What if Ash Ketchum Was Dead and in Heaven the Whole Time, and Other Weird Fan Theories

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Fun fact: the Netflix YouTube channel isn’t just a place for trailers anymore, it seems. They’ve uploaded what appears to be the first in a potential trend of film/TV criticism videos, featuring the work of two well-established YouTubers, fiftyfiveinch (handling the animation and sound design) and Bobby Burns (doing the voiceover work). I’m not sure who actually wrote the script for the video, but the credit for that might also need to go to Bobby Burns, since he’s an experienced critic and filmmaker himself, with lots of his own work on his YouTube channel.

Anywho, Netflix’s first foray into the genre of brief animated TV criticism tackles a very fun topic: fan theories! Specifically, fan theories about the trope that an entire movie or TV show never really happened, either because the character was dead the whole time, it was all a dream, or similar.

I love fan theories, but I had only heard about one of the four that they tackle in this video, and the one I had heard about is probably the most well-known since it’s not just a fan theory and it’s almost considered canon. It’s about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There’s a well-known episode of Buffy that posits that the entire show takes place inside of Buffy’s imagination, so this is hardly jut a “fan theory,” as this video points out.

The other three fan theories, which are about Pokemon, Grease, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the last of which is the best of the four. That’s why they saved it for last, of course!

Just as an aside, I think it’s really cool that Netflix is getting into the business of hiring YouTubers to make videos for them. I mean, I can only hope that these guys got paid for this (please? Netflix, pay your people, we know you can afford it!). It’s really hard to make money as a YouTuber, even if you have a ton of followers, which seems weird to people who aren’t familiar with the problems of the industry. Fusion had a great story about this called “Get rich or die vlogging: The sad economics of internet fame,” which I recommend, if you enjoy watching fun short videos like this and don’t realize how time-consuming they can be to make… and how small the pay-off can be. Always support your favorite content creators, folks!

(image via screencap)

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Image of Maddy Myers
Maddy Myers
Maddy Myers, journalist and arts critic, has written for the Boston Phoenix, Paste Magazine, MIT Technology Review, and tons more. She is a host on a videogame podcast called Isometric (relay.fm/isometric), and she plays the keytar in a band called the Robot Knights (robotknights.com).