Seems like these days people love to come up with theories about their favourite shows. Every now and then I come across a article promoting "This fan has a brilliant theory!" stories. They always seem to have originally been posted on reddit or somewhere similar, and then presented on other sites.
And these aren't always just "Hey, I just noticed this thing that they hid in every episode", either. A lot of them are "What if" scenarios that it seems people have put a lot of thought into, occasionally using very twisted and distorted logic to hammer the square peg of the theory into a round hole. It's almost like it's the new thing to do...
I'm not sure why it seems to have taken off. Maybe it's just that, as with everything else, the Internet just makes it easier to share whatever comes to mind. Kinda like I'm doing now!
Some of them are pretty interesting. There was one that examined the dynamic between Batman and the Joker, concluding that the Joker's ultimate victory would be to make Batman kill him, that even in death he'd win. Which is why it's so important to Batman that he never cross that line.
Then there's the one which makes up a story that basically has Batman being sent back in time by a supervillain and stumbling across the scene of his parents' death. When he realises that nothing's going to happen, he winds up killing his own parents and then going mad and becoming the Joker. Which, as an official story published by DC would be an interesting idea.
As a fan-made OMG THIS GUY JUST CHANGED HOW WE THINK ABOUT THIS theory, it's hogwash. It's not connecting the dots in a new and interesting way, it's just proposing an implausible scenario.
And then there's this theory about The Princess Bride. Basically, some kid watches the movie for the first time and gets to the scene where the grandson asks if his grandpa will come back tomorrow to read to him some more. And grandpa says, "As you wish". And the kid comes up with the idea that grandpa is secretly the latest Dread Pirate Roberts and he's about to pass it on to the grandson.
And his dad is like OMG YOU BLEW MY MIND. And the article is like OMG THIS IS SO CLEVER HOW HAS NO ONE EVER THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE.
And I'm like, BECAUSE IT IS UTTER BOLLOCKS.
I don't blame the kid, he's a kid. But the adults going nuts over it? NO NO NO NO FUCKING NO.
1) Dread Pirate Roberts doesn't work that way in the movie. The name isn't handed down in a bloodline, like the Phantom. It's passed to a promising protegee, they dump the old crew, pick up a new one, and the former Roberts poses as the first mate and tells everyone that this really is Roberts, to help sell the identity. Heck, the end of the movie suggests that Inigo might be the next Roberts, and he sure as hell ain't Westley's son or grandson.
b) The line "As you wish" doesn't work like that, either. It wasn't a Dread Pirate Roberts thing, it was Westley's way of telling Buttercup, "I love you". Just because he was Dread Pirate Roberts for a time does not mean that the two things cross over.
Green) There's absolutely nothing cryptic about the ending! The grandfather is saying, "I love you" to his grandson in the way most meaningful to the story he was telling.
The idea that the story of Westley and Buttercup is historical rather than fantasy within the framework of the movie, that has merit. Mostly because that's the way that the original book by Goldman was written.
Maybe you could even argue that the grandson is their descendant, and that this story has been passed down through the generations. The grandfather certainly suggests as much when he says his father read it to him, and that he read it to his own son, and now he's going to read it to his grandson.
But other than that? Hogwash.
I don't know why people promote such ridiculous ideas. All I can say is clickbaiters gonna clickbait.
