r/FanTheories

So as most of us I'm quite unsatisfied with the season 5 episode 8. Now I know redoing the entire season would be impossible I made the script for the last episode trying to keep kripke's emotions while delivering on the scotch earth promise. Ik this is impossible but I think it might save the show's overall rating if it was shot with this script T\_T(idk man I'm coping)

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The opening with the boys getting in the bought tower. Kimiko is with them not speaking. With Homelander in the oval office the tower is not that heavily guarded they slip in. Sister sage gives comms on the radio about soldier boy being inside the building with him absent from all the meetings and public appearances.

MM is bitching about trusting both soldier boy and sister sage again. But billy tells him with kimiko in shock and the mass genocide around the corner they have to take the risk, if they can't make soldier boy turn on his son, they will subdue him and use him as bargaining chip or something. They are desperate with the time constraints.

We get a hint that billy and mm have something up their ass.

They luck out finding soldier boy in captivity again and free him. A quick fight later, they blow up the bought tower trying to get out and the soldier boy dismisses them all and asks them to take him to Homelander. They ask him how they can trust him and then he tries to run away or something and sister sage is hit by his blast that brought down the tower. Billy turns him into seeing the Homelander as an enemy by telling him he freed him twice.sister sage fucks off hate, without power to harry potter or hell idc don't like the character anyway.

They go through the live tunnel, Ashley saves them and runs away. Homelander throws elon in space.

Starlight takes the deep to the mainland America or some other part of the country devoid of water and their battle commences as in the show, while deep is throwing punches, starlight is deeply injured in the fight somehow and goes to gen v characters passing out and deep who wounded her dies as well. Maybe by small river fishes or something more painful.

Kimiko is fighting oh father and is being overpowered. Butcher and soldier boy are fighting Homelander who was in the middle of giving his speech. As they are fighting there comes a time where Homelander is being overpowered by soldier boy and Billy, then ryan joins in on the fun cuz of the camera and they start overpowering him. Homelander starts feeling uneasy as he is struggling to fight three supes at once he knocks ryan out and tries to fly away but soldier boy and Billy grab him down similar to previous season. This time Billy wrapped his tentacles around him and soldier boy on his shoulder. V1 infused Homelander flies straight up destroying white House roof and mid flight tosses the soldier boy away, he’ll receive Captain America treatment. While Homelander flies billy into the atmosphere. Billy strangles him with his tentacles and is about to suffocate when Ryan brings Homelander down like a torpedo. We see kimiko dying in battle with oh father as she is distracted and the Frenchie visit similar to the show. Homelander , ryan and Billy crash back into the White House garden scorching it completely.

Homelander is in pain but laughs as he sees Billy dying from the fall saying something like scorched earth gave you nothing. While we hear a scream, Kimiko bursts out and lets out a big radiation bomb. Fortunately MM and Hughie had gone to meet annie. Now in the White House we see a weakened kimiko who faints as she rips now powerless oh father's head off and Homelander and Billy both powerless and bloodied, ryan passed out again (incapacitated for the rest of the fight). As Homelander sees the reality of what might happen he begs similar to the show and then similar to show Billy cracks his head open. We then see Billy limp back home celebrating and then he sees terror die and goes to vought towers rubble as he tells Hughie they places frenchie’s thing(virus capsule) when they came to find soldier boy and the show Hughie vs Billy commences with maybe Billy pressing the button at the same moment Huggies chooses to shoot him and saying it's upto u now mate sorry or something. Comic book-esque. Or Hughie just killing him

We then see the few months later like the show with starlight and Hughie in Scotland or France with Kimiko starlight pregnant and healing something like a broken arm or something and soldier boy back in his confinement with Stan Edgar running vought and Ashley impeached.

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Idts I left any loose ends but do tell if you believe that.

We all know the classic twist in The Matrix Reloaded: the Architect reveals Neo is the 6th version of "The One," Zion has been destroyed 5 times before, and the timeline Morpheus believes (that it’s roughly the year 2199) is wrong.

The standard lore calculation says that if each Zion cycle lasts about 100 years, adding the 5 previous cycles means Neo actually wakes up around the year 2699.

But if you actually look at the math of Zion's population, the 100-year cycle is a biological impossibility. The machines are lying about how long a cycle lasts.

The Problem: 23 Founders to 250,000 People When the Matrix resets, the previous One selects 23 humans (16 female, 7 male) to rebuild Zion. By The Matrix Revolutions, Commander Lock states Zion’s population is 250,000.

A common counter-argument is that Zion grows by constantly hacking the Matrix and freeing adult "redpills." But canon explicitly shoots this down. In Reloaded, Councilor Hamann looks at the crowd on the engineering level and tells Neo: “Most of them have never seen the Matrix. They don't know it exists.” The vast majority of Zion is naturally born.

The Impossible Math: If you take 16 founding women and try to reach a naturally born population of ~200,000+ people in just 100 years (roughly 4 generations), human biology completely breaks down.

To achieve that kind of exponential growth naturally in a century, every single woman in Zion—generation after generation—would need to give birth to 20 to 30+ children. Even in a society hyper-focused on repopulation, that is a biological absurdity.

Furthermore, if they were making up the numbers by freeing adults from pods at an exponential rate to bypass natural birth, they would have to steal thousands of people a month. The Matrix would experience a massive, highly visible pandemic of disappearing citizens, completely destabilizing the simulation. Also they don't even have enough ships to do that.

The Conclusion: The 100-year timeline per cycle is a lie manufactured by the machines to keep the human resistance compliant, predictable, and feeling hopeless.

For Zion to grow to a quarter-million naturally born citizens, each cycle must actually last for several centuries, if not a millennium. If each of the 5 previous cycles lasted 500 to 800 years to allow for realistic human population growth, the real year Neo wakes up isn't 2199, and it isn't 2699. Humanity has been trapped in the pods for thousands of years. It’s easily the year 5000 or beyond.

What do you guys think? Did the Wachowskis just overlook the demographic math, or is this the ultimate proof that the Machines' gaslighting goes way deeper than Morpheus ever realized?

Disclaimer: Used AI to make my thoughts into the post.

Whenever they talk about star wars holograms they talk about how bad the quality is I have a theory for why it is bad:

we only see 2 people who use holograms for majority of star wars

rebels

republic

and in both situations it is

a. Fighting

b. In a rebel base

if I was empire and to quash rebels first thing I would do is add trackers and improve surveillance on holograms that they did do taking control over holonet and establishment of SIGNIT and electronic warfare division basically to stop communications

so rebels would have to use off the grid holograms

If we look in to history as to how rebels counter this example Radio Venceremos used by rebels in civil war el salvador

we are comparing burner phone to Samsung galaxy S23 if you want to see peak hologram the fact Palpatine managed to communicate to all 1000's commanders and be able to surprise jedi's who all felt the disturbance in force so get a huge 20 seconds headstart to interpret

Now that it is finally official and production is underway I allowed myself to go back and watch The Batman knowing I am safe from another heartbreaking Firefly incident waiting for answers that never came. With the floodwaters receded and Gotham picking up the pieces, the ending leaves so many threads dangling seemingly ripe for sequel material: Joker and Riddler bonding in Arkham, a flooded and displaced city, a new young mayor in Bella Reál, Detective Martinez likely headed for a promotion after collaring Falcone and Riddler, a newly orphaned boy (likely setting up Robin or a surrogate), and a Batman who’s starting to understand the power of being a symbol of hope.

But the real direction is coming into focus with recent casting announcements and production updates. Notably, there’s been no official word yet on returns for Paul Dano’s Riddler or Barry Keoghan’s Joker. Now Dano is almost assuredly going to be a cameo in Part II at the very least, especially with where I suspect the story is headed, but Keoghan’s Joker is much more up in the air. He didn’t do well with test audiences and his big part was cut from the first film, they didn’t even bill him as Joker. So it is safe to say that little “tease” at the end of The Batman probably is not headed anywhere, at the very least in this next film.

What we do appear to have front and center along with Batman, Gordon, Penguin, Martinez, the mayor, and Alfred are the Dents. The Batman Part II swung big for this trio, in billing order (this is important) Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, and Charles Dance who are heavily rumored to be playing Gilda Dent, Harvey Dent, and Christopher Dent respectively.

Now, when you are making a follow up film and you make the choice to call it “Part II” instead of just The Batman 2 or a generic sequel subtitle, it tells you something. This isn’t another standalone adventure. It’s the next chapter in one continuous story that will be picking up directly from the consequences of Part I and deepening the world Reeves has built.

Now, this I believe is kind of a testimony to the type of writer Matt Reeves is, in that the most consequential revelation in The Batman is often overlooked because there are still 40 minutes left in the film after it happens and it just is not brought up again. In a standalone film that might be a bad thing, but where one continuous story is being told noir style it becomes fucking brilliant.

The crux of The Batman is Riddler helping Batman discover his parents were not wholly the people he thought them to be and everyone now knows Thomas Wayne had Edward Elliott, an investigative journalist, killed. That is the single most consequential revelation in The Batman. It stands to reason those consequences will resonate heavily in a film titled The Batman Part II.

Yet, the Dents are front and center.

So the question now becomes how do you combine all the elements we know will be present in this film in:

The tragedy of Harvey Dent

Hush/Elliott revenge

Gotham’s core corruption

Thomas Wayne’s sins and Bruce’s inherited cross

…without overcrowding this movie?

Well what’s a noir without a good ole fashioned femme fatale?

Imagine one woman who carries both the Dent name and the Elliott wound.

A woman who enters the story tied to Harvey Dent romantically and politically. Someone whose presence could accelerate Harvey’s fall, give voice to an Elliott family grudge that’s been simmering since Edward’s murder, and force Bruce Wayne to stare directly at the blood on his family name.

As separate story threads the film would be over ambitious and bogged down.

But when they share the same blood… suddenly everything tightens into one coiled, personal, devastating storyline.

So my theory is that second billed Scarlett Johansson is playing Gilda (Elliott) Dent as a femme fatale style Hush and the primary antagonist and story driver of The Batman Part II.

Thoughts?

Me, my brother, and my dad have this theory that since, across multiple sci-fi fandoms, everyone (even the aliens) speak English, that therefore means that something must have caused them to do that, right? We figured it couldn't have been chance, or a trading language, since they hate each others' guts.

So therefore we theorised that there must have been some sort of Empire, right?

So that means we figured that there was once a mighty 2nd British Empire that ruled many multiverses, that eventually fell and gave way to all these different empires that, despite being bitter enemies, still speak British English simply because it is the common language and had been the common language since time immemorial, all due to a certain 2nd British Empire.

But before you go arguing, just as an FYI, this is all a silly little joke that got out of hand.

I was reading the resident evil wiki on the T virus, as one does, and I see that the T Virus is modified from the Progenitor virus that was discovered in the mountains. It's speculated in universe that the progenitor virus is millions of yesrs old, possibly older.

What else is ancient and has zombie-like properties? Flood powder.

For those that don't know, the origin of the flood is Precursors, a race of god-like beings who fought the forerunner. As a result of the war, the precursors turned themselves into this powder and spread it through the galaxy. Forerunner put this in pet food, the pets turned into zombies, and thats how we got the firdt flood.

Sounds similar to the T Virus. Scientists discovered this ancient substance and modified it into the T Virus. Under my theory, this ancient substance, the Progenitor Virus, was Precursor powder. Except instead of putting it in pet food, they tinkered with it to create bioweapons.

Any differences can be chalked up to modifications done to turn progenitor into T virus, as well as these being very small scale infections. We never see infection forms in Resident Evil because the flood never advances to that state. Every outbreak in Resident Evil never got bigger than a city. In Halo, we were dealing with planet wide outbreaks (or leftovers from galaxy wide outbreaks). Resident Evil outbreaks are extremely tiny compared to Halo's. Halo CE, they took over the whole ring and only just started on a protogravemind. Afaik, no Resident Evil even comes close to thebone we see in CE.

Similarities, well it explains the classic zombie trope of why zombies don't attack each other despite being feral beasts. The flood are a hive mind. Further similarities are the zombies mutating into stronger versions. Attack and fail to kill a zombie and it becomes a licker. Combat forms slowly evolving. On that note, the Nemesis Project - they created a fully mutated combat form.

There's still major differences. Like I said, they could be the tinkering to turn powder into t virus. It still wouldn't be the true flood. And also, the 'standard combat form' is likely a game thing. I doubt they all mutate the exact same way. And lastly, Resident Evil "flood" are spread by body fluid and bites, not by infection forms. From the comics, we know Halo flood can spread by body fluid as well, it's just not as common as the infection forms and seems a bit weaker (the only people we see turn by spores are already compromised - suggesting the body can fight it off to a degree, but remember, the T Virus is modified).

In the hundreds of years between Resident Evil and Halo, the T Virus is covered up and/or destroyed with no record. Umbrella Corp has long since filed for bankruptcy and/or is absorbed by Weyland Yutani (I like the idea that Aliens is in this verse as well, but thats another story)

In Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, it is believed that Hooded Justice is Rolf Muller, a circus strongman. But this is not the case.

Hooded Justice is actually Laurence Schexnayder, the Minutemen’s publicist.

What Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons have achieved is actually giving a superhero a true secret identity. One that no reader was able to figure out for 40 years.

The following post will be the entire theory in full.

However, it works best visually by being able to see the photos included.

At the end of the post, in a comment, I will post a link to my 100% free Substack so you can see the same theory laid out with the accompanying visual aids if you so desire.

Here we go:

Alan Moore once wrote a comic book called “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” with a publication date of September 1986. The same publication date as his and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen issue 1.
In the picture, you’ll see some villains in this comic book laughing about the ‘great gag’ of Superman’s secret identity. That all Superman had to do was “comb his hair and stick on a pair of glasses” to fool all of humanity.

It’s a widely raised issue in the comic book community - “How can NO ONE tell that Clark Kent and Superman are one and the same?” Many believe that if they lived in the DC Universe, they wouldn’t be ignorant. They would be able to put the pieces together.

It is my belief that Alan Moore saw the comic book community react in this manner and said “Okay, let’s see if you can put it together. Without being told. Can you figure out that the mystery identity of Hooded Justice is actually the low-key man wearing glasses?”
And you know what? We could not figure it out.
Don’t worry, I’m honesty not claiming to be “smarter” than you, I read Watchmen about a dozen times over a 20-25 year period before it clicked.
But luckily it did click and I’m here today to walk you through some evidence I’ve gathered that proves Larry Schexnayder is Hooded Justice. Or, at the very least, provides a much more substantial case than that of Rolf Muller.

Hooded Justice and Larry Schexnayder are NEVER in the same room.
You never see them side by side. Larry doesn’t appear in the Minutemen Christmas photo but HJ does. In the photo op scene in 1940, Larry is completely absent. In Larry’s wedding photo, most of the Minutemen are there but Hooded Justice is not.

Many people seem to believe that the Photographer in the photo op scene is Larry but it is not. The Photographer is short and extremely balding. Larry is taller (as we’ll see in issue 9) and as you can see in his wedding photo, Larry has hair in the middle of his head whereas the photographer does not (with the exception of the couple strands of hair we see).
Let’s talk about that photo op scene.
In the picture, we see Nite Owl paying the Photographer. But why?
Larry Schexnayder is the Minutemen’s publicist. Presumably he set the whole photo op up. Why isn’t Larry in this scene and why isn’t Larry handling the money? This is literally his job.

Instead, it is Hollis Mason who is handling the photo op duties, holding the money and dealing with the Photographer.
Why is the Photographer only making eight prints?
There are eight vigilantes, sure. But there’s also Larry. He would also need a print as the publicist. The photographer isn’t making nine prints, he’s only making eight, and Alan Moore decided he wanted the readers to know that. The only line that the Photographer has in the entire book draws attention to the fact that only eight prints are being made when the team should be receiving nine prints.
It’s not complicated. It’s rather simple. Larry is already getting a print as Hooded Justice.
Now let’s compare the wedding photo to the 1940 photo from the photo op.

Do you notice that the Minutemen (with the exception of the Silhouette and Dollar Bill as they are deceased) are standing in the exact same positions in both photos? There are two differences. One is Larry and HJ are standing in each other’s spot while Sally has her arm wrapped around them in the same manner. The other is that Eddie is not in front of the Minutemen but rather off to the side.
But consider:

What happens if we shift perspective? If everyone in the photo turns to where the arrows are pointing? NOW Eddie is in front while the rest of the Minutemen retain their original lineup.
The lone difference being that HJ and Larry are standing in each other’s spot.
And why wouldn’t Hooded Justice attend the wedding? After all, both Larry and Sally helped cover for him for over a decade, they should all be the best of friends.
Even Eddie Blake attended the wedding. The man who attempted to rape Sally a decade previous.
The reason is simple, it’s not complicated, Larry Schexnayder is Hooded Justice.

The Snowglobe Incident
In Watchmen issue 9, Laurie tells Doctor Manhattan about her earliest memory. She was five years old when she overheard her parents, Sally and Larry, arguing while she was entranced by a Snowglobe in their home.

The argument that Sally and Larry are having is that Sally is revealing to Larry, for the first time, her affair with Comedian, and that Laurie is not Larry’s daughter.
In 1955, Hooded Justice disappeared. We know the year because Rorschach tells us in issue 1.

Though Laurie never says what year the Snowglobe Incident occurs, she says she was 5 years old when it happened. Laurie was born in 1950, so that means the Incident happens in 1955.
We know that Laurie was born in 1950 or LATE 1949 because Laurie says she is 35 years old in issue 1 which occurs in mid-October 1985.

After this Snowglobe Incident, we would never see or hear from Larry Schexnayder or Hooded Justice ever again. Neither of them are seen after this Incident. They disappear at the same time.

Symmetry is Cool
Symmetry tells us quite a bit in Watchmen. It feeds us information if you’re willing to receive it.
Let’s compare Sally’s assault from 1940 to the Snowlglobe Incident and see if we can’t find some genuine symmetry.
During the Snowglobe Incident, Laurie makes a pattern of movements that we have already witnessed before in the book. The same pattern of movements that Eddie makes back in 1940.
These movements will ultimately result in HJ/Larry raging.
Observe:
Eddie and Laurie go into a room that they’re not supposed to be in.
Eddie waltzes in on Sally while she’s changing. Laurie enters her parents’ room, perhaps their study or bedroom.

Eddie and Laurie then touch Silk Spectre’s costume.

We then see Eddie and Laurie’s reflection in a circular type mirror.

Eddie, caught by HJ, has a terrified look on his face. Laurie, caught by Larry, has a terrified look on her face.

Both scenes culminate into Hooded Justice/Larry hovering over Eddie and Laurie in rage.

This is not an accident. These two scenes are symmetrical, and trying to tell us something. Trying to tell us that Larry Schexnayder is Hooded Justice.
The symmetry doesn’t end there.

Most readers believe that what Eddie is alluding to is that roughing up a fellow man/boys gets Hooded Justice “hot.”
But there’s another possibility. What if Eddie was saying that Eddie roughing up Sally is what gets Hooded Justice hot?
Consider Sally calling out Larry on the potential letter he would write to his porn mag. She describes Larry as a cuck who enjoys other men getting rough with Sally while he watches.
That is Larry’s kink. To watch Sally get manhandled by another man.
Going back to the assault scene with this in mind, and knowing that Larry IS Hooded Justice, “this is what gets you hot” means Eddie’s treatment of Sally. It fits. Perfectly.
Because Larry Schexnayder is Hooded Justice.
Now let’s get to it. The Joke. The Gag. More symmetry.

The first picture shows Eddie, in 1940, promising that ultimately the joke will be on Hooded Justice. With pink glass behind him.
The second picture is the joke ultimately landing for Laurie. With pink glass behind her. That Eddie and her mom pulled a “gag” on her.
This is the same joke. Without this, there is no payoff to the joke that Eddie promises.
Without this, the “payoff” of the joke is an off panel death of HJ possibly committed by Eddie. That nobody in the book confirms.
And “gag”. Isn’t this the same term that Alan Moore used to describe Superman’s alternate identity? “What a great gag!”
This revelation occurs in Chapter Nine - The Darkness of Mere Being. Or rather, Mirror Being. The symmetry is shouting at us “Larry Schexnayder is Hooded Justice!”

Symbolism…on Larry’s face.
Dave Gibbons lets the reader know through visual cues as well.
In the pictures, we see a Klansmen’s mask in the corner of Larry’s head, and there’s an “H” and “J” hovering over Larry’s glasses.
It is not at all subtle. It’s literally in your face on Larry’s face.

Some will point out that in issue 9, Larry writes a letter to Sally and discusses Hooded Justice as if he were a different person.
That’s great, and I could point out a hundred instances where Clark Kent is all “So I was speaking with Superman and…”
Kent writes about Superman as if he were a different person all of the time in the various articles he submits for the Daily Planet.
So if Kent can do it a hundred times, why can’t Larry do it once?
See the parallel there with the Superman theme?

Some will choose to believe Hollis Mason when Hollis says that “Hooded Justice was the biggest man I’ve ever seen.” They will believe that over their own sense of sight.
They will betray their own senses in order to believe a comic book character. Don’t be that person.
Look in any panel where HJ appears, especially the photo from the photo op. He is literally no bigger than Captain Metropolis or Nite Owl himself. Dave Gibbons has all of the men standing just a bit taller than the women and so we know that Gibbons is drawing proportionally here. Hooded Justice is no bigger than any other male vigilante in that photo. Trust your eyes over the lies of a comic book character:

This is not, by a long shot, Hollis Mason’s only lie. Though it may be his biggest. That will be discussed in a future post.

Sally Knows Something
In Watchmen issue 9, Sally does an interview in the back material of the book and she makes a slip up.
She is speaking about the two gay men who were on the Minutemen and makes the comment “they’re both dead now.”
She doesn’t name names but we know one is Hooded Justice based on various claims suggesting HJ and Metropolis had a relationship.

But…
How does she know that Hooded Justice is dead?
According to Hollis Mason’s book, published in 1962, the world at large has no idea what happened to Hooded Justice. He simply vanished.

And in 1985, 23 years after Mason’s book is published, Rorschach makes a comment that “Hooded Justice went missing in ‘55”.
So presumably, the world at large still has no idea what happened to Hooded Justice 30 years after he disappeared.

Yet. Fourteen years after Hollis Mason says that Hooded Justice simply vanished, and nine years before Rorschach claims the same…Sally has information that neither of them have. That Hooded Justice is DEAD, not missing.
To me, this means one of two things. She either killed him herself OR she helped cover it up. Perhaps Eddie helped her?
Regardless, she knows something that nobody else on the planet knows. She knows Hooded Justice is dead.
Even in chapter 11, Ozymandias confirms that he can’t prove what happened to Hooded Justice one way or the other. But Sally knows.

If Sally did have something to do with HJ’s murder…
Then who is Rolf Muller to Sally? What is their connection?
There is NONE. Nada. Nothing.
Rolf Muller is a big nothingburger in relation to anyone at all, but specifically for Sally, the same.
There is no motive for Sally to kill Rolf Muller.
But Schexnayder?
The last time we visibly see Schexnayder, he is hovering over Laurie in a rage while Sally pleads with him to leave Laurie alone as she is just a kid.
That’s the best motive ever to kill someone. Protecting your child.

Superman’s Betrayal, and his True Face
If Hooded Justice/Larry Schexnayder is meant to be a subversion of Superman/Clark Kent, then consider that the very first panel of the entire book tries to tell us so.
Observe:

“I have seen its true face.”
What happens if we look at this panel from another perspective? What happens if we simply flip the panel upside down?

That appears to be an image of Superman’s cape, yellow emblem and all, with a knife sticking in its back.

Gibbons tells us right off the bat, secretly, that Watchmen is a betrayal of Superman. It works two ways.
The subversion itself, that instead of an upstanding being with a heart of gold, Watchmen’s Superman is only in it for the money and his rough kinks. It also tells us that Schexnayder will get betrayed.

Eliminating the Competition
I’ve told you how it makes sense that Larry Schexnayder is Hooded Justice.
Now let me explain why it’s impossible that Rolf Muller is Hooded Justice. Well, if we believe Hollis Mason.
Consider that Hollis Mason tells us that Rolf Muller disappeared at “the height of the Senate Subcommittee meetings.”
We know Hollis is referring to the Army/McCarthy meetings of 1954 because this was the height of McCarthy’s communist hunt. Which its height reached in June 1954. Hollis claims that Rolf Muller disappeared at this time and three months later a body turned up in the Boston Harbor - tentatively Muller’s body. Three months after June would be September 1954.
Yet Rorschach told us back in issue 1 that Hooded Justice disappeared in 1955.

If Rolf Muller quit his job, disappeared, and tentatively died three months later all in the year 1954, then it is physically IMPOSSIBLE for a dead man to be roaming around as Hooded Justice in 1955.
Rolf Muller CANNOT be Hooded Justice. IF we believe Hollis Mason. Which, again, is its own can of worms as Mason consistently lies.

Overall, I believe my case that Larry Schexnayder is Hooded Justice FAR surpasses Hollis Mason’s little theory that even he tells the reader to take with a grain of salt.
Which case do you believe?

The Horcruxes were designed to be found. They were designed to be interacted with in order for the fragment of Voldemort's soul to eventually possess the host.

The broad strokes of the main story for Harry Potter is that Voldemort created 7 Horcruxes with the intention of becoming immortal.

There is evidence that all of the Horcruxes were hidden with additional curses designed to weaken but not immediately kill whoever found them.

It is widely held belief that the potion that revealed the locket was designed to keep the person alive in order to be questioned. This makes the Horcruxes seem more like puzzles than actually hiding places. It would be easier to just make a Horcrux out of a meaningless object and hide it. Making Horcruxes out of meaningful items is just a trail of breadcrumbs. A trail that can only be successfully navigated by a incredibly powerful wizard.

All of the Horcruxes are designed to be kept and interacted with. We have multiple examples that the Horcruxes when worn have a significant impact on those that wear them. The locket is almost unbearable and the burden is shared between the trio. The ring begins to kill the person who puts it on. We don't see the final act of what ultimately would happen if the Horcruxes were allowed to continue unimpeded. The closest we get is the diary. The diary almost successfully reincarnates Voldemort but is stopped at the last moment by Harry. Why would only the diary have this ability?

This makes the ring Horcruxe all the more sinister. Voldemort wanted all the Horcruxes to be found by powerful wizards, but he wanted Dumbeldore to find the ring. Voldemort knew Dumbeldore would not be able to resist the possibility of resurrecting his sister. Voldemort barely hid the ring. The ring was just in a shak that could be fairly easy to track back to Voldemort.

The final two Horcruxes break the pattern. Nagini is not something a wizard would interact with. Nagini is something that can go out and FIND a host. In the event nobody finds any of your Horcruxes you have a giant magical snake that can hunt down a host crush them to a weakend state and involuntarily allow proximity to initiate the transfer of the soul fragment.

The last one as we all know was created by accident. IYKYK.

The Horcruxes tied Voldemort to the physical world but also had a built in mechanism to enable him to possess the wizard strong enough to find them. If that failed Nagini could force the issue as a failsafe.

Edit: had a fun idea. What if Horcruxes #6 and #7 were supposed to be the basilisk and sword of Godrick Grifindor?

We know Voldemort was obsessed with Hogwarts. He wanted something from every other founder.

What better Horcruxe that an incredibly dangerous nearly immortal serpent that you and a handful of others can communicate with. A serpent that just so happens to have a emense secret network of secret passages throughout the castle you intend to conquer and claim as you base of operations.

This is NOT a theory about Dudley not being a real agent as some early missions for sure happened. This is a theory about Dudley getting some fake missions mixed in with real ones. A good old old fashioned psyop.

TUFF is confirmed in universe to be a government entity similar to the CIA or the FBI who mainly solve crimes and beat up crooks, you know, Saturday morning stuff. The main for members of TUFF the audience knows are Field Agents Dudley Puppy and Kitty Katswell; the main protagonists with Dudley being a childish himbo who's good at hitting people physically, and Kitty being the problemsolving gunsman, as well as Lab Scientist Keswick who supplies the weaponry and gadgets, and The Chief... who is The Chief (NO WAY!!!). But what gives the idea that some missions may be staged?

Well both Snaptrap and the Chameleon both got tamer with the crimes committed as Dudley is a TUFF agent longer and longer. Snaptrap went from stealing a mind controlling rat statue to robbing the change out of a gumball machine a couple episodes later. While the Chameleon got a whole lot friendlier by treating hostages like houseguests vs. the initial "I WILL TAKE MY REVENGE ON THE MOST SKILLED AGENT AND D.O.O.M.". Snaptrap shows in a variety of episodes that he'd much rather become a dancer than a crook (Queer coding in the 2010's what can you say?), misplacing a 4 year scholarship that he didn't know he had and said something like "Wow, if I knew I had this, I wouldn't have become evil!" [The Rat Pack] He even opens a dance studio in Season 2! [Dancin' Machine] With Snaptrap's interest in the arts, maybe he took a plea deal that he gets to walk parole and they fund his scholarship if he used his acting skills to keep Dudley at bay, while the Chameleon tags with, but what about the rest of the line up?

Birdbrain always has a legitimate motive behind all of his crimes, just with the wrong direction, like bombing a diner because they served Omelettes [Agent of the Year] (Tackling the food questions that even Zootopia didn't touch), he's also much older than the rest of the group so he's been at this for a long while. Snaptrap wasn't even recognized by the public in the first episode. F.L.O.P.P. is just a try hard team that could go in either direction of "They were SO PAID TO STAGE SOMETHING ELABORATE" or "they really are that bad at being evil". Jack was a former agent so his crimes are also legitimate. (or if you want to play Double Jeopardy, if Snaptrap got the data that Jack attempted to steal, he'd rat it out to TUFF). But Dudley's former lunch lady and Quacky the Duck being a famed TV host Dudley likes being evil? That is really, really, easy to stage. But why would there be fake missions to distract Dudley specifically?

Dudley's mother and roommate, Peg, is a mafia boss who deliberately makes her son stupider to make him reliant on her. This sounds ridiculous... until you look at three things: her dating history, the way she raises her ADULT SON, and Dudley's mental state. Peg has dated Snaptrap and Chameleon while knowing Dudley works at T.U.F.F. and that these two were criminals, with Snaptrap even attempting to Join TUFF after Dudley confronts her about it! [Snap Dad! S1E9b] (it is not known how old Snaptrap is other than older than Dudley) 5 Episodes Later, Peg leaves Dudley home alone and he wrecks the place, not even knowing how a light switch works. Her response? She's happy her ADULT SON is still reliant on her to do things for him. This is not a normal or a healthy response. She's been clingy to him in a variety of episodes as well, such as when he moved to neighbors house, an episode where Dudley has to figure out why Snaptrap is kidnapping a ton of moms, and not wanting her son to have any jobs that involve danger, nearly making him quit TUFF. Dudley in multiple episodes has stated that he can't learn anything unless it's fun, and that's why he doesn't know anything, but that has a layer of truth in it. In The Good, The Bad, and the Quacky, Dudley explains that he's really good at spinning wheels because he's been spinning one every Saturday since he was a kid by his mother to determine what they do, and he seems to gradually get dumber as time went on, as well as age regress into a hyper childlike state more frequently, so she's very much a mental toll on him. (Side Mystery: Where is Dudley's dad? It's never stated he even has one!) One last piece: Who at T.U.F.F. is making up the cases for Dudley to go on?

Out of everyone we see in the building, there are other employees at TUFF who are mainly seen filing nondescript paperwork, but there are multiple floors and layouts so who knows? TUFF has provided Witness Protection as it had to be provided during The Weasel targeting Dudley and Snaptrap (...that could have possibly also been staged, but he was a one off so I didn't really count him into this.) But out of everyone Dudley knows in the building, it's very likely someone close to Dudley makes up the cases, and makes sure he's ALWAYS assigned with Kitty. It could very well be Kitty making up these missions based off of mental notes she's taking of Dudley's mental state on the day determining how bad the threat is, or Keswick putting together convincing looking decoy weaponry that is effectively harmless but adds to the realness of the mission or even The Chief... who normally administers these cases, except when the villains call in to announce it themselves. It is very likely that all 3 have parts to play in the psyop, especially since after Dog Daze (S1E6A), Dudley seems to be immune to being fired no matter how badly he screwed something up, closest he gets is nearly sent to an insane asylum for repeated crying (Sob Story, that episode sucked).

Or, the most likely awnser: the show was just Flanderized while early episodes were trying to find it's groove, but this theory was more fun to put together.

TL;DR: The Chief/Keswick/Kitty sets up fake cases against Snaptrap, Chameleon, and Quacky the Duck, and has Kitty watch over Dudley to take clues of his mental healthand keep distracted from an investigation on his mother done by the rest of T.U.F.F.

So, I was looking through the new horror movie, Obsession and I initially believed that what is happening to the "villain", Nikki is that she is being possessed by a demon.

However, an interview with Curry Baker states that the movie is NOT a "possession movie".

Thinking about it, it makes sense. If this has been a typical demon possession plot, it does undermine the themes of the movie.

So, I was thinking deeply and I realized what is happening to Nikki is far worse than a demon taking over her body.

The truth is that... the One Wish Willow has corrupted a part of her soul.

I'm not exactly an expert in religion but I do believed that a soul is a very crucial part of a person. So, I think what is happening to Nikki is that the One Wish Willow is enacting its part on what Bear desired; by cutting a part of Nikki's soul and remolding into someone that can loved Bear.

However, whenever the real Nikki tries to fight back, the wish has to do the only thing that can keep fulfilling its promise, cutting more of Nikki's soul so that Nikki has no control over herself.

So, what we hear from customer service, where he revealed Nikki's blood curdling screams, I'm guessing that was Nikki undergoing the process of having her soul getting cut off bit by bit.

I just watched a reaction video to the 1993 movie Falling Down and I realized something. (I originally saw it when it first came out but I don't remember a lot of the details.) Sergeant Martin Prendergast, played by Robert Duvall, talks about the troubles with his wife a few times throughout the film. We discover they had a daughter who died and we see how unhinged his wife is due to all this. Hence why he is retiring.

But at the end, >!during the final confrontation with William Foster, played by Michael Douglas,!< Sergeant Prendergast talks about how his wife didn't want a baby but she ruined her body for him. (There had been previous mentions of how beautiful his wife was and how she was having difficulty with losing her beauty.) Then he says his daughter died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome when she was 2 years old. He even remarks "but she wasn't an infant, she was a big girl."

A quick aside, I'm a true crime junkie. And the unexplained death of a child over a year old is a red flag. That plus the mother not really wanting the child and being mentally unstable and controlling made me wonder. Did Sergeant Prendergast's wife kill their 2 year old daughter?

It seemed obvious to me but I didn't see it mentioned previously here. Is there something I'm missing? It was a reaction video, not the full movie, so they may have said something in the film to refute my theory. If so, please let me know because I'm very curious.

...Prince Humperdinck initially tried to hire someone else to do the job.

Vizzini, Inigo, and Fezzik kidnap the princess when they are all alone in the woods, immediately take her to a ship, and set sail at night to the Cliffs of Insanity, which they will scale in order to take her to the Guilder frontier, where they will >!murder her and leave her body there in order to provoke a war between Guilder and Florin.!< It's a prestigious line of work, with a long and glorious tradition.

Inigo then notices they are being pursued by a small ship. It is absolutely, totally, and in all other ways inconceivable that they could be followed, as this would require the pursuer a) know the princess was to be kidnapped, b) have the means at hand to immediately switch from land travel to sea travel and c) since it would be impossible to follow another ship at night by sight, to know their ultimate destination.

As Vizzini explains: "No one in Guilder knows what we've done, and no one in Florin could have gotten here so fast."

The only way someone else could have known all these details ahead of time was if Prince Humperdinck, or more likely Count Rugen or one of his agents, had outlined the plan to other scoundrels, and the Dread Pirate Roberts caught wind of it. Knowing the plan, he knew that Buttercup was to be kidnapped and taken to the Guilder frontier.

Knowing the seas, he knew that the most direct route would be from Florin to Guilder via the Sea of Eels, and then up the Cliffs of Insanity. Although it seems to Inigo that the ship is following them, it's more that Man in Black is going to the same place, because once the kidnap plot was put into motion, he knew where he had to be in order to thwart it.

Taking evidence from lyrics and video.

The protagonist lost his lover in the car accident we see in the video. He wanders back into town in shock and passes out on a mattress. Then he uses science to create some method of time travel, he is the eponymous scientist. This might be years or decades later or maybe he was already a scientist and had the potion in his pocket and he drank it, that doesn't matter for my theory.

So at some point he uses the time travel technology, maybe it's a pod he enters and pulls a switch or a chemical reaction in his own body from a drug infusion orally or intravenously, it's science, he is the scientist. At this point, the way the technology works, he starts experiencing his own life backwards. He is just traveling backwards in time at normal speed.

So the beginning of the video, what we see is the start of him "waking up/falling asleep" on the day he made it back to see his lover again. He is still moving backwards, and may continue to do so until being unborn, exemplified by the repeated lyric "going back to the start." I don't think he can stop this, and will eventually be reborn and live his life exactly the same way and get to the moment he started the time travel and loop back again.

"I had to find you, tell you I need you"

This is the impetus, he will do anything to find her, even break time itself.

"Runnin' in circles, chasin' our tails, Coming back as we are...Runnin' in circles, comin' up tails, Heads on a science apart"

This sounds like a time loop to me.

"I was just guessing at numbers and figures, Pulling the puzzles apart, Questions of science, science and progress, Do not speak as loud as my heart"

People probably interpret this proverbially but I think it could easily be taken to mean doing risky and experimental science without proper safety rails, not asking those questions because the heart is guiding him, which leads to the time loop problem.

"Nobody said it was easy, No one ever said it would be so hard"

Reference to media depiction of time travel, it is obviously considered a difficult or impossible task, no one says it is easy, but it is also glorified in the media and seems like an amazing awesome thing, not a curse to loop through time.

tl;dr: Chris Martin got stuck in a time loop trying to reconnect with his dead lover.

I was asked about my thoughts on the finale in another sub, so I figured if I'd written all that down, I might as well post it here too. These are my predictions based on a shitty English Literature degree and watching way too much TV. This is not a bunch of suggestions of what I HOPE happens, just what I think MIGHT happen from what the show is telling us - but a lot of these tropes and usual pathways are traditionally subverted in The Boys, so I could be way off base. It's still interesting to read what other people think and theorise, so I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks the show is telling us might happen, and whether you agree/disagree with anything I've yapped about.

It's really long, I apologise. If it doesn't have spoiler tags, it's just my theory.

I'll give you what I think MIGHT happen, but it's all my own bs, so take it with the largest bowl of salt. Pure speculation. This is going to be LONG, but you did ask! 😅 :

Pretty promptly in the episode, I think we're going to get Homelander losing his goddamned mind. The saviour promo is going to bomb, of course it is. Nationwide revulsion (I'd say global but only America, London and Marseille exist in The Boys). WE ALL KNOW he doesn't really want this divinity thing because he thinks he's divine - like maybe in a megalomaniacal way, but not in a spiritual one (Stillwell vision notwithstanding) - he wants it because he wants unconditional love. No one leaves Jesus, no one looks at Jesus with their heart pounding from fear, so he must become Jesus to win their hearts, right? Well, they are not giving him their hearts willingly, so I imagine he'll decide he can be satisfied with squeezing said hearts until they burst. He's going to choose fear over love, because if you squint at fear in the right light it can look like respect.

SO, we'll need some big, public stakes, right? He'll destroy some buildings, kill some people, full mask-off. I'm sure he'll frame it as making an example of them.

In terms of MArie, I think she'll be in the final battle, but I think she'll be playing support, not front line. Kimiko is our tank, imo Marie is going to play Healbot. Maybe she'll stabilise Kimiko after the chest-blast, >!or maybe she'll keep the virus out of her blood somehow, if the virus comes into play at all.!< She's too powerful to ignore but she's way too external (spin-off lead) to get any kind of final blow.

I think Kimiko is going to manage to get her chest-blast off, but it's not going to kill Homelander. I admit I do NOT understand how people are suggesting >!she'll only fry the V1 out of his blood, because surely she'd be more likely to burn out the less powerful version of it, which would be useless for virus stuff. But maybe she does only partially de-power him, and burns her own powers out at the same time.!< That puts her out of the fight and out of the way. This might be where Marie gets her to safety and stabilises her. I ALSO think whether or not Kimiko ultimately lives is one of the hardest calls to make here. They've set up both endings, tbh. Frenchie has already died, so that makes a peaceful Marseille 'I run a bakery called Mon Coeur making the cakes Frenchie taught me how to bake and looking after Terror, my dog now' ending more poignant for her, but also kind of less likely. She may have gone too far for that now, post-Frenchie. She may not even want it, and would prefer to follow Frenchie into the light. Survives but devastated and without powers would be my speculation, gun to my head.

Soldier Boy being BACK IN THE GD TANK is way too loaded to ignore. That doesn't feel like drawing a line under his story to me, it just feels like they're setting something up by being so obvious with it. Either Ashley frees him because she's lost her mind to panic, or the Tower gets damaged and he manages to free himself because his sleepytime tank got cracked.

Uhhh, what else. Ryan? I think he will appear in the big fight, but not do anything major. Support role.

Until episode 7 I would have said MM is not making it out of this alive. I mean shit, HE said it too. But after that speech he gave? Hmm, I'm wondering about it now. They don't usually do the 'man who had given up on life remembers he is still a man' thing unless something was going to come from it. As long as he manages to fully step out of the endless revenge machine, I'm leaning towards him surviving now, ESPECIALLY if Butcher goes full Dark Side. Can't ignore a parallel and he might be the counter-argument to Butcher's cautionary tale.

Annie and Hughie survive, I think they have to, though definitely not unscathed, but we need some hope and it's been said the finale is >!satisfying, brutal, with a little bit of light. !<I think they're probably going to be the light. >!I absolutely do NOT think Hughie is going to take V and become a Supe,!< I've gone 180 on my own 180 there. There's just no way. Hughie is literally us, he's the everyman, he's not supposed to >!be super,!< he's a hero because >!he's NOT super.!< His job in the Homelander fight isn't going to be to stop Homelander, I'm convinced Hughie's job is to stop Butcher, but that's not really a huge reach because it's in the comics and has already been widely speculated on, so I can't take credit for that.

Homelander dies, he has to, right? That's the show. I don't think it's going to end as a huge scale fight between them, though it might start out like that. The best version of Homelander's death (for justice narrative purposes, not personal choice here) is humiliating and small at the end. Ryan, Butcher, Soldier Boy etc (pick and choose as you like) tank him, he gets weakened by Kimiko on a cellular level, and we watch Billy Butcher beat John to death. And it'll be messy and undignified from beater and beatee. No clean heroic blows.

Aaand that's probably when Butcher is going to turn because I feel like once Homelander is gone, Butcher’s hatred has nowhere to go except fking everywhere. The real virus is Butcher’s revenge, always has been. I know a lot of people are speculating he's going to try and release the virus and do A Genocide on all the supes, but I think the show has defanged the virus so much that it's less likely to be the end game for him now. I think he's going to look at Ryan and just see Homelander 2.0 suddenly. And Hughie is not going to let Butcher kill Ryan, so Hughie is going to kill Butcher. Somehow. It has to be Hughie because that's what the show has been yelling at us this whole series, that Homelander is power w/o love and Butcher is vengeance w/o love and Hughie recently keeps turning down both power and vengeance, he's outgrown both (but still has love for Butcher, so there's a degree of "I won't let you become this" in there)

Deep has to die pathetically. He's lost everything. No Seven, no ocean, no image, no career, no identity. Either Annie is going to push/sparkle-blast him into the ocean (another full-circle attempt for s01e01), or she'll kill him another way.

Sage probably survives, I think she'll end up getting her wish, surrounded by books, alone. But in prison, not a billionaire bunker. I think she'll actually be okay with that.

I think 'battered hope' is going to be the final vibe.

Oh and Stan Edgar will be back in charge of Vought, probably with a new product he already has ready to go. The conversation he had with MM a few episodes ago over cigars is hands down the most thematically important conversation that has ever happened in this show, and should telegraph how it ends better than anything I can say:

"More powerful than nature or life itself. It's profit and loss, supply and demand. The elegant flow of currency across the globe. We're just cogs in a great machine. And we all have our part to play. Say you kill Soldier Boy, or Homelander, or even release this virus. When superheroes go out of fashion, something else will just take their place. Because corporations must still grow. Money must still be made. The machine must still be fed. That is the way of the world."

Pretty self-explanatory, he had lice early on in his villainy, and as matter of image had to pretend it was a stylistic choice and not grow it back.

Kind of the reverse of Bob Ross, who (fun fact) originally grew the afro to save money and had to keep it because of the show.

No wonder he hates Superman, who has great hair.

Btw if I'm missing some backstory from the comics which I've never read, it was obviously fabricated by Lex himself.

That title might sound a little wonky at first, but I promise it’s crucial to this theory.

Now that it is finally official and production is underway I allowed myself to go back and watch The Batman knowing I am safe from another heartbreaking Firefly incident waiting for answers that never came. With the floodwaters receded and Gotham picking up the pieces, the ending leaves so many threads dangling seemingly ripe for sequel material: Joker and Riddler bonding in Arkham, a flooded and displaced city, a new young mayor in Bella Reál, Detective Martinez likely headed for a promotion after collaring Falcone and Riddler, a newly orphaned boy (likely setting up Robin or a surrogate), and a Batman who’s starting to understand the power of being a symbol of hope.

But the real direction is coming into focus with recent casting announcements and production updates. Notably, there’s been no official word yet on returns for Paul Dano’s Riddler or Barry Keoghan’s Joker. Now Dano is almost assuredly going to be a cameo in Part II at the very least, especially with where I suspect the story is headed, but Keoghan’s Joker is much more up in the air. He didn’t do well with test audiences and his big part was cut from the first film, they didn’t even bill him as Joker. So it is safe to say that little “tease” at the end of The Batman probably is not headed anywhere, at the very least in this next film.

What we do appear to have front and center along with Batman, Gordon, Penguin, Martinez, the mayor, and Alfred are the Dents. The Batman Part II swung big for this trio, in billing order (this is important) Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, and Charles Dance who are heavily rumored to be playing Gilda Dent, Harvey Dent, and Christopher Dent respectively.

Now let’s talk about my atrocious title, shall we? When you are making a follow up film and you make the choice to call it “Part II” instead of just The Batman 2 or a generic sequel subtitle, it tells you something. This isn’t another standalone adventure. It’s the next chapter in one continuous story that will be picking up directly from the consequences of Part I and deepening the world Reeves has built.

Now, this I believe is kind of a testimony to the type of writer Matt Reeves is, in that the most consequential revelation in The Batman is often overlooked because there are still 40 minutes left in the film after it happens and it just is not brought up again. In a standalone film that might be a bad thing, but where one continuous story is being told noir style it becomes fucking brilliant.

The crux of The Batman is Riddler helping Batman discover his parents were not wholly the people he thought them to be and everyone now knows Thomas Wayne had Edward Elliott, an investigative journalist, killed. That is the single most consequential revelation in The Batman. It stands to reason those consequences will resonate heavily in a film titled The Batman Part II.

Yet, the Dents are front and center.

So the question now becomes how do you combine all the elements we know will be present in this film in:

The tragedy of Harvey Dent

Hush/Elliott revenge

Gotham’s core corruption

Thomas Wayne’s sins and Bruce’s inherited cross

…without overcrowding this movie?

Well what’s a noir without a good ole fashioned femme fatale?

Imagine one woman who carries both the Dent name and the Elliott wound.

A woman who enters the story tied to Harvey Dent romantically and politically. Someone whose presence could accelerate Harvey’s fall, give voice to an Elliott family grudge that’s been simmering since Edward’s murder, and force Bruce Wayne to stare directly at the blood on his family name.

As separate story threads the film would be over ambitious and bogged down.

But when they share the same blood… suddenly everything tightens into one coiled, personal, devastating storyline.

So my theory is that second billed Scarlett Johansson is playing Gilda (Elliott) Dent as a femme fatale style Hush and the primary antagonist and story driver of The Batman Part II.

Thoughts?

In the second half of Primer, Abe and Aaron start using their discovery to travel back in time leading to a tangled web of cause and effect that starts an unravelling of spacetime with clear signs of divergence in the timeline. (Abe hears a different version of events on a recording of a conversation that he is witnessing on the basketball court). A lot of people have tried to make sense of this half of the film in the last 20 years. (Despite the film telling us “the permutations were endless”)

At first it appears that this fracturing resulted from them using the machine for time travel resulting in duplicates, paradoxes and broken symmetry. But I think they actually caused a rupture much earlier in their initial test with the weeble. They first try the machine using a plate. (Not quite sure exactly what that means). When they do this, they notice the weight of the weeble starting to drop. Excited by this progress, they decide to move from the plate to the box. (Again, I'm not quite sure what that means, but the specifics don’t really matter here). When they do this, the machine takes off and we get shaking and screeching noises with the two of them panicking until the machine peaks and shuts down. My theory is that this noisy test in the “box” was the first rupture of space time caused by their work. The reason I think this is because of what happens in the next scene. The next scene shows Abe waking up disorientated on the floor of his apartment. If you watch closely it’s a mashing together of two similar but not identical scenes. We hear two variations of Aaron’s dialogue on the phone “Abe it’s 7”/”Abe it’s 7 at night”. We see a messy and non messy version of Abe’s apartment. I think what we are seeing here is a ripple caused by their earlier experiment exposing divergence in the timeline. Given how micro budget this film was, with the scarcity of tape being a particular concern for Carruth, I don’t think it’s an accident that he has these two distinctly different takes added in there. Not retakes but deliberately different takes with variations on the set dressing and Abe’s actions. (He throws a shoe in one take but not the other). That cost them time and money, but he pushed it through because it was important. So I think even if they hadn’t gone on to use the machine the way they did, that initial test “in the box” caused a fistula in time that resulted in Abe’s disorientation in this scene.

(I’m not sure if the "protein growth” on the weeble talked about later was from this specific experiment or if they’d run the weeble through the machine a few more times)

Supporting Evidence:
1. When the group first pulls in to Old Man Cadwell's store, the song Wait For The Rain by David Hess is prominently playing on their car radio. Specifically, the point of the song that goes:

And the road leads to nowhere,
And the castle stays the same.
And the father tells the mother...

At this point, the radio is turned off and the next thing we hear is a line of dialogue from Bert. Although it's unclear who the line is directed at (it seems as if he's speaking to the group as a whole), he is facing Karen when he says it.

It's worth noting that Eli Roth (the director) specially contracted David Hess to make a new recording of Wait For The Rain for this film, so it's not so far-fetched to suggest the audio was deliberately arranged so that the lyric, "And the father tells the mother..." leads directly in to a remark from Bert.

2. When Bert returns to the cabin to find Marcy and Jeff dousing his unattended bonfire, Marcy angrily yells at him, "Can't you be responsible for anything?"

Her tone strongly suggests that there is history driving that outburst. She isn't just angry at him for almost starting a forest fire; she's angry at him for a history of irresponsibility that has caused grief to either Marcy herself, or others.

One plausible explanation for this could be that Karen has told Marcy that Bert has gotten her pregnant, and Marcy's angry at him for either carelessly getting Karen pregnant, for refusing to care for Karen and the child, for obviously being too immature to be an adequate father, or any combination of the above.

3. Paul has been pursuing Karen romantically for years, and yet all of a sudden she starts reciprocating his advances? Why now? Could it be that she has suddenly found herself in need of a stable, reliable man to take care of her and her child?

Paul is obviously much better husband & father material than Bert, and he's conveniently already smitten with her.

Perhaps it was Karen's intention to let Paul go all the way with her during the vacation, and then tell him that he'd gotten her pregnant.

4. While they are cleaning the truck together, Bert mocks Paul for constantly simping over Karen. Perhaps he (unlike Paul) is fully aware of the situation and finds it hilarious that Paul is about to be conned in to accepting responsibility for his child.

5. Karen is depicted as having a definite wild streak; during the campfire scene, she states that she was once drunk for five days straight, while hanging out with guys who wouldn't let her drink anything but beer.

Yet despite this, she is the only main character who is never once shown consuming alcohol during the film. Why? Is she abstaining because she's pregnant?

Problematic Detail:
1. Karen is shown smoking after the group arrives at Cadwell's store.

While this might suggest she isn't pregnant, it is worth noting that cigarettes are a lot more difficult to give up than alcohol. So she could still be pregnant; she just fell off the non-smoking wagon.

It's also worth noting that the first shot we see of her with a cigarette comes immediately after Paul tried to befriend the kid, Dennis.

Perhaps the sight of Paul acting all paternal towards a child was a hard-hitting reminder of the uncomfortable future she was facing (with Paul as the stand-in father of her child), and she just needed to light one up to take the edge off.

What do you think?