses for torture in Saw II. The theory gained so much traction that Macauley Caulkin even referenced it on The Tonight Show.

There is no denying that Robert Eggers’s horror flick The Witch was a hit back in 2015. The premise is pretty simple, with a witch terrorizing a Puritan family. However, a Reddit user by the name of secretly_an_alpaca believes that there might be more to The Witch than what meets the eye.

Specifically, they believe that there might not be a witch in the first place. On the contrary, maybe the family is suffering from hypothermia and starvation and are simply hallucinating.

One of the most ambiguous endings in movie history has to be in Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Many have speculated what that never-ending spinning totem means for Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Cobb. Did he finally have a happy ending with his kids? Or is he still in a dream? One theorist believes the fact that he is no longer wearing his wedding ring is the most important takeaway.

Whether he is still in a dream or not, Cobb has finally moved on.

In Grease, John Travolta’s Danny sings a line about saving his beloved Sandy from drowning. However, what if Olivia Newton-John’s character actually did die at the beginning of the movie? Moreover, what if the rest of the movie is an ideal version of how her life would have gone had she not have drowned? Grease author Jim Jacobs actually debunked this theory.

However, the closing shot of Danny and Sandy seemingly flying to heaven in Greased Lightning seems to suggest otherwise…

There is no indication that James Cameron’s Titanic is, in any way, a science fiction movie. However, one theory suggests that there might actually be more fantastical elements in this historical epic than we previously imagined. One of the biggest examples is that Jack is potentially sent back in time to keep Rose alive during the Titanic’s demise.

Not only does Jack mention landmarks from a bygone era, but he also doesn’t have any money from that time period!