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Narrative
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redirected from WMG.DrHorriblesSingAlongBlog It's all a dream, Dr Horrible is just an insane Youtuber
The only bits that are real are the bits where Dr Horrible is talking to his computer in his room (so not the bit where he says he got a car thrown at his head), and the rest is just wishful thinking. The Evil League of Evil don't exist, Captain Hammer doesn't exist, the death ray doesn't exist at all (you never see it in his blog) and the freeze ray is just a toy.
Penny will return in the sequel...as Dr. Horrible's new nemesis
She's so much more heroic than the Jerk Jock Designated Hero Captain Hammer, has elements of The Messiah, so she'd make a good superhero. Bringing her back and making her Billy's mortal enemy would just twist the knife in that much further, fits Joss Whedon's attitude to happy endings perfectly.
Penny is evil.
She's just dating Captain Hammer to infiltrate his secret base and take him out and get into the Evil League of Evil; and Dr. Horrible gets rejected, but they still hook up.
This takes place in the same universe as The Middleman.
Think about it: the world is full of low-level weirdoes with a meta sense of humor. Cheap production values further prove this.
Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer are Brothers.
That would be dramatic.
Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer will hook up.
It would be hot. But then, let's hope the previous WMG isn't true.
Nobody gets the girl.
Penny is turned off by Dr. Horrible's hubris and Captain Hammer's behavior. Neither man wins her heart, and everyone learns a lesson about being a regular ol' normal person trying to make it in this tough ol' world without black-and-white, Good-and-Evil definitions.
Bad Horse is Hammer.
Think about it. You ever seen them in the same place at the same time?
Bad Horse is a horse.
If Bad Horse was an intelligent horse, it would explain why we haven't seen him - the budget's too low for a talking horse to appear. It would also explain the lame name - "Bad Horse" might be what someone called him before he gained human intelligence.
We should have seen this ending coming.
It's freaking Joss Whedon, and not a single person predicted a "death of love interest"? WMG is slipping.....
The Death Ray Worked...
And Billy Buddy is in his own Personal Hell by the end of Act III.
Billy's delusional.
He's hiding away in his basement and is imagining all the success and fame; Penny's death has left him an emotionless shell, and Bad Horse has refused to let him join the Evil League of Evil because he was responsible for Penny's death.
Dr. Horrible's true arch-nemesis was never Captain Hammer, and the Evil League Of Evil was aware of this.
Ideologically, it was Penny, all along. If Captain Hammer had been killed, Billy would have gotten a pat on the back for the good P.R. and a post as Bad Horse's official Hoof-Picker. Unlike Captain Hammer, Penny was selfless from the start, which makes her death look like the most downright evil thing for a person to do. That's why Dr. Horrible's being shown such a prestigious top position in the League.
Dead Bowie is the David Bowie from the Buffyverse.
The world will end about 2 days after the last images of the show
Think about it. We have a villain who has nothing left to lose and who at least partly blames a corrupt world for the death of his loved one. Even if he's a bit odd about how good his inventions are, he can make some pretty nasty stuff if it comes down to it. A doomsday device should be coming about any day now.
Bad Horse got his start when he failed to win the Triple Crown
Bad Horse is Clark Kenting as the Lone Ranger's Silver.
Typical for Joss hiding things in plain sight. The singing cowboys clearly reveal this in the letter to Billy: "It's hi-yo Silver, signed, Bad Horse."
The entire show is told through an unreliable narrator in the form of Dr. Horrible.
Clearly, on the blog, someone asked Dr Horrible how he got his start as a villain. The entire story is, to a point, rather self-congratulatory. The villain is clearly noble. A superhero is portrayed as a brainless, brutish thug who also gets his joy out of deliberately and cruelly tormenting the villain.....when no one else is around to hear it. And it goes on. Despite the villain's instigating the attack and bringing the death ray, the fatal action was caused by the hero showing sudden and unnecessary overkill and even ignoring the warning the villain tried to give him. From that last image of the show, we see him finishing his story, which is clear propaganda meant to cast Dr. Horrible in the most sympathetic light possible.
The whole thing is an idea for a story told by a writer-actor on his video blog.
Some of the things outlined in the story are ludicrous, even by supervillain-story standards - for example, a car gets thrown at Dr. Horrible's head and he survives. A lot of things seem to happen in moments that would heighten the drama - Captain Hammer saves the day at the last minute! Captain Hammer enters just as Billy leaves! Billy appears just as Captain Hammer finishes his big song! The large number of Metaphorgottens and Incredibly Lame Puns indicates he's not the most original of writers, and he winds everything up with a Godfather-esque closing of the door to the Evil League of Evil and him, the blogger, singing the final note. And the whole Act III is just one long Creator Breakdown.
Captain Hammer was artificially created
Captain Hammer is the product of a government initiative to artificially create superheroes to help fight back against the Dead Bowies and Bad Horses of the world. Why? Because, after getting struck by the exploding death ray, Hammer cries out for "someone maternal". A normal person would cry "Mommy!"/"Mummy!" at the very least; Captain Hammer doesn't because he doesn't have a mother. He could have been grown in some sort of vat or tube. The best he can cry out for is someone vaguely maternal to help him during his first experience of pain. Also, it could explain why he gets away with all the throwing cars around and stuff: The local police have had him assigned to them by the FBI and have to accept that he'll do things like that.
Captain Hammer and Penny were members of the Evil League of Evil
Both of them were sent to masquerade as good people for various reasons, including to test and observe up-and-coming villains such as Doctor Horrible. Captain Hammer being a member is not too subtle, given how much of a Jerkass he is. Penny, on the other hand, was much better as feigning good; however, after Dr. Horrible got the letter from Bad Horse telling him that he will be watched, who are the two people who see him the next day during his heist? Penny's skill at pretending may also have earned her a high position in the league; Dr. Horrible was in a (at least seemingly) high position the moment he was made a member because he managed to kill her. Captain Hammer was kicked out at the end because he was too much of a wimp.
Bad Horse is David Bowie from The Venture Brothers.
He has the power of shapeshifting, and thus can take on the form of a horse. Dead Bowie is a decoy.
Alternately...
Dead Bowie took over the Evil League of Evil...
...renamed it the Guild of Calmonious Intent, and became the Soverign.
Captain Hammer is directly responsible for Dr. Horrible's fall to true evil, and thus, the end of the world.
At the end of "Slipping", Dr. Horrible hesitates to kill his arch-nemesis, who has caused him nothing but grief and rubbed it in, despite thinking that Penny isn't watching. Had Captain Hammer not punched Dr. Horrible and fired the exploding death ray, he probably would have backed down. Hammer would beat up Horrible anyway; Penny would see it, really see Hammer for the Jerk Jock he is, and dump him for Billy, who will be caught up in Love Redeems; Hammer would hook up with one of his fangirls, and everyone would live happily ever after.
Dead Bowie's superpower is a form of subconscious mind control that manifests itself in dreamlike hallucinations.
"Am I freaking you out, Bret? Is this a freaky dream?"
Bad Horse is a political puppet
He's a normal horse, and those singing cowboys who speak for him with absolute authority are the real power behind the Evil League of Evil.
Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog is Joss Whedon's attempt at an NGE style Deconstruction of the Super Hero genre.
Think about it, every cliché and standard of the Super Hero genre is either subverted or inverted:
Dr. Horrible will bring Penny Back From The Dead.
What's the point of being a mad scientist if he can't manage a little necromancy?
Penny never realized that Billy is Dr. Horrible
She never did get a look at the "good" doctor — remember, she was hiding during the entire master plan — until she was already dying, at which point, all she sees is his face (completely missing the goggles and labcoat). She never quite makes the connection and thinks Billy was just in the audience for the unveiling of the new shelter. And so, even though she knows that Captain Hammer is a Jerkass, she lies to Billy and tells him that Cap will save them to reassure him. Because Billy is Dr. Horrible, this has the opposite effect and acts to seal his descent into madness.
This is all just a ploy to get tons of money off DVD sales.
Why else would the Whedons take it off the web after only one week?
Billy never wore a white lab coat.
For most of the show Billy seems to wear a white lab coat while he's in the "Dr Horrible" persona, changing back into civilian clothes when he's just Billy. Except, in Act I, he ducks behind a wall in normal clothing for a second, then stands up wearing the lab coat. The only explanation is that Billy wears normal clothing at all times - the lab coat is just a visual representation of his state of mind. Even the red coat at the end could be imaginary in the same way.
Two days after the last images of the show, Billy commits suicide
Captain Hammer's penis is a hammer
This was why Penny was really getting distant from Captain Hammer.
Doctor Horrible became a supervillain because everyone expected him to.
He lives in a world where exceptional students in science are reported to the police for surveillance.
Captain Hammer will become Mal Reynolds
After experiencing pain he becomes slightly more humble and retires, but is still a bit of a jackass. Due to his superhuman nature, he outlives all memory of his being a Superhero, and he fights against the Alliance during the war to redeem himself...and well, this one needs to be said.
Captain Hammer will become Caleb
The First Evil was empowering him from birth. Once he gets over the pain, he'll don the priestly collar and go after Buffy.
Captain Hammer will become the Commander.
After recovering from his humiliating defeat, Hammer reforms and goes back to being a superhero, with a new name: the Commander (who has a cape, see below.) He becomes well-loved once more, and then ends up settling down with Jetstream to have Will.
Their powers are basically the same, so it's not too much of a stretch. As well, he might take the name Commander to help himself recover from his humilation, signifying that he's now "in command" of everything in his life.
The purpose of this show was to show the reality of the relationship between Lex Luthor and Superman
Think about it. Superman/Captain Hammer is born with endless power. He has never felt pain or fear, and he is spoiled by the universe. He's not going to be a good person; he's going to be a pathetic jerk who is convinced that he can do whatever he wants, and who upholds the status quo because it's easy and people love him for it. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor/Dr.Horrible has nothing but brains and money, coupled with a desire to change a world enforced by a superhuman. He has to be a strong person with real goals and ability because he has to change the world with nothing to go on but what he makes for himself. Only in comic book land is Lex Luthor evil and Superman good; in the real world, or in Dr. Horrible, the roles are reversed. Dr. Horrible is a villain and evil, but is not a "bad guy".
Penny is not dead.
This leaves room for Dr. Horrible to accidentally kill her again in the sequel when he blows up a hospital or something! Oh, snap!
The entire show is a Deconstruction of Cannot Spit It Out.
Billy suffers from a common hero affliction — he can't tell the girl he loves how he feels about her. In a "straight" example, the hero tells the girl he loves about his feelings near the end, and they defeat the bad guys and live happily ever after. In Dr. Horrible, Billy ends up indirectly killing the girl he loves without ever letting her know how he felt despite her obviously liking him, and it all could've been avoided if he'd asked her out for frozen yoghurt during the first song.
After his humiliating public defeat, Captain Hammer becomes the next member of the Evil League of Evil
Hammer's reputation is shot to pieces. The media will look for a new "hero" while Hammer is in therapy. Even if Hammer tries to return to his role, he'll never dare antagonize Dr. Horrible for fear of what Horrible will do next. Cut off from the government honey pot, Captain Hammer decides to turn to a life of crime, where he can do what he loves best (beating people up). He sends his application to the Evil League of Evil, commits some atrocities, and is accepted almost instantly, which will piss Dr. Horrible off big time. Once he is part of the League, Hammer starts intimidating and upstaging Dr. Horrible again because Hammer has a natural talent for being a jerk. The rest of the League watches in amusement. Either Dr. Horrible leaves the League in disgust, muttering about falling standards, or he gets his eye-twitch again and shoots Hammer with his latest disintegrator gun.
Billy/Dr. Horrible is an alternate universe version of Toby from Sweeney Todd
Both were played by Neil Patrick Harris (in the Concert version, that is), both were sweet if slightly neurotic, and both became crazed and murderous after the death of the woman they love (who in both versions is killed by her boyfriend).
Billy can't control which persona is in control
One of Horrible's trademarks (besides the goggles and lab coat) is the squinty expression he gets when annoyed, or happy, or... whenever. But we see Billy get this expression, if only for a split second, at several points — in the middle of the significant pause when he's talking to Penny and says the power needs "to be put in ... different hands," when Captain Hammer is taunting him, and so on. By "Slipping," Billy is having serious trouble keeping his Dr. Horrible persona in control, but it could be triggered before that. After Penny's death, the tables are turned; Dr. Horrible usually is active, but Billy pops up from time to time — hence the ending.
The Fangirls killed Penny.
We know that the Fangirls "have a problem with her". When Captain Horrible fired the malfunctioning Death Ray, they took advantage of the situation and murdered Penny with some loose shrapnel. When they saw that Captain Hammer had fled the scene but Dr. Horrible cared, they switched loyalties.
He'll get over it.
How well did Billy even know Penny? He stalked her from a distance for a while but only knew her in person for a few weeks, at most. He didn't even know her well enough to realize that taking over the world wouldn't win her love. By watching her creepily for so long, he's developed an entirely different personality to associate with her face - simply a fantasy woman who would love him exactly the way he is if he could just be BETTER at who he is. When he hears about her petition, he scoffs at her idea of social change but goes right back into his little act immediately. If he paid closer attention to the real Penny, he'd eventually realize that they just don't fit. Now that she's dead, he'll probably mourn for a while and then attach that fantasy persona to some other girl (one of the fangirls, maybe?). At worst, he'll just build a clone or a robot that'll look like Penny and praise him for everything. At best, he'll accept what has happened and be just fine...well, as fine as a supervillain can be, anyways.
Dr. Horrible killed Penny on purpose.
If the above theories about multiple personalities are true, then the Dr. Horrible persona realized that Penny holds great influence over Billy's ability to suppress Horrible, Incredible Hulk-style. Dr. Horrible intentionally designed the Death Ray to explode if anyone other than Dr. Horrible used it - including Billy. Its shell contained a pair of small smart bombs keyed into Captain Hammer , Penny, and at least two other targets, if the other conspicuously large bits of shrapnel in the wall are any indication. Dr. Horrible then blocked Billy from understanding how to operate the Freeze Ray, which he could have used to keep Penny stable for the nearby paramedics and any other medical personnel nearby.
Dr. Horrible didn't kill Penny.
From how things play out, we see a "zoned out" Billy at the start of the second episode. You know it's Billy and not Dr. Horrible by the look on his face. It is likely that he is starting to rethink his life of crime and is running the scenario of hatred through his head. The conclusion he gets is that "this isn't worth it at all," and he discards the "Doctor Horrible" persona. The sparseness of the lab in the last shot with Billy, the look of abject horror on Billy's face, finally blended with the last words sung and HOW they are presented bring Billy to the horrible (sorry about the pun) revelation of the futility of his situation.
Billy killed penny .
He's really unstable anyway, and Doctor Horrible doesn't seem to care about any of the things Billy does, even joining the Evil League of Evil (he just wants to rule). Based on an idea several guesses above, Billy did realize that he and Penny wouldn;t match, maybe as early as the time she was sitting alone in the laundromat with the two frozen yogurts. He wanted to keep the real her from ruining his image of her without letting it look like it was his fault, or he could get her back. The Death Ray only stopped firing forward when it broke, everything else worked exactly the same, and Doctor Horrible tries to stop him not because he's back to Billy and worried about the explosion, but because he doesn't want to die
Bad Horse is trying to destroy the human race.
Notice that in his songs, he seems awfully eager for new members of the Evil League of Evil to prove themselves through murder. Bad Horse's plan is to have them slowly but surely wipe out humanity for him, whereupon he will kill all the members of the League and make horses the rulers of the world.
This is not Dr. Horrible's true Start Of Darkness.
That occurred before he got his Ph.D. in Horribleness, when someone kept moving his chair.
Fake Thomas Jefferson isn't fake.
He faked his death to escape debt and then realized he could get away with whatever he wanted because he was supposedly dead. The name is to throw people off so they won't realize he's the real Thomas Jefferson and, subsequently, almost two hundred years old.
Wonderflonium is Silly Putty.
That's right! It can't be bounced. Why is that? If it is bounced, it goes from its meta state that is a power source to its original state upon the next use. The bounce destabilizes the molecular bond of the Wonderflonium in such a way that the next electrical pulse triggers its explosive return to Silly Putty. If it's not kneaded or pressed against paper, then the return is the safer, more familiar method of return to the original state.
The Billy in the final image is Billy's deeper core.
Remember the pie analogy? There's a deeper part of us past our deep part, that is just like what is on the surface. Pie consists of top crust, filling, and bottom crust. In Billy's case the top and bottom crusts are Billy, and the filling is Dr. Horrible.
The entire show is a Silver Age style Imaginary story.
It's a bad dream being had by Dr Awesome ("I have a PHD in awesomeness!!!"), a Tom Strong style gadgeteer hero, whose Crime Fighting With Cash has not only reduced crime to a minimum, but whose wonderful inventions and push for social reform (aided by his girlfriend and later wife Penny) have created a utopian society despite the constant intervention of his archnemesis, the loutish and fascist Mr Hammer. He wakes up right at the conclusion of "The Nightmare's Real", and promptly goes up from his underground HQ/basement to his mansion, kisses his children Billy and Penny Junior (who are already training to take up the mantle) goodnight, and slips into bed beside his wife Penny.
And they all lived happily ever after.
Penny is Snow White
As long as we're talking about Happily Ever After... Penny's clothes look specially chosen to make her look markedly like Snow White. Ergo... she's, what, Snow White, who didn't get woken by a kiss, but slept in the enchanted slumber until modern days, and was... woken... somehow... quite possibly by someone who was decidedly not Prince Charming, hence her unfulfilling life. She's been expecting Prince Charming and hasn't found him yet - even sings about that - and this provides us with one of two obvious endings:
Captain Hammer Is Cursed
...and the explosion... somehow... broke the curse. Note that the explosion released not only physical pain but emotional pain ("it hurts... in my heart"), neither of which he could previously feel. His inability to connect with girlfriends or sympathize with the down-and-out wasn't a personality flaw; it was a curse that kept him from feeling any sort of pain of any level. (This is somewhat akin to the tale of The Light Princess, who was disconnected from "gravity," such that she floated in the air, but also could not cry and could not take anything seriously; once she learned to love, she also learned to cry and tumbled back to the ground, the curse broken.) Now that he can feel pain, he might be able to sympathize with others (eventually) and thus become a better person.
Half the story is Billy's delusions due to his concussion.
Take a look at the coloring of the scene where he explains "I need to watch what I say on this blog." It matches the coloring of that final shot of Billy in normal clothes, although the camera angle is somewhat tilted. Tilted and fuzzy, which increases the chance that he's begun hallucinating. After Captain Hammer threw a car at Billy's head (witness the bruise - Billy must be a little hardier than he seems, or else the car only grazed him), Billy managed to make it home, only to lapse into severe hallucinations due to his concussion. This came directly after the phone call from Bad Horse, and so the need to kill or be killed is what drives the rest of his vision. ...not so sure on what caused the costume switch, but possibly he was already somewhat hazy when he got back and only imagined that he had his costume on.
Captain Hammer will become an accomplice to Dr. Horrible
After finally feeling pain for the first time, he decides that he never wants to have the feeling again. This is sometime after therapy, and by then, the bad doctor has made a reputation as a supervillain, using his fans as test subjects and such. Hsmmer turns to Horrible, who performs an experiment that makes him stronger and unable to feel pain. Hammer swears allegiance to Horrible afterwards.
In his later years, Dr. Horrible/Billy will build a secret lair on Skullcrusher Mountain
After a while, Billy and Dr. Horrible merge into a single (twisted) persona who tries to replace Penny through supervillainous means and also wants to destroy the world as punishment for taking her away in the first place.
 The ending is the start of a Heel Face Turn for Doctor Horrible, who will destroy the Evil League of Evil from within
The fundamental goodness of Penny, so much that she asks Billy if he is okay even while she herself is dying and doesn't hold any grudge against him, is coupled with her death to fundamentally affect Horrible/Billy. The lyrics he sings as he carries Penny's body indicate that Doctor Horrible thinks that Penny believes in a fundamentally good world and that he has inherited it from her. As they cart her away, Billy is choosing to reject the fundamental driving nature of Doctor Horrible while adopting the persona for his own ends. When he enters the League's chamber and sings about making "you quake with fear", he isn't singing to the world, he's singing to the League that he is going to destroy in Penny's name. The final shot of the blog, with Billy wearing his normal clothes, is a sign that Billy has rejected Doctor Horrible. In other words, Billy is about to get Frank Castle on some bitches.
Billy's plan was the same as the one Angel revealed at the end of the fifth season.
He doesn't want to be a supervillain. That's just a means to an end: joining the Evil League of Evil so that he can find out their secret identities and assassinate all of them ("cut off the head"). In the beginning, he doesn't hate Captain Hammer; he just thinks he's misguided, which is why he's always looking for non-fatal ways to defeat him. His blog is not 100% truthful, as he started it to fool Bad Horse. This explains the contradictions in his ideology—he keeps tacking on references to his own personal ambition when he just wants to help the world. He's cagey with Penny because he suspects her of being a Bad Horse spy.
Now, whether he'll carry out the plan is anybody's guess.
Bad Horse is the one of the horses of the apocalypse.
Plague, to be specific. The Evil Germ-Man was his rider before Bad Horse cast him off. The singing cowboys are the other three riders after Bad Horse killed and stole the powers of their horses.
The entire show takes place in the Watchmen universe.
The only way Captain Hammer would be looked at like a paragon of virtue is if he exists in a world where he is that much better than the other heroes. Compared to The Comedian, Ozymandias, Doctor Manhattan and Rorschach, he looks like a paragon.
Act III takes place in two halves of a forked universe
As per the theories above about one part or the other of Act III being a delusion or a hypothetical. Both of these are true, and the delusion/hypothetical aspects are a residual connection between the halves linking Billy with Dr Horrible. Hey, why not? In Dr Horrible's universe, Penny returns as a ghost, like in the extensive and elaborate backstory of Donnie Darko. Naturally, this means that Moist will end up tasked with collapsing the tangent timeline. Or something.
Everything in Brand New Day happened, and everything shown after is Dr Horrible speculating on how things would have gone if he hadn't grown himself 50 feet tall
Because somebody needed to say it.
Penny was Blessed With Suck
Twice in the play, malfunctioning technology made a beeline for her. First, the van managed to go straight towards her instead of crashing into anything on the way (like a wall). Next, an explosion defied the laws of physics to hit her with shrapnel. The likeliest explanation is that she has the ability to attract malfunctioning technology, and no knowledge or control over it. Moist demonstrates that superpowers don't have to be particularly impressive in this setting, so if anybody is uncomfortable with the Die For Our Ship situation speculated about above...
Captain Hammer will return with a cape.
It doubles as a security blanket.
One of Bad Horse's superpowers is teleporting ghost cowboy assassins
It's the only way those Bad Horse couriers work and one of the reasons Bad Horse is so feared: he can have a three-man squad of singing ghost cowboys (they have to be ghosts because you can't see the lower halves of their bodies) teleport wherever he wishes to kill anyone who opposes him.
The exploding death ray took away Captain Hammer's superpowers.
First off, while explosions aren't fun, odds are that can't be the first blow of that magnitude (or even NEAR that magnitude - he jumps from never having felt any pain to unbearable pain) that a seasoned superhero would take. And even if it was just a much harder blow than his super-strength could keep him totally protected from, he is still in crippling pain days later when he talks to the therapist. That doesn't sound like one painful blow. That sounds like the removal of his inability to be hurt. Since he has not had a lifetime to get used to everyday bumps and bruises, this new sensation is too much for him to bear. It also explains why he hasn't even tried to get back on his feet and has hidden from the media; he can't continue being Captain Hammer.
Either that, or it severely injured him, probably internally since we can't see it. The pain is now omnipresent and, again, is something he's never had before even in small doses. He's in no shape for heroics and in perfect shape for someone to come finish the job if he doesn't drop off the radar.
Penny will return in the sequel.
She will only appear sporadically for a while, causing Dr. Horrible to believe she is a hallucination. She will turn out to be real, but her personality will be a complete reversal of what it had been - bitter, cynical, angsty, and suicidal - though she will seem to possess Penny's memories. It will turn out that she was a clone designed to be short-lived, which would be accomplished by her lacking the will to live, with her learning of Billy's new nature and actions being what pushed her over the edge. Furthermore, it will turn out that the clone was created by Bad Horse to fuck with Billy's mind and drive the last vestiges of guilt and morality out of Horrible, making him the perfect asset to the League. Of course, this will work too well, causing Horrible to go on an unstoppable rampage which will destroy Bad Horse and the rest of the League's inner circle, leaving Horrible in complete control, and allowing him to lead the League to a new glorious age of villainy which will bring the world to its knees.
:Alternatively, Penny returns in the sequel and Billy/Dr. Horrible or Captain Hammer believe her to be real, but she actually IS a hallucination.
Dr. Horrible is set in the Firefly universe.
In "Brand New Day", when Horrible sings about giving Penny "the keys to a shiny new Australia", he means "shiny" as in the slang for cool used in the Firefly 'Verse; the new Australia refers to the fishy planet of New Melbourne. Dr. Horrible destroys the Earth in a rage, and Firefly is set in the future. The same unreliable and interfering authorities who lock up children for showing signs of high intelligence (as seen in the Captain Hammer comic) later decide to start experimenting on them instead. Mal is the descendsnt of Captain Hammer, which explains how he's able to endure the pain he receives.
Bad Horse is the horse once made a senator by Caligula.
He became so accustomed to power that he became an immortal supervillain.
Dr. Horrible, The Tick, and The Venture Brothers all take place in the same universe.
First, take a look at this interview with Joss, which places The Tick and Dr. Horrible in the same universe via Word Of God. Getting from there to The Venture Brothers is a bit of a stretch, but Ben Edlund (creator of The Tick) has written for the show, and in one episode a passing reference to a minor Tick villain, Pigleg, is made. Naturally, this would also place all of these shows in the Jonny Quest continuity as well. The relationship between David Bowie of the Guild of Calamitous Intent and The Evil League of Evil's Dead Bowie would have to be explored.
Johnny Snow is (or was) Dr. Horrible's biggest fan.
Young, shy Johnny loved Horrible's blog so much, he wanted to become his sidekick. But when he was heartbroken to discover that position taken up by a sweaty guy, Johnny became a superhero in a desperate attempt to try and get Horrible's attention. In a way, he's the anti-Syndrome.
Billy is Doogie Howser.
Alienation due to his unnatural intelligence as well as the frustration at being called Doogie led him to change his name and undertake a life of crime. Come on, people, it's obvious!
Bad Horse is the main character.
He orchestrated everything through his agents Penny and Captain Hammer (see above). The goal was to turn Dr. Horrible's super-intelligent brain to the side of evil.
The story is an allegory for anti-intellectualism, especially in politics
The only things that we see as the world being mad are Captain Hammer being accepted (by people and Penny), and Dr. Horrible and other intelligent people being rejected (by people and Penny). It's similar to how in many facets of life, especialy American politics, charisma is valued over intelligence, and intelligence is often seen as a negative trait. But the intelligent respond to this by being self-righteous, socially awkward, know-it-alls, etc., which only makes the problem worse. Campaign rhetoric, when interpreted logically. When you choose people solely based on charisma, you get flaws similar to Captain Hammer (philandering, taking credit for everything).
Billy/Dr. Horrible is a reincarnation of Alexiel from Angel Sanctuary.
Even before the whole love-triangle with Penny and Captain Hammer, he still had a pretty crappy life: Getting beaten up by a smarmy jackass is humiliating, and he gets severe injuries at least part of the time (dislocated joints essentially cripple the limb until you get to a doctor—you can't just shove it back in, or else you'll mess up your nerves). His compassion for others (refusing to fight near a park because children play there, and refusing to kill a young future President or his mother) may be a residual trait of Alexiel's, which was purposefully brought out because, while basic decency is expected for normal people, Billy's compassion specifically conflicts with his hopes to get into the Evil League of Evil—another source of frustration for him.
Once he starts to get resigned to his Designated Villain status, he is no longer (as) tormented; YHWH makes sure that he's still miserable by setting up Penny and Captain Hammer. Hammer being aware that he's dating Billy's dream girl was the icing on the cake. Penny herself may be a reincarnation of Jibril, who "protects" Billy in this life by helping him keep his morality and compassion; but her protection is slowly eroded due to Alexiel's required misery and YHWH's manipulation, and Penny's last attempts to help Billy fail because of her death. After that, YHWH's job is done because Billy killed an innocent person and the love of his life without ever telling her how he felt. His acceptance into the ELE will always remind him of that, and he will spend the rest of his life suffering because Penny isn't there to help him through it—and it's his fault.
Billy's a Cosmic Plaything to the max.
The entire cast is C List Fodder
The newspapers reporting "Country Mourns" and "Worst Villain Ever" is hyperbole used by overzealous reporters and journalists. Captain Hammer is an incompetent Super Hero who only works in a single city. Billy desperately tries to be taken seriously, but there's nothing he can do to compare to the likes of Lex Luthor, Zoom or Sinestro. The Evil League of Evil is the local crime syndicate who stay local because they know that the moment they get the attention of an A-List superhero, they'll be knocked down faster than a house of cards.
The Blog is a huge analogy for the Writer's Strike
Think of it—a poor, sympathetic protagonist sacrifices everything, including his principles, to join a prestigious league, while crazed fans just chomp down on whatever fodder comes their way, and jerks called "heroes" run the entire system? And to take a leap of faith, would that make Joss Horrible, or... Bad Horse?
It's all a product of Billy Buddy's imagination (save the last 2 words)
He's just a lonely, possibly clinically insane, man with nothing but an overactive imagination.
Bad Horse is Suzumiya Haruhi
Pretty much the only major fantasy Haruhi hasn't lived out yet is being a supervillain, and Bad Horse's heraldic cowboys look suspiciously familiar.
Billy is The Master of Doctor Who fame
Toward the end of the Doctor Who episode, Utopia, the Master is posing as the kindly Professor Yana, his personality sealed away as a method of keeping him imprisoned. Possibly, Billy is in the same situation, a future incarnation of The Master thrown to some far-flung corner of space and time with the "evil" personality sealed away, leaving a well-meaning but rather wet young man with an amazing mind.
However, as life takes its toll on Billy and he suffers humilation and defeat, the mental blocks break down; the older personality reasserts itself, leading to a progressively more dominant "Doctor Horrible" (possibly a reference to his old foe, and his thoughts on him?) taking complete control, with the cover personality removed. Give it a few more weeks and Doctor Horrible will be dancing to I Can't Decide as he torments Captain Hammer.
Billy read Twilight
Think about it: he thinks that stalking a girl and generally being evil is the way to win her heart. If you get your love advice from Twilight, that kind of impression is to be expected. Even if you like Twilight, you can't disprove this theory because, even if he liked the book and considered Edward a role model, he would still try to mirror his actions.
Captain Hammer became a good guy
After falling in love, he means what he says about everyone being a hero and only threatens Dr. Horrible after fearing for Penny's life. The therapy is for his subsequent mental breakdown. He'll try to kill Horrible next time when he realizes how dangerous Billy is.
The series is a Blog Suicide Letter
The parts where the doctor is talking to the camera are pieces from his blog, the fantasy sequences were taken from his mind by some machine he invented and the events happening in reality were taken by nanite-cameras he built to document his joining of the Evil League of Evil. Moments after making his final entry he kills himself.
There is a Neutral League of Neutral in charge of both the supers and villains.
The Evil League of Evil isn't as Evil as it could be, especially considering Captain Hammer seemed to be the only superhero that mattered to the press, and completely disappeared after the Death Ray incident. Captain Hammer doesn't look like the kind of guy who would stay a superhero instead of using his abilities for Mundane Utility (at least becoming a movie star), or even becoming a villain, so there's probably someone in charge to make sure the heroes don't get bored and the villains don't get away with any unacceptable casualties.
The car did hit Billy directly in the head.
He went limp when he saw the car flying at him, and the car merely pushed him under it. He likely had more pain in his neck than his head, even if it only grazed him. Possibly, the goggles saved him by absorbing the excess kinetic (but somehow not heat) energy, similar to the freeze ray, so it was more like a mylar ballon hitting him at 30mph than a car.
Brand New Day with Giant Doctor Horrible was a flashback, not a daydream.
He can survive having cars successfully thrown at his head due to an inversion of the Square Cube Law's use in most media.
Members entering the Evil League if Evil must kill their loved one to enter the Evil League Of Evil, and resurrect and turn them to advance in the ranks.
This sith-like "subjugation of nature" attitude explains Dead Bowie (By Tie Die?) and supposedly-Fake Thomas Jefferson (probably brought back by an unseen and possibly [[{{Permadeath permadead]] former member). Penny may be the future Fro-Yo, or Nurse Horrible, assisting the doctor with his freeze ray.
The entire show was created for the sole purpose of making Neil Patrick Harris the definition of cool and encouraging people to emulate him.
In "Everything You Ever", Dr. Horrible sings, "Now Dr. Horrible is here / To make you quake with fear / To make the whole world kneel". However, once you remember that Horrible is played by Neil Patrick Harris, you can also interpret that last line to be, "To make the whole world Neil". In the end, he "won't feel a thing" because Neil will have lost his uniqueness and individuality in a sea of inferior impersonators. (All the better for Joss Whedon or Nathan Fillion to fill the power vacuum after Neil steps down.)
Hey, it's called Wild Mass Guessing for a reason. Also, people have thought of stranger plans.
Doctor Horrible will use How I Met Your Mother's Barney as his civilian persona.
Both characters begin as well-intentioned but timid, have something go very wrong with a girl, and in response seal up their hearts and become soulless bastards... though Barney's is played for laughs. Admit it: it's creepily possible.
Captain Hammer was physiologically scarred by a homeless person when he was a child.
The way he flinches from the homeless, describing them as "a bunch of scary, alcoholic bums"...
Captain Hammer never had any superpowers
The online comic is from his perspective, and notably over-the-top, so him throwing Dr. Horrible that far could easily be an exaggeration. His ability to avoid pain and defeat villains could be attributed to his ability to get the first punch consistently, and we never actually see him "throw a car" at Dr. Horrible, so that could be an exaggeration too. For all we know, he's just a very strong braggart who's never experienced real pain before.
Penny is actually Vi
She was on a mission to redeem Dr. Horrible, possibly as part of a larger plan to get at the Evil League of Evil. Her dating Captain Hammer was meant to communicate to Billy that she likes good guys. The idea was to inspire Billy to outdo Captain Hammer at being a good guy (not that difficult, honestly). They also had an insurance plan in case Captain Hammer went evil after Penny left him for Billy - Dr. Horrible and a Slayer would easily defeat Captain Hammer.
Penny is actually Cyd Sherman
While we're randomly guessing that every role played by Felicia Day is the same person (see above), let's add that Penny is actually Cyd Sherman. After the events of Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog, Penny got raised using a magic spell from the RPG the Guild play. As a result of having magic from the game cast upon her, Penny became incredibly addicted to the game. She tossed away her old life and name, and started playing the game 24/7. Speaking of games, you just lost The Game. HA! (That's just how I laugh.)
The Newswoman is an Active.
Captain Hammer hired her to say nothing but positive things about him to boost his PR. He's certainly got the clout. And in the song "So They Say," she has the line "Let's all be our best." Eerily similar to "I try to be my best."
Captain Hammer really is just a good guy.
And Dr. Horrible is just deranged. The only evidence we see for the world needing social change is that everyone likes Captain Hammer. Sure, he's a bit of a git sometimes, but he's a legitimately good guy, he even tries to help the homeless, it's unlikely that he's just helping them for Penny as he already has a fanclub of people willing to "do the weird stuff" with him, and he was interested in her before he found out that Horrible was. The only bad things he does are being mean to Dr. Horrible (a supervillain and criminal who logically should be in jail), brushing off his shoulder after that guy touches him (So he likes being clean), and his song "Everyone's A Hero," which to me seems more like he's failing at public speaking than someone whose obsessed with himself.
The Evil League of Evil is a cover for The Pride.
Captain Hammer is really one of their agents disposing of superpowered compition under the guise of a hero. It is because he got accepted into the leauge that Hammer stopped picking on Billy not because he was defeated. Besides LA isn't really a hot spot for super activities in most universes and they both had Joss Whedon writing about them for a while.
Wonderflonium is used to focus ray devices.
Think about it. Before Dr. Horrible got the Wonderflonium, the only ray he had that worked at all was the transmatter ray. It snatched up soup instead of gold bars because it wasn't sufficiently focused to get into the vault, and hit someone's lunch instead. The muscle-ray just clicked, and didn't work at all. It's outright stated that the freeze ray requires wonderflonium. Finally, "Do Not Bounce". Clearly, the death ray used wonderflonium, because it exploded immediately after bouncing.
The car missed.
Captain Hammer through a car at Dr. Horrible's head. He missed. The end. No hallucinations. No exagerrations. He just missed.
Dr. Horrible is a younger version of Nathan from Repo!The Genetic Opera.
...just imagine how screwed-up that would leave a guy...
Wonderflonium is an isotope of narrativium.
Specifically, wonderflonium is the common term for narrativium-14 - although it has differing physical properties, it retains the most basic feature of all elements in the narrativium family (other elements include alliterium and tropium) - narrativium-14, wonderflonium, behaves in certain ways simply because the plot says so. Examples: In Act I, Captain Hammer completely destroyed the Horribe Van Remote receiver. It only started working again because the wonderflonium inside the van generated a field of... plotness, and the plot said that the remote worked again just in time. In Act II, the freeze ray fails, because it runs on wonderflonium. The plot states that Horrible's heist in Act II must fail, or Act III would never have happened, so the wonderflonium's failure following the plot. In Act III, the freeze ray fails again. Not only that, but it fails at exactly the perfect dramatic moment in terms of plot. How can this be? Because the plot says that it does, and narrativium-14 follows the plot.
The entire show is from the perspective of Dr. Horrible narrating the event in his blog.
This is why Billy's painted as the victim, Hammer is such a blatant jerk/idiot, the townspeople don't catch on, and Penny's idealized to the point of being a flat character.
Act III, from the shelter onwards, was from the perspective of the Reportress.
Yes, the Reportress (of Terror Island fame), disguised as a normal reporter. The one who wrote "Horible", specifically. Her superpowers are: mis-spelling "horrible" without assistance, and Mad Reportin Skillz™.
The entire Blog was created to advertise for The Guild.
If Penny wasn't killed, she couldn't have "shilled for The Guild" in Commentary!. Therefore, the entire plot of Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog is merely a front to allow Felicia Day to insert advertising into something by Joss Whedon - since anything by Joss Whedon is watched by nerds, they're exactly the target market for The Guild as well!
Billy's full name is Billy Horrible.
And he has a PhD in Applied Quantum Physics, not in Horribleness. Captain Hammer was made a captain when he signed up for the military's Super-Hero Home-Front Initiative, like state alchemists and possibly EVA pilots automatically get an officer rank.
The entirety of Act 3 was an imagination spot...
Where Billy was trying to prove to himself that he didn't need to feel, and failed. That's what the last part of the final line was- getting choked up at even just imagining it, and knowing he couldn't kill Captain Hammer just to settle a grudge and get into the Evil League of Evil.
The Death Ray works by making people into plasticine.
Not literally. Captain Hammer became vunerable because of this, and Penny was killed because the shrapnel was still charged with the plasticination-power. If Captain Hammer's powers work in a way similar to the AT Field of Neon Genesis Evangelion, it could easily be that his field is strong enough that is can't be dented with knives or bullets and disrupt his physical body]], which seems quite likely considering it hurt in his heart. This could be backed up by "it's gonna be bloody" in the song. If it worked like a typical (for a non-explosive) death ray, it would most likely have simply killed him to death instead of anything bloody. It could have been that Doctor Horrible didn't know if it was going to just make Hammer really weak and vulnerable to the point he couldn't stay alive, or if it would completely destabilize him (though, Evangelion Spoiler: Instrumentality Tang would not normally be described as bloody).
The Death Ray had no wonderflonium.
It didn't bounce, it just cracked. The energy hit Captain Hammer through the cracks and made him vulnerable to shrapnel.
In the final scene, Doctor Horrible's new gloves are the same as Captain Hammer's.
Probably just from the same Super Costumes Outlet, but they could be a trophy. And we don't see Captain Hammer after the scene at the psychiatrist's office, so they don't have to be another pair.
Captain Hammer wears gloves to keep from breaking the skin of his knuckles.
Only his skeleton is invincible, and his muscles became unusually-but-not-necessarily-super-strong to compensate. He has an inability to feel pain, so he just makes sure to rely on his boots and gloves to keep his bones from ripping through his skin when he punches a villain too hard. The death ray jump-started his nervous system instead of shutting it down.
TheWarehouse
Ball, Peen, and Super Dick were separated from Captain Hammer. Hammer acts just like Super Dick would with a bit more motivation. What caused this lack of motivation? Ball and Peen being separated into their own characters. If you recall, the hammer is his penis, and Captain Hammer's motivations appear to be primarily getting sex. Doctor Horrible became Charles the Raver after he tried to kill himself, but took psychotropic drugs instead of sleeping pills and decided he liked the feeling enough that life was worth livign and the world was worth saving (his full name is William Charles Horrible). The various themed characters would seem to fit perfectly with the supers theme in Doctor Horrible (that is, puns and uselessness), as would the villains (numerous and ineffectual).
webcomic is the future of Doctor Horrible. Doctor Horrible is the good side and Billy is the evil side.
He always shows the most remorse and is much less manipulative as Doctor Horrible. He sings Brand New Day as Billy, and the closest thing Doctor Horrible gets to a Villain Song is Slipping, which could be about his roles slipping (like WMG has assumed), but in the other direction. Billy wants to be a super villain, and stalks Penny and puts on a false front to make her like him, but Doctor Horrible only once makes anything stronger than a stun ray and shows what appears to be genuine emotion the one time he interacts with Penny.
The Hammer is his yacht.
Captain Hammer's "the Hammer" is his penis the same way a knight's lance is his penis, or Lord Faarquad's castle was his height. That's why he's Captain Hammer. And it answers Penny's question of what he's captain of.
The Guy Who Smells Like Poo is a spy for the Evil league of Evil.
He was standing by the fire drum behind Billy at the same time that he was in the homeless shelter having soup. There are at least two of him, probably psychically linked and possibly a Multiple man. The smell that smells like poo may be a side effect of his power, or it could be method acting.
Specifically, it's within Commentary The Musical. Simple.
Everything after Brand New Day was a what-if scenario.
(Yes, it's another one of these.) Billy headed back to his apartment/lab, intent on bringing about Hammer's demise, but something made him reconsider. Maybe Moist talked him down, or maybe he just needed some time to cool off. He decided that it was too risky, and the likelihood that someone innocent would be harmed was too high. But he didn't want to abandon the idea completely, especially since the ELE would kill him if he did. So he and Moist paid a visit to Hourglass, whose conveniently only-vaguely-alluded-to powers include not only seeing into the future, but living it or allowing others to. Hourglass put Billy into a trance, and in his mind he went through with his plan - of course completely unaware at the time that it was a what-if. (This could also explain why time seems to pass so quickly in the last part of Act III.)
Shortly after the last shot, Moist and Hourglass manage to snap Billy out of it. He is horrified, and, naturally, decides not to go through with it.
Dr. Horrible and Johnathon Coulton's song "Skullcrusher Mountain" describe parallel universes.
It's just that in Dr. Horrible, he met Penny before he completed his rise to supervillainy, mostly because Joss is an evil, evil person.
"Johnny Snow" is, in fact, a woman.
With the name Joni Snow.
Caption Hammer really was falling in love with Penny
He's never been in love with someone before so he's not used to it. If she had lived then she would have dumped him and he may have realised that he's a jerk and actully attempted to improve himself.
The sequel will be "Penny's Sing Along Blog"
We will see the story from her point of veiw, including what made her think that Caption Hammer wasn't a complete jerk among other things. This will also explain her final comment.
or the sequel will be Caption Hammer's Sing Along Blog
Same as above except with Hammer.
Penny is the true hero in this show
I know it's a little sappy, but think about it. She's not perfect like Billy wants to believe, but she is the true hero. She is the only selfless person who desires is to be a symbol hope for others. Her death repesents the end of true heroes as everyone just shifts over from apathetic hope to apathetic fear. Penny repesented true change for the better.
Penny would have dumped Hammer if not for....
... the fact that he help her get the building she needed for the homeless, and she would have felt terrible and others would have assumed she slept with him to get what she wanted.
Penny slept with Hammer to get what she wanted
All for the sake of the homeless. I can't bring myself to hate her....
"Johnny Snow" is Jon Snow from A Song of Ice and Fire
Which makes the entiredy of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog actually a commentary on the wars in Westros. Penny as Sansa Stark? Moist as Tyrion?
In the sequel Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer will go at each other.
Ok, I know this one sounds obvious, and most people seem to be expecting Joss to do something unexpected, but I think going the obvious route would actually be appropriate in this case, given some of the above theories. After all, now that Penny's dead, the real Dr. Horrible is awake, and he won't be holding back. Furthermore, for the first time in his life Captain Hammer had been beaten, and so for the first time he'll actually be recognizing another person as a threat to him. So, I think the results will actually be the two being absolutely ruthless for 40 minutes.
The ELE uses a blood-in blood-out system.
For those unfamiliar with this, its a system common in prison gangs, where you must commit a murder to get in, and are killed if you leave. It helps to filter out cops, who wouldn't kill for admission. It seems that the Evil League does the same, at least to an extent. Apparently they were willing to let Dr. Horrible in if he committed sufficient crimes without killing at the very beginning, which presumably would have still required him to wreak more havoc than a cop would be willing to, but it explains why they decided a single murder was enough to get into a major supervillain organization.
Captain Hammer is Superboy Prime.
That's why he has sweater vests - he's trying to be like Superman. It also explains why he's such a dick.
Billy and Dr. Horrible are the same person. Gasp!
Just throwing it out there. Dr. Horrible and Billy, are in fact, a single coherent mind, not a split personality. This would explain why he has exactly the same mannerisms and shows the same goals and emotions, except for being slightly less shy as Dr. Horrible (which is to be expected, since he's using a costume and alter ego), and even then it's only because until the end he has no direct interaction with Penny in costume to MAKE him go Shrinking Violet. It would also explain why he's just as likely to act evil while dressed as Billy (starting Brand New Day) and can cry remorsefully as Dr. Horrible (Everything You Ever). Really, it should be a given that there is no split personality, merely a single character who experiences a tragedy brought about by his own myopia, but because of the prevalence of the Fanon, I'll just lump this in as another theory.
Dr. Horrible has a superpower, and it's simply being Made Of Iron.
I have some evidence to support this one. When he's hit by a car, all he has are a few bruises. When the Death Ray explodes, killing a person and injuring Captain Hammer, he's completely uninjured. Hammer also beats him up by slamming his head on a truck repeatedly, as well as what's shown on A Brand New Day, as well as a punch right after Slipping. This makes perfect sense, (more than 99% of the things on this page) and explains what was formerly just a way for Joss Whedon to indulge in his trademark girl murder. And that's not even talking about his personal life.
Captain Hammer becomes a true hero in the sequel
The guilt and physical pain from the shelter incident, coupled with the therapy, make Hammer feel empathy for others for the first time. The sobbing he was doing in therapy during the ending montage happenned when he realized what a bastard he was. He becomes a humbler, more compassionate hero (but still an idiot), parallelling Horrible's descent into true villainry.
Moist is gay
Well, I'm only basing it on one tiny bit, but, it's the room with the whole girly motif and the guy in pink latex right next to him. But, then again, now he has a use for his powers of making things moist... and slippery... ''lubricated''.
The Transmatter ray didn't transport a gold bullion after all
It transported the person who was guarding it. As people are made up of many more different elements than gold, they simply re-arranged themselves in-transit and turned the poor guard into slop. He also sniffs it as says something suspiciously like 'Smells like human...'
Doctor Horrible is indestructible!
That car that Cap. Hammer threw at him did give him horrendous wounds and/or broke his neck, but he got better.
There was a considerable amount of time between the explosion of the death ray and Doctor Horrible coughing.
Given the above theory, Retrometabolism is not an instant deal, and that explosion was a freakin' big one!.
Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was produced by Doctor Horrible and was a work of fiction in-universe.
And if the broadcast hack during the 2008-2009 Emmy Awards broadcast means anything, he's from (or came to) our universe. Captain Hammer (or Nathan Fillion in costume) is also a villain or henchman, and Penny is aware of the bad Doctor's identity. The main clue that it can't be before the end of the Blog is that Penny knows who it is. The main clue that it can;t be after the Bllog is that Penny's still alive. Although it could just mean that Penny survived.
Doctor Horrible/Billy actually became the Music Meister
Think about it, both characters are voiced by Neil Patrick Harris, both love to sing... hell, Music Meister's abilities are decidedly non-lethal as well (fitting with most of Horrible's schemes), not to mention a similar taste in main outfits. The only real difference is that the Music Meister claims to have a different background. This alone can be solved by claiming he used his newfound sound powers to brainwash himself into a different persona.
The next episode of Batman The Brave And The Bold that features the Music Meister will have to address this.
Bad Horse is Khartoum from The Godfather
He was reaminted and pure evil as a result. He has a complete disregard for human life after humans killed him for little reason. the cowboys are the stable boys who used to tend to him and have been bent to his evil will. this would also explain hows he's a Thoroughbred horse after all Khartoum was a 600k stud horse...
Dead Not Sleeping (the second e-mailer) is Captain Hammer...
... trying to find out who Dr.Horrible likes, in order to crush his hopes with her.
Dr. Horrible is the cause of, and product of, a Stable Time Loop
Dr. Horrible enlists the aid of Hourglass to go back in time and rescue Penny before the events of the Sing-Along Blog. However, he overshoots his mark by a couple of decades, ending up before Penny is even born. Frustrated at failing again, he sinks deeper into the Dr. Horrible persona and does what any good supervillain would do — take over the world. He is eventually overthrown, and a world now fearful of super-science villains begins persecuting anybody who shows even the slightest spark of scientific aptitude. It's into this world that Billy Buddy is born, and after a lifetime of torture in a Crapsack World, he comes to see Dr. Horrible as a misunderstood benevolent dictator, takes up his mantle, and vows to fix the world... and the cycle is complete.
Billy/Dr. Horrible is Lelouch vi Britannia if the timeline hadn't changed.
Both of them are geniuses who want to change the world through revolution, but the Horribleverse follows a more similar timeline to ours, and Dr. Horrible/Billy has a much harder battle to fight because changing the structure of a 300-year-old government is harder than getting a revolution of a people that have been conquered and discriminated against by Britannia. Penny is Suzaku (she also wants to change the world, but through less anarchic means), and Dr. Horrible is probably Clovis.
The whole show is a fictionalization of a talented but unpopular high school student's life.
The student (Billy/Dr. Horrible) lives with his equally unpopular brother (Moist) and is trying hard to get accepted to a table of drama geeks who are highly intelligent but very elitist. Penny is pretty much herself and Captain Hammer is an arrogant jock. The freeze ray is actually an act of humiliation and the death ray represents the student's decision to injure the jock as well as humiliate him. When Penny dies, it represents the girl moving away/becoming inaccessible to them both.
Capatain Hammer is an alternate version of Booster Gold.
Their personalities are just way too similar (most of the time).
The whole show is an adaptation of Hamlet.
Dr. Horrible is a grown-up Calvin.
We see numerous instances of Calvin showing tendencies to Evil Overlord-dom, but also of him showing compassion (the baby raccoon) and concern at the state of the world, to the point where he's willing to leave Earth entirely for Mars. When he grew up, he assimilated Hobbes' persona - this also hampered his natural scientific tendencies, because Hobbes was always holding Calvin back from such (never willing to be transmogrified or duplicated, remember). When he grows up, he goes by his middle name instead of his first name (Calvin William Buddy becomes Billy Buddy), but still finds himself beset by thuggish bullies and enamored of quiet, smart girls. He puts his overactive imagination into action by trying to become Dr. Horrible - just the descendant of Spaceman Spiff and Stupendous Man, hampered by grown-up uncertainty and doubt. However, when he snaps, he snaps but good. And finally, what is the color of the lab coat that Dr. Horrible dons in the last scene?
The wheel fell off
..and hit him in the face.
Doctor Horrible is a grown up Doogie Howser
Both played by Neil Patrick....both doctors...
Doctor Horrible is a grown up Charlie Brown
Charlie Brown is light haired, Horrible has blond hair. Penny is a red-head. Charlie Brown's love is the little redhead girl. Horrible wants to tell Penny he loves her hair.
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