Are 400+ TV Shows Happening In The Same Universe? | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios 

Some cartoons have done this for one episode (or special). Kim Possible found herself travelling from one "faux" show to another when Drakken and Shego created some weapon that would do that. Timmy Turner (Fairly Odd Parents) also had a full-length TV movie where the characters were hopping from one show to another. Then there's that John Ritter movie where his character was also hopping from one show to another (and yes, he found himself very briefly on a show with two "familiar looking" women). --------------- ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ycVcurvRYqY.html

Thats basically what ready player one was and it was shit so no after that i dont think it can be done well

Mr. Robot Season 4 teaser ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-grBGZmveJSs.html

That would be expensive

To kill Tommy Westphall.

he's the Impossible Man!!!!! ooooh good one!

nope, he's the watcher

that's a real theory online. look it up

crazyjohnb22 I know it is. I made a video about that theory, and I don't really believe it to be true. There's not a ton of evidence to support it.

+NerdSync ohh wow, your pretty big as a youtuber my bad.

OperationSpider same. Cause I’m an I love Lucy fan and when he mentioned it I was like wtf

Lol what a shitshow

Same. xd

Same

Terrible video but i’m glad he introduced it to me.

dude never gonna find you here so im gonna ask you. Can you make pokemon video about pokemon with unrealistic weight for the pokemon. please.

This idea appeals to me. Very good.

I like this Theory.

+Mathew Gibbons (Gaiash) Don't think you finished your comment there

+Mathew Gibbons (Gaiash) Actually, you can connect the two a lot quicker, as Dipper, Mabel, and Connie all appear in the background in the anime short Little Witch Academia 2.

Junglehero127 Those are more of reference designs than the actual ones though.

Not really. They look exactly like the ones from the actual shows so I think it counts

Junglehero127 No they look similar but aren't exactly the same. The colours are completely different for one thing. The Dipper lookalike has red hair, the Mabel lookalike has black hair and the Connie lookalike has lighter skin. It's a cool nod to the shows but too different to count.

+Shawn Ravenfire Unless, perhaps, if "Mad About You" was a documentary or reality TV show in that shared universe. Would that work?

+Shawn Ravenfire Kramer could've won a competition or some such and gotten to act as himself in "Mad about you".

+Shawn Ravenfire Similarly on The Simpsons Matt Groening is famous for having made Futurama while multiple pieces of evidence confirm that The Simpsons existed in Futurama's past.

+Shawn Ravenfire Actually, the first half of this points to the main issue i have with the suggested scope of the hypothesis. To what extend are we talking about characters/locations/props made up by Tommy and to what extend are we talking about characters/locations/props Tommy just happens to have heard of. example: is Dr. 'appears in homicide' ever referred in that series as having worked in st. elsewhere (which according to its own ending never existed) or shown to exist, but not be a doctor, post-twist in st elsewhere. If neither, it would be entirely possible for Tommy to have imagined this doctor working in st elsewhere after having seen that particular homicide-episode. (it would limit the scope of Tommy's imagination but keep the 'it means that show also didn't happen'-impact as i doubt the name and face of the doctor would ever have hit the news (allowing tommy to get the character from tv, while still being 'real') ) The cigarette-brand example and in bobs video 'weyland yutani' could be bi-directionally decoupled. Simply because Tommy imagined someone smoking a brand he has heard of (instead of made up) doesn't devalue anyone/thing else smoking the same stuff. Interesting detail about the buffy-verse, connection. The Buffy-verse itsself is also implied to be a figment of imagination, of Buffy's imagination to be exact. (In season 6 iirc) Buffy spends parts of an episode in a mental institution, where she went to after spotting her first vampire (around the time of the movie, predating the series), doubting which world is actually real. While an explanation is given within the buffy-verse for this mental lapse (stung by a demon whose poison has such effects), not only did that previous mental-institution visit happen (in either version) but more importantly, the 'real'-verse option is shown to continue after Buffy decided to believe the Buffy-verse and (as a result) goes complete catatonic in 'real'-verse. (The diagnosis of this state being irreversable is shown, while if it was all the effect of the demon-poison, that world should have ceased to exist the moment she collapsed there) So no, 'Kramer playing the role of Kramer in mad about you' did not blow my mind, these things happen in a world completely imagined by a girl who can't communicate with the outside world in any way. Especially if she herself has been made up by a 10-year old boy. :P Slightly more serious (hopefully only slightly), such 'the universe might not actually be as big as the 'degrees of separation'-approach might imply'-details also hold for your paradox-verse. Not to mention the detail George would probably have no problem calling Kramer a fictional character. Hell, i wouldn't be surprised if Kramer would believe him. (might even watch the 'mad about you' episode he guest-roled in by winning a contest and consider that 'proof George was right about him'') That having been said, one thing your example does prove. the 'looking into fan-theories can be fun'-statement. (off to check the calvin/hobbs fightclub-prequel theory)

Similarly, there was a similar episode of Deep Space Nine where Captain Sisko is a writer creating the Star Trek universe (which the other writers suggested would end with finding out that it was a dream), and later finds himself in a mental institution having become obsessed with the story. He later finds out that the mental institution was a "false vision" created by the Pah Wraiths. Charmed also had Piper wake up in a mental hospital having imagined being a witch, but similarly, it was an illusion created by the demons to trick her into renouncing her powers. After thinking about Kramer a little more, I remembered that in the show, they were turning Seinfeld's life into a "show about nothing," where another guy was going to play Kramer. Of course, Kramer is himself based on a real person (Kenny Kramer). So Seinfeld may have created a sort of sit-com-inception crossing all universes including ours.

+Robert Trone Does it make it more or less complicated that me, Wheezy and Michael from VSauce are all actually the same person?

+PBS Idea Channel Oh! Now it makes so much more sense! Thanks now some annoying loose ends are tied up.

+Robert Trone someone needs to map every RU-vidr and link everyone ^^

LazyMasterGamer That would be amazing

Robert Trone or like a community thing so everyone could add a link which would be faster like wikipedia ^^

ft NerdSync. yea. me too.

+NerdSync I am pretty sure that has already happened.

+NerdSync More like Film Theory, in this case. But yes, many yes!

Did it really?!

+NerdSync "Here's a theory" and "But that's just an Idea. A GAME IDEA. Thank's for watching"

+KharBrons But it still connects the Universe. Because even though you are right about something beeing not exclusive for your mind, it still presupposes that your dreams and the things causing/appearing in them are in the same Universe. Just like you and IdeaChannel are in the same Universe. So i that matter it still holds up.

+KharBrons Really being in Tommy Westphall's imagination is just the starting point and the icing on the cake. The real fun of the Tommy Westphall Hypothesis is finding how you can connect different shows to each other.

+KharBrons This is what I'm thinking myself. Honestly, the theory seems to connect the worlds better if you do not invoke Tommy's imagination.

+KharBrons I'd think of it more like Tyler Durden in fight club. He only exists in the mind of the narrator, and so if anyone else in that world can see him/interact with him then they too must be part of the hallucination (only imaginary friends can see imaginary friends). So if the narrator sees person x talking to Tyler, and then person y talking to person x, person y must be imaginary as we've deduced that person x is imaginary. The question then arises about whether there are 2 versions of person x- one that see Tyler (imaginary) and one that doesn't (real, on which the imaginary one may be based). But then what are you basing the assumption that there are duplicate copies of someone on?

+KharBrons Largely you are correct to a degree. The idea with tommy is that it is heavily implied everything in the entire show was all in his head. That none of it including the few things that crossed into that show from others were real. So in that case everything in the show at least is clearly part of the dream, as for anything that crosses into it, sure that could have been stuff the kid picked up from his real world. It's just less fun that way.

+Digibro Well, for one, excellent quality post. As to the actual point, I tend to agree, which is why I prefer to just look at the TWU as a grid of interconnected shows and ignore the delusion/fantasy aspect. It's still pretty awesome if that's all you take from it, I think.

sHUT UP DIGI

That's what I said to yo mamma. OOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHH

+Reionder Fukin Savage.

+Sure i imagined wayne saying this and then doing the thumbs up thing

+Sure If humans can see a pattern then it must exist because if not, humans wouldn't have been able to see them in the first place.

+Sure, but patterns are almost by definition the products of minds, and outside minds, patterns don't exist. So if a mind sees a pattern, in a way it does exist.

+Wolfee Darkfang Assuming SMB2's plot isn't that the deposed kings of Subcon used their combine powers to bring the Mushroom Kingdom's heroes over via their dreams to save them, I think you have to consider how dreams work. Perhaps Shy Guys and Birdos appear in SMB 2 because of the his trauma in Yoshi's Island since Shy Guys are the main enemies and Birdos could be made interpretations of the Yoshis. Birdo for instance, never appears in the main games. Neither do shy guys outside of Yoshi's Island. SMB3 is confirmed to be a play though. Dreaming within a dream is awkward too (Dream Events in Mario & Sonic at Olympic Games) and I'm pretty sure the Smash Universe is separate machinations of children playing

No cause you are assuming the creatures you see in the game Mario made up in his head. When they already exist in the Universe

@@malfaroangel3896 Good point. Yeah I've pondered it since I made my original comment. If I can have a dream with long dead relatives in them, mario could easily have dreams involving creatures that exist in his world but just never appeared in a prior game. The franchise was still new at the time anyway, and we only saw the world through marios perspective while the princess was captured.

Your point is valid, but for the record, Mr. Carlin appeared on both St. Elsewhere and Newhart as well as The Bob Newhart Show.

+Bailey Holden But it's not about actors, it's about characters, brands and other things created for one show being in another. TV shows have crossovers and making these means that the two shows either share a universe or a multiverse (depends on how they cross over) and the idea of the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis is seeing how many shows you can connect to each other using in universe connections to each other.

Mathew Gibbons right i'll edit the post later, i haven't seen the revised version of the video yet. but i don't think that really answers all my concerns about it though.

I get you! That's what I was thinking too! Because the theory that all these shows take place in a kids head does nothing to alter my understanding of their primary narratives, I'm stuck going "... and?" I love headcanons/theories that build on characters or analyze intentions because they change the way I view character actions, and therefore the core narrative. But the "Rapunzel is actually Elsa's COUSIN!" ones don't appeal to me at all.

Bailey Holden I haven't seen the old video yet and after I made my comment I saw a post that explained that the thing that was wrong about the old version was including actors. In this video he makes a point of saying "not actors".

+Bailey Holden while i really like fan theories, i had the same 'so what' reaction when it came to the tommy westphall hypothesis.

+Pedro Scoponi Isn't it so good! I think the intertextual fan theories are my favorites. Calvin and Hobbes + FightClub, Tommy Westphall, James Bond is a Timelord, Great Gatsby is an alternate timeline where Jack from Titantic survives...

+PBS Idea Channel there is a life recording of a cracked podcast where they discuss various fan theories my personal faforite (i thought it up myself though i'm probably not the first): malcom from malcom in the middle is mr white from breaking bad (brilliant, cynical, grey morality, hates his mom, he'd look like his dad)

Batman is a Timelord, James Bond is a Timelord, everybody is a time lord, wow e.e'

+DrMustacho I've never thought about that!! It amazes me and scares me at the same time

+Pedro Scoponi I wish, because Timelords are cool!

Also, any connections made only via non-character crossovers, although they do place them in the same universe, do not necessitate that such shows are inventions of Tommy Westphall, for it is possible that Tommy simply incorporated those aspects of his world (i.e. the "Morley" name brand) into his thoughts.

What about fake products and places that are featured in movies/tv shows made by the same people? Like Kevin smiths works. Do those gain more credence because it's a higher probability that the creator wants you to make that connection?

Yeah, like "Sleepless in Seattle and Elf both feature the Empire State Building, so they're in the same universe!!!'! :O" It doesn't really hold up.

+Riley McKinley They're talking about fictional brands and locations, not real ones. Morley was a cigarette brand that was made up for the shows.

Dwight can hop between universes.

yes but the pixar theory idk actually makes sense?

But even Pixar is connected to family guy too

@@Unseenone445 bro i posted this comment 5 years ago

+BlankPicketSign We're gonna be visiting a looonnnnngggg list of people in hospital beds for one of these Fan Theory episodes... :D

PBS Idea Channel Toot Tooooot! Fan Theory Train is pulling in!!! Thank you SO MUCH, this is going to be epic!

Ash Williams from Evil Dead

+NerdOverlord Since Moffat's run, I think pretty much anything happens just because he says so, no matter how much or how little sense it makes. Cough, Amy and Rory's departure. I do agree with your main point though. It adds towards the suspense and keeps the viewers hooked.

+NerdOverlord Sometimes when you try to fill in the gaps, it leads to things like midichlorians.

fair enough but how do you explain the walking dead happening at the same time.

+latieraeve In this corrected version, it's more about direct 'character' or environmental crossovers (like the cigarettes) than just if the actors from one show appear in another show.

so it wasnt wrong, just more information

+latieraeve Yeah..I'm kinda confused, too. No idea why the first video was "wrong", either.