When playing a game, it can be easy to miss some Easter eggs or well-hidden messages the developers may have added for those willing to look for them. Sometimes it’s not just one little tidbit of information that creates these video game fan theories, but a paper trail that can lead to a wealth of hidden knowledge that, once you put the pieces together, changes your perception of the whole game.
Here are four video game fan theories that change the way we look at these games entirely.
Link is Dead – The Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask
Video Game Fan Theories
First brought to light by the popular YouTube channel The Game Theorists, this video game fan theory gets crazier the more you read into it. The theory suggests that Link dies when he falls into the tree trunk that transports him to Termina in Majoras’s Mask. Termina being a place much akin to purgatory where Link must come to terms with his own death.
Each area of Termina is symbolic of some of Kubler Ross’ stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This theory is supported by the evidence that Link experiences each emotion as a way of coming to terms with his death.
To start, he arrives in Clocktown and sees the townspeople denying the inevitability of their death due to the moon falling. Then he travels to Woodfall where the Deku king is angry due to the princess being kidnapped, and he mindlessly blames a helpless monkey.
In Snowfall, Link meets the ghost of the Goron leader Darmani who desperately tries to bargain with him for more time, to no avail. When Link gets to the Great Bay and sees Lulu, she’s depressed over the loss of her eggs and children. And finally, in Ikana Valley, Link climbs the Stone Tower Temple and retrieves the light arrows which symbolize enlightenment and acceptance.
Another big hint towards the theory that Link is dead is that he meets Stalfos in Twilight Princess — the game that chronologically comes after Majora’s Mask. Stalfos are spirits of children who get lost in the forest and this one, in particular, is confirmed to be the Hero of Time, meaning Link from Ocarina and Majora.
The Stalfos states that he wasn’t able to convey the lessons he learned during his lifetime and that he was filled with regret. Since Link fell down the tree in the Lost Woods at the start of Majora’s Mask, it could easily mean that this is what made him into said Stalfos and that he wasn’t able to pass on his knowledge due to his early death.
The Great Pokémon War – Pokémon Red & Blue
Video Game Fan Theories
Sometimes small, seemingly unconnected facts can come together to create a wild fan theory. When playing through the first generation of Pokémon games, you may have some questions like: “where is the protagonist’s father,” “why are there mostly only young children and old people,” and “why is society so based around Pokémon fighting and not Pokémon benefitting other parts of society?”
This popular theory that has made the rounds for years now suggests that the answer to all of these questions comes from the fact that Pokémon Red & Blue start after a great war. It all starts at the beginning of your journey.
The whole concept of the first Pokémon games is that Professor Oak sends Red out to collect data about Pokémon around the Kanto region. If Pokémon have been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and Professor Oak has devoted his life to studying Pokémon, why would a ten-year-old need to go research a limited number of Pokémon?
Maybe a recent war destroyed all of the infrastructure, communication, and knowledge this area had pertaining to Pokémon/wildlife. The Kanto region isn’t very advanced technologically to begin with, so maybe this war was more devastating than we thought.
The lack of middle-aged adults is pretty self-explanatory, as most of them would have died in this supposed war. Red has no father and Blue doesn’t have parents at all, just a sister. All of the gym leaders are elderly or look barely older than Red. On top of this, one of the few adult men you meet serves to add the most credence to this fan theory.
Upon meeting the third Gym Leader, Lt. Surge, he mentions that he fought in some kind of war. As Pokémon is mostly a kids game, it seems out of place for a character to mention anything to do with war.
Most of the other middle-aged men you meet are members of Team Rocket — a gang of thugs who could have been branded as such for dodging enlistment to the war.
Red could very well be in the first generation of kids who live in post-war peacetime, which makes the world of Pokémon seem a little less enticing.
Squall is Dead – Final Fantasy VIII
Video Game Fan Theories
The “they were dead the whole time” cliché isn’t the best method of storytelling, but in Final Fantasy VIII, it makes sense when you start to look at the big picture presented by this theory.
At the end of the first disk/part of Final Fantasy VIII, the main character, Squall, is violently impaled with shards of ice as he falls from a high ledge. He then wakes up with no trace of his injuries and no explanation as to how he survives.
There is also a cutscene in which Squall and Rinoa are standing outside on a balcony together during a ball, with Rinoa pointing up at a shooting star. Later on, you see camera footage of others at this ball and Rinoa standing on that same balcony. The thing is, she’s standing there alone and even though the camera angle might not be able to show Squall, it feels purposeful that the scene would show her alone.
After fighting the same villain who previously impaled him with ice shards, Squall gets stuck in the time compression (kind of like the fabric of reality). The next scene is one of the most bizarre sequences in any video game, as Squall begins to question who he is and what is going on, as he sees incredibly distorted images of Rinoa.
Everything is fuzzy as the same scene just repeats itself, becoming more nonsensical as it continues. It’s as if his memories of her are being erased. This scene is widely considered to be an indication that Squall is accepting his death.
The game never confirms or denies this fact, but Final Fantasy VIII is often a vague game when it comes to its themes and dialogue, which yes, were due to translation, but perhaps it’s also purposeful.
Companion Cubes Have People Inside Them – Portal
Video Game Fan Theories
As with much of Portal, what at first seems innocent is actually quite sinister, just like the companion cubes. You may think that they’re just some box that is, well, your companion during the Portal games, but theory posits the question: what if it was more? In the first Portal game, Glados, the evil artificial intelligence that guides you, tells you that the companion cubes cannot speak and even if they did, you shouldn’t listen to them.
Why would a cube speak though? And if it did, why would anyone ignore that? How would a box gain sentience? In the second game, Glados admits that the boxes do have consciousness and that they can in fact speak. She dismisses this though, and says they have so many that they don’t even matter. But why and how do these random boxes speak?
Well, the theory is that the cubes are stuffed with other prisoners of Aperture Science. Not that their spirit or consciousness is put into the box, but that they’re physically stuck in the actual cubes. In a tie-in titled Portal 2: Lab Rat, the protagonist Doug Rattman has a companion cube that can in fact speak. Since Rattman is a canon character in the Portal games, it means that companion cubes can actually speak.
Who are these people stuck in the cubes though? Well at the beginning of Portal 2, there are a plethora of empty cells just like the protagonists that at one point, probably housed a lot of people. Glados in all of her cynical glory put all the other prisoners into the companion cubes.
Although the journey of Portal is supposed to be for research according to Glados, it’s pretty twisted that you have to deposit the companion cube into a vat of fire at the end of the first portal game.
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