History WMG / MadMaxFuryRoad

*** Beyond Thunderdome did mention a nuclear war and radiation.

In the original Mad Max, Max loses his wife and toddler son. Yet, in Fury Road, he's haunted by hallucinations of a girl who looks to be about 10, and who calls him "pa" when beckoning him to rejoin Furiosa. Continuity error? Retcon? Nope. Max has been haunted for so long that, in his mind, the ghosts of his wife and son have blurred together, and the girl we see is the average.

It's only really justified by ActorAllusion, but the fact that Max narrates Fury Road and both Immortan Joe and The Toecutter are played by the same actor, but there may be a deeper meaning to this concept. Though little about them is similar, Max unconsciously associates his newest enemy with the one who took his wife and child. Small details about Toecutter find their way into Joe, justifying their sharing an actor and the most supurfluous of simularities they have.

[[WMG: Fury Road shares a universe with 2000 AD (Judge Dredd)]]

He's the feral kid from The Road Warrior, who took his hero's name and grew up to be just like him. Think about it; they look different (What's a "recast"? Let's keep the FourthWall firmly in place for now.), Hardy!Max is way too young to be Gibson!Max assuming Fury Road is set after Beyond Thunderdome, and Hardy!Max is far less talkative than even Gibson!Max, mostly communicating in grunts. His memories are also inconsistent with Max's past, as he never had a daughter and he was born long before the world became "fire and blood".

* According to Word of God, Fury Road takes place approx 45 years After The End per an interview with Fandango: http://www.fandango.com/movie-news/interview-director-george-miller-answers-all-your-big-mad-max-fury-road-questions-749278 "Fandango: When looking at the four films as a whole, where does Fury Road take place in the timeline? Miller: If you put a gun to my head, I’d say after Thunderdome, but it’s very loose. I can’t even work out the chronology of the first, second and third, let alone the fourth thirty years later. Fandango: The Mad Max series is set after society crumbles, but what exactly happened to the world? Miller: For me it all starts next Wednesday – when all the bad things we read in the news come to pass; stuff we never saw coming. The apocalypse of some form happens, and you wind up 45-50 years in the future. That's where we pick up." Therefore, Hardy's Max is actually Max Rockatansky II, the original Max's son. He idolized his Dad, and when the pressure of living in the Wasteland (and probably Dad's death) finally pushed him into Sanity Slippage, he adopted most of Dad's history (I used to be a cop, and maybe Dad's habit of wearing the leg brace) as his own as a way of keeping Dad alive somehow. He probably managed to build his own copy of the Pursuit Special as well (note the significant differences: different rear rims, only one large fuel tank in the back).

* Even without WordOfGod, we kniw Joe's citadel has existed as such for one whole generation of War Boys Nux's age to be raised, and for 7000 days (20 years) to pass since a young Furiosa's kidnapping. Gibson's Max was in his prime during the Apocalypse, which is when Immortan Joe roseto power. Now, Hardy's Max refers to himself as a road warrior, like the Feral Kid did to Gibson's Max; it is possible that the kid accompanied the original Max and then took to wearing his uniform, his name and even the leg brace. There's also a hallucination of a child calling to him ("Come on, Pa! Let's go!") when he abandons the Vuvalini. It could be Sprog, but it could be a mamory of Max II calling to Max I.

[[WMG: In Mad Max: The Wasteland, it will be revealed that Max TookALevelInKindness]]
We already kinda see this in Fury road: At first, he is completely apathetic to the plight of Furiosa and the wives, and doesn't seem to give a damn about The Citadel. However, by the end, he puts his life on the line for them, expecting nothing in return. He easily could've stayed and ruled The Citadel with Furiosa, but didn't. This is because he realized that he could still do good in the world and help people, just like in his days as a police officer. The whole situation pretty much resulted in a reverse SanitySlippage. He'll travel from town to town, village to village, punishing the guilty and protecting the innocent. His heroic deeds will give birth to the legend of The Road Warrior.

[[WMG: Fury Road takes place in the same universe as the Hunger Games series]]

I know, its not the official mythos, but this is WMG, so what the hell. Going beyond just an ActorAllusion, Joe really IS The Toecutter, having survived Max running him down in the original movie, but the injuries he sustained caused both an aged, crippled appearance, and gave him partial amnesia, which is why he doesnt remember Max. However, he retained his sadistic, cruel personality and charisma, which allowed him to build a much bigger powerbase than he ever had as leader of the biker gang. However, his injuries are catching up to him, and he's desperate to breed a son to take over from him.

Chromosomally, that is. Same theory as above about how Joe fathered a child with one of the Vuvulvani, but the resulting baby wasn't any less genetically-atypical than his known surviving sons: it had Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Externally Furiosa appeared completely female, and was brought up to self-identify as such, but she has no uterus or ovaries and never menstruated. This is why she was designated as sterile at such a young age. Aside from the infertility, she's perfectly healthy, and ''could'' have easily been the very heir Joe'd been seeking all along ... except he'd already built a society so sexist that merely ''looking'' like a female was enough to bar any girl, intersex or otherwise, from being respected by his misogynistic personality-cult.

[[WMG: Fury Road Max is...]]
...Max Rockatansky Junior. The Mad Max from the original trilogy eventually found a new wife, sired a son, and retired from wasteland scavenging. Unsurprisingly, Junior is a chip off the old block...

,,,Max Rockatansky Junior. The Mad Max from the original trilogy eventually found a new wife, sired a son, and retired from wasteland scavenging. Unsurprisingly, Junior is a chip off the old block...

** Thereby turning two of this film's TearJerker moments into a CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming!/5067418

** Maybe it's a case of [[UnreliableNarrator]], in that Toecutter survived the wreck, pieced his broken body back together, but his mind was irreversibly shattered. He suffered from total amnesia, became Joe Moore, foregoing his former biker hooligan ways in a half-recalled shadow of a memory of the consequences of his actions, and the rest played out as in the comics & Fury Road.

** Maybe it's a case of [[UnreliableNarrartor]], in that Toecutter survived the wreck, pieced his broken body back together, but his mind was irreversibly shattered. He suffered from total amnesia, became Joe Moore, foregoing his former biker hooligan ways in a half-recalled shadow of a memory of the consequences of his actions, and the rest played out as in the comics & Fury Road.

* He organizes an all-female fighting horse to escort the Black Ships. Later, one of his supposed incarnations/avatars would organize the Sisters of Battle.

* Makes alot of sense, except that the Capital had hugely advanced biotech. So if this is the same universe, and why the heck not, it's a distant prequel during the first decades after the war.

A number of observers have noted that this is the only film in the series to have narration (however small and quick it may be) delivered by ''Max'' personally. As such, it makes sense that Furiosa gets the lion's share of attention, since it's him remembering ''her.'' Since Max doesn't seem like the kind of person to bullshit a story, it makes sense with how brutal the film plays out; which also applies to how he's naturally not averse to telling it with all the crap he had to personally go through - instead of having all that stuff swept under the rug by someone else making a legend out of it. This was Max remembering a really rough week where he got his cat wrecked ''twice,'' was used as a blood-bag ''and'' a hood ornament, had to endure a sandstorm while ''outside'' of a vehicle, met a woman as dangerous as he was, got pulled into another issue he wanted no part of, and then helped said woman take back one of the few safe havens left in the wasteland.

* According to Word of God, Fury Road takes place approx 45 years After The End. Hardy's Max is actually Max Rockatansky II, the original Max's son. He idolized his Dad, and when the pressure of living in the Wasteland (and probably Dad's death) finally pushed him into Sanity Slippage, he adopted most of Dad's history (I used to be a cop, and maybe Dad's habit of wearing the leg brace) as his own as a way of keeping Dad alive somehow. He probably managed to build his own copy of the Pursuit Special as well (note the significant differences: different rear rims, only one large fuel tank in the back).

** Thereby turning two of this film's TearJerker moments into a CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming!
** This troper was inspired by this WMG, and wrote that fic. http://archiveofourown.org/works/5067418

This troper has been bothered by the fact that Furiosa has been to the Green Place "many times" yet still doesn't seem to realize that it's gone. Maybe she meant that the thought of escaping to the sanctuary was the only thing keeping her going, and when she had moments of weakness, she would "go to the Green Place" to center herself and remind herself of her ultimate goal. The Vuvulani have to tell her that it's gone, so how did she not know this already, if she had physically gone there?