What's your favorite headcanon?

[Maryring]

All the supernatural elements of Courage, the Cowardly Dog are really just Courage letting his imagination and paranoia run wild. The Lady of the Lake is just a nurse showing Eustace a potential nursery home. The weremole was just a regular mole that left Muriel uncharacteristically cranky, and Fred... well actually everything about Fred probably happened. There's nothing supernatural about that.

[Bohandas]

The reason why the Borg in Star Trek act in the imperialistic the way they do and why they seem to be reliant on assimilation as almost their sole means of gaining new technologies is because they have absorbed the collective arrogance, provincialism, traditionalism, orthodoxy, all-around pig ignorance, and general character flaws of every race they've conquered. They're kind of like Slannesh from WH40k in that regard.

[Mikemical]

Two about Devil May Cry:

Spoiler: DMC2 is an alternative timeline

Show

Vergil(as Nelo Angelo) killed Dante in DMC1, broke free of Mundus' control with the power of Sparda, and took on the name and looks of his brother to honor his memory, which explains why DMC2 Dante was so quiet and less gunplay-savvy than the original. He would've killed Trish instead of sparing her, and never made peace with Lady, explaining why he was alone in his shop and why he would be interested in learning about Sparda from Matier(Dante didn't give a flying fart about Sparda).

Spoiler: Nero is not actually Vergil's son, but they do share blood.

Show

Nero has a blank flashback when Yamato is restored where we hear him saving Kyrie from what we must assume are demons. The Hellgate was opened but Yamato broke, making sealing it impossible while demons poured forth into the streets of Fortuna. Among these demons is Vergil(as Nelo Angelo), who came to blows with Nero, severely injuring his arm before Kyrie distracted him. With his back turned, Nero attacks him, splashing demonic blood over his arm as well as severely wounding the demon, enough for it to be subdued. Nero faints.

Agnus is brought the body of Nelo Angelo, and begins to experiment with it, creating the Bianco and Alto Angelo armors(their library entry states they're modeled after the armor of "a dark angel") as well as several other artificial demons(Gladius, Cutlass and Basilisk). Nero's body heals, but the effects of the demonic blood cause severe changes in his body. Eyes turn blue, hair turns white, and his right arm becomes the "Devil Bringer". Nero becomes an outcast among the Order because of his demonic taint, but remains a valuable asset nonetheless. Through his veins now courses Sparda's blood, which would be capable of restoring Yamato, as well as sensing Dante's proximity. Not to mention, the voice that echoes through his head: "Power. Give me more power."

One about Fables:

Spoiler

Show

Fables ends when Snow White and Bigby get married and everyone gets to live happily ever after, THE END, NO BETRAYAL, NO CHILD MURDER, NO WAR BETWEEN ROSE RED AND SNOW, NO ZOMBIFIED BIGBY, BOY BLUE DOESN'T DIE, NOPE. HAPPY ENDING.

[Jay R]

[Unless you are conversant with both bad and obscure early Silver Age comics and 70s love songs, move along. There's nothing to see here.]

Magi and Sandra like Piña Coladas, and getting caught in the rain.

[Gnoman]

The reason why the Borg in Star Trek act in the imperialistic the way they do and why they seem to be reliant on assimilation as almost their sole means of gaining new technologies is because they have absorbed the collective arrogance, provincialism, traditionalism, orthodoxy, all-around pig ignorance, and general character flaws of every race they've conquered. They're kind of like Slannesh from WH40k in that regard.

Well, that's actually quite clever. Helps to explain the subtle differences between their early appearances and later ones, too.

[Rampionzel]

Dementors are actually the bigger bad in the Harry Potter universe, Voldemort is still the main antagonist but his plan plays out on a much smaller scale. Dementors are the original source of dark soul-destroying magic like the horcruxes, and (borrowing some ideas from Methods of Rationality) they actually are sentient magical manifestations of black holes---which would give room for sequels set in the future IN SPACE!

[Sermil]

Spoiler: For Persona 4 Golden

Show

Kanji and Naoto became lovers a few days after the (mid-February) ski trip. Seriously, the tension between those two had me almost yelling "Would you kiss her already??" at the screen, and I choose to believe it wouldn't have been unresolved much longer.

Oh, and Kanji is actually bisexual. He eventually realizes he can find men attractive while still being a 'real man'. Doesn't mean he doesn't find Naoto attractive too.

[Waker]

Here is my interpretation of the real story of Netflix's Iron Fist.

Spoiler: Iron Fist

Show

My take on the story is that Daniel Rand wasn't meant to be the Iron Fist.
When Danny returns to New York, your understanding of his past is shown through a handful of short flashbacks and him telling others of what happened. This is important as he controls his own narrative.
He frequently tells us about how he is the best fighter in all of K'un Lun despite the fact that his fight scenes are underwhelming. He attempts to sell himself off as a great hero, but his only attempts of kindness are those he can demonstrate through force or power. And overall he doesn't show the mental and emotional stability needed to have been chosen as the greatest protector of K'un Lun. Lemme explain.
When he's living on the streets, he is befriended by a homeless man who freely offers him food and helps him out in other little ways. The man eventually overdoses and dies. Afterwards when Danny is committed to the asylum, he is given advice by another patient. Eventually Danny does get his seat at Rand Enterprises with his first act selling medicine at cost. Later when Rand is accused of potentially being the cause of illness, Danny closes down the suspected factory and pays all the workers time off. Lastly there is the chemist with the kidnapped daughter, wherein he challenges the Hand for her release. The reason I bring up all of these events together is to show how Danny acts as a "good person". In the first two cases, he is treated with kindness and completely forgets about it. In the latter cases, he has a chance to do good, by demonstration of force (using his superior shares) and violence.
Danny is shown to repeatedly suffer from PTSD episodes in the early episodes. Its one thing to have him get nervous when he's on a plane, but doing so when he's just sitting on a bed doesn't seem to indicate these are super rare occurrences. While he can be calm around those he likes, he frequently resorts to violence at little provocation (such as the dojo scene).
But wait, there's more. Danny does not respect vows or promises of any kind if they inconvenience him. Colleen lets Danny stay at her place under the agreement that he doesn't interfere with her students. At the very first class she has after he arrives, Danny attempts to take over the class, even though they are being taught a different style than what he uses, and strikes one of the students when they make a joke. His stories of K'un Lun and Davos frequently talk about his childish behavior; such as stealing wine, attempting to spy on bathing girls, racing carts. Basically a bunch of stuff that his vows probably prohibit him from doing. Y'know, like his vow of celibacy (or chastity, can't remember) that he breaks with Colleen shortly after they meet. And then of course there is the biggest vow of them all, abandoning K'un Lun. There are little things too like when he has to drive a super fast, expensive car even though he admits he doesn't have a license. I mean, that's not a vow, mostly just pride and a willingness to break the law cause he can.
The last big clue that he wasn't meant to be the Fist is that he doesn't seem to know anything about actually using his powers. When he fights the only thing he can seem to do is punch hard and make his skin strong enough to break hatchets. The first time he finds out the Fist can do anything else is when Bakuto shows him he can heal using chi. Later in the Defenders, you discover that a previous Fist had sealed the dragon graveyard.
So why have I talked about all of his character flaws and why does that relate to why I think he wasn't supposed to be the Iron Fist? Before I explain, I'll bring up one last tidbit that is easy to overlook in the show. Early in the show it was mentioned that there was a prophecy about a child coming down from the sky, blah blah. Clearly it was about Danny.
With all that in mind, here is my headcannon. A young Danny Rand shows up in K'un Lun where he starts training with warrior-monks, cause what else is he gonna do? One day he hears about the Iron Fist and says to himself "Iron Fist means you are the best, so that's gotta be me!" He also catches wind about a prophecy and decides it applies to him, cause fate clearly has great things in mind for him. He screws around and makes an ok warrior-monk, the only reason anyone knows who he is being that he befriended Davos. Why is Davos important? Because he's the next Iron Fist. Oh, no one says it in public, but he's a great fighter dedicated to K'un Lun. Being the son of one of the greatest elders doesn't hurt his chances. The years pass and now the time to become the next Iron Fist is here! Only Danny is passed over in favor of Davos. A petulant Danny preempts the ceremony and battles the dragon himself. Against all odds he somehow survives and K'un Lun is left with a decidedly untrained Iron Fist, but what are the odds the city will be attacked?
Now that Danny is the Fist, he finds the hype not worth it. I mean, he's got nifty glowy hands, but all he does is stare at a wall all day for weeks. One day the pass opens and shortly thereafter he decides that being the protector is stupid, so he hightails it back home. Later to justify his decision he makes up some stupid lie about how seeing a bird was a metaphor for the universe saying he needed to go back to being Scrooge McDuck-rich. Upon getting home he throws a fit, stalks people, assaults others and generally just inconveniences everyone because it's his name on the building. Occasionally he has these pangs of doubt for what a hero should do, but rather than show kindness and selflessly help people, he chooses to only do so when he can force others to accede to his demands.
When Davos gets to New York to make Danny go back to K'un Lun, he doesn't bring up how he was supposed to be the Fist. The reason being that he's not a brat whom the world revolves around.

[GloatingSwine]

You don't need headcanon, the fact that the immortal weapon Iron Fist, protector of K'un L'un is a thundering dumbass is canon.

[Dragonexx]

I like this explanation of how technology in Star Wars hasn't really changed in thousands of years.

My theory on why Star Wars tech is the way it is is a combination of two factors: incompletely-understood ancient technology and incredibly powerful AI. It's by no means official, so feel free to disregard it and laugh at me for being dumb.


Here's what we know: The original hyperdrives were developed by the Rakatan Infinite Empire, a highly-advanced civilization whose technology was powered by (and partly functioned using) the Dark Side of the Force. After the Infinite Empire fell ~25,000 years before A New Hope, Humans and Duros engineers were said to have "discovered ways of working around the Force-attuned components of the Rakata technology and produced their own version of the hyperdrive," and the technology spread throughout the galaxy from there.

Not "reverse-engineered the functionality of" and not "independently developed technology based on what they knew of" the original tech, but worked around the problems, presumably leaving the technology mostly intact and not touching anything they didn't have to. Modern movies-era hyperdrives work on the same principles, and at no point over those many millennia did someone come up with a new and improved method of entering hyperspace. Heck, canonically no one knows how ships slow down to exit hyperspace, they just sorta...do it.

The mass shadow issue with hyperdrives is similar. Two other ancient races built a Stargate-like system of gates through hyperspace (also incorporating Force-based technology, interestingly enough) that functioned just fine on a planet's surface, well within gravity wells, and Centerpoint Station (another ancient creation by a highly-Force-sensitive species) could fire a repulsor beam through hyperspace which, again, could originate and terminate within gravity wells; however, modern hyperdrives won't function within a mass shadow due to safety limiters, and turning off the safety limiters to jump within a mass shadow anyway will blow your ship to smithereens. And when the Empire was developing Interdictor cruisers, it didn't do so by directly interfering with hyperspace travel (which would be a superior method if the mechanics of hyperspace travel were well-understood), but by generating mass shadows to fool hyperdrive safety governors.

This all points to a civilization that's very good at building, using, and incrementally improving upon hyperdrive technology, but doesn't really understand it at a fundamental level. Same with blaster technology, which was also mostly reverse-engineered from Rakatan tech; a Rakatan security droid's blaster was considered top-of-the-line during the KotOR era, over 22,000 years after it was built. Same with cloaking technology, where ancient Stygium-crystal-based cloaking devices (Stygium crystals are also Force-attuned, by-the-by) were superior to the Imperial era hybridium-based cloaking devices, being more compact, more energy-efficient, and more user-friendly (in that you could see out of them instead of being blinded yourself).

And same with droids, which leads into my other point. In Star Wars, leaving a droid alone and un-memory-wiped for long enough means that it will develop a distinct personality and become more independent and more capable. Their programming is self-modifying, and this makes them extremely dangerous to a society reliant on droid labor. Droids with "advanced sapience," I guess you'd call it, like R2-D2 can easily slice through military-grade encryption, take over ships and other droids, and so forth. Hence the mandatory memory wipes for droids every so often.

Why not just build droids so that they don't do that? Presumably because they can't. We never see any individuals make a droid completely from scratch, just assemble one from existing parts (most importantly using an existing droid "brain"). Droids are made by automated factories, which are made by construction droids, which are made by automated factories, and so on all the way back to droid manufacturing planets like Mechis III that have been pumping out droids since the early Old Republic days. And no one really knows who got the process started, nor does anyone bother having more than a token non-droid presence on such planets, preferring to leave everything up to whatever intelligence controls the manufacturing facilities. It's all probably hackishly pseudo-reverse-engineered from ancient Force-dependent tech like everything else.


So you have a society where technology has been incrementally improving as best it can be without anyone really understanding the fundamental principles, in a galaxy where maybe they can't understand said fundamental principles--imagine if 99.99% of scientists and engineers just couldn't learn or work with quantum mechanics and all attendant technologies like CPU construction, and only the ones who were "Physics-sensitive" like Einstein or Turing could do anything with them, through inspiration by "the will of the Physics"!

You can't dramatically increase the range of blaster-based weaponry to facilitate long-range precision warfare under Human control, because blaster tech has already been pushed as far as it can go, and shield tech has as well so you're stuck with a frustratingly slow arms race.

You can't entirely computerize your military spacecraft because a group of sufficiently-independent and -intelligent droids could come along and suborn the whole fleet, or the entire fleet could be jammed and blinded with no known countermeasures.

You can't replace your starfighter pilots with drone starfighters and your ground troops with combat drones, because the last time someone tried that the drones started saying "Roger roger!", developing sarcastic senses of humor, and going rogue.

You can't have a well-defended central control computer that can resist such takeover attempts and coordinate the rest of your computerized fleets remotely through a hardened network, because (A) that also failed spectacularly before and (B) the jamming problem again. Plus, your very own central control computer might become too sentient and hijack itself, and wiping your entire fleet's databanks daily or weekly to keep that from happening simply isn't feasible.

It's basically like the "can't have complex networks because Cylons can hack in and take over from the outside" problem from Battlestar Galactica, crossed with the "can't have anything approaching real AI because they'll gain sapience and take over from the inside" problem from Mass Effect...except that the Galactica can also awaken as a Cylon and even the navigation VIs on the Normandy can spontaneously develop into true AIs.

So everyone is forced to rely on tried-and-true manual technology over automated repulsorcraft, human senses over computer analysis, living breathing people in barely-computerized spacecraft over autonomous drone starships, because they know none of those will go rogue. Everyone focuses on eking out that tiny 0.1% improvement in blaster ranges or data compression or whatever, adding a tiny brick to the massive monument that was the hand-me-down technology from ancient civilizations. Everyone desperately keep on top of the memory-wipe schedule for their droids and hope that the ones who develop sapience are nice people (and not like, say, EV-9D9 who gained sapience and promptly decided to modify other droids to be able to feel pain and then torture them to death, or IG-88 who gained sapience and then tried to make armies of itself) who don't want to bring galactic civilization crashing down around their ears.

[Mikemical]

Spoiler: For Persona 4 Golden

Show

Kanji and Naoto became lovers a few days after the (mid-February) ski trip. Seriously, the tension between those two had me almost yelling "Would you kiss her already??" at the screen, and I choose to believe it wouldn't have been unresolved much longer.

Oh, and Kanji is actually bisexual. He eventually realizes he can find men attractive while still being a 'real man'. Doesn't mean he doesn't find Naoto attractive too.

This, though you can totally throw a wrench at them hooking up that if you choose to romance her.

[Sermil]

This, though you can totally throw a wrench at them hooking up that if you choose to romance her.

Ya, I have a rant I've been considering writing about how tired I'm getting of the "every single major female character is a potential romance partner" trope (or just "every single major character" in the case of Mass Effect). One big reason is that it really cuts down on the possible stories you can tell about those characters -- they can't be in a long-standing relationship, and you can't have a B-plot relationship between two major characters, because all of them have to be available for you if you deign to choose them.

[GloatingSwine]

Ya, I have a rant I've been considering writing about how tired I'm getting of the "every single major female character is a potential romance partner" trope (or just "every single major character" in the case of Mass Effect). One big reason is that it really cuts down on the possible stories you can tell about those characters -- they can't be in a long-standing relationship, and you can't have a B-plot relationship between two major characters, because all of them have to be available for you if you deign to choose them.

Bioware gotta tick that Bioware box. All characters are playersexual, all characters are available.

Saints Row 4 should have been the sendup that ended it.

[Bohandas]

I like this explanation of how technology in Star Wars hasn't really changed in thousands of years.

Spoiler

Show

My theory on why Star Wars tech is the way it is is a combination of two factors: incompletely-understood ancient technology and incredibly powerful AI. It's by no means official, so feel free to disregard it and laugh at me for being dumb.


Here's what we know: The original hyperdrives were developed by the Rakatan Infinite Empire, a highly-advanced civilization whose technology was powered by (and partly functioned using) the Dark Side of the Force. After the Infinite Empire fell ~25,000 years before A New Hope, Humans and Duros engineers were said to have "discovered ways of working around the Force-attuned components of the Rakata technology and produced their own version of the hyperdrive," and the technology spread throughout the galaxy from there.

Not "reverse-engineered the functionality of" and not "independently developed technology based on what they knew of" the original tech, but worked around the problems, presumably leaving the technology mostly intact and not touching anything they didn't have to. Modern movies-era hyperdrives work on the same principles, and at no point over those many millennia did someone come up with a new and improved method of entering hyperspace. Heck, canonically no one knows how ships slow down to exit hyperspace, they just sorta...do it.

The mass shadow issue with hyperdrives is similar. Two other ancient races built a Stargate-like system of gates through hyperspace (also incorporating Force-based technology, interestingly enough) that functioned just fine on a planet's surface, well within gravity wells, and Centerpoint Station (another ancient creation by a highly-Force-sensitive species) could fire a repulsor beam through hyperspace which, again, could originate and terminate within gravity wells; however, modern hyperdrives won't function within a mass shadow due to safety limiters, and turning off the safety limiters to jump within a mass shadow anyway will blow your ship to smithereens. And when the Empire was developing Interdictor cruisers, it didn't do so by directly interfering with hyperspace travel (which would be a superior method if the mechanics of hyperspace travel were well-understood), but by generating mass shadows to fool hyperdrive safety governors.

This all points to a civilization that's very good at building, using, and incrementally improving upon hyperdrive technology, but doesn't really understand it at a fundamental level. Same with blaster technology, which was also mostly reverse-engineered from Rakatan tech; a Rakatan security droid's blaster was considered top-of-the-line during the KotOR era, over 22,000 years after it was built. Same with cloaking technology, where ancient Stygium-crystal-based cloaking devices (Stygium crystals are also Force-attuned, by-the-by) were superior to the Imperial era hybridium-based cloaking devices, being more compact, more energy-efficient, and more user-friendly (in that you could see out of them instead of being blinded yourself).

And same with droids, which leads into my other point. In Star Wars, leaving a droid alone and un-memory-wiped for long enough means that it will develop a distinct personality and become more independent and more capable. Their programming is self-modifying, and this makes them extremely dangerous to a society reliant on droid labor. Droids with "advanced sapience," I guess you'd call it, like R2-D2 can easily slice through military-grade encryption, take over ships and other droids, and so forth. Hence the mandatory memory wipes for droids every so often.

Why not just build droids so that they don't do that? Presumably because they can't. We never see any individuals make a droid completely from scratch, just assemble one from existing parts (most importantly using an existing droid "brain"). Droids are made by automated factories, which are made by construction droids, which are made by automated factories, and so on all the way back to droid manufacturing planets like Mechis III that have been pumping out droids since the early Old Republic days. And no one really knows who got the process started, nor does anyone bother having more than a token non-droid presence on such planets, preferring to leave everything up to whatever intelligence controls the manufacturing facilities. It's all probably hackishly pseudo-reverse-engineered from ancient Force-dependent tech like everything else.


So you have a society where technology has been incrementally improving as best it can be without anyone really understanding the fundamental principles, in a galaxy where maybe they can't understand said fundamental principles--imagine if 99.99% of scientists and engineers just couldn't learn or work with quantum mechanics and all attendant technologies like CPU construction, and only the ones who were "Physics-sensitive" like Einstein or Turing could do anything with them, through inspiration by "the will of the Physics"!

You can't dramatically increase the range of blaster-based weaponry to facilitate long-range precision warfare under Human control, because blaster tech has already been pushed as far as it can go, and shield tech has as well so you're stuck with a frustratingly slow arms race.

You can't entirely computerize your military spacecraft because a group of sufficiently-independent and -intelligent droids could come along and suborn the whole fleet, or the entire fleet could be jammed and blinded with no known countermeasures.

You can't replace your starfighter pilots with drone starfighters and your ground troops with combat drones, because the last time someone tried that the drones started saying "Roger roger!", developing sarcastic senses of humor, and going rogue.

You can't have a well-defended central control computer that can resist such takeover attempts and coordinate the rest of your computerized fleets remotely through a hardened network, because (A) that also failed spectacularly before and (B) the jamming problem again. Plus, your very own central control computer might become too sentient and hijack itself, and wiping your entire fleet's databanks daily or weekly to keep that from happening simply isn't feasible.

It's basically like the "can't have complex networks because Cylons can hack in and take over from the outside" problem from Battlestar Galactica, crossed with the "can't have anything approaching real AI because they'll gain sapience and take over from the inside" problem from Mass Effect...except that the Galactica can also awaken as a Cylon and even the navigation VIs on the Normandy can spontaneously develop into true AIs.

So everyone is forced to rely on tried-and-true manual technology over automated repulsorcraft, human senses over computer analysis, living breathing people in barely-computerized spacecraft over autonomous drone starships, because they know none of those will go rogue. Everyone focuses on eking out that tiny 0.1% improvement in blaster ranges or data compression or whatever, adding a tiny brick to the massive monument that was the hand-me-down technology from ancient civilizations. Everyone desperately keep on top of the memory-wipe schedule for their droids and hope that the ones who develop sapience are nice people (and not like, say, EV-9D9 who gained sapience and promptly decided to modify other droids to be able to feel pain and then torture them to death, or IG-88 who gained sapience and then tried to make armies of itself) who don't want to bring galactic civilization crashing down around their ears.

So essentially the same premise as Warhammer 40k (and, to a lesser extent, Dune)?

[Bohandas]

Star Wars:
-Midichlorians tether the soul to the body. (I had an explanation about how this explains why dark side powers age the user prematurely but I forgot the detils of it)

The Prisoner:
-#6 is actually an alternate personality of #1

D&D
-D&D's humans' adaptability is a side-effect of an unusually high degree of hybridization with magical creatures
-The Lady of Pain, Lord AO, and the High God, while all-powerful within Sigil, Realmspace, and Krynnspace (respectively) are unable to leave or directly exert influence outside of their respective realms
-Humans are an evolved species just like the real world, as evidenced by their lack pf a creator deity (or evem any tutelary deity other than wastri)
-Sapient humanoid life preceeded the exostence of the gods, similarly to Warhammer 40k
-The demons don't care about winning the blood war, they just fight it for fun (IIRC one of the copies of the Pact Primeval is in the Modron citadel, so Orcus could have ended it when he posessed Primus)
-Xoriot is not a true plane but rather a hole in the Eberron multiverse
-dying Elder Brains that retreat into the astral plane are eventually absorbed by Ilsensine similarly to how dying mindflayers' brains are eventually added into mortal elder brains
-Olidammara was originally a trickster animal deity similar to Coyote or Ansasi. When Zagyg transformed him into an armadillo he was actually forcing him into his true form rather than polymorphing him.
-Grazzt's father is Zargon the Returner. This allows his son of Pale Night backstory to be rectified with his Baatorian spy gone native backstory.

[Bohandas]

In Mystery Science Theater Joel didn't create Gypsy or Cambot, just Tom Servo and Crow. Cambot doesn't talk and seems essential to the Mads' plan and Gypsy seems to pretty explicitly to just be the Satellite of Love's A.I.

[BWR]

Star Wars:
-Grazzt's father is Zargon the Returner. This allows his son of Pale Night backstory to be rectified with his Baatorian spy gone native backstory.

Except Zargon is from Mystara and has nothing to do with Baator or the Abyss...

[hamishspence]

Originally, yes - but the Elder Evils splatbook introduced options for Zargon in Greyhawk (the default for the book), Faerun, and Eberron.

[Silver Swift]

<very well argued matrix headcannon>

I dislike the "Zion is just another level of the matrix" theory on aesthetic grounds (I feel it devalues the struggles the main characters went through), so my headcanon is that:

• The scenes outside the matrix where Neo uses his powers never happened.
• Something about the plugs they use to get into the matrix causes blood vessels in certain areas of the body to rupture when under stress. in addition, the shock of experiencing death is too much for the brain to handle. "The mind makes it real" is Morpheus talking out of his ass.
• The machines don't need humans to for power, they are keeping us around because they are running on some version of the three laws and/or value preserving humanity because of their original programming.

I'll admit it is a lot less elegant than recursive simulations, but I like it better.

[Frozen_Feet]

Both your Matrix theories are meh. Reasons:

1) everyone who was plugged into Matrix is obviously cybernetic, we see the holes and plugs and all. Hence, the simplest explanation for Neo's Out-of-Matrix powers is that he has wireless technology embedded in him. We know wireless technology exists, because that's what the hoverships use to connect with Matrix. So when Neo fries the sentinels and enters the Matrix without being plugged in, he is simply sending and receiving radio signals. The golden code he sees after being blinded is radio transmissions captured by his implants and translated into visuals by his brain. The lightning/EMP he seems to shoot at the sentinels doesn't come from him, it comes from the Sentinels, as a result of Neo broadcasting a self-destruct signal to them, Neo is just unlucky to get hit by the resultant electric arc.

2) the reason why "your mind makes it real" is GIANT SPIKE INTO YOUR CRANIUM SAYS HELLO. Seriously, did you miss that part? People who are plugged in have their primary neural system physically linked to a high-power device. When Mr. Smith overrides a hapless human, we learn that human actually suffered brain damage as a result. However the system works, it is highly invasive, requiring cybernetic implants and capable of causing physiochemical changes in the brain. Given this, it's no wonder it can kill you if you die in the Matrix. It's not your heart stopping which kills you, that's just a side-effect of the system killing your neural system. Rapid unplugging being lethal is weirder, but still explainable by physical trauma caused by electricity and, again, giant spike in the back of your head.

Now, you can ask, why didn't humans make safeties to stop these? And the likely answer is that they didn't know enough. The first movie implies the hover ships are artefacts from early period of the war. Same may be true of lot of other equipment. Especially given the knowledge that machines have been manipulating Zionites, it is likely that several key components of their technology are functional black boxes to humans which they don't have capability to modify to suit their whims.

[DomaDoma]

I dislike the "Zion is just another level of the matrix" theory on aesthetic grounds (I feel it devalues the struggles the main characters went through)

Thank you. Any illusion theory that makes the story less than it would otherwise be is no headcanon of mine. It boggles me how some people are just flat-out determined to hang on to those. (If you've ever discussed Ofelia escaping from her room in the last act of Pan's Labyrinth, you'll know what I mean.)

[Traab]

Thank you. Any illusion theory that makes the story less than it would otherwise be is no headcanon of mine. It boggles me how some people are just flat-out determined to hang on to those. (If you've ever discussed Ofelia escaping from her room in the last act of Pan's Labyrinth, you'll know what I mean.)

So I guess you object to the theory that The Labyrinth took place in a pubescent girls head which explains the abnormal crotch bulge of the goblin king?

[gooddragon1]

In the Mummy 3: Dragon Emperor,

The witch cast the spell on the emperor in sanskrit so she could sneak in a contingency (like the 3.5 D&D spell in a way) that if he harmed her the spell would be corrupted and affect his entire army with a cursed immortality that could be broken with the weapon he used to harm her. So when he said he felt immortal he was right, but when he used that dagger against her he sealed his fate.

[Bohandas]

Thank you. Any illusion theory that makes the story less than it would otherwise be is no headcanon of mine. It boggles me how some people are just flat-out determined to hang on to those.

Then you really won't like my other favorite Matrix explanation (the red pill is mescaline, there is no matrix)

[Bohandas]

Except Zargon is from Mystara and has nothing to do with Baator or the Abyss...

In Elder Evils he's described as having originally been one of the lords of the ancient baatorans who preceded the modern baatezu and that he was exiled to the area of the material plane near Cynidicea after he was ousted by Asmodeus (though only after it became apparent that his extreme regenerative abilities made him effectively unpurgeable)

[golentan]

Thank you. Any illusion theory that makes the story less than it would otherwise be is no headcanon of mine. It boggles me how some people are just flat-out determined to hang on to those. (If you've ever discussed Ofelia escaping from her room in the last act of Pan's Labyrinth, you'll know what I mean.)

In stories which explicitly play with subjectivity and the nature of reality and perception, I find a complaint like that meaningless. The struggles of the characters aren't less real for being internal. If anything, I usually prefer such an interpretation to accepting another hero's journey power fantasy.

[Bohandas]

DC Comics:
There may be an unlimited number of General Zods in existence due to the Phantom Zone being outside of the orrery of worlds and thus potentially uneffected by the crisis that destroyed all but 52 or the worlds within the orrery.

D&D:
Pale Night's true form is somehow black hole related. Her entire schtick seems like the setup to a "cosmic censorship hypothesis" pun.

Star Wars:
Snoke's true identity and background will turn out to be more or less identical to one of the characters that was cut from Lucas' early drafts of the original trilogy in favor of Emperor Palpatine (either Cos Da**** or Sith Master Valorum)

[Lvl 2 Expert]

There is no such thing as a Pokémon professor.

In the bigger towns and cities gym leaders hand kids their starting Pokémon. The regional league pays them for it. It benefits the gyms (more interest for their type), the league (more battlers) and the kids (going on deadly adventures with deadly barely tamed monsters). In towns that are too small either the league headquarters or the parents arrange the gift Pokémon, but in order to make the moment special someone dresses up as a professor to hand it out.

It's the only reasonable explanation for a Pokémon reproduction expert who has never seen an egg before and a Pokémon classification expert with an empty Pokédex.

[Yora]

In stories which explicitly play with subjectivity and the nature of reality and perception, I find a complaint like that meaningless. The struggles of the characters aren't less real for being internal. If anything, I usually prefer such an interpretation to accepting another hero's journey power fantasy.

I was just thinking of this. It seemed obvious at the end of the second movie and I felt very disappointed by the third movie not building on that.
But I think at least while making the second movie, it was actually meant that Zion is another Matrix level. Though they might have dropped that idea in the third movie. It's not just that at the end of the movie, Neo starts to have magic powers just like those he has in the Matrix. He also gets a message from someone, which turns out to be nothing but a spoon.

What does a spoon symbolize for Neo? The lesson that everything around him is an illusion that he can shape with his thoughts. This was the meaning of the spoon in the Matrix and so it also would have to be the meaning of the spoon in Zion.

[Velaryon]

There is no such thing as a Pokémon professor.

In the bigger towns and cities gym leaders hand kids their starting Pokémon. The regional league pays them for it. It benefits the gyms (more interest for their type), the league (more battlers) and the kids (going on deadly adventures with deadly barely tamed monsters). In towns that are too small either the league headquarters or the parents arrange the gift Pokémon, but in order to make the moment special someone dresses up as a professor to hand it out.

It's the only reasonable explanation for a Pokémon reproduction expert who has never seen an egg before and a Pokémon classification expert with an empty Pokédex.

I've always assumed that the professors give an empty Pokédex to each young trainer on purpose, so they can gather new information and expand the knowledge base about each individual Pokémon depending on how they encounter them. After all, with each new game you are getting different information, so presumably the circumstances or location you encounter them is meant to affect what information is gathered.