History WMG / BlackMirror

AI Generation, specially in the art department, saw a huge boom in advancement within the last few years, specially in 2022 with the release of Stable Diffusion and Novel AI. With all the controversions that surround this technology, it would make sense for it to be featured in an episode for 2023's Series.

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* WMG/BlackMirrorFifteenMillionMerits
* WMG/BlackMirrorWhiteBear
* WMG/BlackMirrorWhiteChristmas
* WMG/BlackMirrorNosedive
* WMG/BlackMirrorShutUpAndDance
* WMG/BlackMirrorSanJunipero
* WMG/BlackMirrorHatedInTheNation
* WMG/BlackMirrorUSSCallister
* WMG/BlackMirrorBlackMuseum
* WMG/BlackMirrorBandersnatch
* WMG/BlackMirrorRachelJackAndAshleyToo

[[WMG:''Metalhead'' is post-''Men Against Fire''.]]

[[WMG:Uploading a consciousness from a human brain utilizes destructive uploading.]]
The requirement of people wanting to be uploaded to San Junpiero or simply uploaded to a device from a human brain requiring the patient to die is because it's not copying the data in the brain, but destroying it as it is uploaded. Otherwise, you have a human that is brain dead.

!!''Metalhead'' is post-''Men Against Fire''.

!!Kenny and Hector from Shut Up And Dance were put into cookies that were put into rats

!!Uploading a consciousness from a human brain utilizes destructive uploading

!!Bandersnatch is a public punishment similar to the one in White Bear

The protagonist murdering his father was a highly publicized crime and he is being punished with a livestreamed torture memory wipe system just like in White Bear

!!''White Bear'': Victoria didn't murder the child / She isn't actually Victoria Skillane

She was a human rights activist who covertly bought a ticket and quickly shoved a cyanide pill into the real killer's mouth. Her punishment is to suffer the same fate. This may have happened several times.

** In which case, they also had to change her appearance. Talk about a violation of civil rights. Or flat-out violation of the law.

!!''White Christmas'': Matt's family

There's a possibility that Matt was lying about having a wife and a daughter - one, it's too much of a coincidence for both central characters to have been blocked by their spouses and their offspring, and two, it seems a bit odd that a seasoned manipulator like Matt couldn't make up a life about the hard drive. Maybe Matt made the wife and daughter up to try and forge a connection between himself and Joe, in order to make it easier for the latter to confess.

!!''Nosedive'': Port Mary will become the future [[Franchise/TheHungerGames Capitol of Panem]]

Over the decades, that exclusive village for high-rated elites becomes ever more and more exclusive, to the point where it ends up walling itself off from the rest of the country, and beefing up security at the gates, with TheBeautifulElite from all over the country pouring in and retreating behind its walls in a centralised form of "white flight". Meanwhile, the rest of the excluded, ill-rated country (explicitly the United States, as shown by the flag in one scene) goes through a number of chaotic upheavals and eventually coalesces into the thirteen districts of the new nation of Panem, while Port Mary builds upward, expands in population, adds skyscrapers onto its glitzy suburbs, and slowly grows from a mere luxury residential village into the new nation's glossy seat of power, the Capitol. The episode proper is already set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, so real-world problems like climate change are hinted at, and may have gotten worse in the meantime: over time, some of these, coupled with other unstated problems both natural and manmade, not to mention the extrapolated consequences of Port Mary's growing class discrimination, might snowball into whatever flashpoint caused the Dark Days, at which point the conflict between the Port Mary-turned-Capitol and the Districts (themselves of varying levels of wealth, but none anywhere near the high-fours and fives of the Capitol) sparks into an all-out war, which sees District 13 going underground and taking the nation's nuclear arsenal, and the Capitol covering up by publicising the district's apparent obliteration. As the dust settles, the Capitol, in a new attempt to impose order, brings the remaining twelve districts in line by mandating annual fights to the death between teenage representatives of all the districts. The rule is, ThereCanOnlyBeOne, and that's how the first, annual Hunger Games began.

!!''Shut Up And Dance'' is a modern AlternateUniverse of VideoGame/HotlineMiami

Specifically, an alternate universe in which [[spoiler: 50 Blessings' assassination attempt]] failed, and the group was subsequently disbanded by force, and life was normal up until present day... [[spoiler: and no more nukes dropped by the US or Russia to boot]]. Any surviving members of 50 Blessings decided to flee America to the UK to lay low for several years in hopes that they could rebuild and, perhaps, finish what they started. And thus, in the present, they decided to pose as a [[BuffySpeak malware remover software... thing.]] And sure enough, it's business as usual once again.

The reason for this theory is due to the fact that the events of the episode mirror many elements of Hotline Miami. The hackers from the software downloaded are sadistic and malicious, and can interfere and sabotage the lives of their unwitting "messengers" on a whim, willing to go to any means necessary to get their pawns to follow orders - in this instance, Kenny and the others - much like 50 Blessings did with the likes of Jacket and Biker; they made it very clear that they did ''not'' take disobedience lightly and would threaten them to get them to listen - and sometimes, bad things actually happened, as Jacket eventually attests to when [[spoiler: his girlfriend gets killed by Richter on 50 Blessings' orders]]. The hackers are also linked with a form of communication, which primarily becomes Kenny's phone, just like how Jacket got his orders from his own phone before his levels start, and the hackers set Kenny (and presumably others before and after him) missions that end up causing chaos such as the bank robbery, akin to how 50 Blessings managed to fool their [[BlatantLies good soldiers]] into fighting for America and to destroy the coalition with Russia, and of course, bloody carnage ends up ensuing as a result.

Of course, some who worked under the hackers and 50 Blessings didn't really wish to - the likes of Kenny and Hector for the former and [[spoiler: Richter]] for the latter. To say nothing of [[spoiler: both villainous sides being able to screw their "subordinates" over by the end; with the secrets of the hackers' pawns, Kenny included, revealed at the end when they [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness have completed their assigned tasks]] and 50 Blessings' representatives telling Biker that [[TheBadGuyWins their plan has already succeeded courtesy of Jacket and that it would only take 5 years for their plan to fall into fruition]]... even though the latter [[GoneHorriblyRight ended up with 50 Blessings and America getting more than what they bargained for in canon as they get nuked]]]].

And especially with the, ah, [[spoiler: [[PaedoHunt "revelation"]]]] in Shut Up And Dance, Kenny even has parallels with Jacket as a person - they may be seen in a sympathetic light at times due to their personal struggles, but you have to remember that they've done bad things - what with Jacket slaughtering nearly 300 people over his span and the reason why Kenny follows the hackers' orders in the first place.

!! ''Fifteen Million Merits'' takes place in a prison

Though there is a lot of debate about the crossover worlds within Black Mirror, there is some distinct cross over between a few episodes. Namely, Fifteen Million Merits and several episodes after. The main song plays a central theme in many episodes following, and the in universe TV show, Hot Shot, is even shown on billboards and tv commercials in later episodes. One possible explanation is that the cells in this episode are actually a prison. Mind you, this is Black Mirror world, so any number of things could land you jail time. Pirating music, being late on your bills, being overtly rude to someone, minor sexual harassment, just about anything you could imagine being overly scrutinized could potentially wind you up in jail. Rather than punish them with harsh, overly stressful environments, they put them away in a cell far out into the country where they work for their power, food, entertainment, and even hygiene amenities. If you want a better life, you dance like a monkey and hope you become a pop idol and not a sex toy. Even the famous don't get let out and are instead just given better life styles. If we as viewers are to believe Bing's cell at the end does look outside, then there is no apocalypse happening and humanity would be just fine living outside where the oxygen is breathable enough that trees and birds can survive. It may very well be that the outside world exists and these people are just criminals used as entertainment fodder.
* Your theory has been emboldened by ''[[Recap/BlackMirrorCrocodile Crocodile]]'', where Bing's incident occurring in the ''Hot Shots'' competition is referenced. They may also simply be an underclass of slave labor who have known nothing else, which would make sense given that nobody has any thoughts of escaping.

!! There's going to be a CrapsackWorld sequel to ''San Junipero''
It had a HappyEnding. This is a ''black'' mirror, not a ''bittersweet'' or ''vaguely grey'' one. Perhaps in series five there'll be an episode where either San Junipero itself has gone to hell, or, worse, Kelly and Yorkie have fallen out of love with each other but are stuck in immortality together. The longer they experience this, the more they grow to actively hate the situation. Nobody wants it to happen, but...
* "Black Mirror" doesn't mean 'things are bad', it's a combined reference to the fact that a turned-off TV or smartphone is essentially a black mirror, and the ancient pagan practice of using a black mirror to 'scry'/see at a distance or through the 'mists of time'.

!! The USS Callister is not a real ship, but a simulation.
Daley set it up somehow to act his out personal power fantasy, which is why the Spock/Tuvok expy shushes Cole when she's not impressed by the monsters--he's trying to stop her from breaking character, possibly because Daley punishes people who do (which may explain the shot of Cole's hands apparently melting/on fire later in the trailer). It also explains the "three cheers" thing.
** [[spoiler:Confirmed]]

!!Daly doesn't rely on GeneticMemory in ''USS Callister''
The one thing supposedly knocking this episode off the [[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness hardest of hard science fiction peg]] is the "take their DNA and it has their memories" thing. What if, instead, there's some database paired with a kind of tracker system that exists in the universe, somewhat like the Arkangel system, that means by taking the DNA he's just kind of able to do a search-by-sequence to get all of the data of the person. Why people aren't so protective of their DNA (throwing away coffee cups instead of incinerating them) would be because they wouldn't expect someone to want to download their identity, or maybe wouldn't expect the average person to have the technology to do so. This would, actually, make Daly's actions even creepier, too.

!!The Crew of the USS Callister are going to be heralded as heroes both in game and in the real world
Once the police investigate Daly's death and his crimes are exposed, both the real people and their digital counterparts will be vindicated. In game, given that they can go anywhere and do anything (they know the source code for Infinity) they'll soon become legends among the gaming community, befriending other gamers and exploring the game's universe in greater depth. Along the way, they may actually take other players on their ship. They may even end up providing help to people in the real world (gaming platforms have been used to get help to people who are in danger). Since the DNA scanner and lollipop that Daly had ends up in the Black Museum, it seems likely that they'll end up setting a major legal precedent for other copied and artificially created consciousness, as well as criminalizing Daly's actions (copying DNA and creating people for the purposes of abuse).

!!The Trinkets from the Black Museum won't last forever
Those keychain trinkets given to patrons who pull the virtual switch on Clayton appear to be the cheap types that wear out over time. Unless they contain some kind of rechargeable battery or can be modded, sooner or later the device will eventually fail. Also, depending on how the device works, as soon as the power supply or circuitry fails, that copy of Clayton's mind could be gone forever. Of course, if that reasoning were true, then Rolo's copy will go the same way too unless Nish decides to mod it to continue functioning. That might explain how Rolo Haynes was able to offer them despite the UN Mandating that any device that stores a consciousness must display at least five emotions for it to be humane; it's not permanent. That or Rolo flat out lied to authorities about it (which is within character for him to do).

!!Rolo Haynes is the real killer of Denise
His SuspiciouslySpecificDenial when the possibility that Clayton is innocent is brought up seems strange, and we know for a fact that he isn't exactly the most moral guy...

!!USS Callister character
Kirsten Dunst’s brief and unnamed cameo role is... Gillian from Marketing! Got to be!

!!The purpose of TCKR System's San Junipero is not altruistic or theraputic
The facility shown at the end of the episode requires time and money to run; the electric bill alone would cost a small fortune. So what's the true purpose of it? One idea: All those people who have "passed on" represent an incredible stockpile of knowledge and experience. Suppose that TCKR's intent is to draw from that to make an AI or their universe's version of Replicants? Even if an inhabitant chose to delete him- or herself, that may only mean that they are taken offline and who-knows-what is done with them afterward?

The facility shown at the end of the episode requires time and money to run; the electric bill alone would cost a small fortune. So what's the true purpose of it? One idea: All those people who have "passed on" represent an incredible stockpile of knowledge and experience. Suppose that TCKR's intent is to draw from that to make an AI or their universe's version of Replicants? Even if a inhabitant choose to delete him- or herself, that may only mean that they are taken offline and who-knows-what is done with them afterward?

The facility shown at the end of the episode requires time and money to run; the electric bill alone would cost a small fortune. All those people who has "passed on" represent an incredible stockpile of knowledge and experience. Suppose that TCKR's intent is to draw from that to make an AI or their universe's version of Replicants? Even if a inhabitant choose to delete him- or herself, that may only mean that they are taken offline and who-knows-what is done with them afterward?

!!The purpose of TCKR System's San Junipero has a dark purpose behind it
All those people who has "passed on" represent an incredible stockpile of knowledge and experience. Suppose that TCKR's intent is to draw from that to make an AI or their universe's version of Replicants? Even if a inhabitant choose to delete him- or herself, that may only mean that they are taken offline and who-knows-what is done with them afterward?