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Everyone Is Jesus In Purgatory
"Now they're trying to come up with meanings for Beatles songs. I never understood what any of them were about, myself..."
Ringo Starr

Suppose you are studying Moby-Dick. Anybody with any common sense would say Moby-Dick is a big white whale, since the characters in the book refer to it as a big white whale roughly eleven thousand times. So in your paper, you say Moby-Dick is actually the Republic of Ireland. Your professor, who is sick to death of reading papers and never liked Moby-Dick anyway, will think you are enormously creative.
Dave Barry, "College Admissions"

"The idea is very simple, so simple that if you are not careful you will forget it. It is this--that everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified. That's what I want to say. Don't you forget that. Whatever happens, don't you dare let yourself forget."
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

Memories of that overzealous English teacher who forced you to accept that every character, every scene, and every action had a deep inner meaning have led to widespread fear on the part of readers and viewers everywhere that every tale secretly contains some other story being told in subtext.

The end result of this is a state of mind that, for example, interprets every plot as an allegory for the afterlife and every protagonist as a stand-in for the Christ: Everyone Is Jesus In Purgatory!

Rampant paranoia results from this state; one cannot look at anything without being suspicious that this is some kind of allegory brainwashing you into learning An Aesop against your will. Is that box of Ding-Dongs one character is handing another a mere confection, or is it a blessing from On High, manna sent from a merciful God? Or wait... it could be a Deal With The Devil; short-term pleasure resulting in permanent bodily ruination! What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic?

The concept of "the Death of the Author" hasn't particularly helped this state of affairs, either, as it allows everyone to insist that their pet theories are entirely valid (with or without justification), regardless of how many times the author of the text states his or her intentions in writing the work, or, as in many cases, that the pet theory absolutely isn't the state of affairs at all.

The Mind Screw series loves this state of mind. It cultivates it intentionally, and takes advantage every chance it gets.

Epileptic Trees derived from this are more frequently Jossed than the Ass Pull kind. If Word Of God tries to Joss it, a particularly stubborn theorist will usually argue that the author was wrong, and that he has the correct interpretation that came out of the author's subconscious.

Of course, we all know this is a reach. Everything is really just about sex.

This trope name comes straight from the fan theories in the Wild Mass Guessing index: a surprising number of series are, according to our theorists, set in Purgatory and starring the Son of God. The Fancy Dan word for finding patterns where there are none is "apophenia", in case you don't want to type out all of "Everyone Is Jesus In Purgatory".

Oddly enough, being Merchandise Driven tends to act as a shield from this trope so long as you don't do anything to provoke it. The deeper meaning is obvious: it's all about selling toys. Unicron isn't Satan, he's fifty bucks of disposable income.

Almost anything that insists that True Art Is Incomprehensible is subject to this trope.

Can be used to make boring stories and shows entertaining by selectively choosing which things to take literally, which narrators are insane, and who's an allegory/personification/metaphor for what.

Please note that the examples below should be distinct from Wild Mass Guessing. Please.
Examples:

Live Action TV
  • The Prisoner pushed the limits of this trope about as far as live-action TV can possibly go; you're never certain whether you're being told a straightforward, literal story or witnessing something allegorical -- except in the final episode, where the show ditches nearly all pretenses of literalism.
  • Buffy The Vampire Slayer had many examples of subtext and allegory, which led naturally to some overanalysis by the fans. One theory involves each season representing one of the seven steps on the path to Buddhist Nirvana (originally posted between seasons 6 and 7, with an amendment after the finale).
  • This editor can't even watch The Simpsons any more without commenting on the unintentional Warped Aesops she sees, as a result of her conviction that Homer represents America and all the other characters represent its political relationships with other nations and its people.
  • The ending of Life On Mars: Did Sam commit suicide? Or did he never even wake up from his coma in the first place? Was he even in a coma to begin with? Or something else entirely? Although the writer himself has directly stated that the first one occurred, plenty (including the star of the series) go with the second interpretation -- and it has to be acknowledged that the series is ambiguous enough to make either possibility valid.
    • Ask five Ashes To Ashes fans about the meaning of the scene in the S1 finale with Gene carrying young Alex away from the scene of her parents' death; expect about seven different interpretations.
  • This Slate article, which explains that Jerry Seinfeld and his comedy routine represents conformity and lack of identity in a totalitarian government. Um . . . right.
    • One thing about that article is true though. The main character of Bee Movie looks creepy as hell.
  • Lost is a series with much deep meaning and symbolism, but many fans take it too far. This is, after all, the fandom where the name for Epileptic Trees came from. There are even theories that include this exact trope title, which have already been discredited by the Word Of God. And yet people still claim they are in Purgatory.
  • Is the Doctor Who story "the Happiness Patrol" really about Feminism? Thatcherism? Homosexuality? Or is it just a fun, weird little story on a Planet Of Hats where one of the villains is made of candy? You decide.
    • The Candyman resembles Bertie Bassett, a mascot of a British candy company. (The company actually complained and the BBC had to deny everything.)
    • This troper will continue to insist with her last breath that the Deus Ex Machina ending to the Doctor Who episode "Last of the Timelords" was not an Ass Pull but the natural conclusion of the nihilism vs. humanism theme that was established back in "Utopia". What? I mean it!
      • Actually, I sort of agree with you: There's some fascinating thematic stuff going on, and the good guys win using the same method as in The Shakespeare Code (the power of words shaping reality), so I think it's set up. I still think the execution was really shoddy, though.
  • There are plenty of theories on Supernatural's "What Is and What Should Never Be". Some think Dean's wish was for rest (as suggested by continual use of "Get some rest") while others think that it was just getting his Mum back. And some think that it was just an Alternate Universe where he would have been a bastard if not for hunting (which, if true, might just be the most disheartening thing that they've ever done) while others think that the Djinn just took it from his wish and Dean's the one who hates himself enough to think that he's a slutty, worthless, borderline alcoholic jerkass (which would be more in keeping with his serious lack of self-worth throughout the entire series). Either way, it's still a massive tearjerker.
  • A theory that became popular a while back is that the cast of Gilligans Island represent the seven deadly sins: Mary Ann is envy, the Professor is pride, Ginger is lust, Mr. Howell is greed, Mrs. Howell is sloth, the Skipper is both gluttony and wrath, and Gilligan himself is Satan.

Anime
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion. Full stop. Although, that was really the point; see the bit about the Mind Screw above.
  • Many Fullmetal Alchemist fans believe that the religion of Ishval was based off modern Islam, due to the Ishballans' dark skin and the Arabian Nights-esque setting they lived in. Hiromu Arakawa (the creator of the manga) has stated that she based it off of the Ainu, an ethnic group that were driven from Honshu and live on Hokkaido, where Arakawa was born. A similar theory is that Ishval was based off of Ishvara, a hindu concept of monotheism.
    • On the other hand, the screenwriter for the anime has, according to this column, admitted that the war themes explored in the anime were meant as a commentary on America's participation in the Vietnam and Iraq wars. The Ishvalan civilians represented the natives of these countries, caught in the middle.
      • And in the movie, it seems to be shown that the Ishbalans are Gypsies.
      • Um, the Gypsies are in our world, but everyone in each world has a counterpart in the other, so maybe the Ishbalans and Gypsies are each others' counterparts.
      • And for added flavour, Arakawa comments on the sleeve of volume 15 of the manga that she talked with plenty of Japanese WW 2 veterans for the Ishvalian flashbacks.
  • Shortly after its release, many began suspecting that Code Geass's Britannian Empire and its resource-grubbing expansionism was meant to be a thinly-veiled potshot at America and the War on Terror, to the point where some began calling for a boycott of the show's eventual US release. In an interview near the end of the first season, director/co-creator Goro Taniguchi stated that this is not the case, insisting that the whole reason he made the show was to tell an entertaining story and not to make any kind of political message.
  • One editor on this wiki has repeatedly insisted that Revolutionary Girl Utena is an "obvious" Mahayana Buddhist allegory "as everyone knows," and has edited the entry to imply that this is "common knowledge." At least one other editor disagrees vigorously, but doesn't feel like starting an Edit War over it.
    • I don't know about Mahayana Buddhist allegories, but Revolutionary Girl Utena is, in fact, a heavily Jungian allegory about adolescence and eventual growing up. It's chock-full of symbolism, and it heavily references (sometimes even directly refers to, especially the movie) Herman Hesse's Demian.
    • In fact, the repeated "chick breaking out of its shell" speech is a paraphrase of a passage from Demian. Compare:
      Demian: The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born first must destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas.
      versus
      Utena: If it cannot hatch from its shell, the chick will die without ever truly being born. We are the chick; the world is our egg. If we don't break the world's shell, we will die without truly being born. Smash the world's shell, for the Revolution of the World.
      • In fact, references to the name "Abraxas" are made repeatedly in the soundtrack titles, meaning this was in no way accidental.
    • The general opinion is that Utena is informed by gnostic themes, not Buddhist.
      • Before a flame war erupts, I'd like to remind everybody that nearly all these different symbolisms draw on each other (well Jung on Buddhism and gnosticism/the religions on vague religous things that Jung was trying to categorize). As the Chinese say: Many Paths, One Way.
      • This troper wrote a paper in college explaining that Utena is, in fact, Jesus in Purgatory (though he does not refute any of the above). Suffice to say, there are many interpretations.
      • Actually, Buddhism did directly influence Gnosticism. Around two hundred and fifty years BC there were Buddhist missionaries in Greece and the Middle East. They influenced the Stoics and some mystical groups, which later informed the Gnostic worldview.
  • Tenchi Muyo: Anybody who was part of the (in)famous Tenchi FF mailing list at the proper time will remember one Mr. Grey, who argued that Tenchi Muyo was all an allegory for an obscure form of Zen Taoism. According to Grey, Ryoko and Ayeka were each half a universe, Ryoko represented the Altruist, and Tenchi represented the goat.
  • Pretty Cure fans are usually kidding when they invoke this -- nobody really believes that Mika's introductory episode was intended as a condemnation of the tendency of news media to focus on celebrities at the expense of more important issues, or that the costume designs in Yes! Pretty Cure 5 symbolize the public school system draining children of their creativity and individuality.
  • Lain. Just Lain. This troper has never seen anyone come up with the same interpretation of that anime twice. Even the creators can't agree on what all of it means. Pro-technology manifesto? Massive religious allegory? Treatise on the negative influences of Western culture on Japanese society? You decide; the Word Of God isn't going to help here.
  • Haibane Renmei: Haibane Renmei was pretty much made to induce this kind of thing as near as I can tell. Though they take a lot of the fun out by making the 'purgatory' part so literal and obvious.
  • Texhnolyze is set in the underground city of Lux/Lukuss, has episodes named "Heavenward" and "Hades", and eventually suggests that Lux was created as a sort of physical purgatory. The show also features a Mind Screw ending, though in general it's one of the more literal examples of this trope.

Comic Books
  • Any story involving a Masquerade and Puberty Superpower can be interpreted as a metaphor for the awakening of a young homosexual if one looks close enough. Then again, some series deliberately play this up. More frequently, such series are often interpreted as allegories for puberty in general.
  • This troper is convinced that Captain America's Death in the Civil War series represents Marvel's rejection of traditional American values. He's not too happy about that.
    • Actually used in Civil War: Frontline 11 where Sally Floyd states that Captain America is out of touch, and should stop trying to fight for an ideal, and fight for Paris Hilton, and Myspace. Obviously, it's considered the worst issue in the entire crossover.
    • Given Cap's usual role as a mirror of the American zeitgeist, if there's a symbolic level to that event (as opposed to simple Shock Value), then it may be intended to reflect what the Bullpen sees as America's rejection of traditional American values. You know, stuff like "torture is wrong" and "we aren't the aggressors" and "civil rights".
      • The fact that Joe Quesada openly admitted that Cap "[was]n't living in the modern world" says otherwise.
      • Yeah, but thats Joe Quesada.

Film
  • The process by which Darth Sidious takes control of the Galactic Republic in the Star Wars prequel trilogy has been interpreted by some as a metaphor for the perceived centralization of power in the Bush administration -- a claim George Lucas denies, and which is pretty blatantly not the case, seeing as the principal details of the story were supposedly sketched out in the mid-'70s.
    Huey Freeman: In Attack of the Clones, the president of the Republic uses the threat of a powerful foreign enemy, which he was secretly in league with, to start a war. He then uses that war to expand his own powers and create a massive military machine that will eventually oppress the galaxy as a fascist regime. I mean, do I have to SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU DUMMIES? THINK!
    • Of course, the exact dialogue certainly wasn't written then. You can't pretend "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy" wasn't just a little intentional.
      • Considering how "if you aren't with us, you're against us" is almost a traditional cliche (used, for instance, by Gaston) and far superior stylistically than "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy," Lucas may have deliberately avoided quoting Bush verbatim.
    • And Sidious even pulls the Victor Yuschenko card in Episode III: "The Jedi assassination attempt upon me has left me mutilated and deformed," along with his almost-quote from Louis XIV: "I am the State Senate."
    • It gets better. In this editor's 20th Century American History class, the professor tried to convince us all that the original movie was an allegory for Nixon's fall from power and Carter's rise to the Presidency. Really.
    • And people like to ignore the obvious parallels to Abraham Lincoln. Oo, touchy.
    • This editor remembers a bunch of right wing pundits saying, "Well, I guess the Empire wasn't all that bad!" when Revenge of the Sith came out. Take that for what you will.
      • This editor remembers one specific article which compared the Empire to the regime of General Pinochet. This was apparently meant as a compliment.
    • Oddly enough my teacher has his own pet theory -- he thinks Lucas is mocking the fact that we always demonize our enemies, by having the villains be so over the top evil. The stromtroopers wear uniforms that look like skeletons, Vader is dressed in pure black and the Emperor is creepy as hell. Plus the Empire seems to commit evil for the sheer heck of it.
    • This Editor always read it as a deliberate parallel to the Nazi party: everything from Palpatine being chancellor before assuming absolute power, to the name "stormtroopers" (the meaning of SturmAbteilung, Hitler's SA). Interestingly, this same idea could have been played with a different historical parallel: Augustus replacing acorrupt Roman Senate with himself, as (arguably) the right thing to do, at least in the short run.
    • After reading lengthy comparisons of Palpatine to just about every major historical figure, including Russians comparing him to various Soviet and Russian leaders, this troper is now utterly convinced that Palpatine doesn't parallel a single politician, but is instead supposed to evoke timeless motifs that apply to politicians in general -- in particular, "dictator legally coming to power", which should be a trope. The Nazi parallels in A New Hope are too obvious to ignore, though.
      • Intentional. Lucas was making his way with mythic themes, which have a timeless appeal, so he counterbalanced that with recent history allusions. That's been the formula for a great story ever since Greek epics -- mostly because they're all the exact same story.
    • Come one, it's all hearkening back to the Roman Empire and the Caesars, consider a republic led by a senate, is taken over by one of those senators, who makes it into an empire, that happens to rule the civilized world.
  • Similarly, the film 300 has been interpreted as an allegory for the war on terror. Notably, though, people who take this tack disagree on whether the Spartans are meant to represent the US and the Persians Islamic terrorism, or the other way around. At a March 2007 press conference, director Zack Snyder found himself nonplussed when asked by a reporter whether King Leonidas was meant to be George W. Bush or Osama bin Laden.
    • Original author Frank Miller claims that his comic to a large degree was inspired by the 1962 film The 300 Spartans, which is often considered to be a metaphor for the Cold War. Whether such a message was intended or not is far from clear.
    • It is generally accepted that Delios is telling the story of the Spartans in such a way to inspire the Spartans to go to war with the Persians; characters frequently repeat lines over the course of the movie, everything's ethereal and dreamlike, and Delios mentions explicit dialogue of scenes where it would be impossible for him to be present. Word Of God explicitly states that Delios wouldn't let the facts get in the way of a good story. This may inspire some to see it as a metaphor for media treatment of the recent Middle East war.
      • Or maybe it's just a testosterone-soaked action movie with some unintentionally Fascist undertones.
      • Of course, considering that 300 was based on a comic book series that was made in the late 90s, before 9/11 even happened, its kind of hard to take any parallels between it and the war on terror seriously, in this troper's opinion.
      • Or, since the vast majority of the movie comes straight from nearly three thousand-year-old history (including the part where the darker-skinned Persians attempted to conquer the cradle of Western civilization), people will whine about anything.
      • And of course the darker-skinned Persians were subhuman giant monsters, wearing samurai masks, and lead by a Brazilian.
      • Some of the movie (that bit about a militarist slaving empire threatening a confederation of slaving city-states with various systems of government and varying degrees of militarism and cultural/technological sophistication) was from history. The silver-masked ninjas and fat guys with rocket launchers and chainsawsknives for hands were from history as I choose to perceive it. The vast majority of the movie, however, was taken from an alternate universe in which up is down, brass is a vegetable, 1/3 women are prostitutes, and the Spartans fought for democracy, egalitarianism, and freedom for all. Contrast with our world, in which the 300 at Thermopylae were accompanied by, among others, the 900. Frank Miller shifts between these worlds against his will.
  • Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is a famous example. Produced at the height of the 1950's anti-Communist paranoia, the movie has often been taken for an allegory for that, although nobody's clear about whether pod people represent Communists, or whether they represent McCarthyists who attack those who are different. The lead actor has stated on the DVD that the movie wasn't intended to be any kind of political commentary.
  • Literature-to-film example: during pre-production for the movie Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Marilyn Manson expressed interest in playing the role of Willy Wonka, and outlined his theory that Wonka was actually Satan, tempting and leading the damned souls (the children) into Hell. Of course, to be fair to him, the original novel was written by Roald Dahl, so he might have had a point.
    • The movie was much creepier than the book, though.
  • Predator. The American military charges into the jungle guns blazing, only to find themselves hopelessly outclassed by a creature who uses stealth, camouflage and the environment, and finally must adapt to a more guerrilla form of combat; the parallels to Vietnam are suggestive. More than a decade later, this editor has still yet to see this concept put forward by anyone else.
    • Dude. That's really obvious. It's like worrying about the racist themes in that one Anvilicious TNG episode.
    • Predator also has a very similiar plot to the first third of Beowulf. Note that Arnold intentionally uses primitive weaponry for the final fight.
  • This editor genuinely believed that The Incredibles was pro-conservative propaganda until someone kindly and gently pointed out the holes in his theory and brought him back to reality.
  • David Lynch actually encourages people to come up with their own theories on Eraserhead. The Lady in the Radiator is frequently interpreted as Death, Henry is the everyman, and the Man in the Planet is either Satan or God. But nobody can agree what the Baby is.
  • This editor once read a book claiming that Stargate was white supremacist propaganda. This editor then concluded that critics and "experts" have too much time on their hands.
    • To be fair, they have a point, given how the movie is about the United States military liberating a (non-)developing faux-Middle East society from a tyrant... Although if anything, it's more about promoting American expansionism.
      • See? You were right. Too much time on their hands. All it's "about" is the events that happened on the screen, neither promoting nor condemning.
  • This editor BS'ed a 25-page paper on the subtext of Bubba Ho-tep for a college class on Elvis. In it, I claimed that the whole movie was about Elvis seeking to "twin" himself to others to compensate for his dead twin brother. My professor was big on the idea that Elvis "twinned" himself, seeing it in every song and movie by Elvis. My grade? A+.
    • You are not the first. Several psychiatrists suggested Elvis' persona was mostly based on both his fondness of Comic Books as a child, and his obsession with his stillborn twin brother, thus showing what kind of stuff these people believe in.
    • This theory is also discussed in the movie Coffee and Cigarettes, in which Steve Buscemi theorizes that Elvis' twin survived and stole his identity, as the only explanation for why he got fat and started wearing sequins.
  • Donnie Darko is almost invariably never interpreted the same way by any two people, with interpretations going all over the allegorical scale.
  • Pulp Fiction possesses several plot points that are subject to this; one revolves around the mysterious glowing contents of Marcellus Wallace's briefcase that are never explained (with one popular theory being that it is, in fact, Wallace's soul, which he bought back from Mr. S), and another being the reason for a band-aid that is prominently displayed on Wallace's bald head as it is filmed from the back. The first is merely a plot Mac Guffin that Tarantino never bothered to explain (although, granted, one which is open to some interpretation); the second is merely a result of actor Ving Rhames (who played Wallace) cutting the back of his head whilst shaving it and requiring a band-aid to stop the bleeding.
  • A common interpretation of The Wizard Of Oz is that it's an allegory of the gold standard vs. the silver standard, with the yellow brick road representing the gold standard and the silver slippers (before they were changed to ruby in the Film Of The Book) represented the silver standard. The Scarecrow supposedly represented farmers and the Tin Man represented factory workers, the Cowardly Lion was William Jennings Bryant, and Dorothy was the "everyman". The Wicked Witch of the West, so dangerous to Scarecrow, was drought incarnate, a terrible, unpredicable evil that could be vanquished with just a little water.
    • Really? This Troper read that Dorothy was supposed to represent President Roosevelt, based on the fact that "Dorothy" is a phonetic anagram for "Theodore".
    • The bimetal standard, actually. Other elements include the Wizard as the President, the Good witches to the North and South saying the Civil War is ancient history, and the evil in East and West saying the next battle is between the rural west and the urban east. In this troper's opinion, this example would be Anvilicious if the story hadn't propagated so much that it's treated as just another story.
      • Note that in the book, there was the unnamed Good Witch of the North (a short, motherly woman in blue whom Dorothy meets at the beginning of the book), Glinda the Good Witch of the South, the Wicked Witch of the East (whom Dorothy squishes), and Wicked West (whom Dorothy melts). The movie turned North and South into one character to save on the casting budget (Adaptation Decay), which made the better sense because the book's post-Emerald City journey to the Quadling country was deleted from the script.
    • The book is that kind of allegory. The film, as far as this troper is concerned, is an allegory on how Hollywood isn't as fun as it looks.
    • See here for discussion on how the book doesn't really have anything to do with politics, including how no one mentioned any interpretation like this until well over a half-century after the book was published.
    • The best part about Wizard of Oz allegory theories is that no one ever, ever seems to realize that there were over a dozen sequels, each trippier than the last--and those were just the ones by Baum. Since they aren't as popular, there's apparently no one out there who thinks that Ozma of Oz is a scathing treatise on supply-side economics or what have you.
  • This troper's friends have all come to a fairly unanimous consensus that I Am Legend is about racism. Apart from Neville's fairly Anvilicious explanation of Bob Marley's desire to "cure" racism serving as a parallel for Neville's own desire to cure the infected, you also have (black) Will Smith playing this lone survivor, struggling against the oppressive masses of the world (whose condition makes them all pale-skinned); and at one point he stumbles into their lair in a bank (often a symbol of the Establishment).
    • This troper came to the consensus that the filmmakers did not read the book, which is a fairly straight forward take on the idea that monstrosity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
      • The filmmakers did in fact film the ending as originally written in the book, but were forced by Executive Meddling and test audiences to scrap it in favor of what reached the screen.
      • The alternate ending this troper is aware of is nothing like that of the book, except in that there is no cure. Moreover, in the book, some of the infected turn out to have fully regained human intelligence and are in fact building a new society. Also, they execute the protagonist. And the woman was an infiltrator.
  • This troper once turned in a paper comparing Plato's Allegory of the Cave and The Matrix. For a Criminal Justice class, yet. I got an A, for "putting more thought into the work than anyone else".
    • That movie might just as well have had big red all caps flashing letters at the bottom of the screen throughout the whole movie stating "For God's sake, this is The Allegory of the Cave, people!"
    • And then there's the whole "Z 10 N IS 01" thing that made a brief splash between the first movie and the sequels. Any theory that assumes as a start that everything we've been told from the start is exactly opposite from the truth probably falls under this trope automatically.
  • This troper read a few threads on imdb.com about Roy Andersons' "Sånger från andra våningen" (Songs from the second floor) both linking the title, and a certain bar scene late in the movie to Purgatory somehow. In reality Anderson wrote the script in an office on the second floor and in the commentary he states that the bar scene was a critique of the Religious and Political institutions in modern Sweden (Critique of modern Sweden). To be fair, the movie has so many weird scenes, characters and props (say a capitalist salesmen of Crucifixes with Jesus, cashing in on the millennium, who later ditching them in a landfill) that it is understandable.
  • This troper once read an article that the movie Toy Story is a pro-atheism allegory. Buzz Lightyear represents religious faith, and he spends all his time working for and trying to communicate with "Star Command", a metaphor for God. Woody, the secularist, tries unsuccessfully to convince Buzz that Star Command is not real. When Buzz finally does learn that he is a toy, he falls into a deep depression, believing that there is no point to life if he isn't really a space ranger. However, Woody eventually convinces him that even if there is no Star Command, he can still find meaning and happiness from being a toy.
    • You know, using nearly the same logic, one can make the argument for just the opposite interpretation, that this is a highly pro-religious movie. (If one is willing to look at the owners of the toys as gods of a sort, for instance; after all, they are the ones who control your whole life, and to be cast away from them by being lost or forgotten is one of the worst possible fates...) And if you buy either one of these interpretations, than this editor is eager to hear your interpretation of Toy Story 2.
  • This editor has been told numerous times by many people various differing meanings of the statue of Paul Bunyan pictured in Fargo
  • This contributor had a professor for a sophomore literature course who showed us a clip of a '50s film noir about a spy trying to recover a lost nuclear device, then explained it was all an allegory of the dangers of letting women have social and political power. This was "obvious," you see, because the greatly feared doomsday bomb was being kept in a box. Y'know... a box. Which is also a slang term - albeit not a popular one - for female external genitalia. And here I was, just a dumb sophomore, thinking that it was in a box because it's a simple and convenient means of storing and transporting something. I had to sit through ten weeks of this kind of shit, people.
  • What, no Blade Runner?

Literature
  • Things Fall Apart. In one scene, it is noted that the white colonists arrived at about the same time as did the swarm of locusts which would be eaten by the African characters during that season. Thus, the obvious conclusion (supported by Cliffs Notes), is that the locusts symbolize the colonists -- seemingly a good thing, but ultimately destructive. However, there is never a scene where the locusts are destructive, and they were simply intended to be edible locusts.
  • Similarly, in one of his books, I Have Landed, Steven Jay Gould discussed how many critics thought there was a symbolic meaning to the references to butterflies in Nabokov's novels. However, the author was an entomologist, and intended no symbolic meaning.
    • It's possible Nabokov did intend a symbolic meaning. When Nabokov gave a lecture on Kafka's Metamorphosis he discussed what kind of insect the main character had transformed into and what significance it had; in particular, that he could have discovered that he had grown wings, hidden under his shell.
    • At the same time, this troper swears that the character of Kinbote in Pale Fire was Nabokov taking the piss out of overzealous literary critics who come up with convoluted interpretations of works that ultimately play into their own biases and pet theories.
  • This editor took a university class in science fiction and was amused by the symbolism the rest of the class (and the professor) tried to attach to everything. In one case, they tried to attach deep meaning to the blue sand in Frederick Brown's classic short story "Arena" (Star Trek reference! It was the basis for one episode), and were nonplussed when he pointed out (being a geologist) that all the blue sand represented was to show the hero that he wasn't on Earth, which doesn't have blue sand.
  • Brazilian writer and "jazz musician" Luis Fernando Veríssimo once wrote a essay in which he claimed that the Walrus and the Carpenter from Alice In Wonderland were metaphors for Buddha and Jesus (one being fat, and the other, a carpenter), and the oysters they brainwashed represented the followers of both religions.
    • This claim is put forth by Loki, the exiled Angel of Death, in Dogma, in his attempt to convince a nun that God does not exist.
    • Notably, the Buddha was not fat. The fat guy is the bodhisattva Butei, the so-called "Laughing Buddha", or may be another deity named Hotei, who is used almost interchangeably.
      • And also, I call to attention that he is a somewhat comedic writer, and mosts of his writings aren't to be taken very seriously.
      • Really? I can't believe it's not Buddha. (Flees for his life...)
      • Sadly, you'll have to be killed for this joke. But I have good news...
    • From Wikipedia: "In The Annotated Alice, Martin Gardner noted that when Carroll gave the manuscript for Through the Looking-Glass to illustrator John Tenniel, he gave him the choice of drawing a carpenter, a butterfly, or a baronet (since each word would fit the poem's meter). Tenniel chose the carpenter. Because of this, the carpenter's significance in the poem is probably not in his profession. Although the two characters of the poem were interpreted later as two political types, there is no indication of what Carroll may have intended; Gardner cautions the reader that there isn't too much intended symbolism in the Alice books; the books were made for the imagination of children, not the analysis of "mad people". (Others have claimed that they're clearly about logic, but the imagination of children part is certainly a nice side dish.)
    • On the other hand, as Gardner points out, there is little doubt that Tenniel intended his illustrations of the Walrus and Carpenter as caricatures of Disraeli and Gladstone.
      • This troper seems to recall it was the Lion and the Unicorn who were meant to represent Disraeli and Gladstone.
    • Okay, that's enough. Listen to Carroll's Duchess from the first book:
    Duchess: There's a moral in everything, if only you can find it.
  • There are many, many theories on how The Wizard Of Oz is meant to represent politics at the time. As usual, Wikipedia goes into much, much detail. When asked, Baum said that his books were intended for children.
    • Quite excusable, since Baum had some very unsubtle messages about feminism. Women fighting for their rights, but only because they want pretty dresses and jewelry; being inept at espionage because they can't keep their mouths shut; achieving a matriarchy solely by using their feminine wiles; and finally agreeing that it's best for everyone if they resign themselves to doing all the housework and give up these silly notions about having rights. To claim that there is no politics in the Oz series is remarkably farfetched.
      • It perhaps should be noted that at the end of this same book the throne of Oz is indeed claimed by a girl who rules the country throughout the rest of the series and is, indeed, the only truly competent ruler Oz ever sees. In real life, Baum was a committed feminist who strongly supported the suffrage movement (see this New York Times book review for a slightly fuller account of this.)
      • furthermore, there is the fact that the city was reclaimed from the all-girl army by Glinda the Good Witch of the South and her...ummm...all female army. And Glinda's army had real weapons, unlike Ginjur's army who fought with knitting needles, and were, overall, far more sensible and competent than the revolutionists. If you have to bring a feminist allegory into this at all, it's more like straw feminists vs. real feminists...or something. This editor prefers to think of it as "just a fun little children's story that happens to contain one the first bits of gender bender transformation she was ever exposed to. Yay."
  • The seven Chronicles of Narnia have been claimed to be An Aesop focusing on one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Just goes to show that this trope applies even when there's plenty of actual, valid symbolism, allegory, and "supposition" to choose from.
    • This editor once argued in an academic paper that the White Witch's reign at the beginning of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe was a critique of Stalin's Russia.
    • This troper once heard that the entire series was a children's adaptation of The Bible. I Am Not Making This Up.
      • It's a widespread assertion. And after a comparative religion course including an assignment to read certain passages from The Bible and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in parallel, a far too plausible one.
      • Lewis has specified how the books compare with Christianity: "The Magician’s Nephew tells the Creation and how evil entered Narnia, The Lion etc. - the Crucifixion and Resurrection, Prince Caspian - restoration of the true religion after a corruption, The Horse and His Boy - the calling and conversion of the heathen, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - the spiritual life (especially in Reepicheep), The Silver Chair - the continuing war against the powers of darkness, The Last Battle - the coming of Antichrist (the ape). The end of the world and the last judgement." (Source)
    • It's safe to say, however, that The Deplorable Word of The Magician's Nephew is a nuclear metaphor, as Aslan says that humans are working on weapons just as dangerous. And that Earth will soon have rulers just as disinterested in human life as Jadis. This is pretty overt.
    • And a book was just published saying that each novel corresponds with one of the seven heavens of the medieval cosmos.
  • The Greek poet and Literature Nobel Prize winner Odysseas Elytis once attended a celebration in his honor, where samples of his work were read and then had their meaning analyzed in detail by distinguished scholars. When his turn came to speak and thank everybody, he put his tongue in his cheek and gave special credit to the scholars for finding more depth to his poetry than even he had thought of.
  • Despite what every English teacher (and Bradbury himself, when he wrote the book) has said, Ray Bradbury now claims that Fahrenheit 451 is in fact not about censorship, but about how TV makes you stupid and less likely to read.
    • That's because it isn't about censorship; the government in Fahrenheit 451 has simply harnessed our society's existing disinclination to read--and inclination to look down on those who read too much. This is made explicit in the novel, with the implication that it couldn't have happened in a literate society that valued ideas.
    • To be honest, though, Ray Bradbury has been known to find subtext in his work that he never intended to put there. His subconscious mind writes his stories, not his conscious one... plus, his characters talk to him.
      • This troper moves in writing circles and can assure you that the majority of writers think of their characters as talking to them. "My characters aren't talking to me," is a phrase frequently spoken by a writer who is stuck on what their characters will do next.
      • And this troper would like to verify that finding subtext in your own work that you didn't intend to put there is very common. Most of the time you don't think about the underlying themes of a work while writing it. If you do, it becomes fairly obvious even if it's not Anvilicious.
    • In any case, this declaration was, for this troper, one of those times when Wordof God became Discontinuity. Call it Anti Jossed
  • Repeatedly, The Lord Of The Rings trilogy was claimed to be symbolic of World War II. (Sauron = Hitler. Mordor = Nazi Germany. Isengard = Italy. etc...) But Tolkien insisted that there was no such allegory, and that it was just a part of his extensive Mythology. In the foreword to the 1964 edition, Tolkien went so far as to sum up how he would have ended the story if it had been an allegory for WWII. And pointed out that he'd written half of it pre-World War II.
    • This troper has even seen accusations of the reverse. The Shire was likened to idealized Germany, and the rampant racism (Every good race is pretty, tall and blonde, notwithstanding that most of the characters are not) as arian ethics. Of course, at the time of the book not just Germany subscribed to those ideas.
    • Legendary science fiction author Isaac Asimov once wrote that he interpreted the Ring as industrialization, a view sparked when his wife, on seeing an oil field, muttered, "That's Mordor." When several readers wrote him to state that Tolkien had denied that, Asimov said, in effect, "Whatever Tolkien said aside, I still look at it this way."
      • It's worth noting that Tolkien did indeed feel strongly against industrialization (see Treebeard's statement that Saruman has a mind full of wheels and gears, not to mention the Scouring of the Shire), but the degree to which that impacted the novel is up to debate.
      • Bob thought that movie adaptation seemed to take this approach, especially with the scene in The Two Towers where the Ents destroy the dam, unleashing the river (purity of nature), destroying the factories of Saruman. When he asked his father what he thought, he (being a priest) answered that he saw allegories to the Biblical Flood. At that point Bob realized that there can be any number of different interpretations of that scene, so maybe it's just supposed to be tree people wrecking an evil wizard's base of operations.
      • When I saw the movie's take on Minas Morgul, my first thought was "That looks like a nuclear reactor envisioned by people afraid of one."
      • It's also worth noting that Tolkien's problem, at least if interpreted from his works, was not so much with industrialization itself as with rampant and uncaring industrialization. There are countless examples of machinery and engines being used by the forces of good as well as those of evil. He defines Power or the Machine in his letters as arrogantly attempting to put one's own design in place of God- meaning that yet another interpretation could be centered about a hatred of pride and rampant human destruction of the environment.
    • It has been said that Tolkien's images of Mordor stemmed partly from his experiences in the trenches of WWI. He also publicly stated that he didn't like allegory, but he did like applicability: He wouldn't write a book in which Sauron is Hitler, but he would write a book where Sauron could be compared to Hitler.
      • The Tolkienologists whom Peter Jackson consulted actually pegged Saruman as comparable to Hitler, what with the influential power of his voice and his plan to breed a master warrior race.
      • C'mon, too, look at the names--Isengard = Eisengard = Iron Tower in German. Besides, Tolkien actually admitted that, as Middle-Earth was supposed to be Europe in the distant past, that Mordor corresponded to Italy (Mount Doom is Stromboli), thus making Sauron perhaps Mussolini.
    • The Biblical interpretation of Lord of the Rings is quite ubiquitous, despite the fact that it's clearly more inspired by Germanic mythology. Yes, Gandalf dies and comes Back From The Dead, but his subsequent increase in knowledge, not to mention his entire character design, is more Odin than Jesus. Yes, Morgoth did a Face Heel Turn, but so did Loki. And there's a Ring of Doom, people!
    • All theories being officially [[Jossed]] by Tolkein himself in a letter he wrote in 1966. It's in the second edition of the book, onwards.
  • This editor had an English class where the writer of the essay (another student) was standing right there when the teacher started explaining the allegory of the paper, despite the author disagreeing. The teacher essentially told him to "Shut up, this is about the words, not the author!"
    • This editor had an English teacher who did this thing called "explication", which explained all the symbols, and invariably fell into this, especially when we did Andy Warhol...
    • This editor not only had a teacher do that, but he talked through the finale of 2001: A Space Odyssey, explaining the strangeness. I mean, it's not like we could make our own interpretations!
    • This troper stil remembers the horrendous teacher who insisted that by featuring drunk characters in The Tempest, Shakespeare adressed the "important" issue of alcohol abuse.
  • Despite Douglas Adams explicitly saying that the number 42 was randomly chosen with no intended hidden meaning in The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, Epileptic Trees involving everything from base thirteen to Tibetan monks continue to live on.
    • Speaking of base 13, 4 suits of 13 cards each, plus 2 jokers... a deck of cards!
      • As quoted by the Author himself, "I may be a sorry case, but I don't write jokes in base 13."
    • You mean it's not a Shout Out to Lewis Carroll?
    • This troper recalls an English class discussion where a fellow student attempted to say how 42 was the number of chromosomes in the human body, and how it represented, along with the Earth, how we were the question and answer. (Note: Humans have 46 chromosomes -- 22 standard pairs, plus the sex chromosomes).
    • This troper always thought that "6 times 9 equals 42" (at the end of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Arthur pulls tiles out of a bag of makeshift Scrabble tiles to try and subconsciously generate a question to go with the great answer, and gets "What do you get if you multiply six times nine?") was to be interpreted as "There is no answer. There is no question. Just relax." Which, if you think about it, is overthinking stuff to create a message to not overthink stuff.
    • This troper always thought of it as a satire of deep-sounding but ultimately meaningless questions such as "What is the meaning of life?" or "What is the sound of one hand clapping?".
    • Come on, it's obviously because 42 is the number of spots on a pair of 6-sided die, representing that life is a gamble
  • Take your pick with Harry Potter. An allegorical polemic against the UK's strict gun laws. A diatribe against Thatcher's Britain. A foaming defense of fascism. Praise for a class society. Subversive feminism. Subversive racism. Subversive Marxism. Damaging society by making nerdiness cool and desirable instead of a cause of beatings to minimize its destructive influence. Damaging society by projecting and propagating the domination of sport over superior influences such as nerdiness.
    • There are those that argue that Harry Potter is symbolic of gay society. To support this, some people simply replace the word "wand" with something else, If You Know What I Mean, and reflect upon how it seems almost as many scenes were written with that substitution in mind. Ignoring the fact that the series only has one gay character.
    • Let's not forget that John Granger teaches a class on, and wrote two whole books on, how Harry Potter can be seen as a fully Christian work filled to the brim with symbolism culled from classic authors the likes of which Tolkien and Lewis were reading in their heyday. However, whether he is right or wrong, it could be a bit too much of a coincidence that all the good guys are on the team with the lion mascot (*coughAslancough*) and all the bad guys are on the team with the serpent mascot (which Satan is commonly associated with).
    • And this editor reached the conclusion that lycanthropy is J. K. Rowling's metaphor for AIDS. Think of it: it's infectious by contact with blood, almost no one refers to the condition straight-forwardly, and it is a big deal that Voldemort threatens to let Greyback loose near people's kids. To end the tree epilepsy, Greyback is probably also a metaphor for pedophilia. Of course, most werewolves act like this.
      • According to the trial transcripts from the JKR vs the Lexicon case, the AIDS metaphor at least was the author's intention. So maybe everyone actually IS Jesus in Purgatory?
    • To be fair, there are some cases of genuine, intentional symbolism in the books. For example, J.K. Rowling has said that the Dementors are meant to represent clinical depression.
      • …and given this example of the "depth" of Rowling's symbolism, I think we can safely discount most of the more convoluted theories. I mean, duh!
  • It seems like almost every time Kafka's The Trial is discussed, a comment is made on how it predicts the Holocaust and totalitarianism. However, besides the fact that the Law Courts in the novel are grotesquely humorous Obstructive Bureaucrats, there is a strong implication that the protagonist is actually guilty of something in the Freud Was Right sense (he's a Handsome Lech), which is totally at odds with the fact that the Nazis' victims were innocent of any actual crime.
  • Isaac Asimov once wrote a short story, titled "The Immortal Bard", that made fun of this tendency. He also wrote a serious essay that ended up concluding that the "true" meaning of a story is whatever the reader thinks it is.
  • Whenever discussions of governmental surveillance, propaganda and overt authority are raised, mentions of 1984 cannot be far behind. To be fair, the novel accurately reflects many of the various nasty methods that governments (both totalitarian and democratic) use to control and manipulate populations and remains relevant in many ways, but it sometimes seems that governments can't pass any kind of legislation at all without someone pointing to the book and screaming about how George Orwell's vision is coming true.
    • While in high school, this editor made it something of a hobby to compare every possible assigned book to 1984, just because she could. Due to bizarrely frequent English teacher changes she managed to get away with it for a year and a half, and got good grades, too.
    • In proof that not all English teachers are delusional, this troper wrote an essay on 1984 which claimed that Orwell's reputation for having the gift of prophesy is utter horses**t and that he was merely talking about the politics of his day. She got an A-.
      • Anthony Burgess in 1985 agreed. He even went so far as to say Orwell was writing more about England during and after the Second World War than Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. The essay portion of that is a good book, by the way.
  • Richard Adams has always claimed that Watership Down is simply a children's book. However, many fans disagree with him and see the book as an rabbit version of Animal Farm with the allegory taking aim at fascism and appeasement. Others see it as an attempt to fashion an English version of The Aeneid.
  • There was a girl who was the daughter of a book author, and coincidentally, they were reading one of the books her father wrote in class and discussing all those hidden meanings and symbolism. When she got home she asked her dad about them, who proclaimed that the school had made all those up and it wasn't his intention to put symbolism or anything in the book. He asked the school to correct this, and they said no.
  • This editor's Canadian Literature class was debating the symbolism of the garden in Roughing It In The Bush, apparently unaware of the fact that the book in question is basically someone's diary, and therefore, its events would be purely accidental. Oh, yeah, and we agreed that the garden represents the womb. From this, we extrapolated that she was having an affair with her neighbour. By extension, this implies that every woman who ever hired a gardener is sleeping with that gardener.
  • Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum plays on the theme of hidden meanings and symbolism.
    • Eco himself has jokingly called Foucault's Pendulum "Dan Brown's Biography".
  • This troper completely ruined her enjoyment of Jim Butcher's Summer Knight because she reads too much comparative mythology. She immediately started matching up the cosmology of the Faerie Courts to archetypes and Golden Bough- style motifs. It didn't help that one she read actually used the terms "Summer Knight" and "Winter Knight" and that the plot of the book followed the pattern it referred to with a disturbing degree of accuracy.
  • Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 does everything it can within the text to stop you from over-analyzing it; the basic plot is about a women seeking the meaning of a symbol she found written on a bathroom wall, and after finding some of the most improbable answers ever... well, the book ends just before we find out whether it was imagined, a hoax, or f'real.
    • Considering the whole book is explicitly a Mind Screw punctuated by events which are probably completely random, trying to solve the mystery is the real joke. Seriously, how many people would be seriously concerned about a conspiracy about the Postal Service?
    • This troper's American Literature class analyzed it, and determined that it was about the indeterminate nature of reality, and uniting pop culture with high art.
  • In the third book of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, The Waste Lands, Jake is forced to submit a psychotic rant he doesn't even remember writing as his Final Essay, which he worries will finally let everyone know he's losing it, but the yuppie teacher inteprets it as an astounding symbolic piece despite its insanity.
  • Not long after it was published, the Dr. Seuss book Horton Hears a Who was co-opted by anti-abortion activists, largely thanks to the line "A person's a person, no matter how small"... even though Theodore Geisel was himself pro-choice, and protested the use of the phrase by pro-life activists. The debate continues to this day, including litigation by Geisel's widow, and the release of The Film Of The Book hasn't helped a bit. Seuss himself said the book was about the Cold War and post-war relationships between America and the Soviet Union.
    • Having seen the aforesaid film, this troper is guessing it will inevitably be used as fuel for religious fanatics comparing it to the persecution of early Christians and the perceived anti-Christian sentiment in modern America (the Kangaroo's line "If you can't see, hear, or feel it, it doesn't exist!" smacks of strawman atheist, and the Mayor of Whoville at one point makes an impassioned speech about a "giant invisible elephant in the sky" protecting the Whos) and atheist fanatics comparing it to the persecution of Galileo and other Renaissance thinkers (Horton is accused of "corrupting" the children of the Jungle of Nool, and near the end of the film, Horton is offered the chance to go free if he "recants" his belief in invisible little people living on a speck of dust), and both parties will have completely missed the bit about not persecuting or ridiculing those with different beliefs.
    • Speaking of the good Doctor, many of his books can be taken as allegorical or symbolic of something. Yertle the Turtle, for example, is supposed to be Hitler (and seeing as Geisel fled from Nazi Germany, this really isn't much of a stretch), while The Butter Battle Book is an obvious satire of the arms race.
  • At risk of going against the idea of the page, George Orwell's Animal Farm is, on at least one level, a fairly direct allegory for the history of the USSR from 1917 to 1945. But some of the analysis gets a little confusing. Does Boxer represent a specific individual, or just downtrodden yet willing workers in general? Is Benjamin a cautionary tale about those who know what's going on, but don't act on this knowledge, or an Author Avatar? Saying this, the simplest answer is probably "Both".
  • In Lord Of The Flies, is Jack supposed to represent Hitler? Is Simon Jesus? Is the lack of girls on the island proof that boys are evil? The overuse of symbolism and metaphors in the book don't help.
  • I once read a book ("Naked is the Best Disguise") that claimed, among other things, that Holmes's return represents Christ's resurrection, Moriarty is Nietzsche, and "The Red Headed League" is a Freudian parable of thwarted pederastic rape. I don't think he was kidding.
  • This trope is parodied extensively in House Of Leaves. One critic of The Navidson Record goes as far to say that since only men wish to explore the house and women are not interested in doing so that the house is an allegory for a vagina.
  • Santiago of Old Man And The Sea is Jesus.
  • So is Santiago from Chronicles of a Death Foretold. The reason? He wore white and might not have slept with a woman before she married. Never mind all the other women he did for a fact sleep with.
  • This troper had to do an analysis in teams for The spell by Hermann Broch. It came a moment when this troper made a theory that the isolated small town of the book was actually outside of time and space.
  • Although not straight, Basic Instructions proposed a new cryptic interpretation for Moby-Dick: a metaphor of marriage.
  • This Troper once made and defended the claim that Anna Karenina was, in fact, about a covert war between God and Satan. Levin is a paladin plagued with doubts, the train motif actually is Satan, and Anna and Vronsky are agents of the devil. Most of this analysis hinged on a single scene where Anna and Vronsky like a painting of a summer day better than a painting of Jesus crucified. His teacher loved it (though to be fair, she was more interested in the absurdity than accepting it as a legitimate interpretation).

Music
  • Someone once tried to convince this contributor that "The Llama Song" was about blue-state conservatives.
  • Some people claim that the song "Puff the Magic Dragon" is really about drug use, despite the song's writers having repeatedly stated that this was not their intent.
  • Similarly, Subliminal Seduction author Wilson Bryan Key insisted that the Simon and Garfunkel song "Bridge Over Troubled Water" was really secretly promoting heroin use. He went so far as to claim several of the more poetic phrases in the lyrics were actually "common drug slang", although their use as such has never been seen anywhere outside of his fevered imagination.
  • Freddie Mercury insisted unto his death that "Bohemian Rhapsody" had not only no hidden meaning, but no meaning at all. Due to this, most theories revolve around his bisexuality, which he also denied (well, refused to confirm) until his death. To be fair, though, the song definitely sounds like it might have some meaning deeper than "Mom, I just shot a guy and the police are after me, help..."
    • This troper's mother was convinced that it was actually about Mercury's AIDS... until it was pointed out to her that Mercury would not be diagnosed with HIV until 12 years after the song's release.
    • This editor decided that the folky "39" was not about WWII as the titular year would suggest, but about colonizing other planets in 2039. This was a just-for-fun 'wacky' theory...then turned out to be actually true.
    • This troper and a friend of his passed a few hours on a bus trip trying to demonstrate that the song was about Gavrilo Princip and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
    • There is a difference between "no deep meaning" and "no meaning at all." It's possible to piece a basic narrative from "Bohemian Rhapsody"; therefore, there is a meaning--the story it tells on the surface.
  • There's a video of song "Quickening" by dj TAKA (from the Bemani franchise) on MySpace where someone changed the audio output of the song until the somewhat gibberish playing in the backround of the song said "I am satan, hear as the angels try," (need specific quote, since this troper's memory has been rememmbering English class stuff instead), I Am Not Making This Up.
  • The Beatles get this a lot:
    • Any of the various outlandish interpretations of the lyrics of "Come Together", such as what "toe-jam football" is.
      • The most popular theory for "Come Together" is that it's about John Lennon, its primary author. Some of the clues for that theory fit better than others.
    • "Helter Skelter" and the rest of the White Album, along with several other Beatles songs, are all a huge (and tragic) example of this. The song was written about nothing (or a playground slide, or maybe the Roman Empire), but Charles Manson built up this whole mythology around it about how it was prophecy and so on. Then he went around murdering people to fulfill the prophecy, or whatever. Whoops. Turns out it wasn't any of that at all...
      • A helter-skelter is like a waterslide, only without the water.
      • So that would just be a slide then?
      • Helter-Skelters are tower-like constructions that appear at fairgrounds. You climb up the stairs inside, the slide is a spiral around the outside. A mat is generally used to make it faster. Otherwise, they're the same.
    • A few