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Wild Mass Guessing for Catching Fire can be found here, the page Mockingjay is here, and the page for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is here.

There was no "Rebellion" in the Dark Days
So, the timeline as we know it, or rather as it is taught by the Capital??? Years ago: Great Cataclysms
"the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained."
?? Years ago: Panem is formed. For some reason, the districts go to war, with the Capital (and possible each other?)74 Years ago: The Capital is victorious, writes the Treaty of Treason, starting the Hunger Games.

What exactly, tells us that the Districts rebelled, or were under the rule of the Capital in the first place? And the Districts are far too evenly divided, along both ethnic and social lines, to be natural. Given how much other revisionist history the Capital spews, it's more than possible that some number of separate states formed, went to war with each other, and the one that was finally victorious divided up the land and the people, called itself "the Capital" and gave demands of its member states about what it wanted each to produce, moving around people en mass to divide them up into visually similar ethnic groups and reinforce their divisions, hoping that if any District rebelled, they would have too little in common with their neighbors to gain the support of the majority of Districts.

  • But 74 years isnt that long of a time. There are likely people still alive who could conceivably remember the first hunger games. Mags for instance. And even if those in the districts didn't know the truth, 13 certainly would.

The designs on the covers of the books represent the Capitol and the Districts, connected by train
The first book has two circle things each connected to a middle circle with lines, and Katniss's mockingjay pin. The circles outside the middle are districts connected to the Capitol in the center by train tracks. On the Catching Fire cover the middle Capitol circle is divided up into wedges like the Quarter Quell arena (which I think was located in or very near the Capitol) and depicts a jabberjay. The Mockingjay cover features of course a mockingjay, and the circles and train tracks are all broken up because the Capitol and Districts are now at war.

Foxface was in love with Katniss.
Either that, or she had another reason to want her to win or survive.First of all, Foxface is shown to excel in subtlety and observational awareness. She always knows where all of the other players are. She doesn't seem to help anyone else except for Katniss. Now just before you stop me and say she didn't help anyone, think about it. When Katniss was in trouble, she showed her the way.
  • Example 1: She shows her how to bypass the mines at the food cache.
  • Example 2: She shows Katniss that she can make it to the “feast” and back out safely.
Also, there's a question. In the start of the movie, Foxface was shown to be quizzing herself on poisonous plants. So she would have known that those berries she took from Peeta were poisonous. So why would she take them? If she was hungry, she could've harvested her own berries. I can't believe that she would just steal twenty berries when Peeta had just shown her the bush. She would've taken them herself. So my argument is that she wanted to kill herself to save Katniss and Peeta (because she knows two can survive). You might ask why wouldn't she eat her own berries, when she could've at any point during the games. I propose that she did so for two reasons.
  • One: She wanted Peeta to know they were poisonous, specifically because she didn't want Katniss to lose Peeta.
  • Two: She wanted Katniss to know, or at least figure out, that she loved her. Foxface could've killed herself any way, at any time, but she chose to do it publicly. This would reveal that she's been following Katniss and Peeta this WHOLE TIME, but it would also put the question in Katniss's mind; 'Why would she steal twenty berries from Peeta?

The girl who lit the fire the first night of the 74th Hunger Games deliberately committed suicide by Careers.
Katniss calls her "the biggest idiot in the Games" - surely anyone would know better than to light a fire at night with the Careers out prowling, after years of being required to watch the Games. The girl probably didn't want to kill anyone, but couldn't publicly not try to without Snow taking it out on her family, so pretended to accidentally get killed by the Careers before she got the chance to kill anyone.

It is set in the future of the Maximum ride series.
Think about it. There are the mutts, all the high tech stuff and the biggest connection is in mockingjay, when they mention the stuff that is no longer avalible to them, like 'biological weapons with expiration dates'. Ummm that sounds familiar, doesn't it? Maybe the war and the Games were what Max was meant to save the world from, but failed.
  • Alternatively, she saved part of the world. The rest of the world -other then Panem- that is never mentioned the the trilogy consists only of the experiment's island.

True to censorship of sex over violence, the movies will not show or mention about victors being pimped out
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  • Jossed; it's brought up in Mockingjay.

Clove and Katniss were secretly allied.
Exhibit A: Clove offs the boy about to kill Katniss at the bloodbath and then misses Katniss with her throwing knife, which lands in Katniss's pack. Number one, wouldn't it be to Clove's advantage to wait the extra second for the boy to kill Katniss before whacking him? Number two, wasn't it established that Clove's aim is incredible and that she never misses? It seemed that she was protecting Katniss and wanted her to have that knife.

Exhibit B: When the Careers have Katniss cornered in the tree, Clove stood there and did nothing. As seen in the bloodbath earlier, Clove should have had no trouble finishing Katniss at that distance. So, why didn't she?

Exhibit C: At the feast, Clove seems to want Katniss as nothing other than dead when she first sees her. So why would she monologue? Is she holding off Cato?

The entire setting takes place after Caesar's Legion takes over the East coast.
After their defeat at Hoover Dam, and because of the death of Caesar and inability to maintain control under the Legate Lanius, remnants of Caesar's legion fought their way Eastward. It could explain why they use Roman Latin naming. As for the tech: without Caesar's influence that technology is bad, the remnants grew to become accustom to technology, and some even learned how to make them. The fashion though, I assume it's because some of them are a bit... loony.
  • Alternatively, it is what becomes of Caesar's lands once the NCR wipe them out. They have a President after all and women are seen as being equals in the military. It is also possible that District 13 is the home of descendants of the Brotherhood of Steel; they have a lot of power in the East, less so in the West which is still NCR territory and live in an underground bunker.

All those Roman names are honoriffics given to Capitol officials.
The founders of Panem has decided a Greco-Roman theme would be fitting to their regime. Maybe they are Italian Americans, maybe Latin-speaking intellectuals or the equivalent of Caesar's Legion.

Dictrict 3 runs the internet.
District 3, electronics, is a geeky district. They understand electricity, unlike most people in the Capitol, as well as computers. They mostly run websites about the Hunger Games, including extra footage and ways for people to sponsor or bet on tributes.

Mad Max takes place during the same time as the Hunger Games.
Why hasn't anyone come to help Panem out of their dictatorial nightmare? Most other places have devolved into complete anarchy or are worse off than Panem. In particular, Australia's mostly-coastal civilization was put underwater by global warming. Mad Max takes place in the desolate Outback that WASN'T put underwater.
  • There's at least one nation that hasn't descend to anarchy or follow the same way as Panem. After the war(s) that nearly devastated the Earth, this nation decided to live in peace. Refugees from other nations are welcome. The leaders of this nation try to stop the Hunger Games, but Panem refuses to let this happen as they believe they must continue to "repent" for what humanity has done and forced them to cease their actions.
  • Is this other nation by any chance named "Ooo"?

Katniss and Peeta keep the memories of their fellow tributes alive through bedtime stories they tell their children.

They obviously use them as protagonists in completely fictional, child-friendly stories having nothing to do with the Hunger Games.

Marval and Glimmer are two vain, shallow souls from District One who are thrust into the wilderness with only a spear and a bow and arrows and learn standard life-long lessons to come with the situation. Cato and Clove are a pair of brave warriors who ended a civil war in District Two. Foxface is a clever, well-meaning Robin Hood-like character from District Five who is killed by a Capitol bounty hunter, but her spirit continues to look after those who truly need it. Rue is a skilled bandit from District Eleven whose life is saved by Thresh, who becomes like a brother to her.

Katniss and Peeta may or may not have included their own story, with all names changed, of course. The girl's favorite story is the one about Foxface, whose cunning she greatly admires. The boy's favorite is the one about Rue and Thresh because he thinks they sound cool.

  • Okay the above become headcanon for this Troper because it's just so heartwarming...

Finnick is related to sugarcube guy from Baccano!
Yes, it's probably because of their love for sugarcubes.
Panem is Earth-That-Was from Firefly.
Everything about the society seems to reflect very similarly to how societies function in Firefly, with a decadent, aloof Core system (the capitol) and a bunch of outlying Rim planets (the Districts). Panem is what's left of Earth after the starships left to go somewhere else, thinking Earth was wholly used up and Panem is comprised of those who remained afterward.
  • The reason for travelling to other systems in Firefly was (amongst others) that Earth became too crowded; in The Hunger Games, there are few humans left and extinction is used as an argument for a ceasefire.
Miss Yukari takes over District 13 after the revolution.
Well, there was nobody left to run it after the revolution, so the residents probably voted her in, thinking she'd be a better leader than President Coin.
  • Well, just so long as she doesn't start up a taxi service, they'd probably have a pretty good time.
Panem isn't the remains of America - It's the remains of the One Piece world
And, some of the Districts match up perfectly with locations in One Piece - District 4 would be Water Seven, District 2 would probably be Alabasta, District 10 or 11 would be that island Ace was on in his cover story, and the Capitol would be Enies Lobby/Impel Down/Marineford/Mariejois. Plus, don't the Capitol residents who have dyed skin kind of remind you of Fishmen?
The Pokémon universe is set in Panem centuries after Katniss overthrew the Capitol; Pokemon evolved out of Capitol muttations set loose after the war
After Panem fell and there was no more Capitol to deal with the muttations, they were set loose in the wilderness. Over time, tracker jackers, etc. became Beedrills, etc., technology were developed to capture these animals, and inspired by a warped, legendary view of Katniss, 10-year-old kids began taming muttations and going out on journeys through the forest.Ash Ketchum has olive skin, dark hair, and a nature-based first name, pegging him as coming from the former District 12. The theme naming based on region/employment was kept, and Misty/the water gym area is what used to be District 4; Brock comes from 2, Surge from 5, Erika from 7, etc. The color-named cities came from popular depictions of the luxury in the former Capitol.

A part of the series is set around the time the events of Jyu-Oh-Sei occured
Both Hunger Games and Jyu-Oh-Sei have one common element — Teenagers fighting (and sometimes to the death) for survival in a futuristic society. I'm thinking that sometime during the war that led to the creation of Panem, many people fled to the space colonies (like Chimera, Hecate, and Juno) for their safety. But, because Panem was a dystopia that was going to fall to a revolution, they kept it a secret from their citizens to prevent another war. Plus, The fortress for the Blanc Ring residents looks strikingly smiliar to District 13.
Lady Gaga had something to do with the planning of the Capitol
People in the Capitol have ridiculous hairstyles, outlandish clothing, and some of them even dye their skin. Lady Gaga is known for her hairstyles and clothing, so she may have had some type of influence on the culture in the Capitol.
  • Her and Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie. I'd buy that they influenced a lot.
  • Actually,(believe it or not) there is a method to what Lady Gaga wears. The people in the Capitol seem to wear what they do because they think it looks stylish. So it may be that they saw pictures of Lady Gaga and thought she looked cool, and decided to dress like her. Or it may be something entirely different.

Foxface knew that they were nightlock berries
In the training room, she was doing that huge plant memorization game and flying through it. And during her interview, she said that she would always analyze the situation and apply herself. Additionally, without others to reliably steal food from, she was starving. So when it came down to her and the fearful Thresh and Cato, and the unstoppable team from 12, or death by starvation she knew she had no chance of winning. Seeing Peeta with the berries just made her ending quicker and hopefully less painful. The reason she also took the cheese was because she was worried that if the Capitol knew it was suicide they would hurt her family.
  • This is very likely, actually. I doubt someone as clever as Foxface would be stupid enough to die from unknowingly eating poison berries. I think she knew her chances of winning were low then, so the most she could do was kill herself in a quick and painless way. And in doing so, she'd ensure nobody else would get the pleasure of killing her and that (by taking the cheese) the capitol would never know of her true intentions and her family would be safe. In a way, then, she was a Victorious Loser.
  • This explains it all! First read I was extremely puzzled on how Foxface, who Katniss remarked to be the smartest person the arena just died because she mistook a deadly berry for a safe one. This makes even less sense in the movie where one of the shots of her is at the EDIBLE PLANTS station.
    • This could be Fridge Brilliance at the fact she was possibly revising what berries to eat and what not to eat. This could also turn into Fridge Horror when realizing that she went into the games possibly thinking that she might end up killing herself if faced with a challenge she know she won't be able to survive.
  • Also fits well with Katniss' line from the beginning of the book, albeit with poison.
Gale and I agree that if we have to choose between dying of hunger and a bullet in the head, the bullet would be much quicker.

Peeta is named after pita bread
His parents are bakers. The difference in spelling can be attributed to years that have passed between now and then. Mrs. Everdeen the apothecary named both her daughters after plants, and Peeta's parents named their son after bread.
  • Peeta is a terrible name. They should have named him something dignified, something proud... young Turn Over.
  • I believe that District 12's name scheme for children (yes, fanfiction authors, they have name schemes!) are named after their parents' professions. Katniss and Primrose are plants; Katniss and Primrose are the daughters of the owner of the apothecary. Peeta is a corruption of pita, a type of bread; his parents run the bakery. A gale is a gust of wind, staying nowhere at once; and when we first meet Gale, his mother is unemployed, wandering like the wind.
  • Except I think it's mentioned at one point in the first book that it was Katniss's father who named her, and I think Primrose as well.
    • Their father was a hunter and brought the plants to their mother. And it beats having to name them after something coal-related, if only for the reason that so many others in the district would do so.
    • Presumably Gale's mother didn't hold off on naming him until she had become an unemployed widow. His name has nothing to do with his parents' professions. His siblings are Rory, Vick and Posy which (at least to me, a non-native English speaker) doesn't seem related to any particular profession. Also neither Haymitch, Madge nor Delly have names that relate to their parents' jobs.

Peeta is not named after pita bread
So many people say so because of the sound-alike but the spelling is quite different and that matters a lot in the evolution/etymology of names. Nobody ever relates his name to his occupation in story, and pita bread is never mentioned as even being eaten or known of by that name. Peeta is just a random word, possibly a variation of the name Peter. Did Delly Cartwright's family run a deli? Did Haymitch's family pitch hay or something?

At least in part, the districts were used to separate different sectors of culture and/or races
There's very little variety in the districts. Other than the blonde town kids and the olive-skinned Seam kids, you see no racial variety within the districts. In 11, everyone is described as "dark-skinned," and if you read very carefully in the text, the District 3 tributes could be seen as Asian-looking, with their dark hair and ashy skin. Also, both districts behave like (very unfortunate) stereotypes may portray those races. From what we've seen of District 1, the tributes are fair, with the female District 1 tribute being described as blonde. I think that when the districts were created, different races were penned off into them to prevent diversity. Perhaps the Capitol though that a more diverse population would lead to greater tolerance of other Districts? I have two theories for District 12: One being that a certain economic group was put there, and the other is that the "town" residents were originally from another District, but were put into 12 to both raise the population (the whole place only has 8,000 people) or to run the town.
  • Crosses the line to Unfortunate Implications quite easily: District 11 people are "dark skinned", live in the south, work the earth and are treated horribly by their masters. The District 3 people are all Asian and Nerdy. District 4 is made up of Irish fishermen (with red hair and names like "Finnick O'dair"). And, the District 10 residents are descendants of Mexican cattle ranchers.
    • And you think that's accidental? The founders/organizers of Panem and the districts were inhumane enough to make a spectacle out of almost two dozen children being killed every year, and canny enough to do it in a way that will mostly pit the districts against one another. Why wouldn't they divide up people into districts by pre-disaster stereotypes, reinforcing xenophobia and divisions among them?
  • Sounds like a classic founder effect to me. EG, the descendants of a few families of coal miners way back in the hills of West Virginia (maybe they hid in the mines when the bombs fell) survived the apocalypse and were later annexed by the Capitol. A genetic bottleneck gives most of district 12 the similar, limited set of genes.

Nudity is no big deal, at least in the Capitol
Katniss mentions that sometimes the tributes show up in the chariots naked. Her prep team sees her naked all the time. In Catching Fire, when the thing with the dress happens, she wonders if it has left her naked. And then there's Johanna...
  • Well, with all the other stuff in the Capitol, I wouldn't be surprised.
  • I'd think it would be specifically a Capitol thing. Remember how squeamish Katniss is when she thinks about being naked in front of everyone, or when she has to see Peeta in his underwear to clean his leg wound? Nudity is definitely a big deal for her.
    • Johanna, Finnick and Peeta are all decidedly not squeamish about being naked (or half-naked) and Glimmer’s interview dress was see-through, so I think nudity is mostly a big deal just for Katniss and it’s meant to showcase how out of place she is in the Capitol and around other people. Either that or Values Dissonance between 12 and the other Districts and the Capitol and Peeta was too sick/worried about dying to care about what people saw.
      • Well, Johanna's a Shameless Fanservice Girl, Glimmer was going for the same thing, Peeta is mostly The Stoic, and Finnick was from the fishing district (where, presumably, people spend a lot of time in the water and thus in various states of undress) - not to mention he's spent the last several years of his life as a sex slave, so it would follow that none of them are all that concerned about nudity.
      • Though Katniss doesn't seem especially bothered about stripping off for her prep team, even initially.
    • It's just one way to showcase how different Katniss is to the people of the Capitol, and to the other victors. When she strips down for the prep team, she's not given much of a choice, plus Haymitch had already told her to do what they say. On top of that, it seems like Katniss is more uncomfortable with other people's nudity than her own.
      • Not to mention she pretty much states outright that themakeup and strange hair colors sported by the Capitol stylists pushed them so far into the Uncanny Valley that she had a hard time even thinking of them as human, and compared them instead to "oddly-colored birds".

Mirror's Edge takes place in the Capitol
A sparkling clean city with cameras EVERYWHERE and information is so closely controlled that even outside on a roof you have to whisper? Familiar, no?
  • Only further backed up by Mockingjay, wherein most of the movement throughout the Capitol occurs via service shafts and the like. Anyone who has played Mirror's Edge knows just how much time you spend in ventilation ducts and gritty unseen areas.
  • Actually, while the Capitol is described as colourful, Mirror's Edge is about lack of vivid colours by game design (the colour red is seen almost exclusively using runner vision and developers actually said things about cold/warm colour contrast). Although, the trigger-happy blues of Mirror's Edge and the peacekeepers of Mockingjay bear striking similarities. And both cities are brought down (though only implied in ME) by a girl trying to save her sister.

The Hunger Games takes place in the same future as Mortal Engines.
Civilization in America did survive the Sixty Minute War, but the rest of the world thought it was completely destroyed, which is why Panem is isolated, and between District 13 and the Capital, any large groups approaching are shot down, leaving people to believe that anyone going there dies of fallout or something similar. It could be that Panem is concealing the history of the Sixty Minutes War either because they have lost the records, or wanted to conceal their shame. District 13 has fallout shelters meant for the long term, which may have been created before Panem even formed. Also, that would explain what the rest of the world is up to.
  • The fashion of coloring one's skin in fantastic shades is deliberately imitating the appearance of Scriven, while at the same time the slang term "Mutt" for "mutant" or "mutation" may indicate prejudice against the actual Scriven. North America may even be considered the "Dead Continent" because America specialized in biological warfare and genetics (see all the mutant species), and during the Sixty Minutes War unleashed biological weapons on the rest of the world, which could explain why President Snow believes that everyone outside Panem is dead.
  • The The Mutts at the end are clearly Stalkers, technologically reanimated corpses, which may or may not retain their original personalities, but can be programmed to hunt and kill specific people. The Mutts are just biological rather than mechanical in their reanimation, but otherwise the same principle: take a corpse, stuff it full of technology in and around it, and send it back to kill its friends/killers for psychological shock and horror value.

The Hunger Games are in the future of Battle Royale.
The resemblances are clearly there. Apparently after whatever happened to North America, the Panem government thought that the Greater East Asia had some pretty good ideas.

The idea for The Hunger Games evolved from old shows such as 'Big Brother' and 'Survivor'
There are lots of similarities between these shows and the Games: being stuck in an enclosed area with strangers, elimination (death in the latter), the idea of fierce compitition. I think that the Capitol was not wholly original in their idea of the Games, but drew back into pre-disaster North America and drew ideas from these old shows.
  • There's death in Survivor?
  • This was part of the point of the series- to show how sick those shows really are.

Well, jumping off of that, maybe the Hunger Games are the apotheosis of … wait for it … Total Drama, which gets more insane every season.

I mean think about it: the islands were the original arenas, and those shows already had massive helpings of borderline-lethal challenges, actually lethal intern working conditions, arena manipulation (see Revenge of the Island, or even more so Pahkitew Island, which was revealed to be largely artificial), and a sadistic host to boot. It's not farfetched to imagine that, soon after the Rebellion, when the Capitol first consolidates control, its media department went out researching effective propaganda methods to keep the districts in line, but nothing was clicking … until one of the would-be Gamemakers stumbles upon a broadcast of old Total Drama reruns.

Alternatively, the Total Drama franchise itself is running well into the future, even surviving the Dark Days, and quite possibly tolerating greater and greater abuse and violence with each annual iteration; by the time of the Dark Days, it's common for contestants to die on the show, just not at their competitors' hands (at least, not by show mandate). Sensing an opportunity, the Capitol's media producers strike a deal with the TD producers to buy out the franchise. Once Total Drama's been nationalised and included into the lineup of Capitol propaganda, the new producers add a newer, deadlier twist: why not require the contestants to actually kill each other?

  • Adding onto this, Danganronpa was an intermediary form between Total Drama and the Hunger Games. The format wasn’t perfected until the first Hunger Games. Further, the Hunger Games eventually devolved into The Running Man, thanks to The Remnant of Coin’s ideology and ways taking over and using killing games for “good” purposes, killing Capitol citizens at first before targeting anyone they didn’t like. Battle Royale and Your Turn to Die are both intermediary forms between Danganronpa and The Hunger Games. Effectively, a series of Happy Ending Override after Happy Ending Override, turning killing games into a constant threat to be overcome again and again by the forces of good.
    • All we need to do now is incorporate SAW into this.

One of the disasters that led to the creation of Panem was a huge earthquake in California
Here in Southern California, whenever an earthquake hits, mentions of a catastrophic earthquake called "The Big One" usually surface. We've seen a glimpse of what happens in San Fransisco and in Los Angeles when huge earthquakes struck the city (the earthquake in 1906, the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake and the 1994 Northridge Earthquake), and these quakes could lead to huge tsunamis, fires, and land/rock/mudslides. Then again, engineers and construction workers have developed and will develop ways to prevent the Big One from being catastrophic.

President Snow is a Peeta/Katniss shipper
...What? Until the third book comes out it's the only rational explanation of why he insisted that Peeta and Katniss ham up the romantic performance even though he knew it wouldn't stop the rebellion. After all, there's really no reason he'd think that dressing them up in their wedding clothes for the interview would actually help. If anything, it would only elicit the reaction it did.
  • It's seen throughout the series (made most obvious in Mockingjay) that President Snow toys with his victors for fun and profit, especially in their relations with other characters. This fits perfectly with his hiring out Finnick to Capitol girls to keep him from Annie, and the slaughter of Haymitch's loved ones
  • Confirmed in the third book, as he thought that by having Katniss actually fall in love with Peeta, she will have a weakness with which he can break her. And he almost succeeds.

Peeta's name is a corruption of the name Peter
Nearly everyone's name is a noun of some sort (Katniss, Snow, Gale, Primrose, etc) but Peeta isn't. It's argued it's a corruption of a type of bread, which also makes sense, but since this was our world (probably), some names remaining makes sense.
  • The etymology fits remarkably well, although the truth probably lies somewhere between this and the WMG that he's named after the type of bread.
  • When I read the books I made this assumption, Peeta = Peter, Haymitch = Hamish
  • Actually Peeta be refering to rock or stone, he's often described as being big strong and sturdy, and for Katniss he is the reliable sturdy choice.
The Reapings are all rigged.
Katniss has already stated that the children of victors aren't excluded, and in fact they're put in the arena too often to be luck of the draw. So those are definitely rigged. The reapings could be rigged to weed out anyone who might try to start an uprising while they're still young. Peeta talks about not being the Capitol's pawn in the Games, and it's possible he's disliked the Capitol and spoke about it at some point before the reaping. We already know that Katniss said bad things about the Capitol as a child. Prim was chosen in the reaping because it was known that Katniss hunted illegally and they didn't want her to be able to win with her hunting skills, so hurting her emotionally by having her sister killed was the best thing they could do to her. Gale was never chosen because he has hunting skills and he's strong, giving him a chance to win, and the Capitol doesn't want anyone who is against them to become a victor.
  • And then there's Haymitch, who was a liability to the Capitol's stability from the beginning, yet somehow got drawn?
    • That's why he was reaped during a Quarter Quell. They figured that, with 47 other kids against him, including (presumably) a Career pack of 12, he wouldn't have a chance. Not only was the timing convenient, they wanted to use the Quell to kill him off as opposed to a random accident back in D12. More entertainment for the masses.
    • I actually wondered at that myself, especially during the first book. I think somehow Katniss's little excursions were known about and they decided the games would be her punishment and her sister's name coming up would be the dramatic icing on the cake.
    • This is completely defeated by the twist of the first Quarter Quell, where the Districts voted on which tributes to send into the arena. At least one game is exempt.
      • Or they could have just rigged the votes. Kinda defeats the purpose of the punishment, though...
      • Well, Katniss did mention that it would have have been much worse to be voted into the games than picked randomly, so maybe they did this for a sort of psychological thing to mess with the kids' heads, make them less happy to go home if they win, stuff like that.
      • Oh, like they made the kids think that they had been chosen as tributes by the people of their districts even though the tributes in the games might not have necessarily been the ones with the most votes? That'd certainly make the Victor more willing to bend to the Capitol's will (because whatever district loyalty they had would be at least tarnished in most cases and the Capitol would be providing for their every want and need) and less likely to stir up trouble and they could still cherry pick the most appropriate children to be in the Games.
      • I think that even if the games ARE rigged, forcing the districts to vote instead of making it "the luck of the draw" would have a heavy psychological impact on both the tributes and the populace. The people will be forced to send two of their citizens to their potential deaths (considering the impracticalities of going through 8000 people, it will likely be chosen from those that they know personally), while the tributes will be angered at the apparent betrayal of being forced into The Hunger Games.
  • To tie this in with another theory about the rebellion beginning before the 74th Games, it could be the rebels, somehow armed with knowledge that Katniss is a skilled hunter, the object of Peeta's affections, and completely devoted to protecting Prim, that they rigged the box so Prim would be selected in order to get Katniss to volunteer, thus creating the Mockingjay. Admittedly, that does rely on a bit of Gambit Roulette, but this is WMG, after all.
  • Back to the original theory that Prim was reaped as punishment for Katniss's hunting. Then why didn't they wait a year to have Prim selected when Katniss couldn't volunteer?
    • Getting Prim killed would have pushed Katniss into rebelling since nothing would be holding her back. Pushing Katniss into becoming a Victor by having her volunteer for Prim lets the Capitol put a leash on her and keep an eye. Plus there are rebel insiders in the Capitol and they probably manipulated things to help Katniss become the figurehead she was in Mockingjay.

Lavinia (the Avox that Katniss recognizes) was escaping to District 13 when Katniss and Gale saw her and the boy in the woods.
Both Katniss and Peeta felt like she looked like she was from the Capitol. Why else would someone from the Capitol be in District 12?
  • Confirmed in Mockingjay.

Where is everything?
Since Word of God states there will be no map, we may as well try to figure it out on our own. This troper thinks it's obvious that all of Panem is in North America. Please use the bullet point format to suggest locations and do not remove what other people have said! This is NOT a reference for what is correct (except for facts about districts, like "District 12 does coal mining"); this is Wild Mass Guessing.
  • Updated to give Word of God exports, pursuant to the new viral site.
  • The Capitol: Mountainous city.
    • West of or lying in the Rockies, cold in winter with substantial snowfall. Probably Montana/southern Alberta, judging by climate.
    • Quite possibly founded by the survivors from a government hidey-hole in Cheyenne mountain (or something similar)
    • Denver. Considered to be the backup capital of the US (should anything ever happen to DC).
      • The problem with Denver as the capitol is that the Capitol is described as "ringed by mountains," and while Denver has some pretty impressive mountains to the west, it's flat as the proverbial pancake to the north, south, and east.
    • Aspen. It's mountainous on all sides, cold and snowy, in the center of the country, and already home to a fairly decadent culture.
    • Reno. It snows there in the winter and people go there to be entertained. If it is Reno, then I have a feeling that the arena in Katniss and Peeta's Games was in Lake Tahoe. Add to that, there's a part of Reno that is called the Tessera District (Tessera, as we know, is the singluar form of Tesserae, which equals more grain and oil in exchange for more entries for the Games).
    • Vancouver, British Columbia — assuming the author hasn't gone with the "absurd sea level rise" angle.
    • Los Angeles.
      • Can't be Los Angeles - even though there's the San Gabriel Mountains nearby - because the Capitol was stated to be in a snowy area where the Rockies would be. This Troper is a Los Angelino, and she's only seen snow in the Los Angeles area three times (and, it usually doesn't stick).
      • If global warming has left some or other layer of the atmosphere "too thin for airplanes to fly in," I think it'd be a safe bet that it has affected the climate quite massively.
    • Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It's already a rich area in real life, and fits the description of the Capitol perfectly.
  • District 1: Luxury goods.
    • Could be anywhere, probably a former metropolitan center like New York City.
    • Can't be NYC. Districts 1-4 were mentioned as being closer to the Capitol, and partially because of that, more their favorites. 2 was the closest, but no one knows how big the Seam is.
      • Districts 3 & 4 aren't distinctly mentioned to be close by, especially considering 3 isn't a career district. 1 is probably California.
      • I support the theory that 1 is in California. I would also like to add on to this theory - I believe that District 1 would include the areas of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, since both cities are world-famous centers of luxury and decedance.
    • California and Nevada. They already have luxury good and service industries, and produce a lot of gold and gemstones.
  • District 2: Masonry
    • Colorado and environs, without dispute. Marble is mentioned as an export, and Colorado is the only mountainous producer of marble on the continent.
    • Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. It's mentioned to be close to the capital, but if my theory about the Capitol being in Colorado, it's unlikely to be Colorado, since it's not all that plausible that Colorado rebelled if the centre of authority is there (see my theory about Loyalist Regions below).
    • Doesn't District 2 include the "Nut"? Sounds like Cheyenne Mountain to me.
    • Northeastern California/Northwestern Nevada, including Lake Tahoe, Carson City, and maybe Reno. The entire time I read the Nut scene in Mockingjay, I kept picturing Heavenly Mountain in Lake Tahoe as the Nut.
  • District 3: Electronics.
    • Somewhere where steel and petroleum products are readily available, or possibly near the ocean where goods can be shipped from other areas. Judging by the fact that their seal seems to contain the space needle in it, Washington is a good bet.
    • New England. New England is up and coming in the technology and electronics sectors, especially around Boston. It's America's main rival to Silicon Valley.
    • Or just Silicon Valley itself, given that low-numbered Districts are supposed to be close to the Capitol.
    • I'd say somewhere between Northern California and the Washington-Canadian border, with San Fransisco/San Jose/Cupertino or Seattle as the most likely contenders, given that Google, Apple, and Microsoft have offices there.
    • The Hunger Games Adventures map places it in the Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio area (Americans please help this non-American troper check this, thanks).
  • District 4: Fishing (Finnick's district).
    • Finnick seems to know something about tropical plants. Somewhere on the Gulf Coast?
      • Finnick wasn't too familiar with tropical plants: Mags ate some nuts based on knowledge from previous games. However, there's some cultural implications that it's in New England/Maritime Canada, given the blatantly Gaelic nature of some of the names (Fionn = "fair", Odair(e) = "pale/dun"), the nature of their industry, and their wedding ceremony procedures. This would put 4 awfully far away from the Capitol, however.
      • It would make sense, though — the Grand Banks of Newfoundland were once renowned for the abundance of fish in the area.
    • My guess is the Pacific Northwest.
      • Confirmed in the Hunger Games Adventures map.
    • Southern California and possibly Baja California as well. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are vital trading/fishing spots in the world today, and it's hinted somewhere in the book that District 4 does some overseas trading with other nations.
    • Cascadia (Washington and Oregon). Fishing, especially salmon, is very important to the region's culture and economy today.
  • District 5: Power.
    • Florida. It produces the greatest amount of electricity of any state in the Union (including California).
    • Northern Quebec is the centre for a lot of hydroelectric power generation, to the point where hydro accounts for almost all of Quebec's generating capacity. This would conflict with the likely location of District 13 though (see below).
    • The Dakota's and Minnesota are high prospects. Given that there are 4 sources for power (oil in North Dakota, plenty of flat-lands to get winds across, not a lot of trees for lot of sun, and the Mississippi river for water), it would work well.
    • Possibly the Southwestern US. There's a lot of hydroelectric (Hoover Dam etc) and nuclear (where fallout/waste wouldn't disturb plants and crops) power there. Also seen in the movie, District 5 provides energy for the Capitol. With the capitol in the Rockies, this is possible.
  • District 6: Transportation.
    • Presumably dead center of the country, possibly leaning slightly closer to the major production centers of Panem (electronics and luxuries are produced in limited quantities, and are less likely need dedicated transport links than lumber or masonry). District 6 could well be in Nebraska, roughly in the middle of North America (ignoring the largely uninhabited areas of Northern Canada and Alaska) and home to Union Pacific and the largest railway yard in the world.
    • Somewhere near Detroit might be thematically fitting as well.
    • Texas. It has the most transport infrastructure of any state in the Union today.
    • The Chicago/St. Louis area? Famous for being the gateway to the West.
  • District 7: Lumber.
    • IIRC, this included redwoods. Pacific northwest?
    • Not redwood. Predominantly softwoods. Must be in between 12 and the Capitol, as Katniss guesses the train is passing through it on her way to the 74th Games.
      • I guess for that matter, there's no guarantee there haven't been major climate changes since present time that reforested any region of the US.
    • This Tropette thinks that District Seven could be somewhere around Minnesota, Wisconsin, and maybe the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, given the climate there.
    • Alaska. 12% of the country's forests are located in Alaska. No other state even comes close to the sheer amount of trees in Alaska.
      • A lot of Alaska is bare tundra though.
    • My guess is northern and central Ontario, probably stretching into Quebec and Manitoba. The softwood forests there are vast.
    • The Hunger Games Adventures map has District 7 in the Seattle and Vancouver area. It's the top left hand district in the link in the last point here.
  • District 8: Textiles.
    • North and South Carolina. It's really the only place left in the US with a textile industry.
      • On the Hunger Games Adventures map, North and South Carolina are submerged due to rising sea levels, or in District 12. We'll have to wait and see which of the currently locked districts is 8.
    • Lots of factories too. Could possibly be in the "rust belt" of Michigan/Ohio.
    • Chicago and the surrounding area. There were a lot of factories (especially clothing factories) during the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800's.
    • It could also possibly be in NYC, there were a lot of those factories there during the late 19th-early 20th century.
  • District 9: Grain
    • Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. These three states are the centre of the US' Corn Belt. Might also include the UP for aesthetics.
  • District 10: Livestock/husbandry. Likely Great Plains states/provinces, since it along with 7 are mentioned as necessary to pass through to get to the Capitol.
    • Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. Kansas is currently the second largest producer of cattle in the US (Texas is already used up with District 6). The High Plains in the other three states are likely to be used for it as well.
  • District 11: Agricultural (Rue's district). Hinted to be the Deep South, and the train heads that way on the victory tour.
    • Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. The location of the Cotton Belt (cotton is mentioned to be one of the district's exports). It's also the most likely district demographically to send two black children as tribute (as shown in the film at least).
      • Confirmed in the Hunger Games Adventures map. Not sure if it goes as far north as Tennessee though.
  • District 12: Coal (Katniss's district).
    • Given the fact that it's stated to be a week's walk from District 13, which is stuck in Quebec or Ontario, it's either Pennsylvania or possibly West Virginia. West Virginia has the largest coal output of all the states, which makes it a front runner.
      • In a book reading somewhere on YouTube, Collins gives Katniss a Southern accent, further supporting the West Virginia theory.
      • There's also the rich Kentucky coal mining fields.
      • As someone from Kentucky, I think Kentucky is the best possibility. There are a lot of woods in Kentucky, and the lake mentioned in my opinion is Cave Run because when I went there it was surrounded by woodlands. The same could also be said about the Kentucky River. Though I've never hunted there are places that I assume would be good hunting. And if we could no longer produce horses its not a long shot that we'd go back to coal mining.
      • Considering that before Daniel Boone, Kentucky was HUNTING grounds...
      • There are woodland-surrounded lakes throughout the continent. Besides, Cave Run Lake isn't even a natural lake, and given the obvious disintegration most relics of our time have suffered, the dam would probably be gone as would the lake itself.
      • IIRC The lake was never specified as being natural or artificial, and depending on when it was made, and how well it was made, theres a decent chance a dam could survive. That being said, Trout Pond in West Virginia would fit the bill decently enough I think. It's a natural lake in West Virginia, though not a huge one. It is located in an area with a large coal deposit, and a great deal of potential forest area. Plus it's closer to Canada, where district 13 would have to be if the info further down is accurate.
      • Also, there's nothing to suggest that district 12 doesn't run through both Kentucky and West Virginia.
      • Didn't Katniss state that District 12 was near Appalachia at some point?
      • That probably cuts W.Va. then. West Virginia isn't near Appalachia, it's the only state to exist entirely in Appalachia.
      • The precise quote states that it is located "in a region once known as Appalachia". West Virginia is still in.
      • It really makes sense to be in West Virginia, if the folks are Mediterranean descent. A friend of mine's family are coal miners and Italian and that's where they hail from, and she says a lot of folks there are like that.
      • If not for some evidence pointing otherwise (the Appalachia reference, the southern accent in the book reading, etc), it could also be in Atlantic Canada. 6.5 days walk from the Laurentian area to Halifax, Nova Scotia, according to Google Maps. I personally choose to believe this despite any evidence to the contrary, because I like to think that I live in/near District 12.
      • I'm an expy Nova Scotian and think this is a crock, you can walk a day and see the ocean no matter where you are, and it's the ass end of the Appalachians. Look into District 4 instead, given the fishing industry and Gaelic ties. Also there's the fact that Nova Scotia is doomed to be an island in very short order so it seems odd that nobody mentioned having to swim to get out of the District. 12 is clearly in the Cumberland Gap, especially given that the Seam's physical descriptions almost certainly indicate its residents are Melungeon.
      • I'm with the above. I'm from East Tennessee, which happens to be very mountainous (Great Smoky Mountains, anyone?), so I'd say it could be anywhere around the Smokies, either East Tennessee or North Carolina. The area also has rich coal deposits and, unfortunately, a high rate of poverty. The wildlife is also very similar, practically identical. And you can't tell me this doesn't evoke District 12's forests.
    • West Virginia and Kentucky. These regions are the kings of coal production in the US. Pennsylvania would also be part of this district, except that it's anchored to Philadelphia and the East Coast power structure (see my theory below on Loyalist Regions).
    • Pittsburgh. Yes, we're out of coal, but the book says we just have to dig deeper.
    • Hunger Games Adventures places District 12 in western North and South Carolina, with the east coast being submerged due to global warming.
  • District 13: Graphite (revealed in newscasts from second book), and also a major strategic/nuclear location.
    • District 13 can't be anywhere except the Laurentian mountains in Canada. No other place on the continent produces graphite.
      • But, then it is located in Quebec and it was never mentioned that they speak French in District 13 (to bad actually as a francophone District 13 looks cool to me). Though it might have been resettled with Anglo-saxons by the Capitol before the Dark Days.
      • For a Francophone District 13, see here.
    • District 13 process graphite. It would make sense for it to be in New England, as it's specialty is specifically nuclear technology and innovation, and between MIT's high-energy labs, Boston's already-existence (although mostly covered) underground areas, and District 12 being the first place someone from District 13 off the edge of Panem's map would encounter, it has to be somewhere northeast, and why not New England. Also, because it would be an Ironic Echo: New England is part of an empire it dislike, so it rebels and breaks free, only to have its own problems with governing, equality, and freedom almost four score years later.
  • Here are some maps from DeviantArt, it's not perfect but it's better than nothing.
  • The districts aren't regions: they are small outposts. District 12 is basically a mining company town in the woods (and a small town at that). District 11 is essentially a plantation. The very biggest agricultural districts might not cover more than several hundred square miles, the smaller ones are the size of small towns and cities.
    • But in Catching Fire, Katniss describes District 11 as being massive to the point of endlessness, with a population so large that even a portion of it can successfully rebel and in Mockingjay, she says District 2 is made up of many villages spread throughout the mountains. Those don't exactly sound like outposts.
    • Given the scale of North America, and that it's unlikely that Katniss has any concept of a car, it's quite conceivable that District 11 would be, to her eyes, endlessly wide, but on an actual map of the continent would only show up as a relatively small area. Likewise, the villages of District 2 could be scattered across a single range.
  • The map from the Hunger Games Adventures Facebook game seems to make some sort of sense, seeing as it resembles America somewhat. Only the Capitol, District 2 , District 11 and District 12 have been revealed, however; we'll have to wait and see the others.
    • District 4 is pretty much California.
    • Does anybody think that lower-numbered Districts would be closer to the Capitol, with the Districts numbers getting higher the further you get, up to 11, 12, and 13 the furthest out (east)? Otherwise, what would the reason for numbering the Districts the way they are be?

When this book is made into a movie, "Rue's Lullaby" will be an Award-Bait Song
  • C'mon, you know it will.
    • The entire movie can only be Oscar Bait or a shitshow, really.
    • Songs nominated for the Academy Awards must be written for the film. I'm not sure if using pre-existing lyrics and setting them to a new melody counts. There'll be an Oscar Bait song anyway, though.
      • Jossed. Rue's Lullaby will be in the film (break our hearts, Jennifer!), but not the official soundtrack. It does have an Award-Bait Song performed by Taylor Swift seen here. Since Whitney's dead and Celine's largely retired, Taylor will probably be the go-to girl for Award Bait Songs. It would be nice to see her win something without some jackass ruining everything.

Cinna wasn't born in the Capitol
  • Look at him compared to the other residents: he's calm, quiet, down to earth, and seems to lack their accent. My guess is he was made to live in the Capitol after his talent with fashion came out; and chances are, he’s not the only one. Given what we know about them, it’s not so hard to believe the Capitol wouldn’t have a problem removing someone from their home and forcing them to adapt to their lifestyle so it can make use of that person's abilities.
    • Cinna is described as olive skinned and cropped dark hair, and has an amazing ability with electronics (he stated he and his designing partner created the Ember effect etc), I assumed he came from where Nuts and Volts did (District 3, I think)
    • District 8 (Textiles) perhaps? Does any one remember what the District 8 tributes looked like?
      • I don't think they ever say, but yeah, I think 8 is a strong possibility.
      • Paylor was from district 8 and was black. However, on the Hunger Games wiki most of the victors from 8 are fair-skinned, so according to the ethnic division theory it's possible but not fully supported. Also, district 8 was one of the most rebellious districts - I believe they were the first or among the first to revolt in the second rebellion, and it's highly possible the underground resistance group that orchestrated the rebel plot in Catching Fire originated there if not 13. All this supports why Cinna would be the only (shown) anti-Snow Capitol resident until the revelations at the start of Mockingjay.
    • However, Cinna's name is of Graeco-Roman origin, like those of Capitol and District 2 residents.
      • He could have changed his name after moving to the Capitol so he could fit in better.
      • In the movie he's played by Lenny Kravitz, who is mixed race. So at least Film!Cinna could be the result of a Capitol resident's visit to a District 11 Tribute turned Sex Slave (in the film both Thresh and Rue are black instead of Ambiguously Brown) who was possibly kept around as a curiosity.
      • Thresh and Rue were black in the books too as well, though, weren't they? I feel like Suzanne Collins said as much in an interview or something.
      • They were called "dark skinned" in the books, and indeed, after the whole racist twitter debacle, Collins has stated that this definitely meant "black". The tweeters probably read around it, or took it to mean "well-tanned."
    • My guess would be that he was either an immigrant from District 3 who made enough of an impression on a higher-up from the Capitol to be transferred over to work for him and changed his name to fit in, or his parents consisted of a Capitol parent and an outer district parent, either through the Capitol one falling in love while on a trip and taking the child (either by force, law, or after the death of the poorer parent) or had the child with a sex slave and brought it back to raise as their own.

Seneca Crane is originally from District 12.
  • He's fairly ordinary-looking compared to other Capitol residents, for starters. Then there's the fact that his favoritism towards District 12 was ultimately what got him killed. In the movie, he makes the rule change to allow two tributes from the same district to win in response to Haymitch's request, and is later seen defending it to President Snow. Why would he make such a significant change in the rules if he wasn't benefiting from it in some way? Because he's doing it for his home district. It's also possible that he and Haymitch have known each other for longer than the movie (or book) lets on. Think about it: It wouldn't be too far-fetched for a child born in District 12 to try and run away, especially if the child was orphaned or abused, both of which are likely in such a desolate district. The boy flees to the Capitol before his first Reaping (that way he wouldn't be registered in the district), changes his name to Seneca Crane, and goes about making a name for himself. Many years later, Haymitch gets involved with the Games, recognizes Seneca, and is able to procure favors either because of some old friendship or by threatening to reveal Seneca's birthplace.

Later on Katniss will meet up again with Gale...
...and proceed to have an affair.
  • Katniss is self-centered, and could easily have an affair.
  • She doesn't really blame Gale for Prim's death, and after time passes she may come to terms with what he did.
  • She never really resolved her feelings for Gale, and she certainly still has feelings for him.
    • She does however say that because she couldn't be sure if Coin or Snow ordered the bombing, Gale would forever be linked in her mind with Prim's death. Although she may choose to forgive him, she's never going to forget that fact.
      • Plus, when she hears that Gale is in district 2 and won't return to 12; "I dig around inside myself, trying to register anger, hatred, longing. I find only relief". She's definitely done with him. Throughout the whole books I thought that she never ever loved Gale, she's always seen him as a friend, an ally, and everything romantic is initiated by him.

Haymitch has been a Katniss/Peeta shipper from the beginning.
He's always been the first to work out the next step to take (e.g. Katniss has to justify her actions as purely out of love for Peeta, Katniss has to marry Peeta), and that's the only reason he wanted them to stick together in the arena. Really, if you look past the fact that it did help the two stay alive, he's all over them.

The Movie will give more Character Development to other tributes
Since the book was told from Katniss' perspective, we didn't really know anything about the other tributes, save for Rue. Hopefully, we'll learn more about Cato, Clove, and Thresh.
  • CONFIRMED!

When the movie comes out, there will be outrage from the Moral Guardians
Come on. We'll all see that coming.
  • The film will likely have mostly implied violence in order to secure the age rating that will maximise the audience capabilities. For example, Rue's death, either the spear will come out or there won't be any blood.
  • Or they'll keep the violence and take out all the nudity. Extreme violence is okay but not nudity.
  • CONFIRMED.

Cinna is God or an alien, and the mastermind behind the entire plot.
First off, how can he set Katniss' dress on fire without it burning her? For that matter, how could he fit an entire second dress under the wedding dress without Katniss noticing? Especially with the Mockingjay wings hidden under the dress, the outfit would have to have used some form of spatial compression in order to fit that much cloth in. Not even the Capitol appears to possess the technology for that or heat-free fire. Cinna must therefore be in possession of technologies or abilities beyond anything achievable by any of the other characters. Apart from that, his extreme confidence in Katniss can be explained by his knowing what would happen from the start - hence his "still betting on her" throughout the books. Besides, after setting Katniss' dress on fire, he still somehow gains her trust, and he has to have had some motivation for giving her so many pretty and absurdly elaborate things. What better motivation than the foreknowledge that a plan started up to seventy-three years prior would finally come to fruition, precisely as planned? For that matter, we never do see Cinna die - Katniss is only informed indirectly, and Cinna's last scene only shows him being beaten. The circumstances provided Katniss with some extra motivation to play Mockingjay - which Cinna had already fully prepared for, as if he were aware of what would happen.
  • While she doesn't outright say there's a second dress, Katniss does notice that the wedding dress is way heavier than she remembered. As for the fire she wears, there are fireworks (usually meant for indoors) which burn at a cold enough temperature to at least put a hand through without fear.

Taken all in all, the Hunger Games were just radical enough, perhaps, to serve as entertainment for a bored deity or an immensely powerful extraterrestrial with no concept of human morality - but of course, plans of that magnitude would have to include provisions for their eventual conclusion. That being picked Cinna, the innocuous clothing designer, as a persona for the last, most important, and most exciting event of the plan; the entire series is simply one big, all-encompassing Hunger Games, and Cinna is its Gamemaker.

  • Maybe Cinna (or, frankly, Snow) is actually Q, still bent on screwing with humanity.
  • Superior technology, knowing the future, and stuff that's Bigger on the Inside? It's obvious that Cinna is the Doctor. Therefore, given how he's not trying to fix the problems with Panem personally, the ending of Mockingjay is a fixed point in time.

Paylor plotted to replace Coin from the start
Paylor was high up enough to know that the bombing of the children wasn't done by the Capitol. She let Katniss see Snow because she knew he would tell her what District 13 did and hoped it would motivate Katniss to assassinate Coin. Once Coin was dead, she would be able to seize power with little objection.

Prim is the child of Mrs. Everdeen and Mr. Mellark.
They both realized that they still had feelings for each other (much like Katniss/Gale affair portrayed above). Prim looks much like Peeta, Mrs. Everdeen, and pretty much everyone from the merchant quarters. Exactly like everyone from the merchant quarters. So, unless Mr. Everdeen had some merchant genes somewhere along the line, the odds of that happening are very slim. Mrs. Everdeen's breakdown after the mines exploded was just as much guilt as it was grief. Also, Mr. Mellark is shown to be especially nice to Prim and to Katniss by extension, promising after Katniss was reaped that he wouldn't let Prim starve.
  • I'm pretty certain that the books say that Mrs Everdeen came from the merchant class, and that in marrying Katniss's father, married beneath herself. So that's where Prim's genes came from.
    • But Prim's father would still need to have the genes for blond hair in order for his daughter to have that hair color. So either he had merchant blood in him too or Mr. Mellark actually did get the daughter Peeta says he wanted...

Heading on down to the Capitol, gonna have myself a time
The Capitol is South Park, Colorado. The first President of Panem was Eric Cartman, who finally and successfully seized power. He then began his plan to re-locate and separate the hippies, gingers, Jews, etc. District 1 got all the hippies, which is why they have silly names like Glimmer and Marvel, and he punished them by forcing them to make spurious luxury goods.
  • You, sir or madam, win the Internet.
    Peeta: Oh my God, they killed Cato!
    Katniss: You bastards!

The punishments the Capitol inflicted and The Hunger Games are no more effective than the Treaty of Versailles of 1919
After the Treaty of Versailles was implemented, Germany was ruined, its economy destroyed, and the people made to make up for the entire First World War. After the Apocalypse and the Dark Days, the Capitol forced the rest of the human population under their banner of Panem to surrender goods and services to them, basically enslaving them. Then the population rebelled against the state(s) that forced them into poverty and desolation, with massive loss of human life, hatred on both sides, and a fustercluck of atrocities from both the Capitol and lost District 13.

Panem isn't the United States; Panem is the remnant of all nations on Earth
Each of the districts is descended from the refugees/immigrants of different nations or sets of nations. After some major ecological or national disaster, the survivors from all over the world migrated to North America. The new conglomerate-state put the wealthiest in the secure and safe Capitol and scattered the others to different districts, wiping out other languages with universal English and putting the Panem that we know into effect.
  • District 3 is Japan and maybe China, to go with the theories of Asian and Nerdy on the main page.
  • District 4 is the refugees of Ireland — look at their names, and the unintelligible patois Mags speaks — Gaelic, perhaps?
  • District 7 is Canada.
  • District 10 is Mexico
  • District 11 is the remnants of all the African nations, put together into the South because Panem didn't mind history repeating itself.
  • District 12, whose residents are olive-skinned with dark hair, is the remnant of the Arab nations, and possibly Israel as well. Panem's aristocracy blames the Middle East wars for the disaster, and so punishes them with the poorest district and the deadliest job.
    • Shame the film casting doesn't bear this idea out.
    • How would you explain the blondes in district twelve then? They are probably just the surviving North American population, The olive skinned seam residents could have been olive skinned before the catastrophe, or their skin darkened due to being in a warmer climate than their ancestors lived in.
      • The descendants of blonde Jews from Israel?
    • I was thinking Italian because from southern Italy a lot of people have olive skin and dark hair, but in northern Italy, a lot of people have blonde hair and blue eyes.
    • ...Maybe they're Celts who didn't make it to D4? Seriously you thought all Celts are red-headed? Actually, quite many of 'em are slightly dark-skinned brunets (so-called Black Irish), perfectly matching the description of D12's inhabitants.
  • While this is all very interesting, it's HIGHLY unlikely. It would be too hard to keep everyone under thumb when they're that spread out from each other. Even under the watchful eye of the capital, revolt would be too hard to keep control over.
  • So when does each district give up on the Tributes idea and instead build and battle giant themed robots a la Robot Jox or Mobile Fighter G Gundam''?

Cocoon and Gran Pulse is the future of Panem, or an Alternate Universe thereof
Specifically, Cocoon being the Capitol. The parallels are striking: the weird-dressed people who all live in prosperity, while the people on Pulse struggle to even stay alive; The trigger-happy soldier policemen who do more harm than good; A brutal method which they kill people with, with the populace's consent (Hunger games, purge); The artificial military beasts (mutts/biomechanical monsters and cie'th); both besieged at the end of the book/game resulting in the death of at least one main character
  • And the characters: the main heroine (a no-nonsense tough woman who appears almost emotionless) is struggling to save her sister, failing this task (Serah is crystallized, though gets better until Final Fantasy XIII-2, that is, while Prim is killed off for good. The black-haired tanned hunter who always has a snidy remark and is fiercely protective of his/her loved ones (and remember that in early stages of development, Fang was male!). The fan-favourite male characters (Finnick and Cid Raines) who help the main characters and both die in the finale of the story And both casts have a character named Snow (one as first name, one as surname).
  • And Final Fantasy XIII-2: this time, the hunter character (Noel) is male and still resembles Gale, while the main heroine wields a bow (and her motives also have to do with her sister, though this time, the protagonist's the younger one), and is still engaged to Snow, while he barely has any screen-time in the game (and Peeta is Brainwashed and Crazy for the greater part of Mockingjay. And at the end of XIII-2, the younger sister still dies

The Movie will lead to a Defictionalization of the Games.
Of course, participation will be voluntary and nobody'll really kill each other (for now, the host'll emphasize).It'll be cancelled after half a season.

Cato was in love with/physically attracted to Peeta
Mostly because of this tumblr post. It could explain why Peeta was accepted into the Career pack, (part of) why Cato wants to kill Katniss so much and why Cato dealt with Peeta himself after he helped Katniss (he was jealous and felt betrayed, with a touch of If I Can't Have You…).
  • I don't think so. Cato focused and obsessed on Katniss for one of two reasons: 1- He felt threatened: Here's a girl from an underlying district which had only had 2 victors in the 74 years of the Games, who outshoned him in both the interview and the opening ceremonies, has a drive and determination to win for her sister, and then gets a score of 11! He barely knows her and what her fighting style is, and that puts him at a disavantage. In short, he saw her as the only true competition he had and wanted to take her out as early on in the Games as possible. Or 2- He falls in love with Katniss. Maybe not love, but is attracted enough to her to cause him to obsess about her. Having been raised with the sole goal of participating in the Games, he's been brainwashed into being a killing machine, and is unable to deal with the emotions Katniss is stirring in him. It makes him nuts, and the only way he knows to deal with it is to kill. And so he focuses on her.

Peeta got into the Career Pack because of Haymitch and Finnick's friendship
Finnick was a mentor during the 74th Games as revealed in Mockingjay. Haymitch also states that alliances are usually formed before the Games themselves. It doesn't make much sense that the Careers would want anything to do with the District 12 Tributes that are some of the weakest competitors unless there was some string pulling from Haymitch's end and using some leverage with Finnick to get Peeta in. Why not Katniss? Well he appeared more likable and the belief may have been he would win more sponsors. Why not both? Who knows?

Haymitch drinks vodka
Vodka is clear and can be made from anything. Which means in the first book on the train when he's pouring it into red stuff, he could be making a Bloody Mary.
  • I thought it was implied that Haymitch drinks whatever booze he can get his hands on. It probably was vodka on the train, but I think he'll drink anything just as long as it gives him a buzz.
  • His drinks are normally described as being white in colour. Unless in the future they sell White Russians in bottles, it's unlikely to be vodka he drinks.
  • Considering the region he is from I would assume his usual drink is actually White Dog. White Dog is Bourbon before it is aged and is usually clear to a translucent white in color.
  • Clearly y'all stick too close to the straight and narrow to have ever seen moonshine. I have this theory: Ripper will ferment whatever is available. And Haymitch is dumb enough to drink it.

Cinna and President Snow come from the same social class
My issue with the WMG that Cinna isn't from the Capitol is that it assumes that everyone from the Capitol fits the stereotype of the Capitol citizen that Katniss knows. Growing up, she only ever saw or heard the most outrageous, attention seeking and affluent Capitol people in the Hunger Games and she still only really ever interacted with that same type of person after she was reaped, with really only two exceptions : Cinna and Snow. I think that both of them were from relatively poor Capitol families and worked their ways up the ranks because of their talent and ingenuity and that's why neither of them really exhibits the typical Capitol traits. The lower class might not be able to afford to be quite as eccentric as the richest Capitol citizens and would be more level headed and practically minded and it could also account for the lack of accent. The lower class wouldn't have the money to participate in the type of things the upper class does and then wouldn't be raised with/have the opportunity to pick up the "Capitol" accent, or at least it wouldn't be so marked that Katniss would have noticed or felt the need to mention it.

Also, Castor, Pollux and Lavinia might be from the same class. I don't think it's ever explicitly stated where any of them are from, but Katniss says Lavinia has the "Capitol look" and I can't think of any other reason whatever Pollux did to become an Avox would lead him to become an Avox instead of being executed and none of them seem to fit into Capitol stereotypes.

The flood that won Annie her Games was caused by the Gamemakers to stop a group of tributes from escaping the arena
Based on the fact that they put up a force-field after Katniss shot at them, the Gamemakers seem very keen to learn from their mistakes. So, I figured someone tried to kill themselves by jumping off the roof - they did the same thing and then again after someone tried with a cliff, which lead to the creation of the force-field in the arena of the 2nd Quarter Quell that helped Haymitch win. After Haymitch won, they must have realized that it's possible for a tribute to reach the end of the arena and use it to their benefit, so they started putting in what were essentially self-destruct buttons in the arenas in case anyone got too close but no one did for another 20 years. The escape attempt made in the 70th Hunger Games is what inspired the rebellion's plan for the 3rd Quarter Quell.
  • Also, in The Movie, part of the reason the fire the Gamemakers used to corral Katniss is set off is because she was too close to the edge of the arena, so maybe they at least have less drastic versions of this that don't completely destroy the arena.

If it wasn't such an Epic Movie, The Hunger Games would've been shelved because of the Trayvon Martin killing.
  • Only because the publicity machine had been cranking for months and had just shifted into total-saturation high gear, has nobody called it too soon.
    • Unlikely, as the only similarity between the movie and the Trayvon Martin case are that both involve the death of minors. The Neighborhood Watch movie, which was considerably more topical to the case, was only renamed, not shelved.

The Dog-things are Mabari War Hounds
  • The resemblance in the movie is uncanny.

Suzanne Collins knew full well that people would have trouble making a Portmanteau Couple Name from "Katniss" and "Peeta"...
  • ... and cracks up laughing about seeing "KatPee" and "Peeniss" all over the internet...
    • On the flip-flop, "Everlark" is really quite beautiful.
    • "Patniss" doesn't sound too bad either. Not too sure about "Keeta" though.
      • I saw one person on Facebook who called it 'Toast' , you know, coz the boy with the bread plus the girl on fire equals toast.

Hunger Games is set in the far future of the same universe as Atlas Shrugged
  • The whole world itself is a Randian paradise where the teaming masses are ruled over by an inherently superior elite, whose primary form of transportation outside of their capitol is a super-efficient high-speed train system.
  • Additionally, most of the people living in The Capitol appear to be the long-term products of a system that encourages people to view others only in terms of how they are of use to them personally and to view altruism and self-sacrifice as deviant behavior.
  • There has to be a way to get Rapture into this WMG

The arenas aren't real- the Games take place in a Matrix-style machine.
  • Considering that the Gamemakers control everything on their computers (at least in the movie) it would be easier to have everything directly broadcast into the Tribute's brains and over television, instead of wasting resources building a new arena each time. The tubes the tributes go into are actually sensory chambers that make them see and feel everything in the arena, and kill them if needed. This explains why most every winner heals completely, dogs pop out of the ground, and wounds can shrink to nothing from simple creams. It would also make the muttations a hell of a lot easier to do, and why Katniss's hallucinations are so perfectly tailored to her worst fears- the Gamemakers designed them.
    • What about Chaff's hand and Peeta's leg? And Katniss had a history of really specifically frightening nightmares and since tracker jacker venom was described as being able to drive people mad, maybe there's something in it that targets fears anyway because they were genetically engineered to be weapons. That's not even mentioning how impossible the escape from the arena in Catching Fire would be if this were true. Also, how would you explain why the gamemakers would need to use fire to get Katniss away from the edge in The Movie (Suzanne Collins was involved with writing the screenplay) or how Haymitch used the barrier to win his games? If it were a Matrix-style machine, they could just create more arena.
    • Deserted arenas are used as tourist attractions for Capitol citizens. While this may be a lie, I think it's safe to assume that arenas actually do exist.
      • It works for the movie, maybe even makes more sense for the movie, but doesn't work for the books.
  • On the plus side, it could make for a good "Cinna is actually Morpheus trying to unplug Katniss so she can become Trinity" plot.

Everything after the tracker jacker incident in the 74th Games is just in Katniss' head.
  • We know that it causes massive hallucinations and that Peeta's perception of reality is distorted beyond complete repair after being hijacked. Even though Katniss is only stung by four tracker jackers or so, there's no saying if maybe the entire story from the incident on is just a dream she has during her black-out.
    • I would argue that Katniss dies from a combination of tracker jacker venom and exposure. Everything that follows (including the second and third books) is 100% halucination cooked up by her mind. That's why the seventy fifth Hunger Games pulled only victors, because Katniss knew them from "watching" the games. It also helps explain Prim's inexplicable death and the "Seventy Sixth Hunger Games" (weaponized residential areas?). She dies, Peeta dies of blood poisoning. Life in Panem continues to suck.
  • So Tracker Jackers are Space Wasps?

The Hunger Games takes place several hundred years after 1984.
The rebellion mentioned in the backstory was led by Winston's grandchild(ren) to try to overthrow the Party, but it failed and caused everything to be reorganized. Oceania becomes Panem and ends up getting divided into 12 districts plus the area that would have been District 13. What would have been District 13 is where Winston was from. The Peacekeepers are (arguably) nicer versions of the thought police and the Big Brother idea was scrapped entirely over time in favor of the Hunger Games. The Gamemakers are what became of the Ministry of Love.

Madge was supposed to be the Mockingjay.
The Mockingjay being the symbol of the rebellion was planned from the beginning. At some point Madge was chosen (or maybe she wanted to, because she felt guilty for living off the Capitol when so many people in her District starved to death), to be a martyr for the cause because who better than the pretty niece of a fallen tribute to win over all of Panem and then turn the districts against the Capitol with her death, (which might have been planned to be an in-game suicide)? Madge had access to information about the Capitol and the other Districts because of her father and knew that tensions were rising and that a rebellion wasn’t far off. She planned to volunteer for whichever girl got reaped that year, but Katniss beat her to the punch. Why was Madge so eager to give Katniss the Mockingjay pin? Because ‘’someone’’ needed to be the Mockingjay. The next year was the quarter quell and there was no telling what could happen then and before then, Madge wouldn’t have been old enough to be able to survive. If this was going to happen, it had to happen during the 74th Hunger Games. And when Madge kissed Katniss, it wasn’t just an “I’ll miss you because you’ll be dead within the week” sort of thing, it was an “I’m sorry that I’m dooming you even if you survive, but this is for the good of all of Panem” sort of thing. Madge Katniss was a hunter (and, probably, that Peeta had a crush on her); if anyone from District 12 could survive Hunger Games, it would have been Katniss. It was just the rebellion’s luck that Katniss ended up being a more effective Mockingjay than Madge could have ever been.

Peeta and his father are the Baker and his son from Into the Woods.

I'm going out on a limb here a bit, but it's WMG, it's allowed. The "Kingdom" that got destroyed was a secluded part of District Twelve, which was allowed to have it's little monarchy for sentimental reasons. After the Baker's wife died and he was left alone with his son, Cinderella, Little Red, and Jack, they wandered through the woods until they reached the Seam. Cinderella and Little Red went to live on their own when they got old enough, but Jack stayed with the Baker. The heartbroken Baker soon realized that he couldn't raise his young son Peeta on his own, so he married a woman with a young son of her own. She soon proved a bitter and cruel, jealous of the dead wife the Baker son clearly preferred. She took it out on Peeta, who after all wasn't her son, and doted on her own son. The brother that was too old to sacrifice himself for Peeta was Jack, and the other boy had grown up thinking being cruel to Peeta was acceptable.

Things would have played out about the same if Katniss hadn't volunteered as tribute.
Katniss would have told Peeta to kill Prim last and protect her with his life until then, Peeta would have played the "I'm in love with the other tribute's sister" card, and the rule change would have happened because the audience wouldn't have wanted Prim's "mystery sister" to hate Peeta when he gets back. In the end it would be Peeta who comes up with the double suicide plan.
  • Assuming both Prim and Peeta lived that long, which is unfortunately unlikely, I think it'd be more likely for him to kill himself, no joint-suicide plan. Anyway, I doubt either of them would have made it for more than a couple days.
    • You're probably right about Prim dying soon (I can't imagine Haymitch saying sober long enough to help her because she wasn't a fighter like Katniss, unless maybe she reminded him of Maysilee, but there were probably other girls from the merchant class that he mentored) but Peeta was still strong and good at camouflage. If he allied himself with the Careers he probably could have lived long enough to have one of them kill him in his sleep after they picked off the weaker tributes. Alternatively, he could have spent a good deal time at the plant identification station and gotten enough knowledge to feed himself like that (he would have stood a decent chance against the Careers in a confrontation) and, on the off chance Prim survived, find and defend/ally himself with her.

The people of Capitol are otakus.
From where else did they get the idea of colouring their hair with odd colours? Anime of course.

Brink! took place sometime before/during the events of The Hunger Games.
Global Warming is one reason for natural disasters to occur which, along with wars, caused the world to go to shit. The Ark is somewhere out there when the sea level rose. Just like Panem, The Ark is a Shining City but heavily besieged by warring rebels and security forces. The Resistance also hoped to make contact with civilization on the mainlands. They eventually found Panem and decided to take refuge in it rather than continue fighting on The Ark. Unfortunately for them, the Districts are just as bland as the Guest Slums, the Capitol treats them like crap and some of their younger members gets chosen to fight in a Reality TV deathmatch. And all of that pissed them off, again. Naturally, they contributed to the rebellion. Revolution begins again (with a nice touch of Le Parkour)!
  • And probably some of The Security moved to Panem and became peacekeepers.

Not all of Panem is divided into districts.
If Panem is supposed to be the USA, there are clear divisions already, with some regions more likely to rebel and others aren't. And it's quite unlikely, if not completely impossible, for a single city and its surrounding suburbs to vanquish the rest of the country. So, a large swath of the country didn't rebel, and therefore were not divided into districts. The rebellious regions were reconquered and organised into the thirteen districts. Those regions that did not rebel were allowed to keep their original status, and are not required to send two tributes to the Hunger Games every year. In my headcanon, sixteen states and DC are part of the so-called 'Loyalist Regions:'
  • Hawaii
  • Utah
  • Arizona
  • Colorado
  • New Mexico
  • Oklahoma
  • Missouri
  • Illinois
  • Indiana
  • Michigan
  • Ohio
  • Pennsylvania
  • Maryland
  • Delaware
  • Virginia
  • Washington, DC
  • New York

    • In the Hunger Games Adventures game, nearly all of continental US (and Canada and part of Mexico) is divided into districts. So the only possibility for this theory is Hawaii.
    • Panem was stated to have been divided into 13 districts before the rebellion which resulted in the Hunger Games being imposed. That said, I think there is a lot of empty land between Districts, and there could perhaps be some people living in some of the remoter places who have managed to escape the Capitol's notice.

Katniss set the net that entangled Rue.
Just think about it. The book mentions Katniss setting snares several times before she allied herself with Rue. It would make sense that she might use a larger trap she learned in training to capture bigger game. It would also provide another reason for Katniss to feel guilty about Rue's death.

An uprising was already brewing before the 74th Hunger Games.
Let's be honest, uprisings and rebellions never happen overnight. The whole deal with Katniss and Peeta only set things off. It's made very clear how most of the Districts are in such poor condition, always oppressed, close to dying of starvation, and almost no possibility of moving up in life. Another rebellion was bound to happen sooner or later. If the whole Katniss+Peeta thing didn't happen, something else would've set things off. Especially since a Quarter Quell was coming up, which are worse for the tributes than most of the Hunger Games.
  • Almost a given, IMO! Consider who else was reaped or in the 75th Games — this wasn't some by-the-seat-of-our-pants shindig. Beetee, Finnick and Annie were both reaped (Mags volunteered in Annie's place), Johanna, Cecelia, Chaff, and Haymitch got pulled, with Peeta volunteering for him. Considering this it's possible to probable that Snow knew something was afoot. What better way to stomp out a rebellion than get rid of its leaders in one fell swoop?
    • No "almost" about it. The least belieavable part of this series is that the Capitol lasted as long as it did. Seventy-five years of government-mandated child slaughter? This would have happened decades sooner. Or maybe this is just the story of the one that worked and all the failed ones just got sent down the memory hole...

The Hunger Games occurs in the future after Fahrenheit 451.
451 ends with some kind of war beginning; despite losing a number of cities, America survived the war intact and at some point was reformed as Panem.

The new system of government at the end of the series will be based on the US Constitution.
Thirteen districts combining to create one of the most successful and long-lasting republics in the history of the continent? Too good a historical parallel to pass up. And they can also use that precedent to deny the Capitol voting rights.

The Hunger Games trilogy is set in the Bad Future of the DC Universe.
The Hunger Games universe is what would happen if the villains won and got rid of all the heroes. The crazy death traps in the arenas and used as defense for the Capitol are inspired by the Riddler. Tracker jackers were created by adding genes from the plant that provides the hallucinogenic component of Scarecrow's fear toxin. The jabberjays were probably Penguin's idea. The first war that initially destroyed so much humanity was between the heroes and villains, then between factions of villains.
  • All the mutts would more likeley be genetically engineered by Lex Luthor, and the different districts could have been so isolated by a failed attempt at Braniac bottleing the cities. And if so The capitol is probably Metropolis, Lex would have been the first president perhaps directly stemming from when he was president of the U.S.A. and the hunger games would have initially been an attempt at training new super villans through H.I.V.E. However this failed by the time the current Super-villans died of old age, leaving normall villans in control and the hunger games in place as a matter of tradition. pehaps the death trap designs were adapted from the creations of The Joker or The Riddler but they wouldnt have come directly from either as they would both Retire/kill themselves once Batman was defeated.
Panem isn't the remains of all of North America.
It's the North Korea of a fairly prosperous world which has for the most part rebuilt itself, and occupies a fairly small area somewhere around Appalachia. Assertions that all of humanity has been reduced to a country of only a few million people is propaganda meant to discourage efforts to flee the repressive dystopia. Alternately, the districts are tiny city-states spread out across North America, and the train lines between them actually run across narrow strips of Panem land between other countries.
The Hunger Games is actually the past of the Fallout Universe
It takes place almost immediately after (or even shortly before) the Great War. Then everyone either dies or becomes ghouls.
Haymitch and Katniss are related, and he knows it.
There's repeated parallels drawn between the two, they look similar (granted, so do a lot of the Seam people), and once he realizes she's got potential, he's awfully intent on getting her out alive. She's the one he communicates with through sponsor gifts, because he knows she'll understand what he means. Granted, it could just be because he's setting her up to be the Mockingjay, but it's possible he's an uncle or a cousin or something and she's not aware of it.
Panem "forgot" how to manufacture planes
Along with all other present-day aeronautics knowledge, the collective body of information required to set up a production line was destroyed in whatever cataclysm resulted in Panem. The nonsensical excuse about atmospheric destruction started out a pure propaganda to explain why the all-powerful city uses hovercraft (with admittedly impressive cloaking technology) instead of jet aircraft that are faster, can be built smaller, and go move at several times to speed of sound to drop a payload from cloud level, leaving the victims with only the delayed sonic boom for a warning (a mental image that would be a powerful tool of fear). Either only the top people in Panem are still aware of this deception, or the fact it's a lie has been forgotten completely; but either way it's a better explanation for the absence of familiar aircraft that Artistic License – Physics.
Panem is within a Time Shard.
Except the settlement is resilient enough on their own, and the people in charge are kind of assholes, so the Ilari and their glyphbearers declared "screw them" and skipped over that continent. Since the entire sprawling settlement that is Panem is within one shard, nobody is aware of the Wind or the greater cataclysm that took place.
Panem is not the only nation left in the world
It is, however, the only nation that has any form of technology. If one was to go to South America, Asia, Africa, Australia or Eurasia one would find various tribal scavengers and iron age villages. Occasionally they send in airships to bomb villages that get too big.
Cato's explosive temper in the book was an act
When watching him react to losing the supplies, Katniss notes how over-the-top and almost unreal Cato's reaction is. He actively pretended to be an Axe-Crazy psychopath to intimidate the easily scared tributes, and to cause the others to underestimate him. Consider his reaction when being pushed off the Cornucopia: rather than freak out or throw himself at the Mutts, he calmly and methodically fights them off, utilizing the Cornucopia itself as cover, and manages to take out a few of them before finally being overwhelmed. Cato isn't a psychopath Blood Knight, he's a Determinator who fought the Hunger Games on a psychological level, not just a physical one.
The story is set at least a century after Iji
Specifically, a full aggression path that left nothing but humans alive on Earth and a power-dependent, militaristic creed in her wake. That Alpha Strike would explain the state of the world, and the Tasen occupation and Komato invasion why there's only one surviving human civilization. In the intervening years, the alien invasion has been forgotten, but Panem has co-opted the nanotechnology for their... well, everything; hovercraft with perfect cloaking is just one example.
Stories like Day of The Barney and Cupcakes are told as bedtime stories in District 2.
Hey, if your plan is to raise a killer from birth, might as well be sure they get used to these kinds of stories. Might account for Cato's apparent insanity.
the series takes place in the future of Power Rangers RPM
It's a distant future where computers are never mentioned, most of the country doesn't even use electronics. Panem is said to have risen from the ashes of North America and we are never told whether or not the rest of the world still exists. Those who are against the war fear that there will be no humans left. People barely seem to have knowledge of life before whatever happened to wipe out most of the world. Katniss says that she doesn't think much of their ancestors because of the state their ancestors left the planet in, with little care for what happened to future generations. Perhaps after the events of Power Rangers RPM, Corinth became the Capitol as the population began to expand into other parts of North America to become the rest of Panem. People began to abandon computers out of fear of another virus like Venjix. After a few hundred years, people who weren't around when computers were widely used stopped understanding the concept of computers and thus humanity forgot the details of why there was an apocolypse. They just know that humanity badly, carelessly screwed up with some technological advancement during a time of lots of pollution and war. This explains the vague apocolyptic scenario refered to in the books as well as the lack of modern technology.
Gensokyo exists in the same world as The Hunger Games, and the books take place shortly before or during Phantasmagoria of Flower View.
Gensokyo exists as a fantasy, shaped and filled by things the people outside the barrier think are myth. Andquite simply, a core part of the Gensokyo lifestyle is the very antonym of life in Panem. Everyone is considered equal and can dispute whatever they like with anyone else. Fights are not a violent struggle to the death, but a routine thing both participants walk away from; they aren't a bloody spectacle everyone is forced to watch, but a vivid lightshow anyone would like to get an eyeful of. Ultimate authority exists, but she only reacts to keep order and fails hardcore at the oppressive parts of her job description. People dissatisfied with the state of affairs can launch a full-blown uprising, but a few sheets of danmaku and tea together later everything's smoothed over and everyone's happy. In other words, an utterly impossible fantasy for everyone living in Panem.

As for the timing, between the end of Catching Fire and the rest of the revolution, there's a very high bodycount. Perhaps not a huge amount of souls in the absolute sense, but certainly a relatively intense surge of the dead, enough to cause the flower incident, especially considering the underlying reasons. If Komachi's lazy about the already forgiving trickle of souls coming from such a small human population, an entire district and war's worth at once would flood her inbox without a doubt.

  • Jossed by later games which reveal a contemporary setting, such as Touhou Shinpiroku ~ Urban Legend in Limbo. That being said, it's still possible for the series to take place in Touhou's far future, since the setting of the Hifuu stories implies things are headed toward being a Crapsack World, setting up the wars and disasters which led to The Hunger Game's After the End setting.

Katniss chose her Weapon because of her name.
  • On the main page under Meaningful Name, it's explained that "Katniss" is another name for a plant called Arrowhead. In the first book, Katniss explains that her parents specificially named her after the plant, which grew near the area where they lived. If she knows the common name for the Katniss plant, she may well have chosen to be Archer for that reason.

Panem was founded by the descendants of U.S. and Canadian Military Personnel stationed at NORAD
  • The Capitol is said to be somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Also, in order to have such an advanced level of technology available, it would make sense that they would have originated from somewhere that was largely spared from the Cataclysms that plagued that destroyed most of our world. Since Cheyenne mountain meets both criteria. It would be a good place for the Capitol to emerge from.

When whatever happened first started to happen, the NORAD personnel, probably following standard protocol for a nuclear attack, brought their dependents and even perhaps a few local civilians, and experts in important sciences and technology inside the base and rode out the disaster. Once things stabilized the went out into the outside world and sought the help rebuild and restore order over the wasteland through military conquest. Thus was born the nation of Panem. With conquered areas and people forming the Districts.

The Hunger Games take place in the same universe as Trinity Blood
  • Panem rules North America while the Vatican and Methuselahs fight over Europe/Middle East/North Africa. In the latter conflict Panem is officially neutral. The lack of organized religion on Panem might be the result of an agreement with the Vatican to stay out of North America out of respect for the Capitol's sphere of influence and to respect its neutrality. Besides, the lack of reliable transportation technology and the need for the Methuselahs to protect themselves from the sun over such distances, means they would have trouble exerting influence on the other side of the Atlantic anyway.

The Hunger Games takes place in the Warhammer 40K Universe
  • Because everything needs this as a WMG. SO here we go: In an attempt to breed a better class of Space Marine, the Imperium created an imitation world of Holy Terra, designed to be a massive ferral world. Everything is trying to kill you, from the government to the animals in the wild. However, this world was cut off from the Imperium by the Tyranid hivefleet. But why didn't the Hunger Games world get overrun? Necron Tomb. It's been stated that the Tyranids are afraid of the Necrons, and somewhere on the Hunger Games world, there exists a MASSIVE Necron tomb. So while the Tyranids wiped out every system around that world, Panem grew without influence from Holy Terra or the God Emperor. Centuries after its establishment, their bloodthirsty nature got the better of them, leading to the revolt of District 13 and the establishment of the Hunger Games.
    • This may not be accurate as the members of the Imperium speak in a British-like accent, unlike most of the citizens of Panem. Since Chaos gods exist in the 40k universe, wouldn't some people be psykers and/or corrupted by Chaos?

The war which brought everything down was waged from orbit
All those satellites are still up there on automatic - their access codes and broadcasts encrypted to to the point that Panem has pretty much given up ever making heads or tails of the data or being able to control them. The system will still blast any rocket or craft that gets above a certain altitude, which is why they rely on hovercraft.
  • This WMG makes this Troper wonder if this is the past of Brin's The Postman as well, since that's the reason given for lack of aircraft or highly advanced tech in that world.

President Snow is sabotaging himself.
He's gone loopy. He doesn't have Peeta or Katniss executed quietly. Allowing previous tributes to go in the 3rd Quarter Quell is just plain crazy. A lot of his actions don't add up. He's like Hitler, made it into power and is just apeshit crazy.
  • Or, possibly, he was a once-efficient dictator whose judgement is starting to fail due to age and illness. Nobody dares comment on Snow's decline because they could get their heads chopped off. This could explain why the Games system lasted for decades but started to come apart in Katniss's time.

Glimmer and Cato were hooking up during the Game. Glimmer is a snake-woman.
In the movie, Cato are always sen next to each other and touching even though they don't come from the same district. After camping out in front of Katniss's tree they are shown to be cuddling together while sleeping. In the scene before, Cato is seen to had a massive hickey on his neck. Therefore, since no human bout could produce a hickey that large, Glimmer has retractable jaw.

President Snow is a Lamarckian.

Like Stalin and Lysenko, he seriously believes that acquired characteristics can be passed on genetically. So by conditioning people to fear him, he expects their offspring to be born genetically easier for him to intimidate. This is why actions that, to us, merely look like gratuitous moustache-twirling villainy guaranteed to cause an uprising... actually make sense to him as a practical longterm investment.

  • The people in Divergent III seem to be Lamarkians — they somehow thought that creating the factions would stress out the system and cause the Divergents to evolve.

Panem isn't in an alternate Earth at all, but in Strangereal

The world outside of Panem, across the oceans, isn't nearly as bleak as the Capitol's propaganda machine has people believing - in fact, it's modern and very comfortable for its several nations and their numerous inhabitants. The two civilizations are segregated by their defense measures - the Strangereal nations don't care to trigger Panem's nuclear option over a single continent in the middle of nowhere with minimal useful resources, and the only ocean-crossing military power Panem has is low-altitude bombers and big, lumbering hovercraft. You know, the kind of things that, say, Garuda flight would tear apart for breakfast.

Cinna is a timelord.

He's very enlightened, and we need one of these.

Only the first book is factual.
The Hunger Games is the story of an ordinary, everyday girl who gets caught up in a gladiatorial contest staged by a vicious ditatorship, and only just manages to survive. Catching Fire is a repeat of the first story, but is interrupted when a powerful resistance appears from nowhere to sweep in and rescue the girl. Mockingjay is the story of how the girl becomes the heroic, beautiful symbol of the revolution and leads the overthrow of the dictatorship. Doesn't that sound a heck of a lot like a Mary-Sue fantasy?

The first book is a true account of Katniss and Peta's involvement in the games. The second book is true up to when the game begins, at which point Katniss starts mixing in fantasy elements because she can't face the truth - that Peta was killed and she went on to win by cutting down the other contestants. The third book is pure wish-fulfilment revenge and rescue fantasy, written while Katniss sits alone in the Victor's Village, her life now completely controlled by President Snow and his goons.

Alternatively there's the even darker version. All the above is true, with the added fact that Katniss killed Peta herself in their second games.

  • Did you even read Mockingjay? Katniss doesn't end up as the "heroic, beautiful symbol of the revolution." She ends up as the "deeply traumatized figurehead of the revolution with ugly skin grafts covering up her horrible burn scars." If the third book is Katniss' attempt to lie to herself to make herself feel better, she would give herself a much happier ending. One where she isn't a burnt out shell of her former self and, more importantly, where Prim doesn't die.

The entire series was written by Katniss as pro-herself propaganda to explain all of her actions to the reader (and herself)

A combination of the above WMG about the memory book and all of the Headscratchers about how positive Peeta is portrayed. In "reality" Katniss is nothing more but a crazy lady living under an extended, life-long house arrest with her equally crazy husband for killing the President of District 13 and the political leader of the rebellion. Some might even remember her as a cold-blooded killer who survived two Hunger Games and was all too willing to keep killing for the rebellion. Katniss wanted someone to remember her and Peeta in a more positive light, so she started writing a journal - except this "journal" twisted nearly everything; the Careers from the 74th Games and Snow were almost irrevocably evil, Coin showed her true colors to be no better, Peeta was the victim of PTSD and torture, Rue and Prim were just innocent helpless youths caught up in the violence, Haymitch was just understood in the end, Cinna and the rest of the prep team were infallibly good despite being Capitol citizens, etc.

Clove actually wanted to die.
That, or she's incredibly, incredibly stupid.

She guessed that Thresh was nearby and decided to provoke him by saying all those taunting things about poor little Rue whilst trying to kill Katniss; after all, she's hardly portrayed as a stupid character, and the amount of time she spends just gloating rather than getting on with the kill could be a sign of something other than arrogance. Maybe she genuinely wanted Thresh to hear and attack her.

My guess is that she saw Cato and Glimmer snuggling up in the movie and was heartbroken due to her own feelings for Cato; when Glimmer died, she still felt resentful of her and realised, in her resentment and jealousy of the dead, what a terrible person she was, and how terrible the games were. At that point, she lost the will to live...but changed her mind at the last moment, crying out for Cato as Thresh attacked.

She's pretty young; it's likely that she'd be immature enough to make such a decision without really thinking about it, especially under the pressure the Games put all the kids under.Alternatively...

Clove realised that Katniss could become a symbol of rebellion before anyone else.
Which is why, when she came to the aformentioned realisation that the Games were cruel and terrible, she couldn't bring herself to kill Katniss; her reason for wanting to die was not because of her own problems, but because she knew that her own death would preserve Katniss' life, and save many lives to come.

Of course, she could have just left Katniss to survive and preserved both of their lives...but that's not as dignified as a Heroic Sacrifice, and she comes across as pretty arrogant. She still had an image to maintain, after all.

  • It's possible Clove wanted to die on her own terms, wanted Katniss to kill her, just end it and be quick about it (I mean, some of the Tributes go in the worst ways... Glimmer and Clove to name two), and hadn't counted on Thresh being there. Like Peeta, she may have wanted to die as herself. It may have had nothing to do with Katniss or Cato, and why she called out was because she really didn't want to die the slow and painful way of being smashed to death. She may have been trying to provoke Katniss into killing her, while still looking the part of a Tribute.

The Clique was written by Katniss after the end of Mockingjay as a Self-Insert Fic
Katniss wanted to write something to try to make sense of her life, so she started writing an AU High School version of her own life. Claire, the main protagonist would stand in for herself, with Alpha Bitch Massie and her Girl Posse standing in for other tributes from the 74th Games. Massie herself is a re-imagined version of Glimmer, Clove became Alicia, and "Foxface" became Kristen. Rue was written in as Layne, Claire's BFF who was also rejected by the rest of the Pretty Committee. President Snow became Mrs. Burns, the somewhat tyrannical and insane principal of Octavian Country Day Girls' School. Katniss also gave Claire a love interest, Cam - who obviously is a version of Peeta. The other boys would be versions of the other male tributes. I'm not sure where Prim fits in though, or who Katniss made into Dylan.

Johanna Mason was inspired by Shego.

She's a twentysomething, Deadpan Snarker Action Girl who develops a vitriolic friendship with the main character. Described in Mockingjay as being "a sick greenish color."

Cinna's last name is Mon
Just cause.
  • Then tell me this: Why do we never hear of Cinna's brother, Poke?
  • To say nothing of their sister, Wo, and cousin Hu.

Glimmer was planning an alliance with Katniss
Glimmer gets the bow and arrow from the cornucopia. A curious choice because she's apparently not very good with the bow and arrow (evidenced by her being unable to hit Katniss). Maybe she got the bow for Katniss, and planned to break off from the careers with Peeta and Katniss (she didn't tell Marvel her plan). She might have also been better with the bow and arrow than she showed — she missed Katniss on purpose. She also tried to climb the tree to get to Katniss — but happened to break a branch on the way up. This might have been done on purpose in order to stop the others from climbing up, and to give herself a reason NOT to kill Katniss. She then agrees with Peeta that they should wait Katniss out. Furthermore In the movie her preferred weapon is stated to be the bow and arrow. Given that she gets a good score in training, chances are she really did miss Katniss on purpose.

Prim is a figment of Katniss's imagination
A sweet girl that is embodiment of kindness and love seems a little out of place in a dystopia where people living in Districts must struggle to survive. Interestingly enough Prim only speaks to Katniss and her grief stricken, hysterical, mother. Regardless of what Katniss does, Prim only holds unconditional love. For Katniss, Prim sounds to good to be true. Maybe because she is.

Prim's true birth was paralleled by the death of Katniss's father. With his loss, Katniss did not lose one parent but two. Her mother retreated from the material world and from her responsibilities. Friends were rare in Districts, it was easy for citizens to betray one another because food was always scarce; people could only trust those whom they had strong bonds, with blood being one of the least conditional. Unfortunately, for young Katniss her mother unintentionally switched the roles with her daughter. Katniss was now the caretaker, a child tasked with feeding a full grown adult in ruthless world. So she invented a sister to ease her mindset into her new role. Prim was simple, she needed to be fed and loved; she allowed Katniss to feed her mother without thinking of the complex emotions she was facing or secret hatred Katniss held for being forced to grow up. Mrs. Everdeen never denied Prim's existence, it was easier to agree than argue, and she was barely in touch with reality to begin with.

The lottery never picked out Prim's name. The odd's of Prim being chosen astronomically low but Katniss's wasn't so lucky. As the announcer called out her name, a sea of emotions flowed through Katniss. She was scared, scared of dying, scared of killing, terrified that her life would change forever. So like how mother dealt with depression, Katniss retreated into her own mind; she made herself volunteer, she was a hero because she saved her sister from certain death, she was powerful and not afraid.

Prim's existence saved Katniss's life because she gave her purpose. Katniss could not kill to save her own life, her life was brimmed with tragedy and anger. She couldn't kill for mother, for she had abandoned her child when Katniss needed her. But Prim was a constant, a fairy tale of her own creation, as long as Katniss could go to Prim, she would survive. Not killing Peeta could be seen as Character Development, as he proved that real people could be trusted and selfless. It's why Katniss put her life on the line, in spite of dying meant never seeing Prim again.

With her faith in real people restored, Katniss started thinking of thoughts outside of survival. She saw people wanted to rebel and saw her refusal to follow the code of the Hunger Games as a symbol to lead them. So she started a revolution, but that did not mean she abandoned her illusions. Prim was still Katniss's sanctuary and Katniss was going need her now more than ever for the acts of war the revolution would commit.

Prim's non-existence is further proven by the Revolution's determination to save Peeta. They thought he was Katniss's motivation to survive because he existed to them and was the one person in their reality that to whom Katniss showed affection. They never thought of Prim because Prim was solely Katniss's creation for only her to love.

Prim's death was caused by the loss of Katniss's sense of purpose. By caring for real people, Katniss lost her impenetrable armor as feelings like sympathy and empathy returned to her and were turned against her. When children were killed in the bombing, Katniss's mind snapped. She was no longer a care taker, she was a murderer. Someone as a pure and beautiful as Prim could not exist with someone so evil. So she died and a part of Katniss died with her. It's why she got away with being mentally unstable, because she always was. Dr. Aurelius knew it would be eaiser for Katniss to live with this then try to convince her otherwise. So Katniss lived the rest of her life mourning the death of a girl that never lived.

  • In-universe there are people outside the Everdeen family acknowleding Prim's existance - Peeta's dad saying he would not let her starve, and Johanna talking about how the whole country loves Prim, and how there will be riots even in the Capitol (movie quote) if Snow's government kills her. The revolution didn't need to save Prim when they went to save Peeta, because at that point in the story she already had been accounted for.

The Hunger Games is really a sequel series to Suzanne Collins' other YA series, the Underland Chronicles
In that series, there is an offhanded comment about a vision of a destroyed world. The Hunger Games is the Underland Chronicle's far future. What do people think?

The series is a sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Panem is the last human nation on Earth because the intelligent apes are in the process of establishing their civilization in the rest of the world, with Panem being formed by the human surviours of the virus. No one other than the Capitol's leaders are aware of this.

Came up with this to amuse myself mostly.

  • Glad I'm not the only person to have this theory. As an extension to this, the apes were driven out of the USA in the war foreshadowed at the end of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Apes dominate everything north and south of Panem.

Haymitch started the "star-crossed lovers of District 12" campaign to save Katniss and Peeta from prostitution
Knowing what happened to Finnick, Haymitch started the campaign after finding out that Peeta had been in love with Katniss all those years. That way, if both of them won, nobody from the Capitol would be able to touch either of them once their "romance" was in the open.

District 9 is District 9.
Oppressive government? Check. Downtrodden masses? Check.

District 12 had been on the decline for a long time
The need for coal by the Capitol and the other districts had been going down for decades. Only a few largely outdated machines and power plants are were still using the stuff by the events of the books. District 12 once had numerous towns like District 2 did, but these were gradually abandoned as they became more and more Redundant with their populations being reassigned to other Districts. This is why District 12 was basically only one coal mining town by the events of the book, why the Peacekeepers in 12 were lax until Thread arrived and why the Capitol was willing to make an example of it.

Seneca is not a first name, but a title.
Think about it. Seneca sounds exactly like senator. A Senator is a ruler, and so is a head game maker. However, The Capitol dropped the title after the 74th hunger games. As they are nervous another Seneca could cause a rebellion again. Hence why there is no Seneca Heavensbee.

Johanna has a crush on Haymitch.
When she was stripping off in the elevator, she wasn't interested in Peeta (or Katniss, for you yuri fans) but Haymitch. They've known each other for some time, and have similar outlooks. She might think he's just what she wants.

Each of the Districts are supposed to partly represent a different country that fled to the only land that could sustain life.
Maybe it's just me, but whenever I think of the way Katniss describes the Seam look, I always think of Italians. Specifically the dark hair and olive skin thing. This WMG is largely ignoring the movies as a reference point, excepting one small thing: the Capital would likely be the UK, namely England, going off Effie's accent. District 3, the Technology district, would probably be a representation of Korea, who provide much of the current world's technology. District 8, the Textile District, could be China, as they mass-produce fabrics and clothing. Since most of the District One tributes are ridiculously attractive people (with fair hair) and the district itself is the luxury district, they could be France. The aqua-eyed and blonde District Four could be Russia and/or the Ukraine, District 6- which is responsible for transportation- may be the remains of Japan which provides a considerable amount of the current world's transport (along with Korea and Germany). District 13 is Canadians, since it's in Canada thanks to the graphite thing.

Katniss Evadeen is Birgitte Silverbow
The series tells a story, either far future or long lost history, of one of the many iterations of the hero Birgitte Silverbow. Birgitte is reborn with each revolution of the Wheel of Time, with a different name and face but always retaining her archery skills and her braided hair.

Hunger Games is the precursor to the society in Divergent
Mostly because Lenny Kravitz (Cinna)'s daughter Zoe plays Christina in the latter. But while Katniss's community remained peaceful, others did not and so they instituted factions to bring about stability once more.

The Hunger Games is actually set in North Korea
Perhaps Suzanne Collins met with an NK defector who told her of his/her story of joining a game similar to the Hunger Games. Then she made this defector into Katniss and made his/her story into a book. What made me think this is that the people in the Capitol are enjoying their lives while many the districts suffer from lack of necessities, which is what is seemingly happening in NK. Also, the fact that electricity isn't on in 12 for 24/7. Haven't you seen the satellite map where SK is lit up like a Christmas tree and NK isn't?Well, this is a WMG! Or probably this defector was from the future? Also Suzanne Collins probably made up Catching Fire and Mockingjay by her own. She did say it was intended to be only one book(?)

There have been two near-revolutions in the past
The Quarter Quells are spectacularly timed. Societies tend to run in cycles, and with this particular society, 25 years may be the length of a full cycle. If someone particularly well-versed in how society works had a hand in the shaping of Panem and the Hunger Games, it seems possible they installed the Quarter Quells as a way of stopping a revolution. Especially if the Quells are not actually set in stone, as is implied by a deleted scene for Catching Fire.

Bonnie and Twill are from District 13.
They aren't District 8 natives but are actually agents sent by President Coin to spark the idea of District 13 in Katniss's head. Coin needed Katniss to believe in the idea, as nigh impossible as it seemed. Sure, you could say Haymitch threw in a wedge to the plan, but that was just to stray Katniss a little ways from them. Plus, she was never good at the whole knowing who the real enemy is.Oh, and Bonnie and Twill aren't their real names. They're just fake names. That's why when Katniss tried to find them in the district, nobody recognizes them. They weren't real to begin with. Once their job was complete, they went back to District 13 and assumed their real identities again.

Katniss is the future incarnation of Ree Dolly.
Even if they weren't both played by the same actresses, there are an incredible number of similarities. Teenage girls in a hardscrabble mountain environment, burdened with mentally ill mothers, with absent fathers and younger siblings depending on them, hunting to keep food on the family's table...it's no wonder that Jennifer Lawrence wasn't too sure about playing Katniss so soon after playing Ree, fearing being typecast.

Lolita Fashion is popular in the Capitol.
Frills, puffy skirts, loads of accessories, large ribbons, and an emphasis on being cute and/or elegant? They'd love it, especially OTT (Over-The-Top) Sweet Lolita, and Hime Lolita.

Career Tributes are also victims; they are psychologically pressured to join the game
Many of the Career Tributes in the books openly express or subtly imply that they hate the Hunger Games and the Capitol itself, and some of them are happy to join the rebel cause. Note that most of the Kamikaze pilots during WWII, in fact, hated to die for their country as well. Some of them even expressed open contempt for their country and the leaders for making such stupid decision. While becoming Kamikaze pilot was "voluntary", just like the Career Tributes, the pilots were "recruited" by using psychological pressure, including shaming and threatening their families.

The Boy from District 3 killed the Boy from District 4 with a landmine.
It seems the most likely scenario to explain his alliance. The other Careers weren't really going to wait for him to explain why he'd be more useful to them alive. However, if they SAW him kill one of their own with a mine, they'd probably be willing to hear him out.

The Hunger Games is the future of America in V for Vendetta continuity.
A really odd theory, but still... My opinion on the origin is based on my belief that The Hunger Games share setting with V4V of all things. Might be like this: the USA were really in a problem in the mid-21st century (their distant relatives in the UK were simply exagerrating that "Ulcered Sphincter of Arse-erica" were anything but torn apart... or they weren't). There was the epidemy, the war and stuff like that, the economic (and social as consequence) system started to collapse, so America was verging on the edge of chaos and anarchy...

...And then came out a small (at first) far-right political party, essentially willing to orchestrate an American remake of the British "Reclamation". Their program was quite similar to Norsefire... except for one lil' thing: they wanted to cosplay Romans rather than Nazis (y'know, 'cos a big country like the US would need to take an example of another big, brutal, epic Empire — but Nazis were way too overdone). The rest of their rhetoric was roughly similar ("The democrats drove our country into crap, we've lost international influence and respect", blah-blah-blah, "Our economy is crippling 'cause of thousands of lazybone immigrants that prefer welfare to getting a job, and those demotwits do nothing but chat about it on live TV", blah-blah-blah, "Are we tired of being openly mocked and insulted by everyone? (YEEEAAAH!!!) So let's show 'em we're capable to recover and come back more powerful!").

They gathered power quickly, promising the country to return to its highest glory (possibly even secretly backed by Norsefire at some point, after all they're not so different). Progressively they gained more votes and more states to support them, more seats in the Congress. And finally there came a day that after that election there could remain only one party — most likely, of the two, as this party would've assimilated all of the closest far-right, semi-fascist parties, and the leftists gathered round all the socialist or liberal-leaning parties in kinda "#Alliance 4 Democracy". The rest became completely minor and negligible by then.

So there was an election and the two alliances got approximately equal percentage of votes (the other parties, as mentioned before, didn't matter). There was the re-election to be arranged to decide which of the two gets into office. But... suddenly, a few days (or hell, even hours) before the second round, some kind of... a terrible horrible bad thing happens (a terrorist attack, a shootout, a mass fighting/riot with a few dozens of corpses...) and yes you got it right, our far-right party blames it on their opponents. The election ends with far-rights getting a majority — even a slightest one would do, let alone landslide...

And the first thing they do is to ban all the other parties from parliament. Their opponents, definitely not amused by this, start war against them. Police, military, and other force organizations divide between the two (those rooting for the far-rights would later become Peacekeepers, whereas those who've chosen to side with democrats eventually defect to District 13). They rename the country to Panem (1. Panem is Latin for "bread" — see Bread and Circuses, and 2. Panem = Pan Am = Pan-American, likely in the process they have taken control not only over US, but some parts of Canada and Mexico as well).

They reorganize the country's administrative division (13 provinces are easier to govern than 50, especially with your population significantly shortened by the war, diseases, famine and migration). Then they relocate the capital city (Washington is too damn close for all those enemies of our glorious nation based in <del>Quebec and likely New England</del> District 13, right?).

Finally, when our "putting on Rome" party gets a sort-of-win over the democratic alliance (or rather a peace treaty between them), they remember one more great thing from Rome: gladiator fights. Well, they decide, first it will provide the main amusement of the year, and second, it's a nice way to bully the districts so that they would obey (and if there are gonna be riots... there are gonna be Peacekeepers). And here comes a new "vicious and voracious violation of volition" named Panem — as it is.

P.S. At one moment, a thought glimpsed in my mind that some of their British counterparts from Norsefire fled to the US to join that far-right party, after their regime in the UK fell due to V's actions.

If Katniss had not volunteered, Primrose would have won.
Yeah... just that.

Katniss's and Gale's fathers were killed in a "mining accident" because they were hunting illegally
They didn't want to kill them in their hunting grounds so had to find another way to do it and this was the easiest and least suspicious.

Annie's mental state was not caused by the trauma she suffered in the arena.
Obviously she is suffering from PTSD and what she experienced during her Hunger Games made whatever underlying condition she had a whole lot worse. But the condition described in the book, including covering her ears to try and shut out the voices she's hearing, is not primarily PTSD. The majority of her mental health problems are due to something else. Perhaps the traumatic experiences triggered a dormant condition such as schizophrenia, which would make it correct by extension to attribute it to her trauma in the arena, but she would have developed her condition with or without the Hunger Games.

The series is actually Trotskyite propaganda.
When thinking about conspiracy theorists shoehorning their political beliefs into literature, I noticed some similarities between the Districts and the classes from Marxist historical analysis. So I thought why not shoehorn someone-elses' political beliefs into a piece of literature.

  • The capitol: a rather idle group living off the surplus labor of others', clearly the Haute Bourgeoisie or the Finance Aristocracy. The lack of people 'promoting' into the capitol indicates a metaphor for a hypothetical 'advanced' capitalism, wherein all sectors have matured into being controlled by oligopolies, which crush any attempts of new entrepreneurs into reaching the top using their massive economics of scale.

  • District 1: Workers who have a higher standard of living then the rest of the proletariat, by virtue of the sectors they work in, and have a better relationship with the ruling classes clearly the Labor Aristocracy.

  • District 2: The Military Caste, as they provide the bulk of peacekeepers; they aren't a perfect analogue to the Prussian aristocratic officers as their status is below that of District 1 and they serve mostly as canon fodder but it comes close enough.

  • District 3: Engineers and programmers, probably the 'Bourgeois specialists'.

  • District 4: Fishermen, they come the closest to the Petite Bourgeois as they own their own means of production (their boats).

  • Districts 5,6,7 and 8: (Electricity, transportation, wood and textiles) the Proletariat.

  • District 9 and 11: (grain and agriculture) the Peasantry obviously.

  • District 12: Low and poor enough to be beneath notice, clearly the Lumpenproleteriat. The fact that the protagonist comes from this place despite Marxists ussually looking down on the lumpenproleteriat suggests An Aesop towards other Dirty Commies about even degraded and degenerated elements being capable of achieving class consciousness.

  • District 13: Plotting to overthrow the Capitol from the shadows, clearly the Professional Revolutionaries and the vanguard of the proletariat.

Lastly the assassination of President Coin at the end of the story symbolizes the necessity to the workers to prevent any Bonapartist elements from taking over after the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.


Everyone who ever died in the series is hiding in a Peeta costume.
So, crazy theory here. Sometime during the first Hunger Games, a Sponsor gave Rue a Peeta costume. It is a TARDIS in actuality. When Rue dies, it is really Peeta. Everyone who ever dies after this goes inside the suit too. Haymitch knows.

Panem is run by pedophiles who decided that molesting children was overrated and watching them kill each other would help satisfy their desires more
You know this theory to be true.

Katniss Everdeen is the descendant of Oliver Queen.
So let's see, they are both masters of archery, Katniss' favorite color is green (Oliver being the Green Arrow) Both heavily skilled in combat, both have a sense of justice and always take the blame and puts others before themselves, and despite their names being different both have the same ending. The Hunger Games takes place in a post apocalyptic world, maybe a universe where Damien Darkh actually succeeded in his plans to destroy the world or at least most of it leading to the creation of panem and also would be the reason as to why Panem is the only nation left in the world cause Damien destroyed all the other ones, Maybe he was the one who actually created Panem and the idea of the Hunger Games in the first place. But then who would carry on the lineage of Oliver Queen that would lead to Katniss Everdeen decades later? Why William of course, their both brunette after all, and William and possible maybe more of Team Arrow including Oliver himself could've hid in an underground bunker, not to mention Hunger Games came out the same year Arrow did. Just a fun thought I had

The trackers the tributes were given in the arena

Those were made for more than giving the location for the tributes, they also act as a sort of life detector for the players. Once inserted into the body, the tracker can check heart rate, or lack thereof, changes in temperature, body chemicals, etc and would notify the Gamemakers when a tribute dies.

Prim is Katniss' half-sister
She has blonde hair and blue eyes, which are recessive traits, so both parents would have to carry the genes. It's possible that Mr. Everdeen carried those genes but it's improbable given the implication that people with those traits rarely marry with people from the Seam.

Plutarch rigged the 74th hunger games and the reaping of Prim to start the rebellion
Plutarch likely had to be with the revolution before the 75th hunger games, given everything necessary to fit into place. Being in the capital and a gamemaker, he likely had access to things like video footage of everyone. He knew that a girl volunteering to take the place of her young sister would win over viewers, and it worked out better than he could have even imagined. Katniss is pretty predictable, so her volunteering was basically guaranteed to happen if Prim's name was drawn. Especially from a district where people just don't volunteer, and where there's only ever been ONE winner. Then he made promises to a number of tributes to NOT kill Katniss, and their families would be taken care of. Not all of them were in on it, but a few were. Namely Foxface, Clove, and Glimmer. Then he spent his time as a game maker making sure Katniss won. When she didn't team up with the careers, he pushed her toward Rue knowing that when Rue died, Katniss would honor her. (And Rue would eventually have to die anyway.) He also may have led others to their death in the name of the games. What he didn't count on, and what worked out better than he could've imagined, is that Seneca Crane would agree to the two winners per district thing. Once the capitol went back on their word, and Katniss chose the third option, it solidified her position as the mockingjay and symbol of the rebellion. Of course, he also didn't count on Coin preferring Peeta or Peeta not getting out of the 75th Hunger Games.

Lavinia is the daughter of a high-ranking Capitol official...
...which is how she found out about the existence of District 13. When it was discovered that she ran away, her mother or father (whichever one was the Capitol official) ordered for her to be captured alive if possible and pulled some strings to allow her to become an Avox instead of being executed on the spot like her male companion was.

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