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It was a conscious choice to cast Mark Hamill as Firelord Ozai.
In his most famous role, Mark is the son of a man who tries to kill him multiple times, sees him only as a tool in his quest for power, and came this close to world domination. Family-wise, the man has a brother, an absent wife, a son who is older and a daughter who is younger. It is also hinted that he was good once upon a time. This has to be more then a coincidence.

Also, in one of said father's (being Vader, not Hamill) more famous roles, he is a king who is killed by his own brother in his lust for power. Also, in this movies sequel, one of two protagonists is a "Well Done, Son" Guy who dose a Heel–Face Turn and acquires a scar on his eye, given by his own parent, and was conditioned into the way his acts by said parent. Also, this boys have similar names.

This troper has a lot of free time on her hands...

  • A "conscious choice"? As opposed to what? Casting it by picking a name out of a hat? Of course it was a conscious choice. The cast of a TV show doesn't happen by accident and serendipity.
    • I think the idea is that it was an intentional Actor Allusion, not just a matter of who was best at the role (although Hamill clearly fit that criteria too).
    • Right.
    • Then again, perhaps they were inspired by his equally awesome performance as the animated version of another crazy.. the Joker?

The Avatar world is our world in the distant past.
There was a giant Cosmic Retcon replacing the four elements with the elements of the periodic table. This led the the Avatar Spirit discontinuing the Avatar system and the elemental bending disciplines (which are related, as implied by the Giant Lion Turtle's speech on Spiritbending) because a) the prospect of learning more than 117 different bending styles, plus reincarnating among an equal number of elemental nations, was enough to give even a transcendent Spirit of the World a massive headache, and b) because the first Plutoniumbenders accidentally wiped out human civilization and wrecked the ecosystem, and the Avatar Spirit didn't want to risk putting the world through that again. (This also explains why there are currently no traces of the Four Nations' civilization, as well as why all the Mix-and-Match Critters were replaced by bizarre, abberrant, mutated creatures such as "bears", "ducks", and non-flying "bison".)
  • Alternatively, due to the prevalence of Mix-and-Match Critters, and the tendency to treat the impossible as a mild inconvenience, the Avatar world is actually the world of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and all bending is produced by Spiral Energy. The giant drill at Ba Sing Se was the second thing in history to pirece its walls and was only stopped by a spinning air nomad.
  • Second alternative, the Avatar world is a realm in the Mortal Kombat cosmology. We have the super-duper chi kung-fu, and the Asian culture which is known to extend beyond Earthrealm (seen in Outworld in particular, probably implying Asian culture isn't native to Earth). The Avatar, then, is that realm's protector god, much as Raiden is to Earth.
  • Third alternative, the past Gaia, from Final Fantasy VII. Both worlds use elements such as Fire, Water, and Wind. Not only that but the Air Nomads are nomadic, just as the Cetra from Final Fantasy VII. Not only that, but the Earth Kingdom is similar to a younger form of Midgar, with the Dai Li being similar to the Turks, and the centralized transportation seen in both worlds, with a lower ring and upper ring. Moreover, that could be why some people's bodies are not seen, they just disappeared, as in Final Fantasy VII. The strange looking animals are the proto form of Monsters, do to not being infected by JENOVA. Ostrach Horse=Chocobo? Cosmic Power? Avatar State=Limitbreak? Fire Nation=Wutai and Earth Kingdom=Midgar?
  • Fourth alternative; It could be the world of The Twelve Kingdoms before the Gods decided to separate the four lands in twelve kingdoms and an island in the center. Just look at the mix-n-match creatures, how they can be similar to some youkai.
  • Sixth alternative; It could be Star Wars in the distant past, before humans managed to travel the stars, and bending is merely a primitive version of the Force. The Fire Nation are simply early Sith (letting their emotions control their bending) while the Avatar is the original Jedi.
    • This implies the Jedi are more powerful than the Sith, which they are not. In the movies, Palpatine beat Yoda in the Senate Chamber, Vader beat Obi-Wan on the Death Star, Kylo Ren wiped out the New Jedi Order. The Sith are either as powerful as or more powerful than the Jedi. Also, we already have canon that denies this. The first force-users lived on Tython as warring factions who used the Dark and Light. Neither were Sith or Jedi. They used crystal-swords made of lightsaber crystal material to fight. They could channel the Force through these swords.

An upcoming Avatar spinoff will be "Field Trips with Zuko."
In a similar vein as The New Scooby-Doo Movies and Batman: The Brave and the Bold, it will be a series chronicling Zuko's search for Ursa, engaging in wacky team-ups along the way. (Example: Zuko looks for Ursa in a pineapple under the sea, Zuko wonders why he doesn't have fairy godparents for all the crap he's been through, etc.)
  • Season 1 will feature cartoon Zuko as described above. In Season 2, he'll be played by the actor cast in the Shyamalan film and Crossover into every by-then-current live-action Nickelodeon series.
  • Also, Toph will keep showing up to try to get a refund field trip and constantly get shot down. And the universe will implode at a show turning a Memetic Badass into a Butt-Monkey.

Zuko's Important Haircut at the end of Season Two was an Homage to Bruce Lee
Just look at his stance and fighting style in the season finale and tell me I'm wrong.

Short, general theories about the early aspects of the show.
In the early stages of development, the show was set in a more sci-fi setting. Example: Aang having a more high-tech staff, Momo being an R2-D2-esque robot, etc. Therefore, through the powers of WMG, we can conclude that...

In the upcoming live-action film, Zuko will receive his scar during the storyline, not before.
Narrative-wise, it's simply easier to show rather then showing an extensive flashback sequence. At the start, he'll be an unpopular, but not exiled, prince eager to prove himself to his dad. After one encounter with Aang, he'll return home for the war meeting and fateful Agni Kai. They'll also segue this into Zuko's presumed death before the Seige of the North...instead of simply putting him in exile, Ozai will try to outright kill Zuko. After that, everyone will assume he's dead until it's revealed he survived with help from Iroh. His survival and Iroh's role in it will set up them becoming fugitives in the planned sequel. Hence why all of the released photos of him have no scar...they want to surprise folks unfamiliar with the source material. So it's basically The Dark Knight Avatar-style.
  • Also, Zhao will be the man Zuko speaks out against in the war room. Since Zuko won't yet be man enough to face his father, he'll take his anger and frustration out on the man he was prepared to fight. ("Zuko? I thought you were dead?" "Half.")
  • Um, Zuko has his scar in the pictures that have been released. It's just way more subtle.
    • They can size it up or shrink it down in post production. Stops the poor lad from having to sit through an hour of make up each morning.
  • He gains his scar before the beginning of the film. This troper has seen the film in the theatres

The sequel to the live-action film (The Last Airbender) will be called The First Metalbender.
And Summer Glau will play Toph Beifong.
  • A tribe of Whedons will direct, script, and produce it as a musical. The song over the end credits will be 'Nobody's Asian In The Movies'
    • There will be no third installation because too many of the main characters die at the end.

The Great Movie Wild Mass Twist Guessing Cluster.
No matter how close the live-action film sticks to the source material, some part will be labeled a "shocking twist" just because it's Shamylan. Just post any ideas for what that twist could be here, and put them in spoiler tags.
  • Aang turns into a magical koi fish tidal wave!
    • What a twist!
  • Yue turns into the moon!
    • What a twist!
  • Dev Patel has a totally hot yet psycotic sister who's the real antagonist!
    • What a twist!
      • Said psycho-hot sister (or one of her assistants) is Latika!
  • Zhao gets beaten by Zuko! Again!
  • Aang and Zuko are brothers! even if that means explaining how can a 100 year old frozen kid is your brother...
  • The avatar's world coexist with our world, we just don't notice it...
  • The boy Katara finds in the iceberg turns out to be the long-lost Avatar.
  • The movie turns out to be good!
    • The fans stop complaining about the moive and like it!
      • All the fail about the movie is actually a brilliant plan by Magnificent Bastard M. Night Shayamalan, who has actually filmed a separate movie that is faithful to the original series and actually culturally sensitive, but used the fail!movie to generate bad publicity!
  • Every character played by white will be bad guy, doesn't matter his role in series
  • Everyone is actually Adrian Brody.

Zuko Alone is based on William Faulkner's Light in August.
Both are about a mysterious wandering guy (Zuko and Joe Christmas) ending up in a random small village where he tries to just pass through and be left alone but he winds up getting caught up in the people there and their problems. Then it cuts to a long flashback of the wandering guy's childhood which turns out to be filled with all sorts of turmoil that explains his current behavior. Eventually the villagers find out the wanderers real ethnicity (Zuko's fire nation Joe's actually black though he looks white) and they all freak out. This comparison is the only way i managed to get throught that book back in English class.
  • Or, you know, it's supposed to be a Western with magic kung fu.

White Lotus Pai Sho tiles work like the enchanted galleons Dumbledore's Army use.
In "The Old Masters", Jeong Jeong says "a call went out" to all the members of the White Lotus but no one ever says how they communicate over such vast distances. Maybe the tiles are more than just how members identify one another; maybe they serve as communication devices as well - at least for something like a meeting place and time.

The Fire Nation is actually an alternate universe version of Nazi Germany.
Think about it. They commit genocide on several races of people. In "Imprisoned", they're shown to kidnap any dissenters and take them away to a work camp rig where they are forced to work for the Fire Nation. The warden, as per usual, pretends to be nice, but singles out the one worker who is sick and takes him away. It's been mentioned that the Fire Nation manufactures propaganda. They want to take over the world. Think about it!
  • Those same attributes are true of a great many regimes throughout history, not just the Nazis specifically. The Romans did it, the Soviets did it, Shelbyville tried to do it to Springfield, etc.
    • This troper always saw the Fire Nation as based on early 20th century Japan.
    • This troper thought the Fire Nation had a few, somewhat unfortunate ties to China. The Airbenders are TIBETANS MONKS (especially since the monks [and Dalai Lama, or in here, the avatar] were exiled and now struggle to keep their culture alive which is similar to how the air nomads end up, or leading down that path). China and Fire Nation have a lot in common: higher population, technologically advanced, strict law enforcement, ect. Not all people who are Chinese, or all places in China apply. But it'd be mighty tough to miss the similarities.
    • The Earth Kingdom seems to share more similarities with China than the Fire Nation. What with all the secret police, brainwashing, and figurehead king, not to mention it is quite poor and is barely industrialized compared to the Fire Nation. Or maybe both nations were based on China, only in different time periods. In that case, there really isn't much of a political agenda behind the show at all.
  • Tibetan monks aren't exiled...

The movie is a altered verson of The Boy in the Iceberg
After the war ended, Pu On Tim rewrote the play to make it a little more accurate.
  • Wait, so Pu On Tim took an adaptation of all three seasons and turned it into an adaptation of only the first season? How did that happen?
    • The first movie was Act I.
      • They never got to act to because the stage was to covered in tomatos and the audience was threatening to burn the entire stage to the ground.

Shortly after the war someone will invent a writing system analogious to Braille
This will probably involve a slab of rock (or wood if the reader is an earthbender) that an earthbender uses their earthbending (or a firebender their firebending) as paper and their finger as the paintbrush/ink.
  • It will be Sokka.
  • Alternatly, it will involve a special ink that allows both waterbenders and earthbenders to "read"- waterbenders by microscopic water capsules in the ink, and earthbenders by the earth "shell" around the water capsules. Somehow...

If Koh is ever somehow killed, all the faces he stole will turn into masks.
If returned to their proper owners, the faces will be replaced. So the poor monkey outside the cave will have a happy ending.

If Azula had been a guy like the writers originally planned, less people would find Zucest gross.
Yaoi fangirls would have crawled all over the bedroom scene in The Awakening and tons of other Zucesty scenes in a way that the vast majority of het fans seem more reluctant to do so.

The ember island player's use a separate script outside the fire nation
In the version the Earth kingdom and the Northern water tribe see, the "Gaang" beats the fire lord.

The Ember Island Players were secretly pro-Avatar.
The Boy in the Iceberg was a classic example of this trope. They got away with performing the tale by claiming that it was a morality tale about the foolhardiness of going against the Firelord, and then promptly break their Aesop by spending 95% of the play focusing on the Avatar and his awesome adventure.
  • This happens quite often in Real Life dictatorships. The Berlin cabaret remained popular in the east because it was one of the few institutions permited to (gently) mock the state.
    • The opposite could be argued, however. While the action focuses on Team Avatar, they are horribly miss cast, written to be extreme versions of a few character tics, and for the most part made them look like morons. It is closer to Soviet era cartoons lampooning capitalism.

The Ember Island Players tacked on the ending, but for other reasons
It doesn't even work as Fire Nation propaganda; from a dramatic perspective it makes no sense for the real heroes to pop in during the third act and effortlessly defeat the protagonists. So, the authorized version of The Boy in the Iceberg ended right about when Sokka got up to leave, with a hopeful epilogue. The EIP altered it not only for propaganda reasons, but also because they're hacks. According to Zuko, they ruined Love Amongst the Dragons, so they have a reputation for getting plays wrong.

Episodes like "The Great Divide" and "The Painted Lady" saved Avatar's life
Bryke intentionally put in bad episodes to keep the show from becoming cancelled before its prime. If we had sixty-one episodes of "Crossroads of Destiny" or "The Blind Bandit"-level awesomeness, we never would have seen past the halfway point.

Bryke were subtly were hinting at the real end pairings of AtLA from practically the very beginning.
In all the fan-names for the canon pairings, i.e. Kataang, Maiko and Sukkanote , the name of the girl is first- or, in some circles the one who is "on top" so to speak. Bryke spread these names around on the interwebz. Somehow. Anyhooz, the canon pairings were the ones where the female was "on top" if you will. Zutara just never had any hope... (Besides, much as I adore Zuko, who would believe that be tops? XD) The only one exempt from this is Toph, mostly because she's just that awesome. And ten. (Though that doesn't mean that this troper isn't holding out for Tophuke.
  • Jossed by the commentary. Byrke calls Toph/The Duke "Doph", and they ship it.
  • Also Jossed by the fact that Bryke calls the Mai/Zuko pairing "Maizu"

There is no war in Ba Sing Se.
The Earth King invites anyone who says otherwise to Lake Laogai. . .
  • I am honored to accept his invitation.
  • We are safe here.
    • My name is Joo Dee. Welcome to our wonderful city.

There is no Shipping War in Ba Sing Se
All fanfiction pairings involve Long Feng our great Grand Secretariat of our glorious Ba Sing Se.
  • The Earth King invites anyone who says otherwise to Lake Laogai...

Pants and death really are an illusion.
Aang's true Avatar state is a pantsless immortal being. It knows the truth: Pants are an illusion, and so is death.
  • This makes perfect sense. Of the five avatars we get to know, only Kuruk and Aang wear pants. Aang is still learning how to be an Avatar, and Kuruk wasn't the best Avatar since he was more of a "go with the flow" kinda guy and as he put it, "everyone solved their own problems." Roku, Kyoshi, and Yangchen wear robes, because they understood the importance of pantslessness. HOWEVER, Yangchen explains that the Avatar must sacrifice his spiritual needs (i.e., not wearing pants) to fulfill his duty to the world. while all of the Avatars lived in a world where pants were required, Yangchen, Kyoshi and Roku could get away with not wearing them. However, pants are needed at the frozen poles where Kuruk comes from, and they're also required for male Airbenders like Aang. Because Aang and Kuruk needed to wear pants due to climate and/or culture, they are less competent Avatars- though in Aang's defense, he's 12 and inexperienced anyway with or without pants, but Kuruk did not get rid of his pants, preferring to "go with the flow".
    • Korra wears pants in the next series, but she's also a new Avatar, and there's nothing so far saying that she won't wear a dress at one point.
    • Or pants are an illusion in the non-mortal realm. Seriously, what use do spirits have for pants?
  • This theory could add a whole new meaning to Aang's pantsless dreams... He was subconsciously realizing that Avatars shouldn't wear pants, but was still too inexperienced to accept it, maybe?

Meta-WMG- The Ready for Lovemaking scene wasn't cut because the censors thought it was ridiculous.
Most of the comic relief in this story comes from embarrassing Sokka, so Zuko walking in on Sokka when he was expecting Suki is downright hysterical and par for the course. Perhaps the censors were laughing so hard they genuinely didn't notice Suki sneaking in after Zuko left, nor the implications of what just happened.

The casting of the voice of Actor Sokka from Ember Island Players was due to jokes about Captain Planet
It's Scott Menville, the voice of Ma-Ti

Iroh is a metaphor for Prometheus.
Prometheus was known for giving advice to those without the previous knowledge, the most important of which was fire. Iroh did the same to Zuko. You may say that Zuko is like Iroh's son- this is a mirror to Deucalion, Prometheus' son. They were both taught by their respective guardian. It was also mentioned that Iroh would be pecked by birds, which was Prometheus' fate.

When Aang was hallucinating from sleep deprivation there was one thing in the duel between Momo and Appa that was real
And that was a six armed Guru Pethik floating on a cloud.

Holo the Wise Wolf made a cameo on the show
She showed up in the spirit world in "Siege of the North, part 2. Around the time he went to the monkey guy who was meditating.
  • Does someone have a gif or jpg of it?

The Dai Li began as Avatar Kyoshi's personal agents
In Escape From The Spirit World, she says that she compromised between the Earth King and the rebels by giving him the Dai Li to protect his rule and Ba Sing Se's culture...and giving them an assurance that he'd listen to their concerns. Seems a bit lopsided, eh? Kyoshi was damned intimidating, but she had a whole world to protect. I suspect that, while she was alive, the Dai Li acted as a Sword of Damocles to the Earth King and his administration as much as to the people, and likely as her spies in surrounding areas as well. It was only after she died that they truly became part of the Earth Kingdom bureaucracy and then an independent law unto themselves.

The Earth Kingdom genocide Ozai planned was actually in the works all along.
Perhaps not in the form it finally took in the finale, but come on. We're talking about Sozin killing off all the Airbenders (except Aang), Azulon killing off all the Waterbenders (except Katara)... Ozai was the next in line to commit genocide, but the burning of the entire Earth Kingdom wasn't his idea. Why did Sozin kill off all the Airbenders? To kill the young Avatar. Of course, he knew that the Avatar was very young, probably didn't have control over the Avatar State, so the Avatar spirit was reincarnated... into the Southern Water Tribe. So Sozin moved on... but then passed away, leaving it up to Azulon to kill the Waterbenders. Azulon was probably still alive at the time of Kya's death; he probably died believing that the last Southern waterbender was dead, and that the Avatar cycle had moved on to... the Earth Kingdom. A few years later, Ozai finds out that the Avatar is still around, oh and he's the one Airbender who escaped the genocide. However, he's crazy enough to still want to commit genocide... so he waits around, tries his best to kill Aang off, and then during Sozin's Comet decides to burn down an entire continent.

I mean come on, having the Avatar on your side is a good thing. All the Fire Lords had to do was kill off every Earth/Water/Airbender in existence, wait for a new Fire Avatar to come along, then indoctrinate him and make him a Fire Nation supersoldier.

Katara's Time of the Month falls on the Full Moon.
Unfortunately for Aang, this means that Katara will have her way whether he wants to or not...

The name of the Avatar world is Coruscant.
The Avatar universe is actually the ancient past of the Star Wars universe, chronicling the early evolution of the human species on Coruscant. Bending became more and more sophisticated and eventually the four nations became so mixed that the only benders left were full-on energy benders, with some moderate power over all the elements (of course this took thousands of years). Over time, bending also became rarer and rarer, and benders became more separate from society, eventually forming the Jedi Order, based on the ancient culture of the Air Nomads.

Avatar World is our world in the far-flung future
In The Legend of Korra it is established that the human and spirit worlds began as separate, but something happened to allow spirits into the physical world. It is also shown that spirits can temporarily possess physical creatures without killing them, but it usually fundamentally alters their biology. In The Last Airbender the Gaang has a discussion where they can differentiate "just a bear" from a platypus-bear, an armadillo-bear, and a skunk-bear. So, not only can they identify the bear elements in each of these hybrids, but also the platypus, armadillo, and skunk elements. And they can differentiate them from each other. Meaning that there is some memory of what each of those animals was in a non-hybrid state.

It is possible that, in the Avatar Universe, sometime in our future timeline, spirits become broadly able to enter our world. And their interaction with our world resulted in mass hybridization of animals and the eventual rise of the avatar cycle and the creation of the four nations.

In the Netflix series, the cast will be the right "ethnicity".
Since each nations are influenced by real world cultures, and will NOT be "white-washing" the characters like the previous live-action adaptation.

Water Tribes = Inuits and Eskimos, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Fire Nation = Japanese, Chinese, South Asians, and Southeast Asians.
Earth Kingdoms = Chinese and KoreanAir Nomads = Tibetans, Shaolin Monks, and Sri Lanka Buddists.
Gyatso will be played by an Indian.
Sun Warriors = Latinos and Philippines.Swampbenders = Cajun and Creole


There are no werewolves or vampires in the avatar world.
There are however legends of something that is part man, part wolf-bat.

Oma and Shu formed a Suicide Pact
According to Chong, the song (after he remembers the part he forgot about earlier) goes "Built a path to be together...AND DIE!"

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