Famous Movie Theories We Were Completely Wrong About

Kooky movie theories are everywhere these days, allowing anyone to go viral just by adding a mind-blowing, "but what if?" twist to a film they've obviously seen way too much. Unfortunately, most of these theories are just plain stupid, the product of cherry-picking scenes and plot points to back up a crazy shower-thought that the theorist was too stubborn to abandon the second their research proved them wrong. Here are some of the more famous theories you can safely dismiss on sight.

The Pixar Theory claims every Pixar movie is connected, starting with Brave and ending with...Brave. Apparently Boo, the adorable little girl from Monsters, Inc., discovered time travel and went back to the 14th century, becoming the witch from Brave and officially kickstarting the cycle. In between, one movie bleeds directly into the next, like the evil corporation from Up polluting Earth to the point of uninhabitability (Wall-E).

This whole idea is 100 percent garbage. It bases everything on two pieces of evidence: Pixar referencing their own films via Easter eggs, and both the Brave witch and Monsters Inc. monsters entering through wooden doors. Everything else, it fudges more than Willy Wonka would. Like, Brave connects to The Incredibles because magic from Brave's world gave people superpowers... 500 years later. That's either some slow-acting magic, or this theory died a painful death on Step One. If that's not enough, once Inside Out premiered and shattered the timeline to pieces, its author simply blogged on Movie Pilot about how this is actually part of a second Pixar timeline. It's an Earth-2 Story, apparently!

So what of The Good Dinosaur and all of Pixar's other upcoming films? Will each of those be separate timelines as well? Because we already have a term for that: "stand-alone movies."

Eight actors have played James Bond, all in vastly different ways, so how to explain the discrepancy? Well, a very popular theory suggests each actor portrays a different person, making "James Bond" simply a code name for whatever agent earns a promotion to 007 status. As one dies, another simply assumes the alcoholic, tiny gun-wielding mantle until it's his turn to ascend to that giant baccarat table in the sky.

The second you actually pay attention to the films, you realize just how wrong this theory really is. For one, various movies reference Bond's past—particularly his marriage to the ill-fated Teresa. Even though George Lazenby's Bond married her, every Bond since also married her, because they're all the same guy. And if that wasn't enough, there's a scene in Skyfall where Bond visits the graves of his parents... who are both named Bond! So yes, it's a real name, not a fake one. As for why Bond acts differently depending on who plays him, there's an easy explanation: the man is a professional killer. Talk about a stressful job, so forgive him if some days he's Roger Moore-goofy, and others he's Timothy Dalton-psychotic.

One of the great mysteries of modern cinema (more or less) is what actual day Ferris Bueller and friends ditched school for a day of parading and baseball. The film never says, so some enterprising theorist at Baseball Prospectus figured it out themselves. Based on who was playing at Wrigley Field that day, the kids ditched school on June 5, 1985. Apparently, waiting two more stinking weeks for summer vacation wasn't an option.

This wildly popular theory is perhaps the most classic example of ignoring some facts and embracing others so you get to look right on Reddit. Because the other part of Bueller's day off—trespassing the Von Steuben Day parade and somehow not getting immediately hauled off to jail—didn't happen on June 5. As the National Post pointed out, the real Von Steuben parade actually occurs around Baron Friedrich von Steuben's birthday, which is September 17. So which is it, June or September? It's neither—the movie takes place on a totally made-up Hollywood composite day, with baseball players thrown in there without regard to when they actually played because it doesn't matter. Unless you're a bored blogger out to break the Internet for a day, that is.

Some theories are amazingly popular, despite having zero evidence that they could possibly be true. This is the case with the insistence that Owen, Chris Pratt's velociraptor-handler character in Jurassic World, is actually a kid from the first Jurassic Park movie, all grown up. The basis for this theory? Almost nothing. In a scene from the first film, a young boy dismisses raptors as unscary. Dr. Grant reacts by wielding a giant, razor-sharp raptor claw and lecturing the kid on respecting a species too extinct to stand up for itself. That boy, apparently, learned to respect raptors so much that he grew up to work with them. We know this because, in World, Owen mentions that he and the raptors have a "relationship based on respect."

And... that's it! Apparently, only one person in the universe can use the word "respect," so if two say it, clearly they're the same person. Never mind that the movie 100 percent doesn't back this theory up—the Internet still insists on embracing it, because coincidences and/or slight callbacks to earlier films couldn't possibly exist. No, everything must be connected, everything must have an explanation, and everything must be uncovered by nameless computer addicts pretending they know more about movies than the moviemakers.

Here's the worst offender of all: the countless theories that explain surreal/supernatural stories by deciding the main character made everything up. They're either in a coma, suffering from fever dreams, or simply hallucinating to forget real-life trauma. Did you know Harry Potter isn't a wizard? Nope, he's an abuse victim who dreams of life as a wizard while locked away in the Dursleys' cupboard. There are no Pokemon, either—just weird creatures Ash dreams up while in a coma. Same with Sandy from Grease, who theorists believe drowned and then dreamt up the movie while slowly dying. There's no Batman—Wayne is actually locked away in Arkham Asylum due to going crazy after seeing his parents' murders. He hallucinates life as a superhero—with Arkham wardens as supervillains—to cope with life in a rubber room.

We're going to stop here, because if we didn't, we could go on forever. It's not just that these coma/dream theories are lazy, unoriginal, and hacky (though they totally are), it's that they're impossibly cynical and depressing. They're outright dismissing any world that isn't their own, insisting that anything more fantastical than a Ken Burns documentary was "just a dream." They don't have any good ideas of their own, so they spend all their time butchering everyone else's to make themselves feel better about their lack of imagination. And that's no theory, that's a fact.