5 Crazy (But Intriguing) Celebrity Conspiracy Theories

Around this point, the theories tend to get depressing in the way you can probably imagine: Miley was killed off because she refused to partake in some Disney executive atrocity or another. That or any other imaginary horror scenario based on some interview where she said she'd kind of wanted a more normal childhood, as opposed to Hannah-Montana-ing her way through puberty. But whatever the route to her conspiracy-death, the end result is the same: The lovable chipmunk was caught in a drift store explosion, and what we see now is not the Miley of old, but instead a surgically grafted clone-actress-whatever.

'Course, the people touting this horsecrap utterly forget the most simple reason for Miley's current Mileyness: She's super rich, in her 20's, and living out the childhood she never had a chance to back in her days as a child star. Is there anything in her habits that can't be explained with some combination of those facts? No. Does this matter to the conspiracy crowd? Nope.

Vin Diesel and Jennifer Aniston are pretty cool, right? The former is a seemingly very nice guy and a notorious geek who is as much One of Us as a musclebound, super-rich Hollywood megastar can possibly be. The latter seems moderately sympathetic for a famous person, and also was, uh, Rachel. Maybe you'll find that cool. I won't judge, much.

However, a man known only as "grandmoviestar" certainly will. According to his far-fetched but admittedly original claim, Diesel and Aniston have actually used their Hollywood powers to make a whole lot of blockbuster movies, such as all four Transformers and Avatar, completely disappear for over a decade -- meaning these films were actually made ten years earlier than we think. How? Why? Because "grandmoviestar" liked Sienna Miller more than Aniston, of course. He knows all this because he played Sergeant Slaughter in a G.I.Joe movie that the duo also magicked into nonexistence. Uncannily, said movie was one of the few that never rematerialized.

Hilariously, "grandmoviestar" also goes out of his way to note that Megan Fox (hitherto totally unmentioned in the theory) doesn't exist, and is actually a composite character played by 23 different people, much in the way Lassie was actually a ton of different dogs.

Via Pop Culture Keys
OK, that one I can sort of buy.

Be honest: Raise your hand if you actually want this theory to be true. My hand's raised, baby, and chances are that yours is, too. Think about it. I doubt many people would complain if the world had 23 times more Megan Fox than we assumed, especially since they appear courteous enough to make exactly as many Michael Bay movies as just one would. Shit, Vin and Jennifer can steal and hide all the Transformers movies they want, for all I care.

Actually, let's make a movie out of that. Who wouldn't pay a significant amount of money to see a film in which Diesel and Aniston sneak around Hollywood stealing and hiding terrible movies, chased by 23 Megan Foxes and a batshit insane man who looks like Sergeant Slaughter? No one, that's who.

No, it's not, according to conspiracy theorists. There's this weird trend whereby conspiracy buffs automatically assume that almost every single person with a face and a modicum of fame is an immortal overlord, or at the very least an alien reincarnation clone from Ancient Egypt or some shit. I wish I was making that up.

The "Nic Cage and Keanu Reeves are immortal vampire things" theory I've covered before is one subset of this phenomenon. However, they're far from the only ones, and a great whooping way from cracking the Crazy Immortal Time Traveler Theory Top 10. Check it:

Ernest Schrodinger is James Woods? Shit, now I'm really worried about that cat.

Yep, any and every person with fame and a face is bound to end up in one of those lists sooner or later, either as some weird pharaoh time traveler reincarnation or a plain ol' immortal. Hell, let's point out right now that Vincent Van Gogh kind of looks like Chuck Norris, and we can be relatively sure that someone, somewhere is drafting that into a conspiracy. Maybe he's in part two of that video. Chances are, there are plenty out there.

Via Business Insider
It's ... it's uncanny.

Look, there are only so many ways to put a face together, and billions and billions of people have walked the earth over the years. Some folks are going to wind up looking like each other, even if they're not directly related. It's just natural and doesn't mean a thing.

Unless, of course, it does.

Think about the implications if every celebrity was indeed a time-travelin' great person of yesteryear, or a vampire, or some semi-divine immortal being who walks the earth while at the same time being stupid enough to risk getting found out by searching the limelight. Don't you kind of want that to be true, and for the cat to get out of the bag any minute now? The war between humanity and celebrities would be over within a week, no matter how strong and ancient they are -- that kind of bafflingly flawed logic would make beating them ridiculously easy, even with the most rudimentary of "club 'em in the head" tactics.

Everyone knows that celebrities are, for all intents and purposes, the new royals. Back in the day, royalty was respected and fawned upon (often because if they weren't, they'd take your fields and behead you). But these days, very few people even bother knowing the name of, say, the Queen of Belgium. Wait, does Belgium even have a queen?

Mark Renders/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images
They do, and apparently she looks like a soccer mom.

Still, everyone surely understands that the whole "celebrities = royalty" thing is just an expression for the changing priorities and norms of modern society. Surely, no one assumes that celebrities are, ha, literally cloned royals who now preside over us on their new thrones of fame, or some shit like that.

... Oh, god fucking dammit, conspiracy theorists.

According to a particularly inspired conspiracy, the Illuminati (man, those guys sure get around for a free-thinking boys' club that has been defunct since the early 19th Century) has been inserting royal blood into celebrity circles for quite some time in order to prepare an alien invasion (because of course). Their agent in these circles is none other than Shirley MacLaine, an 81-year-old Oscar winner and true entertainment veteran, who, in their minds, has managed to collect a list of filthy accolades even the Conspiracy POTUS can only dream of. Maclaine is not only a prime-class clone grown from DNA taken from the Saxe-Coburg royal line; she's also somehow the genetic ancestor of every single living royalty. She uses her royal fame powers to act in concert with the Illuminati and aliens, slowly dispatching the Hollywood notables and world leaders she meets and replacing them with some fucking pod people or whatever. She's also a demon-possessed satanic supreme priestess, because why not?

It's almost impressive, if only in terms of female empowerment, right up until the theory realizes it's giving a woman too much power, and takes time to point out that actually, MacLaine is also completely under the control of the CIA, which has used her as a sex slave for its missions. But who controls the CIA, then? It's a mystery, much like how these people manage to put their pants on in the morning.

If you harbor even a modicum of sanity, all that litany is really saying is that someone really, really doesn't like Shirley MacLaine, which is OK, because some of the things she says aren't the most likable. However, it's one thing to feel disdain, and entirely another thing to express this by painting someone as ... a pretty interesting supervillain for The Rock to fight against, come to think of it. For the three of you who actually thought all that makes sense, well ... did I mention they actually present the following video as proof?

Ah-HA! Did you see that shit? She called Meryl Streep "otherworldly!" It's all clear now -- Meryl has become yet another victim.

The shootings of rival rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., in 1996 and 1997 respectively, were and arguably remain the celebrity deaths of hip hop. As such, it's no surprise there is some amount of "Elvis lives" theorists buzzing around the two. Seeing as Biggie's death was well-documented and had tons of witnesses, the brunt of this spitballing has gone in Tupac's direction. That death had some legitimately strange aspects -- the twig-like Tupac took several bullets while Suge Knight, the mountain-sized rap mogul sitting in the same car, wasn't hit, the body was cremated suspiciously quickly, etc. And as such, fans keep spotting the guy around the world with almost Elvis-like fervor.

IPGGutenbergUKLtd/iStock/Getty Images
Though admittedly with far fewer impersonators.

However, my favorite theory about these two clearly perished rappers isn't that just one of them survived. No, despite all evidence to the contrary, they both either survived their shootings or outright faked their deaths. Then they put all their differences aside and waltzed off to a resort in New Zealand, where they secretively lived with the locals for several years before perhaps moving their [undisclosed] to [undisclosed]. There's not a lot of info in that PBS link, so it's up to our imagination what that could mean, but I'll point out that the whole "two members of enemy clans abdicate their former lives and head together for new adventures" thing is not terribly unlike the plot of Romeo And Juliet.

Of course, such a strange thing could never be. As it turns out, the whole thing was little more than a bunch of hackers feeding an absurd story to PBS for shits and giggles at the expense of truthers. Real conspiracy theorists would never claim Tupac and Biggie would travel together to New Zealand.

According to them, the two went to Cuba instead.

For more from Pauli, check out 5 Bizarre Ways People Are Fooling Surveillance Systems and 5 Pop Culture Sex Toys That Can't Be Arousing To Anyone.

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