May 4, 2017 • 52 mins
It turns out that the characters in your favorite TV shows and the like are actually dead, dreaming, dying or don't exist.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to 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 even know anymore because it just
(00:24):
occurred to me. We're doing a show on uh TV
show fan Theories, and we have our own little fan
theory here that Jerry 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
(00:44):
for years. I think that Jerry's made up. I love it, Yes,
because they're right. We're we're not saying no, actually, Jerry
totally real. Anyway, 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
(01:08):
what about fan theories make them, you know, make shows better.
I couldn't find anything. No, I think the answer is obvious.
I think that's why I couldn't find anything. Too. People
just have time on their hands. That's not what I
was gonna say. I was gonna say that it takes
something that's already pretty enjoyable and adds entirely new dimensions
(01:31):
in depth to it. It takes something familiar and you
can go back and rewatch it through different lens now
and you have 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
(01:51):
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.
I'm just kidding kids out there, we're just joking. Should
we just get right into these? Yes? Some of these
are gonna be shorter, others are going to be a
(02:12):
little longer, and we're just gonna kind of jump around. Right.
Should we start with the Granddaddy or end with the Granddaddy? Uh? Well,
it's the Granddaddy to you Uma by the wall? No?
Do you like that one though? Yeah? And I thought
maybe if I said it, Yeah, I think we'll start
(02:33):
with say, by the Bell. I don't know why. I
thought if I said it, really only I would know
what you were saying. Um, we'll start with say by
the bell, we'll finish with one that I know you're
talking about. Okay, cool, that's very um click baity, I know,
but so one you won't believe the last one. One
of the things that um is really hard to do
(02:56):
when it comes up when you 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
the show says, hey, you know this show that you
think means this or is about all this, It's actually
this is what's going on almost all the time. It's
(03:16):
just somebody's idea. But the part of the backbone of
a fan theory is that it has to hold up
and just about every circumstance. Yeah, and I'll get one
out of the way quickly. Is a bad example, because
to me, a bad fan theory is uh murder. She
wrote she was really a serial killer because you know,
(03:37):
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?
About this? So I know what you mean, and yes
you a fan theory doesn't have to do there else
it's just some schmo saying something somewhere. But murder, she wrote,
(03:57):
has a couple of things to back that up besides
the husband. And the husband I think is whatever. But
but the point that I've seen here there Number one
is Jessica Fletcher is a murder author of murder mystery authoress,
and she murders go follow her everywhere she goes. Right,
(04:17):
think 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, a significant number of
(04:41):
the say two hundred seventy four episodes of murder she wrote,
took place there. If even two hundred of those murders
happened in a town of 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,
(05:01):
the eight team 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.
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, shock
because I was a thirteen year old boy, not a
(05:22):
year old person. It's even better now, really, Yeah, you're
rewatching it? Oh yeah, it's on Netflix and I think prime.
Oh yeah, man, it's good. Check it out. And I'm
not saying like, oh, murder, she wrote good on my hipster.
I've been watching Murder, she wrote for years and years now, Pal, yeah,
you know have a beard. No, but but hold on,
(05:44):
I think I want to extend this for a second.
You raised a very good point, and I feel like
I defended murder. She wrote with that same point that
a fan theory has to have meat on its bones.
It can't be an offhanded thing. It's proved 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
(06:06):
a little thin, granted, 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? Well, I've got one for you. So we're
(06:27):
going to talk about the saved by the Bell fan 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 two thousand twelve wrote a post called Saved by
(06:50):
the Bell a conspiracy theory. Um so he originated this one.
As far as I can tell, he gives zero credit
to anybody else. And the way that the post has written,
it really comes across like he is laying out his
argument himself. So it's possible. And if if, if you
had this idea prior to two thousand twelve, and you're
(07:11):
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 Cract and Mental Flaws and
our own article and who else was me? TV had
a good one? Yeah? Um, Paste magazine had one. Uh.
(07:32):
There's there's a lot of good fan theory uh articles
out there all right. So at long last Saved by
the Bell and I like this one, and I don't.
I don't remember watching this show at all. What but
I 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 would
(07:54):
in my wheelhouse, I guess not. Older teenage boy slash
college Um, well they had Saved the Bell of college years.
They's just for you. Uh. But I do know these characters,
so it had to have absorbed into me somehow. Um.
So here's the deal. Pre Saved by the Bell. This
I did not know. Um. There was a TV show
(08:15):
was it called Good Morning Miss Bliss? Yes? And it
was unbearably bad. He saw that too. So the idea
of this show is there's this boy named Zack. This
is an Indiana, not just Zack, Zack Morris, Yeah, the
Zach played by Mark Paul Gosler, right, Um, this was
an Indiana, of course, not California. And he was troublemaker.
(08:38):
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 was in the original Parent
Trap played the two twins, Hayley Mills. Yeah it was her.
Oh okay. Apparently like then, when you signed a contract
with Disney as a child, they own you for a life. Um.
(08:59):
He has a couple of friends named Mikey and Nicky. Uh,
they're always putting him in his place. Uh. He has
a brother, his parents are divorced, and by all accounts,
Zack Morris and good morning, Miss Bliss is a bit
of a schlub who is always sort of getting his
come up it's from other people. Yeah, kind of a loser. Yeah,
basically the opposite of Zack Morris and Saved by the Bell.
(09:24):
Did the ever say Zach attack? 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 Saved by the Bell. They would
(09:45):
have just you know, kept it going exactly. Uh to say,
by the Bell comes along and now Zack is at
Bayside in California. He's Mr. Everything. He's as this article
points out, he's the most popular kid, ins cool, and
excels in everything, sports, music, casual, racism, whatever. That's that's
(10:06):
the logan transporting. Uh. 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 his core,
(10:30):
but as far as how he's treated and viewed by
his peers and everyone else, he's the differences night and day.
He's not a duet anymore. He's not a loser. He's
he's a total winner. Has logan trend points out, like um,
if he were to miss a quiz, rather than fail,
he would convince the teacher to hold a bake off,
(10:52):
and then he would win the bake off by cheating.
Like That's 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 Uh. I think Slater was went from
his rival to his um sort of his pal, but
(11:13):
his you know, his second Yeah, his wingman, Screech was
around in both, but I think he was sort of
screeching both, right, didn't changed much, Yeah, it Screech has
always been screeched alright, So what's the big reveal? What's
the fan theory? So the fan theory is that Saved
by the Bell is the daydream fantasy of Zack Morris
(11:39):
who's actually living in back in Indiana at John F.
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 the theme song, the theme song talk it's
(12:00):
about like how harried Zack is Well, it's all first person, right,
but you assume that it's talking about Zack, because the
whole show is it revolves around Zack. 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 gonna
pop a test and he knows he's in a mess
(12:21):
and dog ate all his homework, And if you actually
watch the show, nothing ever gets Zach. He's untouchable. 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, either settles
(12:42):
into class and starts day dreaming or 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 my chair, so she, uh,
(13:04):
she won't know I'm there, meaning the teacher. This all
is Zack in Indiana it describes a different person. Doesn't
make any sense that these lyrics if you had not
known that that was a show that existed and all
you knew was saved by the bill, these lyrics don't
make any sense. But they do if it is all
(13:24):
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, that's not nearly as fun. Well, the
other thing I like about fan theories is that there
almost not real it's just fans having fun. But I
(13:50):
like the idea to imagine like some subversive writer that's like, oh,
well here's what we'll do. This is all elaborate fantasy
of this Zack 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 and
(14:10):
address the 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
or night dream. I love it, man, that's a good one. Um.
(14:33):
And you know, uh, things like Mikey and Nikki disappeared. Um.
At one point, Kelly is in love with him and
then she just is gone with no explanation. Yeah he
he 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 save
(14:55):
by the bell Um, and then she's just gone once
she dumps Zach. He's he's Terry. He's really bad at school,
but he got a fifteen o two in the s
A t 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 two. Yeah, so it's all it's even more
(15:18):
evidence that all this is made up and by apparently
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
(15:58):
through a couple of 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 uh the
TV's theme song where he talks about getting in a
fight and that's the whole reason he's sent to Bill
bell Air. Yeah, the Fresh Prince of bel Air. It's
a TV show from and the rap that Will Smith,
(16:22):
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 bell Air to get out,
you know, to get him away from the rough neighborhood
and what Philly West, Philadelphia born and raised and um,
so the theory is that he was actually killed during
this fight, and um everything else is you know, his
(16:46):
h 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 after life, which is
bel Air. His parents are like basically non existent, but
they show up a couple of times. Uh. This is
(17:08):
explained away by the fan theory as his parents visiting
their son's grave. It's pretty awesome. 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 Prince is dead?
That's right? What do you wanna do next? Should we do? Do? Uh? That?
(17:33):
The two of them from Gilligan's Island? Yeah? The drug
ones super lame? Yeah, I thought so too. There's this
one theory that the and this was. You're right, it's
just dumb that that Mr Howell on Gilligan's Island paid
Gilligan and the Skipper to take him out to see
to do a drug deal, which is why he has
a trunkload of catch, trunk full of cash. Ginger's got
(17:57):
a drug habit, Maryann's a federal agent. This just sounds like,
you know, like, uh, someone smokes 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? And they were drug thing? Man, I
think you nailed it. But there's a better fan theory
(18:20):
for Gilligan's Island that 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 um caused everyone
on board to drown, and that in Hell, each one
(18:40):
of the characters represents one of the seven deadly sins
Ginger's lust, Marianna's envy, Professor's pride, thirst in Hell, of
course it's greed. Uh, Mrs Howell, I've seen a sloth
and gluttony seen that too. I've also seen Skipper as
either gluttony or wrath. Wrath makes a lot more sense.
(19:01):
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
horror red rugby shirt. Uh. And then uh, he's always
although it seems like it's always accidental, he's always thwarting
(19:23):
their plans, Like every time they get something something going
to get off of the island, 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 Gilligan's Island Uh,
in a book, confirmed that they did. It was his
(19:46):
idea that they did stand for the Seven Deadly Sins?
Is that right? Yeah, So there you go one of
the rare fan theories that actually was true. 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
(20:07):
being like, yeah, yeah, that's what I meant. Schwartz. 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. Um and UM on record is not having
watched Star Trek Yeah, I mean me neither. But in
Star Trek six, the Undiscovered Country, the Undiscovered Country. Sorry,
(20:36):
people are so mad at me right now. Trek he's uh.
And an ancestor of mine maintained that when you eliminate
the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
And that was Spock in that movie. And the source
of that was Sherlock Holmes himself from the Sign of
Four from a book. And so the idea here is
(20:58):
that Spock is related Sherlock Holmes. It's a little weird
aw about that, but I could see it. I mean
they're both pretty rational. Well, Sherlock Holmes, he loved his speedballs.
I don't think Spot was ever into those. No, he
was more involved. You know, Sherlock Holmes love speedballs, though,
don't you. I did not. Doesn't surprise me. It surprised
me at first. So there's another um Star Trek one.
(21:22):
I love this one that Andy Griffith is the pre
apocalyptic world that leads into Star Trek, and this one
is pretty awesome. So it's based on a Star Trek
episode Chuck Mirie m I R I like Sirie, but
(21:44):
with an M 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 people entirely by kids. And the reason why it's
people entirely by kids because some disease has broken out
(22:05):
where um, 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 back lot that they shot both
shows at and they just outfitted Mayberry to be posted
apocalyptic right down to like Floyd's barbershop. Yeah, but I
(22:25):
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 seal it
for you. Then well there's another part two that um
the kid who played Barney Fife's cousin Virgil. Uh, he
(22:46):
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 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 the beginning of Andy Griffith
(23:09):
when they're you know, walking down to the lake and
he skipped the stones on the lake. 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. Uh, 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. The
(23:31):
same with mash too. That's like the Hollywood Hills, well,
like the mountains behind Malibu. Um, when you fly into
l A, you can and you're looking for you like, oh,
I totally see that. That what we're talking about is
the helicopter in the opening UM montage for mash. Um
(23:54):
was 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. I don't know,
I don't remember that rusted out and overgrown with weeds
and um, but yeah, it's like an old army jeep.
(24:15):
There're a couple of little remnants. Jamie Farr is still
out there, like, hey, how you doing. Thanks for visiting.
You need anyone today? Can I get a lift back?
You need 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 that why they did wrote that
(24:37):
into the show. Yeah, and he's always talking about Tony Pacos,
which is a real place. Oh yeah, I knew all that,
but I didn't know if it was. You know, Jamie
far is definitely from Toledo. Okay, Well they never let
you forget it. Yeah, he's eighty two. Hey, Jamie Far,
God's pizza. Um? What else we got? So? Um? This
(24:57):
one is one of my favorites. This good one. Gar Field,
Oh yeah, is dying alone in an abandoned house 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 nine is the hallucination of a dying,
(25:18):
starving cat in an abandoned house. Yeah. I was way
into Garfield. Garfield was great, but the books Garfield and
Bloom County were my two biggies. I was never into
bloom County. Man I loved it. Um, I did love Garfield, though,
I mean it was a little bloom County is a
little more advanced, I think, and it's humor, um, which
(25:40):
I still got. But Garfield was like kind of perfect
for a ten year old Chuck. It was perfect. So
what you're talking about is, in October of n 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 kind of unsightling. Yeah,
very bleak. And if you go and look at these
(26:01):
strips you can find him online obviously. Um, it's Garfield
alone in an abandoned house, and it's really heavy. Yes,
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 and and his panic
continues to build over the course of the six strips.
(26:24):
Um and finally in the last one, I believe, Uh,
he wakes up and John and Odie are there and
everything's back to normally so happy. But leading up to
that point in strip like three four five, it's it's
getting a little freaky and um again, like you said,
there's nothing funny about it's not It wasn't intended to
(26:45):
be funny. It was intended to scare. And the idea
is is that what we're seeing in these six strips
are the actual reality of Garfield and that everything else.
He finally manages to go back to his basically dying
fee her dream that featured John and Odi. Yeah, but
well they disappear though in that strip too at the end. Yeah,
(27:06):
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 trip. Yeah, okay,
so he's hallucinated them and then is alone and abandoned.
So that's why. Okay, Right, So then that backs up
that whole idea that, yeah, that they're just a hallucination,
because they're demonstrated as an hallucination in that sixth series trip. Yeah,
(27:28):
and he's six strip 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? And then apparently he kind of
laughed at the idea when someone said, hey, uh, you
realize what people think that this is all a big hallucination,
(27:49):
like every other strip you've drawn as a hallucination of
this dying cat. And he laughed about it, but like
what what else? What were people supposed to think? That?
He just got really heavy and and yourd for six strips.
And I think the other thing that was so off
putting about it too, is it resolves or there there
is no resolution? I think on that that seventh day,
(28:10):
the Sunday one just picks up like everything is totally normal,
and it never which makes it even more unsettling. 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
(28:30):
and there's a segment in it, um what's the name
of the segment Valves triast about a cat that turns
out to be a ghost cat. Have you seen it?
It's very good haunting, but it's sort of parallels to
Scarfield story very much. Whether or not was purposeful, we
don't know that part right or did Jim Davis like
(28:51):
discount that too. I've never heard whether or not he
discounts that. Yeah, but that's definitely go check out the
Garfields strips to just look up like Garfield dead or
dying or whatever and it'll bring him up. But um,
also just I'm sure it's on YouTube. Just look up
valves v A L S E treats t R I
S t E and uh, it will, it'll get to you.
(29:14):
It's very sad. Uh And you should plug your favorite thing,
uh 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 of any given strip and it's
(29:35):
just John like, yeah, shouting out loud, like he's just
like like putting his head down on the counter. Good stuff. Yeah,
I forgot 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. M all right, did
(30:15):
you see this Breaking Bad one? Yeah? Um, 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 Bad is
(30:38):
what caused the the zombie outbreak in the Walking Dead. Yeah,
and that's 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 listen
(31:00):
of stuff you should know. Yeah, what up? Dog? Hopefully
still is not anymore. Uh. He drives a red Dodge
Challenger in that first season UM, 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 manager's uh the dealership's
(31:22):
general manager is named Glenn Ohhen the best one is
it comes in season two if you ask me, Yeah,
I agree, you take it buddy. Uh? 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 it seemed pretty far into um Walking Dead.
(31:43):
I'm behind him Walking Dead by like one season. I
need to go back catch up. Yeah, Anyway, season two,
Darryl played by Norman Rita's is um trying to take
the fever down on tea dog another character. Right, why's
it funny? Uh So his brother Merle, he is um.
(32:07):
He is like this bag of drugs basically, so he
looks through the bag, see faces, there's anything that can
help bring the fever down, and there is that blue
crystal meth from Breaking Bad in his bag. So that's
in a good little hint ye. And then before the
Zombie Apocalypse, Merle, his brother h was actually a drug
(32:29):
dealer and he described in one episode his supplier was
quote a jankie, little white guy who threatened him with
a handgun and said I'm gonna kill you, b word,
And that very much sounds like uh Jesse Pinkman. Yeah.
The only way he could have gotten it across more
is if he'd mentioned fat stacks or something, right, that
(32:51):
would have been like super on the nose. Though, So
that's 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. Uh okay, I got one. All right,
(33:16):
this is this is an old one, but I think
it's a good one. The flint Stones and the Jetsons
take place at the exact same time. It's a good
one that the flint Stones are not prehistoric. They're actually
set in a post apocalyptic future. And it's say that
doesn't make any sense, does it? The author, I think
(33:38):
this came 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 had already been invented, so you would figure
(33:59):
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 DoD? Why does
the music and the flint Stones any popular music is
always like fifties, like English British invasion type of I
forgot about that. Twitch twitch um. Why do they have
(34:23):
a banking system? Yeah, 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 uh
it's not cloud City's orbit City, um, which is supposedly
(34:46):
built in the clouds above a small line, which is
where the flint Stones 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 flint Stones are part that have
to scrape by with whatever they can find back here
(35:08):
on Earth. Well, and that George and Fred mirror one another,
and that Fred labors at this uh, I mean, I
don't even know what you call that, like a a
Corey yeah with Mr Slate um, whereas George works at
spacely rockets and assess in this article works for a
total of about nine hours a week. And then robots
and computers handle everything else. That's supposedly how our life
(35:32):
is supposed to be right now, but we're not doing
it right 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. Um.
There was a movie called The Jetson's Meet the flint Stones,
and in that very movie, George Jetson visits the past
(35:55):
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, like there was an apocalypse and
there was no grass. But if he visits the past,
(36:18):
I don't know. This is falling apart where we talk
about it. It It undermines that one. I'm really great Kazoo?
What was up with that guy? Yeah? Well this is
where stuff you should know is evolved. To remember the
Great Kazoo? What was up with that guy? The whole
Christmas thing is weird to me that the flint Stones
(36:39):
would celebrate Christmas when they were clearly supposedly before the
birth of Christ as being in prehistoric times. And no,
it doesn't make any sense. There's a lot of stuff.
The flint Stones didn't make sense about um, how about
the Scooby Doo and I thought this was pretty great, uh,
and not Scooby Doo. See, this is the difference between
(37:00):
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, that's great. Yeah,
(37:21):
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. Um. And not only are these
places abandoned there, they're populated by people who are squatting
(37:46):
basically in these abandoned places. They live in the abandoned place,
and um, the bad guys are and they have no
means to support themselves other than by carrying out these weird,
veiled crimes that they try to dress up as something
other world they which suggests that their geniuses so very
(38:08):
very smart people living in squalor and are jobless. Yeah,
was this cracked? Yeah? So it says that, uh, out
of the twenty seven villains in the original UM Scooby Doo,
Where Are You Run, twenty three of the twenty seven
are motivated by monetary gain via theft, smuggling, or land speculation. Uh.
(38:32):
And like you said, if these people are geniuses, why
are they you know, like I'm gonna squat in this
abandoned mansion so I can gain ownership of it. It's
all very strange. Yeah. And they point out that the
talents that these people have are UM indicate a very
wide variety of UM specific schooling. Right. Yeah, two were
(38:55):
PhD s. Two or three were PhD s. Two are lawyers,
one had an ability to produce forged paintings, one could
repair boats, one was a magician, the stuntman. So these
are highly skilled, highly specialized UM professions that these people
are trained in or capable of doing. But yet they're
out of work and they're pulling off these very elaborate
(39:19):
schemes rather than just having a job in their profession. Yeah,
and even Scooby doo, Like when they go into a
nice vacation spot, it's it's run down and abandoned. It's
like Soviet level vacation spot. Yeah, pretty much. So I
thought this was a great one. At the very least
they had some reason to not just have it be
(39:39):
like normal society that they were living in and like
they would you know, like when you go back and
look at them that 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're like, wait,
not much of a budget, so we got to go
shoot at this abandoned musement park. But they like if
(39:59):
they or at a restaurant, they're almost invariably the only
people there. Have you ever noticed that? 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 television hospital procedural drama
(40:20):
Saying Elsewhere, right, which, uh, Saying Elsewhere? If you watched it,
or even if you didn't, and you just are a
fan of like famous endings of TV series Saying Elsewhere
was very famous for its ending in that UM also
famous for having a bunch of like big stars earlier
in their careers. Yeah, Howie Mandel, Denzel, uh At Begley, Yeah,
(40:41):
begs a lot of other people, UM, but it very
famously ended with UM. At the very end, the uh
showed a shot at the hospital with the snow falling
UM 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. He's like, oh my god,
(41:02):
because again this is like if you watched Eer or
anything Scrubs, what any normal show about hospital life? And
it's about hospital life. That's what st Elsewhere was about.
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,
(41:25):
six years, a hundred and thirty seven episodes about life
at a hospital and the characters that inhabited and worked
at this hospital, the hospitals in a snow globe. This
is totally out of left field, right, make it even
weirder in Walks, who had up to this point been
the director of surgery. I think, um, Donald Westfall, he's
(41:50):
the medical director of st Elsewhere. He walks in. He's
clearly not a doctor. He's dressed, he's not dressed like
one 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. Um,
he is Donald Westfall's son in the series Stand Elsewhere. Yeah,
(42:12):
he had been on the show, but he was never
like a big character, and he he had autism. And uh.
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 everything
(42:34):
about Saying Elsewhere all hundred and thirty seven episodes took
place in the mind of Tommy Westfall, this boy with
autism who's 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 my son. I
talked to him. I don't even know if he can
(42:55):
hear me. He sits there all day long in his
own world, staring at that toy. What's he thinking about?
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, you get it. Everyone,
(43:16):
So America is sitting there like what. At the time,
this is what nineteen eighty eight, I think when it
went off, the was just like what just happened? That's
really weird. But then in two thousand two it started
to get even weirder, right because there's a TV writer
named Dwayne McDuffie, and he wrote a post called six
(43:40):
Degrees of Staining Elsewhere, and he points out, wait, everybody,
if all of stane elsewhere, it took place just in
Tommy west Fall's mind, And then that means that there's
a significant amount of NBC shows that also are just
in Tommy west Fall's mind. It's come to be called
the Tommy west Fall hypothesis or the Tommy Westfall universe multiverse. Okay,
(44:04):
and uh, it just spreads and spreads and spreads. And
there's a really good this paste article called Tommy's World.
The TV legacy of St. Elsewhere's Tommy Westfall Universe is
pretty pretty much the definitive outside post on it, and um,
it lays out a pretty good thread of how shows
(44:24):
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,
Uh the Doctor some of the doctors from St. Elsewhere
went to Cheers one time, Okay, so that means Cheers
is in Tommy Westfall's mind. Uh. Frazier was a spinoff
(44:46):
of Cheers. Check. That means Frasier isn't real. Yeah, you're
getting this. We don't need to say that after each one,
do we. I think it really drives the point home.
If the John Larroquette show, um, which was actually pretty good.
John Larkett is great and that show was very underrated,
but the lead character played by John Larriaicette was John Hemingway. Um,
(45:07):
he called in one time on Frasier's talk show on
Fraser he was one of the Collins as that character.
So now John Lara Catt's universe is in Tommy west
Fall's mind. That's right. So on the John larric Uette
show itself, they mentioned Yo Yo Dine as a company
(45:29):
um a tech company, and in Star Trek, Yo Yo
Dine uh made technology used by the Enterprise crew. Yo
Yo Dine right right, Yo You're dying, So that means
Star Trek is in Tommy west Fall's mind. That's right.
Yo Yo Dine was also appears again in Angel the
(45:50):
TV Josh Wheeden's Angel um it was part of the
I think he was a client of the law firm
Wolfman Hart Angel okay, and then wolf him in Heart
um was was representation to another tech company called Whalon Utani,
which made tech on the TV show Firefly, things are
(46:12):
getting deep now, right, so now Firefly is in Tommy
west Fall's mind as well. Uh. Then Whitland Utahni 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 bay of the ship.
(46:33):
Red Dwarf on the show. So that means that Firefly,
Red Dwarf, and then dr who are all in the
mind of Tommy Westfall because all of them are connected
back to sing Elsewhere. And and as the author of
this paced article points out, this is a normal thread.
(46:56):
It's spread to something like more than four hundred t
V shows being implicated as being in the imagination of
Tommy Westfall. Yeah. I think the last count I saw
was four and nineteen shows. Um, which you know, if
they just get one more than all of a sudden,
it's a weed theory, right you know, Uh, pretty great.
(47:17):
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 and that
was apparently a spinoff from st 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 the guy who played him,
(47:38):
but he got he just popped up in different shows
all over the place, not even necessarily just on NBC.
Oh yeah, he was on X Files and that was Fox,
wasn't it. Uh, Law and order, he was on the wire, uh,
and he was on thirty Rock, so much Munch is
just sitting there since he was already connected to St. Elsewhere.
(47:58):
Any show he pops up Bond, he's obviously in the
same universe as St. Elsewhere, which again is in Tommy
west Fall's mind. So most of the television in the
United States come, you know, it doesn't exist except in
the mind of a boy with autism who likes this
snow globe back in. I wonder how much of that
(48:21):
was I mean, not pre planned, but zero from what
I understand. Well, they clearly meant to show though that St.
Elsewhere was a figment of his imagination, but I don't
think they even stopped and thought, oh that, you know, wow. Well,
and then most of that stuff came after St. Elsewhere too,
So I wonder then if someone kind of ran with it,
(48:43):
like if there's this inside Cabal and Hollywood and the
w g A where people are trying to like, I'm
sure try these things together. So it's like putting a
Wilhelm screaming yeah, which we did incorrectly. We tried, tried Jerry, well, yeah,
that was that was just that was in s Y
(49:04):
S k jam Uh you got anything else? No, sir, Well,
if you want to know more about TV fan theories,
you can go find him on the internet. 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. Okay,
so a good one. Yeah, and nothing from lost Yeah, yeah,
(49:25):
I 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 of whiskey all over the world
like a big scavenger hunt, and not all of that
(49:49):
whiskey was found. Remember that? Yeah? I remember. So this guy,
Chris ort Loft, writes in about that. He said one
of them was hidden in Lake Flats in New York
year before the nineteen eighty Olympics and supposedly was never
found and a few years ago, more than three decades later,
my mother picked up the trail when she discovered that
(50:10):
it was possibly still out there. I love it. This
guy's mom was like what fre you whiskey? I think
she was just like it sounds like an adventure, you know,
just kidding? Uh where you know? Maybe she wanted the
free whiskey too. Um. A fan of cryptic crossword puzzles,
word games, and snowshoeing, the allure was too much for
her to pass up. Well, there you have it, plus
(50:31):
you 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 and historical maps, and hiking through the woods and
fields around Lake Placid. I love this guy's mom. Yeah. Um.
I sat down with her a few times with my
thinking cap on in hopes of unraveling the mystery, as
(50:54):
did many of her friends and relatives. We have lots
of research and speculation amassed as a result, and I
was like kind of nervous reading this. I was like,
she found it, she didn't find it. Um. 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,
or maybe it's still waiting to be found and someone
else can correct the case, so to speak. Blame it
(51:15):
on leaves and twigs. Uh, if you were any listeners,
want a chance of some by now vintage Canadian whiskey
though for the very least, and Enriching walked through the
Christine Northern New York Wilderness. The clues as originally printed
in the cc AD or as follows, and then he
gave them to me, so you can just look that
up on the internet. They're out there. It's really love yourself. Well,
(51:39):
I mean I can't read them all. It's get out
your decoder pins. Happy hunting, and do share one with
me if you find it. That is from Chris or Law.
Thanks or Laft. Will you appreciate that you have the
last name of a person who's only called by their
last name. And Mrs ort Law for at the very
least your mom. I don't know if that's her name,
Madame Madam Mortlaw like that. It's a great explorer and
(52:03):
adventure that's how she shelf forever be known in Yeah,
well thanks Laf and Madam ort Laff. 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 time for Mother's Day too. Uh.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K
podcast or Josh M Clark can join us on Facebook
(52:23):
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know or slash Charles W.
Chuck Bryant can send us an email to stuff Podcasts
at how stuff works dot com has always joined us
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to 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 even know anymore because it just
(00:24):
occurred to me. We're doing a show on uh TV
show fan Theories, and we have our own little fan
theory here that Jerry 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
(00:44):
for years. I think that Jerry's made up. I love it, Yes,
because they're right. We're we're not saying no, actually, Jerry
totally real. Anyway, 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
(01:08):
what about fan theories make them, you know, make shows better.
I couldn't find anything. No, I think the answer is obvious.
I think that's why I couldn't find anything. Too. People
just have time on their hands. That's not what I
was gonna say. I was gonna say that it takes
something that's already pretty enjoyable and adds entirely new dimensions
(01:31):
in depth to it. It takes something familiar and you
can go back and rewatch it through different lens now
and you have 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
(01:51):
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.
I'm just kidding kids out there, we're just joking. Should
we just get right into these? Yes? Some of these
are gonna be shorter, others are going to be a
(02:12):
little longer, and we're just gonna kind of jump around. Right.
Should we start with the Granddaddy or end with the Granddaddy? Uh? Well,
it's the Granddaddy to you Uma by the wall? No?
Do you like that one though? Yeah? And I thought
maybe if I said it, Yeah, I think we'll start
(02:33):
with say, by the Bell. I don't know why. I
thought if I said it, really only I would know
what you were saying. Um, we'll start with say by
the bell, we'll finish with one that I know you're
talking about. Okay, cool, that's very um click baity, I know,
but so one you won't believe the last one. One
of the things that um is really hard to do
(02:56):
when it comes up when you 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
the show says, hey, you know this show that you
think means this or is about all this, It's actually
this is what's going on almost all the time. It's
(03:16):
just somebody's idea. But the part of the backbone of
a fan theory is that it has to hold up
and just about every circumstance. Yeah, and I'll get one
out of the way quickly. Is a bad example, because
to me, a bad fan theory is uh murder. She
wrote she was really a serial killer because you know,
(03:37):
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?
About this? So I know what you mean, and yes
you a fan theory doesn't have to do there else
it's just some schmo saying something somewhere. But murder, she wrote,
(03:57):
has a couple of things to back that up besides
the husband. And the husband I think is whatever. But
but the point that I've seen here there Number one
is Jessica Fletcher is a murder author of murder mystery authoress,
and she murders go follow her everywhere she goes. Right,
(04:17):
think 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, a significant number of
(04:41):
the say two hundred seventy four episodes of murder she wrote,
took place there. If even two hundred of those murders
happened in a town of 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,
(05:01):
the eight team 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.
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, shock
because I was a thirteen year old boy, not a
(05:22):
year old person. It's even better now, really, Yeah, you're
rewatching it? Oh yeah, it's on Netflix and I think prime.
Oh yeah, man, it's good. Check it out. And I'm
not saying like, oh, murder, she wrote good on my hipster.
I've been watching Murder, she wrote for years and years now, Pal, yeah,
you know have a beard. No, but but hold on,
(05:44):
I think I want to extend this for a second.
You raised a very good point, and I feel like
I defended murder. She wrote with that same point that
a fan theory has to have meat on its bones.
It can't be an offhanded thing. It's proved 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
(06:06):
a little thin, granted, 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? Well, I've got one for you. So we're
(06:27):
going to talk about the saved by the Bell fan 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 two thousand twelve wrote a post called Saved by
(06:50):
the Bell a conspiracy theory. Um so he originated this one.
As far as I can tell, he gives zero credit
to anybody else. And the way that the post has written,
it really comes across like he is laying out his
argument himself. So it's possible. And if if, if you
had this idea prior to two thousand twelve, and you're
(07:11):
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 Cract and Mental Flaws and
our own article and who else was me? TV had
a good one? Yeah? Um, Paste magazine had one. Uh.
(07:32):
There's there's a lot of good fan theory uh articles
out there all right. So at long last Saved by
the Bell and I like this one, and I don't.
I don't remember watching this show at all. What but
I 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 would
(07:54):
in my wheelhouse, I guess not. Older teenage boy slash
college Um, well they had Saved the Bell of college years.
They's just for you. Uh. But I do know these characters,
so it had to have absorbed into me somehow. Um.
So here's the deal. Pre Saved by the Bell. This
I did not know. Um. There was a TV show
(08:15):
was it called Good Morning Miss Bliss? Yes? And it
was unbearably bad. He saw that too. So the idea
of this show is there's this boy named Zack. This
is an Indiana, not just Zack, Zack Morris, Yeah, the
Zach played by Mark Paul Gosler, right, Um, this was
an Indiana, of course, not California. And he was troublemaker.
(08:38):
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 was in the original Parent
Trap played the two twins, Hayley Mills. Yeah it was her.
Oh okay. Apparently like then, when you signed a contract
with Disney as a child, they own you for a life. Um.
(08:59):
He has a couple of friends named Mikey and Nicky. Uh,
they're always putting him in his place. Uh. He has
a brother, his parents are divorced, and by all accounts,
Zack Morris and good morning, Miss Bliss is a bit
of a schlub who is always sort of getting his
come up it's from other people. Yeah, kind of a loser. Yeah,
basically the opposite of Zack Morris and Saved by the Bell.
(09:24):
Did the ever say Zach attack? 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 Saved by the Bell. They would
(09:45):
have just you know, kept it going exactly. Uh to say,
by the Bell comes along and now Zack is at
Bayside in California. He's Mr. Everything. He's as this article
points out, he's the most popular kid, ins cool, and
excels in everything, sports, music, casual, racism, whatever. That's that's
(10:06):
the logan transporting. Uh. 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 his core,
(10:30):
but as far as how he's treated and viewed by
his peers and everyone else, he's the differences night and day.
He's not a duet anymore. He's not a loser. He's
he's a total winner. Has logan trend points out, like um,
if he were to miss a quiz, rather than fail,
he would convince the teacher to hold a bake off,
(10:52):
and then he would win the bake off by cheating.
Like That's 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 Uh. I think Slater was went from
his rival to his um sort of his pal, but
(11:13):
his you know, his second Yeah, his wingman, Screech was
around in both, but I think he was sort of
screeching both, right, didn't changed much, Yeah, it Screech has
always been screeched alright, So what's the big reveal? What's
the fan theory? So the fan theory is that Saved
by the Bell is the daydream fantasy of Zack Morris
(11:39):
who's actually living in back in Indiana at John F.
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 the theme song, the theme song talk it's
(12:00):
about like how harried Zack is Well, it's all first person, right,
but you assume that it's talking about Zack, because the
whole show is it revolves around Zack. 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 gonna
pop a test and he knows he's in a mess
(12:21):
and dog ate all his homework, And if you actually
watch the show, nothing ever gets Zach. He's untouchable. 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, either settles
(12:42):
into class and starts day dreaming or 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 my chair, so she, uh,
(13:04):
she won't know I'm there, meaning the teacher. This all
is Zack in Indiana it describes a different person. Doesn't
make any sense that these lyrics if you had not
known that that was a show that existed and all
you knew was saved by the bill, these lyrics don't
make any sense. But they do if it is all
(13:24):
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, that's not nearly as fun. Well, the
other thing I like about fan theories is that there
almost not real it's just fans having fun. But I
(13:50):
like the idea to imagine like some subversive writer that's like, oh,
well here's what we'll do. This is all elaborate fantasy
of this Zack 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 and
(14:10):
address the 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
or night dream. I love it, man, that's a good one. Um.
(14:33):
And you know, uh, things like Mikey and Nikki disappeared. Um.
At one point, Kelly is in love with him and
then she just is gone with no explanation. Yeah he
he 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 save
(14:55):
by the bell Um, and then she's just gone once
she dumps Zach. He's he's Terry. He's really bad at school,
but he got a fifteen o two in the s
A t 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 two. Yeah, so it's all it's even more
(15:18):
evidence that all this is made up and by apparently
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
(15:58):
through a couple of 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 uh the
TV's theme song where he talks about getting in a
fight and that's the whole reason he's sent to Bill
bell Air. Yeah, the Fresh Prince of bel Air. It's
a TV show from and the rap that Will Smith,
(16:22):
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 bell Air to get out,
you know, to get him away from the rough neighborhood
and what Philly West, Philadelphia born and raised and um,
so the theory is that he was actually killed during
this fight, and um everything else is you know, his
(16:46):
h 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 after life, which is
bel Air. His parents are like basically non existent, but
they show up a couple of times. Uh. This is
(17:08):
explained away by the fan theory as his parents visiting
their son's grave. It's pretty awesome. 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 Prince is dead?
That's right? What do you wanna do next? Should we do? Do? Uh? That?
(17:33):
The two of them from Gilligan's Island? Yeah? The drug
ones super lame? Yeah, I thought so too. There's this
one theory that the and this was. You're right, it's
just dumb that that Mr Howell on Gilligan's Island paid
Gilligan and the Skipper to take him out to see
to do a drug deal, which is why he has
a trunkload of catch, trunk full of cash. Ginger's got
(17:57):
a drug habit, Maryann's a federal agent. This just sounds like,
you know, like, uh, someone smokes 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? And they were drug thing? Man, I
think you nailed it. But there's a better fan theory
(18:20):
for Gilligan's Island that 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 um caused everyone
on board to drown, and that in Hell, each one
(18:40):
of the characters represents one of the seven deadly sins
Ginger's lust, Marianna's envy, Professor's pride, thirst in Hell, of
course it's greed. Uh, Mrs Howell, I've seen a sloth
and gluttony seen that too. I've also seen Skipper as
either gluttony or wrath. Wrath makes a lot more sense.
(19:01):
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
horror red rugby shirt. Uh. And then uh, he's always
although it seems like it's always accidental, he's always thwarting
(19:23):
their plans, Like every time they get something something going
to get off of the island, 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 Gilligan's Island Uh,
in a book, confirmed that they did. It was his
(19:46):
idea that they did stand for the Seven Deadly Sins?
Is that right? Yeah, So there you go one of
the rare fan theories that actually was true. 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
(20:07):
being like, yeah, yeah, that's what I meant. Schwartz. 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. Um and UM on record is not having
watched Star Trek Yeah, I mean me neither. But in
Star Trek six, the Undiscovered Country, the Undiscovered Country. Sorry,
(20:36):
people are so mad at me right now. Trek he's uh.
And an ancestor of mine maintained that when you eliminate
the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
And that was Spock in that movie. And the source
of that was Sherlock Holmes himself from the Sign of
Four from a book. And so the idea here is
(20:58):
that Spock is related Sherlock Holmes. It's a little weird
aw about that, but I could see it. I mean
they're both pretty rational. Well, Sherlock Holmes, he loved his speedballs.
I don't think Spot was ever into those. No, he
was more involved. You know, Sherlock Holmes love speedballs, though,
don't you. I did not. Doesn't surprise me. It surprised
me at first. So there's another um Star Trek one.
(21:22):
I love this one that Andy Griffith is the pre
apocalyptic world that leads into Star Trek, and this one
is pretty awesome. So it's based on a Star Trek
episode Chuck Mirie m I R I like Sirie, but
(21:44):
with an M 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 people entirely by kids. And the reason why it's
people entirely by kids because some disease has broken out
(22:05):
where um, 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 back lot that they shot both
shows at and they just outfitted Mayberry to be posted
apocalyptic right down to like Floyd's barbershop. Yeah, but I
(22:25):
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 seal it
for you. Then well there's another part two that um
the kid who played Barney Fife's cousin Virgil. Uh, he
(22:46):
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 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 the beginning of Andy Griffith
(23:09):
when they're you know, walking down to the lake and
he skipped the stones on the lake. 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. Uh, 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. The
(23:31):
same with mash too. That's like the Hollywood Hills, well,
like the mountains behind Malibu. Um, when you fly into
l A, you can and you're looking for you like, oh,
I totally see that. That what we're talking about is
the helicopter in the opening UM montage for mash. Um
(23:54):
was 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. I don't know,
I don't remember that rusted out and overgrown with weeds
and um, but yeah, it's like an old army jeep.
(24:15):
There're a couple of little remnants. Jamie Farr is still
out there, like, hey, how you doing. Thanks for visiting.
You need anyone today? Can I get a lift back?
You need 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 that why they did wrote that
(24:37):
into the show. Yeah, and he's always talking about Tony Pacos,
which is a real place. Oh yeah, I knew all that,
but I didn't know if it was. You know, Jamie
far is definitely from Toledo. Okay, Well they never let
you forget it. Yeah, he's eighty two. Hey, Jamie Far,
God's pizza. Um? What else we got? So? Um? This
(24:57):
one is one of my favorites. This good one. Gar Field,
Oh yeah, is dying alone in an abandoned house 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 nine is the hallucination of a dying,
(25:18):
starving cat in an abandoned house. Yeah. I was way
into Garfield. Garfield was great, but the books Garfield and
Bloom County were my two biggies. I was never into
bloom County. Man I loved it. Um, I did love Garfield, though,
I mean it was a little bloom County is a
little more advanced, I think, and it's humor, um, which
(25:40):
I still got. But Garfield was like kind of perfect
for a ten year old Chuck. It was perfect. So
what you're talking about is, in October of n 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 kind of unsightling. Yeah,
very bleak. And if you go and look at these
(26:01):
strips you can find him online obviously. Um, it's Garfield
alone in an abandoned house, and it's really heavy. Yes,
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 and and his panic
continues to build over the course of the six strips.
(26:24):
Um and finally in the last one, I believe, Uh,
he wakes up and John and Odie are there and
everything's back to normally so happy. But leading up to
that point in strip like three four five, it's it's
getting a little freaky and um again, like you said,
there's nothing funny about it's not It wasn't intended to
(26:45):
be funny. It was intended to scare. And the idea
is is that what we're seeing in these six strips
are the actual reality of Garfield and that everything else.
He finally manages to go back to his basically dying
fee her dream that featured John and Odi. Yeah, but
well they disappear though in that strip too at the end. Yeah,
(27:06):
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 trip. Yeah, okay,
so he's hallucinated them and then is alone and abandoned.
So that's why. Okay, Right, So then that backs up
that whole idea that, yeah, that they're just a hallucination,
because they're demonstrated as an hallucination in that sixth series trip. Yeah,
(27:28):
and he's six strip 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? And then apparently he kind of
laughed at the idea when someone said, hey, uh, you
realize what people think that this is all a big hallucination,
(27:49):
like every other strip you've drawn as a hallucination of
this dying cat. And he laughed about it, but like
what what else? What were people supposed to think? That?
He just got really heavy and and yourd for six strips.
And I think the other thing that was so off
putting about it too, is it resolves or there there
is no resolution? I think on that that seventh day,
(28:10):
the Sunday one just picks up like everything is totally normal,
and it never which makes it even more unsettling. 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
(28:30):
and there's a segment in it, um what's the name
of the segment Valves triast about a cat that turns
out to be a ghost cat. Have you seen it?
It's very good haunting, but it's sort of parallels to
Scarfield story very much. Whether or not was purposeful, we
don't know that part right or did Jim Davis like
(28:51):
discount that too. I've never heard whether or not he
discounts that. Yeah, but that's definitely go check out the
Garfields strips to just look up like Garfield dead or
dying or whatever and it'll bring him up. But um,
also just I'm sure it's on YouTube. Just look up
valves v A L S E treats t R I
S t E and uh, it will, it'll get to you.
(29:14):
It's very sad. Uh And you should plug your favorite thing,
uh 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 of any given strip and it's
(29:35):
just John like, yeah, shouting out loud, like he's just
like like putting his head down on the counter. Good stuff. Yeah,
I forgot 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. M all right, did
(30:15):
you see this Breaking Bad one? Yeah? Um, 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 Bad is
(30:38):
what caused the the zombie outbreak in the Walking Dead. Yeah,
and that's 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 listen
(31:00):
of stuff you should know. Yeah, what up? Dog? Hopefully
still is not anymore. Uh. He drives a red Dodge
Challenger in that first season UM, 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 manager's uh the dealership's
(31:22):
general manager is named Glenn Ohhen the best one is
it comes in season two if you ask me, Yeah,
I agree, you take it buddy. Uh? 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 it seemed pretty far into um Walking Dead.
(31:43):
I'm behind him Walking Dead by like one season. I
need to go back catch up. Yeah, Anyway, season two,
Darryl played by Norman Rita's is um trying to take
the fever down on tea dog another character. Right, why's
it funny? Uh So his brother Merle, he is um.
(32:07):
He is like this bag of drugs basically, so he
looks through the bag, see faces, there's anything that can
help bring the fever down, and there is that blue
crystal meth from Breaking Bad in his bag. So that's
in a good little hint ye. And then before the
Zombie Apocalypse, Merle, his brother h was actually a drug
(32:29):
dealer and he described in one episode his supplier was
quote a jankie, little white guy who threatened him with
a handgun and said I'm gonna kill you, b word,
And that very much sounds like uh Jesse Pinkman. Yeah.
The only way he could have gotten it across more
is if he'd mentioned fat stacks or something, right, that
(32:51):
would have been like super on the nose. Though, So
that's 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. Uh okay, I got one. All right,
(33:16):
this is this is an old one, but I think
it's a good one. The flint Stones and the Jetsons
take place at the exact same time. It's a good
one that the flint Stones are not prehistoric. They're actually
set in a post apocalyptic future. And it's say that
doesn't make any sense, does it? The author, I think
(33:38):
this came 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 had already been invented, so you would figure
(33:59):
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 DoD? Why does
the music and the flint Stones any popular music is
always like fifties, like English British invasion type of I
forgot about that. Twitch twitch um. Why do they have
(34:23):
a banking system? Yeah, 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 uh
it's not cloud City's orbit City, um, which is supposedly
(34:46):
built in the clouds above a small line, which is
where the flint Stones 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 flint Stones are part that have
to scrape by with whatever they can find back here
(35:08):
on Earth. Well, and that George and Fred mirror one another,
and that Fred labors at this uh, I mean, I
don't even know what you call that, like a a
Corey yeah with Mr Slate um, whereas George works at
spacely rockets and assess in this article works for a
total of about nine hours a week. And then robots
and computers handle everything else. That's supposedly how our life
(35:32):
is supposed to be right now, but we're not doing
it right 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. Um.
There was a movie called The Jetson's Meet the flint Stones,
and in that very movie, George Jetson visits the past
(35:55):
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, like there was an apocalypse and
there was no grass. But if he visits the past,
(36:18):
I don't know. This is falling apart where we talk
about it. It It undermines that one. I'm really great Kazoo?
What was up with that guy? Yeah? Well this is
where stuff you should know is evolved. To remember the
Great Kazoo? What was up with that guy? The whole
Christmas thing is weird to me that the flint Stones
(36:39):
would celebrate Christmas when they were clearly supposedly before the
birth of Christ as being in prehistoric times. And no,
it doesn't make any sense. There's a lot of stuff.
The flint Stones didn't make sense about um, how about
the Scooby Doo and I thought this was pretty great, uh,
and not Scooby Doo. See, this is the difference between
(37:00):
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, that's great. Yeah,
(37:21):
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. Um. And not only are these
places abandoned there, they're populated by people who are squatting
(37:46):
basically in these abandoned places. They live in the abandoned place,
and um, the bad guys are and they have no
means to support themselves other than by carrying out these weird,
veiled crimes that they try to dress up as something
other world they which suggests that their geniuses so very
(38:08):
very smart people living in squalor and are jobless. Yeah,
was this cracked? Yeah? So it says that, uh, out
of the twenty seven villains in the original UM Scooby Doo,
Where Are You Run, twenty three of the twenty seven
are motivated by monetary gain via theft, smuggling, or land speculation. Uh.
(38:32):
And like you said, if these people are geniuses, why
are they you know, like I'm gonna squat in this
abandoned mansion so I can gain ownership of it. It's
all very strange. Yeah. And they point out that the
talents that these people have are UM indicate a very
wide variety of UM specific schooling. Right. Yeah, two were
(38:55):
PhD s. Two or three were PhD s. Two are lawyers,
one had an ability to produce forged paintings, one could
repair boats, one was a magician, the stuntman. So these
are highly skilled, highly specialized UM professions that these people
are trained in or capable of doing. But yet they're
out of work and they're pulling off these very elaborate
(39:19):
schemes rather than just having a job in their profession. Yeah,
and even Scooby doo, Like when they go into a
nice vacation spot, it's it's run down and abandoned. It's
like Soviet level vacation spot. Yeah, pretty much. So I
thought this was a great one. At the very least
they had some reason to not just have it be
(39:39):
like normal society that they were living in and like
they would you know, like when you go back and
look at them that 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're like, wait,
not much of a budget, so we got to go
shoot at this abandoned musement park. But they like if
(39:59):
they or at a restaurant, they're almost invariably the only
people there. Have you ever noticed that? 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 television hospital procedural drama
(40:20):
Saying Elsewhere, right, which, uh, Saying Elsewhere? If you watched it,
or even if you didn't, and you just are a
fan of like famous endings of TV series Saying Elsewhere
was very famous for its ending in that UM also
famous for having a bunch of like big stars earlier
in their careers. Yeah, Howie Mandel, Denzel, uh At Begley, Yeah,
(40:41):
begs a lot of other people, UM, but it very
famously ended with UM. At the very end, the uh
showed a shot at the hospital with the snow falling
UM 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. He's like, oh my god,
(41:02):
because again this is like if you watched Eer or
anything Scrubs, what any normal show about hospital life? And
it's about hospital life. That's what st Elsewhere was about.
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,
(41:25):
six years, a hundred and thirty seven episodes about life
at a hospital and the characters that inhabited and worked
at this hospital, the hospitals in a snow globe. This
is totally out of left field, right, make it even
weirder in Walks, who had up to this point been
the director of surgery. I think, um, Donald Westfall, he's
(41:50):
the medical director of st Elsewhere. He walks in. He's
clearly not a doctor. He's dressed, he's not dressed like
one 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. Um,
he is Donald Westfall's son in the series Stand Elsewhere. Yeah,
(42:12):
he had been on the show, but he was never
like a big character, and he he had autism. And uh.
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 everything
(42:34):
about Saying Elsewhere all hundred and thirty seven episodes took
place in the mind of Tommy Westfall, this boy with
autism who's 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 my son. I
talked to him. I don't even know if he can
(42:55):
hear me. He sits there all day long in his
own world, staring at that toy. What's he thinking about?
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, you get it. Everyone,
(43:16):
So America is sitting there like what. At the time,
this is what nineteen eighty eight, I think when it
went off, the was just like what just happened? That's
really weird. But then in two thousand two it started
to get even weirder, right because there's a TV writer
named Dwayne McDuffie, and he wrote a post called six
(43:40):
Degrees of Staining Elsewhere, and he points out, wait, everybody,
if all of stane elsewhere, it took place just in
Tommy west Fall's mind, And then that means that there's
a significant amount of NBC shows that also are just
in Tommy west Fall's mind. It's come to be called
the Tommy west Fall hypothesis or the Tommy Westfall universe multiverse. Okay,
(44:04):
and uh, it just spreads and spreads and spreads. And
there's a really good this paste article called Tommy's World.
The TV legacy of St. Elsewhere's Tommy Westfall Universe is
pretty pretty much the definitive outside post on it, and um,
it lays out a pretty good thread of how shows
(44:24):
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,
Uh the Doctor some of the doctors from St. Elsewhere
went to Cheers one time, Okay, so that means Cheers
is in Tommy Westfall's mind. Uh. Frazier was a spinoff
(44:46):
of Cheers. Check. That means Frasier isn't real. Yeah, you're
getting this. We don't need to say that after each one,
do we. I think it really drives the point home.
If the John Larroquette show, um, which was actually pretty good.
John Larkett is great and that show was very underrated,
but the lead character played by John Larriaicette was John Hemingway. Um,
(45:07):
he called in one time on Frasier's talk show on
Fraser he was one of the Collins as that character.
So now John Lara Catt's universe is in Tommy west
Fall's mind. That's right. So on the John larric Uette
show itself, they mentioned Yo Yo Dine as a company
(45:29):
um a tech company, and in Star Trek, Yo Yo
Dine uh made technology used by the Enterprise crew. Yo
Yo Dine right right, Yo You're dying, So that means
Star Trek is in Tommy west Fall's mind. That's right.
Yo Yo Dine was also appears again in Angel the
(45:50):
TV Josh Wheeden's Angel um it was part of the
I think he was a client of the law firm
Wolfman Hart Angel okay, and then wolf him in Heart
um was was representation to another tech company called Whalon Utani,
which made tech on the TV show Firefly, things are
(46:12):
getting deep now, right, so now Firefly is in Tommy
west Fall's mind as well. Uh. Then Whitland Utahni 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 bay of the ship.
(46:33):
Red Dwarf on the show. So that means that Firefly,
Red Dwarf, and then dr who are all in the
mind of Tommy Westfall because all of them are connected
back to sing Elsewhere. And and as the author of
this paced article points out, this is a normal thread.
(46:56):
It's spread to something like more than four hundred t
V shows being implicated as being in the imagination of
Tommy Westfall. Yeah. I think the last count I saw
was four and nineteen shows. Um, which you know, if
they just get one more than all of a sudden,
it's a weed theory, right you know, Uh, pretty great.
(47:17):
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 and that
was apparently a spinoff from st 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 the guy who played him,
(47:38):
but he got he just popped up in different shows
all over the place, not even necessarily just on NBC.
Oh yeah, he was on X Files and that was Fox,
wasn't it. Uh, Law and order, he was on the wire, uh,
and he was on thirty Rock, so much Munch is
just sitting there since he was already connected to St. Elsewhere.
(47:58):
Any show he pops up Bond, he's obviously in the
same universe as St. Elsewhere, which again is in Tommy
west Fall's mind. So most of the television in the
United States come, you know, it doesn't exist except in
the mind of a boy with autism who likes this
snow globe back in. I wonder how much of that
(48:21):
was I mean, not pre planned, but zero from what
I understand. Well, they clearly meant to show though that St.
Elsewhere was a figment of his imagination, but I don't
think they even stopped and thought, oh that, you know, wow. Well,
and then most of that stuff came after St. Elsewhere too,
So I wonder then if someone kind of ran with it,
(48:43):
like if there's this inside Cabal and Hollywood and the
w g A where people are trying to like, I'm
sure try these things together. So it's like putting a
Wilhelm screaming yeah, which we did incorrectly. We tried, tried Jerry, well, yeah,
that was that was just that was in s Y
(49:04):
S k jam Uh you got anything else? No, sir, Well,
if you want to know more about TV fan theories,
you can go find him on the internet. 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. Okay,
so a good one. Yeah, and nothing from lost Yeah, yeah,
(49:25):
I 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 of whiskey all over the world
like a big scavenger hunt, and not all of that
(49:49):
whiskey was found. Remember that? Yeah? I remember. So this guy,
Chris ort Loft, writes in about that. He said one
of them was hidden in Lake Flats in New York
year before the nineteen eighty Olympics and supposedly was never
found and a few years ago, more than three decades later,
my mother picked up the trail when she discovered that
(50:10):
it was possibly still out there. I love it. This
guy's mom was like what fre you whiskey? I think
she was just like it sounds like an adventure, you know,
just kidding? Uh where you know? Maybe she wanted the
free whiskey too. Um. A fan of cryptic crossword puzzles,
word games, and snowshoeing, the allure was too much for
her to pass up. Well, there you have it, plus
(50:31):
you 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 and historical maps, and hiking through the woods and
fields around Lake Placid. I love this guy's mom. Yeah. Um.
I sat down with her a few times with my
thinking cap on in hopes of unraveling the mystery, as
(50:54):
did many of her friends and relatives. We have lots
of research and speculation amassed as a result, and I
was like kind of nervous reading this. I was like,
she found it, she didn't find it. Um. 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,
or maybe it's still waiting to be found and someone
else can correct the case, so to speak. Blame it
(51:15):
on leaves and twigs. Uh, if you were any listeners,
want a chance of some by now vintage Canadian whiskey
though for the very least, and Enriching walked through the
Christine Northern New York Wilderness. The clues as originally printed
in the cc AD or as follows, and then he
gave them to me, so you can just look that
up on the internet. They're out there. It's really love yourself. Well,
(51:39):
I mean I can't read them all. It's get out
your decoder pins. Happy hunting, and do share one with
me if you find it. That is from Chris or Law.
Thanks or Laft. Will you appreciate that you have the
last name of a person who's only called by their
last name. And Mrs ort Law for at the very
least your mom. I don't know if that's her name,
Madame Madam Mortlaw like that. It's a great explorer and
(52:03):
adventure that's how she shelf forever be known in Yeah,
well thanks Laf and Madam ort Laff. 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 time for Mother's Day too. Uh.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K
podcast or Josh M Clark can join us on Facebook
(52:23):
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know or slash Charles W.
Chuck Bryant can send us an email to stuff Podcasts
at how stuff works dot com has always joined us
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
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