April 8, 2023 • 53 mins
It turns out that the characters in your favorite TV shows and the like are actually dead, dreaming, dying or don't exist. Explore some strange fan theories with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's Josh and for this week's select, I've
chosen our awesome episode on Not So Fan Theories. It's
a straight ahead, easy, breezy, beautiful episode and I hope
you enjoy it tremendously. Let's go Welcome to Stuff you
Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to
(00:28):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I almost forgot who I
was for a second. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. Yeah,
there's Jerry or is she really there? I don't know.
I don't even know anymore, because it just occurred to me.
We're doing a show on TV show Fan Theories, and
we have our own little fan theory here that Jerry
(00:49):
doesn't exist. Yeah, that's true. That's a fan theory which
is sort of a common thread. And a lot of
these is either like, oh, they were really dead or
you know, or they didn't exist to begin with, right,
And so we've heard from people for years to think
that Jerry's made up. I love it, yes, because they're right.
We're we're not saying no, actually, Jerry's totally real anymore.
(01:14):
I'm looking at it right now. So I was going
through the internet looking for think pieces, essays on why
people come up with fan theories or what about fan
theories make them, you know, make shows better. Couldn't find anything. No,
I think the answer is obvious. I think that's why
(01:35):
I couldn't find anything, too. People just have time on
their hands. That's not what I was gonna set an say.
I was gonna say that it takes something that's already
pretty enjoyable and adds entirely new dimensions in depth to it.
It takes something familiar and you can go back and
rewatch it through different lens. Now. Yeah, and you have
(01:57):
time on your hands, right, It's definitely not something that
super busy people do, you know. No, And then I
also was like, maybe I should just calm down. We
don't have to explain everything. We can just have fun
sharing fan theories. That's what we're gonna do. It's like
a summer break one. Yeah, this feels like one of those.
I'm we're both drunk, sure, pretty drunk, just kidding kids
(02:21):
out there, We're just joking. Should we just get right
into these Yes, some of these are going to be shorter,
others are going to be a little longer, and we're
just gonna kind of jump around, right, Should we start
with the granddaddy or end with the granddaddy? Well, it's
the granddaddy to you, um, say by the wall? No,
(02:45):
do you like that one though? Yeah? And I thought
maybe if I said it, Yeah, I think we'll start
with say by the bell. I don't know why. I
thought if I said it really fast, hopefully I would
know what you're saying. We'll start with say by the bell.
We'll finish with one that I know you're okay, cool,
that's very um click baby, I know, but so one
(03:05):
you won't believe the last one. One of the things
that is really hard to do when it comes up
when it comes to fan theories, we should say, I
guess we should define A fan theory is basically, it's
where somebody who likes a show says, hey, you know
this show that you think means this or is about
(03:27):
all this, it's actually this is what's going on. Almost
all the time, it's just somebody's idea. But the part
of the backbone of a fan theory is that it
has to hold up in just about every circumstance. Yeah,
and I'll get one out of the way quickly. Is
a bad example. Okay, Because to me, a bad fan
(03:47):
theory is a murder. She wrote, she was really a
serial killer because you know, you never found out what
happened to her husband and all these people are dying
around her. I like that one, yeah, but it's just
too easy. It's not like to me, a good fan
theory is one you can say, and this happened, and
look at this, and what about this? Okay, about this,
so I know what you mean, and yes, you a
(04:09):
fan theory doesn't have to do there else it's just
some schmo saying something somewhere. Yeah, but murder, she wrote,
has a couple of things to back that up besides
the husband, and the husband I think is whatever. But
the point that I've seen here there number one is
Jessica Fletcher is a murder author, a murder mystery authoress,
and she murders follow her everywhere she goes. Right, think
(04:34):
about the last time you stumbled upon a murder, Well,
that's just called TV. Okay, So that's one thing, hold on.
And then secondly, even when she travels, she stumbles upon
new murders. But more to the point, in her little
town of Cabot Cove, a population thirty five. Ye, a
(04:57):
significant number of the say, two hundred and seventy four
episodes of Murder, she wrote, took place there. If even
two hundred of those murders happened in a town of
thirty five hundred, yeah, it would be the murder capital
of the world percentage wise per capita. So I see
what you're saying by the fact that she's a writer.
It's not like she's a detective. Like you can't say it. Boy,
(05:18):
the eighteen we're always getting in these crazy adventures like
they were hired to each Yeah, they were seeking it out.
She just happens to be sucked into it, all right,
she just happens to be there. Right. I've never seen
that at TV show either, so that probably something to
do with it. What never seen murder, she wrote, shuck
because I was a thirteen year old boy, not a
well sixty five year old person. It's even better now.
(05:41):
Oh really, yeah, you're rewatching it. Oh yeah, it's on
Netflix and I think prime wow. Oh yeah, man, it's good.
Check it out. And I'm not saying, like, oh, murder,
she wrote's good. I'm a hipster. I've been watching murder,
she wrote for years and years now, pal, Yeah, you
don't have a beard. No, but hold on, I think
(06:02):
I want to extend this for a second. You raise
a very good point, and I feel like I defended murders.
She wrote with that same point that a fan theory
has to have meat on its bones. Yes, it can't
be an offhanded thing. It's prove what you just said.
Prove why Jessica Fletcher is a serial killer? Well that's
that they there's a couple of them. It's a little thin, granted, Yeah,
(06:24):
but there's something to back it up, which makes it
a decent fan theory. Not the best, but a decent one.
The other thing is it's really difficult to pinpoint the
origin of fan theories. Oh yeah, like who did this first? Yeah,
who came up with this idea? What loser? Well, I've
got one for you. So we were going to talk
(06:44):
about the saved by the bellfan theory, and people are
just like nervous with anticipation about that one. Now, as
far back as I can tell, it looks like a person.
A writer on the website Cracked Cracks website, a writer
named um Man I lost their name Logan Trent in
twenty and twelve wrote a post called Saved by the
(07:07):
Bell a conspiracy theory. Um. Oh, so he originated this one.
As far as I can tell, he gives zero credit
to anybody else. And the way that the post is written,
it really comes across like he is laying out his
argument himself. All right, So it's possible. And if if,
if you had this idea prior to twenty and twelve,
(07:28):
and you're not Logan Trent, let us know. But I'm
bestowing Logan Trent with the origin of the Saved by
the Bell fan theory, which is one of the best. Yeah,
and um, big shout out to Cracked in Mental Floss
and our own article and who else is MeTV had
a good one? Yeah, um Paste Magazine one. Uh, there's
(07:50):
there's a lot of good fan theory articles out there,
all right. So at long last, Save by the Bell
and I like this one. And I don't I don't
remember watching this show at all, what but I know
these characters and the gist, so I had to have
watched it at some point. You didn't watch Saved by
the Bell. No, it wouldn't. That wouldn't in my wheelhouse,
(08:11):
I guess not a little older teenage boy slash college Um,
well they had saved by the Bell of college years.
They just for you. But I do know these characters,
so it had to have absorbed into me somehow. Okay,
So here's the deal. Pre saved by the Bell. This
I did not know. Um there was a TV show
(08:32):
was it called Good Morning Miss Bliss? Yes, and it
was unbearably bad? So he saw that too. Yeah. So
the idea of this show is there's this boy named Zach.
This is an Indiana that just Zach Zach Morris. Yeah,
these Zach played by Mark Paul Gosler, Right, yeah, Um,
this was an Indiana, of course, not California. And he
(08:53):
was a troublemaker. And there was a teacher named Miss
Bliss who was super smart and always thwarted him. She
was what's the name of the lady who is in
the original Parent Trap played the two twins Hayley Mills.
Yeah it was her. Oh okay. Apparently, like Ben, when
you signed a contract with Disney as a child, they
own you for life. He has a couple of friends
(09:17):
named Mikey and Nicky. They're always putting him in his place.
He has a brother. His parents are divorced, and by
all accounts Zach Morris and good Morning Miss Bliss is
a bit of a schlub who's always sort of getting
his come upance from other people. Yeah, kind of a loser. Yeah,
basically the opposite of Zach Morris and say By the Bell.
(09:41):
Did they ever say Zach attack just make that up? No?
I think so. I think there's a T shirt even
that said that. So flash forward and how many years
later was this couple? So good Morning Miss Bliss goes
off the air. I get the feeling it wasn't very popular,
or they wouldn't have rebooted it as say By the Bell.
(10:01):
They would have just you know, kept it going exactly. So,
say By the Bell comes along. And now Zach is
at Bayside in California. Right, he's mister everything. He's as
this article points out, he's the most popular kid in
school and excels in everything, sports, music, casual, racism, whatever. Right,
(10:22):
that's that's the logan Trent swording. He's the Alpha and
his circle friends Mikey and Nikki are gone. Yeah, they're
just gone. No explanation, right, And there's no explanation for
any of this, like how he got to California. But
it's it's the same character, right, it's the exact same character,
but there are some huge, huge changes, Like at his
core he is a different person. Actually, not necessarily at
(10:46):
his core, but as far as how he's treated and
viewed by his peers and everyone else. Yeah, he's the
differences night and day. He's not a dweeb anymore. He's
not a loser. He's he's a total winner. He's Zach
attack has logan. Trent points out, like, um, if he
were to miss a quiz, rather than fail, he would
(11:07):
convince the teacher to hold a bake off, and then
he would win the bake off by cheating like that.
That was how like he went through life. And also
very notably, his parents were no longer divorced, they were married,
and he didn't have a brother. He was an only
child and was beloved by all right, Yeah, he had
I think Slater was went from his rival to his
(11:28):
um sort of his pal, but his you know, his
second Yeah, his wingman, right, Screech was around him both,
but I think he was sort of screeching both, right, Yeah,
and change much right, Yeah, his screech has always been screeched.
What can you do? Bill? Stab you in the bar,
all right, So what's the big reveal? What's the fan theory?
So the fan theory is that Saved by the Bell
(11:51):
is the daydream fantasy of Zach Morris who's actually living
in India, back in Indiana at John Kennedy Junior High,
and that the whole it's great man, and that the
whole um, the whole premise of this this fan theory
is revealed through the theme song, right, right, So in
(12:13):
the theme song, the theme song talks about like how
harried Zach is. Yeah, well it's all first person, right,
but you assume that it's talking about Zach, because the
whole show is it revolves around Zach. He's the narrator
um and he's having like a lot of trouble, like
getting ready and he gets out to the bus just
in time to see it fly by, and the teacher's
(12:36):
gonna pop a test and he knows he's in a
mess and doggate all his homework and if you actually
watch the show, nothing ever gets Zach. He's untouchable. Yeah,
So in the theme song it says, it's all right
because I'm saved by the Bell, right, yes, which this
fan theory suggests that once once he settles in it
(12:58):
either settles into class and starts stage, or it gets
home at night and starts dreaming he can go off
to bay Side, where he's the biggest winner around. That
is the bell. Right. So the fact that these lyrics
by the time I grab my books and I give
myself a look, I'm at the corner just in time
to see the bus, and then eventually writing low in
(13:19):
my chair, so she won't know I'm there, meaning the teacher.
This all is Zach and Indiana, right. It describes a
different person. Doesn't make any sense that these lyrics if
you'd hadn't not known that that was a show that existed,
and all you knew was say by the Bell, these
lyrics don't make any sense exactly, but they do if
(13:41):
it is all a fantasy in his imagination. Sadly, it
also makes sense if you think that the producers hired
the composer before they were really aware of what the
show is going to be like, and that's what the
composer came up with lyrics. Wise, yeah, it's not nearly
as fun. Well. The other thing I like about fan
theory is that they are almost not real. It's just
(14:04):
fans having fun. Yeah, but I like the idea to
imagine like some subversive writer that's like, oh, well, here's
what we'll do exactly. It's all an elaborate fantasy of
this Zach guy. I've got one other thing that the
I think the Cracked article points out, if not someone
else came up with it later. They pointed out that
Zach has the power to stop time and address the
(14:28):
camera like he breaks the fourth wall fairly regularly, and um,
he can just stop time and move around within this
frozen time, which also, I mean, that's a weird thing
for somebody to be able to do if they're not
in the middle of their own day dream, yeah or
night dream. I love it, man, that's a good one. Um.
(14:50):
And you know, things like Mikey and Nikki disappeared at
one point, Kelly is in love with him and then
she just is gone with no explanation. Yeah, people kind
of pop in and out sometimes with no explanation at all.
I think Kelly dumped him and then like all of
a sudden, she's gone. And she was like one of
the characters throughout the entire saved by the bell, right,
(15:13):
and then she's just gone. Once she dumped Zack. He's
he's Terry. He's really bad at school, but he got
a fifteen o two in the SAT. Like all this
stuff is like dream dream stuff. Right. Well, that's another
point that Logan Trent makes is that a fifteen o
two is literally impossible, Like you can't score a fifteen
o two SAT. Yeah it's fifteen hundred right, Yeah, so
it's all it's even more evidence that all this is
(15:36):
made up, and by it apparently a not so smart
kid man. So that's saved by the bell man. You
want to take a break and then get get back
to it. I think so I could do this all day.
All right, all right, we'll go through a couple of
(16:15):
quicker ones here. The Fresh Prince is dead. Yeah, I
kind of really don't need to say anything else, do you. Well?
In the the TV's theme song where he talks about
getting in a fight and that's the whole reason he's
sent to Bill bel Air, Yeah, the Fresh Prince of
bel Air. It's a TV show from nineteen ninety ninety six,
(16:36):
and the rap that Will Smith, the real life Will
Smith actually plays a character named Will Smith, and he
talks about getting in a fight and getting sent off
to bel Air to get out, you know, to get
him away from the rough neighborhood and what Philly West, Philadelphia,
the Ford and raised. And so the theory is that
he was actually killed during this fight, right, and that um,
(17:00):
everything else is you know, his journey in the afterlife. Yeah.
The cab that picks him up to take him in
bell Air, the rare cab is supposedly God or some
sort of um ethereal figure that's taking him to the afterlife,
which is bell Air. His parents are like basically non existent,
(17:21):
but they show up a couple of times. This is
explained away by the fan theory as his parents visiting
their son's grave. Right, it's pretty awesome. Yeah. And then
um boys, the men apparently showed up at one point,
but they were like a heavenly choir. Oh, I don't
remember that episode. So that put all that together. Fresh
(17:43):
Prince is dead? That's right. What do you want to
do next? Should we do? Do the two of them
from Gilligan's Island? Yeah? The drug one's super lame? Yeah,
I thought so too. There's this one theory that the
and this one's right, it's just dumb that mister Howell
on Gilligan's Island paid Gilligan and the Skipper to take
(18:06):
him out to see to do a drug deal, which
is why he has a trunk load of cash. A
trunk full of cash. Ginger's got a drug habit. Marianne's
a federal agent. This just sounds like, you know, like
someone smoked some weed and came up with like like
someone said, hey, what's your first idea of what Gilligan's
Island could have been? Other than what it was, they
(18:29):
would a drug thing. Man. I think he nailed it,
But there's a better fan theory for Gilligan's Island agreed.
Gilligan's Island is Hell. That this, like The Fresh Prince
of bel Air, takes place in the afterlife, but not
in Heaven, in Hell, or at least in purgatory. That
the Minnows shipwreck caused everyone on board to drown, and
(18:55):
that in Hell, each one of the characters represents one
of the seven Deadly sins. Ginger's lust, Marianne is envy,
Professors Pride, Thurston, Hell of course is greed. Missus Howell,
I've seen his sloth and gluttony seen that too. I've
also seen Skipper as either gluttony or wrath. Wrath makes
(19:17):
a lot more sense. And then Gilligan is sloth or
is Satan himself? Yeah. And one of the giveaways for
Gilligan being Satan, well there's two of them. One is
that he's always wearing a red shirt. Oh well, so
obviously Satan because Satan wore a red Rugby shirt. Right.
And then he's always although it seems like it's always accidental,
(19:39):
he's always thwarting their plans, like every time they get
something something going to get off of the island, right,
Gilligan is the one who somehow screws it up and
they're stuck there again. So he's keeping them in hell.
And this one actually has legs. Yeah, apparently. Sherwood Schwartz,
the creator of Gilligan's Island, in a book, confirmed that
(20:01):
they did. It was his idea that they did stand
for the Seven Deadly Sins. Yeah, is that right? Yeah,
So there you go one of the rare fan theories
that actually was true. And I wonder whoever whoever thought
of that was like, no, yeah, I was right. Well
that makes me wonder if somehow it got out or
something maybe or he was retroactively just being like, yeah, yeah,
(20:24):
that's what I meant. Here's a quick spot from Star
Trek one that I kind of liked. We'll do both
of the Star Trek ones about that. Okay, um and
Um on record is not having watched Star Trek Yeah,
I mean me neither. But in Star Trek six, the
(20:46):
Undiscovered Country, the Undiscovered Country. Sorry, people are so mad
at me right now, Trek He's yeah. Uh. And an
ancestor of mine maintained that when you eliminate impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth. And that was Spock
in that movie. And the source of that was Sherlock
(21:07):
Holmes himself, from the Sign of four, from an eighteen
ninety book. And so the idea here is that Spock
is related to Sherlock Holmes. It's a little weird, how
about that? But I could see it. I mean they're
both pretty rational. Yeah. Well, Sherlock Holmes he loved his speedballs.
I don't think Spock was ever into those. No, he
(21:28):
was more evolved. You know, Sherlock Holmes loves speedballs, though,
don't you. I did not. Doesn't surprise me. It surprised
me at first. Really. Yeah, So there's another Star Trek one.
I love this one that Andy Griffith is the pre
apocalyptic world that leads into Star Trek and this one
(21:53):
is pretty awesome. So it's based on a Star Trek
episode Chuck Mirie m Iry like Syrie but with an M.
Yeah and um. In this episode, the Star Trek crew
beams down to Earth and it's very obvious it's Mayberry.
But it's like a poke post apocalyptic Mayberry. It's peopled
(22:16):
entirely by kids. And the reason why it's people entirely
by kids because some disease has broken out where you
die at the onset of puberty. Yeah, and it's uh,
well it is Mayberry because it is Mayberry. It's literally
the same backlot that they shot both shows at and
they just outfitted Mayberry to be post apocalyptic right down
(22:40):
to like Floyd's barbershop. Yeah, but I think they just
scratched out Floyd. They scratched out the f and it
just said Lloyd. Oh did it? I don't know. I
think it's said Floyd's. Did it really? Yeah? Oh it's
that on the nose huh. I think. So, Oh, this
one's great. This is a great fan thing. Well there's
another Part two that the kid who played Barney's cousin, Virgil. Uh,
(23:02):
he actually appears in this Star Trek episode. What Yeah,
so it's full circle. Gene Roddenberry was like, I'm gonna
come up with a fan theory. No one knows what
those are yet, but I'm going to lay it down
for him decades from now the internet comes around. I
don't know what that is, but it's going to be something.
I'm Gene Roddenberry. You know the beginning of Andy Griffith
(23:26):
when they're you know, walking down to the lake and
he skipped the stones on the lake. Yeah, it's like
right in the Hollywood Hills, is that right? Yeah? My
brother drove me up there one time and it's like
this look familiar and he started whistling the theme song
and I was like no, wow. He said yeah, and
he's like the bat Caves like over there. Oh yeah yeah,
and it's sort of you know, killed my dreams. Well,
(23:48):
the same with mash Too. That's like the Hollywood Hills. Well,
like the mountains behind Malibu Rum when you fly into
La you can and you're looking for You're like, oh,
I totally see that. That. What we're talking about is
the helicopter in the opening montage for Mash Yeah, was
(24:12):
like it's supposedly flying through Korea, but it's actually Yes,
it's California where they're shooting, which is way cheaper to shoot. Yeah,
we shot. I mean I shot a TV commercial over there,
and I think we talked about this before. There's you
know one of the jeeps is still out there. Oh no,
I don't remember that rusted out and overgrown with weeds.
Huh and um. But yeah, it's like an old army jeep. Yeah,
(24:32):
there are a couple of little remnants. Jamie Farr still
out there, like, hey, how you doing, Thanks for visiting.
You need anyone today? Can I get a lift back background?
I'll be I'm cheap. That's terrible. Is he still around?
I'm supposed to know this. He's like my hometown's favorite son.
Oh was he really from there? From Toledo? Yeah? Is
(24:53):
that why they did wrote that into the show. Yeah,
and he's always talking about Tony Paco's, which is a
real place. Oh yeah, I knew all that, but I
didn't know if it was. Yeah, I know, Jamie Farr
is definitely from Toledo. Okay, well he saw they never
let you forget it. Yeah, he's eighty two. Hey, Jamie Farr,
godspeedzer Um what else we got? So? Um? This one
(25:14):
is one of my favorites. This good one. Garfield, Oh yeah,
is dying alone in an abandoned house. Yeah, and everything
that you've seen in all except I believe six of
the Garfield strips, all of them that have been going
on since nineteen seventy seven, is the hallucination of a dying,
(25:34):
starving cat in an abandoned house. Yeah. I was way
into Garfield. Yeah, Garfield was great, but the books Garfield
and bloom County were my two biggies. I was never
into bloom County. Oh man, I loved it. I did
love Garfield, though, I mean it was a little bloom
County is a little more advanced, I think, sure, and
(25:54):
it's humor, which I still got. But Garfield was like
kind of perfect for ten year Chuck. It was perfect.
So what you're talking about is, in October of nineteen
eighty nine, Jim Davis, the creative Garfield, said, you know
what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put out six strips
in a row that are not funny. No, they're actually
(26:15):
kind of unsightling. Yeah, very bleak. And if you go
and look at these strips you can find them online.
Obviously it's Garfield alone in an abandoned house and it's
really heavy. Yeah. Garfield wakes up in the first strip
and no one's around and he's starting to get a
little panicked, and then it just kind of continues on
(26:36):
and his panic continues to build over the course of
this six strips, and finally in the last one, I believe,
he wakes up and John and Odie are there and
everything's back to normally so happy. Yeah, but leading up
to that point in strip like three four to five,
it's it's getting a little freaky. Yeah, And again, like
(26:59):
you said, there's nothing funny about it's not it wasn't
intended to be funny. It was intended to scare. And
the idea is is that what we're seeing in these
six strips or the actual reality of Garfield and that
everything else he finally manages to go back to is
basically dying fever dream. Yeah. Feature John and Odie. Yeah,
(27:19):
but well they disappear though in that strip too at
the end. Yeah, like they appear and then like he
goes to give him food and then they like disappear
and he's alone again at the end of that sixth strip. Yeah,
oh okay, So he's hallucinated them and then is alone,
okay and abandoned. So that's why okay, right, So then
that backs up that whole idea that yeah, they're just
(27:40):
a hallucination because they're demonstrated as an hallucination in that
sixth series strip. Yeah, and he's six strips series. That
was his intent was very much to do something sad
and different, and I think he heard quite a bit
from the fans like what is going on? Right, And
then apparently he kind of laughed at the idea when
someone said, Hey, you realize what people think, that this
(28:04):
is all a big hallucination, like every other strip you've
drawn as a hallucination of this dying cat. And he
laughed about it. But like, what what else were people
supposed to think? Yeah, that he just got really heavy
and weird for six strips. And I think the other
thing that was so off putting about it too, is
it resolves or there is no resolution. I think on
(28:25):
that that seventh day, the Sunday one just picks up
like everything's totally normal, and it never saw, which makes
it even more unsettling. Yeah, and then Chuck, there's a
there's a clear I don't know if it was a
reference to it or coincidence or whatever, but there's this
um animated movie called Allegro non Tropo and there's a
(28:48):
segment in it, what's the name of the segment, valse
triste about a cat that turns out to be a
ghost cat. Have you ever seen it? No, it's very good.
Oh yeah, haunting. But it sort of parallels this Garfield
story very much. So, whether or not was purposeful, we
don't know that part, right, or did Jim Davis like
discount that too. I've never heard whether or not he
(29:11):
discounts that. Yeah, but that's definitely go check out the
Garfield strips. Just just look up like Garfield dead or
dying or whatever, Yeah, and it'll bring him up. But
um also, just I'm sure it's on YouTube. Just look
up vals va ls tres triste and it will. It'll
get to you. It's very sad and you should plug
(29:34):
your favorite thing ever, which is Garfield without Garfield. Oh yeah,
that's great. Yeah, which in that case, it was John
who was just crazy and hallucinating right, Yeah, you could
make a pretty good case that John was out of
his mind when you take Garfield out any given strip
and it's just John like, yeah, shouting out loud, like
(29:55):
he's just like like putting his head down on the counter.
Good stuff. Yeah, I forgot it about that. You want
to take a break, Yeah, we'll take a break and
go through another couple of quickies and then the big Daddy.
(30:31):
All right, did you see this Breaking Bad one? Yeah?
This one has spoilers for Breaking Bad and a little
bit of The Walking Dead, So if you haven't seen that,
tune out. But there is a theory that's actually, I
think kind of cool because I love both shows Breaking
Bad and Walking Dead, that the blue meth from Breaking
(30:54):
Bad is what caused the zombie outbreak in the Walking Dead. Yeah,
and I'm bad. Yeah, but I mean it seems like
they're totally unconnected until you start digging in there. That's right.
When you look at season one, the character of Glenn
Hey shout out to Stephen Young, he's a listener. Stuff
(31:17):
you should know. Yeah what up dog? Hopefully still is
not anymore. He drives a Red Dodge Challenger in that
first season, which looks kind of like Walter White's car
that he eventually ends up with, and then in Breaking Bad,
when Walter White returns that dodge, he takes it back
and the managers. The dealership's general manager is named Glenn
(31:42):
little Thin. The best one is it comes in season
two if you ask me, yeah, I agree, you take it, buddy,
Because why you didn't watch either one of these shows? No? No,
I did. Okay, I saw all Breaking Bad and I've
seen I can't remember how far I've seemed. Pretty far
into Walking Dead. I'm behind him Walking Dead by like
one season. Oh I need to go back catch up. Yeah, anyway,
(32:07):
season two, Darryl played by Norman Ritas, is um trying
to take the fever down on tea dog. There's another character, right,
why's it funny saying dog? So his brother Merle is
m he is like this bag of drugs basically, so
he looks through the bag see if there's anything that
(32:29):
can help bring the fever down. And there is that
blue crystal meth from Breaking Bath in his bag. So
that's a good little hint, yep. And then before the
zombie Apocalypse, Merle, his brother, was actually a drug dealer
and he described in one episode, his supplier was quote
(32:51):
a jankie little white guy who threatened him with a
handgun and said, I'm gonna kill you. B word. Yeah,
and that very much sounds like Jesse Pinkman. Yeah. The
only way it could have gotten it across more is
if he'd mentioned fat stacks or something, right, that would
have been like super on the nose though. So that's
(33:11):
that's a pretty fun theory. It is obviously meth equals
death everybody, that's right, especially Blue. Well. The one thing
I didn't get was like, what are like all those
people on meth? But then I thought, no, maybe just
a certain amount. And then they infected other people with
their zombie juice. Yeah, okay, I got one. All right.
(33:33):
This is this is an old one, but I think
it's a good one. The Flintstones and the jet Sins
take place at the exact same time. It's a good one.
That the Flintstones are not prehistoric, they're actually set in
a post apocalyptic future. And you'd say that doesn't make
any sense, does it. The author, I think this came
(33:55):
from mental floss points out why would some cave people
create record players with whatever they had on hand? No
one in prehistoric times knew what a record player was,
But if you were living in the post apocalyptic times,
you would want to be able to listen to records
because they'd already been invented. Yeah, so you would figure
(34:16):
out how to make a bird put its beak on
a record and use that instead. Why do they celebrate
Christmas in prehistoric times? Good question. Why Why does the
music in the flint Stones any popular music has always
like fifties, like English British invasion type of I forgot
about that, twitch twitch Yeah. Why do they have a
(34:40):
banking system? Yeah? Set up. Yeah, that's fairly complex, it is.
Why are these animals talking? Well, that's just weird. Yeah,
I don't know if you can like place that at
the feet of George Jetson the The thing about the Jetsons, though,
is supposedly they are living up in It's not cloud
City or orbit City, which is supposedly built in the
(35:03):
clouds above a small line, which is where the Flintstones
live below the small line, and allegedly the thing that
divides them really more than anything is income. Yeah, that
the Jetsons are wealthy and part of the ones that
can survive and live up in the clean air. The
Flintstones are a part that have to scrape by with
(35:23):
whatever they can find back here on Earth. Well, and
that George and Fred mirror one another, and that Fred
labors at this I mean, I don't even know what
you call that, like a quarry, a quarry, yeah, with
mister sleet, whereas George works at spacely rockets and it
sess here in this article works for a total of
about nine hours a week. And then robots and computers
(35:45):
handle everything else that's supposedly how our life is supposed
to be right now, but we're not doing it right.
Oh really yeah, and now robots are just stealing everyone's job,
but we don't have anything to show for it except
for joblessness, but the bad kind. Right. There was a
movie called The Jetsons Meet the flint Stones, And in
(36:07):
that very movie, George Jetson visits the past and has
a little kind of a throwaway comment when he sees
green grass, and he says that it's something he remembers
from ancient history. Right, so that one kind of undermines
the whole idea. Oh, I don't know, well, if he's
saying that he from ancient history, Oh, I see that part. Yeah,
(36:30):
like there was an apocalypse and there is no grass.
But if he visits the past, I don't know. This
is falling apart. Yeah, where we talk about it. It
undermines that one. Remember the Great Kazoo? What was up
with that guy? Yeah, well this is where stuff you
should know is devolved too. Remember the Great Kazoo? What
(36:51):
was up with that guy? The whole Christmas thing is
weird to me that the flint Stones would celebrate Christmas
when they were clearly supposedly before the birth of Christ
as being in prehistoric times. Right, No, it doesn't make
any sense. There's a lot of stuff the Flintstones didn't
make sense about. How about the Scooby Doo win I
(37:12):
thought this was pretty great, Yeah, and not Scooby Doo. See,
this is the difference between a good fan theory and
a bad one. Bad one. Scooby and Shaggy are always
stoned because look, they're bumbling, and they're always hungry for
Scooby snacks, for Scooby snacks. Bad fan theory, good fan theory.
Scooby Doo takes place after the world economy has shattered, right,
(37:36):
it's great. Yeah, and there's a lot to it right. Yeah,
So the idea is that these guys are driving around
and if you really look at the places that they visit,
everything's abandoned and run down, always like abandoned amusement park,
abandoned ski resort, abandoned everything. And not only are these
(37:56):
places abandoned, they're they're populated did by people who are
squatting basically in these abandoned places. They live in the
abandoned place, and the bad guys are yeah, and they
have no means to support themselves other than by carrying
out these weird veiled crimes that they try to dress
(38:20):
up as something other world they which suggests that their geniuses. Right,
so very very smart people living in squalor and are jobless. Yeah,
was this cracked? Yeah? So it says that out of
the twenty seven villains in the original Scooby Doo Where
Are You Run, twenty three of the twenty seven are
(38:42):
motivated by monetary gain via theft, smuggling or land speculation.
And like you said, if these people are geniuses, why
are they you know, like I'm going to squat in
this abandoned mansion so I can gain ownership of it. Right,
It's all very strange. Yeah, and they point out that
the talents that these people have are indicate a very
(39:05):
wide variety of specific schooling. Right, Yeah, two were PhDs,
two or three were PhDs. Two were lawyers, one had
an ability to produce forged paintings, one could repair boats,
one was a magician, it's a stunt man. So these
are highly skilled, highly specialized professions that these people are
(39:28):
trained in or capable of doing. But yet they're out
of work and they're pulling off these very elaborate schemes
rather than just having a job in their profession. Yeah,
and even Scooby Doo, like when they go into a
nice vacation spots, it's run down and abandoned. It's like
Soviet level vacation spot. Yeah, pretty much. So I thought
(39:50):
this was a great one. That was good. At the
very least they had some reason to not just have
it be like normal society that they were living in,
and like they would you know, like when you go
back and look at them, they were weird. Yeah, weird
settings for shows really sparsely populated because it's anime, there's
no reason to do that. Yeah, I could see if
you were like, oh wait, not much of a budget,
(40:11):
so we got to go shoot at this abandoned amusement park.
But they, like if they are at a restaurant, they're
almost invariably the only people there. Have you ever noticed that? Yeah,
it's like a really empty series. It's cool. It makes
it a little more haunting. I like it. Are you
ready for the last one? All right? I think we've
waited well long enough. This one is based on the
(40:33):
television hospital procedural drama Saint Elsewhere, Right, which Saint Elsewhere
If you watched it, or even if you didn't and
you just are a fan of like famous endings of
TV series, Saint Elsewhere was very famous for its ending
in that also famous for having a bunch of like
big stars earlier in their careers. Yeah, Howie Mandel, Denzel, Yeah,
(40:57):
Ed Begley, Yeah, begs a lot of other people. But
it very famously ended with um. At the very end,
it showed a shot at the hospital with a snow
falling and then you pull back and you realize that
that was actually a snow globe held by a boy, right,
and it's kind of mind blowing. It's like, oh my god, right,
(41:19):
because again, this is real. If you watched er or anything, scrubs,
what any normal show about hospital life? Yeah, and it's
about hospital life. That's what Saint Elsewhere was about. Yeah,
you know it was weird and quirky, but it was
it was about a hospital. So the idea of drama
that the last scene of I think six seasons, yes,
(41:42):
six years, one hundred and thirty seven episodes about a
life at a hospital and the characters that inhabited and
worked at this hospital. Yeah, the hospitals in a snow globe.
This is totally out of left field, right, Yeah, make
it even weirder. In walks who had up to this
point been the director of surgery. I think Donald Westfall,
(42:06):
he's the medical director of Saint Elsewhere. Yeah, he walks in.
He's clearly not a doctor. He's dressed, he's not dressed
like one. He's like a construction guy. Yeah. The way
he's talking, he's super like blue collar. All of a sudden,
and he walks into the room where the boy holding
the snow globe, whose name we will find out is
Tommy Westfall. He is Donald Westfall's son in the series
(42:28):
sant Elsewhere. Yeah, he had been on the show, but
he was never like a big character, and he had autism,
and in walks Donald Westfall, who's now a construction worker,
and says he's talking to his own father. He's like,
I don't get it, Pops. He just sits around and
looks at that snow globe all day. I wonder what
he's thinking in his head, which suggests pretty strongly. Yet
(42:49):
everything about Saint Elsewhere all one hundred and thirty seven
episodes took place in the mind of Tommy Westfall, this
boy with autism, who was sitting there staring at his
snow globe. Yeah, I mean, in fact, it's it's really
it was even more on the nose than that. He
actually says, I don't understand this autism thing, Bob. He's
(43:10):
my son. I talked to him. I don't even know
if he can hear me. He sits there all day long,
in his own world, staring at that toy. What's he
thinking about? Right? Like, they didn't need to say all that.
They should have just to me, showed that and showed
him coming in as a construction guy and maybe just
looked longingly at the sun. But he's kind of like,
(43:31):
you get it. Everyone so America is sitting there like what. Yeah.
At the time, this is what nineteen eighty eight, I
think when it went off, all of America was just like,
what just happened? That's really weird. But then in two
thousand and two it started to get even weirder, right, yeah,
(43:51):
because there's a TV writer named Dwayne McDuffie, and he
wrote a post called six Degrees of Saying Elsewhere and
he points out, wait, everybody, if all of Saint Elsewhere
it took place just in Tommy Westfall's mind, then that
means that there's a significant amount of NBC shows that
also are just in Tommy Westfall's mind. It's come to
(44:15):
be called the Tommy Westfall hypothesis or the Tommy Westfall
universe multiverse. Okay, Yeah, and it just spreads and spreads
and spreads. And there's a really good this Paste article
called Tommy's World, The TV Legacy of Saint Elsewhere's Tommy
Westfall Universe is pretty much the definitive outside post on it. Yeah,
(44:36):
and it lays out a pretty good thread of how
shows are connected. And since they're connected, that means that
they're all taking place in the mind of this boy
with autism, Tommy Westfall. Right, and it goes a little
something like this. Some of the doctors from Saint Elsewhere
(44:56):
went to Cheers one time. Okay, so that means Cheers
is in Tommy westfall mine. Uh. Frasier was a spin
off of Cheers. Check. That means Frasier isn't real. Yeah,
you're getting this. We don't need to say that after
each one, due I think he early drives the point home.
The John Larocquette show, um, which was actually pretty good.
John Larrictt's great and that show was very underrated, but
(45:19):
the lead character played by John laraic Kett was John Hemingway.
He called in one time on Frasier's talk show. Yeah,
on Frasier he was one of the collins as that character. Right.
So now John lara Keett's universe is in Tommy Westfall's mine.
That's right. So on the John Larricquette show itself, they
(45:41):
mentioned Yo Yo Dine as a company, a tech company, right, Yeah.
And in Star Trek, Yo Yo Dine made technology used
by the Enterprise crew Yo Yo Dine, right, right, Yoyodyne.
So that means Star Trek is in Tommy Westfall's mind.
(46:03):
That's right. Yo Yo Dine was also appears again in Angel,
the TV's Joss Whedon's Angel. It was part of the
I think he was a client of the law firm
Wolframan Heart right Angel, Okay, and then Wolfreman Heart was
representation to another tech company called whalan Utani which made
(46:26):
tech on the TV show Firefly. Things are getting deep now, right,
So now Firefly is in Tommy Westfall's mind as well?
Then whyland Utani ship was in a spaceship graveyard on
the series in Britain Red Dwarf Right, and then Bring
it Home and then the Tartists is in the hangar
(46:48):
bay of the ship Red Dwarf on the show. So
that means that Firefly, Red Dwarf, and then Doctor Who
are all in the mind of Tommy Westfall because all
of them are connected back to Saint Elsewhere. And as
the author of this paced article points out, this is
(47:11):
a normal thread. Yeah, it spread to something like more
than four hundred TV shows being implicated as being in
the imagination of Tommy Westfall. Yeah. I think the last
count I saw was four hundred and nineteen shows. It's
so amazing, which you know, if they just get one more,
then all of a sudden it's a weed theory, right, yeah,
(47:32):
you know, yeah, pretty great. Tell him about John Munch though,
he's like the all star character from Tommy Westfall universe,
all right. That was Belzer's character on Homicide Life on
the Street, right, and that was apparently a spinoff from
Saint Elsewhere. It was related to it somehow, Yeah, I
think so officially related. But then Munch was on a
bunch of different shows. Yeah, like his character, not just
(47:54):
the guy who played him. Yeah, but he got He
just popped up in different shows all over the place,
not even a necessarily just on NBC. Oh yeah. He
was on X Files and that was Fox, wasn't it. Yeah? Uh,
Law and Order, The Wire was on the Wire, Yeah,
and he was on thirty Rock yea. So Munch is
just sitting there since he was already connected to Saint Elsewhere,
(48:15):
any show he pops up on, he's obviously in the
same universe as Saint Elsewhere, which again is in Tommy
Westfall's mine. So most of the television in the United
States doesn't exist, come, you know, it doesn't exist except
in the mind of a boy with autism who likes
his snow globe. Back in nineteen eighty eight. I wonder
(48:37):
how much of that was I mean, not pre planned,
but zero from what I understand. Well, they clearly meant
to show though that Saint Elsewhere was a figment of
his imagination, right, But I don't think they even stopped
and thought, oh well, thats too right, you know. Wow. Well,
and then most of that stuff came after Saint Elsewhere too,
(48:57):
So I wonder then if someone kind of ran with it,
like if there's this inside Cabal and Hollywood and the
w GA where people are trying to like I'm sure
try these things together, so it's like putting a Wilhelm
scream in yeah, which we did incorrectly, very tried, tried, Jerry, Well,
(49:18):
yeah that was that was just that was in sys
k jam yep uh you got anything else, no, sir. Well,
if you want to know more about TV fan theories,
you can go find them on the internets or send
one in. Though, if you have one that we didn't
talk about, yeah, a good one though we defined what
a fan theory is ak so good one yeah, and
(49:39):
nothing from Lost Yeah, yeah, just don't bother if you
already said all that stuff. So since I said I
already said all that stuff. It's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this hidden Whiskey. Remember our live show
in Vancouver we talked about the Canadian Club had a
very special promo in the eighties where they hit cases
(50:00):
of whiskey all over the world like a big scavenger hunt,
and not all of that whiskey was found. Remember that? Yeah?
I remember. So. This guy, Chris Ortloff, writes in about that.
He said one of them was hidden in Lake Placid,
New York, a year before the nineteen eighty Olympics, and
supposedly was never found. And a few years ago, more
(50:22):
than three decades later, my mother picked up the trail
when she discovered that it was possibly still out there.
I love it. This guy's mom was like, what free whiskey?
I think she was just like, sounds like an adventure.
You know, I'm just a kidding, you know. Maybe she
wanted the free whiskey too. A fan of cryptic crossword puzzles,
(50:43):
word games, and snowshoeing, the allure was too much for
her to pass up. Well there you have it. Yeah,
Plus she really liked whiskey. She tracked down a man
in Connecticut who had previously searched for it, spoke with
customer service at Canadian Club even and with a couple
of other leads. She spent months turning over the clues,
checking current in historical maps, and hiking through the woods
and fields around Lake Placid. I love this guy's mom. Yeah.
(51:06):
I sat down with her a few times with my
thinking cap on in hopes of unraveling the mystery, as
did many of her friends and relatives. We have lots
of research and speculation amassed as a result, and I
was really kind of nervous reading this. I was like,
she found it right, she didn't find it. Sadly, after
all the effort and intrigue, we still have no idea
where it is. Maybe some kids took it years ago,
could be completely buried by leaves and twigs by now,
(51:28):
or maybe it's still waiting to be found and someone
else can crack the case, so to speak. Blame it
on leaves and twigs. If you were any listeners want
a chance of some buy now vintage Canadian whiskey, though
for the very least and enriching walk through the Christine,
Northern New York wilderness. The clues, as originally printed in
the cc AD or as follows, and then he gave
(51:48):
them to me, so you can just look that up
in the internet. They're out there. It's really well, I
mean I can't read them all. It's get out your
Dakota pins, happy hunting, and do share one with me
if you find it. That is from Chris Ortloff. Thanks Ortloff.
Will appreciate that you have the last name of a
person who's only called by their last name, and missus
(52:11):
Ortloff for at the very least your mom. I don't
know if that's her name, Madame, Madame Ortlof, I like that.
It's a great explorer and adventure there. That's how she
frit Shelf forever be known in Yeah, well, thanks Ortloff
and Madame Mortloff. If you want to get in touch
with us to tell us something cool that your mom's done,
we want to hear that kind of thing just in
(52:33):
time for Mother's Day too. Yeah. You can tweet to
us at sysk podcast. You can join us on Facebook,
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email The Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com
and has always joined us at home on the web.
Stuff you Should Know dot Com Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
(52:55):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listening
to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, it's Josh and for this week's select, I've
chosen our awesome episode on Not So Fan Theories. It's
a straight ahead, easy, breezy, beautiful episode and I hope
you enjoy it tremendously. Let's go Welcome to Stuff you
Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to
(00:28):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I almost forgot who I
was for a second. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. Yeah,
there's Jerry or is she really there? I don't know.
I don't even know anymore, because it just occurred to me.
We're doing a show on TV show Fan Theories, and
we have our own little fan theory here that Jerry
(00:49):
doesn't exist. Yeah, that's true. That's a fan theory which
is sort of a common thread. And a lot of
these is either like, oh, they were really dead or
you know, or they didn't exist to begin with, right,
And so we've heard from people for years to think
that Jerry's made up. I love it, yes, because they're right.
We're we're not saying no, actually, Jerry's totally real anymore.
(01:14):
I'm looking at it right now. So I was going
through the internet looking for think pieces, essays on why
people come up with fan theories or what about fan
theories make them, you know, make shows better. Couldn't find anything. No,
I think the answer is obvious. I think that's why
(01:35):
I couldn't find anything, too. People just have time on
their hands. That's not what I was gonna set an say.
I was gonna say that it takes something that's already
pretty enjoyable and adds entirely new dimensions in depth to it.
It takes something familiar and you can go back and
rewatch it through different lens. Now. Yeah, and you have
(01:57):
time on your hands, right, It's definitely not something that
super busy people do, you know. No, And then I
also was like, maybe I should just calm down. We
don't have to explain everything. We can just have fun
sharing fan theories. That's what we're gonna do. It's like
a summer break one. Yeah, this feels like one of those.
I'm we're both drunk, sure, pretty drunk, just kidding kids
(02:21):
out there, We're just joking. Should we just get right
into these Yes, some of these are going to be shorter,
others are going to be a little longer, and we're
just gonna kind of jump around, right, Should we start
with the granddaddy or end with the granddaddy? Well, it's
the granddaddy to you, um, say by the wall? No,
(02:45):
do you like that one though? Yeah? And I thought
maybe if I said it, Yeah, I think we'll start
with say by the bell. I don't know why. I
thought if I said it really fast, hopefully I would
know what you're saying. We'll start with say by the bell.
We'll finish with one that I know you're okay, cool,
that's very um click baby, I know, but so one
(03:05):
you won't believe the last one. One of the things
that is really hard to do when it comes up
when it comes to fan theories, we should say, I
guess we should define A fan theory is basically, it's
where somebody who likes a show says, hey, you know
this show that you think means this or is about
(03:27):
all this, it's actually this is what's going on. Almost
all the time, it's just somebody's idea. But the part
of the backbone of a fan theory is that it
has to hold up in just about every circumstance. Yeah,
and I'll get one out of the way quickly. Is
a bad example. Okay, Because to me, a bad fan
(03:47):
theory is a murder. She wrote, she was really a
serial killer because you know, you never found out what
happened to her husband and all these people are dying
around her. I like that one, yeah, but it's just
too easy. It's not like to me, a good fan
theory is one you can say, and this happened, and
look at this, and what about this? Okay, about this,
so I know what you mean, and yes, you a
(04:09):
fan theory doesn't have to do there else it's just
some schmo saying something somewhere. Yeah, but murder, she wrote,
has a couple of things to back that up besides
the husband, and the husband I think is whatever. But
the point that I've seen here there number one is
Jessica Fletcher is a murder author, a murder mystery authoress,
and she murders follow her everywhere she goes. Right, think
(04:34):
about the last time you stumbled upon a murder, Well,
that's just called TV. Okay, So that's one thing, hold on.
And then secondly, even when she travels, she stumbles upon
new murders. But more to the point, in her little
town of Cabot Cove, a population thirty five. Ye, a
(04:57):
significant number of the say, two hundred and seventy four
episodes of Murder, she wrote, took place there. If even
two hundred of those murders happened in a town of
thirty five hundred, yeah, it would be the murder capital
of the world percentage wise per capita. So I see
what you're saying by the fact that she's a writer.
It's not like she's a detective. Like you can't say it. Boy,
(05:18):
the eighteen we're always getting in these crazy adventures like
they were hired to each Yeah, they were seeking it out.
She just happens to be sucked into it, all right,
she just happens to be there. Right. I've never seen
that at TV show either, so that probably something to
do with it. What never seen murder, she wrote, shuck
because I was a thirteen year old boy, not a
well sixty five year old person. It's even better now.
(05:41):
Oh really, yeah, you're rewatching it. Oh yeah, it's on
Netflix and I think prime wow. Oh yeah, man, it's good.
Check it out. And I'm not saying, like, oh, murder,
she wrote's good. I'm a hipster. I've been watching murder,
she wrote for years and years now, pal, Yeah, you
don't have a beard. No, but hold on, I think
(06:02):
I want to extend this for a second. You raise
a very good point, and I feel like I defended murders.
She wrote with that same point that a fan theory
has to have meat on its bones. Yes, it can't
be an offhanded thing. It's prove what you just said.
Prove why Jessica Fletcher is a serial killer? Well that's
that they there's a couple of them. It's a little thin, granted, Yeah,
(06:24):
but there's something to back it up, which makes it
a decent fan theory. Not the best, but a decent one.
The other thing is it's really difficult to pinpoint the
origin of fan theories. Oh yeah, like who did this first? Yeah,
who came up with this idea? What loser? Well, I've
got one for you. So we were going to talk
(06:44):
about the saved by the bellfan theory, and people are
just like nervous with anticipation about that one. Now, as
far back as I can tell, it looks like a person.
A writer on the website Cracked Cracks website, a writer
named um Man I lost their name Logan Trent in
twenty and twelve wrote a post called Saved by the
(07:07):
Bell a conspiracy theory. Um. Oh, so he originated this one.
As far as I can tell, he gives zero credit
to anybody else. And the way that the post is written,
it really comes across like he is laying out his
argument himself. All right, So it's possible. And if if,
if you had this idea prior to twenty and twelve,
(07:28):
and you're not Logan Trent, let us know. But I'm
bestowing Logan Trent with the origin of the Saved by
the Bell fan theory, which is one of the best. Yeah,
and um, big shout out to Cracked in Mental Floss
and our own article and who else is MeTV had
a good one? Yeah, um Paste Magazine one. Uh, there's
(07:50):
there's a lot of good fan theory articles out there,
all right. So at long last, Save by the Bell
and I like this one. And I don't I don't
remember watching this show at all, what but I know
these characters and the gist, so I had to have
watched it at some point. You didn't watch Saved by
the Bell. No, it wouldn't. That wouldn't in my wheelhouse,
(08:11):
I guess not a little older teenage boy slash college Um,
well they had saved by the Bell of college years.
They just for you. But I do know these characters,
so it had to have absorbed into me somehow. Okay,
So here's the deal. Pre saved by the Bell. This
I did not know. Um there was a TV show
(08:32):
was it called Good Morning Miss Bliss? Yes, and it
was unbearably bad? So he saw that too. Yeah. So
the idea of this show is there's this boy named Zach.
This is an Indiana that just Zach Zach Morris. Yeah,
these Zach played by Mark Paul Gosler, Right, yeah, Um,
this was an Indiana, of course, not California. And he
(08:53):
was a troublemaker. And there was a teacher named Miss
Bliss who was super smart and always thwarted him. She
was what's the name of the lady who is in
the original Parent Trap played the two twins Hayley Mills.
Yeah it was her. Oh okay. Apparently, like Ben, when
you signed a contract with Disney as a child, they
own you for life. He has a couple of friends
(09:17):
named Mikey and Nicky. They're always putting him in his place.
He has a brother. His parents are divorced, and by
all accounts Zach Morris and good Morning Miss Bliss is
a bit of a schlub who's always sort of getting
his come upance from other people. Yeah, kind of a loser. Yeah,
basically the opposite of Zach Morris and say By the Bell.
(09:41):
Did they ever say Zach attack just make that up? No?
I think so. I think there's a T shirt even
that said that. So flash forward and how many years
later was this couple? So good Morning Miss Bliss goes
off the air. I get the feeling it wasn't very popular,
or they wouldn't have rebooted it as say By the Bell.
(10:01):
They would have just you know, kept it going exactly. So,
say By the Bell comes along. And now Zach is
at Bayside in California. Right, he's mister everything. He's as
this article points out, he's the most popular kid in
school and excels in everything, sports, music, casual, racism, whatever. Right,
(10:22):
that's that's the logan Trent swording. He's the Alpha and
his circle friends Mikey and Nikki are gone. Yeah, they're
just gone. No explanation, right, And there's no explanation for
any of this, like how he got to California. But
it's it's the same character, right, it's the exact same character,
but there are some huge, huge changes, Like at his
core he is a different person. Actually, not necessarily at
(10:46):
his core, but as far as how he's treated and
viewed by his peers and everyone else. Yeah, he's the
differences night and day. He's not a dweeb anymore. He's
not a loser. He's he's a total winner. He's Zach
attack has logan. Trent points out, like, um, if he
were to miss a quiz, rather than fail, he would
(11:07):
convince the teacher to hold a bake off, and then
he would win the bake off by cheating like that.
That was how like he went through life. And also
very notably, his parents were no longer divorced, they were married,
and he didn't have a brother. He was an only
child and was beloved by all right, Yeah, he had
I think Slater was went from his rival to his
(11:28):
um sort of his pal, but his you know, his
second Yeah, his wingman, right, Screech was around him both,
but I think he was sort of screeching both, right, Yeah,
and change much right, Yeah, his screech has always been screeched.
What can you do? Bill? Stab you in the bar,
all right, So what's the big reveal? What's the fan theory?
So the fan theory is that Saved by the Bell
(11:51):
is the daydream fantasy of Zach Morris who's actually living
in India, back in Indiana at John Kennedy Junior High,
and that the whole it's great man, and that the
whole um, the whole premise of this this fan theory
is revealed through the theme song, right, right, So in
(12:13):
the theme song, the theme song talks about like how
harried Zach is. Yeah, well it's all first person, right,
but you assume that it's talking about Zach, because the
whole show is it revolves around Zach. He's the narrator
um and he's having like a lot of trouble, like
getting ready and he gets out to the bus just
in time to see it fly by, and the teacher's
(12:36):
gonna pop a test and he knows he's in a
mess and doggate all his homework and if you actually
watch the show, nothing ever gets Zach. He's untouchable. Yeah,
So in the theme song it says, it's all right
because I'm saved by the Bell, right, yes, which this
fan theory suggests that once once he settles in it
(12:58):
either settles into class and starts stage, or it gets
home at night and starts dreaming he can go off
to bay Side, where he's the biggest winner around. That
is the bell. Right. So the fact that these lyrics
by the time I grab my books and I give
myself a look, I'm at the corner just in time
to see the bus, and then eventually writing low in
(13:19):
my chair, so she won't know I'm there, meaning the teacher.
This all is Zach and Indiana, right. It describes a
different person. Doesn't make any sense that these lyrics if
you'd hadn't not known that that was a show that existed,
and all you knew was say by the Bell, these
lyrics don't make any sense exactly, but they do if
(13:41):
it is all a fantasy in his imagination. Sadly, it
also makes sense if you think that the producers hired
the composer before they were really aware of what the
show is going to be like, and that's what the
composer came up with lyrics. Wise, yeah, it's not nearly
as fun. Well. The other thing I like about fan
theory is that they are almost not real. It's just
(14:04):
fans having fun. Yeah, but I like the idea to
imagine like some subversive writer that's like, oh, well, here's
what we'll do exactly. It's all an elaborate fantasy of
this Zach guy. I've got one other thing that the
I think the Cracked article points out, if not someone
else came up with it later. They pointed out that
Zach has the power to stop time and address the
(14:28):
camera like he breaks the fourth wall fairly regularly, and um,
he can just stop time and move around within this
frozen time, which also, I mean, that's a weird thing
for somebody to be able to do if they're not
in the middle of their own day dream, yeah or
night dream. I love it, man, that's a good one. Um.
(14:50):
And you know, things like Mikey and Nikki disappeared at
one point, Kelly is in love with him and then
she just is gone with no explanation. Yeah, people kind
of pop in and out sometimes with no explanation at all.
I think Kelly dumped him and then like all of
a sudden, she's gone. And she was like one of
the characters throughout the entire saved by the bell, right,
(15:13):
and then she's just gone. Once she dumped Zack. He's
he's Terry. He's really bad at school, but he got
a fifteen o two in the SAT. Like all this
stuff is like dream dream stuff. Right. Well, that's another
point that Logan Trent makes is that a fifteen o
two is literally impossible, Like you can't score a fifteen
o two SAT. Yeah it's fifteen hundred right, Yeah, so
it's all it's even more evidence that all this is
(15:36):
made up, and by it apparently a not so smart
kid man. So that's saved by the bell man. You
want to take a break and then get get back
to it. I think so I could do this all day.
All right, all right, we'll go through a couple of
(16:15):
quicker ones here. The Fresh Prince is dead. Yeah, I
kind of really don't need to say anything else, do you. Well?
In the the TV's theme song where he talks about
getting in a fight and that's the whole reason he's
sent to Bill bel Air, Yeah, the Fresh Prince of
bel Air. It's a TV show from nineteen ninety ninety six,
(16:36):
and the rap that Will Smith, the real life Will
Smith actually plays a character named Will Smith, and he
talks about getting in a fight and getting sent off
to bel Air to get out, you know, to get
him away from the rough neighborhood and what Philly West, Philadelphia,
the Ford and raised. And so the theory is that
he was actually killed during this fight, right, and that um,
(17:00):
everything else is you know, his journey in the afterlife. Yeah.
The cab that picks him up to take him in
bell Air, the rare cab is supposedly God or some
sort of um ethereal figure that's taking him to the afterlife,
which is bell Air. His parents are like basically non existent,
(17:21):
but they show up a couple of times. This is
explained away by the fan theory as his parents visiting
their son's grave. Right, it's pretty awesome. Yeah. And then
um boys, the men apparently showed up at one point,
but they were like a heavenly choir. Oh, I don't
remember that episode. So that put all that together. Fresh
(17:43):
Prince is dead? That's right. What do you want to
do next? Should we do? Do the two of them
from Gilligan's Island? Yeah? The drug one's super lame? Yeah,
I thought so too. There's this one theory that the
and this one's right, it's just dumb that mister Howell
on Gilligan's Island paid Gilligan and the Skipper to take
(18:06):
him out to see to do a drug deal, which
is why he has a trunk load of cash. A
trunk full of cash. Ginger's got a drug habit. Marianne's
a federal agent. This just sounds like, you know, like
someone smoked some weed and came up with like like
someone said, hey, what's your first idea of what Gilligan's
Island could have been? Other than what it was, they
(18:29):
would a drug thing. Man. I think he nailed it,
But there's a better fan theory for Gilligan's Island agreed.
Gilligan's Island is Hell. That this, like The Fresh Prince
of bel Air, takes place in the afterlife, but not
in Heaven, in Hell, or at least in purgatory. That
the Minnows shipwreck caused everyone on board to drown, and
(18:55):
that in Hell, each one of the characters represents one
of the seven Deadly sins. Ginger's lust, Marianne is envy,
Professors Pride, Thurston, Hell of course is greed. Missus Howell,
I've seen his sloth and gluttony seen that too. I've
also seen Skipper as either gluttony or wrath. Wrath makes
(19:17):
a lot more sense. And then Gilligan is sloth or
is Satan himself? Yeah. And one of the giveaways for
Gilligan being Satan, well there's two of them. One is
that he's always wearing a red shirt. Oh well, so
obviously Satan because Satan wore a red Rugby shirt. Right.
And then he's always although it seems like it's always accidental,
(19:39):
he's always thwarting their plans, like every time they get
something something going to get off of the island, right,
Gilligan is the one who somehow screws it up and
they're stuck there again. So he's keeping them in hell.
And this one actually has legs. Yeah, apparently. Sherwood Schwartz,
the creator of Gilligan's Island, in a book, confirmed that
(20:01):
they did. It was his idea that they did stand
for the Seven Deadly Sins. Yeah, is that right? Yeah,
So there you go one of the rare fan theories
that actually was true. And I wonder whoever whoever thought
of that was like, no, yeah, I was right. Well
that makes me wonder if somehow it got out or
something maybe or he was retroactively just being like, yeah, yeah,
(20:24):
that's what I meant. Here's a quick spot from Star
Trek one that I kind of liked. We'll do both
of the Star Trek ones about that. Okay, um and
Um on record is not having watched Star Trek Yeah,
I mean me neither. But in Star Trek six, the
(20:46):
Undiscovered Country, the Undiscovered Country. Sorry, people are so mad
at me right now, Trek He's yeah. Uh. And an
ancestor of mine maintained that when you eliminate impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth. And that was Spock
in that movie. And the source of that was Sherlock
(21:07):
Holmes himself, from the Sign of four, from an eighteen
ninety book. And so the idea here is that Spock
is related to Sherlock Holmes. It's a little weird, how
about that? But I could see it. I mean they're
both pretty rational. Yeah. Well, Sherlock Holmes he loved his speedballs.
I don't think Spock was ever into those. No, he
(21:28):
was more evolved. You know, Sherlock Holmes loves speedballs, though,
don't you. I did not. Doesn't surprise me. It surprised
me at first. Really. Yeah, So there's another Star Trek one.
I love this one that Andy Griffith is the pre
apocalyptic world that leads into Star Trek and this one
(21:53):
is pretty awesome. So it's based on a Star Trek
episode Chuck Mirie m Iry like Syrie but with an M.
Yeah and um. In this episode, the Star Trek crew
beams down to Earth and it's very obvious it's Mayberry.
But it's like a poke post apocalyptic Mayberry. It's peopled
(22:16):
entirely by kids. And the reason why it's people entirely
by kids because some disease has broken out where you
die at the onset of puberty. Yeah, and it's uh,
well it is Mayberry because it is Mayberry. It's literally
the same backlot that they shot both shows at and
they just outfitted Mayberry to be post apocalyptic right down
(22:40):
to like Floyd's barbershop. Yeah, but I think they just
scratched out Floyd. They scratched out the f and it
just said Lloyd. Oh did it? I don't know. I
think it's said Floyd's. Did it really? Yeah? Oh it's
that on the nose huh. I think. So, Oh, this
one's great. This is a great fan thing. Well there's
another Part two that the kid who played Barney's cousin, Virgil. Uh,
(23:02):
he actually appears in this Star Trek episode. What Yeah,
so it's full circle. Gene Roddenberry was like, I'm gonna
come up with a fan theory. No one knows what
those are yet, but I'm going to lay it down
for him decades from now the internet comes around. I
don't know what that is, but it's going to be something.
I'm Gene Roddenberry. You know the beginning of Andy Griffith
(23:26):
when they're you know, walking down to the lake and
he skipped the stones on the lake. Yeah, it's like
right in the Hollywood Hills, is that right? Yeah? My
brother drove me up there one time and it's like
this look familiar and he started whistling the theme song
and I was like no, wow. He said yeah, and
he's like the bat Caves like over there. Oh yeah yeah,
and it's sort of you know, killed my dreams. Well,
(23:48):
the same with mash Too. That's like the Hollywood Hills. Well,
like the mountains behind Malibu Rum when you fly into
La you can and you're looking for You're like, oh,
I totally see that. That. What we're talking about is
the helicopter in the opening montage for Mash Yeah, was
(24:12):
like it's supposedly flying through Korea, but it's actually Yes,
it's California where they're shooting, which is way cheaper to shoot. Yeah,
we shot. I mean I shot a TV commercial over there,
and I think we talked about this before. There's you
know one of the jeeps is still out there. Oh no,
I don't remember that rusted out and overgrown with weeds.
Huh and um. But yeah, it's like an old army jeep. Yeah,
(24:32):
there are a couple of little remnants. Jamie Farr still
out there, like, hey, how you doing, Thanks for visiting.
You need anyone today? Can I get a lift back background?
I'll be I'm cheap. That's terrible. Is he still around?
I'm supposed to know this. He's like my hometown's favorite son.
Oh was he really from there? From Toledo? Yeah? Is
(24:53):
that why they did wrote that into the show. Yeah,
and he's always talking about Tony Paco's, which is a
real place. Oh yeah, I knew all that, but I
didn't know if it was. Yeah, I know, Jamie Farr
is definitely from Toledo. Okay, well he saw they never
let you forget it. Yeah, he's eighty two. Hey, Jamie Farr,
godspeedzer Um what else we got? So? Um? This one
(25:14):
is one of my favorites. This good one. Garfield, Oh yeah,
is dying alone in an abandoned house. Yeah, and everything
that you've seen in all except I believe six of
the Garfield strips, all of them that have been going
on since nineteen seventy seven, is the hallucination of a dying,
(25:34):
starving cat in an abandoned house. Yeah. I was way
into Garfield. Yeah, Garfield was great, but the books Garfield
and bloom County were my two biggies. I was never
into bloom County. Oh man, I loved it. I did
love Garfield, though, I mean it was a little bloom
County is a little more advanced, I think, sure, and
(25:54):
it's humor, which I still got. But Garfield was like
kind of perfect for ten year Chuck. It was perfect.
So what you're talking about is, in October of nineteen
eighty nine, Jim Davis, the creative Garfield, said, you know
what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put out six strips
in a row that are not funny. No, they're actually
(26:15):
kind of unsightling. Yeah, very bleak. And if you go
and look at these strips you can find them online.
Obviously it's Garfield alone in an abandoned house and it's
really heavy. Yeah. Garfield wakes up in the first strip
and no one's around and he's starting to get a
little panicked, and then it just kind of continues on
(26:36):
and his panic continues to build over the course of
this six strips, and finally in the last one, I believe,
he wakes up and John and Odie are there and
everything's back to normally so happy. Yeah, but leading up
to that point in strip like three four to five,
it's it's getting a little freaky. Yeah, And again, like
(26:59):
you said, there's nothing funny about it's not it wasn't
intended to be funny. It was intended to scare. And
the idea is is that what we're seeing in these
six strips or the actual reality of Garfield and that
everything else he finally manages to go back to is
basically dying fever dream. Yeah. Feature John and Odie. Yeah,
(27:19):
but well they disappear though in that strip too at
the end. Yeah, like they appear and then like he
goes to give him food and then they like disappear
and he's alone again at the end of that sixth strip. Yeah,
oh okay, So he's hallucinated them and then is alone,
okay and abandoned. So that's why okay, right, So then
that backs up that whole idea that yeah, they're just
(27:40):
a hallucination because they're demonstrated as an hallucination in that
sixth series strip. Yeah, and he's six strips series. That
was his intent was very much to do something sad
and different, and I think he heard quite a bit
from the fans like what is going on? Right, And
then apparently he kind of laughed at the idea when
someone said, Hey, you realize what people think, that this
(28:04):
is all a big hallucination, like every other strip you've
drawn as a hallucination of this dying cat. And he
laughed about it. But like, what what else were people
supposed to think? Yeah, that he just got really heavy
and weird for six strips. And I think the other
thing that was so off putting about it too, is
it resolves or there is no resolution. I think on
(28:25):
that that seventh day, the Sunday one just picks up
like everything's totally normal, and it never saw, which makes
it even more unsettling. Yeah, and then Chuck, there's a
there's a clear I don't know if it was a
reference to it or coincidence or whatever, but there's this
um animated movie called Allegro non Tropo and there's a
(28:48):
segment in it, what's the name of the segment, valse
triste about a cat that turns out to be a
ghost cat. Have you ever seen it? No, it's very good.
Oh yeah, haunting. But it sort of parallels this Garfield
story very much. So, whether or not was purposeful, we
don't know that part, right, or did Jim Davis like
discount that too. I've never heard whether or not he
(29:11):
discounts that. Yeah, but that's definitely go check out the
Garfield strips. Just just look up like Garfield dead or
dying or whatever, Yeah, and it'll bring him up. But
um also, just I'm sure it's on YouTube. Just look
up vals va ls tres triste and it will. It'll
get to you. It's very sad and you should plug
(29:34):
your favorite thing ever, which is Garfield without Garfield. Oh yeah,
that's great. Yeah, which in that case, it was John
who was just crazy and hallucinating right, Yeah, you could
make a pretty good case that John was out of
his mind when you take Garfield out any given strip
and it's just John like, yeah, shouting out loud, like
(29:55):
he's just like like putting his head down on the counter.
Good stuff. Yeah, I forgot it about that. You want
to take a break, Yeah, we'll take a break and
go through another couple of quickies and then the big Daddy.
(30:31):
All right, did you see this Breaking Bad one? Yeah?
This one has spoilers for Breaking Bad and a little
bit of The Walking Dead, So if you haven't seen that,
tune out. But there is a theory that's actually, I
think kind of cool because I love both shows Breaking
Bad and Walking Dead, that the blue meth from Breaking
(30:54):
Bad is what caused the zombie outbreak in the Walking Dead. Yeah,
and I'm bad. Yeah, but I mean it seems like
they're totally unconnected until you start digging in there. That's right.
When you look at season one, the character of Glenn
Hey shout out to Stephen Young, he's a listener. Stuff
(31:17):
you should know. Yeah what up dog? Hopefully still is
not anymore. He drives a Red Dodge Challenger in that
first season, which looks kind of like Walter White's car
that he eventually ends up with, and then in Breaking Bad,
when Walter White returns that dodge, he takes it back
and the managers. The dealership's general manager is named Glenn
(31:42):
little Thin. The best one is it comes in season
two if you ask me, yeah, I agree, you take it, buddy,
Because why you didn't watch either one of these shows? No? No,
I did. Okay, I saw all Breaking Bad and I've
seen I can't remember how far I've seemed. Pretty far
into Walking Dead. I'm behind him Walking Dead by like
one season. Oh I need to go back catch up. Yeah, anyway,
(32:07):
season two, Darryl played by Norman Ritas, is um trying
to take the fever down on tea dog. There's another character, right,
why's it funny saying dog? So his brother Merle is
m he is like this bag of drugs basically, so
he looks through the bag see if there's anything that
(32:29):
can help bring the fever down. And there is that
blue crystal meth from Breaking Bath in his bag. So
that's a good little hint, yep. And then before the
zombie Apocalypse, Merle, his brother, was actually a drug dealer
and he described in one episode, his supplier was quote
(32:51):
a jankie little white guy who threatened him with a
handgun and said, I'm gonna kill you. B word. Yeah,
and that very much sounds like Jesse Pinkman. Yeah. The
only way it could have gotten it across more is
if he'd mentioned fat stacks or something, right, that would
have been like super on the nose though. So that's
(33:11):
that's a pretty fun theory. It is obviously meth equals
death everybody, that's right, especially Blue. Well. The one thing
I didn't get was like, what are like all those
people on meth? But then I thought, no, maybe just
a certain amount. And then they infected other people with
their zombie juice. Yeah, okay, I got one. All right.
(33:33):
This is this is an old one, but I think
it's a good one. The Flintstones and the jet Sins
take place at the exact same time. It's a good one.
That the Flintstones are not prehistoric, they're actually set in
a post apocalyptic future. And you'd say that doesn't make
any sense, does it. The author, I think this came
(33:55):
from mental floss points out why would some cave people
create record players with whatever they had on hand? No
one in prehistoric times knew what a record player was,
But if you were living in the post apocalyptic times,
you would want to be able to listen to records
because they'd already been invented. Yeah, so you would figure
(34:16):
out how to make a bird put its beak on
a record and use that instead. Why do they celebrate
Christmas in prehistoric times? Good question. Why Why does the
music in the flint Stones any popular music has always
like fifties, like English British invasion type of I forgot
about that, twitch twitch Yeah. Why do they have a
(34:40):
banking system? Yeah? Set up. Yeah, that's fairly complex, it is.
Why are these animals talking? Well, that's just weird. Yeah,
I don't know if you can like place that at
the feet of George Jetson the The thing about the Jetsons, though,
is supposedly they are living up in It's not cloud
City or orbit City, which is supposedly built in the
(35:03):
clouds above a small line, which is where the Flintstones
live below the small line, and allegedly the thing that
divides them really more than anything is income. Yeah, that
the Jetsons are wealthy and part of the ones that
can survive and live up in the clean air. The
Flintstones are a part that have to scrape by with
(35:23):
whatever they can find back here on Earth. Well, and
that George and Fred mirror one another, and that Fred
labors at this I mean, I don't even know what
you call that, like a quarry, a quarry, yeah, with
mister sleet, whereas George works at spacely rockets and it
sess here in this article works for a total of
about nine hours a week. And then robots and computers
(35:45):
handle everything else that's supposedly how our life is supposed
to be right now, but we're not doing it right.
Oh really yeah, and now robots are just stealing everyone's job,
but we don't have anything to show for it except
for joblessness, but the bad kind. Right. There was a
movie called The Jetsons Meet the flint Stones, And in
(36:07):
that very movie, George Jetson visits the past and has
a little kind of a throwaway comment when he sees
green grass, and he says that it's something he remembers
from ancient history. Right, so that one kind of undermines
the whole idea. Oh, I don't know, well, if he's
saying that he from ancient history, Oh, I see that part. Yeah,
(36:30):
like there was an apocalypse and there is no grass.
But if he visits the past, I don't know. This
is falling apart. Yeah, where we talk about it. It
undermines that one. Remember the Great Kazoo? What was up
with that guy? Yeah, well this is where stuff you
should know is devolved too. Remember the Great Kazoo? What
(36:51):
was up with that guy? The whole Christmas thing is
weird to me that the flint Stones would celebrate Christmas
when they were clearly supposedly before the birth of Christ
as being in prehistoric times. Right, No, it doesn't make
any sense. There's a lot of stuff the Flintstones didn't
make sense about. How about the Scooby Doo win I
(37:12):
thought this was pretty great, Yeah, and not Scooby Doo. See,
this is the difference between a good fan theory and
a bad one. Bad one. Scooby and Shaggy are always
stoned because look, they're bumbling, and they're always hungry for
Scooby snacks, for Scooby snacks. Bad fan theory, good fan theory.
Scooby Doo takes place after the world economy has shattered, right,
(37:36):
it's great. Yeah, and there's a lot to it right. Yeah,
So the idea is that these guys are driving around
and if you really look at the places that they visit,
everything's abandoned and run down, always like abandoned amusement park,
abandoned ski resort, abandoned everything. And not only are these
(37:56):
places abandoned, they're they're populated did by people who are
squatting basically in these abandoned places. They live in the
abandoned place, and the bad guys are yeah, and they
have no means to support themselves other than by carrying
out these weird veiled crimes that they try to dress
(38:20):
up as something other world they which suggests that their geniuses. Right,
so very very smart people living in squalor and are jobless. Yeah,
was this cracked? Yeah? So it says that out of
the twenty seven villains in the original Scooby Doo Where
Are You Run, twenty three of the twenty seven are
(38:42):
motivated by monetary gain via theft, smuggling or land speculation.
And like you said, if these people are geniuses, why
are they you know, like I'm going to squat in
this abandoned mansion so I can gain ownership of it. Right,
It's all very strange. Yeah, and they point out that
the talents that these people have are indicate a very
(39:05):
wide variety of specific schooling. Right, Yeah, two were PhDs,
two or three were PhDs. Two were lawyers, one had
an ability to produce forged paintings, one could repair boats,
one was a magician, it's a stunt man. So these
are highly skilled, highly specialized professions that these people are
(39:28):
trained in or capable of doing. But yet they're out
of work and they're pulling off these very elaborate schemes
rather than just having a job in their profession. Yeah,
and even Scooby Doo, like when they go into a
nice vacation spots, it's run down and abandoned. It's like
Soviet level vacation spot. Yeah, pretty much. So I thought
(39:50):
this was a great one. That was good. At the
very least they had some reason to not just have
it be like normal society that they were living in,
and like they would you know, like when you go
back and look at them, they were weird. Yeah, weird
settings for shows really sparsely populated because it's anime, there's
no reason to do that. Yeah, I could see if
you were like, oh wait, not much of a budget,
(40:11):
so we got to go shoot at this abandoned amusement park.
But they, like if they are at a restaurant, they're
almost invariably the only people there. Have you ever noticed that? Yeah,
it's like a really empty series. It's cool. It makes
it a little more haunting. I like it. Are you
ready for the last one? All right? I think we've
waited well long enough. This one is based on the
(40:33):
television hospital procedural drama Saint Elsewhere, Right, which Saint Elsewhere
If you watched it, or even if you didn't and
you just are a fan of like famous endings of
TV series, Saint Elsewhere was very famous for its ending
in that also famous for having a bunch of like
big stars earlier in their careers. Yeah, Howie Mandel, Denzel, Yeah,
(40:57):
Ed Begley, Yeah, begs a lot of other people. But
it very famously ended with um. At the very end,
it showed a shot at the hospital with a snow
falling and then you pull back and you realize that
that was actually a snow globe held by a boy, right,
and it's kind of mind blowing. It's like, oh my god, right,
(41:19):
because again, this is real. If you watched er or anything, scrubs,
what any normal show about hospital life? Yeah, and it's
about hospital life. That's what Saint Elsewhere was about. Yeah,
you know it was weird and quirky, but it was
it was about a hospital. So the idea of drama
that the last scene of I think six seasons, yes,
(41:42):
six years, one hundred and thirty seven episodes about a
life at a hospital and the characters that inhabited and
worked at this hospital. Yeah, the hospitals in a snow globe.
This is totally out of left field, right, Yeah, make
it even weirder. In walks who had up to this
point been the director of surgery. I think Donald Westfall,
(42:06):
he's the medical director of Saint Elsewhere. Yeah, he walks in.
He's clearly not a doctor. He's dressed, he's not dressed
like one. He's like a construction guy. Yeah. The way
he's talking, he's super like blue collar. All of a sudden,
and he walks into the room where the boy holding
the snow globe, whose name we will find out is
Tommy Westfall. He is Donald Westfall's son in the series
(42:28):
sant Elsewhere. Yeah, he had been on the show, but
he was never like a big character, and he had autism,
and in walks Donald Westfall, who's now a construction worker,
and says he's talking to his own father. He's like,
I don't get it, Pops. He just sits around and
looks at that snow globe all day. I wonder what
he's thinking in his head, which suggests pretty strongly. Yet
(42:49):
everything about Saint Elsewhere all one hundred and thirty seven
episodes took place in the mind of Tommy Westfall, this
boy with autism, who was sitting there staring at his
snow globe. Yeah, I mean, in fact, it's it's really
it was even more on the nose than that. He
actually says, I don't understand this autism thing, Bob. He's
(43:10):
my son. I talked to him. I don't even know
if he can hear me. He sits there all day long,
in his own world, staring at that toy. What's he
thinking about? Right? Like, they didn't need to say all that.
They should have just to me, showed that and showed
him coming in as a construction guy and maybe just
looked longingly at the sun. But he's kind of like,
(43:31):
you get it. Everyone so America is sitting there like what. Yeah.
At the time, this is what nineteen eighty eight, I
think when it went off, all of America was just like,
what just happened? That's really weird. But then in two
thousand and two it started to get even weirder, right, yeah,
(43:51):
because there's a TV writer named Dwayne McDuffie, and he
wrote a post called six Degrees of Saying Elsewhere and
he points out, wait, everybody, if all of Saint Elsewhere
it took place just in Tommy Westfall's mind, then that
means that there's a significant amount of NBC shows that
also are just in Tommy Westfall's mind. It's come to
(44:15):
be called the Tommy Westfall hypothesis or the Tommy Westfall
universe multiverse. Okay, Yeah, and it just spreads and spreads
and spreads. And there's a really good this Paste article
called Tommy's World, The TV Legacy of Saint Elsewhere's Tommy
Westfall Universe is pretty much the definitive outside post on it. Yeah,
(44:36):
and it lays out a pretty good thread of how
shows are connected. And since they're connected, that means that
they're all taking place in the mind of this boy
with autism, Tommy Westfall. Right, and it goes a little
something like this. Some of the doctors from Saint Elsewhere
(44:56):
went to Cheers one time. Okay, so that means Cheers
is in Tommy westfall mine. Uh. Frasier was a spin
off of Cheers. Check. That means Frasier isn't real. Yeah,
you're getting this. We don't need to say that after
each one, due I think he early drives the point home.
The John Larocquette show, um, which was actually pretty good.
John Larrictt's great and that show was very underrated, but
(45:19):
the lead character played by John laraic Kett was John Hemingway.
He called in one time on Frasier's talk show. Yeah,
on Frasier he was one of the collins as that character. Right.
So now John lara Keett's universe is in Tommy Westfall's mine.
That's right. So on the John Larricquette show itself, they
(45:41):
mentioned Yo Yo Dine as a company, a tech company, right, Yeah.
And in Star Trek, Yo Yo Dine made technology used
by the Enterprise crew Yo Yo Dine, right, right, Yoyodyne.
So that means Star Trek is in Tommy Westfall's mind.
(46:03):
That's right. Yo Yo Dine was also appears again in Angel,
the TV's Joss Whedon's Angel. It was part of the
I think he was a client of the law firm
Wolframan Heart right Angel, Okay, and then Wolfreman Heart was
representation to another tech company called whalan Utani which made
(46:26):
tech on the TV show Firefly. Things are getting deep now, right,
So now Firefly is in Tommy Westfall's mind as well?
Then whyland Utani ship was in a spaceship graveyard on
the series in Britain Red Dwarf Right, and then Bring
it Home and then the Tartists is in the hangar
(46:48):
bay of the ship Red Dwarf on the show. So
that means that Firefly, Red Dwarf, and then Doctor Who
are all in the mind of Tommy Westfall because all
of them are connected back to Saint Elsewhere. And as
the author of this paced article points out, this is
(47:11):
a normal thread. Yeah, it spread to something like more
than four hundred TV shows being implicated as being in
the imagination of Tommy Westfall. Yeah. I think the last
count I saw was four hundred and nineteen shows. It's
so amazing, which you know, if they just get one more,
then all of a sudden it's a weed theory, right, yeah,
(47:32):
you know, yeah, pretty great. Tell him about John Munch though,
he's like the all star character from Tommy Westfall universe,
all right. That was Belzer's character on Homicide Life on
the Street, right, and that was apparently a spinoff from
Saint Elsewhere. It was related to it somehow, Yeah, I
think so officially related. But then Munch was on a
bunch of different shows. Yeah, like his character, not just
(47:54):
the guy who played him. Yeah, but he got He
just popped up in different shows all over the place,
not even a necessarily just on NBC. Oh yeah. He
was on X Files and that was Fox, wasn't it. Yeah? Uh,
Law and Order, The Wire was on the Wire, Yeah,
and he was on thirty Rock yea. So Munch is
just sitting there since he was already connected to Saint Elsewhere,
(48:15):
any show he pops up on, he's obviously in the
same universe as Saint Elsewhere, which again is in Tommy
Westfall's mine. So most of the television in the United
States doesn't exist, come, you know, it doesn't exist except
in the mind of a boy with autism who likes
his snow globe. Back in nineteen eighty eight. I wonder
(48:37):
how much of that was I mean, not pre planned,
but zero from what I understand. Well, they clearly meant
to show though that Saint Elsewhere was a figment of
his imagination, right, But I don't think they even stopped
and thought, oh well, thats too right, you know. Wow. Well,
and then most of that stuff came after Saint Elsewhere too,
(48:57):
So I wonder then if someone kind of ran with it,
like if there's this inside Cabal and Hollywood and the
w GA where people are trying to like I'm sure
try these things together, so it's like putting a Wilhelm
scream in yeah, which we did incorrectly, very tried, tried, Jerry, Well,
(49:18):
yeah that was that was just that was in sys
k jam yep uh you got anything else, no, sir. Well,
if you want to know more about TV fan theories,
you can go find them on the internets or send
one in. Though, if you have one that we didn't
talk about, yeah, a good one though we defined what
a fan theory is ak so good one yeah, and
(49:39):
nothing from Lost Yeah, yeah, just don't bother if you
already said all that stuff. So since I said I
already said all that stuff. It's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this hidden Whiskey. Remember our live show
in Vancouver we talked about the Canadian Club had a
very special promo in the eighties where they hit cases
(50:00):
of whiskey all over the world like a big scavenger hunt,
and not all of that whiskey was found. Remember that? Yeah?
I remember. So. This guy, Chris Ortloff, writes in about that.
He said one of them was hidden in Lake Placid,
New York, a year before the nineteen eighty Olympics, and
supposedly was never found. And a few years ago, more
(50:22):
than three decades later, my mother picked up the trail
when she discovered that it was possibly still out there.
I love it. This guy's mom was like, what free whiskey?
I think she was just like, sounds like an adventure.
You know, I'm just a kidding, you know. Maybe she
wanted the free whiskey too. A fan of cryptic crossword puzzles,
(50:43):
word games, and snowshoeing, the allure was too much for
her to pass up. Well there you have it. Yeah,
Plus she really liked whiskey. She tracked down a man
in Connecticut who had previously searched for it, spoke with
customer service at Canadian Club even and with a couple
of other leads. She spent months turning over the clues,
checking current in historical maps, and hiking through the woods
and fields around Lake Placid. I love this guy's mom. Yeah.
(51:06):
I sat down with her a few times with my
thinking cap on in hopes of unraveling the mystery, as
did many of her friends and relatives. We have lots
of research and speculation amassed as a result, and I
was really kind of nervous reading this. I was like,
she found it right, she didn't find it. Sadly, after
all the effort and intrigue, we still have no idea
where it is. Maybe some kids took it years ago,
could be completely buried by leaves and twigs by now,
(51:28):
or maybe it's still waiting to be found and someone
else can crack the case, so to speak. Blame it
on leaves and twigs. If you were any listeners want
a chance of some buy now vintage Canadian whiskey, though
for the very least and enriching walk through the Christine,
Northern New York wilderness. The clues, as originally printed in
the cc AD or as follows, and then he gave
(51:48):
them to me, so you can just look that up
in the internet. They're out there. It's really well, I
mean I can't read them all. It's get out your
Dakota pins, happy hunting, and do share one with me
if you find it. That is from Chris Ortloff. Thanks Ortloff.
Will appreciate that you have the last name of a
person who's only called by their last name, and missus
(52:11):
Ortloff for at the very least your mom. I don't
know if that's her name, Madame, Madame Ortlof, I like that.
It's a great explorer and adventure there. That's how she
frit Shelf forever be known in Yeah, well, thanks Ortloff
and Madame Mortloff. If you want to get in touch
with us to tell us something cool that your mom's done,
we want to hear that kind of thing just in
(52:33):
time for Mother's Day too. Yeah. You can tweet to
us at sysk podcast. You can join us on Facebook,
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email The Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com
and has always joined us at home on the web.
Stuff you Should Know dot Com Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
(52:55):
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