Top 10 Craziest Video Game Fan Theories!

“Star Fox” (1993)

At first glance, Nintendo’s Star Fox franchise is a delightful shoot ‘em up adventure about gutsy space pilot Fox McCloud and his anthropomorphic animal friends. But for some gamers, this cute exterior hides a dark secret. Art for the game seems to show the pilots with metal legs, giving rise to speculation they’ve undergone amputation to better survive intense G-forces. If true, it must have really sucked when “G-diffusers” were introduced on Arwings in the sequel, “Star Fox 64”. Star Fox programmer Dylan Cuthbert has claimed the creators of the original puppets just couldn’t be bothered making feet; but those ankles are awfully slender.

“Five Nights at Freddy's” (2014)

Scott Cawthon’s popular point-and-click horror game about animatronic murder-bots in a pizza restaurant might seem pretty straightforward for newcomers. But fans believe there’s a complex, overarching plot that brings together all the disparate elements - although Cawthon has claimed that as of the fourth game, no-one had figured it out. Is Foxy just misunderstood? Is the pizzeria a kind of purgatory - the same plot device brought in to make sense of all the random crap in “Lost”? Is there a real Freddy’s Fazbear’s Pizza restaurant? If you’re wondering, there isn’t... but that hasn’t stopped fans from mass calling at least three different pizzerias.

“Pokemon Red/Blue” (1998)

On one hand, the world of Pokemon is a bright, exciting land full of adventure and potential animal friends. Sure, you’re essentially capturing wild animals and forcing them to fight each other... but hey, the battle stops when they pass out. Sooo that’s nice. But in “Pokemon Red/Blue”, Lieutenant Surge mentions that electric Pokemon saved him during “the war”. And suddenly a whole dark history begins to unfold, answering a lot of hitherto unanswered questions. Like, where is everyone’s parents? Why are there so few middle-aged men? It all makes sense if the population was decimated in a horrific Pokemon War - leaving only children, women, and grizzled war veterans alive.

“Portal” (2007)

When you’re cut off and alone, any friend will do. Trapped in the test chambers of Aperture Science, it’s easy to become attached to your trusty Companion Cube... but in the end, it’s just a crate painted with hearts... right? Well, some fans think there are actually people stuffed inside. The theory is inspired by a tie-in comic, in which the cube of Aperture employee Doug Rattmann appears to talk. In the game, GLaDOS warns Chell not to listen if her own cube pipes up. Rattmann’s conversations probably have something to do with his anti-psychotic medication running out... but we have to admit, GLaDOS is one pretty twisted A.I.

“Silent Hill 2” (2001)

Konami’s classic survival horror game takes the player a convoluted psychological journey to investigate the death of the protagonist’s wife. But it turns out - spoiler alert - the killer was him all along. In the “Water” ending, James drives his car over a cliff, saying now “they can be together”. While this could mean “together in death”, in the “Rebirth” ending, James plans to revive her corpse, which some gamers interpret to mean it’s close at hand. For example - in the trunk of his own car.

“Limbo” (2010)

On the surface, Limbo seems to be about a loving brother who braves death to reunite with his sister in the underworld. And when we say “death”, we mean “a lot of deaths”... over and over. But fans have offered an even darker interpretation, suggesting that the boy has been consigned to the underworld for murdering his sister. In some myths, the underworld is a place where the dead are cursed to suffer for the same sin over and over. The idea is that in “Limbo”, our protagonist is forced to undergo a long and varied series of horrific deaths before he can join his sister in the afterlife.

“The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” (2011) and “Fallout 4” (2015)

“Skyrim” is set in a fictional fantasy world, and “Fallout” in post-apocalyptic Earth. But what if Skyrim is just on a different planet from the world of Fallout? Or even in “Fallout’s” distant past? In “Fallout 4”, players can stumble across a bioluminescent plant with restorative properties that was first discovered at the mouth of a river. It has a remarkable resemblance to Nirnroot, a plant in “Skyrim” that also glows and grows near water. Is it just a fun Bethesda easter egg… or a clue to a larger universe where plants survive millions of years, or travel through space? Hmmm.

“Mass Effect 3” (2010)

The ending of “Mass Effect 3” left many gamers in an uproar. In a series all about choices, the game’s finale offered players some difficult and, for many, dissatisfying options: destroy synthetic life, bringing down the Reapers; merge with them and take control; or somehow fuse organic and synthetic life with a weird green light thing. And so a theory was born. The Reapers’ have an energy field that can brainwash organic beings, a process known as “indoctrination”. What if Shepard had been indoctrinated, and the ending only happened in his head? Or the Reapers influenced his final choices? Hey, a fan can dream.

“Final Fantasy VIII” (1999)

We’re used to game characters surviving things that would kill a person in real life. But what about getting impaled by an ice javelin as thick as your arm? During an assassination attempt gone wrong, Squall is easily defeated by the sorceress Edea. But he later wakes up and seems pretty much fine - with his wound completely gone. One fan explanation is that Squall dies, and the rest of the game is all a dream in his dying mind. This theory is further fueled by the ending, which shows Rinoa supposedly fading from Squall’s dying memory, as well as one of the most disturbing freeze frame’s you’ll ever see.

“The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask” (2000)


At the beginning of “Majora’s Mask”, Link is searching for a “beloved and invaluable friend” - Navi, his fairy companion in “Ocarina of Time”. According to one popular theory, he’s so distraught at her departure that he passes through the five stages of grief, with Clock Town representing denial, and the other locations anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But a more radical theory postulates that Link is dead, and he’s in purgatory; his grief is actually over his own death at the start of the game.