A ‘Cars’ Holocaust? 5 Insane Implications In Famous Movies

5 Ghostbusters Truthers Would Be Everywhere (And They'd Be Right!)

Every major event in American history creates crackpot conspiracy theorists, or "truthers." These are the people who say 9/11 was an inside job, or that the moon landing was directed by Stanley Kubrick, or that Keanu Reeves is an immortal.

The ghost attack on New York City in Ghostbusters would arguably be the biggest event in American history. It's true that the Civil War killed more people and had a bigger influence on the facial hair of future generations, but ghosts being real would have forever changed the global retail industry from the sheer number of pants being shit alone.

And other reasons ...

The event was widely publicized and witnessed firsthand by thousands of New York citizens. But somehow, by Ghostbusters II, nobody believes the attack happened. The busters themselves are now stuck working kids' birthday parties. Can you imagine if that was the ultimate fate of 9/11 first responders? For some reason that is never addressed, all of New York woke up the day after the attack, washed 15 pounds of marshmallow gunk out of their hair, and instead of "Never forget," immediately forgot.

You just know the Ghostbusters version of 4chan is bogged down with thousands of Marshmallow Truthers providing proof of the attack. The difference is that they'd be right. And from news reports to eyewitness accounts, there'd be a lot of evidence pointing to there having been some sort of attack on NYC from an otherworldly marshmallow creature and his ghost minions. The Ghostbusters version of Loose Change would be five hours long and completely accurate. See that, truthers? There is an alternate universe where you could conceivably be right! That's the biggest victory you'll ever experience!

4 The World Of Logan Would Have Mutant History Buffs And Dorky Mutant Battle Reenactors

Somewhere between all the F-bombs and decapitated Mexicans, Logan pauses for a moment to show us how comic books work in its universe. Not only do they exist, but they're also at least somewhat true. Logan doesn't seem all that impressed with comic book writers' journalistic practices, but he admits there is an objective, historical truth to some of what they've written. They're based on real struggles in mutant history, but romanticized, dramatized, and blown so out of proportion that they enter the realm of fantasy. So they're basically like drawn versions of Oliver Stone movies.

You can't have historical fiction without history, so there would have to be historians doing their best to catalog mutant-related events even as the mainstream was persecuting them. In Logan, an unnamed mutant-triggered catastrophe has made the mainstream so anti-mutant that this would be like people today recording the history of the perpetrators of 9/11. That means the comic book nerds of this world are more like dads who love John Le Carre novels. And comic conventions would be the equivalent of heading to the Javits Center dressed like Seal Team Six or Al-Zawahiri.

And since the battles waged by mutants would be some of the biggest, most dramatic in American history, you can bet that there would be even more Marvel's Civil War reenactors than there we have for the actual Civil War. People would keep the memory of the Battle of Alcatraz alive by pantomiming in Phoenix and Magneto cosplay, hurling homemade Styrofoam fireballs at one another. And we would call them dorks. Some things would be consistent across both worlds.

3 Thanks To Birdman, Theatre Would Be A Horror Show

Birdman is a movie about a play, shot to feel like a play, but on Adderall. And that play ends with lead actor Riggan Thomson shooting himself right in the damn nose.

Prior to Riggan's attempted suicide, he is dogged by his detractors, both real and imaginary, all trying to convince him his shitty play will fail. While the stress created by arguing with an imaginary Birdman is the more memorable moment, Riggan's staunchest opponent is drama critic Tabitha Dickinson. She tells Riggan that no matter what happens, she's going to eviscerate his play in her review -- effectively killing it before anybody could see it. She hates that Riggan -- a former movie superstar -- has the audacity to leverage his low-culture fame into a Broadway run.

But thanks to Riggan's willingness to leave it all on the stage -- by which we mean the majority of his nose -- Tabitha comes around. She dubs Riggan's play a resounding success, and claims he has a created a new theatre movement: superrealism. By shedding literal blood on stage, Riggan's brought the theater into a more intense -- and even more self-destructive -- realm.

While that may sound like the overexcited enthusiasm of a critic desperately trying to get somebody to read their words instead of watching a PewDiePie video, the movie presents Tabitha as the single most important living theatre critic. Her words matter. Add that to Riggan's notoriety as one of the world's most famous actors, and you can bet people are reading the hell out of that review and taking it very seriously.

In the real world, actors subject themselves to intense punishment via method acting all the time, and that's just because Daniel Day-Lewis is cool as hell. What happens when you make almost killing yourself on stage the hippest new theatrical movement? An entire subculture of artists shoehorning semi-suicidal methods into their own works.

If you think biting the head off a bird is an intense stunt for a metal concert, wait until Daniel Radcliffe chops off his dick at the end of a big musical number. Theatre would get hard fucking core.

2 The Terminator Would Have The Most Studied Crime Wave In History

From the perspective of the audience, the events of the first Terminator make perfect sense. Of course the futuristic murderbot sent back in time to kill the mother of the human resistance leader opposing sentient machines in an apocalyptic future would experience some setbacks. It'd be hard to find the right Sarah Connor on the first try, so naturally he'd have to kill all the women in the phone book with that name. As soon as we buy the premise that the Terminator was sent back with nothing but a name and a city, everything -- from the murders of the Sarah Connors to the police station shoot-out to the robot getting crushed by a hydraulic press -- follows naturally.

But nobody in the film's version of LA has any idea what the hell happened. And that means Terminator's Los Angeles is about to be beset by nerdy true crime enthusiasts desperate to make sense of by far the most mysterious and suspicious murder spree of all time. All they know for sure is that two women named Sarah Connor were brutally murdered, and the third was at the center of the most brazen and deadly attack on a police station in our country's history.

In the Terminator universe, Sarah Connor just kinda wandered off after the slaughter. It seems like the events of the film have been largely forgotten. She only ends up in an insane asylum in the second movie because she tried to bomb a computer factory several years later. So either nobody knows she was a part of what would be considered a major, high-profile crime, or she somehow managed to prove her innocence by claiming she happened to wander into a factory with a mysterious dead guy and a bunch of pipe bombs.

Either way, for Terminator denizens, this would be the most intriguing unsolved mystery of all time. We got a hit podcast out of the events of Serial -- the Terminator crimes would obsess fanboys right up until Judgement Day arrived.

1 Cars Implies That There Was A Vehicle Holocaust

The world of Pixar's Cars is pretty much exactly like our own, but with one key difference: Humanity has been replaced by sentient cars who murder the ozone layer with every breath. Other than that? Same shit, different body shapes.

Now, consider the backstory of one character in particular: Sarge. Sarge is an Army Jeep who was built (Born? Bred?) for war. Specifically, World War II. His primary purpose is slashing the tires and fuel lines of German Panzers. According to the Blu-Ray extras, Sarge loves talking about his WWII days, "Like the time his tank friend lost his track in the Battle of the Bulge, and Sarge had to tow him to safety." That means even the battles are the same across worlds. Even Sarge's license plate refers to the year of the Pearl Harbor attack -- the year America officially became part of the war effort.

And you can see that, apart from the fact that it was fought entirely by motor vehicles, everything about WWII appears to be exactly the same. Which ... very strongly implies that all of the atrocities of WWII also happened, only to cute whimsical cars. Nazi Volkswagens rounding up poor, innocent Opels and sending them to the scrapheap. Vintage Mazdas, their paint still scarred with radiation burns some 60 years after the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings. Even airplanes are sentient in this universe, which means some of them personally dropped those bombs. Picture it: Cutesy cartoon bombers all screwed up inside with PTSD, trying to drink away the screams and failing. Always failing ...

In order to have a Sarge, there has to be a WWII. And in order to have that, we get all the horrible suffering that came with it. So don't be surprised if Cars 3 sports an oblique reference to their universe's version of the Palestine/Israel conflict. It might be a bit dark for a kids' movie, but you've got to keep the world internally consistent.

Jordan Breeding has a blog and a Twitter, and his work has consistently been referred to as super realistic.

For more movies that leave us with more questions than answers, check out 6 Horrible Aftermaths Implied By Movies With Happy Endings and 5 Movie Places No Realtor Could Sell After Credits Rolled.

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