It's the natural order of things. Once kids turn into adults, only one thing can happen. They come up with sick theories about their favourite TV shows as a child and ruin them.
We hate to say it, but a lot of these make far too much sense for our liking...
1. Postman Pat has fathered all the kids in town
All the birds are definitely singing alright, because Pat is quite the lothario according to this theory. It turns out that Pat is the Pat Mustard of Greendale.
Twitter user @AnDuinnineach first noted how pretty much all the kids in the village have a certain... Pat quality about them. Could it be that Pat has secretly been a serial shagger all these years?
And it's made even worse when you think about poor Jeff:
Not only that, but fans have dug even deeper into the revelation, realising that the spin-off series Postman Pat Special Delivery Service conveniently cuts Jeff out of the action while leaving "his son" Charlie behind.
2. Hey Arnold is actually all about Helga and her depressing life
You'd think that a show called Hey Arnold is about, you know, Arnold, but Redditor iSmokeTheXS has pondered whether it's secretly about antagonist Helga G Pataki, the angry bully who always picked on Arnold by calling him "football head" but was also secretly in love with him.
Before you dismiss that as a silly thought, remember that it's actually Helga that shouts "Hey Arnold!" repeatedly in the intro, and she's the only person that has her own monologue in every episode. Everything that we see is told via her viewpoint.
Helga's life is a pretty depressing one, hence her need to be a bully to the one person she loves the most. Her father is neglectful (he refers to her simply as "the girl"), her mother is an alcoholic and her older sister Olga is adored.
And so, maybe the show is all about Helga's obsession with Arnold, and how she manages to get through her horrid life through her love for him, explaining the show's title and the weird amount of screen time for Arnold despite being a secondary character.
3. The Smurfs are white supremacists
Well, blue supremacists. The theory goes that the lovable Smurfs are actually a racist Nazi-like faction due to their pointed white hats (go with it), and the fact that their leader wears a pointed red hat, which is very similar to the KKK.
Their villain Gargamel is a money-loving, big-nosed, dark-haired dude (any deeply offensive stereotypes occurring to you?), whose cat is called Azrael, the name of the angel of death in Jewish tradition. Yeah...
Author Antoine Buéno also points out: "The first comic strip, 'The Black Smurfs', was intimately concerned with what you might classify as a racial threat. Because in that album, the Smurfs are sick. And when they're sick, they don't turn purple or red or anything like that, they become black. And when they become black, they lose all trace of intelligence."
4. Donald Duck has severe PTSD
This theory comes from The Journal of Cartoon Overanalyzations, which diagnoses Donald with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder because of his often erratic behaviour.
This arises from his experiences as a paratrooper in WWII, as he is seen having regular flashbacks, has difficulties responding normally to social stimuli, and has "persistent symptoms of increased arousal (eg difficulty falling or staying asleep, anger and hypervigilance)".
Not only that, but Donald clearly doesn't like talking about his experiences and has had symptoms for over 60 years now. Poor guy.
5. The Power Rangers are all child soldiers fighting against their will
Back in the 1980s, child soldiers who were recruited to battle in Iran were given plastic keys and were told they were keys to heaven. They were then made to clear minefields ahead of the adults. This kind of stuff sadly still goes on to this day around the world.
In terms of the Power Rangers universe, Zordon recruits teenagers from Earth to fight in a war between his people and the evil Rita Repulsa. To do this, he gives them gadgets, bright outfits and magic abilities. He then essentially forces them to fight against hundreds of monsters in a war that they shouldn't have been part of in the first place.
The theory ended up being the inspiration for Adi Shankar's surprisingly good fan movie starring James Van Der Beek as a grown-up Ranger. "We were children asked to fight an intergalactic war against an enemy we never met," Van Der Beek says in the film. "Let's stop pretending our side stood on some moral high ground."
6. The Flintstones is set in an apocalyptic future
You might not know that there was a 1987 crossover TV movie where the Flintstones met the Jetsons. In the episode, Elroy builds a time machine to send them to the future, but due to an error, they end up in the past. But The Nerdist has theorised that the time machine actually worked. They did go to the future.
Let's say that the Jetsons live in the sky in order to escape the wasteland down below. Said wasteland may have been caused by some kind of nuclear apocalypse, and the only way to survive is to live up in Orbit City while the Earth recovers.
In this new world, any surviving animals get a fresh start without humans around. They evolve with enriched intelligence, and functioning robots are able to eventually clone dinosaurs. So, when humans do finally come back down, tech has hugely advanced but the cost is too high. So, they come up with a nature-based system where humans can be engineered to achieve Herculean feats.
They also end up using animals to drive technology, from pig garbage disposals to birds playing records. They're attempting to rebuild what they once had using whatever is around. They even have a modern banking system. And why would they celebrate Christmas in prehistoric times, eh?
The Flintstones are actually us in the far future – You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!– attempting to reclaim the past via everything from technology to religion to entertainment.
7. Winnie the Pooh and all his friends have psychological disorders
It's pretty clear that Eeyore has clinical depression, but when you delve further into the other characters, you can't help but notice a recurring theme. And this theory has medical weight behind it – the Canadian Medical Association actually diagnosed them all.
The study reckoned that each of the central characters were representations of different issues. Piglet has generalised anxiety disorder, Owl is dyslexic, and Tigger has a serious case of ADHD. (Not that all those would count as psychological disorders of course, but you get the idea.)
Pooh himself actually has both ADHD and OCD, as well as impulsive tendencies, such as his obsession with honey and repetitive counting habit. And human character Christopher Robin apparently has schizophrenia, as the others are all manifestations of his own imagination.
With all their issues, the animals could actually represent Chris's own struggles as a kid when learning to interact with others and function in the outside world.
