WMG / Nope

Wild Mass Guessing pages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.

Refrain from using first-person pronouns, please. This is a WMG page, not a forum.

Pre-Release Theories

At least some of the town knows what's going on

Beyond the alien plushies, the shot where a character (presumably Steven Yeun's) unveils a horse in a box looks like it could be a sacrifice of some kind?

• Several clips imply that Steven Yeun's character is hosting some sort of show titled "Jupiter's Claim". With said title and the horse in a box, it could mean that it's a show where aliens claim horses in front of the public.
  • Jossed. Only Jupe is aware of the UFO, and he’s only seen it for six months. He was also unaware of how dangerous the creature is, which costs him his life.
  • Confirmed: Jupe was feeding OJ's horses to JJ for months, and Lucky the horse was intended as the latest victim for the Star Lassoo Experience Preview. Ironically Lucky doesn't play along and by staying in the box the horse becomes one of the few survivors.

The exact nature of the anomaly will stay unknown.

• The true identity of the anomaly will remain a mystery in favor of whatever message the director may be going for. Alternatively it may simply remain an eldritch force for the sake of mystery.
  • Confirmed. While we do learn that the UFO is actually an alien organism, we never learn where it is from, why it is here, or how its body functions.

The title is an acronym

• Like Get Out (2017), the title is in all caps. Unlike Get Out, the font spaces the letters apart from each other. As for the trailer, whatever is lurking in the sky (be it sci-fi aliens or cosmic horrors), it's possible that "NOPE" stands for "Not Of Planet Earth". Credit to this person on Twitter for making the connection.
  • It has been noted, here and elsewhere, that Peele's last film, Us, was also titled with a possible acronym: when asked what they are, the chief antagonist, Red, says "We're Americans". U. S.
  • Jossed. If the title is an acronym, it’s never revealed in the film itself.

Theories regarding the movie's themes

Because it wouldn't be a Jordan Peele horror movie without some social commentary:

• The protagonists' link with the history of early filmmaking, the multiple shots of cameras seen, and the brief shot of what looks like a movie depiction of an alien (around 1:32 in the trailer), suggests that NOPE will deal with ideas relating to cinema and its relationship with racial issues.
• The stereotypically American iconography in the trailer (cowboys, ranches, baseball games) and the implication that the town has a dark secret suggests a return to Peele's exploration of hidden evil in American society, a theme that he explored in his previous two films.
  • Confirmed. Specifically, the self-destructive nature of seeking fame at all costs and casual disregard of nature.
• As this Cracked article points out, the choice of the first motion picture ever made seems like an apropos one for a Jordan Peele movie, considering the extremely charged context surrounding that clip in particular (including the creator, Eadweard Muybridge, having murdered his wife's lover and gotten away with it, as well as the film having been commissioned by an openly racist former governor) and the origins of the film industry as a whole. Between this background, the fact that the protagonists work as horse trainers for Hollywood films, and the title suggesting genre savviness, it's possible that this film will in some way explore the ugly side of the film industry.
  • Given how the main actress talks about how black people have always had "skin in the game" when it comes to Hollywood, the film's plot might also be a metaphor for white people stealing creative ideas from black people.
    • Given the Alien Invasion angle, maybe it will be about them harvesting our brainpower and passing what our minds made as they're own.
  • If this is the case, it will almost certainly make reference to The Birth of a Nation, widely known as both the pioneer for modern cinematography and the most racist non-Nazi propaganda film ever made.
• It could also be a statement on the exploitation of animals by humans. The main characters run a horse facility. Horses are taken from the wild using a lasso and are "broken in". The aliens use a tractor beam for a similar purpose. To yank humans from their homes and "break them in" for some purpose.
  • Jossed. The only reason the UFO attacks is to feed.
  • ...except for that last part, which is Confirmed. Treating animals with proper respect and understanding that they are wild animals is huge theme of the movie.

This will be a horror comedy.

The weird imagery along with the beginning of the first trailer, which shows the main actress playing essentially an alternate universe version of herself (her great great great great grandfather being the first subject of a motion picture EVER) will establish that there will be various light-hearted moment interspread among the more clearly scary moments, much of the comedy revolving around the concept of "NOPE," which is essentially characters trying their damndest to avoid obviously scary and/or creepy situations that would get character in stereotypical horror flicks killed when they stupidly go into them instead. However, much of the comedy and/or horror involves subverting this concept of "NOPE" to Hell and back, rewarding some situations by avoiding them entirely and cursing others by not avoiding them, whether being attacked by something else and/or the situation turning out harmless. This could possibly tie into the social theme of the movie presented above, as the main threat of the movie, similar to the topic of said commentary, is something scary enough that most would go "NOPE" and avoid it, but in truth cannot be defeated until we take the risk of jumping headlong into it.

• Confirmed. The UFO is real, but so is everyone's snarky commentary and goofiness. Also, several characters avoid near-certain death by saying “nope” to an obviously dangerous situation rather than taking their chances.

If this is an alien invasion film, some of the abductees will be turned into horse/human hybrids.

Horses seem to be at the forefront of the film, the a shot of a child fist-bumping an inhuman-looking hand resembles something between a horse hoof and a human hand, and it could fit as a parallel to how the trailer discusses the first man on film was a horse-rider.

• Assuming this WMG and the common theory of "NOPE" standing for "Not Of Planet Earth" are both accurate, based on the song being used in the trailer ("Fingertips" by Stevie Wonder), the word "YEAH" could be an acronym too; "Your Equines Are Human".
  • Jossed. The Alien Abduction is actually the UFO eating its prey. Also, the inhuman hand was a chimpanzee's hand.

The film will discuss in addition to its main commentary Asian-American culture and its relations with other POC, whether explicitly or implicitly

We see the Korean-American Steven Yeun as a cowboy, including in a rodeo where the majority of people are White.

Now what this troper is saying is that perhaps his race will come into play. On one hand Asians have had a better relation on the White-centric society of America then most others and do have more priviliges, but on the other they are still subject to much discimination institutionally. It doesn't help many Asian communities have had pretty tense relations with Blacks, especially after riots, like among Koreans in LA after the 1992 riots or Hmong in Minnesota with George Floyd protests.

Thus, the film could tackle the idea of inter-POC relations, and depictions of both in the media.

• Jossed. The main theme of the film appears to be society’s obsession with capturing spectacle, no matter the cost.

The themes will have nothing to do with race in America.

Peele isn't all race all the time. Us was primarily about how "Mirror Image" gave him nightmares.

• While that episode was a major influence, Us was by no means an apolitical movie. It was clearly at least trying to touch on themes of race and class. Mirror Image was Jordan's jumping off point, but it is not the be-all-end-all for analysis of Us.
  • Confirmed. See above.

A "bad miracle" is a Deal with the Devil.

Related to the theory that some people in town know what's happening, decades ago the leading citizens of this town cut a deal with aliens: the aliens would grant some sort of boon that would benefit the town for years to come, in exchange for some price they would get to extract later, when the people who made the deal are all long dead. And in the present day of the movie, the devil—the aliens—comes back to collect his due.

As for what the aliens want in exchange for the service they rendered years past? Possibly setting up a "shop" of their own, with dire consequences for the townsfolk...

• Adding on to this theory the town could be dying and is using the aliens to bring in tourists. However, in order to make sure the aliens keep coming back they need to offer up horses for the aliens to abduct, supported by this poster, which would have a negative effect on the main characters horse ranch which could be the "bad miracle" mentioned in the trailer.
  • Mostly Jossed. The only person who knows what is happening is Jupe, and even he couldn’t have predicted that the alien would hunger for human flesh. The “bad miracle” refers to the possibility of capturing footage of a UFO at the cost of many innocent lives.

The horses aren't just mere animals in this story

There's a minor implication that the aliens in this movie are connected to horses in some way. In the trailer, there's a part where the lights in the distance go out, screams are heard, and a horse is seen running as if panicked. Either the horse is running because he or she senses the presence of evil and is trying to get away, or horses in general are secretly an intelligent species who know exactly who the aliens are.

• In relation to the Deal with the Devil theory, it's possible that the aliens gave mankind horses - which in this movie, might be a slave species - thousands of years ago, and now they're coming to collect their dues. And the horses don't want to go back, because, unlike humans, they know what will happen if the aliens get them.
  • Jossed. The UFO is an animal that eats both horses and humans. It has no direct connection to horses aside from preying upon them.

Ricky is the villain of the movie.

• The main conflict behind the film seems to be the aliens granting wishes to the humans which turn out to be bad miracles i.e. omens. Given how Brian is featured seemingly sacrificing a horse, it is very likely that he is in cahoots with the aliens, or, going with the religious theme, he is the False Prophet for the aliens claiming to speak for them when he is really trying to line his pockets. This would not be the first time that a seemingly kind character turns out to be monstrous underneath the skin as Rose Armitage is revealed to be in on the brain transferal operation after she spent the entire film playing the part of a loving girlfriend.
  • Jossed. Ricky is not a villain; the deaths he causes are purely accidental.

The Cloud and the Kite String

• With the CinemaCon footage revealing that there are Flying Saucers involved, the Surreal Horror image of the first poster and trailer stars to make a kind of sense - the aliens may be using clouds to conceal themselves, but the kite string gets caught, and the audience has a visual cue, like the buoys from Jaws, or a particular foe to root against, akin to Stumpy from Tremors.

• Confirmed. The UFO attempts to take Emerald’s decoy horse, flag attached, and the horse gets stuck in the creature’s throat. The flag is released when Jean Jacket vomits its partially digested victims’ viscera and props from Jupiter’s Claim onto the ranch house.

The woman with the pink veil is not a villain or anyone scary.

• She's actually a perfectly nice person who just happens to have an unfortunate facial disfigurement that she was either born with or is the result of a traumatic event.
  • Pretty much confirmed. She is Jupe’s childhood co-star who was attacked by a chimpanzee on the set of their TV show and left disfigured because of it. She doesn’t say any lines, so it’s entirely possible that she isn’t a nice person, but she certainly isn’t villainous.

The attackers are doing all this purely for entertainment

• Due to the repeated comments about early film, the shots in the second trailer of Steven Yeun hyping up something he wants to show the audience, and shots looking up that make the flying saucers look like the lenses of cameras its going to be revealed that whoever is doing this is doing it purely for entertainment. No different than exploitation films
  • Jossed. The alien- singular- is driven by an animal instinct to eat and defend its territory.

Post-Release Theories

The UFO is an angel.

• In keeping with the biblical allusions of a "bad miracle," Jean Jacket is an angel, likely one of those bizarre ones such as an Ophanim (an inter-looping series of wheels with eyes) that was sent to the Earth to cleanse it of mankind who had grown wicked before God's sight.
  • Borderline confirmed by Jordan Peele himself, since he stated that the design for Jean Jacket was mainly inspired by the Rebuild of Evangelion version of Sahaquiel.

Jean Jacket is a Great Old One.

• The central entity is bizarre enough as it is already, but it reaches cosmic proportions by the end of the movie, so that it might just as well cross straight into Lovecraftian territory.

Jean Jacket is an atmospheric beast.

• Rather than being truly extra-terrestrial, Jean Jacket is from within our own atmosphere; This idea has been explored through cryptozoology as the "atmospheric beast phenomenon". Jean Jacket vomiting on the farmhouse is reminiscent of star jelly, which is often associated with these freefloating beings in cryptid lore. This may imply there are others, also hiding in the clouds...
• Tellingly, in an interview with a scientific advisor who worked on the film, Jean Jacket is only referred to as a creature and an animal, rather than an alien.

O.J. is dead.

• At the end of the film, Emerald looks out at the distance and sees her brother who seems to have escaped his close encounter with Jean Jacket. However, he noticeably doesn't interact with his sister and he is shown under a sign called the "Out Yonder" which could imply that O.J. actually died and Emerald is seeing him as a figment of her imagination.

Some of Antlers's footage survived.

• Jean Jacket regurgitates inorganic material it sucks up with its victims, relatively undamaged. We see cannisters of film rolling away after Angel is spat out. While the movie showed a reel of film being messed up when Antlers dies, there's a chance some extra footage could make it out.

JJ was brought to Earth by other aliens.

• With its lack of sapience and ...biological needs, it doesn't seem likely that JJ is a Space Whale roaming the cosmos. It may well have come along with something far more intelligent... be it by accident, as a biological warfare tactic, or... something.
  • Keeping with the movie's themes, perhaps the aliens brought it to Earth as a form of entertainment for them. But over time, JJ became too difficult to control, so they abandoned it—uncaring of the threat the creature posed to the native life on Earth.
  • Or alternatively, Jean Jacket was their house pet that they brought along for their vacation and when the time came to go back home but realized that Jean Jacket had grown too big for their ship, went by the reasoning that "it's an animal, it knows how to take care of itself, right?" and then just abandoned it like some pet-owners abandons their "summer-pets" from time to time. Considering how it have been around long enough to inspire Christianity with concepts such as angels and heavenly ascension, alongside Word of God confirming that Jean Jacket reproduces asexually, it seems they were right in that it could "take care of itself" when left alone in an unknown environment after all...
    • This interpretation would be not unlike the titular analogy of the Strugatsky Brothers' Roadside Picnic, wherein a disastrous alien incursion is framed as a party of teenagers having a picnic in the woods by the road and leaving behind their trash for the animals to sort through.

A government cover-up is imminent, and all of the main cast's efforts to get footage might have been for nothing.

• One of the very last shots of the movie is a group of people in black, possibly government agents and police, arriving on the scene as Jean Jacket's corpse floats in the air. Given that Jean Jacket seems to be made of some kind of material resembling fabric, it's highly likely the government will try to cover up its existence by claiming it was a popped weather balloon. Em's photo could also be dismissed as altered or explained as a bug on the lens like with the security cameras. This would be a direct parallel to the infamous Roswell Incident where a destroyed weather balloon was thought by conspiracy theorists to be a UFO.
  • Em takes the picture of Jean Jacket on instant camera which makes the notion of the government passing it off as fake less likely.

The deleted scene with the Loony Fan is the explanation Ricky's blase self-exploitative attitude to his personal tragedy.

• According to a test audience, Gordy was not shot by the police but rather by a Chapman-esque fan with a gun who just happened to come into the studio at the time of Gordy's rampage ^note He's the man calmly walking through the chaotic lot in the third trailer. Whatever the true reason of the fan was (again, Chapman-esque) from Ricky's perspective his life was saved by a good samaritan who helped him because he admired him; if Ricky was a nobody then no one would've stepped up to save him from Gordy, which lead to Ricky believing that being a big star with lots of fans is an ultimately admirable goal to have. All that leads to him gladly using the Gordy tragedy for his personal profit (lowkey, likely because even he knew how tasteless it really is), dredging his Kid Sheriff fame decades later where the movie would likely be no more than a pop culture footnote, and creating the fatal Star Lasso Experience.

Jean Jacket's digestive system is essentially the same as a predatory whale's or bird's.

• Whales and birds have two primary stomachs, and a third dead-end chamber. The first is a nondigestive "crop" where excess food is stored, alive or dead. The second is the main stomach or gizzard, which rapidly grinds prey up with hard, bony ridges (and in birds, stones they swallow) - think of a cement mixer filled with boulders. The blind chamber produces all the digestive fluids. This would explain why some of Jean Jacket's prey is still alive even days after being eaten, while others are digested almost immediately, and why there's an audible Sickening "Crunch!" before the screaming inside abruptly stops - the helpless victims passed down to the gizzard, which crushes them immediately and ends their suffering. It also might explain Jean Jacket's vomit storm - the plastic horse or some other inedible blocks the passage between crop and gizzard, which irritates the gizzard and causes the alien to vomit up its extremely gory contents.

Jean Jacket can "see" electromagnetic fields and hunts by that method.

• It's a bit of a stretch, but Jean Jacket uses electromagnetic fields to move about and to power the suction vacuum it uses to consume prey. That's why power goes out around it - it's a floating EMP machine. So what if it could SEE electromagnetic fields as well? Earthly sharks can do this, through their ampullae of Lorenzini. What if Jean Jacket's "eye" is in fact a giant ampule of Lorenzini? It detects people are looking at it because the shape of their electromagnetic field changes, but it cannot tell real eyes from fake eyes, because it cannot see eyes in the first place. The encounters OJ survives with Jean Jacket involve him hiding in a vehicle or a building - both of which would mask any electric field from him. Even nonliving things (like the fake horse) have weak electromagnetic fields associated with it, and anyone that's ever worked with balloons knows how much static electricity they accumulate, and the one in Jupiter's Claim was HUGE. That was the bait that attracted Jean Jacket so compellingly, not the eyes in the balloon - the static charge must have lit up like a searchlight to a creature that could see EMP.

Jean Jacket wasn't trying to eat the mascot balloon. It was trying to mate with it.

• Jean Jacket has only one orifice that we can see, which seems to serve as both a mouth and an anus, since it is regularly shown discarding the remains of its food through it. This is similar to the setup a number of real-world invertebrates have (sea cucumbers and jellyfish, for example). If Jean Jacket's species reproduces sexually, then it stands to reason that its sexual organs are also located there. Now imagine what the sight of a large, floating balloon must look like to a creature that is, for all intents and purposes, a large floating balloon— not prey, but a potential mate. Jean Jacket's usual prey, based on its behavior previously in the movie, seems to consist of ground-dwelling animals such as horses.
  • It can be assumed, then, that when Jean Jacket's species mates, one swallows the other inside its body cavity, and possibly even eats their partner after sex. This, in turn, means that Jean Jacket is most likely female, since there are many animals in real life where the female eats the male after mating. This might also account for the bizarre jellyfish-like form Jean Jacket assumes when pursuing O.J.; she had already caught sight of the balloon, and was attempting to woo it with her species's typical mating display. When Em cut the balloon loose, it resembled the typical response of a receptive male, which encouraged Jean Jacket to take the mating process to its next— and as it turned out, last— stage.
    • This also has a thematic link to the praying mantis that blocks the security cameras - one of the better-known facts about the mantis (though slightly overxagerrated) is that a stressed female will occasionally eat a male during or after mating.

Jean Jacket's species are prey animals where they come from.

• Jean Jacket's agitation at being watched is noticeably not apex predator behavior: most apex predators attack when prey isn't looking, much like big cats which only attack if their target's back is turned (one way of avoiding tiger attacks is to wear fake faces on the backs of their heads to confuse the tigers). Jean Jacket being riled up at being observed, implying it knows to fear, be threatened and retaliate at potential dangers, coupled with its threat display making it look as large and intimidating as possible, has some implications that even while Jean Jacket is a major threat on Earth, on its homeworld, there's Always a Bigger Fish.

The SNL Gordy's Home sketch only existed in Ricky's mind.

• As a child, Ricky had extreme difficulty processing the traumatic experience, and the only way he could mentally deal with it was to imagine it through the filter of a comparatively harmless TV comedy sketch. Over the years, he went back to that fictional version in his mind so often that he managed to convince himself that it was an actual sketch; but a big clue that SNL never performed such a sketch is that Em, who certainly would have known about it since she's a pop culture-savvy fan of Ricky, had never even heard of it.
  • Supporting this is that Em recognized the MAD magazine cover, meaning that she's knowledgeable with the pop culture of the time.

The SNL sketch was pulled from circulation.

• As an alternative to the above, the SNL sketch did exist, but was as controversial as one would expect of something that made light of a recent horrible tragedy to be. The sketch only aired once and was pulled from syndication after the backlash, with NBC doing their best to completely bury it. As a result, the sketch became extremely obscure, even to hardcore fans—which is why Em never heard of it before. Ricky simply had the misfortune of watching the sketch during its original broadcast.

Otis Haywood was a animal trainer on Gordy's Home

• Em tells Jupe her dad "told me about" the Gordy incident. Not she saw, or heard, but was TOLD, and not told after it went off the air so she didn't see it either. Not only does this further the connection the Haywoods have to Jupe and the nature of spectacle but why Otis gives OJ his speech about not really being able to tame an animal- he knows from experience.

Jean Jacket isn't actually supposed to eat humans or earth animals; It is lost on another planet.

• Any aliens from different planets would likely come from ecosystems completely different from that of Earth, and certainly wouldn't be evolved to consume humans (especially considering that human flesh is notoriously quite unhealthy for most animals to eat). JJ may have traveled to Earth and gotten lost at some point, and started picking off the local human and animal population to survive not because it wants to, but because it needs to do so. It's been recorded in Real Life that some animals, such as lions and bears, will hunt humans if they are too weak or sick to hunt their proper prey. Perhaps JJ left its home, got lost and found Earth by pure happenstance, and Jupe took the opportunity to start "taming" it.

Jean Jacket isn't an alien, but an animal from Earth, albeit an unusual and undiscovered one for obvious reasons.

• JJ is able to take the form of a completely mundane, white fluffy cloud that blends in perfectly with its surroundings aside from never moving, which is an odd adaptational trait for an alien completely foreign to Earth to have. Why would a creature that didn't evolve on Earth be so good at blending into Earth's habitat? Also, the fact that JJ can sustain itself on humans and animals, and doesn't go without food for longer than a few days, means that it likely wouldn't survive in the vacuum of space where there is nothing to hunt and where living planets are probably lights years apart. It also seems perfectly adept at navigating Earth's atmosphere, can fly gracefully and silently, and has no negative reactions to oxygen or other gasses. The only thing that kills it in the end is the same thing that kills plenty of Earth's animals already... a plastic balloon full of helium that prevents it from breathing.

The Heywoods and friend will still find themselves under fire for not reporting to the authorities earlier.

The stable cloud in the sky was the first solid evidence at which point should have been pointed out to authorities, rather than risking human lives in hopes of selling the footage for fame and profit. After that the blood-and-junk-covered house should have sufficed for evidence, being able to cite the similarity to how their father died and checking it for DNA testing.

Jean Jacket is an animal that exists in More than Three Dimensions.

Jean Jacket seems to change size and shape in ways difficult to explain (even given its unusual nature as a living balloon and the types of sea-creatures used as its inspiration). It also appears to be Bigger on the Inside, moves and accelerates in alarming ways, and the sounds of its victims seem to come from all around as it flies overhead. It is possible that we are just seeing a 3-dimensional cross-section of a larger creature.

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