The Bizarre Theory That Would Completely Change Forrest Gump
"Forrest Gump" was one of the biggest movies of the 1990s. Starring Tom Hanks as the title character, the Robert Zemeckis film won six Oscars at the 67th Academy Awards ceremony in 1995, per The Hollywood Reporter.
The film played like a trip through history as Hanks' dim-witted Gump had run-ins with an impossible number of celebrities and world leaders. In the 1950s and 1960s, he taught Elvis Presley how to shake his hips, and drank Dr. Peppers in the presence of President John F. Kennedy. He also became a college football star, a war hero, a champion ping pong player, and started a lucrative shrimp boating business before landing on the cover of Runner's World magazine as he made an unlikely trek across America on foot. Gump also "invented" the famous "smiley face" symbol after wiping his face on a dirty shirt during his cross-country run in a rather farfetched scene. Even more farfetched? In the Winston Groom novel the movie is based on, Gump even traveled to Mars, but producers for the film version of the story kept that milestone out of the script, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Gump's life wasn't completely charmed. His tumultuous relationship with his childhood best friend Jenny (Robin Wright) played in the background. He also faced adversity as a child with a low IQ and braces on his legs. And a scene early in the movie spawned a fan theory claiming that the story of Forrest Gump is not what it seems.
Some fans think Forrest Gump was dead for most of the film
In 2018, a Reddit fan theory speculated that Forrest Gump was actually dead for the entire movie, save for the early scenes that showed him as a child. The theory suggests that the scene in which bullies chase a young Forrest and his braces miraculously break off of his legs is the moment that Gump is killed and is "breaking free" from his life on Earth, and the rest of the movie is Gump imagining what his life would have been like and serving as a guardian angel for Jenny and others. (Throughout the film, Gump pointed out people who had died.) The significance of white feathers both at the beginning and the end of the film is thought to symbolize an angel getting its wings — Gump being the well-deserving angel in the final scene. A similar Reddit theory speculated that Gump died in the Vietnam War and the events after that was his afterlife.
Whether it was life or the afterlife, Gump lived an incredible one –- and there could have been more. In an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, screenwriter Eric Roth revealed he penned a sequel script that would have had Gump in the back of O.J. Simpson's white Bronco during his famous 1994 highway chase. Gump also would have crossed paths with Princess Diana before her death, and a nursery school teacher who taught in an Oklahoma City building that he would later see blow up. Roth said after 9/11 took place, he felt the sequel had "no meaning anymore."