Greatest Nerd Theories: And the Winners Are…

?Fuck that was awesome. I know I say this every time, but if you don’t read last week’s contest and all the incredibly elaborate — and often downright brilliant — nerd theories the TR readers have come up with, you’re missing out. I really feel like these contests are the best part of TR‘s legacy to the internet; I should probably make a book out of all these if you wily nerds wouldn’t sue me to oblivion. Now, it would be a crime for me to try to cut these theories down to snippits for Honorable Mentions, so here they are — please give them, and the other theories, a look when you have a chance:

? Ranchoth’s insane Batman movie theory
? Tanner’s insane Cloverfield/Ghostbusters theory
? Kayla’s lovably desperate Sailor Moon “theory”
? Lord Alvarez’s Doc Brown from Back to the Future is insane theory
? Alkad’s quite reasonable Batman is insane theory
? Skaramuche’s highly detailed “Dumbledore Lives” theory
? Zeig’s awesomely weird BSG/Terminator/Star Trek connection theory
? LealahLupin3 and Joseph’s sharing of the creepy Ash from Pok?mon is in a coma theory
? BadNflu3nce’s impressive Calvin and Hobbes/Higurashi no naku koro ni theory
? Jidasfire’s sensible “V is Alan Moore” theory
? The Man with Two Brains’ far superior Matrix ending theory
? Hmmm…’s “no pooping in the future” theory
? Gareth and Coconut Monkey’s “We got the shitty John Connor” theory
? Keepoffthegrass’ Burgertime/Genesis theory
? DW’s shockingly appalling theory that TR is just an elaborate front so that I can publish my fan fiction under a variety of pseudonyms
? Chris Ward’s Pac-Man/No Exit theory
? Cote’s delightful Vulcans are elves theory (“Oh! I forgot to write, regarding the elves-vulcans theory, that they of course had awesome names like Spockolas! “Would you like some more elvish tea, Mr. Spockolas?” “Yes, I would be delighted, Mrs. Saarwiken. I love elvish tea.”)
? Doc_Ock_4Mugen’s fun evil MOTU Sorceress theory
? Zidel333’s silly theory that the arguing Who nerds deserve t-shirts

As for the winners? After the jump.

?Let’s start with the random winner, shall we? As it turns out, the winner has a pretty good nerd theory — even if it’s not backed up by the material, it sure would make the G.I. Joe cartoon movie a hell of a lot more forgivable:

Bill said:

Cobra-La was NOT responsible for sending Cobra Commander out into “mans world” to conquor it for them. Oh no.

The ever shrewd Cobra Commander merely staged the entire incident involving that godawful Cobra-La nonsense from G.I. Joe: The Movie (1987) as a rather complex way for him to rid himself of Serpentor and weed out any “weak links” in the Cobra chain. With everyone believing that he was turned into a snake, everything would be disorganized.

Cobra Commander could then simply walk back in, reassume control of Cobra, and fine tune it more to his liking. It might be a smaller organization than it was previously, but it would be stronger! He could run things as the undisputed leader, the way it used to be.
In short, Cobra-La? Never was real. It was all staged for the benefit of a long term plan by Cobra Commander to clean house. All those Cobra-La creeps were probably nothing more than robots or protoplasm or some other such thing that the Commander always had lying around. The “Cobra Commander” that turned into a snake? That was probably one of those protoplasm things too. The real Commander was probably watching from some secret control room and laughing his ass off that everyone bought into the outlandish characters from Cobra-La and his supposed “true” origin. I can just see him laughing while slapping his knee…

That is the secret behind G.I.Joe: The Movie and Cobra-La.

Not bad, Bill. Not bad at all. But frankly, there was one theory shared that was so brilliant, so fantastically argued, and so sensible that we should all adopt it as reality.

?“Starman” Matt Morrison said:

My theory is about Spider-Man: One More Day and how we can retcon it away for good while also explaining away another horrible Marvel Comics storyline.
FACT: In One More Day, Peter Parker makes a bargain with the demon Mephisto to save his Aunt May’s life at the cost of his marriage. Reality is rewritten so that Peter and Mary Jane never married and are currently broken up.
FACT: For some unexplained reason, in the rewritten reality, most of Harry’s friends have vanished. Flash Thompson has returned to being the bully who makes Peter’s life miserable. And for some strange reason, Harry Osborn is alive and well.
FACT: Events in general seem to be geared toward making Peter’s life as comically, unbelievably horrible as possible. He can’t get a job. His roommates hate him and/or Spider-Man. Aunt May marries J. Jonah Jameson’s father. Jolly Jonah becomes Mayor of NYC and immediately sets about making capturing Spider-Man priority one for everyone. And Norman Osborn – despite being publicly known as The Green Goblin – has become head of the national agency in charge of monitoring/commanding all the legally-operating superheroes in the United States.
A lot of fans don’t think ANY of this makes any sense. And it doesn’t. Peter Parker – written properly – would never make a bargain with The Devil because it was easier than dealing with tragedy. It doesn’t make any sense for Harry to be back from the dead because of Peter’s bargain. And known-murderer and lunatic Norman Osborn being appointed to a national agency, much less being beloved by the public REALLY doesn’t make any sense…
… unless this is all part of Norman’s wish.
Would Norman make a literal deal with the devil to get power and a chance to cause as much chaos as possible by jacking around with the superheroes? Yes.
Would Norman make a literal deal with the devil to bring his own dead son back to life? Probably. Crazy as he was, he was always depicted as being a loving, if distant, father.
Would Norman make a literal deal with the devil to make Peter Parker as miserable as possible? Hell yes!
That’s the idea: Mephisto went to Norman and offered him a chance to have all the wealth, power and prestige he always wanted. He even sweetened the deal by offering to bring Harry back from the dead AND by fixing it so that Peter Parker would be made as miserable as possible by the new world that was created. Making Peter believe he’d be responsible for his own problems was just the icing on the evil cake.

Marvel, if you’re reading this, cut Starman Matt Morrison a check and insert this into regular universe Spider-Man as soon as humanly possible. It corrects your biggest fuck-up of the last decade in a way that make perfect sense and works with all your existing storylines and would get all the fans (back) on your side. Do it. Don’t be stuck up because some comics fan figured out how make it work and you couldn’t. Do it. Seriously. Do it.