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The Galactic Federation is actually the local version of The Empire.
Well really. Even their Reasonable Authority Figure Grand Councilwoman is willing to destroy entire planets to kill one fugitive. Inhabited planets. Apparently they don't consider species sentient if they don't have hyperdrive. She's willing to accept 'I own him' as a legal excuse not to take Stitch...which means they recognize slavery. They've got serious prejudice against genetically engineered lifeforms, killing them on sight. Employing a Boxed Crook is common enough its more worrisome that he'll hurt the mosquitos then that he'll be let out of jail. From that point of view, the Grand Councilwoman is actually the Affably Evil Anti-Villain head of the government for an alliance of Scary Dogmatic Aliens. They've even got the dim, gothic interior architecture.
  • Strangely enough, despite their willingness to gas the entire planet to stop Stitch escaping, they never actually intended to kill him. From the start they planned to exile him to a barren planet and while Jumba is eager to kill and dismantle him, capturing Stitch seems to be high on the priority list. It's probably a case of Blue and Orange Morality than evil empire.

By Galactic Federation standards, Mosquitoes are cute and/or beautiful.
Think of the wild animal species that animal rights groups on Earth publicize: Giant Pandas, Bengal Tigers, Bottlenose Dolphins, Orangutans, Sea Turtles, etc; There may be species more valuable to the environmental balance, but those that get all the attention are the ones that we like. Though technically Humans are just as "endangered" as Mosquitoes, the insects are aesthetically pleasing (as demonstrated by Agent Pleakley) and therefore protected. Cobra Bubbles caught on to the attraction and used it to save the planet.

It wasn't the content of Stitch's brief speech that horrified the Galactic Council, it was the context.
Stitch's words have been translated to roughly mean "I will destroy." That's bad, but not quite as bad as the reactions of the council members would indicate. Those words must therefore have some historical significance similar to repeating a snippet of one of Hitler's tirades in the German Bundestag (German federal parliament) today. The words in themselves may not be so terrible, but such an unthinkable act would shock and infuriate the German parliament.
  • Alternately, it might literally translate into "I will destroy," but "meega nala kweesta" might be a particularly rude version that is rarely used because of it becoming a curse. Like how the term for a female dog is rarely used for the canine anymore since most people use it as an insult to a woman. "Kweesta" might mean "destroy," but it could be the more vulgar version of the word.
    • He cursed in the Alien equivalent of the Russian mat (Jumba has after all an kinda-Russian accent), there are tons of vulgar ways to say "destroy" in it.
      • Or perhaps it's a particularly harsh kind of 'destroy', the kind with immense pain and suffering, cities made uninhabitable, that sort of thing.
      • Maybe a more literal translation is 'I will cause a genocide/holocaust', or something like that.
    • Jossed on it supposedly meaning, "I want to destroy;" Chris Sanders stated in a TikTok video that it means something far worse, and also wrote in the comments that it does not mean "I want to destroy."

Lilo and Nani officially agreed to be Stitch's wardens.
In order to adopt Stitch Lilo signed something saying she was Stitch's caretaker and agreeing to be responsible for his actions, and might also say Lilo has custody of Stitch. This is enough to officially say Lilo is responsible for making sure Stitch stays in exile and doesn't cause too much damage to the mosquito population. Since Lilo seems to be five Nani would have to sign too and would be the person truly held responsible by the State of Hawaii if they let Stitch run around and he attacked somebody. These documents assume Stitch is a dog and not an intelligent superweapon. However, the Galactic Federation could ignore the document's original purpose and take it literally. The Grand Councilwoman had to give Lilo and Nani a higher level of citizenship than most humans to make this legitimate otherwise it would be like a jail leaving a dog in charge of guarding a prisoner, and she still had to make sure Lilo and Nani did the job they agreed to do.

Lilo & Stitch shares a universe with Birdy the Mighty.
The latter's anime series and the reboot manga spend a significant amount of time on that universe's Federation, and Earth is considered a backwater world in the middle of nowhere in both stories.

In Leroy & Stitch, Jumba's and Stitch's rewards were actually tests. Stitch passed. Jumba passed eventually.
Stitch and Jumba both seemed to be reformed by Leroy and Stitch, however it's possible that Jumba is only behaving either because he's being watched closely by Pleakley and Nani, or he simply lacks the facilities to do anything on a backwater planet like earth. The best solution would be to give him his lab back and pretend to trust him and see if he falls into his old habits. The goal of Stitch's reward was to see if he could function without Lilo or revert back to his original programming. Stitch was homesick but still acted as a responsible citizen. Whether Jumba passed is debatable. His first instinct was to get back to illegal genetic experiments but he did not get very far before he was forced at gunpoint to make one by Hämsterviel and could easily have decided against it, plus when he makes Leroy it he gives it an off switch. When Jumba decided on his own to go back to Hawaii instead of going back to his old lab it counted as a pass.

There are a few signs to suggest Lilo has Asperger's. She has no friends for one thing, and the girls including Mertle who she thinks are her "friends" actually treat her like an outcast. She may not be very bright, but she still has some signs of intelligence, and she can be unpredictable mood wise. One point Lilo is happy, next she is gloomy and next she can be angry quite easily. For example, Nani cheered her up before Lilo sees a 'shooting star' which is actually Stitch and she then snaps at her older sister when she playfully falls on her. Lilo also does not like it when Stitch touches her personal property such as her doll or photo of her late parents although she is right to tell him off.

Leroy was either designed to be a wussed out version of Stitch, or to degrade quickly.
Jumba was making Leroy at gun point and there's only so much Hämsterviel could do to test his capabilities without giving Jumba an opportunity to escape. Either Leroy beat Stitch partly because Stitch was distracted by missing Lilo, and Leroy got the jump on the other experiment's because he knew their locations strengths and weaknesses and they had gotten complacent, or he was genuinely on even footing with Stitch at the time. However, either way at the stadium every other experiment proved itself capable of fighting him.

Cobra Bubbles really is retired from the CIA as he claims, but he'd been since been picked up by SHIELD.
Hey, Disney owns Marvel now, and another Disney Channel Animated Original has had a Marvel crossover of their own. So why not?

Cobra Bubbles was never a real social worker and Nani was never in danger of losing Lilo.
Cobra Bubbles is a CIA operative called to Hawaii once the agency realized that an alien had landed on Earth. Being a social worker was his cover. (He might have even replaced the real social worker that Nani was expecting, since it's clear that this is the first time both Nani and Lilo are meeting him.) Notice he's always in the background whenever Lilo and Stitch are wandering around town: he's not shadowing them to keep an eye on Lilo, but to monitor Stitch. Realizing that Lilo was in danger from Jumba's efforts to recapture Stitch, Cobra made the call to remove Lilo temporarily from the home under the guise of putting her in foster care, with the intention of returning her once the alien situation was under control. He couldn't tell Nani this for fear of breaking The Masquerade of aliens among us. (The biggest flaw in this theory was that Bubbles was involved in Lilo's case prior to Stitch joining the household, but there's a slim chance that could have been coincidence: it's a small island, Lilo's case might have been one of the few to which he could be assigned as part of his cover, and it was just a lucky break when his social worker persona and his real mission to uncover the alien plot happened to converge on a single family.)

Stitch's feet are called soolnds.
As are the feet of several other characters.

Cobra Bubbles IS Marcellus Wallace.
They look EXACTLY the same, are both played by Ving Rhames. This WMG is implying that after the events in Pulp Fiction, Marcellus reforms from a life of crime, changed his name and joined the C.I.A for some time. When Lilo asks him "Did you ever kill anyone" he doesn't answer (Possibly because he was dealing with traumatic flashbacks)But keep in mind this theory is just for fun, since there is no way in hell that Disney would canonize with a Quentin Tarantino movie, especially the world record holder for using the word "motherfucker".

The Grand Councilwoman is from the same stellar system as the Sensorites and the Ood
The character design is very similar.

Mr. Bubbles picked mosquitoes in '73 because they're native to only one planet yet unlikely to die out.
A certain species of fish, or cats, or cows, are likely to either be intentionally brought into space or (in the case of the fish, and cows if they're bred into an even more useful species and go the way of the auroch) might cease to exist on earth, but mosquitoes are unlikely to ever cease to exist on the planet short of glassing or gassing it. Contrarily, they are likely to be screened out of any Earth-to-colony ships to keep them contained and keep from wildly transmitting bloodborne diseases between planetary cultures.

The Merrie Monarch festival in the credits of the original movie required all (human) dancers to be descendants of Hawaiian royalty.
Thus making Nani, and also Lilo, technically Disney princesses (This means the redhead from Lilo's dance class is mixed-race, but I doubt they ever explicitly said she had no Hawaiian blood).

Cobra knew Stitch was an alien the entire time.
  • When Cobra is giving Nani the conditions of keeping Lilo in the first movie, he says he wants their "dog" to become a model citizen. To be a model citizen, he would therefore have to at least understand social conventions of humans, which would require him to have thinking capabilities beyond those of a normal dog. Having worked with the Galactic Federation before, he knew that aliens existed, and, with his background, probably got a little information on the dog. With a background like that, and his near-invincibility, it wouldn't be unlikely that he'd immediately jump to the belief that Stitch was an alien. Not wanting to expose their existence, he kept referring to Stitch as a dog until the secret was out.
  • At the end of the movie the following dialogue takes place, which makes it clear Cobra has interacted with aliens before (not to mention that he is totally not shocked / impressed at all upon being confronted with aliens, which most other humans would be).
    Cobra: Aliens are all about rules.
    Grand Councilwoman: [To Cobra] You look familiar.
    Cobra: CIA, Roswell 1973.
    Grand Councilwoman: Ah, yes. You had hair then.

Cobra Bubbles is an Agent of The Men in Black.
A secret agent wearing a black suit and shades, who's already personally familiar with aliens? He certainly fits most of the M.O. Though of course, it raises the question of why he never neuralized Lilo and Nani, though he may have intentionally refrained from doing so (see above theory), and he decided to let them keep their memories because the Galactic Federation allowed them to have custody of Stitch.

Bubbles is a retired Agent J.
Agent J clearly attained a noteworthy status in the Men in Black universe, so it is not at all implausible that he worked with the Grand Councilwoman. Heck, the Grand Council itself works in the MiB universe. Agent K said in the first movie they made a treaty to be a neutral planet, which implies SOME sort of overall governing body for at least a good chunk of the aliens.

The MiB learned their lesson about 'retiring' Agents in the manner they used to after MiB 2, so when Agent J retired, he wasn't neuralized into forgetting everything... he just moved into a new, less stressful field of work, with appropriate (if false) paper trail.

Lilo is an alien, possibly even an experiment.
This is about as unlikely as you can imagine, but it is based on two noteworthy factors: One, Lilo's social worker is a former member of the CIA-about as unlikely a coincidence as can be imagined. Secondly, Lilo has been shown to be capable of wrestling and fighting with Stitch, despite the fact that the latter has enough strength to lift a VW Beetle.
  • Stitch doesn't use his super strength unless he absolutely HAS to.

Experiment 628 is designed for eye-poking.
He made good on his threat. Jumba just hasn't used 628 because it'd come off as incredibly petty, considering that the 600 series are some of his best work. If 628 ever escapes, its name will be Pokey and one true purpose be to stop Pleakley from pestering him or ratting him out. Like his more serious projects, experiments 630note  and beyond.

Experiment 628 is designed as a Power Nullifier.
A more serious take on the enigmatic experiment, and keeping with 627 existing as a challenge to Stitch by being better. Experiment 628's power is to cancel out the abilities of other experiments, which forces them to find other means of stopping it as part of Jumba's Secret Test of Character. It also has the ability to cause dehydration and deserts, allowing it to turn other experiments back to pod form as another means of cancelling them out. Jumba is just waiting for Stitch to need another ego trip before he can use 628, and wasn't able to have his pod with him during the Leroy incident.

Mertle is racist towards Hawaiians
This is why she hates Lilo so much. Not because of Lilo's weird habits, her relationship with Stitch, or just overall bitchiness. She's a Caucasian who moved from California who really hates Hawaiians, their culture, or is just trying to vent her frustration over having been ripped from her old life in California.
  • Maybe not racist but she could definitely be The Resenter: Mertle's the only white girl (and not a very pretty one at that) in her group of friends; said group belongs to an ethnic dance troupe she can never really excel at not matter how good or passionate she is; their families also presumably in a different tax bracket than hers, another barrier between her and everyone else. Of course she'd lash out at someone like Lilo who squandered her "advantages" of being a local girl by being so ridiculously, unnecessarily weird!

The only reason anyone hangs out with Mertle is to make sure their families can get or keep jobs
Mertle's mother works for a big fancy hotel and the tourism industry is the backbone of the state economy. If Mertle were to imply that, say, one of her "friends" has a sister who was fired for having a bad attitude and her mother told other managers who told others it could affect their future job prospects. While it's unlikely that Mertle's mother would actually do this Mertle's "friends" don't know that (or worse she actually threatened them with it) so they make nice with this bratty girl to protect their families' livelihoods.
  • Alternately they hang out with her is because they just don't know how to deal with Lilo, who was presumably quite weird before she lost her parents and Mertle, a Rich Bitch type they might be more familiar with, is the only one ballsy, stupid and/or tactless (though Lilo doesn't seem the type to play the "orphan card") enough to call her out on her behavior.

Jacques von Hämsterviel is an talking Earth gerbil of French and German extraction
He is a gerbil who insists on being called "hamster-like," despite his long, tufted tail, rather like Ratigan, who prefers to be called a "big mouse." He has a French given name and a German surname. Maybe he shows up in space because he was possibly captured by aliens at some point.
  • Jossed; his species has been a part of alien society for a while, considering Dr. Habbitrale from the PS2 prequel game.

Lilo and Nani are distant descendants of Moana.
Not implausible given their shared Polynesian background. Also, this theory (and similar ones) were already floating around WMG.Moana.

Lilo is the reincarnation of Moana's grandmother.
The village crazy lady who knows all the good stories? Check. Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant? Check. Has way too much fun trolling everyone? Check. Knows how to tame monsters? Yup. Maybe after a few lives as various critters, she decided to be human again, but still remembers enough of the old stories and such to know that you have to do things like appeasing the weather-controlling fish.

Jumba is a Heavyworlder.
His short, wide body shape with elephant-like feet is pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a creature adapted to a planet with very strong gravity.
  • This could also mean that his "can lift up to 3,000 times his weight" specification for 626 is actually based on his homeworld's gravity, making Stitch even stronger than you'd expect.

Jumba planned on 626 coming to Earth all along.
Jumba seemed fairly well acquainted with Earth culture by alien standards, and one of his early experiments was indistinguishable from an earth animal, suggesting he'd either been to earth or hired someone to go there to collect genetic material. And the odds of 626 making a random hyperspace jump to the same planet are... astronomical. The conclusion? Jumba originally planned on releasing 626 on Earth, a backwater planet with no FTL technology, to test his destructive capabilities, and he genetically programmed him to seek out Earth in an emergency.

Jumba created the Gremlins.
We know Gremlins are the result of alien experiments and that they're extremely susceptible to genetic manipulation and transmogrification. And Stitch certainly seems to have many of the same personality traits exhibited by the Gremlins, often sliding from one extreme to the other.

If she doesn't get her act together, Mertle will become a villain.
Even at such a young age, Mertle is already a Neutral Evil Jerk with a Heart of Jerk. She's very xenophobic, abuses people (especially Lilo) for not sharing her interests, has a very short temper, and thinks she can get away with anything because her family is wealthy. One can just imagine the monster she'll grow up to be as an adult if she keeps this up, just like many real life children who grew up spoilt by their rich families. She could very well grow up to be a bigger villain than Hämsterviel and form a group akin to white supremacist terrorist organizations to get rid of Lilo, Stitch, and the other experiments for being "weird".

Mertle is at least some percentage Hawaiian.
Probably like 1/4 or so, maybe 1/2 as an optimistic estimate if you assume her mom dyes her hair and her dad is a red-haired Caucasian (which would also explain her name; the mom took his). Yes, she has red hair and is relatively pale, but she also has an awfully round/wide nose, plus she clearly tans rather than burning (compare her skintone to Ice Cream Man). Most damningly, though, she's allowed to participate in the hula recitals with Lilo and all the other actual, ethnic Hawaiians— it seems rather odd that they would just let some random white girl join in a cultural event. Her hatred of Lilo may actually be a kind of projection, in that she herself feels out of place being a biracial individual, and takes it out on her "weird" classmate when in actuality, she feels like the weird one who doesn't belong.

Angel was designed as a failsafe in case Hämsterviel would steal Jumba's experiments, and Reuben and Stitch were designed as failsafes to keep Angel in Jumba's control.
As we see throughout the series, the main conflict between Jumba and Hämsterviel was caused by copyright issues over the experiments. Hämsterviel wanted the experiments all for himself, while Jumba claimed that, while the "evil" in the experiments might belong to Hämsterviel, the "genius" belongs entirely to Jumba. This caused a rift between the two evil geniuses which was constantly growing the more experiments Jumba was making. Eventually, Jumba had enough, so he designed 624 with the sole purpose of preventing Hämsterviel from using the experiments. I mean, why else would you make an experiment that can invoke a Heel–Face Revolving Door?

However, Jumba saw an error too late: that Hämsterviel might find a way to control 624. So he developed an anti-Hämsterviel program to ensure 624 won't betray him. However, he realized he couldn't install it into 624 directly, due to there often being errors (like it happened to Clip), so he decided to install it into his dream doomsday weapon and have that experiment download it into 624. This is how 625 and 626 were created, with 625 being a Flawed Prototype to 626 due to his laziness. Jumba then realized that the "downloading" bit was an Accidental Innuendo, and that 625 and 626 will be sexually attracted to 624, and perhaps have a rivalry. Jumba then came with the most brilliant scheme of his career: for 626 and 624 to become the rulers of an empire of evil with Jumba as their evil advisor. However, 626 was arrested by the Galactic Federation, then he escaped to Earth, and Jumba's plan went down the drain. However, the plan of 626 being a vector for the anti-Hämsterviel program worked, since 624 (named Angel) fell in love with 626 (named Stitch) and betrayed Hämsterviel because of it.

Mertle envies Lilo because she had a good relationship with her dad.
In Leroy and Stitch, we learned that Mertle's dad left her and his wife and seeing Lilo having a good relationship with her dad might've touched a raw nerve and so she bullies Lilo as a way to cope.

[[Lilo's family pays the Galactic Federation for home insurance
It's how they afford repairs when Gantu keeps taking the roof off the house.

Lilo's expulsion from Hulu School from Stitch Has a Glitch was lifted after the movie
Remember that upsetting (and rather harsh) scene from Stitch Has a Glitch, where Lilo gets expelled from Hula School for Stitch's glitching, yet she was strangely allowed to still compete in the May Day Competition and still attend Hula School in the series (which takes place after Stitch Has a Glitch)?

Well, Kumu either had second thoughts about expelling Lilo or Nani talked him into letting her back in or he allowed her back in under the condition she doesn't always bring Stitch with her or all three.

The live-action remake will include characters from Lilo & Stitch: The Series
It's very likely that Angel will appear, with either Kate Higgins or Tara Strong reprising their role as her.

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