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The Force

The Force is just a tool.

"A certain point of view"? Right. It can be used for good or for evil, sure, but that doesn't justify mystical claptrap about the "Dark Side" of the Force. A screwdriver can be used for good or for evil, but you don't hear carpenters giving their apprentices ominous warnings about The Dark Side Of The Screwdriver. (Though if they did, then there would probably be a lot more carpenters.) This view has been argued for by Luke Skywalker (in the Expanded Universe) and George Lucas himself.

Then again, screwdrivers don't give you Evil Yellow Eyes and slowly turn you psychotic.
- So the Dark Side is a result of improper tool use amongst the Jedi?
  - This is implied in Zahn's Hand of Thrawn duology. A Jedi using excessive power drawn from the Force loses the ability to hear its guidance; that's why Yoda, a Jedi Master, could lift an X-Wing from a swamp but ended up tired from the effort. Too much power, too little guidance... Dark Side. The main point of this was a Fix Fic about why Expanded Universe writers had been way, way, way overdoing the Force compared to what was demonstrated in the movies.
  - Were you thinking of the "single-handedly reassemble the pulverized remains of Darth Vader's beachfront castle in five minutes flat with the power of the Force alone" incident, or the "throw seventeen full-sized Star Destroyers clean across the solar system" incident? Or the reborn Palpatine's penchant for ripping gigantic holes in hyperspace?
  - Likely more the Vader Castle incident (the Star Destroyers were, at least, a group effort). It could be noted that Hand of Thrawn suggests using Force too often for too many things isn't all that good, either.
The EU is currently struggling with this. After the Vong War, the Jedi collectively decided (based on what Jacen learned from Vergere, a long-time Vong slave, tellingly) that there is no light side or dark side. Jacen continues to hold to this view even as he becomes noticeably crazier and more evil; the rest of the Jedi are becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
- Vergere stated, "There is no dark side to the Force, only in yourself."
- Not sure if it's Word of God, Word of Dante, or just Word Of Plot Convenience, but apparently Vergere was wrong. The Potentium philosophy, which basically states that good or evil in the Force come from the user rather than the Force itself, has been confirmed by the Power of the Jedi Sourcebook (according to Wookieepedia, anyway) to be "corrupt" and "misguided".
- Most likely, Word of a million authors intent on retconning anything the previous author had to say into oblivion.
- Best explanation is that the Potentium theory is actually true, but holding the "light" and "dark" sides in perfect balance requires an insane amount of skill, a lifetime of discipline, and the kind of emotional mastery that is vanishingly rare even among Jedi. With so few able to master the discipline, and with such terrible consequences for those that fail to do so (there's no margin for error when you're walking on the edge of the precipice), it's hardly surprising that the Order has historically erred on the side of caution and declared it heretical. The last thing you want is overconfident young Jedi convincing themselves that they can toy with the fringes of the dark side with impunity. It's a bit like the "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny" shtick - it's not literally true, but it serves to deter Jedi from getting anywhere near the dark side until they are wise enough to understand the nuances - whereupon most of them continue to steer clear of it.
- In that case, it does dominate your destiny. You are spending so much time balancing upon a razor's edge trying not to fall that it can never leave your mind.
- Ah. Yet another multi-levelled "certain point of view" statement.
On the other hand, the Knights of the Old Republic series appears to embrace this mode of thinking: you don't gain Dark Side points through using Dark Side powers, but in the way you interact with others.
In this tropers opinion this makes perfect sense. The Force doesn't make you inherently good or evil, there is no "Light" or "Dark". It's just that some people are corrupted by the thought of having so much power. It's not the power itself, it's the individual. Vader went mad not because of giving in to the "Dark Side" but because he couldn't stand the thought of losing the only woman he'd ever loved, while she was pregnant and but a few years after he learned his mother had been tortured and killed by Tusken Raiders. Plus the fact he spent his young years as the indentured servant of a greedy Jerkass can't have done much good for his mental health. If only there were psychiatrists in the Star Wars universe...
- There are: Jedi aren't allowed to visit them. Make of that what you will.
- The Jedi do at least have their own counseling services. Yoda advises Anakin to visit them in Revenge of the Sith. Being an idiot, he doesn't.
- With that fact and combining some of the above: the Force requires a certain set of beliefs in order to use it. It's only as powerful as you believe it is so if your belief starts wavering, then the Force starts to fail. As a result, a dogmatic, inflexible system of beliefs is required in order for their to use the power. If you believe that beliefs are relative, then you have to give some credence to people who don't believe in the Force and thus you yourself start to lose that ironclad belief. Some point in the mists of time of the Star Wars universe, somebody created a set of beliefs about Dark and Light and rigidly defined them. That tradition was passed down. As to why using the Dark side makes you turn wrinkly with yellow eyes, consider this: in the real world, beliefs can have concrete effects. Placebo painkillers can act as real painkillers, voodoo zombies believe that they have risen from the dead because that's the cultural belief, and certain Australian aborigines practice a system of belief where pointing a special bone can kill someone - and people who believe that have been killed by a "pointing bone". Now imagine that you've been brought up to believe that doing certain things are part of the "Dark side" and that this Dark side corrupts, then if you starting doing those things, then your mind makes it real. This also explains why Jedi start training at an early age - kids don't know that you're not supposed to be able to lift up a starfighter just by believing you can. It also puts everyone in a really weird situation: in order to use the Force you need to essentially delude yourself into believing that something which isn't true is true and that that makes it true. (My head!)
I'm thinking the yellow eyes, the pallor, and the other nasty side effects of the DS are not so much the Dark side, but the fact that using the Force alters the caster's physiology. The Dark siders usually take on their apprentices in late adolescence or early adulthood, after they're full-grown. They also encourage getting insane amounts of power very quickly, leaving their bodies no time to adjust to the extra load. That, and all the anger, fear, and the dog-eat-dog nature of Sith adds constant stress, which also hurts them physically. Their power can sometimes compensate for it if they choose to. The Jedi are all about slow, incremental growth in power and ability, and they take their apprentices from the cradle. This allows their bodies to grow into their powers and adjust, the side effect there meaning they're pretty much hooked on it. (Which is why Kreia was able to smile, reverse the spell the council was casting on Exile, and kill the lot of them). While this explains some of the reasons why the Jedi recruit from the cradle, it makes it no less reprehensible.
- When Dark Siders die there is an explosion of energy equivalent to all the evil they have done. When Light Siders die they simply dissolve into the Force (generally). Clearly, regardless of what type of Force-use you perform, it causes changes to your body.

The old Sith really did go extinct.

It's unlikely that the Sith survived a thousand years at number of only two. Darth Plagueis was probably a Jedi Knight or Master who became very disillusioned about both his Order and the Galactic Republic so he sought to create a new system of power. He based his own ideology on distorted Jedi legends and propaganda about the historical Sith. At some point, he left and began training a young Palpatine claiming to belong to the old Sith in order to give his own doctrine a sense of history. After all, Sith are supposed to be masters of deception.

Discussed heavily in a few bits of the expanded universe. Most notably Knights of the Old Republic II where Kreia explains that even pre-Rule of Two Sith are not true Sith, because the true Sith were a non-human species long extinct. "The Sith is a belief."
The details about Plagueis are Jossed, however.

The Jedi were founded as a cult that was created to prevent Force Users from running the galaxy.

Any 'official' explanations of the Jedi's origins is a lie. Force Users have been around forever, but the Jedi were not, and Force Users always seem to play a huge role in galactic affairs. Before the Jedi, the galaxy was divided into countless little empires, ruled by individuals or groups with Force abilities who were basically proto-sith. Things were constantly chaotic because these guys were fighting each other all the time, so someone came up with an idea to get rid of them. They began kidnapping children with Force potential and brainwashing them into assassins who would never seek to rule themselves. This was extremely successful and the end result was the Jedi and the Republic, with a new history of the Jedi being made up to look good. This explains why the Jedi have a bunch of rules and restrictions that run contrary to a persons nature as well as why they are determined to hunt down all Sith everywhere-its left over from the original cult.

Thing is, the Jedi weren't always the way they were depicted in the prequels. Prior to Exar Kun? They took their apprentices in adolescence/young adulthood, they weren't very centralized, and marriage/family was permitted, so long as it was understood that the Jedi business came first. No one blinked twice at the Sunrider family, for example. And even though Jolee screwed up, his problem was that he trained Nayama against orders, not that he married her or that she was too old. Exar Kun's little rampage must have scared the shit out of them, to the point of becoming reactionary and clueless. That's when they started with the child recruitment, and the "no love, aside from love of the Order" crap. It reached the point of art form with the Covenant killing their own Padawans, the rest of the Council pulling a collective duck and cover when the Mandalorians were turning the Republic to slag, and reached its pinnacle with the hypocritical and dogmatic Atris.

The reason the force seems more powerful in the expanded universe

Is that during all the lightsaber fights we see on-screen the Jedi are deploying all their power in some sort of invisible forcepush field, created to slow the other fighter, and the other jedi/sith tries to use his own forcefield to cancel the other one out and overwhelm his opponent. It's why Palpatine was capable of killing three masters so quickly, his enormous power had lowered their speed. It's also the reason Palpatine suddenly gets so powerful after the wounding of Windu, it is not an act, but the force field is negated after Windu loses focus and Palpatine doesn't need his own strength to hold up a forcefield anymore. Why do they use these fields instead of projecting everything offensively you ask?

In episode I, during the first battle between Qui-Qon and Darth Maul, Darth Maul tries to capture the queen alive, and thus cant risk damaging the ship near the battle. Qui-Qon doesn't know who their attacker is, and wants enough of him to remain to interrogate. It's also possible that Maul wanted Qui-Qon to be able to flee, so Amidala would reach Coruscant and get Palpatine elected.
The second battle in episode I, is fought in a power plant, bad idea to throw force around there.
In episode II the major lightsaber battle is near the end of the movie. None of the characters want to fling around too much energy out of fear of the cave collapsing
- This being the same battle where Dooku rips chunks out of the ceiling to impress his old master?
Episode III contains the battle between Dooku and Anakin/Kenobi. None of them want to fling around force because of the fact they are about 10 cm of hull away from cold harsh space
in the battle between Kenobi and Grievous, Grievous doesn't have any force powers and Kenobi is afraid that if he gained too much of an advantage, the droids would shoot him. Notice how he doesn't use force push against his opponent either, while this opponent has no defense against them
The battle between Windu and Palpatine takes place in an area that couldn't exist on normal physics, clearly there is some sort of shielding or other technology holding the building up. Better to not blow it up, no?
The battle between Yoda and Palpatine involves a lot more force powers then any other battle in the SW movies, this is because they can actually use most of their powers. They are still a little careful because of the senate seats being held up by repulsor lifts, and if they damaged the power source of that, they could get buried under an avalanche.
For the last battle, lava, fragile structure and force powers do not mix.
In episode IV, the battle between Vader and Ben took place near the Falcon, which Ben tried to protect. Vader wanted to toy a little with his old master, so he didn't go all out on him.
In episode V, Vader didn't actually try to kill Luke and Luke was not fully trained, so he simply did not have the power for it. Now that I think about it, Vader probably didn't even use his forcefield, since Luke wouldn't be able to defeat him anyway.
Before Luke learns the forcefield style, Yoda dies. He then goes to face the emperor and Vader. Vader and Palpatine can't use their full power since they are on a suspended platform over a giant power core. Luke goes all-out, since he doesn't know the technique.
As the last living jedi, Luke teaches all he knows to his apprentices. All he knows does not include the forcefield technique/style, so all the Jedi in the post-ROTJ era go all-out in every situation, not minding their surroundings.

More proof for this can be found during order 66, when weapons that blast apart a battle droid in one shot, only wound a jedi, and multiple shots are needed to take them down. This could hint that the force is indeed commonly used by Jedi as a forcefield, an ability later forgotten and replaced by sheer power.

Accidentaly played with in some Star Wars games. In Knights of the Old Republic, many light-side abilities where various force shields and ability boosts and dark-side powers weakened enemies (ignoring such visual effects like "red lightning" for life drain and sparkling for some others). Basically the only abilities that would be noticed by bystarnders are force lightning and telekinetic powers, just like in the movies. Averted just slightly with with the Jedi Knight series, as (especially in JK 3) Kyle and Jaden posses some of these also, and the fields are actually visible, but that's a detial.
Oh, my, God, the Jedi have AT Fields. (Yeah, I know, everyone does, but still.)

The Jedi order requires being consistently and repeatedly destroyed to remain effective

In Knights of the Old Republic, the Order has become decadent, terrified of action and useless. By Knights of the Old Republic II, the Jedi Order is all but wiped out. Canon says the Exile goes on to reboot the order and it becomes effective once again. This lasts until The Old Republic, where they grow complacent and get nearly wiped out again. Fast forward to the prequels, and guess what? They are decadent, terrified of action and useless. Again. Oh, what's this? Yep, they get wiped out, and are then rebooted again, this time by Luke Skywalker. This is what "Bring order to the force" quite literally means: kill them all and start again from nothing.

There's a Doylist explanation for this too, you realize: each adaptation is just a retelling of the same basic plot.

The Dark and Light sides of the Force exist because of the Jedi philosophy

My experience with the EU is fractional, but I did read several books a long time ago which took place during Obi-Wan's academy years. In them, the Jedi students who had trouble with their emotions were encouraged to 'let those feelings go into the Force'. The Force is a connected to all living things, yes? And if you have a whole bunch of Jedi pushing their anger, aggression, hate, frustration, etc, into such a network, it stands to reason that it's going to come out somewhere else, doesn't it? So the Jedi actually create the darkside by being unable to process their own darker emotions. Any sufficiently trained Force-sensitive who cannot or does not join in pushing aside those feelings becomes a lightning rod for everyone elses discarded negativity, hence why, in most cases of Sith versus Jedi, there are a small number of Sith and a large number of Jedi. Sith power hinges on having a big group of Jedi in order to create enough excess hate for them to tap into, and they're much stronger when only a limited number of individuals is doing this. But, being only human (so to speak), having all of that unpleasant emotion dumped repeatedly into them creates a complex and inescapable resentment towards its source - i.e., Jedi. So the Sith inevitably do themselves in by dramatically reducing the number of Jedi, at which point their power level drops, and the Jedi make a come back. Hence the endless cycle.

It goes beyond this: the Dark and Light sides of the Force exist because of everyone. The Force is generated by living things, so who's to say that we can't have an impact on its "personality?" The Dark Side is as much a tangible force of evil as it is a reflection of the user.

Prequel-era Jedi were actually allowed to marry and form families

However, this comes with a big caveat. Having a family means attachment which Jedi are not supposed to cultivate. They are supposed to see the needs of the many over the needs of the few and this requires a substantial amount of discipline and responsibility to accept, so the Order has Shoot Your Mate (or more likely, Abandon Your Mate)-style tests to prove a Jedi's willingness to accept their spouses and children are to come second to the greater whole. Those who succeed are allowed to stay, but those who fail are given a choice: leave your love, or leave the Order, because they can't afford to have someone bug out in the middle of an important mission that would determine the lives of millions/billions because someone tried to kidnap the Jedi's family to influence the process and it would be cruel to potentially put them in that situation. As for why they don't form relationships with other Jedi, such Jedi would be dealing with a combination of a lifetime of indoctrination and a view of the Order that would be like the Westermark Effect

, meaning they would see other members as siblings.

As for why Anakin didn't try for this... Anakin was The Chosen One, a glory hound, and was impulsive, vain and undisciplined. He had a lot of pressure to fulfill the prophecy, liked the idea of being the Galaxy's number one hero, and would fail that "Jedi Marriage Test" on reputation alone. He couldn't fulfill all three, but wanted to, so he had to keep his relationship secret (which would get him expelled because he went and got married without the Order's approval), and this spiraled until Anakin had his Shoot Your Mate scenario play out (but was under actual field conditions), and we all saw how well that turned out.

This is to correlate the Jedi families mentioned in the Expanded Universe and Ki-Adi Mundi's own family. Those were either ex-Jedi or Jedi who passed the test, and Mundi himself got permission. Most Jedi didn't bother. Obi Wan didn't try for this test for Duchess Satine because at the time he knew he couldn't keep his feelings in check at the time and decided his ability to help the galaxy at large was more important to him than his own personal desires. As for why he didn't later, he didn't want to burden her with someone who couldn't be there for her all the time, and that would let her find one who could.

Ki-Adi Mundi was a special case. Being from an endangered species, it was of the utmost importance that he married and had a family. The Jedi made a special exception for him because of this, as long as he didn't let it control him. For the rest of the Jedi however, marriage had been banned since approximately 4000 BBY as a part of the reforms set in place to prevent another Sith Lord like Exar Kun to ever come from the Jedi Order again (said reforms also mandated the teaching of padawans from childhood, a practice that was nonexistent prior to Exar Kun's betrayal)

The Force does not really exist

"The Force" is just the cultural assignment of religious/superstitious significance to Psychic Powers possessed by Differently Powered Individual's. In the canonical Star Wars universe there are non-Force-sensitive races that possess powers such as Telepathy. Those rare individuals with the potential to become Jedi or Sith are just mutants with extreme degrees of latent psychic ability, possibly linked to bio-chemical processes caused by the high Midichlorian counts in their cells. Failure of the Force to provide guidance to its believers is simply the result of those believers failing to recognize that their powers are purely a function of their own minds and thus expecting supernatural guidance when in reality they only get what they can actively look for. Falling to the "Dark Side" is nothing more than succumbing to mental problems that cause one to become a sociopath. Likewise, "destiny" is just a purely religious notion, and not a real thing. This is why the Jedi were taken completely off guard by Order 66, something they never expected the Force to allow to happen.

Jossed in "Children of the Jedi". Not only does the Force definitely exist, the particles that carry it can be detected by certain machinery. Additionally, a force user with a certain brain implant can use the force precisely enough to control droids, computers, and even ships, so long as he knows the schematics of the target. Not to mention the Ysalamiri, who could create an area free of the force by generating the opposite particle, similar to antimatter.
None of that invalidates the original hypothesis, which is that Psychic Powers do exist, but not a Sentient Cosmic Force. In fact, that "The Force" is detectable and quantifiable effectively destroys its mystical significance and reduces it to simply an energy field generated by living things, some of whom (ones with high numbers Midichlorians in their cells) generate so much of this energy/particle that they can use it do seemingly supernatural things. This was reinforced in some of the supplemental materials for Dark Empire, which introduced the Universal Energy Cage. Designed by Imperial engineer Umak Leth, it was a purely technological device that used very powerful Deflector Shields to effectively "jam" a Force-user's powers. Other EU material (and supplements for Attack of the Clones) indicate that a Force-user can be prevented from accessing using their powers by applying minor, random electrical shocks to their bodies, thus suggesting that their ability to use "The Force" is a function of their biological nervous systems and not a metaphysical property of being "luminous beings, not this crude matter".

The force is a result of a power-hungry individual gaining ultimate power and going mad from it

I thought about this idea when I read about the Sith Emperor. In his attempts to gain absolute immortality, the Sith Emperor purged himself of his own emotions and senses, separating himself from the rest of the universe and convincing himself (justifiably I might add) that he is a god. In addition, because of his fear of death (one of the very few fears he has left), he is willing to go to any lengths to escape it, including linking his consciousness with those of other beings and crushing them so they become his fanatically loyal thralls (at one point he was able to gain mental domination over thousands of other Sith and convert former Jedi to the Dark Side with his presence alone, including Revan. However, while he may seem like a simple over-powered villain, I noticed that his quotes bear an odd resemblance to the nature of the force. For example, the wiki pointed out his desire was to experience everything in the form of destroying a Galaxy, traveling to other galaxies, and becoming anything he desired. Whether it be a farmer, a diplomat, an artist, a chef or a simple man, he wants to live infinite lives seeing the universe for eternity. And what is the force? A ubiquitous power that surrounds and permeates all life in the galaxy, connecting them all. The last time time the Sith Emperor appeared before his death he was basically an eldritch abomination whose very presence could turn the most powerful creatures into extensions of his own will, and whose mind nearly transcended the limits of Blue-and-Orange Morality until only the basest desires remained (hunger for power and fear of losing it). Additionally, this is also similar to what happened to Gigyas in EarthBound where he becomes incapable of thought once he gains vast cosmic power. From this, I can conclude that the Force is a result of a previous power-hungry individual's successful attempt to alter the universe at the most fundamental level and become the most dominant thing in the universe, at the cost of their individuality, emotions and self-awareness. He would be an intrinsic part of all life, including a farmer (Luke Skywalker), a diplomat (Leia Organa), or a simple man (Anakin), influencing their goals and journeys yet being manipulated by them in turn (Light and Dark side). This means that any Sith's (including Palpatine's) desire for absolute power is self-destructive. Even if they got what they wanted, they wouldn't have any conventional mind left to even enjoy it. Had the Sith Emperor plans gone into fruition, he would have eliminated what scant emotions he had left and become an all-powerful vegetable.

When did this happen? Before the Mortis family. The Father, Son and Daughter are what remains of said man's mind and soul. The Celestials were probably the first lives said individual lived.

The Skywalkers and the Prophecy

The Skywalkers are Descended from Revan.

Given a cursed family bloodline, and that there was a romance between Revan and Bastila post-KOTOR, as well as a genetic disposition toward the characteristics that promote becoming a Sith (volate temper, absurd degree of Force ability, etc.) the Skywalkers are descended from Revan. Some female descendant of Revan's married a Skywalker, and the family has continued its tradition of skirting the line between Light and Dark sides, while bringing balance to the Force and playing major parts in all sorts of major historical events.

Starkiller was the real "Chosen One."

He's the only character we've seen in canon who can use the Dark Side of the force without having it completely consume and corrupt him. He can literally "bring balance to the force." The fact that he's the one who sparked the Rebellion that eventually defeated the Empire helps, too.

Either Luke, Leia, or Han will have a Dying Moment of Awesome in Crucible.

All the members of the Skywalker and Solo that were alive when the old EU finished died of old age.

Now that the old EU has ended I like to think that all living Skywalkers and Solos died of old age in the old EU rather than in battle.

Jedi and Sith

The Jedi Exile is an alien.

In the Knights of the Old Republic games, all humans speak Basic and many aliens speak their own languages, subtitled. The Jedi Exile certainly looks human, but she never speaks and we have to rely on subtitles to understand her, just like the aliens. She's also never referred to by name despite being an important historical figure, and we have no information on her family or early life. She also has the ability to cut herself off from the Force and mooch off of other people's Force connections for cool powers. This ability baffles several Jedi Masters and a professional Jedi historian turned Sith Lord. It's obviously the racial power of whatever race she belongs to, and she's called the Jedi Exile because no human can pronounce her name.

My Jedi Exile was a 'he' so your point is invalid
- Canonically, the Exile is a 'she'. Of course, this adds new levels of tolerance to her makeup, because that meant putting up with the Disciple. (This troper tends to go with 'he', if for no other reasons than a) avoiding the Disciple and b) Handmaiden is a very, very sexy Lady of War).
  - I'm of the Male Exile/Female Revan school. Mical is cut a lousy deal in-game. He's a last-minute addition, and it shows. (He's cut a much better deal in fanfic, but I digress). Furthermore, all of Obsidian's concept art and trailer refer to Exile as "he." Top it off with Brianna (Handmaiden) getting cut a very nice storyarc with a side order of Fanservice. Conversely, a female Revan gets an additional romance choice, a third ending, and access to 2/3 of the largest dialogue tree in the game. Only one Bastila conversation is locked off. And the final in-game reason? Saul Karath and the Leviathan. You know he's not going to permanently damage Bastila. Malak would give him a lightsaber enema. However, the non-Jedi Republic soldier is worth nothing to Malak, is Karath's former lieutenant, and has made no secret about wanting to use Saul for target practice. Let Malak deal with the Jedi - torturing Carth makes more sense! From what I understand, Bioware was also operating with the idea Revan was a woman, if only so that they remembered to keep the gender open.
- Then again, Male Revan and Carth strike up a huge bromance in the game. Partly because of the attempt to keep gender ambiguous except when needed, it borders onto Ho Yay at times. Do not underestimate the power of the bromance.
  - Dude, this IS BioWare. Bisexuality is pretty much standard with these guys. See Sky and Silk Fox from Jade Empire and several crew members from the Normandy, Shepard included. They managed to sneak a lesbian Jedi catgirl under Lucasarts' radar, despite the company's notoriously homophobic track record. Chances are, they would have gone there in a Pride March float, grinning all the while.

Palpatine formed The Empire to combat the Yuuzang Vong threat, but did that for his own personal glory

So, the superweapons and the militarization was there to be able to readily deal with the enemy, but he also allowed the oppression of the non-human races For the Evulz and also put deranged opportunists that would tear his empire apart should he not be there to deal with them, to give whoever deposed him a "screw you!" from beyond the grave.

He was already plotting to create the empire even before he knew of the Vong, and he knew very little about them (his only source was pretty vague) so he just used it to Dupe Thrawn into helping him. And besides, Thrawn's fleet was meant to combat unknown threats like the vong. and tarkin was the one who imagined most of the weapons (there purpose was also specifically meant to show the public "obey us or we will fucking kill you")
Orchestrating the Clone Wars wasn't an effort to build up the Republic into a force capable of fighting the Vong. It was about crippling any viable alternative.

If Galen Marek hadn't died, he would have ended up turning the Alliance into his own personal army to replace the empire

The dark side corrupts intentions, period. Even if he was trying to do good by the end of The Force Unleashed, he was still using the Dark Side actively. We have yet to see anyone use the dark side for good without their intentions slowly mutating from "save lives" to "gain power for power's sake and rule with an iron fist, nyehehehe". It is a very good thing he pulled a Heroic Sacrifice when he did, before the corruption set in.

We shall see. Force Unleashed 2 is coming.
Hard to say. Star Wars is very inconsistent about exactly how corrupting the Dark Side. On the one hand, we know that if you give yourself over entirely to the Dark Side you're pretty much straight up Evil with a capital E. On the other hand, in spite of the Jedi's claims to the contrary there's been many, many instances of Force-users who openly dabble in the Dark Side and yet don't fall. These examples include Kyle Katarn (and yes, he came close to falling, but he continued to use the Dark Side without falling after this initial brush), Jolee Bindo (if we're to believe his own words), and Mara Jade. Ultimately, there seems to be a difference between relying on the Dark Side as your primary source of power and using it as an ancillary tool to the rest of the Force.

Darth Vader lied about Galen being dead.

Think about it. Darth Vader could easily find a use for Galen to work with him (wether he knows about it or not) while Palpatine's busy attacking the rebellion. Plus, given how much damage he's taken, Galen could have easily survived the barrage of force lightning.

Palpatine will return in the Legacy series.

First, it would be awesome. Second, Palaptine said he was the frikkin Dark Side itself! The Jedi spirits can't hold him for long!

Joruus C'baoth was created by Darth Sidious as a Gambit Roulette to drive Jorus over the edge.

If a Spaarti clone is grown too fast, it is impossible for the mind to adapt to the "double presence". My theory is that that also happens to the original, too. Add to that Jorus C'baoth's already-severe case of Pride, and you have a recipe for trouble.

Kyp Durron will be killed by natives of Carida.

As many people as form a jury in the GFFA. They will bring ysalamiri, naturally.

Darth Gravid's redemption began on a mission to Monor II.

The Guardian of Mount Tantiss killed by Joruus C'baoth is...

Asaj Ventress. She could have returned to the service of Sidious after The Clone Wars.
The Inquisitor from the upcoming Star Wars: Rebels TV show.
Darth Maul. Sidious said that he had plans for him, and this task could have been it.

The "brief, curtailed scream" with which Exar Kun was exorcised was the Once an Episode Wilhelm Scream.

Darth Vectivus was Darth Gravid's master.

Both Vectivus and Gravid are anomalies in the Banite Sith due to their light-side tendencies; if Luimya is to believed Vectivus was a Token Good Teammate (or at least a Noble Demon) who died peacefully and Gravid was a heretic who incorporated light-side teachings, and was driven insane. Perhaps the reason why Gravid was such an embarrassment to the Sith is because he was trained by a master without the personality most Sith have. Being trained by Vectivus led to Gravid not getting the conviction to follow the Rule of Two and simply wait until Vectivus died of natural causes. And as someone like Vectivus wouldn't give his apprentice the standard training of a Sith apprentice, it contributed to his heretical light-side leanings. This eventually lead to Gravid's apprentice Darth Gean having to kill him because destroying Sith relics or no, if Vectivus' traits continue down the line the Sith would die in spirit if not in name.

Other Characters/Species

R2-D2 is T3-M4 in a new body four thousand years later.

It happened to HK-47, at least in Star Wars: Galaxies, so we know that a droid AI could survive that long. And it would explain why R2's so quirky and creative; he's had four thousand years to craft a personality for himself. It's also why he stays around C-3PO, because he sees shades of HK-47 in him, and he wants a familiar figure in his life—after all, he's seen all his friends and acquaintances die around him. The Force had a special destiny for R2, passing from Revan's ownership, to the Exile's, and, after millenia, to Anakin Skywalker ... and to his son.

Wait... so R2/T3 sees shades of HK-47, a snarky, bloodthirsty assassin droid, in C-3PO, a prissy, cultured protocol droid? BS.

Thrawn Will Return

Seriously. Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo was so tactically brilliant, he could have foreseen the betrayal of his bodyguard, Rukh. There is no way he could have not seen the shifted attitude of the Noghri after Leia's "recruitment" of them. Therefore, he had a clone of himself made, who stood in at the Battle of Bilbringi (possibly some battle before Bilbringi), while Thrawn himself went to the Hand of Thrawn to inform his aides of his plans and scout out more of the Unknown Regions, to increase his Empire of the Hand further. It is during this time that he is "killed", and by the time the Caamas Document Crisis comes around, he is still out and about. He has instructed his aides at the Hand of Thrawn to play coy about his continued survival, so by the time Mara and Luke come to Nirauan, they are told false information about Thrawn and his "return".In Survivor's Quest, the people aboard Outbound Flight's remains refer to the Chiss as "the Blue Ones", not as a statement of fact, but as an honorific. However, they could not possibly have had any contact with the Chiss in the past fifty years. The conclusion? Thrawn went back to the remains and interacted somehow with the Survivors, obviously not revealing that it was him who destroyed them in the first place. Also in Survivor's Quest, Mara hints that there may be another clone of Thrawn out there; Zahn himself has admitted that should the need arise, another one could be created. However, what if this "clone" was actually the original Thrawn? The possibilities are endless.Remember, this is Thrawn we're talking about; something like this is definitely not beyond his scope.

Outbound Flight indicates the "blue ones" moniker comes not from Thrawn but from his brother, Thrass, who sacrificed himself to land the ship safely.
I think you're overestimating Thrawn.
I thought that Thrawn should have taken precautions after noticing a change in the Noghri (which he mentioned to Pellaeon) as well. However, much as I'd love for him to return, I don't see it in the cards. If he had foreseen that Rukh would turn on him, it would have been much easier to kick Rukh off the Chimaera than to create a clone just for Rukh to kill. Then Thrawn could have been at Bilbringi in person, and possibly even won the battle since he wouldn't have gotten assassinated halfway through it. No, the best we can hope for are more Thrawn stories set before his death and maybe, someday, the awakening of a Thrawn clone.

Nuso Esva, the 'non-human' warlord

from Choices of One and Crisis of Faith is a Yuuzhan Vong. Precisely the kind of cunning mind and alien terror Thrawn was sent to the Unknown Regions to quell.

Boba Fett's friendship with Anakin contributed to Anakin's decision to help kill Windu

In Boba Fett: Pursuit, Boba Fett and Anakin befriend each other when Boba rescues Anakin from a space slug. Anakin knows of Mace's killing of Jango Fett from Obi-Wan, and later, Boba Fett pretty much becomes Vader's best buddy. So therefore I can conclude the other major factor besides Palpatine in the decision to attack Mace was Jango Fett's death.

The H'nemthe mating habits were bioengineered.

If they'd had them from the beginning, males would start to feel thin and stretched after a while. This troper's guess is that the urge to eat one's husband was engineered by the Rakata either as Disproportionate Retribution for some offense or else simply For the Evulz.

Omwati are big on gallows humor

That's why Qwi swallowed the peacetime use story despite the code names.

Mission Vao is the great (insert massive number of greats here) grandmother of Shaddo Vao and Astral Vao

Same last name, same race (Blue Twi'leks), so they're probably related somehow.

Kinda confirmed in the Tabletop RPG supplement Legacy Era, listing them all as part of "Vao family legacy".

Kreia's prophecy about the end of the Mandalorians...

Was in reference to Jango Fett's death at Mace Windu's hands. Figuratively speaking, Jango Fett was officially the last of the True Mandalorians, the ones who carried on the remainder of the old Mandalorian culture. When Jango died, the original culture of the Mandalorians died with him. This would pave the way for New Mandalorians to rise up, and whilst not completely maintaining the old cultural ways, it would be a rebirth of the Mandalorians whose end Kreia prophecized, because they were supposed to decay until falling down to one man, whilst after Jango's death, they slowly but surely became stronger, and rebuilt their culture from the ashes of the old.

In that sense, they truly are one-third of a trinity between themselves, the Jedi, and the Sith. All three of them are powerful cultures consisting of many different races, and each culture has influenced the galactic stage in ways greater than any other possible culture combined.

The Jedi at Pylokam's was Tahiri's grandfather.

Let's go over the facts.

First: We know from Anakin's Quest that Tahiri's grandfather was a Jedi who hid on Tatooine sometime between Order 66 and A New Hope.

Second: Thanks to Anakin's actions in Attack of the Clones, there is a conveniently-located emotional bloodstain to mask the presence of Jedi. The closest spaceport is Mos Eisley. The Jedi would not remain too close to the Valley of the Spirits for long (anymore than Yoda would have moved into the cave where he'd slain the traitor from Bpfassh), but it would appear that proximity is important.

Third: We know from Quest that Tahiri's grandfather was slain by stormtroopers.

Fourth: We know from Nightlily that Pylokam went to see Balu, apparently to denounce a Jedi. This could have been Kenobi, but then how did the Imps get on Gramps' trail?

Conclusion: That was not Obi-Wan that Trevagg sensed at Pylokam's, but the elder Jedi Veila. Evidently, Pylokam somehow figured it out and turned him in.

Jar Jar Binks died in the Krytos plague.

Simultaneously satisfying many fans desire that he die horribly, adding some sympathy to his character, and creating an element of irony.

Nashira is Mara Jade's mother

Akanah told Luke that Nashira told her that she had lost a son and a daughter to the Emperor. What's to say that Mara Jade wasn't that daughter? Mara's memories of her "recruitment" were as hazy as Leia's apparent memories of Padme^note.

R2 has the Mask of Darth Nihilus installed in him.

He's shown signs of Force usage ( "Hold your fire. There are no life forms. It must have short-circuited." sound a lot like "These are not the droids your looking for." ) and speaks in beeps just as inconprehensible as Darth Nihlus's own speech which like R2 isn't subtitled.

Thrawn was already a clone during the Thrawn Trilogy.

Thrawn, being in a very dangerous line of work, had been killed at some point in the Unknown Regions. However, he already had a backup which took his place, which would explain why he was already knowledgeable and confident in cloning technology. I know it's a longshot, but I'm mainly convinced by his age; Thrawn had to have been at least in his fifties when he died, and should have looked even older given what we know about Chiss aging and lifespans, but artwork always depicts him as though he were in his thirties. He's a clone, and was from the moment we first saw him!

Crossover Theories

Mara Jade Skywalker is the preincarnation of Mary Jane Watson

Just because the names sound so similar. Mary Jane, Mara Jade. Plus if Mary Jane ever marries Spiderman she'll be Mary Jane Parker which sounds pretty close to Mara Jade Skywalker.

Mara has a redheaded child, she wins.
Considering Luke and Peter have a lot of the same idea as to what to do with Great Power, and what not to have it do to you? (I'm ignoring that really dumb "deal with the Devil" arc, like many other fen)
And after that, Mara/Mary became Ginny Weasley.
Since Ginny and Mary Jane are both more or less modern, this would be a double incarnation, or a reincarnation that occurs beyond the forward progression of time.
Then their combined power in the world created Amelia Pond.
Mephisto is the reincarnation of Palpatine, and ruined their marriage out of revenge for their pre-incarnation
Personally always assumed that the name similarity was intentional by writers - Meaningful Names and inspiration from Campbellian stories are par the course for Star Wars.

The Yuuzhan Vong are Tyranids

Come on. A species of intergalactic conquerors that uses organic technology, hopelessly outmatch the inhabitants of the galaxy they invade and whose sole purpose is to annihilate everything in sight. The Vong even have a mentality that is very similar to a Hive Mind.

Yuuzang Vong aren't that united. Scratch the surface, they have a lot of internal bickering and a caste based system which include rejects. I think they may be Tau genestealers though, and because Tau are so resistant to mental psychic attacks, the Tyranids failed to establish their hive mind control over them. They then reversed engineered the Tyranid organic technology...

Star Wars is Harry Potter

And Jedi are wizards. Look, Force sensitivity runs in the family, but also happens to children of people with absolutely mundane ancestry, and it influences people even when they're unaware of it. Because HP is newer than SW, I assume this is more of a WMG of Harry Potter: Rowling imagined the distant ancestors of the Jedi. Lightsabers are highly-evolved form of wands.

The characters:
- Luke = Harry: The Hero - duh.
- Han = Ron: Supporting male lead with snarky personality.
- Leia = Hermione: Female lead in a Slap-Slap-Kiss relationship with Han/Ron.
- Yoda = Dumbledore: Whimsical mentor figure.
- Palpatine = Riddle/Voldemort: Charismatic guy loved by everyone until he shows what's Beneath the Mask as a cackling sorcerer and becomes the Big Bad.
- Vader = Snape: Seduced by The Dark Side when he was a young man and redeemed as an adult. Not liked by Luke/Harry, but is ultimately forgiven. Punishes people unfairly.
- Padmé = Lily: Love of Vader/Snape's life whom he lost through his association with The Dark Side. Mother of Luke/Harry.
- Mara Jade = Ginny: Fiery Redhead girlfriend of the hero. At one point, an agent of Palpatine/Riddle.
- Obi-Wan = Hagrid: Bearded guy who lives in a hut and recruits the hero by telling him a bunch of lies about his past.
Groan. Can't wait to see Harry's hand chopped.

Revan's mindwiped identity was that of Guybrush Threepwood, from Monkey Island

To be (re)trained as a Jedi, Revan had to complete The Three Trials (compare to The Secret of Monkey Island).
The Quest for the Star Forge involves Revan searching different planets for four pieces of a Star Map (compare to Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge).
When the Four Map Pieces are combined, they lead to an object of unimaginable wealth and power, but which turns out to actually be an object of confusion and destruction. (compare Big Whoop to the Star Forge)
The most powerful mÃªlée weapon in the early section of the game is a Prototype Vibroblade, which is specifically made for "the user on a budget". Compare to Guybrush's assortment of low-quality tools, including a shovel made "For the treasure hunter on a budget."
Revan is a kleptomaniac.
Guybrush has shown evidence of Jedi knowledge, including the Jedi Mind Trick.
It is canon that Revan redeemed Ajunta Pall, leading him back to the Light. For this to be possible, Revan must have developed a high Charisma and Persuade skill. Scoundrel is the only non-Jedi class that has Persuade as a class skill. A scoundrel is a pirate.
Revan's scoundrel clothing is a fancy red jacket, similar to one of Guybrush's in Escape from Monkey Island. To avoid catching the notice of Sith soldiers on Taris, Revan would have needed nonmilitary style casual clothing: this excludes the Soldier's uniform.
No Basic-speaking character ever actually says Revan's assumed name outloud. They clearly cannot quite remember it. The few alien-language speaking characters who do say it manage to muddle the pronunciation terribly, so that it sounds nothing like "Guybrush Threepwood". This is a problem that applies almost exclusively to Guybrush.
Similarly, if Revan makes fun of Nemo's name on Dantooine, Nemo responds that names are of little importance, and that "you of all people should know that." This occurs while Revan is still using his assumed name—Guybrush Threepwood.
On Taris, Revan encounters someone named Largo. Coincidence?
If Revan arrives on Korriban after rediscovering his identity, and he tries to tell the Sith that he is actually Darth Revan, no one takes him seriously. No one. This is a problem that applies almost exclusively to Guybrush.

Abeloth is an Instrumentality

Think about it: All these people returning to her, much like Angels return to Adam. (Or Lilith.) And we know she can absorb them and take on their personalities, like she did with Callista. Plus, with how kriffed-up Legacy Of The Force was, complete with paedophilia, a father letting his son go through all this suffering, a lot of clones, and a climactic battle between two people who understand each other better than anyone else understands the other...Yeah.

The Celestials are the Ancients, and Star Wars is in the distant past of the Stargate-verse

Consider that Humans in Star Wars have an unknown origin. Consider next that the Celestials are a mysterious race of beings who supposedly populated several planets across the Star Wars galaxy with Humans. Then, of course, there's the fact that Celestials left behind several mysterious, super-advanced technologies such as Centerpoint Station and had an unparalleled mastery of interstellar travel.

In the Stargate universe, Humans have a known origin (Earth/Tau'ri) but they were still seeded across the galaxy by the Ancients (and later the Goa'uld, of course, who play a similar role here to the Builders/Rakata). Furthermore, just like the Celestials the Ancients were the masters of interstellar travel and left behind numerous unexplained relics of immense power (the eponymous Stargates, Destiny, Atlantis, etc.).

We already know the Ancients colonized several galaxies, so it's not a stretch to say they could have colonized both Earth and a "galaxy far, far away." We already known the Ancients obtained the ability of ascension and the Celestials are hinted to have done something similar (thereby explaining their mysterious absence). So it doesn't seem like that big of a stretch (so long as we ignore the obvious fact that this is WMG and not serious canon we're discussing) to suppose the Celestials are the Ancients.

Simon the Killer Ewok from Galactic Battlegrounds is a universe- and species-displaced Simon the Digger.

Seriously, how could an Ewok be that badass?

Humans in the star wars galaxy were natives to a planet known as Krull

The slayers in that film were early Yuuzhan Vong, Colwyn's control of fire and the glaive were force techniques, and the son of the Prince and Princess destined to rule the Galaxy? his name was Palpatine.

Meta

Screw "A long time ago".

The events of Star Wars are in the present or future. They are referred to as occurring "A long time ago" because the individuals retelling these events are even further in the future.

Alternative non-displacement in space rather than time: A long time ago, our galaxy was far, far away.
This also allows Coruscant or Tatooine to be Earth.
- No! Humans are immigrants! The Neanderthals were native inhabitants from this planet and we wiped them out.
- For the latter, the two-suns fable was added later; stories told and retold tend to get combined with local elements.
In Attack of the Clones, Palpatine makes reference to "this Republic which has stood for a thousand years". This could be considered a retcon of the earlier "over a thousand generations", if you want to place the films as close to the present as possible.
- The Republic is actually 25,000 years old, and gets reorganized every so often. Palpatine was referring to the last reorganization, the Ruusan Reformation, 1000 years or so before Episode 3. This is the official explanation.
On the other hand, it's never stated in the films that the Republic was founded by humans.
- Actually, it was founded by an alliance of Humans and Duros, the first two spacefaring species in that section of the Galaxy. (Though there were older galaxy-spanning governments by then-extinct species.)
This is the plot of a book that was never published called Alien Exodus. It was never published for numerous reasons (would have seemed silly, ignored current EU continuity, etc).
- As for details, the descendants of Curtis Henderson (American Graffiti) escape the dystopian earth of THX-1138, get enslaved by Insect Overlords in some distant galaxy, and eventually overthrow them and found Corellia. The man leading the revolution is nicknamed "Skywalker" by his people. Seriously.
- Well, if you read the Ultimate Guide to Vehicles, the manufacturer's logos from Corellia do look like they could pass for space shuttle mission patches.
The ORIGINAL Teaser from 1976 tells us that "Somewhere in space, this may all be happening right now..."
According to the Infinities story Into the Great Unknown, Star Wars takes place about 126 years before Indiana Jones. Since the trend lately has been to incorporate as much stuff from official materials into the canon until contradicted by higher-level material, it could be argued that this fact is canon. If so, that hardly seems like a long time in a galaxy where the average government regime lasts ten thousand years.
- The problem with that theory is, that story is contradicted by higher level material, namely the New Jedi Order series. Dus to the deaths of certain characters, the events of "Into the Great Unknown" are impossible to reconcile with other canon. And besides, that story was just silly.
In Shadows of the Empire, there's a ship called the Korolev. Nobody of that name in the Star Wars galaxy. A rocket pioneer by that name from the real world. Interesting.
- It always bugged this troper how despite its setting as being separate from Earth, characters in various Star Wars media use phrases such as "Achilles Heel".
  - Of course, we can counter that with this
  - Geez, it's just the standard Translation Convention at work, nothing to get your mynocks in a sarlacc about.
- NOBODY in the WHOLE GALAXY? Wow. Just... wow. Must have taken you years of research to check every name... except for the trillions of unnamed inhabitants of twenty million whole worlds, of course. Besides, Star Wars has a buttload of things named after real-world people, places, and concepts as an in-joke. Grabbing any one and saying "this proves they're us!" is... wow, just wow.
- Then again, they seem to use metric, and in one novel someone refers to "Joules."
The Milky Way is the Galaxy, and the time is the present. The reason we don't have any contact with the Republic or anybody else, is that Earth is one the most distant and forgotten planets in the Galaxy, to the point we don't remember any past contacts with the republic.
- Doesn't work. Milky Way has a bar. The GFFA has none.
See also the Star Wars entry under Space Jews, particularly regarding the "Ferrets."
Alternatively, time is cyclical in Star Wars, so it's both the future and the past.
Maybe the narrator is lying and it isn't "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away", which would explain how they have humans...unless maybe some Star Wars DNA managed to cross to our galaxy and land on Earth a few million years ago. As to how they speak English...I guess we have to assume that it is translated for us movie goers. Same thing with "Achilles Heel", could be their version was just translated for us. That's the explanation that Tolkien gives for his stuff.
You're all making this much too complicated: by definition, the terms "a long time ago" and "far, far away" are synonymous, since space and time are the same thing. Likewise, all faster-than-light travel is, by definition, a form of time-travel into the past. So at some point in the future of planet Earth, human beings will develop faster-than-light travel, and eventually use it to travel to and colonize distant galaxies. Of course, the colonists will arrive in those other galaxies long before they left ours. As such, the events depicted in the films are occurring "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away," from the perspective of our galaxy. So you see, it's really simple.
- Hyperspace is a form of extra-dimensional warp drive, it would fall under 'Apparent' FTL travel and not real FTL travel. Time travel is not a consequence of Star Wars' Hyperdrive.
The reason why there are Rubber-Forehead Aliens? They're humans who, due to evolution/genetic engineering, have become new species to adapt to the many planets. There are some exceptions, like Plo Koon (who can't survive in oxygen).

Living beings of Earth are "transparent" to the Force, like the Yuuzhan Vong

Episode 1 tells us that the Force is mediated by the midichlorians, sorts of bacteria living into the cells of every living creature (of the Star Wars galaxy). But the cells of the living beings of Earth contain nothing of the sort: they contain mitochondria and (in the case of plants) chloroplasts, but no midichlorians. This means that if a Jedi (or a Sith) ever happened to visit Earth, he would not be able to feel any life on it. To him, looking at an Earth human would feel like looking at an animatronic robot: he would see something that looks like a human, but he would (mistakenly) "know" that the human he is looking at is not real. In the same way, a Jedi would never be able to use his mind tricks on humans of Earth, because his midichlorians would not have any other midichlorian to communicate to, and would not have any advantage in combat (like being able to read the intentions of his opponent and prevent them) for the same reason.

And this is why we're the most distant and forgotten planet in the Galaxy. They think it's barren and lifeless.

If we take this wild guess to the extreme, we reach an interesting conclusion...

The Yuuzhan Vong are the humans of Earth, and Yuuzhan Tar is Earth

The Yuuzhan Vong come from outside the Star Wars galaxy (a galaxy far, far away... hmmm) and are transparent to the Force. Just like humans of Earth are supposed to be, if the wild guess above is correct. Let some millennia pass starting from now, enough for humans to mutate physically, develop their own biotechnology and a constructed language spoken by every individual, based on Basic and Latin. This would make the expression "Yuuzhan Vong" an evolution of "human vulgus", where "vulgus" is Latin for "people". And "Yuuzhan Tar" would be "human terra", where "terra" is Latin for "Earth".

Then how did we go from iron-based blood to copper-based?
- At one point, the Earth suffers a planet-wide cataclysm (perhaps an impact with a giant asteroid) that strips away most of the atmosphere. As a result, the Earth still has oxygen, but its atmospheric pressure and temperature are dramatically lowered. Scientists decide that the quickest way to prevent human extinction is to mutate human physiology so that it can thrive in such an environment. They release a bacteriophage (a virus that injects DNA into cells) that mutates bone marrow cells so that they create erythrocytes where hemoglobin (iron-based) is replaced by hemocyanin (copper-based, which works better in cold, low-pressure environments). The humans of Earth, now adapted to the new environment, keep evolving naturally (perhaps with one or two more artificial pushes along the way) and eventually turn into the Yuuzhan Vong.

In combination with the usual 'It takes place in the Future' WMGs: Tatooine is the far-future Earth.

Knights of the Old Republic has a Side Quest implying that some or all humans are descended from Sand People slaves taken by the Rakata, before they bombed the planet down to glass. This makes Tatooine Humanity's homeworld, and therefore Earth post silica-based remodelling. This explains why so much important stuff happens there: even though nobody remembers what it originally was, being the birthplace of the dominant species in the Galaxy has left Tatooine with a disproportionate influence in the Force, making it a crossroads of fate. The fact there are two suns is because at some point somebody stellified Jupiter.

They must have moved it, too, to keep the two suns together in the sky. Or maybe this was an attempt to lengthen the Sun's lifespan by turning it into two smaller, cooler, less hydrogen-intensive stars.
"You bastards! You blew it up!"

There is a TV Tropes in the GFFA.

This explains why in Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, Luke is saying "I've seen this all the time." at every single holodrama about him. Also explains why Lando refers to "some Big Bad" in Allies.

Coruscant is Earth

Sort of mentioned above: Over time, Earth got to be so built up, it eventually turned into one big planet-wide city. During this same time, the human race was going through an expansionist phase, colonizing new planets left and right. Also during this time, the name of Earth slowly changed(this is Truth in Television; London used to be called Londinium, India was called Hindustan, and even old New York was once New Amsterdam) until, by the time of the Galactic Republic, it was now called "Coruscant".

And somehow moved from the edge of the galaxy to the center?
- They used Centerpoint to pull it there.

Politics and Propaganda

The Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoons are in-universe pro-Jedi propaganda, produced shortly after the fall of the Republic.

Most of the events depicted in the cartoons did actually occur, but details were changed to depict the Jedi in a better light. The abilities of the Jedi were also greatly exaggerated: Remember that one battle where Mace Windu single-handedly decimates an entire army of battle droids after losing his lightsaber? If Mace could really do that, why did he and his Jedi have to be rescued by the clone troopers in Attack of the Clones?

The boy who stood on the hill watching the above-mentioned battle (then offered Mace a drink of water afterwards) played a large role in the creation of the propaganda films.
- That part was actually canonized in a sourcebook-type article on the official website (ref), with the exception that it doesn't explicitly say that the version we see is the boy's version.
  - The fact that the boy created a cartoon based on the Battle of Dantooine is canon. However, according to Leland Chee, the Clone Wars cartoon as we know it as factual, and everything in it happened as depicted.

The films aren't Rebel propaganda, the Expanded Universe is.

Think about it: the Empire in most EU material is treated as highly xenophobic and biased towards humans. The only similarities besides how it was founded the Galactic Empire has to the Nazis specifically? In the context of the Original Trilogy, the mooks are named Stormtroopers and they dress like Nazis-the only "evidence" for this is a)One random stormtrooper calling Chewbacca a "thing"(that just means that guy is an anti-Wookite) and b)the general lack of non-humans(that could just be because human beings are common, especially surrounding essential Imperial planets like Coruscant). Apparently the Empire being Lawful Evil totalitarians who are willing to blow up peaceful planets wasn't enough for the Rebels, who opted for Godwin's Law as well.

Luke Skywalker and the Jedi's Revenge is exactly how the Galactic Civil War happened, and the movies are Rebel propaganda.

Just because.

The expanded universe consists of in-universe documents from about fifty years after the Legacy era

As noted on the Grand Unified Timeline, the Legacy Era in the GFFA lines up with the 1950s in this one. Thus, the EU is actually a series of historical documents and historical fiction written in the present day of the GFFA, discussing events that took place close to two hundred years earlier; the movies themselves are, however, not in-universe documents, which is why they are so much higher on the canon scale. The discrepancies and retcons of the EU are actual in-universe factual errors or poetic liscence by the researchers and writers, much like you'd find in stuff written today about the Civil War era.

Karen Traviss is a Mandalorian or writing for a primarily Mandalorian audience, so her documents are written from a Mandalorian-ethnocentric perspective
The Jacen Solo administration has been subject to centuries of smear campaigns and caricature, and he wasn't actually that nutty or Slippery Slope diving in "actual" history, sorta like Nixon in reality- bad, but comically exaggerated in popular culture
- Vergere is an extremely controversial figure, with different authors thinking her very wise or insidious, and so different documents present her very differently
Daala is also a very controversial figure, with various authoritative authors exalting and lambasting her as either utterly incompetent or one of the most skilled persons ever, and most portrayals as a result end up with elements of ridicule and praise, resulting in appearances of Informed Ability
- This might also be a case of pandering to an in-universe Memetic Badass while sticking with less-impressive historical facts
- Also alternatively, she really piled it on high with the propoganda during her time as chief of state, resulting in a lasting positive public opinion of her that bleeds into the historical accounts- and is spoofed by some who disagre
So much emphasis is placed on not using racial slurs towards the Yuuzhan Vong of the NJO series because of "present-day" Yuuzhan Vong antidefamation groups making such slurs very not PC

Centaxday is a Meaningful Name

It's the day on which the Republic traditionally collect its one percent income tax.

The entire Disney canon is an in-universe movie series.

Legends is what really happened. The Disney canon is nothing more than an in-universe series of holofilms produced by a group of reformists. That's why nothing in the sequel trilogy makes any goddamn sense: they're TRYING to depict the Republic, Imperials, Jedi, and Sith as incompetent buffoons to further their political agenda. As for Rogue One, it was produced by the New Republic as a more digestable version of Operation: Skyhook, and Solo was an abortive attempt at a Han Solo biopic that he found extremely inaccurate aside from the Sabaac tournament and the Kessel Run, but even the latter was more mundane than what was seen in the movie.

Some Legends works are actually in-universe works of fiction in the Disney canon

Think about it. The earliest Legends works are filled with Early-Installment Weirdness, and even after they ironed that out there was still fairly big examples of Continuity Snarl before the Disney reboot. The galaxy is really big, so I'd imagine a lot of people hadn't gotten their facts straight. That Marvel comic where Vader and Anakin are seperate characters? Made before the galaxy discovered they were one and the same. Splinter of the Mind's Eye? Whoever wrote it didn't know Luke and Leia were siblings. The anti-Jedi, pro-Mandalorian/clone trooper slant in Karen Traviss's works? Imperial propaganda from before the Mandalorian Uprising and was subsequently suppressed.

The Imperial March is actually an ancient battle hymn of the Galactic Republic and freedom fighters that the Empire claimed for itself

The Imperial March predates the Empire, and is first heard during the Galactic Wars, and in-universe is so popular everyone hums it once in a while, like that Separatist battle droid trying to breach a Republic escape pod. Considering the Empire's own symbol derives from the Republic's eight-spoked roundel, it would be in-character.

Unfortunate Implications

Luke is slowing descending into hallucinatory madness, like his father before him.

This ignores the prequels and disregards the sequels.

Luke is a pretty useful member of the rebel alliance in A New Hope, although a little prone to believing everything an old man tells him, no matter how crazy it sounds. The more Luke learns about the force, the less useful he seems to become. In A New Hope, he saves them all.
- After all the build up in Episode 5, a showdown between Luke and Vader was inevitable, and the only way it would come out without being forced was if Luke went out on his own. Plus, Luke was the epitome of usefullness during the Sail Barge scene. If he hadn't been their, or if he hadn't used the force, they would have all died, so yeah, he was still useful.
If the Force really works, why would people who knew Vader dismiss it as an "old religion"? If he's choking people from a distance, at least those in the inner circle would know it was real. This suggests the "choking" scenes are just wishful thinking on Vader's part.
- "Welcome to Imperial Officer Training 101, first lesson: Lord Vader thinks he can choke us all by waving his hand. If he ever finds out he can't, he'll just stab us with his lightsaber. Just act it up, fall over, and then we're ready to introduce "New Recruit: John Smith".
- I vaguely remember reading a book years ago, where it was mentioned people thought the choking came from some of the technology built into him, not from the force.
  - Yes! I know what you're talking about! Someone else even built a glove with sonic disruptors to mimic Vader and make everyone think he had force powers.
  - You're thinking of The Glove of Darth Vader, one of the Young Adult books of the Jedi Prince series. While the glove itself was augmented to enhance the wearer's strength, the Force Choke was all Vader. Trioculus had it installed with a device to simulate the Force Choke in order to maintain the illusion that he was Palpatine's son and heir to the throne. And that's about the most believable part of the series. The rest are painful to read, even at the appropriate age, and left completely out of continuity for a very good reason.
  - The sonic disruptor didn't mimic the force choke, it caused intense pain and tissue damage exactly the way you would expect a sonic cannon to have cause, though it was meant to be his version of a force choke. It was the lightning emitters that maintained the illusion that he was Palpatine's son.
Nobody else sees Yoda, and R2 seems really quite concerned throughout the Dagoba sequence — which lasts for weeks by the look of it, and yet very little time has passed for everyone else.
- Not quite. The Falcon's hyperdrive is knocked out at that time, meaning that they have to drag their butts to Bespin at sublight speed. Given the distances between stars in your typical galaxy, it could've easily taken several years.
  - Luke is confirmed to hallucinate at least somewhat while on Degoba - remember the duel with the Darth Vader who had Luke's face? It would also explain how Luke managed to find Yoda when he could have been anywhere on an entire planet.
Thus, the Force is a fiction, which lives primarily in the madness of the Skywalker family.
I'm sorry, but Luke made the shot into the Death Star's exhaust port, which everyone else, who were in bombers with targeting computers failed to do. It's always been real. What about when Palpatine toasted Luke, or the explosion that occured when he hit the reactor. There is no way an old man could have realeased that much energy unless he had dark energy.
- Re the exhaust port— Two Words: sheer luck. The rest were hallucinations.
  - Or it wasn't even Luke that made the shot. That would explain why the medal scene was completely without dialogue - it was a hallucination/dream sequence.
Also, the Jedi mind trick is obviously the force, as is Obi wan sneaking around the Death Star to everyone except Vader, as well as his body vanishing into thin air when Vader cut him down. Plus if the force was fake it would undo one of the key aspects of the story (not to mention make it a lot more dull.)
- Note that the Jedi Mind Trick fails in Episode VI. In Episode IV, the droids don't seem to notice the stormtroopers much so it could have been a hallucination by Luke that Obi-Wan went along with to further his "Force" ideas. Also, Obi-Wan is a Retired Badass, which could explain the sneaking around the Death Star as simple stealth skills combined with a stealth field generator (they exist in the Star Wars universe according to KOTOR). He deactivated it to face Vader honorably. As per his vanishing when Vader cuts him down, perhaps there was a sudden power surge in Vader's lightsaber while he was cutting him that caused him to evaporate? After all, Vader is mentally unstable in this WMG and might have misaligned a wire in his lightsaber or some such thing.
  - Obi-Won and Yoda both evaporate... according to Luke's point of view. Whenever we see other Jedi die outside of Luke's POV, that doesn't happen.
  - First of all, the force trick only effects the weak minded. Jabba the Hutt ain't weak minded. Bib Fortuna on the other hand, was effected. And they technically do notice stormtroopers, they just stay out of the way. As for Obi Wan; there are scenes when Obi Wan walks RIGHT IN FRONT of the Storm Troopers and they don't notice. The situations he's in are only doable with the force. In addition, stealth field generators don't work at close range according to the game, and obi wan was at close range. We had no idea that Obi Wan intended to die. What's more, your scenario brings in a lot of other extra factors that violates occam's razor. And A New Hope was made 26 years before Kotor. for all intents and purposes stealth generators don't exist as far as we know. There's also a scene where Vader looks up after Obi Wan uses it. And vader just HAPPENS to know that Obi Wan is on the Millenium Falcon. Again, fanon is fine, but rewritting the whole frigging saga is just stupid.
  - The Jedi Mind Trick is only targets reacting to intimidation, just like the Force Choke. The people that do respond are all mooks who have more to lose by confronting the Jedi than by playing along. The Storm Troopers figured arguing with a crazy old guy with a laser sword about droids was above their pay grade - same with Bib Fortuna or the death stick dealer. If someone doesn't play along, the Jedi rationalizes that they're "strong-minded".

Sith Lords regularly rape/sexually abuse their Padawans

Because1. They're sadists2. To show them who's boss3. Because by the time they are that deep in dark side, this is the only relationship they could ever have. To quote Darth Bane "one to desire power and the other to have it" Think about the Freudian implications there.

Alternatively, they don't need to have sex. The Dark Side is powered by passions, including their lust. Meaning Palpy got a sexual thrill off electrocuting Luke.
There is some actual canonical basis for this. Star Wars: The Old Republic blatantly states that Sith of the old Empire could do anything they wished and no one could do a damn thing about it. Darth Malgus openly kept a Sex Slave he considered a common-law wife until he killed her for being a potential liability. If a Sith Warrior corrupts Jaesa, she admits to getting a little drunk at a party, sleeping with a handsome young officer, then killing him afterward. A Sith Warrior can also order both his potential love interests (Vette and Dark Side Jaesa) into a threesome, and in an earlier patch, you could force Vette into a romance without removing her slave collar, essentially keeping her as a Sex Slave. The love interest for the female Sith Warrior already knows he is unlikely to survive the affair and will be killed as soon as she is bored of him. And if your Sith makes an advance on NPC characters, they often become visibly nervous and afraid. Leave it to BioWare to fly as much Squick as they can while still adhering to a Lucasarts-mandated T rating
Also, the Dark Side is powered by anger, fear, and hatred. So the master might rape their apprentice to increase their apprentice's power.

The Star Wars Holiday Special was a hallucination that took place in Luke's radiation-fried brain after the destruction of the first death star.

He spends the next few years trying to convince himself that it wasn't real, and eventually turns to the dark side because anyone who could dream that up must be a dark sider.

So that is why George Lucas refuses to acknowledge its existence.

Assassination is just a cover job for the Emperor's Hands.

Think about what we know about Palpatine: He's obsessed with superweapons, and he did away with the only people who would oppose genocide, because the only way to defeat the Yuuzhan Vong was to destroy them entirely. In addition, Palpatine knows about the Yuuzhan Vong because of his connections to Thrawn. We also know that Luke carries Anakin's name and lived with Anakin's family on Anakin's home planet. He's not hidden very well. Palpatine let him survive because Palpatine knew only Vader's grandchildren could defeat the Yuuzhan Vong. We also know that Force-sensitive clones are mentally unstable. What does this have to do with the Emperor's Hands? The name "Emperor's Hand" comes from an ancient method of extracting DNA before cloning technology was perfected. Palpatine, knowing only of Luke (and besides, Luke can have many more children than Leia can just by virtue of being male), recruited young girls and trained them as assassins, but the assassin job was just a cover for their real purpose: To be the mother of Luke Skywalker's children. The male Hands only exist for the sole purpose of perpetuating this facade. This is why Palpatine was thinking YOU WILL KRIFF LUKE SKYWALKER! at the end. It was the last command.

Mara actually has a nightmare in Union #3 that goes something along the lines of this WMG; well, the last part anyway.

Vader didn't become a cyborg all at once

The end of episode Three felt kinda forced, to try and match up Anakin Skywalker and cyborg Darth Vader. But Vader had twenty years of pitiless combat to be honed into a killing machine, losing more and more of himself to battle.

I'm not sure how to resolve his duel with and defeat by Obi-Wan, though.
- It also does seem odd that Obi-Wan would leave him to burn, both for reasons of mercy and practicality.
It's actually implied by Mara Jade that Palpatine used to carnally punish Vader as well. Not to mention he impaled himself on a lightsaber in the duel with Maul in Resurrection.
- That last one's from the non-Canon stories listed in Star Wars Tales, though. Vader did it to stab Darth Maul (a clone of him, actually) through himself. Maul Clone then asks incredulously what Vader could possibly hate enough to destroy him, and he replies: "Myself."

Miscellaneous

The Empire would have lost against the Vong, but for entirely different reasons.

Forget Han's awesome Imperial superweapon speech. The Galactic Empire was a corrupt, Sith-backed totalitarian terror state that practiced widespread disfranchisement and brutality against the majority of its populace. By the time of the Vong invasion, the Galaxy would have endured 40 years of this. The Vong wouldn't be seen as extra-galactic invaders by most people, they'd have been seen as liberators. The Peace Brigade? That would have been a drop in a bucket compared to what The Empire would have to face, and much of it more legitimate than what the New Republic had to deal with.

Random nonhuman: What's this you say, Imperial scum? They come to enslave us and murder our children? Assuming this isn't more Imperial propaganda like how Alderaan was blown up by the Rebels, how's that any different than you?

Dark Forces—Just what are the Dark Troopers?

We know what the various components of the Dark Troopers are made from—the metal from the Gromas Mines known as Phrik. But we never really found out just what the Dark Troopers are. From the first encounter with a Phase 1 DT on Gromas, we're made to believe that the Dark Troopers are just droid soldiers, but in the briefing where General Rom Mohc's backstory is given to us it states that he opposed the construction of the Death Star because he believed it eliminated the need for physical combat on the battlefield. Since Mohc relishes the thought of an honorable battle between soldiers, it seems uncharacteristic of him to construct mere droids to fight the Empire's battles. Add to it that we fight Mohc in his own Dark Trooper suit at the end of the game, and I've got a theory as to what exactly the Dark Troopers are.

When he first began production on the Dark Troopers, General Mohc traveled the systems of the Empire, searching for the best and most elite troops he could find to enlist in a "special project" that he said would make them the strongest fighting force in the Empire. He promised that these elite troopers would become "gods among men", and would carry enough power to lay waste to the Rebellion once and for all. All they had to do was accept his offer. Most of the troops he approached accepted immediately, driven by thoughts of greed or ambition to become the best of the best in the Empire. They were taken to the Arc Hammer and ordered to report to the medical facilities, and that is when Mohc carried out their transformation. The troops were each brought in and sedated on an operating table, while a medical droid with a scalpel attachment carefully opened their cranial cavities and removed their brains. Once in the proper life support containers, their brains would be lobotomized and modified, removing any forms of personality or memory from them along with anything that would hinder them from rational, mechanical thought, turning them into cold, heartless, unfeeling killing machines. They were also given special brainwashing implants that would ensure that they served Mohc and the Empire fully and completely, without question. After the modifications were made, the brains of the elite troopers would be placed into a cybernetic chassis, and their own Imperial pride would forever condemn them to exist as the Empire's newest weapon, the Dark Trooper.

Of course, initial tests of the procedure were far from successful. Some of the subjects succumbed to fits of madness and were nothing more than useless, gibbering husks. Others killed themselves immediately after activation. And there were a few who went on vicious killing sprees, turning their weapons on anything that moved before eventually being put down. But once the process was perfected, Mohc submitted his proposal to Darth Vader with the massacre of Talay and the subsequent destruction of Tak Base. Vader accepted, and Mohc continued his work on the Dark Troopers before being thwarted by the intervention of Kyle Katarn, the mercenary hired by the Rebels after information about the Dark Troopers was leaked by Crix Madine. His plans on the verge of failure, Mohc had the same brain transplant operation performed on himself so he could fight Kyle in one-on-one combat while also testing out his newest design of Dark Trooper armor. One thing Mohc didn't count on, however, was that while his Dark Troopers were powerful and nigh invincible, they lacked a vital quality that made the troops selected for the project stand out, something that Kyle had an abundance of—the imagination and creativity of the human mind. Kyle had used this to his advantage and was able to defeat Mohc and destroy the Arc Hammer, ending the threat of the Dark Troopers once and for all.

Rebel Force isn't just a Stealth Sequel to Last of the Jedi, but written by Watson under a new penname.

The Rebel Force series not only contains several characters from Watson's earlier books but shares a similar writing style, even for a YA book series. The fact that the characters are introduced slowly into the six book series and it's written by a "new author" seems to indicate that either Lucasfilm or publisher Scholastic was afraid of Continuity Lockout for people that hadn't read Jedi Apprentice, Jedi Quest, and Last of the Jedi.

The Clone Wars were the Jedi Council's way to make up for the failure of the Mandalorian Wars.

As shown in KOTOR and KOTOR 2, the conflict split the Jedi Order as the more idealistic Jedi Knights flocked to Revan's banner in saving the galaxy from the Mandalorian invaders, and that in many ways set up for the darkness to come in the following centuries and millennia. The Jedi Council had been correct about a corrupting influence behind the Mandalorians working to undermine them, as TOR shows, though as the KOTOR games make abundantly clear, if Revan hadn't acted, the Republic would have promptly fallen to the Mandalorians, and who knows whether or not they would have allowed the Jedi to continue practicing their faith and upholding galactic law as peacekeepers? Thus, following the Ruusan Reformations, the Jedi of the prequels era tend to be more learned than Jedi of previous generations, with access to their enormous archives dating back to 25,000 years of history and all the holocrons and other sources of historical information they'd accumulated, so that by the time the Separatists had raised a droid army, the Council decided it wouldn't repeat the mistakes that had so badly fractured the order several thousand years prior, and possibly herald a new coming darkness that would likewise last for centuries and millennia - they would challenge this threat head-on alongside the Republic military, but they would also secretly work behind the scenes to expose the dark forces working against them, unaware as to how expertly the Sith had redefined themselves in the thousand years since, and the rest, as you all know, is history!

Sidious gave the Jedi droids to fight because of the Mandalorian Wars.

It's been stated within the Revenge of the Sith novelization by Matt Stover that in his grand chessmaster gambit, Palpatine was providing the Jedi with irresistible bait. This takes it a step further. As a learned student of history, he likewise was aware of the problems the Jedi had faced during the Mandalorian Wars, primarily their debates on the role of the Jedi, that of peacekeeper vs. warrior, as the Jedi Council of the time had worried that striking down so many other living beings in a war scenario would drive them to the dark side, and so set them up with machines to fight, an enemy they would have no qualms with slicing down without a second thought, as the Jedi didn't really view them as sapient beings that had rights, in his bid to overextend the Jedi Order and spread them thinly across the galaxy, surrounded by as many programmed assassins as he could put under their command in the form of the clone army.

Legend's decanonization happened In-universe.

At one point, be it because of Aboleth or Darth Krayt, the timeline was shattered. All of history was destroyed in a moment. The Force tried its best to fix the damage, but so much of history was lost that it was impossible to restore it to what it was. The Disney Canon is the best attempt at reconstructing the timeline that isn't wildly unstable.

WMG / Star Wars Legends

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