Main/Real Life/Archive One/WMG

The first archive page of Wild Mass Guesses for Real Life. To see more archived entries, see the second archive page.

Please do not add new entries here. New guesses go on the main Real Life/WMG article.

Each Alternate Universe we create is through fiction.
Each brane we interact with is every work there is! Now to see if there's a Yuki Nagato in Kansai...
 * The universe created by My Immortal died of Entropy and Paradox several trillion years earlier than all of the rest, and is eating away at the multiverse...

All you need to be content is The Power of Love.
That's why Jesus was contented despite his Crap Sack life. Nowadays, for the sake of civilization, we are living in greed and discontent. Why did the Catholic Church ban sexual love besides the purpose of procreation, then (like for example, homosexuality, which is a sin even though there are cases of true love)? Answer: They were trying to keep the masses in discontent, like Nineteen Eighty-Four because of the Jihad threat.
 * Try to read "Civilization and its Discontents" by Sigmund Freud.
 * It isn't actually a sin to be Homosexual. It' a sin to engage in homosexual activities.

There's at least 1 thing that has always existed.
Think about it. Nothing can come out of nothing, so one thing has always been there that could have separated, creating a cycle between two objects, who in turn cause the existence of everything else.In other words, the universe is just as infinitely big as infinitely small.
 * That object is a forward moving time machine
 * But in true nothingness, there would be no laws of physics, including the "can't get something from nothing" one, so what's to stop existence from literally appearing out of no where? I mean, we can't very well apply the laws of physics to non-existence -- if you can apply a property to something, then it exists. This gets really weird to think about when you realize that having no properties is a property in and of itself.
 * Indeed. Additionally, we can't really talk about "The Beginning" until we can actually define "existance". And that's before we even consider things like zero-point energy or string theory's Multiverse/branes model. And quantum mechanics, which takes things like particles appearing and disappearing spontaneously for totally acceptable.

The world is every single medium of fiction at the same time.
It's a very popular franchise, so it has works in every genre. All the below theories on the world being fictional are true.

== The United Kingdom avoids establishing an English Parliament and a full federal system for the sole purpose of continuing to field four international soccer teams. == Having the Parliament at Westminster oversee both affairs for the UK as a whole and the most populous subdivision of it is the only way to come up with a definition of "nation" that incorporates England, Scotland, etc. separately but doesn't make, say, Bavaria also a separate "nation". "We invented the game" might be worth a try but since FIFA is French-based.... yeah, right.
 * Or for that matter, the three US states that were once independent countries. Texas is too obsessed with American football to make a big splash, Vermont has too small a population base to draw from and we can't play field sports until mid-May some years, but California could be a powerhouse.

They ate her!
And now they're going to eat me!
 * Oh my GOOOOOOD!

Real world ghosts work kind of like Mario ghosts
All those old photographs would make sense. The person in the photo doesn't see the ghost because they're turned around and the photographer doesn't see it because they're facing it. It's captured on camera because the camera isn't a person.
 * Better yet; they more frequently appear in old photos because the cameraman could have wondered off while the film was exposed, hence there was no one actually watching the ghost while the photo was taken (this explains why there aren't ghosts in every photo given the amount of dead people about; they only turn up if the cameraman gets bored). This phenomenon occurs sometimes with cameras on a timer but is less frequent now since the cameraman is usually watching the whole time (plus cameras may be close enough to "thinking" to count as a person as far as some of the older ghosts are concerned).

Bungie secretly owns Microsoft.
Them buying themselves back was a trick. Think for a moment, if Frankie were to sabotage 343 Industries MS would be doomed. Their biggest franchise would die. The reason Bill Gates left MS was simple, he was ordered to.

The entertainment industry is FULL of people who only live in Los Angeles because they have to, as that's where all the jobs in their field are.
That's why the city's always being destroyed on film, why celebrities relatively rarely support LA-area charities, and so on.

Tourists from the future dress and act like tourists in the present.
More to the point, they dress and act like stereotypical tourists from the present, in order to not arouse suspicion. Due to the closed loops produced by stable time travel, it's under some argument whether the stereotype was born out of natural progressions in the timeline, or from time travelers. It's not even a secret, really, it's just that no one has the common courtesy to ask someone when they're from as well as where. To think, hundreds of people every day who would be happy to tell us all about the three-thousand-eighties and give us directions there, if only we cared a little more about what other people had to say.
 * Have you read "Let's All Go To Golgotha"?

You are a major superhero!
1.) Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory 2.) You have not gone through your Origin Story yet.
 * You have been made into many a Pragmatic Adaptation, suffered Adaptation Decay, recovered had movies and use the Comic Book Time Trope to have helped win WWII and still beat Mad Scientists on a daily basis. Because of Status Quo Is God though, you will never really advance in life. You will only be reborn as the same hero in a different Alternate Universe. The reason you don't know this yet?
 * Actually, you are a pirate
 * Then why don't I have the Most Common Superpower?
 * I do. Also, my life is pretty much crap after crap, so, I might be the Chosen One. Might. Life is unfair, after all. Besides this, I'm fat and considered rather ugly. Perhaps beauty tropes don't apply as often IRL.s
 * You're Hollywood Homely until you get your powers and Stripperiffic costume. ;)
 * You.... You've found me out.
 * So when do I get my coolio name? I'm WAITING!
 * You are a major superhero, and all of your closest friends are on your superhero team trying to rescue you. Right now, as you read this, a supervillain with mind-control powers has trapped you in a perfect simulation of being an ordinary human being with a fairly unremarkable life. Any time you notice something strange or experience deja vu, it's because the mind-control is slipping. Like now ...
 * This explains why, whenever I try to do something, something goes wrong!

The Four Classical Elements represent the four states of matter.
Basically, the old alchemists actually got it right in a way. Earth=Solid, Water=Liquid, Air=Gas, and Fire=Plasma.
 * Love to see that I'm not the only one who thinks about that! And, if we ever manage to prove it right, the "fifth" element, Soul, is in another state, like a cold fusion, or something. Or not, who knows?
 * Cold fusion is a process, not a state of matter. Anyway, where does Bose-Einstein Condensate fit in? That's pretty damn cold, at least.
 * So is a Bose-Einstein Condensate the fifth element, somehow?
 * The Bose-Einstein Condensate is unofficially considered the sixth state of matter and the first artificial one. The truth is that there is about a dozen different states of matter all in all. Only the first five can be found naturally on Earth and a bunch of the artificial ones are very unstable.
 * Aether?
 * The fifth element could be observation--it changes things, but is not really tangible on it's own unless you change your thought process a little.
 * Do i smell the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?
 * Fools! The fifth element is love!
 * You are all ignorant. The fifth element is obviously The Game!
 * The fifth element is ether, (what space is made of) which is dark matter. Seriously.
 * The fifth element is energy.
 * The fifth element is surprise.
 * Alternatively: Earth=Carbon, Water=Hydrogen, Air=Nitrogen and Fire=Oxygen. Those are the four elements that we use and study most often after all. Admittedly this analogy has a few bugs, such as water (H 2 O) being made up of mostly fire.
 * There are actually multiple "fifth elements" depending on if you're in Greece or Japan. Aether is energy, when atomic bonds effectively break down; matter, according to General Relativity, is just really dense energy, and all matter is derived from Aether. In Japan, on the other hand, they have void, which is the emptiness that nevertheless holds the universe together - simultaneously representing the fact that most of the universe is more empty space than matter (even matter itself is more empty space than subatomic particle), AND the concept of dark matter and energy.

The Four Classical Elements represent the four components of the universe.
Another alternative: Earth=Matter, Fire=Energy, Water=Time, Air=Space

The Four Classical Elements represent the four fundamental forces of the universe.
Earth = Gravity, Fire = Electromagnetism, Water = Strong Nuclear Force (water is cohesive), Air = Weak Nuclear Force (wind disperses things)
 * Same thing can be said for Water = Electromagnetism and Fire = Strong Nuclear force. Electromagnetism flows and was always described as a current, like water (also, motors = waterwheels?), while the strong force powers nuclear reactions, like stars.

Bungie has already taken over.
And you can't tell. They are just waiting for the slingshot to make if official. We, ...er, they have 100% control.

Viruses are microscopic zombies.
Think about it. Viruses need no sleep, no food, and no water. They have no intake or excretion. They are exceptionally hard to kill except through the use of very high temperatures. Their only purpose is to destroy living cells while creating more viruses. Add to this the fact that most biologists consider viruses "non-living" for these reasons, and you have yourself a certified zombie.

Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden are the same person.
Notice how we've never heard of Obama until *after* September 11th, we also haven't seen each other in the same room. Barack Obama is the identity bin Laden uses to weaken the United States from within, lowering our defenses with his horrid foreign policies, wrecking our economy with his socialist economic policies, and forming an evil cult to do his bidding (no, not that one). That's why we could never find bin Laden, he's been in our midst this entire time!
 * This also handily explains why he can't find his birth certificate.
 * The sad part is that there are people who seem to really believe this.
 * The really sad part is that there are people who seem to believe that he's god.
 * The conservatives mocking that attitude vastly outnumber the supporters who ever took it seriously.
 * Complaining About Presidents You Don't Like?
 * Gushing About Presidents You Like?
 * Pointless Natter No One Likes?
 * Humorous 3rd option that some people like?
 * Complaining About Presidents You Don't Vote For (not to be confused with "They Voted For It, Now It Sucks")

One day, men will be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.
One day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." One day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. One day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

My four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. One day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

One day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." We will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. We will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

From every mountainside, freedom will ring!

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring,we will let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing: Free at last! Free at last!
 * Someone's got themselves a nice dream.
 * Naah, that one's too crazy even for WMG.
 * tl;dr
 * They were probably right about the go to jail together part...
 * Yay for Barack Obama?
 * Please let me be wrong.
 * Meh. I reckon we're okay. Whether or not he screws up obviously isn't gonna be dependent on his skin colour... I reckon Martin Luther King would be right to be happy about now.
 * Yeah, but his election certainly wasn't based on the content of his character.
 * You could say that about a lot of American presidents. And a lot of leaders worldwide for that matter. Doesn't mean they're gonna fail.
 * ...Well, he said a bunch of stuff that people must've wanted to hear and thought made sense, whether he follows through on it or not (and let's face it, when you raise hopes that high, and make proclamations that big,then at the very least some people are gonna fall flat on their faces from a great height as a result). I kinda doubt that more people voted for him just because he's black than did because he had some good sounding ideas to get them out of a difficult rut (or for reasons like "he's less crazy than the other guy" or "he can't do any worse than the guy we have now.") Besides, a while before Obama started getting popular it really looked like Mc Cain was going to win...
 * Jews, Catholics, Protestants... Can't poor Atheists join the others in the joining-hands-and-singing thing ? No fair !
 * Totally seconded. Atheists can be lovely people too!!
 * Hey, what about Wiccans, we were around then too. (Just more hidden and obscure.) I hope that someday MLK's dream will come true. Until that time, we get to put up with the Tea Party

I'm Spartacus.

 * No, I'm Spartacus.
 * ...But I thought * I* was Spartacus?
 * Uh... guys?
 * IIIIIIIIIIIIIII'M CAPTAIN KIIIIIRRRRRRK!!!!!
 * WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM?!
 * I'm Spartacus and so's my wife!
 * Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Spartacus.
 * THIS! IS! SPARTACUUUUUUUUUS!!!
 * Are you dense? Are you retarded or something? I'm the goddamn Spartacus!
 * Would you like that? Would you like to ride with Batman?
 * No, I'm Dirty Dan!

Real Life is a Postal MMORPG where your controller only goes the nonviolent way.

 * Please turn your head back and show the middle finger to break the fourth wall.

Catholic schools exist to limit the numbers of Catholics.
In the late 19th century, American Catholics came to the realization that, since the majority of immigrants for a generation or more were Catholic with no end in sight, they were facing a potentially unending cycle of church expansion and further overcrowding. The way they found off the treadmill was to establish schools which would be a one-time investment, working on the principle of stuffing students' heads with so much dogma that after 8-12 years they're ready to leave the Church and never come back, thus freeing up precious church-pew space for the next generation of new immigrants. I call it Our Lady of Perpetual Turnover.
 * Evangelical groups establishing their own parochial schools in recent years don't share this goal- their leadership simply isn't Genre Savvy enough to realize the above.
 * However, in the 1970s the Catholics discovered their program too successful, between the multiple generations driven away, changing immigrant demographics, and existing infrastructure, leading to a general defunding of the system in the years since.

Sarah Palin will run for President at least 3 times, with diminishing results each time.

 * In 2012, she will win the Republican nomination but lose the election.
 * In the next run (not necessarily 2016), she'll have lost the support of the party establishment but still have enough support among Republican base voters (and the media) to stay in the race past Super Tuesday and be short-listed for VP (but not picked since the GOP prez candidate will remember McCain's fatal case of Uchiha Syndrome).
 * Will there be any polar bears left by this point?
 * By the third future run, she'll be seen as a perennial candidate, nobody will take her seriously and she'll drop out without winning a single delegate.
 * And then she'll create her own third party, and/or start backing the secession of Alaska.
 * So you are predicting that Sarah Palin will become the next Ralph Nader, or are you saying she is secretly Ralph Nader in disguise?
 * Why not both?
 * Am I the only one thinking of V now? V = Ralph Nader, Evie = Sarah Palin. Quickly! To the Adobe Photoshop mobile!
 * Another explanation: Ralph Nader wanted to atone for ruining the last couple of elections(by stealing votes from the Democrats and thus helping the Republicans win), so he arranged for the creation of Palin as a kind of Reverse Mole-- a living Strawman Political who would say absurd things, "go rogue", and undermine her own party(see "Sarah Palin doesn't exist" below).
 * Nader in disguise...with glasses?
 * Don't be ridiculous, without glasses how would he see?
 * Until there, Mc Cain will be as good as dead, and if she will ever be prez... The world will end. I'd prefer even Ashley Simpson over her in the White House, at least she isn't Ax Crazy, just dumb.

Doctor Horrible robbed hundreds of banks all over the world in the past few months
As Dr. Horrible says, they don't report crimes of that scale on the news. They cover it up with some complicated financial gobbledygook. Now that he's swimming in gold, he's just waiting for the world to collapse into chaos so that he can take over.
 * So that's what a credit default swap is.
 * I'm suddenly okay with this now.
 * Well, it explains the financial crisis.
 * Not to mention the spontaneous singing. Also, a girl in my class gave birth to a pterodactyl. Then it began to sing.
 * And then Captain Hammer threw a car at my head. It didn't sing. It didn't sing at all.

Buckethead was caught in a Groundhog Day Loop
Like Bill Murray, he used the time to hone several skills, most notably the guitar and doing the robot.

Uranus is an alien fueling station
There is a massive hexagon at the far pole of the planet. Hexagons are a sign of design. It's the furthest gas giant in the system so would be the least energy-intensive to stop at. You could process millions of tons of any conceivable fuel out of it. The reason the pole is tipped away was specifically so we couldn't observe it until we developed space travel. Considering galactic time scales, this could be a standard security measure.
 * Isn't it Saturn that has the hexagon? And Neptune's farther out... Or is that just what The Man has told me?
 * Titan has life on its surface. And they are so more advanced than humans that they can become invisible to cameras, volitate, and laugh at our attempts of declaring superiority, like one laughs when a child tells a joke.
 * you earth-children have found us out. It is clear to us that in groups your minds are very powerful. Welcome To the Great and Glorious Federation of the Stars.
 * That would explain the probing.
 * And the horrible smell.

== The governments of the world are in fact controlled by the World Chess Federation == We normal people are just pawns in their twisted game and the Illuminati and Freemasons are their knights. Deep Blue is in fact a Sentient AI that controls our information, but is our only hope. Everything is going exactly as planned.
 * This is actually more comforting than it initially appears, as the way strong chessplayers actually use pawns is at odds with the common metaphorical meaning of "pawns." While good chessplayers sometimes sacrifice pawns, it is never done lightly, as games are often won by a single pawn, and the players are well aware that the sacrifice may spell disaster if they don't get a strong advantage from it.
 * Actually, the world is being controlled by a single, immortal person since the fall of the Roman Empire. So, everything is part of a huge Xanatos Gambit to simply kill the Chosen One that will overthrow their system by simply pointing it to the public. Uh oh... You never looked at it, just in case.
 * In real life, the head of the World Chess Federation is, in fact, the president of Kalmykia, a Russian province. Among other things, he has made the study of chess mandantory for all elementary school students. Meanwhile, former world champion Garry Kasparov has attempted to run for the presidency of Russia, without much success.
 * Furthermore, they engineered the failure of the Broadway run of the musical Chess (through a bad script rewrite and bad reviews) in order to reduce any association between themselves and politics in the American public's imagination. The recent success of the concert version is a sign that they will soon reveal their plans to the world at large.

The Aliens's flying saucers run on ethanol.

 * Crop circles.
 * Alternatively, aliens are space comedians which ships run on Helium. And said aliens have funny voices as a side effect. What, crop circles is just their way of doing humor!
 * Maybe they run on methane? I mean that would explain all the missing cows...

Caffeine is sentient and is enslaving all of humanity.

 * And I, for one, welcome our new caffeinated overlords!
 * Actually, it's a nano-mechanical entity disguising itself as a chemical, but the sentient part and enslaving part are right.
 * Well, this is just obvious. Track the use of Jolt Cola and Red Bull among programmers at Microsoft to the creation of the Starbucks Coffee chain. The infection is radiating from Seattle. Obviously, the entity is the result of an escaped routine written by a Microserf.
 * False. The infection can be traced back to the Boston Tea Party, shortly after which the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology began working on the foundations of the computing industry. Clearly, the entity is older than we think. It is likely to be alien in origin.
 * MIT? In Boston? Where Dunkin' Donuts started? In The Fifties, just before home electronics......oohhhh, NOW I see....
 * This Troper can't stand caffiene or the effects of thereof. Viva la resistance!
 * This troper used to drink soda by the gallons. He's feeling better now that he's broken free of that wonderful, syrupy brown... Um... I'll be right back...
 * Yes... yessss... resistance is futile!
 * Coca-Cola...Atlanta's Revenge?
 * Perhaps the problem is only on coffee. Heck, coffee has a nasty charcoal taste, yet, people drink it like crazies! No, seriously, Coke's caffeine is just some sort of failed replica.
 * No. coffee's caffeine is the Evil Twin of Soda's caffeine
 * Leezle Pon will save us!

All conspiracy theories are false.

 * There is no Area 51
 * Actually, there is, but it's just a normal air force naval air base with no aliens or supertechnology or whatever.
 * No, there is actually no Area 51! The conspiracy is in making you believe there ever was one.
 * Nah, it exists, but only to distract us from the real weird things that are in Area 51-A.
 * There are no black helicopters
 * Alternatively, there are, but the black is only for camo and they are owned by ordinary government agencies everyone knows about like the FBI.
 * There are no Illuminati
 * There are, but they are a bunch of philosophical morons that don't have anything to do with world control, and their organization name changed for Scientology after a certain weirdo suggested that perhaps we're all alien offspring.
 * There are no Underpants Gnomes
 * Only Underpant-stealing midgets.
 * The Freemasons are highly overrated
 * True. Bunch of wussies.
 * There are no mind-control rays that you need tinfoil hats to block.
 * Tinfoil hats are innefectual, you need to be over a certain IQ number (let's suppose 100) to be immune, that is, only works on dumb people.
 * We did in fact land on the moon, exactly as planned.
 * And there probably was... Boring.
 * The fluoridation of water is a perfectly sensible safety measure, and has nothing to do with Communists or our precious bodily fluids
 * In truth, it serves to make teeth stronger. You wouldn't want tooth decay by eating too much sugar too early on your life, would you?
 * Vaccines are not an attempt at mind control, nor at creating Alien/Human hybrids, nor do they cause autism, nor do they contain any form of nanotechnology.
 * In truth, they might contain cloned horse DNA, if anything. But we won't turn into centaurs by taking this, we only will be more resistant.
 * Evolution is not a conspiracy to turn children away from God and towards sin. Nor is sex education. Psychology as mind control devised by Lord Xenu isn't even worth considering.
 * God is dead, and we killed him. Now, let's give a minute of silence for Him... Or not.
 * Or, alternatively, all of the above is true but it didn't kill God. He doesn't really care whether we teach evolution or creationism, and He never thought sex was evil. And God is now laughing at us for our stupidity.
 * Or, alternatively, 'God' does not exist.
 * Every half-baked, hare-brained load of nonsense vomited forth by some fertile mind into the collective consciousness is just that, nonsense.
 * Except the Anti-Scientology ones. These guys are a bunch of rip-offs.
 * Kekkonen wasn't replaced in the middle of his run as president and really did die in -86.
 * JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, and the "magic bullet" path was in fact quite plausible.
 * However, all of these conspiracy theories are useful, as they encourage people to be suspicious and fearful about nonexistent things, and thus hide the REAL work of the Omniscient Council Of Vagueness
 * Said council may or may not include:
 * Robin Williams
 * Chuck Norris
 * Barack Obama
 * Bungie, All of Us.
 * Pope John Paul II
 * The current Pope, Pope Benedict XVI
 * Haruhi Suzumiya
 * One or more Time Lords
 * The reanimated corpse of Abraham Lincoln
 * Ronald Reagan in an Immortal Robot Body
 * Richard Nixon in a giant Immortal Robot Body.
 * Revolver Ocelot
 * Hideo Kojima
 * The World Chess Federation
 * Stephen Colbert
 * Brian Blessed
 * Ganondorf
 * Gendo Ikari
 * Matrix
 * Anonymous (hey's he's anonymous)
 * Jimbo Wales
 * Someone that's just like Haruhi, but not Japanese at all. Or else, we would see giant tentacled flatchest tsundere Eldritch Abominations raping cute busty time-traveling girls. Or the entire world would take the whole honor stuff really seriously. Perhaps that RL Haruhi has just a really messed up mind and life, and what she imagines is actually the opposite of what happens.
 * Your Mom
 * A sufficient number of people, each acting out of their own unenlightened self-interest is indestinguishable from a conspiracy to screw the average guy.
 * Hey, if all conspiracy theories are false, wouldn't that mean everything on this page are 100% wrong? Oops, I mean... the pyramids in Egypt aren't actually pyramids... each one is simply a single square on the ground enhanced with alien technology to make them appear three dimensional to all the senses. Fooled ya!

The Council no longer bothers to conceal it's moves...

 * ...knowing that they will instantly be refuted, disputed, and denied on the Internet.
 * I'm sorry, I was right here, spacey, imagining that would be cool if humans levitated.

The State of the World is the result of the Devil saying No
Satan paused and said No thanks, I actually read the end of the book and have no desire to burn forever in a lake of fire. Besides, I like the world it's got Summer Glau, Community and TV Tropes in it. So no four Horsemen, no final conflict. Just a World that's running out it Warranty and a deity that's unsure what to do next cause the other guy decided not to play the script.
 * The trumpets rang and the Angels descended and proclaimed Lo Lucifer now is the time to bring forth the Anti-Christ for the end of days.
 * Have you read Good Omens?

Conspiracy theorists are themselves a conspiracy.

 * Apollo deniers are a conspiracy of nihilists who want to make humanity despairing and pliable so they'll have no will to grow, advance and throw off the chains of the powers that be, because they want to be those powers. Their chosen method: a nearly 40-year-long Hannibal Lecture. The Myth Busters are heroes for not letting them get away with it.
 * Possibly, they are undercover agents of an evil alien empire who seek to prevent humanity from expanding into space and threatening their dominance by creating despair and distrust of the space program.
 * And said alien empire might be what are known as the Anti-Spirals. Preventing us from expanding into space by making humanity despairing and pliable...
 * 9/11 deniers are a conspiracy of nihilists who want to destroy modern societies on the whacked out theory that retrograde ones are somehow "purer". They are the infowarfare arm of the terrorists that commit physical violence. And, of course, they hope to obtain power in whatever's built on the ashes on the world, not realizing that they themselves are the ones usually targeted for destruction by the very people they are idolizing.
 * Boy, someone has a beef with the troofers, also, some Unfortunate Implications with the "savages"
 * Why yes, yes I do. Also, I heretically and unrepentantly call things like stoning, head-chopping, forcing half your population to wear tents, and killing people for witchcraft "savage". Call me old-fashioned. Or rather, new-fashioned.
 * Ok, now I'm pissed off, conspiracy theorist "idolise" Islam, and the actions of some extremists represent the who spectrum of the religion?
 * In truth, the Islamic extremists are destroying Islam's reputation to the rest of the world. Not that I ever cared for religion, anyways, but it's harsh to hate a different culture because of some mind-screwed people. Or else, we would be hating Germany because of Hitler!
 * Godwin's Law is a conspiracy by competent reasoners to prevent the tubes of the internets from clogging with fallacies!
 * Someone mention Unfortunate Implications? Step forward, Birch- I mean, Birthers!
 * The birther movement is a Stealth Parody of conspiracy theories, and the main media outlets are in on the joke. That's why so little has been made of the fact that it's fronted by an immigrant, because you Don't Explain the Joke.

There are no aliens at Area 51.

 * Area 51 is just a smokescreen to draw attention away from where the aliens REALLY are.
 * Which is code-named "Area 52".
 * Wrong. Everyone guesses that the true Area 51 is a higher number than 51 (52, 53, etc.) 49 on the other hand...
 * Wrong. In truth, the aliens are a cover story to prevent us from finding out what's really going on at Area 51.
 * Wrong. In truth, the aliens are all the illegal kind, but they are not being sent back, because they don't want to have to rebuild the custom alien suits to another person.
 * If I remember correctly it was burying and burning radioactive waste. If the base doesn't exist, you can't sue them!
 * On that note, aliens did not crash at Roswell. There was no weather balloon either, however, and the whole "balloon" story was a coverup for the crash of an experimental government aircraft that had a large high-tech advantage over the enemy. Also, Roswell alien conspiracy theories have prompted the government to leak fake info on "aliens" to crazy theorists to cover up tests of experimental military technology that were noticed by the public, instead of blaming it on mundane things. After all, if the public knows about tomorrow's weapons, so do the enemy militaries.
 * Mogul nuclear test-detection balloon train, IIRC.
 * There's no Area 51, or Area 52. We are the aliens.
 * And then we were zombies.

The aliens abducting people are suffering from space psychosis & things like abductions, cattle mutilations & crop circles are a form of obsessive compulsive behaviour.
Think about it like this: space is big. We are a long way away from anywhere that could possibly have intelligent life. According to our current understanding of physics, 12,000,000 miles a minute (or thereabouts) is the fastest speed there is, so unless they've figured out a loophole, the aliens would take several hundred years at least to get here. Several hundred years cooped up in a saucer smaller than most passenger planes. And either due to medical technology, or simply their different physiology, they don't die. Eventually their minds would snap. By the time they get here, they've either forgotten what it was they originally came to do, or are just too out of it to care & they spend all their time mutilating or defacing things all over the world, over & over & over again. That's the whole reason for the coverup. Governments are afraid that if we knew that beings so advanced had descended into madness, we'd lose hope for our own future.
 * The aliens could be the descendants of the original aliens that set out on their mission. They would reproduce, and raise their children to take over the mission once they are dead. The question is what their real mission is, and whether it actually includes Earth. They could just be stopping at any planet with useful resources which they can use to help them survive their journey. If they do have a mission here, they could be here to study us, or to destroy us, or anything else imaginable. Their mission could even be over, but they haven't left or they haven't started it yet as a form of procrastination, because they don't want to begin the dreadful journey back, when they know they will not see their home planet, and they will condemn many of their descendants to the same fate. Of course, they could also be on an endless journey to complete missions on different planets, which would be just as sad. Or they could have just forgotten what the hell they were supposed to be doing in the first place. *** aliens, why are you so mysterious with so many different possibilities? These are just theories based on the assumption you travel normally and don't have a long lifespan, too.
 * Perhaps God did it to them.

Everyone is in Purgatory, atoning for their sins.
And I am your father! Who is also the last Horcrux! IN A MODERN NATURE RESERVE! Nyehehehehe! (gets dragged away by men in white coats)
 * Actually, it would make a lot of... oh, *** ! (runs away from men in white coats)
 * (Puts on white coat, quietly slips out the back)
 * I feel more like I'm in Hell, if you ask me. Perhaps... After all, Kaballah says so.
 * Well, my grandfather had a theory that we're all in hell now. Makes me kinda wonder what happened to him after he passed on.
 * Speaking of which...

Everyone is trapped in an Ironic Hell.
Everyone has a fear, pet peeve, rivals, and enemies. Why? Because Real Life was created for the sole purpose of making everyone miserable. Also explains why Humans Are Bastards and Failure Is the Only Option.

Elvis Presley Lives
Hey, there has to be a Elvis lives entry!
 * Elvis is not dead, he just went home.
 * He's actually hiding out somewhere in Bermuda under an unpronounceable assumed name. He's also producing all of Tupac Shakur's new albums. (Tupac's alive too, but he has laryngitis.)
 * Hiding with him are John Lennon, Freddie Mercury, Jimi Hendrix, and Bon Scott.
 * If Elvis were alive, he'd be in his 70s by now.
 * Yeah, so? That doesn't mean he couldn't play rock'n'roll!
 * Case in point: The Rolling Stones. Which point that makes is up to the viewer.
 * Actually, he's working at a Burger Lord in Des Moines.
 * Famine probably had him fired by now.
 * No, he actually just fell into Hammerspace and has been living there ever since.
 * Or he's stuck in a crappy retirement home with Black JFK.
 * Elvis is living in Wisconsin as a part of a Nakama of supposedly dead celebrities, including (but not limited to): Tupac Shakur, Michael Jackson, Princess Diana, Farrah Fawcett, Natasha Richardson, Heath Ledger, and Bea Arthur.
 * He's a not-too-bright vampire bodyguard living in Louisiana. Also, he likes cats.

Jimmy Hoffa lives.
He was kidnapped, pumped full of sodium pentathol, and forced to listen to elvis presley records for a week, nonstop. They set the face-butchers on him and left him in De Moines with a suitcase full of casettes and application papers for Burger Lord, a non-union corporation. The ultimate punishment for him. (Incidentally, Elvis Presley is buried under Giants' Stadium. Because someone has to be.)
 * No, no. Jimmy Hoffa is hiding in my backpack.

The US Government is hiding the existence of aliens.
They have them contained in a secret base called Area 51 and won't share their alien spoils. What a shame for the rest of the world that aliens have only ever landed in America.
 * Conversely, all so-called 'alien' UF Os were actually developed by the United States Military, and the myths about them being alien are actually propagated by the government to keep citizens and countries from paying close attention to them. Think about it: Groom Lake has been used since the '50s to test top-secret aircraft, many of which have very unusual profiles: The A-12 Oxcart/SR-71 Blackbird have a very flying saucer like front profile, flanked by two large engines; the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter matches the description of many triangular UF Os, and the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber can look like either; it has a flying-saucer like front profile and is a mostly triangular flying wing.

Aliens are hiding the existence of the US Government.
They're just doing a lousy job of it.
 * Do they? How do we know that what we call "US Government" is really the US Government? As far as this European troper knows, the existence of that continent over the ocean might be an alien lie.

Aliens are hiding their existence from themselves.
Yes, we are the aliens, and we are desperately trying to hide that fact from ourselves for some reason...

The Roswell UFO was an unmanned probe.
In all the stories this editor has read about it, there was a lot of wreckage, but never any mention of alien bodies. So who's to say the spacecraft wasn't an extraterrestrial version of Voyager 2 or something?
 * If IRL can be Jossed, then this one was. The other Wiki shows the relevant image: the photo of General Ramey posing with the weather balloon wreckage shows him holding a paper in his hand which may or may not mention something about alien bodies. This editor can't really make anything out.

The people of Roswell perpetrated the UFO hoax.
Think about it: A weather balloon comes down in a small town in the middle of nowhere. They decide to claim that it's an alien spacecraft, simultaneously fueling conspiracy theories against the government (who have been telling the truth the whole time) and getting a massive influx of tourism dollars. Otherwise, Roswell would just be another dot on the map with nothing interesting about it.
 * There's a conspiracy theory that the US government perpetuated the hoax to stop anyone from figuring out what's really at Area 51.
 * Which is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, and the whole place is a red herring.
 * Have you been to Roswell? It is just another dot on the map with nothing interesting about it. So, their plan sucked.
 * Except for all the alien-related tourist traps.

It's all true, but you won't like it.

 * There WAS an alien crash at/around Roswell in 1947, the US government DID make deals with the aliens... where do you think transistors and lasers came from? After a century or two of covert technological transfer, we humans will "discover" the interstellar drive and then the community.
 * Of course, it's a little tricky to square the idea that transistors and lasers are reverse engineered alien technology with the fact that both were already understood on a theoretical level before 1947.
 * This is a replica of the first transistor. The original looks like even more of a piece of crap. The miniscule transistors we use these days may pass for advanced alien technology, but the early attempts... no so much...
 * Unfortunately (for a few of us), aliens have kids. Alien kids go to college. College is a time of getting away from parents and parental controls, and experimenting with many many things. Including intoxicants.
 * Sometimes they hang out in groups when getting intoxicated.
 * Sometimes not-so-good ideas seem really funny when intoxicated...
 * Sometimes, they are, in truth, the classroom nerds. It might explain bully to a T. Younger humans notice the alien individual better than adult ones, and try to expel them from the planet. But then, every time an alien commits suicide due to bullying, the worlds lose a piece of progress.
 * All the abductions, cattle mutilations, implants, etc., are REAL, and COVERED UP BY THE GOVERMENTS OF THE WORLD... because who wants to be told, "Yeah, we know you got yanked out of your car, mind controlled, anal probed, and worse... but it was a bunch of drunk college aliens doing it, and they said they're sorry, and we think we got all the footage off YouTube..."?? Civilization would fall if this got out - 'cause, _I_ would revolt against my government if they couldn't keep a half-dozen drunken fratboys from kidnapping me and subjecting me to otherworldly anal humiliation and then FILMING IT.
 * Piercings, dude, piercings. Tribal tattoos are their barcode.
 * However, to the governments, joining interstellar civilization is too important to let these little incidents mess up the Grand Plan.
 * However, to the governments, joining interstellar civilization is too important to let these little incidents mess up the Grand Plan.

The Government has set up so many conspiracy theories that not even they know what's real anymore

 * Come on, the grassy knoll, the moon landing, the Roswell incident, it's all been a ridiculously complex Xanatos Roulette by the government to achieve something, but nothing happened between 1970 and 2000 conspiracy-wise. Obviously, The Patriots all died shortly before/after the moon landing and the grand master plan was lost forever. For security reasons, they didn't record anything, so now nobody knows what's real or not, and any conspiracy that took place involving those events are defunct.
 * There are no conspiracies, life is just boring like that.

The Myth Busters crew work for the Government Conspiracy.
By "disproving" dangerous ideas to the Masquerade, they convince you how "science" "really" "works" (is that enough quotes?).
 * The reason they tell the audience, episode after episode, not to try ANY of their experiments at home, even though some of them are quite safe, is that their results are faked. If you tested plant telepathy in the comfort of your own living room, it would work like a charm and you could use your unstoppable Ficus Army to overthrow the government.
 * Oh, nice job. Now you just gave all the wannabe supervillains ideas. Now, excuse me for a moment while I train my own Ficus army for um... self-defense. Right.

Jim Morrison didn't die. He's actually Thomas Pynchon.
The circumstances of Jim Morrison's death were mysterious, and it's been said the coroner that performed the autopsy was actually a friend of his. Before his death, Morrison expressed a wish to become a writer. He faked his death, used the body of an unknown sailor in the fraudulent autopsy, and took his name. That's why Thomas Pynchon never lets anyone see his face, or why he never expressed any familiarity with writing during his youth (very uncommon, when compared with most authors). Fearing his ruse would be discovered, Morrison got his friend Michael Chabon, who was in on the scheme, to "voice" him in an episode of The Simpsons so his voice wouldn't be recognized. Later, Chabon's voice was performed by Dan Brown, who found out about the secret when he went to Chabon's house to present him with some scented soaps, and promised to keep the secret, as that was the only exciting thing that ever happened in his life. Alternatively, he regenerated and changed his first name to Grant.
 * Unfortunately, Pynchon had published V. while eight years before Morrison died.
 * Also, you say "he never expressed any familiarity with writing during his youth" - didn't he ace English at Cornell?

We are all background characters in a fanfic. Written by...

 * Bono: Just look at Bono and tell me he isn't a Self-Insert Mary Sue.
 * Ever noticed he's started to look like Robin Williams? Wait.... that's it! What if Bono's not the one writing the fanfic, Robin Williams is! That might explain a few things... about me anyway, like how I suddenly go off into wacky non-sequitors in the very same manner he does, complete with the voices. It sure explains why Bono's started looking like him... dear Robin wants another avatar.
 * Will Smith.
 * Mr T.
 * My uncle, who has been mistaken for Bono on occasion.
 * God. And he is a *** effing Mary Sue with God-like powers.
 * Jesus is his Author Avatar.
 * George W. Bush. He has attempted to paint himself as The Woobie and the Ensemble Darkhorse, but instead ended up as a Creator's Pet.
 * 4-chan.
 * Bill Bailey.
 * FDR. He started writing it when Hitler was coming to power, about how he was elected president of the US and saved the world and the US became the dominant power. After a while he decided his character was a Mary Sue, so he killed himself off and just kept writing.
 * A-CHUCK-A NORIIIS!!!!!
 * Barack Obama.
 * An anonymous Anti-Sue that inspired all the hardships in the world in her own life experience, and now probably is editing tropes like crazy to escape this horrible fiction. And you can't stop her because it's WMG.
 * Tara Gillesbie. In fact, Real Life is every bit as bad of a fanfic as My Immortal, if not worse. You'd think we'd notice this, but do the characters in My Immortal notice the ridiculous plot and lack of logic in their universe? They don't, and neither do we. In the real Tara's universe, the logic and events in ours are seen as absurd, as they should be.

Reality is a series of books written by different authors, but set in the same Verse.
Some of these authors are better than others. Also, they tend to screw with each other. For example, one author turned Britney Spears into a Mary Sue, a superpopular pop star. The next author didn't like it, so they turned her into a train wreck, and shaved her head. Authors who want to write about about non-realistic subjects are forced to either write the show-within-a-show type stuff, or are confined to certain parts of the Verse. For instance, sci-fi people either have to write things like Star Wars (original trilogy and prequel trilogy are different authors, both using the George Lucas avatar) or have to confine their writing to crop circles, Area 51, and Roswell. In truth, it's just a huge crossover. It explains Hitler existing in the same world (but not at the same time) as David Copperfield.
 * Recently confirmed by (of all people) Grant Morrison: "There's only one story. Lucky for us, it contains all the others."
 * Note: Reality is a multimedia wiki.

The world is a truly epic realist story.
Think about it! The world of this story (our world) doesn't work like the world of most stories: it follows that the story is, in fact, subverting tropes found within other stories. In fact, the writer got so meta, they have their characters catalogue all the tropes the story subverts. So we're all Genre Savvy, and therefore we're all going to die.
 * Unless we live in a world where we 'think' we're Genre Savvy, but are actualy horrifically Genre Blind. In which case we're all dead anyway. Unless the author is planning to subvert Death by Genre Savviness...
 * Let's hope Death by Sex isn't enabled...
 * Guess what? STDs.
 * Ooh! Then some of us would be immortal!
 * Which explains why people go to such lengths to get laid. After all, Who Wants to Live Forever??
 * Wouldn't explain how people die as virgins, though.
 * Alternately, reality is an Epic Fantasy beloved by the nerds of the very boring "real" reality.
 * You mean exactly like in Kingdom of Loathing?
 * Such boring reality might be just like Gray World on Fairy Odd Parents. It might explain daltonism/color blindness, and such people that suffer from these problems are the authors. It explains the Most Writers Are Male, too, since most color blindness genetic issues occur with greater chances on males.

Most of the oddities in day-to-day life are caused by trees with epilepsy.
Self-evident.
 * In truth, it's caused by trees with epilepsy disguised as people with Parkinson's. Michael J. Fox was one of the culprits.

The real world is exactly what it seems, and all theories to the contrary are foolish, laughable, or outright delusional.
I know it's degrading, but I heard this somewhere on the internet and thought it was funny enough to share.
 * And then, there's no hope, no God, nothing besides reality. Surely a High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
 * Not just a High Octane Nightmare Fuel, but that fact where there is only reality is WORSE than seeing an Eldritch Abomination in the face and then seeing the inside of its anus.
 * It's not a Nightmare Fuel for a Nietzsche Wannabe, though. In fact the fact where nothing exists besides reality is their philosophy in life.
 * Alternatively, the world is exactly what it looks like. But the fact that non-transparent things are in the way of parts of it, and the fact that we see what we want to see, means that the best thing to do is always think both intensely and rationally about everything we see.
 * If there is only reality, then the best thing to do is save it by overloading it with fun through fiction!

All is all.
Is is.

Mister Rogers is actually god.
Think about it: even though most people reject the values and/or optimism of their childhoods, everyone likes Mister Rogers. When his car was stolen, the thieves returned it with a full tank of gas... because they could not stand before the wrath of the lord! Add to this the number of rumours flying around about him (he's an ex-Marine with 48 confirmed kills, his family died causing him to devote his life to family entertainment, he was deeply involved in organized crime, etc.), and the fact that he has already been acknowleged as the most powerful being in the universe, and a pattern begins to emerge.
 * Alternatively, everyone is Will Rogers' hallucination.
 * So, God is dead, and stomach cancer has killed him?
 * Quick, someone call Nietzsche!
 * Didn't stomach cancer also kill Richard Feynman, who is also called God a lot?
 * So... God is a Presbyterian? We knew it! We bloody knew it!
 * Actually, This Troper has always hated Mister Rogers.
 * Kill the blasphamer!

Rodents are the ultimate scourge of God.
Think about it: they breed quickly, building their numbers into the thousands in a matter of months if not weeks, cause millions of dollars worth of property damage, ruin countless food stashes due to their habit of eating only part of it and leaving the rest to rot, are known carriers of some of the most deadly diseases known to man, and have chisel-like teeth that never stop growing, forcing them to gnaw constantly to keep them short (which they can do on just about any material), and giving them one wicked bite. They're also able to slip into the narrowest of spaces, evading capture, and despite their natural curiosity, they seem to more often than not have a knack for avoiding traps. However, they're so incredibly cute, that humans naturally want to keep them as pets instead of killing them on the spot. Oh, and they're one of the most plentiful species on the planet. Roaches may be bad, and they may survive the upcoming nuclear Armageddon, but rodents are the ones that will ultimately doom Humanity.
 * This means that cats really are tools of the devil, but working on our side.
 * Roaches have genetically engineered rodents to destroy humanity so they can rule after our demise. That's why they, in spite of being mammals, have so many roach-like characteristics. Roaches are playing a long game, but they all have faith that their descendants will inherit the earth.
 * God is an insect, probably a roach or a beetle.
 * Chinchillas are mostly harmless, and thus are a failed protoype.
 * As are primates ourselves, having branched off from rodents millions of years ago. Roaches have been around since before the dinosaurs, so were obviously around to create the creatures they would now have to destroy. Which makes us the hideous genetic mutants.
 * My mother would think otherwise]...

We are not the first sapient species to evolve on Earth.
Signs show that almost all traces to this day of humankind having existed on Earth would disappear completely after as little as 50,000 years. As long as every species before us failed to invent plastics (that continue to exist in measurable quantities even after being ground into microscopic particles) or land on the Moon/Mars (where climate allows pretty much everything non-biological to practically exist forever), there would be no signs that any civilization existed before the first human hunter-gatherers. Even other primates could have created a thriving society as little as 1 million years ago and we'd never know.
 * Alternately, other sentient species might have invented plastics, but also a way to decompose it again, much like we are hoping to be able to do soon, for the environment's sake. See The Relict in the Pitch Testing Zone.
 * One thing from our civilization that would persist for a very long time is that we have used all or almost all of the easy mineral resources. Such resources are replenished on various geological time scales, but many such resources can't be replenished before the Earth is rendered uninhabitable by the growing Sun. No future civilizations will stroll up a mountain, see some oddly colored rocks, and accidentally discover Copper. We can be reasonably confident there have been no technological civilizations before us. (Which is not the same as "sentient", of course.) You can keep going and hypothesize that somebody put those resources back, which is just faintly theoretically possible (when your civilization transcends, leave behind nanobots programmed to return resources to ore in just such a way that it looks totally natural, then methodically destroy themselves), but you're definitely getting out into the "can't prove it even in theory" domain there. Or we aren't the first civilization, but the bastards before us used up all the Phlebotinum.
 * One possiblity is that a small, stone-age civilization existed, but died out.
 * The whales are sentient. So are dolphins, even if they are kind of insane. But if you're counting sentience as dependence on tools and other material posessions, then the dinosaurs did it. Probably the raptor group, while they were growing feathers, maybe before that.
 * As per the above theory, the most intelligent species on the planet is using us all to find the meaning of life.
 * TAKE HIS BRAINS OUT!
 * Dinos had such huge brains, so, it means they used it for something.
 * Our cities will probably degrade to rich piles of ore. So the next civilizations will have easy metal. But they will have a lot of trouble with burnable fuel - it won't restore itself for a _long_ time. So we can think that previous civilization had a lot more fuel, and thus they probably managed to get away from earth. And the aliens who visit earth are archaeologists or tourists who want to see where their ancestors lived.

Arlen Specter: US Senator by day...
...ghostly super-powered crime-fighter (or possibly villain?) by night. Because if "Arlen Specter" isn't a Meaningful Name, I don't know what is.
 * Alternatively, Arlen Specter is a ghost wizard.
 * The meaning of his name began unfolding on April 28, 2009, when he joined the Democratic Party. He will be a political 'specter', as he (in the public perception) gave the Democrats their 60th vote. The only question is: Whom will he haunt? The Republicans, for allowing the Democrats to roll out their full agenda and giving the public the idea that they are a party of extremists? Or the Democrats, for making them overconfident and leaving them (in the public's view) with no excuse not to fix the country?

Regina Spektor is our universe's Purity Sue
.
 * See the above WMG.
 * Regina Spektor means "Queen Ghost." Just wanted to throw that out there.
 * That would explain her constant singing about gravediggers.
 * Let's break this down: Meaningful name? Check. Beautiful singing voice? Check. Spunky and cheerful? Check. Proficiency with a random musical instrument? Check. Speaks several languages fluently? Check. Defector From Decadence (Soviet Union)? Check. Humble? Check. Sickeningly sweet? Check. Smiles and Sunshine and Universal Love in her presence? Hell yes, you can power a lightbulb just by holding it near her. Just plain cooler and better than you? Check. Red hair (because All Heroes Want Redheads), bright blue eyes, "pouty lips," and "large and supple breasts?" Check. Unique, frilly outfits? Check. New words get made up to describe her? Reginasaurus, anyone? She probably has a fucking katana and an animal companion, too. Total unrealistic Mary Sue.
 * Therefore, Regina Spektor is this universe's Purity Sue. And therefore a self-insert of God. Who is a 13-year old girl. Who is also Robin Williams. Who is Revolver Ocelot. Who was...Russian. With a spectre for a father and a warrior queen for a mother... it all makes sense.

YOU ARE ALL WEIRDOS
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