The Tommy Westphall Multiverse Hypothesis

Lack of threads for this. I had heard about this plenty of times, damn fascinating.

A good summary of the gist of it.

So, what do you folks think? I honestly wasn't aware of just how huge this was up until now.

You may pick the pieces of your mind from the floor now.

Holy crap, that's amazing. It's like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but with fictional characters instead of the actors who play them.

I've long known about this theory and like it on a purely fanboyish level, but my logical self has to reject it. There are too many examples of A sharing a universe with B, B with C, etc. until you get to G, which is explicitly a television show in A. Mutually contradictory.

Somebody wrote a pretty thorough refutation of this awhile ago.

I don't have a link to it offhand, but you could probably just find it via Google.

My own simple refutation:

Kid probably incorporated his favorite shows in his daydream.

And my refutation to that is "shut up, autistic kid gives birth to all of TV".

When wank becomes work, it's not fun anymore. This is work.

Well, obviously some people are still having fun with it.

Tell that to a sperm donor.

I would kind of suspect that it was true for them, as well... not that I would really know, but it seems to me that there would be a lot more involved in sperm donation that just 'you walk into clinics and they pay you to masturbate'. You know, like paperwork. Medical checks.

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Well. Damn.

I Read This As: The Tommy Wiseau Multiverse Hypothesis

Me too, actually. Now I want to see every TV show ever remade by Tommy Wiseau.

That would be rather amusing.

... I believe I have something to do with Sony Vegas now. Excuse me.

I think the biggest problem with the Tommy Westphall multiverse hypothesis is based on what you would consider a crossover, or even a Continuity Nod. Obviously, a Shout-Out isn't always a continuity nod.

Example: A few shows are connected to the theory simply because they all use a Shout Out to a book for a company name... Those shouldn't belong at all. Drawing from the same source for inspiration does not translate to shared continuity.

But something like, how the St. Elsewhere cast hung out in Cheers, and Cheers' connection to Frasier, or the Elsewhere connection to Homicide (and not to mention John Munch.)

That being said, what I personally consider crossovers and continuity nods still makes up for a fairly large chunk of television.

Actually, the entry on the trope page for All Just a Dream links to a site that (allegedly, I can't really tell) takes this into account and gives a rather conservative estimate.

edited 1st Dec '12 7:23:41 AM by sorin255

Old dead topic, I know, but I just realized that Dwayne Mc Duffie might've been pre-empted by 3 months by Whedon. The Buffy ep. Once More, With Feeling (#607 Nov 2001) "I've got a theory some kid is dreaming and we're all stuck inside his wacky broadway nightmare." It could've just been coincidence, or a similar reference, but given the proximity of the two (both working in the comics side of television,) I can't help but theorize.