Fanon / Live-Action Films

aka: Film

• Many viewers of Avatar believe Eywa is manipulating both sides of the conflict to achieve her ends of getting rid of the RDA. This is based on absolutely no canonical evidence whatsoever. She doesn't even visibly interfere until Jake takes some time to explain the situation to her, and the Na'vi are about to lose their decisive battle, when she could've just Zerg Rush'd the RDA at about any time.
• The Big Lebowski: A popular theory among fans is that Donnie is Walter's imaginary friend. This doesn't make much sense, as the Dude also acknowledges him a few times during the movie, both characters go to a funeral home after he dies, and other characters (including the Stranger, the Jesus, and Gary the bowling alley bartender) acknowledge him as well.
• In Bill & Ted fanfics, if either of boys' biological mothers' whereabouts are mentioned, typically Bill's left him and his father, and Ted's mom is dead, going along with the fanfic trend of making him a Woobie.
• In The Boondock Saints fanon, it's generally agreed that Connor is the older twin.
• The Devil Wears Prada: A lot of fans assume that Andy got very close to Miranda's daughters, Caroline and Cassidy, to the point that she is one of only two people, along with Miranda, who can tell the two apart. This is despite there being very little evidence of it in the actual film.
• Some fans like to put both Event Horizon and The Chronicles of Riddick in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. In Event Horizon's case, it's quite plausible to put the film sometime in the Dark Age of Technology, and the events line up well with everything we know about the Warp.
• Fight Club
  • A surprisingly large number of people sincerely believe that the name of Edward Norton's character is Jack. In fact — and this is lampshaded in the film — his true name is never revealed, although an argument can be made that it is, in fact, Tyler Durden. Notably, the novel is a bit more unambiguous about the last point, as it includes a brief scene after The Reveal where the Narrator shows his driver's license to Marla to prove that "Tyler Durden" isn't his real name. The film called him Jack in the script and behind the scenes, but only as a nod to the Reader's Digest articles written by an organ in first person discussed in the film.
  • Another popular theory is that Calvin and Hobbes is the prequel to Fight Club, with the Narrator being an older Calvin, Marla as Susie, Bob being an older Moe trying to be The Atoner, and Tyler as a vengeful reincarnation of Hobbes.
• Ghostbusters:
  • Egon and/or Ray as autistic, due to their quirky personalities and, in Ray's case, the fact that his actor is autistic.
  • Egon as Jewish due to the stereotype about nerds being Jewish, his last name ("Spengler") being common among Jews, and the fact that his actor was Jewish.
• Glass Onion: The exact status of Blanc's relationship with his partner Phillip is never specified, only that they're together, but the unanimous consensus among the fandom is that they're married.
• Michael Myers, the antagonist of Halloween, is believed to have never dies in either of the two original timelines. This means that presumably, he has survived the end of both Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and Halloween: Resurrection, the last in each respective timeline. The remake further suggests that the filmmakers aren't planning to end either timeline. Chris R. Notarile made a fan film based on this theory (which included professional voice actor Tom Kane), depicting Michael Myers' death at age 60, from the rage inside him, as Dr. Loomis predicted in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. It could fit into either timeline.
  • Notarile made another fan film, which depicts Freddy Krueger captured by Pinhead sometime after his death in Freddy vs. Jason. He is then tortured by Jason Voorhees, the mind of Michael Myers, and the presumably deceased soul of Leatherface, with Pinhead telling him "Your reign of evil is now over." This contradicts Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash and its sequel, but these are an alternate sequel to Freddy vs. Jason itself; the "main" sequel, Jason X, can't take place after Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash 2: Nightmare Warriors because history is altered to prevent Freddy's transformation into a dream demon, thereby preventing him from resurrecting Jason at the end of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.
• High School Musical fanon:
  • If Chad is not dating Taylor, he's dating Ryan 99% of the time. Probably has something to do with the sexy baseball scene in the second movie. Even fans who don't ship Ryan/Chad assume something went down in the locker room after that baseball game, not helped by the fact that they're wearing each other's clothes in the next scene.
  • Sharpay often has a cutesy nickname that her mother calls her by, to go with Ryan's "Ducky".
• The Hobbit films inspired a lot of popular headcanons about Dwarvish culture, such as hair-braiding being a serious act that's done only between family members or lovers, dwarves having ridiculously intricate courtship rituals that include elaborate gifts and hair beads, and dwarves falling in love only once in their lifetimes with their "One".
• The fandom for Inception has unanimously decided that Eames' totem is a poker chip. This is fleetingly implied in the film but never explicitly stated.
• Several Indiana Jones fans seem to consider it Canon that Indy becomes immortal following the events of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade after drinking from the Holy Grail. Among other things, this provides a handy explanation for how he survives the infamous fridge-nuking in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and how he manages to survive into the present day as seen in the framing sequences in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
• The Lord of the Rings films gave us Figwit, the sexy elf from The Fellowship of the Ring. He was noticed by fangirls and anyone else who got bored during the Council of Elrond scene; they adopted him and called him "Figwit" as an acronym for "Frodo is great — who is that?" He's also played by Bret McKenzie, whom viewers may have recognized from Flight of the Conchords. As a nod to the fans, he reappered in The Return of the King (to much squeeing), and McKenzie was given another role in The Hobbit trilogy, as Elrond's personal herald "Lindir" (meaning "singer" and a minor canon character).
• The idea that Mad Max: Fury Road is a sequel to Mad Max (with Toecutter surviving his crash and becoming Immortan Joe) and a prequel to The Road Warrior (with Rictus Erectus surviving his crash and becoming Lord Humungus). Jossed by the official comics, based on the backstory George Miller created but had no space to film.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe has so much "headcanon" that there's Avengers a whole site dedicated to this trope.
  • The character Hawkeye, though, attracts the most theories, many still inspired by the mainstream comics. They include that Clint was a Circus Brat with a criminal record (like in his comic backstory), served in the U.S. Army or else some kind of law enforcement division, is a single father with a young child (which was shot down somewhat following Avengers: Age of Ultron, is or once was dating (or even married to) Bobbi Morse, that Bobbi Morse is the mother of the aforementioned child, and many more. Some fans of The Bourne Legacy even invoke the Actor Allusion to suggest that this film is Hawkeye's origin story; both characters are played by Jeremy Renner.
  • Additionally, the vast majority of fics featuring Black Widow as a major character give her the same backstory as her comics character; agelessness and all, making her a product of the Red Room, a rough contemporary of Steve, and having a past relationship with the Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, despite their very limited on-screen interactions (though her "Don't you recognise me?" line in Captain America: Civil War was pounced on by fans). The latter ship, variously known as Buckytasha and Winter Widow, is tagged on over 4000 fics on Archive of Our Own. The canonical Brutasha (Bruce Banner/Natasha Romanov), by contrast, has less than half that number.
• ''Making Mr Right': During the third act Dr. Peters claims to have reprogrammed Ulysses; Ulysses even gives a speech where he says that he doesn't like humanity because of the way they interact with each other. Dr. Peters also stops Frankie from seeing Ulysses last time, and Ulysses just stares at her coldly. In the end it's revealed that Ulysses and Dr. Peters have switched places, with Dr. Peters going off into space. Most fans think that Dr. Peters never actually reprogrammed Ulysses and swapped places with him before the press conference, but there is actually nothing in the movie to support this. The movie implies that Dr. Peters undid his reprogramming and decided to switch places with Ulysses after the press conference.
• In My Own Private Idaho fanon it is generally accepted that Scott is the one who picked up Mike at the end,due to the fact the driver is wearing the same clothes as Scott and in one version of the script it was actually Scott before it was changed to be more ambiguous.
• Planet of the Apes: It's widely accepted that Zira and Cornelius coming to the past and Caesar's birth there altered the 'verse's history, greatly speeding up the ape revolution and making it happen much earlier than the one that led to the events of the first film. This may also mean that the aftermath of Battle is different from the one in the original timeline, and that the world might not have been destroyed as it was in Beneath. A "closed loop" theory also suggests that anger at Caesar led to him being erased from ape history later on, leading to the scrolls Zira and Cornelius read having Aldo as the first to say "no".
  • In the same way, followers of the first theory believe that the new timeline changed The Lawgiver from vengeful and hateful to humans, to tolerant and a promoter of friendship between the two races. Followers of the "closed loop" theory, on the other hand, believe that The Lawgiver's teachings were originally like this, but that they were misinterpreted or altered by the Orangutans later on. The fourth film (where The Lawgiver appears) is intentionally ambiguous, and ends with a shot of a Caesar statue crying a tear. Naturally, the former interpret this as Caesar crying out of joy for succeeding in securing peace, while the latter believe that he cries out of sadness because he knows his efforts will fail.
• In The Film of the Book of Prince Caspian, a geeky boy attempts to flirt with Susan at the train station in the first few minutes of the film. A small group of fans have grown attached to him, calling him Warren.
• Most Princess Protection Program fans seem to agree that Carter and Rosie are at least bisexual, as well as the fact that they developed a mutual attraction to each other. However, due to Rosie's responsibilities to her kingdom, they could never act on it. Though most agree that they at least confessed to each other at some point. The most agreed-upon points after the Homecoming dance or before Rosie's coronation.
• Saw: The producers of the movies gave Adam's surname as Faulkner, but in Saw V, he's named as Adam Stanheight on a list of the Jigsaw Killer's potential victims. Fans have reconciled this by saying his full name is Adam Faulkner-Stanheight.
• The School for Good and Evil (2022): In the film, Lady Lesso calls Professor Dovey "princess" in one scene and one scene only and it was meant as an insult, but almost any fan content centered around the two will have Lesso referring to Dovey exclusively as "princess" as an Affectionate Nickname. In return, many fans also have Dovey affectionately call Lesso "Nora" (a shortened version of her first name Leonora), despite there being no evidence of that in the film.
• Scream: A lot of fans theorize that Tatum has a twin sister who was absent from Woodsboro during the first movie. This is due to the twin beds in her bedroom and how it would allow for a Backup Twin scenario after her death. It helps that Rose McGowan is a supporter of the theory.
• Virtually every Starship Troopers fan believes that the destruction of Buenos Aires via meteor strike was a False Flag Operation by the Federation to justify invading the Arachnids' homeworld (or at least a random natural disaster that they falsely blamed on the Arachnids). This is never made explicit, but the film seems to at least leave the door open for this interpretation, and it would fit very well with the story's themes.
• Many Quentin Tarantino fans theorize that the events of his several films are linked together in some way.
  • One popular theory is that at least some of the events of Pulp Fiction occur on the same day as the bank heist in Reservoir Dogs. In particular, the reason why there are no cops around to stop Jules and Vincent while they're driving around covered in blood is that they're too preoccupied with the heist and its disastrous aftermath.
  • Another theory is that Pulp Fiction is a direct sequel to Reservoir Dogs. This theory suggests that the the mysterious briefcase in Pulp Fiction contains the diamonds from the heist in Reservoir Dogs. This has some basis in fact, as Word of God has confirmed that the briefcase was supposed to contain diamonds in the original draft of the script.
  • The theory that Kill Bill is an action movie that Mia Wallace starred in during her time as an actress — possibly even a reworked version of her failed Fox Force Five TV pilot — has recently caught on with Tarantino fans.
• Various explanations for the inconsistencies of how time travel works between the three Terminator movies are fanon. The Terminator movies (and the TV show, for example) never state how it works, just that it does.
• The Usual Suspects: There are a number of fan theories that identify Keyser Soze as any member of the cast you care to name. In the director's commentary, the filmmakers express puzzlement over this phenomenon, saying they felt the end is pretty clear.
• The Wizard of Oz:
  • For those who think Oz was All Just a Dream, Glinda's real world counterpart is often depicted as a kind schoolteacher of Dorothy's.
  • Glinda as the true villain of the film, or at minimum not being as innocent as she seems, is a popular fan-theory. Fans find her suspicious, from her appearing right after the Wicked Witch of the South's death to her getting Dorothy to kill the Wicked Witch of the East without telling Dorothy how the Ruby Slippers work. These issues come due to an Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole resulted from Glinda adapting two separate characters, but fan consensus is that she's a morally ambiguous Witch who gets Dorothy to kill her political opponent. Her attitude and demeanor doesn't help the way she looks either.
  • Dorothy is a teenager. She has a Vague Age, being played by a teenager with her chest bound but being a little girl of 6-to-10 in the original books, but many interpret her as Judy Garland's age. This helps the Coming of Age Story element of the film.
• A common theory regarding the Continuity Snarl between X-Men: First Class and X-Men: The Last Stand is that the Xavier who visited Jean Grey was, in fact, a psychic projection.

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