Cartoon Theories That Will Ruin Your Childhood

Does anything scream childhood like Saturday morning cartoons? Nothing’s more innocent than sitting down with a bowl of cereal and enjoying some animated classics until you grow up and realize your childhood favorites are actually packed full of strange implications, uncertainty, and, worst of all, subtext! Let's explore some dark cartoon theories that might just ruin your childhood.

Aladdin Theory: The Whole Movie Is His First Wish

We all know the Disney adaptation of the of middle-eastern folktale, Aladdin; a street punk in Agrabah discovers a magic lamp, wishes to be a prince, gets found out, saves the day, marries a princess, and lives happily ever after, but a weird plot hole that always stood out was the fact that Aladdin is afraid everyone will find out he’s only a commoner who wished to become a prince. Indeed, the evil advisor Jafar later figures this out, disgracing Aladdin in the process.

Aladdin - Jafar's Prince Ali Reprise by Zora Hika

This raises a pretty important question, though: when Aladdin wished to become a prince, what did the genie actually do? Think about it for a second. Aladdin didn’t wish for people to think he’s a prince, he wished to be a prince. If the genie had actually granted Aladdin’s wish, then there’d be no dark truth to expose.

Reality would’ve been rewritten to make Aladdin an actual member of a real royal family, but it wasn’t. Instead, Aladdin acts like he must constantly lie and conceal his past, and is eventually exposed as a common street rat, in Jafar’s words. So, the genie didn’t actually grant Aladdin’s wish; he just gave him some new clothes and an entourage.

One rather clever theory explains this by positing that, in fact, the entire movie’s plot is just the genie granting Aladdin’s first wish. Think about it; at the end of the movie, Aladdin saves the day, woos princess Jasmin, and they get married, making Aladdin a prince.

All the fake prince stuff, the clothes, the elephants, the title, the entire adventure Aladdin is simply a means by which the genie gets Jasmin to fall in love with Aladdin and marry him, thus fulfilling Aladdin’s first wish. And if the genie happens to get his freedom out of the deal, where’s the harm?

This reading of the story casts the genie in a new light; still not evil by any means, but definitely more manipulative than he might initially appear. It also makes the romantic element of the story a little creepier; after all, it makes genie the ultimate matchmaker.

SpongeBob’s Skin Theory

A strange interpretation of SpongeBob’s anatomy is known as skin theory, which stems from a pretty bizarre observation about the show. Have you ever noticed how many jokes revolve around characters treating their skin like clothes?

Spongebob Squarepants: Skin Theory by Doug Woolever

And it happens a lot. On top of wearing skinsuits, there are also lots of gross jokes where characters get their skin removed or remove it easily. Once you’re looking for them, there are a shocking number of jokes, especially in the first few seasons, with similar punchlines.

Skin theory proposes that every resident of Bikini bottom is wearing an extra set of skin, or perhaps a full body suit, at all times. While this may seem like a reach, consider the episode Musclebob Buffpants. In it, Spongebob is tired of being seen as a weenie, so he does the only sensical thing he can; order a replacement pair of arms.

Spongebob Squarepants-MuscleBob Buffpants Part 2/2 by MultiTriplehfan

While this is strange to us, other characters seem to react relatively casually to SpongeBob’s new arms. Spongebob learns about his replacement arms through a commercial, so there’s clearly market for replaceable body parts. Then there’s this joke:

Your disguises can't fool me this time by The Sponge Fanatic

So, on top of mail-order arms, there are also head enhancement clinics? What are we meant to take from this, are the residents of Bikini Bottom all zombies or something? One outlandish explanation is that the Spongebob characters are actually humans in disguise. This does require you handwave away the whole living underwater thing.

A much more plausible and interesting explanation is that these second skins are simply normal! In Bikini Bottom, residents change their costumes the way we might change our hair or wardrobe. After all, in Musclebob Buffpants the reason Spongebob orders his new arms is plain old insecurity, and who can’t relate to that?

Pinky Is The Genius

Pinky and the Brain is one of those wonderful shows that has the decency to tell you it’s premise in the theme song. Remember it? The premise is that the smart mouse, Brain, wants to take over the world. Every week, however, he’s foiled by the pea-brained antics of his assistant Pinky.

Pinky and The Brain Intro by CartoonIntro

Over the course of its original 65 episodes, Brain attempted to take over the world via devious plans such as getting elected President of the United States, creating a planet made of paper mâché, marketing perfume, and becoming the coach of a basketball team. Some of these schemes don’t sound very smart, they sound ridiculous.

How was Brain meant to take over the world by winning a golf tournament? So, the lyrics were “one is a genius, the other’s insane,” but it never mentions which of the two is the genius. Could it be that Pinky is actually the mastermind here? Let’s look at the evidence.

Brain is a textbook megalomaniac; he’s egotistical, arrogant, and desires control above all. Additionally, as we’ve discussed, his plans tend to follow a strange sort of logic that doesn’t always make sense. Note the theme song doesn’t purport either are stupid; just insane, and Brain fits the bill.

Pinky, on the other hand, appears to be dim-witted, easily confused, and incompetent. But almost every time one of Brain’s schemes goes wrong, it’s usually because of Pinky’s tampering. This has caused many to speculate that Pinky’s demeanor is an act; that he’s chosen to keep an eye on Brain and thwart his schemes, should he ever actually get close to world domination.

In the recent Animaniacs reboot, we learn that Brain hates humanity due to the fact he was experimented on as a lab mouse. Pinky, on the other hand, was used as a cheese taste-tester and lived a relatively carefree life. This could explain why Brain wants to conquer the world while Pinky, whose always been the friendlier of the two, wants to preserve it. Dear scientists; please treat your lab mice with respect.

Nurse Joy Is A Pokémon

In Pokémon, Nurse Joy is the friendly, helpful caretaker that Ash first meets in Viridian City in the second episode of the anime TV series. Joy treats Ash’s injured Pikachu and they part ways. Until a few episodes later, when Ash meets an identical Nurse Joy running the Pewter City Pokecenter. This Nurse Joy mentions the previous Joy is her sister, however, something is clearly off here.

Whenever Ash injures his so-called-friends in animal blood sport, he heads on over to the Pokecenter and there’s Nurse Joy, ready to help. This even extends to cities in other continents! They’re all the same person, with some have slightly different hair styles! Are we supposed to believe one family is this large? That sister after sister is identical, and each became a nurse? That her parents couldn’t think of any names besides Joy?

Pokemon XY Children Like's Nurse Joy by MY TOONZ WORLD

One theory explains this away with a simple-if-creepy assertion; that Nurse Joy is, in fact, a Pokémon. While this might seem ridiculous at first, it starts making an unsettling amount of sense the more you think about it.

For starters, it explains why all the Joy’s look so similar; sure, there’s a little variance between them, but there’s a little variance in Pokémon, too. It also explains why they share the same name; Nurse Joy is the species. While Nurse Joy can speak and looks human, there are plenty of human-looking Pokémon, and Pokémon like Meowth, Mewtwo, and Slowking can speak, too.

Many Pokémon are also drawn to specific areas based on their nature, Chandelure, for example, prefers mansions. Nurse Joy could similarly be drawn to hospitals, with a desire to take care of injured Pokémon. She’s often seen alongside the Pokémon Chansey, this could suggest she’s an alternate evolution of the Pokémon’s baby form, Happiny; their color schemes are awfully similar, after all.

While this is all compelling, maybe we're overthinking things. After all, Pokémon takes place in a crazy, magical world where visiting a Pokecenter doesn’t put Ash into crippling debt for the rest of his life. That can only be fantasy.

The Dark World Of Thomas The Tank Engine

If you think about it, Thomas the Tank Engine’s design is very disturbing and it's crazy when kids get excited about metal trains with human faces. No wonder we’ve never seen a live-action Thomas movie. For instance, how human are these trains? Do they have entire, mangled human bodies in there?

A quick google will reveal that there’s even a horror game, Choo Choo Charles, about these awful creatures. Still, there’s something even creepier going on in the Tank Engine world than human-train hybrids, and it’s forced labor.

According to the late Reverand Wilbert Awdry, creator of Thomas the Tank Engine, the living trains don’t have faces outside their home of Sodor, the primary setting of the series. Whatever way this information is interpreted, it’s creepy as heck. Either the trains lose their sentience the moment they leave Sodor, or worse, they just lose their faces, becoming blind, mute, and entombed in their own bodies.

This makes leaving Sodor a grim prospect for any of the train, but it gets worse. The trains don’t self-actualize or run their own society in the one place on Earth they’re alive; instead, they must obey the whims of Sir Topham Hat, also known as the Fat Controller. And if the underlying Imperialist vibes of a wealthy, knighted, British Industrialist forcing the inhabitants of a small island to work is lost on you, remember his behavior.

The Fat Controller puts the trains to work, and constantly threatens them if they misbehave. In one episode, the Fat Controller is too busy to order the trains around. Japanese engine Hiro decides to take charge and manage operations while the Fat Controller is preoccupied. Rather than relieved, the Fat Controller is furious, tyrannically screaming “I am the controller of the railways!”

Hiro is reduced to tears, and the Fat Controller forces him to apologize to every train on the island. In another particularly harrowing episode, a train called Henry who refuses to obey the Fat Controller is bricked up inside a tunnel forever.

Henry Gets Bricked Up by LadyOfSodor

The trains have clearly internalized their own enslavement, too; the best compliment you can give an engine on Sodor is to call them useful. As if living a terrifying existence as a meat train wasn’t enough.

The Floating Timeline Of The Simpsons

For over 35 seasons and 750 episodes, the Simpsons has delivered hundreds of hilarious and memorable TV moments. Besides the Simpsons historic drop in quality from the funniest show on air to one that had an episode about a talking dishrag, something else is rotten in Springfield, and it’s time.

Cartoon characters not aging in real-time is nothing new. In fact, besides a few exceptions like Adventure Time, most don’t age at all. Many exist in a kind of timeless cartoon world. In the Simpsons, however, things are different, it has a floating timeline. What this means is that while the characters don’t age, time still moves forward. Thus, the Simpsons family, technically, don’t have a past.

To explain this a little more, in season 4 episode 16, Homer’s birth year is given as 1956. In 1993 when the episode aired, this would have made Homer 36, which is younger than I’d have guessed. This age is consistent with other episodes, too, Homer was a youth during the moon landing, and flashbacks show him beginning to bald in the 80s.

However, as time moved forward in the real world, so did Homer’s past. In 2008, a season 19 episode portrays Homer as a young adult in 1994, which is a year after the episode that confirmed he was 36. That’s the floating timeline.

Essentially, Homer and Marge weren’t born in any year; they were just born around 36 years before whatever the current episode is. This means their entire lives are constantly being ghoulishly rewritten, along with their memories. Some fans theorize that this isn’t just the state of the show’s world; it’s something Homer is aware of! He goes from dim-witted but well-meaning in early seasons to selfish in the later ones.

Fans even dubbed late-season Homer Jerkass Homer, who’s safe in the nihilistic knowledge that nothing he does matters and that the status quo will inevitably be restored by the end of the episode. In season one when Homer loses his job, he’s so distraught he considers removing himself from the world. Now, Homer gets a new job every week without fear.

Some fans tie the genesis of this change back to a season 4 episode where Homer meets God in a dream, perhaps this meeting gave him some greater knowledge? Or maybe it's simply like the clip below:

"Cartoons Don't Have to be 100% Realistic" by TotalDramaXtremist

Peppa Pig Theories

At this point, everyone in the world recognizes Peppa Pig. She’s the cute, charming little pig that plays with her friends and relatives. However, something that stands out is the art style. While many cartoons go for more realistic or expressive character designs, Peppa is simple, crude, and looks like she was drawn by a child herself.

Additionally, we always see Peppa from a side-on angle, so we still get to always see her entire range of facial expressions, or so we think. In the show, we often see Peppa from both her left and right sides, and when we do, she still always has both eyes visible. What that means is, if we were to swivel Peppa around, we’d end up with something horrifying.

Nasty as it is, this is what Peppa would look like is she ever dared to face the viewer directly. So, what’s going on here? One popular Peppa Pig theory is that the world of the show takes place in a post-human society. You’ll notice that all the buildings in Peppa Pig are on top of large hills, which could suggest they were built to protect against floods and other environmental disasters. After humans wiped themselves out via climate change or nuclear warfare, animals evolved to take their place, with some peculiar mutations occurring along the way.

Another theory posits that to survive a bizarre new world, humans transformed themselves into animals, which might explain why the pig people, rabbit people, and elephant people are all the same size. While we do see one human in the series, she’s also the Queen. Maybe that’s because she’s the last remaining human, or the final remaining traditional human.

The Missing Pokémon Theory

If you’re an old-timer like me, it may be surprising to hear, but Team Rocket don’t just use an Ekans and a Koffing. In fact, over the years, they’ve used an entire gym’s worth of combatants. A fan favorite is Wobuffet.

This blobby weirdo was Jesse’s signature Pokémon for a while. It never obeyed her commands, always showed up at the worst possible time, was a general idiot, and fans loved him. Something about this guy’s design bothers me, though. Can you tell what it is? That’s right, it’s the tail.

Wobuffet’s gimmick is that, while it doesn’t hit hard, it always bounces back like an inflatable balloon. This has led many to theorize that the Pokémon itself is this little black tail with googly eyes, while the body is an empty, inflated organ.

This is a neat little design element, however, it’s not where this theory ends. The more you dig, the more Pokémon you find with an eerily similar design; a pair of cartoony eyes with a black body, often surrounded by something else.

This has led to the Missing Pokémon Theory; that all these Pokémon can trace their lineage back to one simple, blobby, undiscovered Pokémon. Need more proof? In the Pokémon universe, no Pokémon has more than three stages in its evolutionary line.

Bulbasaur becomes Ivysaur, which becomes Venusaur. Igglybuff becomes Jigglypuff becomes Wigglytuff, etcetera. While some Pokémon don’t evolve, some can evolve into several different Pokémon, and some only evolve once, no Pokémon has more than three stages.

What’s great about the undiscovered blob theory is that is that every potential Pokémon line it applies to is only a two-stage evolution. Shellder evolves into Cloyster, but that’s it. That means for all these Pokémon, the undiscovered blob could take the place of their first evolutionary stage. For example, blobby could evolve into Shellder, which then evolves into Cloyster. Or it could evolve into Wynaut, which evolves into Wobuffet. Or Tangela, which evolves into Tangrowth.

Pokémon like Eevee already have a bunch of potential evolutions, so it isn’t too outside the realm of possibility to think all these Pokémon might share a mysterious missing link. Or a black blob with eyes is just easy to draw, it could go either way.

The Dark History Of Pixar's Cars

Pixar’s Cars franchise is bewildering. They’re no one’s favorite Pixar movies, and in terms of box office they don’t live up to the studio’s other successes. Somehow, though, the franchise sports three major releases, two spin-off films, a bunch of shorts, and apparently two TV series! Who loves the Cars universe this much? Meanwhile, the worldbuilding in the Cars series is very weird.

One Cars theory that you might’ve heard is that the films take place on a post-apocalyptic Earth, where humans have gone extinct and Cars reign supreme. While it’s a fun idea, in Cars 2 Lightning McQueen travels all over the world, from Japan to Italy, and every single city he visits is clean, with well-maintained infrastructure. Unless the humanity-ending apocalypse happened one week before the start of the film, you'd doubt these cities would be in such great condition.

The reality is that Cars takes place in a world with cars instead of people, and that simple explanation carries with it a lot of dark implications Disney likely didn’t intend. For example, meet Tony Trihull, who appears in Cars 2.

Cars 2 (2011): Catching Professor Zundapp by YouClips Family

Tony is a Littoral Combat Ship; a US warship designed in the 2000s to expand American military presence in shallow waters, specifically, in the Persian Gulf. This heavily implies that in the Cars universe, the Cars USA invaded Cars Iraq, hence the need for LCS Tony Trihull.

However, another reason for deployment in the Persian Gulf was to keep an eye on Iranian waters. This implies that, in the Cars universe, the Cars CIA instigated a Car Coup in Cars Iran, installing their own Cars Shah, leading to a 1979 Cars Iranian Revolution. You see how messy this all gets?

In the Planes spin-off movie, the character Skipper has an honest-to-goodness flashback to his time in Cars World War 2, which raises so many macabre implications. One final nightmare to consider is the fact that the actual Pope canonically exists in the Cars universe. He rides around in a little Popemobile as a joke, but that joke also implies that, as in the real world, there was an assassination attempt on the Pope’s life in 1981.

The existence of a Car Pope means there’s not only a Car-tholic Church, but that there must also have been a Cars Jesus, who was somehow nailed to a Cross by Cars Romans.

Nelson's Real Dad Is Barney Gumble

Were you ever picked on as a kid? It helps to picture your bully as Nelson Muntz from The Simpsons: ugly, mean, and stupid. Meanwhile, you'd imagine that your tormenter would turn out like Barney Gumble when they grow up; unhealthy, undignified, with zero discernible talents. Those two characters do seem awfully alike, don’t they?

Barney being Nelson’s secret father is a Simpsons theory as old as the show itself. Let’s look at the evidence: first off, the characters look remarkably similar. Same giant teeth, similar messy brown hair, the same bad posture, and large gut, their color schemes are even the same. Nelson also makes several jokes about his dad going out for cigarettes one day and never returning, so we know he isn’t in the picture.

In one episode, Nelson references the fact that his mom has woken up next to different men a lot, so it’s entirely possible Barney was a regrettable one-night stand that ended in Nelson’s birth. If not directly, though, Barney has been shown to donate sperm to afford beer money, so he could easily have fathered Nelson that way.

The Simpsons - Sperm Bank by Andreas Pap

Either way, though, Barney is hardly the most responsible guy in Springfield, so it makes sense he isn’t around raising Nelson. There’s one elephant in the room this theory has to address; the fact that Nelson’s dad actually shows up in later episodes.

The Simpsons: Nelsons father [Clip] by Cartoon Guy

The thing is, though, these episodes never confirm this man is Nelson’s biological father. Nelson’s mother also seems to have little affection for the man, so it’s entirely possible he was just a guy she was with in Nelson’s youth.

Some fans have taken this theory to much stranger lengths though. Remember the wackiness that arises from the Simpsons floating timeline? Well, some folks theorize the Simpsons’ weird relationship with time could mean that Nelson is, in fact, a younger version of Barney. And while that idea is interesting, it might be better quit digging, or pretty soon the Simpsons’ timeline will be as convoluted as the Dark Souls one.

If you were amazed at these cartoon theories, you might want to read more theories that will ruin your childhood. Thanks for reading!