History WMG / TheLordOFTheRings

* What about dwarves?
** We've got those.

Frodo could be bearing a crucial part of a nuclear weapon that had a sporadically functional tracking device instead of a ring, Elves would be snipers from a more developed country with better technology and more access to vaccines etc. to allow them longer lives. Dwarves could be a mining people with more advanced technology than the men of Gondor, but less than that of the Elves. Hobbits are nomads that settles in Gondor territory a long time ago, but are not seen as integrated into the culture, and are also seen slightly as hillbillies. Pipe weed is pot. Sauron has invented nuclear weaponry, and possibly cloning/genetic modification (orcs). The enormous eagles and winged mounts of the Nazgul are early airplanes. I don't mind that it is

[[Tolkien meant for the series to work without magic, possibly as a slight counterpart culture to our world.]]

[[WMG: The Ring was never ENTIRELY destroyed.

By the time of the events of the movie the Dwarves and Elves have very nearly or entirely vanished and Aragon's kingdom has long since shattered into various small warring kingdoms like Nockmaar and Galadorn. The Nelwyns are the descendants of the Hobbits.

* In the First Age, the Elves actually had ''better'' tech than they do in the Third Age! They had Elven-glass lights, which give off non-toxic pure unquenchable light and no heat -- presaging the development of LED technology and CFL bulbs by ''centuries''. And they mastered the art of creating gems from base materials, which requires high tech, and their gemstones glowed with an inner light, suggesting knowledge of phosphorescence, radioactivity and/or liquid crystal electronic resonance. The Silmarils can be seen from far off without blinding or burning those nearby, suggesting complex laser lensing properties. Perhaps evil creatures are sensitive to those wavelengths, since they spend so much of their time in the dark.

'''He who controls the pipeweed controls the economy''' (the mechanism of addiction was not widely known in ancient times) and was capable of using their economic influence to oppress the non-Numenoreans and keep Middle Earth locked in permanent MedievalStasis.

Creatures like orcs and elves came about as the military's attempts at creating bio-weapons to aid in battle. Orcs were their first attempt, but failed miserably due to them being super-strong, but incredibly dumb and easy to kill. Elves came next, designed to just be [[OurElvesAreBetter better than humans at everything]].

All of this can be traced back to Saruman, [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation the real hero of the story]], whose efforts to modernize the production of pipeweed and bring Middle-Earth into the 31st century were thwarted by MagnificentBastard Gandalf, who wanted right-wing Dunedain militia to have a monopoly on the means of production for Middle-Earth's most valuable resource (note the hints throughout the story about pipeweed's importance) -- in order to fund their constant guerrilla campaigns elsewhere. A rigorous Straussian or Marxian analysis can thus demonstrate that, much like the Trojan war, it was all a fight over resources.

* With Tolkien, hard to tell. There are base 12 human cultures that count knuckles using the thumb. (Each finger that isn't a thumb has three knuckles, and there are four fingers that aren't thumbs; that adds up to twelve.)

Tolkien writes of mithril and elven glass; these have similar properties to modern aluminum and plexiglass. In the books, a ship was built of mithril and elven glass; this was a spaceship. The medieval references are due to Tolkien misinterpreting the Westron the books were written in; to his credit, they ''do'' chronicle events that happened over nine thousand years ago.

* Palantirs = Wi-Fi teleconferencing. Out-of-universe, Tolkien was a technophobe, which is another reason for the mistranslation. If the GhibliHills you loved as a kid have been torn down and replaced with a car factory, then you too might hate technology.

* There is some support for this in The Silmarillion that Christopher published, actually. It mentions how Morgoth was greatly reduced because of how much of his evil power went out into his hordes of evil creatures. Maybe in the form of animating elf-corpses?

[[WMG:Every orc death strengthens Morgoth]]
An extension of the above, that the Orcs were created via Morgoth spreading himself thin. Every time one was destroyed, that power would logically return to him. Given how many orcs were left when he was sealed into the void, it means that every time an orc was killed after that, he would have become closer to breaking the seal. Logically, this means that either he could break out any time now, or there's still a few orcs and miscellaneous fiends lying around keeping his power away from him.
* This logically explains Morgoth's WeHaveReserves military policy. He was conserving resources. The more orcs died on the battlefield, the smoother his recycling capability -- allowing him to whip up the next batch.

[[WMG:''The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings'' is pro-royalty propaganda.]]

* The escape of Morgoth/[[TheWheelOfTime Shai'tan]]

** Nope. Tolkien made the books before Wi-Fi was even dreamed of.