Richard Parker the tiger was Peter Parker's dad!

Today, we are going to talk about 2012's Life of Pi. It's a divisive, metaphorical masterpiece, I would call it. What is divisive about it? Everything about the movie is metaphorical, right? There are hundreds of different aspects of this movie that you could examine and find different interpretations and different meanings. And, you know, since this is a fan theory podcast, it is just the perfect movie for us, right? But not every, you know, viewer will take to it the same way, right? Some people want their movies to be a bit more upfront with how they present things. And they don't like to feel tricked at the end of the movie, right? I see. I see. So what are we going to be examining? Are we going to be examining, you know, that he was the tiger? Are we going to try to figure out what the island that eats people means? No, I mean, we could take every scene and try to decipher the sometimes subtle

and sometimes very in-your-face metaphors behind them. Ridiculously in your face. Like you said, the carnivorous island, which most people agree is an analogy for cannibalism, but some people have other definitions of. But that's not what we're going to do. Instead, we are going to prove that the tiger on Pi's boat was actually Spider-Man's father. What? That's right. Wait, wait. Richard Parker was that Richard Parker. Whoa. Yes. Well, that's good evidence right there. I know. Case closed, right? today we are talking about the life of pi in another movie that came out the same year with some very particular shared actors we're talking about 2012's amazing spider-man and richard parker and this um this is gonna be a real trip 2012 is the amazing spider-man that's the one with andrew garfield don't ask that so quizzically you just watched it you freaking weirdo just for our for our listeners yes that's the one with andrew garfield

Now, I can see why you might ask that. There have been many Spider-Mans, especially in recent years. No, we're not talking about the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man. We're not talking about the Tom Holland Spider-Man. We are talking about the father of the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man. But most of all, I think we're going to be talking about the life of Pi. I think the most evidence for this is actually found in the life of Pi. And I think that I can pretty conclusively convince you that uh the tiger in the boat was actually the man richard parker father of peter parker no no wait a minute wait a minute names prove nothing uh what wait no my whole theory is falling apart before my eyes hold on there are more than one people named richard parker and also the tiger was and you might be a little skeptical at this claim but was a tiger and Richard Parker was a human. Was he, though? Oh, no. Were there any humans that maybe transformed into other animal hybrids in the Amazing Spider-Man universe?

Oh, wait, that's what the entire universe is about. More so than any other Spider-Man series, the Amazing Spider-Man universe. It hinges on the whole scientific aspect of human-animal hybrids. First and foremost, I'm going to show you evidence that Pi and his family, specifically his father, that they knew and worked with Richard Parker, the man, that he gave them a tiger for experiments. Number two, I'm going to prove that Pi's dad is a scientist and businessman, a geneticist, just like Richard Parker, and that he is running a gene splicing lab out of India. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Bet you didn't see that coming. I'm also going to prove that Pi was employed later in life as a geneticist or a scientist at Oscorp, which is pretty good proof of. You might see that one coming. A little hard to argue with that. Yeah. I'm also going to show you evidence that the disaster which unfolded in the life of Pi and the sinking of the ship they were on was caused by Richard Parker's experiments gone awry.

Dude, what you're describing, keeping in mind that I actually didn't dislike Life of Pi, I thought it was an interesting movie, but what you're describing is a so much better movie than Life of Pi. Dude, I have a lot of thoughts on the Life of Pi, and now all of them are positive. I love this movie now. No, but finally, I'm going to be presenting to you just a boatload of evidence that the tiger on the lifeboat was, in fact, Richard Parker, the man-tiger hybrid. And also that the other animals were other gene-spliced individuals, you know, from his experiments. All right. As we go through all this evidence, we're going to have to keep in mind, is Pi a reliable narrator? And the answer to that question is no. No. That's the point of the movie, right? So not everything he says can be taken at face value, but everything he says does have some truth in it. So clearly you're going to say that Pi grew up to be Rajit Ratha.

That's correct. A doctor or scientist who works at Oscorp. But I don't think you could possibly present any evidence that proves that Pi is the sort of person who would change his name. Wait, that's the entire beginning of the movie. wow no then let's start there casina and he changed it to pi come on pi is clearly dude dude i just realized what i can release this episode on march 14th it's pi day oh man we got a new holiday we gotta find pi pi themed theories this is so exciting what we'll do next year now i think it is clear that pi grew up with his family living in an animal genetic testing facility he thinks that it's a zoo at least when he was much much younger he thought it was a zoo he refers to it as a zoo but those animals like a zoo no it doesn't have you ever seen a zoo that looked anything like that those animals were just like way too sweet and perfect okay well i i will say that my the first time i watched it while i did

like many parts of this movie i was very put off at the very beginning by the overuse of cg animals in scenes that could have just used normal animals like there's a cg lizard a cg birds this confused me as well until i finally many years after seeing it the first time realized that this was one of those made-for-3D movies. I didn't see it in theaters, so I didn't know that. I saw it in theaters and I did not get the 3D glasses because why would I pay more for that? I know, seriously, what a stupid thing to base your movie on. I want to talk a little bit about Pai's birth because he was born under some strange circumstances. He was born and raised on this quote-unquote zoo in Pondicherry, which is the French part of India. The way Pai describes it, he says, I was delivered on short notice by a herpetologist who was there to check on the bangle monitor lizard. Do you know what a herpetologist is by any chance?

Of course. I wanted to be a herpetologist when I was young. They're experts on reptiles and actually also amphibians. Dr. Kurt Connors in The Amazing Spider-Man is a herpetologist. You got it. Exactly. He was delivered by, I think, Dr. Connors. What other herpetologist does Richard Parker know who he could bring in on short notice to deliver a human baby?

I'm not making this up. Pi is the one who said he was delivered by a herpetologist. I mean, they put it in the movie, not me. Don't blame me for this. But Rajit Ratha seems to be the same, around the same age as Dr. Kurt Connors. Yeah, this can be deceiving. He never said he would. I mean, so all we know about Richard Parker and Connors is that they've been friends for a very long time. Yeah, they do both have gray hair. Right. Richard Parker could have been just starting out, and also Connors could have been just starting out. Maybe he was like a grad student or something at the time, and they were adventuring around India, getting their hands dirty, delving in genetics for the first time, and they delivered a baby. When he was like 19. Yeah. He could have been like 25, you know? He could easily be, I think, 25 years older than Pai. Here's where things get a little strange and we start to actually doubt the validity of his claim that he grew up on a zoo.

Pai says that when the French handed Pondicherry back to us in 1954, the town decided that some sort of commemoration was in order. My father, who was a clever businessman, came up with one. He ran a hotel and got the idea to open a zoo in the local botanical gardens instead. As it so happened, my mother was a botanist in the gardens. It's just such a weird coincidence that they managed to get some strange government funding to take over like half the town and open this zoo for no reason with a botanist. So, okay. So you're thinking this was like an Island of Dr. Moreau situation. Exactly. Where they ran a hotel and they turned the people who checked in into animal people. I mean, maybe, maybe not. Who am I to say? But all the puzzle pieces are there. It's not my fault if you start putting them together. MRO is also a French name. You're right. Yeah. I can't deny that. So what other evidence do we have that they were working on animal hybrids?

Well, it just so happens to turn out that Pi worships literal animal hybrid superheroes. Like Spider-Man? So he says, the gods were my superheroes growing up. Henuman, the monkey god, lifting an entire mountain to save his friend Lakshman. Ganesh, the elephant-headed, risking his life to defend the honor of his mother, Parvati. He's describing literal animal-human hybrids as his superheroes. So maybe he wanted to actually make good on that later in his life. He wanted to create a Spider-Man, clearly. This is his life's ambition. He is really into that idea. He doesn't even want to wait to do human testing. No, no, no. He's like, we gotta do this. need to do this. He does know it can work. Well, this is all well and good, but there's no evidence that his dad has anything to do with genetics. He said he ran a hotel and then he ran a zoo, right? What does he know about science? Excuse me, Pi's dad is extremely into science. He is

dead set on teaching his kids about science. He is constantly telling them to think rationally. He says, science has brought us more knowledge than religion has in a thousand years. I think that Pi's dad is a highly educated scientist and that maybe Pi is trying to hide it. And is there other evidence of this? Later, when fully grown Pi is talking to an author about his story, he reveals that he teaches a course at the university. He must be extremely educated. So it's around this point in the movie where Richard Parker is introduced. The way that Pi tells it, he says, the tiger Richard Parker got his name through a clerical error. The hunter who caught him named him Thirsty because he was drinking from a stream. The hunter sold him to the zoo, but the names got switched on the paperwork. The hunter was named Thirsty and the tiger was named Richard Parker. I don't know. That could have totally happened.

I think that it's quite possible that they did get a tiger named Richard Parker because the paperwork got messed up. But that also means this proves that a hunter named Richard Parker caught a tiger and did business with, you know, Pi's dad and worked with them. Back in the 60s, a young 20s Richard Parker and his friend Kurt Connors were just doing that old thing with like handlebar mustaches where you go catching tigers with guns. That's what they did in the 60s. Let's go on an adventure. 50s, 40s, 1860s. I think that's exactly what happened. And how do we know that Richard Parker stuck around? Well, Pi's dad teaches him an important lesson about Richard Parker very quickly after this. Pi goes down to kind of like play with the tiger and then his dad comes in and he says, do you think that tiger is your friend? He's an animal, not a playmate. And then he feeds it a goat to teach Pi how horrible and cruel life can be.

I think that that was one of these metaphorical scenes that the movie is known for. That was not a tiger. That was actual Richard Parker. That was the man, Richard Parker. I think Pi was beginning to think of this mysterious scientist businessman, Richard Parker, as like a friend, a confidant, a playmate. But his dad showed Pi Richard Parker's true nature by allowing him to witness one of their horrible experiments with a goat. I think that's what happened. He didn't feed a goat to a tiger. He did some horrible experiment and made a genetic hybrid out of that goat. He gave a goat to Richard Parker. I mean, the mouse they experiment on in The Amazing Spider-Man is pretty horrific. Yeah, exactly. As Pai grows up, it shows him reading a lot of books. One book written by Dostoevsky. It's called Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. So this short story, it's an allegoric story of a suicidal man who dreams of an idyllic planet inhabited by perfect people.

The perfect people on this planet slowly become corrupted by this man and his ambitions and his inner darkness. They all begin to change and, you know, kind of become like hybrids of themselves and that man until eventually he wakes up and he decides that he doesn't want to kill himself anymore. He's like, huh, that was pretty interesting. This is exactly what Richard Parker is doing to the world. He's trying to corrupt the world. He's taking these people and he's turning them into genetic hybrids. He's corrupting everyone on earth, everyone that he can. Yeah, I don't, I mean, yeah, but okay. So I guess on a related note, Dr. Kurt Connors does essentially want to do that. He may not be Dr. Richard Parker. That's exactly what Kurt Connors does. He releases the lizard gaps on the city. Or in his version, perfect the whole world by making them into gross lizards. Yeah. Another note, when Pi takes his girlfriend to the quote-unquote zoo,

he introduces her to Richard Parker. He says, here is Richard Parker. He's the most magnificent creature we've ever had here. And this is just because he really looks up to Richard Parker. He thinks he's a great scientist. Such a good compliment. He's like, what a magnificent creature. This man is going to change the world, my colleague here. It's around this point that we get some more evidence that this zoo is not what it seems. They start to have money problems and Pi's dad decides that they need to move abroad to North America. He says, our animals are worth far more abroad for use in the advanced genetics testing facilities, clearly. Yeah, at Oscorp in New York City. Now, they say they're going to Canada and maybe they are. Who knows? Oscorp, it's an international company. They might have facilities in Canada as well. It doesn't really make that much sense for them to move all these

animals all the way from India to America otherwise. It seems like the shipping might outweigh just the price of selling the animals there. On the ship, Pai notices that all of the animals are being drugged. And he thinks this is kind of odd. Why are the animals being drugged? His dad explains it away. He's like, oh, it's just to make the trip easier for them. Don't worry about it, Pi. No, no, no, that's not what it is. This is in preparation for the gene splicing surgeries and experiments that they're about to undergo over the course of their travels. Okay, a couple of questions about that, and it's okay if you don't have any answers, but... No, please, ask away. First of all, is it... I believe that it is normal procedure to sedate animals on a long trip. I mean, on a plane, not on a boat. And secondly, if they're going to a high-tech lab, why do the experiments on a ship? No, no. These are the really bad experiments.

They have to do these in international waters. International waters. Oh, whoa. Okay. All right. That checks out. No, this is like a dark ship. Now, the ship itself is actually a little odd. The ship is named the Simpsum. This is a Hebrew word for the creation of the universe. Specifically, Tsim Tsum in the Hebrew mythology is when God contracted his infinite light to make space for the universe to exist. And this is exactly what Richard Parker's gene therapy is doing. He's contracting the humanity to make room for the animal to exist in the people. He's playing God and creating a new universe and species of hybrid life, right? Okay, huh. Why would the ship be named Tsim Tsum at all? It is a Japanese ship. Yeah. Why would a Japanese ship have a Hebrew name? It doesn't make any sense. Clearly, Richard Parker bought this ship and named it something to reflect his own high-minded ideals and his vision of himself as God.

Well, I'm starting to see perhaps why they're having money problems if Richard Parker's just using all their funds to buy a random ship. Well, and this is actually where I want to get into something we learn in Amazing Spider-Man 2. so it sounds like you're starting to doubt my dubious claims of richard parker's wild spending sprees and his secret labs in india and his crazy secret boat labs seems more like a norman osborne thing to do than richard parker does it though does it really does norman osborne have any secret labs in the spider-man the amazing spider-man movies there are some secret labs underneath oscorp but norman osborne doesn't seem to know about them it's just the other people on the board but do now richard parker on the other hand is revealed in the amazing spider-man 2 to just randomly have a super secret lab in a transforming subway train in the middle of new york city

in roosevelt station it's the weirdest thing ever and just to be clear this is a secret lab it has nothing to do with oscorp and it is plot-centric that oscorp knows nothing about this lab and neither does anybody else so uh this is exactly the kind of thing that richard parker does he goes around the world building super secret labs you have to like put a special token into the token slot and then the entire subway train emerges from the ground and transforms before your eyes to create this lab it's the weirdest thing ever dude so yeah okay maybe it's not so weird that he has a secret boat lab right he's got secret train labs yeah okay so he likes building labs in you know traditional methods of locomotion he probably has a airplane lab exactly he does he has a secret jet lab in spider-man 2 as well and this is where you know you might also be wondering would richard parker actually travel around this much was he such a

jet setting he does have a private jet he does have a private jet it's revealed at the beginning of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. They say first they're going to spend the night at Lake Geneva, and then they're going to go somewhere else, probably one of his secret labs in India to meet some of his old contacts, as far as we know. And while they're doing this, he's uploading all of his information to his secret lab at Roosevelt Station. Kind of odd choice to me that he got on a private jet to upload the information by satellite back to his house in New York. But, you know, whatever. Seems like it would have been faster to do that before he got on the plane. And does he have weird secret agent-like tendencies? What does he say to his wife right here? He says, our life as we know it is over. We're going to spend every day from now on looking over our shoulders, never feeling safe. He's talking like a weird secret agent kind of guy.

This is clearly his style. He loves this kind of thing. He loves being an international man of mystery, setting up secret labs all over, doing strange untowered experiments on unwitting people. This is totally a Richard Parker's MO. Yeah, okay. Disaster is about to strike on the Tsim Tsum. Kai wakes up. He goes out on deck to watch the storm, which is a pretty crazy thing to do because this boat is bucking around a lot. However, everything is okay. The boat's not sinking. you know the storm is not like ripping the boat to shreds and then all of a sudden an alarm starts blaring for no reason the ship starts taking on water and sinking for no reason it's kind of odd like the alarm starts blaring before the ship starts taking on water which implies to me that something just happened to the ship that was not related to the storm at all oh so pi he wants to find his family he goes back into the ship which is already the insides of the ship are already

full of water this is like two seconds after he goes out he just walked through a ship that was completely dry right it's full of water he has to swim underwater through room after room looking for his family and he's not just swimming through rooms he's swimming past dozens and dozens of animals that are all free for no reason hi uh he gets thrown on a lifeboat a zebra jumps in breaking its leg in the lifeboat drops now clearly i think what happened here had nothing to do with the storm richard parker was conducting some crazy gene splicing experiments on the crew and on the animals this includes the evil cook it includes pi's family and his mom the only reason pi wasn't included was because he ran up on deck to watch the storm and they missed him richard parker works works quickly he does work quickly and is there evidence that the gene splicing therapy works quickly because you might say it's not possible that everyone could already look like animals

oh wait it takes mere seconds for this gene splicing to act how fast did it turn those policemen into lizards pretty quick yes the gene splicing that they've come up with is insanely fast it can transform a man into a monster within a minute uh easily so i think it's completely believable that the animals jumping on the ship could have once been human normally i would go with with occam's razor here and be like if there was a bad storm and suddenly the ship is having problems and taking on water probably it was due to the storm however i do know also occam's razor just a simple explanation mad scientists do like doing experiments during big storms especially ones with lightning so it's quite possible that's why richard parker chose now to act And are mad scientist experiments known for having great success and not causing problems in the Spider-Man universe? No, unless your name is Spider-Man.

Typically, mad scientists conducting crazy experiments in thunderstorms in the Spider-Man universe result in large explosions and equipment being broken. And I think that's exactly what happened on the ship. Something went wrong. All the genetic hybrid animals escaped and ran all over. the ship was destroyed and began to sink immediately and i have further evidence of this well again i would argue against this and and ask you for more evidence of how how did this ship suddenly explode and and take on water that's a good question there there is evidence in universe for things like that happening spontaneously like in amazing spider-man when oh you mean in the other universe not in life of fire well this is one universe as we've established yeah they're one universe yes evidence in universe yes of things spontaneously i don't know bursting into flames like when dr connors pushes a bunch of cars off the bridge and a little

boy is stuck in a car that catches fire for no reason whatsoever no reason at all the car is just it just it didn't want to live anymore it was like i'm done time to explode so i guess when a mad scientist is running around causing havoc sometimes things explode in the life of pi the sinking of the boat is canonically meant to be strange and unexplained they specifically don't say why the ship sank and they very much imply that it was not because of the storm at the very end of the movie, Pai tells the story of the two Japanese insurance agents who went to talk to him at the Mexican hospital where he was recovering. They needed to figure out why the ship sank, because none of it made sense. They said they didn't believe Pai's story. They didn't believe the explanation of the ship sinking. Everything about this implies that the ship sinking was strange and unusual. We get to see the report, and this isn't even in the story. Pai actually

pulls out this report and sets it down in front of him the author he's talking to sees it so this is the most concrete evidence we have of anything in the entire movie it says final report one sole survivor could shed no light on the reasons for the sinking of the simsum the ship appears to have sunk very quickly which would indicate a major hole breach no a storm couldn't cause a major hole breach there's no there's no legitimate way that wind and waves hitting a ship could tear a piece out of the metal hull it doesn't make sense it would have to hit something or have an explosion it also says the important quantity of debris would support this theory but precise reason for breach is impossible to determine something went wrong on this boat that night and made it explode and sink hi he can't offer any more of an explanation for it but he does say something interesting to these insurance agents he says i don't know what happened i was asleep

something woke me up it could have been an explosion i'm not sure and then the ship sank what else do you want from me that's pi's explanation for it so uh there you go if what you say is true then i'm suspicious that pie was even asleep he might have been working with richard parker i think that richard parker took him under his wing which we know he was spending way too much time with richard parker and his dad started to get wary and he was like look at these horrible experiments with this goat look how horrible richard parker is i forgot i forgot we had already established that's the way it happened all the hybrid animals escaped as the ship was destroyed and richard parker has now been combined with tiger dna he's drowning in the sea what you're describing is definitely the plot of a spider-man film it is yes especially an amazing spider-man film this is how both movies go explosion scientist gets combined with tiger and then

crazy stuff ensues right pie's mom is combined with an orangutan's dna uh the cook has been combined with hyena dna and a sailor has been spliced together with a zebra pi saves richard parker the tiger with a life preserver pulls him into the boat seeing that he's a tiger yeah pretty weird thing to do if this is just a tiger right i love tigers but in a survival situation i don't think i want it on my boat now just just to be clear and to be you know not disingenuous pi was wary of the tiger and when he saw that it's a tiger he starts to get scared and he does try and push it back away from him but not necessarily off the boat he lets it get into the boat and then this is really important the tiger ignores pi it does not attack him it just gets under the tarp that's true pi climbs back into the boat and he starts calling for his mom and dad and who does he find right after that the orangutan he found his mom she was right there

that's why he started calling to her yeah okay so at that point he says to the hyena hmm looks as though your drugs haven't worn off yet basically uh you know he's referencing the genetic hybrid surgery which he saw this hyena undergo not the sleeping pills at this point he's hoping that he can just wait this out because as we know from the amazing spider-man sometimes these things just wear off these serums that turn you into a part animal they wear off after a few hours every time these genetic hybrid splicing therapies either wore off or went wrong and resulted in death richard parker has not discovered the zero zero decay rate algorithm yet so he doesn't know how to make a stable hybrid okay so eventually all these guys are going to die or going to have their hybridness wear off the very next scene shows a close-up of the zebra who is surrounded by flies what are all these flies doing out here in the middle of the

freaking ocean hovering over the mariana trench yeah there's only one plausible answer uh richard parker brought them for a genetic hybrid experiments i mean he does like bringing spiders places then maybe you know he started with flies and realized spiders are cooler yeah he probably started with flies and then spiders were eating his flies and he's like whoa wait that's way better why did i see why did i see it before so simple flies are so dumb they get eaten by spiders spiders are cool the cook hyena hybrid gets in a fight with the mom orangutan hybrid she hits him and he kills her and then pie gets mad and starts yelling at him and the cook is a you know the cook hyena is about to you know jump on pie and start fighting with him and then the man the legend richard parker jumps in to save the day he doesn't attack pie at all but he kills the hyena yeah i mean it is a little odd that a tiger would attack a hyena generally tigers don't attack other

predators unless perhaps this tiger was the embodiment of uh the rage and savagery within um pi that was my next thing i was gonna say is that we keep saying it's weird you keep saying it's weird that the tiger doesn't attack pi and you know obviously that's supposed to be weird this is a movie that is supposed to be reinterpreted of course the interpretation that they ham-fistedly just tell you at the end it just ruins the movie in my opinion but i guess it was also in the book so whatever um it's just when he's like oh and you you were the tiger well it's right after like shut up dude i get it saying word for word this is the analogy yeah this is what happened like i already explained it you don't need the author to say it again and this character was you in the analogy and this character was this person it just made the movie so much less fun i know i know based on what i've told you so far what do you think seems more likely

that these animals were actually people and that this is just a weird metaphor or that these animals were actually people hybrids that have been turned into animals by a crazy scientist richard parker uh okay i don't know which one is more likely but i know which one is cooler well that might just be the point of the life of pi as we find out at the end of the movie so let's continue pi then he goes to have a conversation with richard parker he says if we're going to live together we have to learn to communicate and i think this is because you know hybrid richard parker has lost his ability to speak and then he says maybe richard parker can't be tamed but with god's will he can be trained and i think maybe he's like uh i can't tame the great scientist richard parker richard parker does what richard parker wants but i can aim his ambition towards keeping me safe i mean i can't argue with that richard parker does what

he wants he just just tosses his kid off with uncle ben goes out on a jet fights with a flight attendant so richard parker and pie have a bit of a bonding moment where first they look at each other and then they both look into the ocean and they start to see some like psychedelic fish and people and hybrids kind of like meshing together this is their dream of the perfect reality they're they're seeing eye to eye right here he's like yes richard parker i know what we must do we must turn all humans into into animals he even says right after this words are all i have left to hang on to everything is mixed up fragmented he's describing hybrids here mixed up fragmented all right yeah they're about to die they're totally dehydrated and totally starving and then they wash up on an island it's a weird island it's made of like purple seaweed cucumbers and full of infinite happy meerkats that don't mind when you eat them. It's got

beautiful pools of fresh water to go swimming in and drink. It's a wonderful island, but it's actually an evil island because the meerkats, they hide at night. They go up in the trees and Richard Parker flees to the boat and the beautiful clear pools turn to acid and fill with death and rotting fish chunks. And the island looks like a woman laying there. And then Pi finds a lotus in the forest and inside of it is what looks like patches of hairy skin and a tooth and pie explains in the future to the author that the island was carnivorous yeah and it's a good thing old pie is here to explain that because i never would have caught on because that makes zero sense well at this point in the movie i was just like what so so this island was my favorite part of the movie when i watched it is it's a really good because it's the only thing that isn't just explained to you right it doesn't make much sense it leaves it entirely up to interpretation a lot of people really hate

this part uh too but for that reason uh because it doesn't make any sense and it's creepy and weird i see that now i had never you say a lot of people are into the cannibalism theory i had never heard that theory my wife christine really likes life of pie she loved the book oh no she likes you didn't tell her the cannibalism theory did you you did you talked about it when we were here oh no i told her the cannibalism theory what am i done she actually i i talked to her about she actually thought that was an interesting interpretation no but brita was like i hated that part what did it even mean and you were like uh duh brita what would a plant islands that eat people mean come on don't imitate me that's exactly what you said you're like uh cannibalism no i i remember exactly what i said i said um cannibalism that's how i said it with that inflection i didn't i don't think so you didn't say it like really yes i did i said it

just like the girl in the folders commercial no but so when you said that i was like oh yeah that makes sense i'd never never i just liked it because it was a cool weird creepy moment because what's interesting is that this happens at the act break like this is the third act and usually at the act break is the lowest low point but this isn't but it's like a low point this is a high opposite. He gets everything he needs. Well, and that pacing even makes it feel creepy and weird, right? Like it just seems wrong. I love that part of the movie. The only thing that makes sense is if this is a low point that's masquerading as a high point, cause he doesn't necessarily want to talk about it. And it's just him having to face everything he's done. The fish bones that come up in the water, all the fish he ate, you know, he became a meat eater, the shape of a woman. He ate his mother's body, you know? And, you know, now these things are part of him. Inside the flowers

is the hair and the teeth. I mean, and this is, like I said, the most common interpretation of the island is that it represents cannibalism. It was his salvation because he was about to die. And this is the only thing that sustained him. And in that sense, it's a paradise. It kept him going when nothing else would. It gave him everything he needed to survive. But then every night he has to deal with what he has become and that's when it gets scary and not so good there's there's lots of theories about what the island is and that's why it's cool it's because and that's why actually the whole movie is cool because you could find your own interpretation for pretty much anything that pie goes through um some people think that the island represents isolation how you know basically it feels like you have everything you need but then at night you feel so lonely and you want someone else to be there and you realize you're just dying alone

um that's not a creepy explanation yeah i know i don't like that i think maybe the island represents him becoming a serial killer uh that's my interpretation um and that's maybe when he killed his family but anyway this is all getting like way too far down the way you said you had said the the lotus might represent something well and this is another um point where i take issue with the island representing cannibalism because basically near the beginning of the movie, he meets this girl who he likes and she's doing interpretive dance. As he watches her, he then goes to talk to her. He's like, hey, this is really weird. You did a different movement than all the other girls because every movement in that style of dancing has a meaning. And he's like, at the end, when all the other girls just finished, you kept dancing and you did this movement, which means a lotus flower. and then you did this movement which means hiding in the forest he's like so what does a lotus flower

hiding in the forest mean and then all the girls kind of just giggle at him and laugh it off and leave on this crazy island he finds a literal lotus flower hiding in the forest so there must be a connection between this island and that girl my personal interpretation would be that he later murdered that girl. She was the first person he killed. And that's why he found body parts in the Lotus. And he, I think, buried her body in the forest. That's why the Lotus was hiding in the forest. That was my interpretation of it. I think most people would not agree with that. If this is the Marvel Universe, then the interpretation of the Cannibal Island must be that it is an actual Cannibal Island. Now, is there any precedent for that in the Marvel universe well i did some research and there is a marvel character called krakoa the island that walks like a man it is a sentient living island located in the middle of the pacific ocean

it may have spawned from a nuclear testing area like it was an island that just came to life because of nuclear radiation oh no they dropped too many bombs on it it came to life anyway it was a like hostile enemy in a few of like the x-men comics and then later it became friends with them and now i think x-men live on it so well but anyway so there could easily be some sort of other random experiment there's a cannibal island that floats around and another note about krakow is that apparently in one comic he releases several spores that grow into other sentient islands and one of them does turn out to be a villain so i mean there's precedent for there being weird islands out there in the marvel universe absolutely dude i didn't think that that island wouldn't have anything to do with the theory but it turns out it's like a hinge point of the theory nice i mean now it all makes sense it didn't make sense in life of pi but in the marvel

universe it totally does metaphor it's not a metaphor at all it's like an actual sentient carnivorous island just like this is a carnivorous tiger man um back to the richard parker theory he realizes that if he stays on this island no matter how you interpret it he's gonna die alone and unfulfilled. The only way for him to live and continue and progress is to leave the island. So he and Richard Parker leave and then they just kind of like wash up in Mexico. He's like and we're gonna get back to the world or die trying. Cut. They're back. It's like whoa it was that easy. He just had to leave. Richard Parker the tiger man. He jumps out of the boat. Pie says Richard Parker went ahead of me. He stretched his legs. He walked alone to the shore at the edge of the jungle, he stopped. I was certain he was going to look back at me. He would bring our relationship to an end in some way. But he just stared ahead into the jungle. And then Richard Parker, my fierce

companion, the terrible one who kept me alive, disappeared forever from my life. I wept like a child. Not because I was overwhelmed at having survived, although I was. I was weeping because Richard Parker left me so unceremoniously. It broke my heart. And then he says, you know, my father was right. Richard Parker never saw me as a friend. After all we had been through, he didn't even look back. But I have to believe there was more in his eyes than my own reflection staring back at me. I know I felt it, even if I can't prove it. And I think all this proves to me that Richard Parker was more than just an analogy. He was a person. He was a mentor for Pi. And Pi never got the validation he wanted from Richard Parker, which led to Pi seeking Richard Parker out and continuing to work with him later in life. And actually, I think this is cool because it explains one of the things I was wondering about, which is why Pi, once he changes his name in The Amazing

Spider-Man to Rajit Ratha, why Rajit is so professional with, you know, like Kurt Connors, and even when he kind of talks about Richard Parker, like, you know, why is he more friendly if they you know if he knew these people from before but i guess it's because richard parker taught him that you know you don't look back this is a professional relationship yeah he wants to be like richard parker and we know that this is how richard parker is because this is exactly how he leaves peter parker he doesn't look back and he won't let his wife look back either she's like we can't do this we can't leave him like this he's like we have to let's go he's not our problem anymore. This is Richard Parker's M.O. He leaves. He leaves little boys without caring about them. I cannot argue with that. That's good evidence. We then get into the, what I would call the infamous scene where Pi explains everything word for word, and then the author explains everything word for word.

Ta-da! Record scratch. Now we're going to explain everything to you. No more metaphors. Christine said that she read the book and she liked the book when she was younger, and she said that in the book they did have that part but she said that you know I guess because in the book you can kind of interpret it differently that to her it just felt like an off-handed like oh you know maybe it was this and this and this and this and this who knows you know he just kind of like says it real quick uh instead of like having this very good actor just like crying while he gives this monologue where you're like oh okay yeah that is what really happened you know yeah and then christine also said that she just kind of ignored it too because like like he says you know just it's not as fun and well now that you say it i actually i have to give a couple of shout outs one uh to suraj sharma who played young pie i think he's

a terrific actor he's good and another to irfan khan who unfortunately passed away a couple years ago in 2020 also a fantastic actor i've liked him in every movie i've seen him in and it's really sad that he's gone which is two movies yeah would you shut up i'm trying to be nice but you ruined it um the author is talking to pie about it and pie asks him he's like well i mean of the two stories i told you like the same basic things happen in them but which one do you prefer and then the author is like well i mean the one with the tiger right that's the better story and then pie says thank you and so it goes with god either he is saying you choose to believe in god because that's the more fun story rather than facing the cold pointless cruelty of life or pie is saying that this the story of the tiger is the story of the man richard parker who played god so it goes with god richard parker that's what he's saying

i guess that is the story i prefer whichever story you want it to be is the story that it is and i prefer the one where richard parker is a scientist because that's a way more fun story that's hilarious that's the best story i've ever heard so we're just doing what the movie's asking us to do right we're yeah we're paying tribute to it by by doing this this crazy thing that we're doing as the movie ends it's clear that pi is abandoning this section of his life he's done with the life of pi and that's why the movie's called the life of pi right he's ready to start the life of rajit ratha wow now i have a couple of notes about amazing spider-man one and two i love how it starts off and peter parker the child is playing hide and seek his dad is not playing hide and seek with him as we learn in the second one his dad is in the basement recording a video about how he's running away from his son and he's told his son he's like shut up kid let's uh

play hide and seek i'll hide you look for me and then he just goes and locks himself in the basement he's such a horrible stone cold so yeah he does find like a broom man with boots hiding behind the curtain like who set that up i assume peter oh he set it up for himself because no one else probably because his parents yeah oh poor peter now one note and just hold on because i might blow your mind here one note that i have is the decay rate algorithm the algorithm that richard parker came up with which is just imperative to doing anything with gene splicing different animals together and even kurt connors doesn't know about it um the decay rate algorithm if you look at it has a lot of symbols but one symbol really jumped out to me and that was pi wow he never forgot his protege oh man he put pie into his magnum opus pie now known as rajit will always be in richard parker's heart he may not have looked back but you know

he kept him in mind so yeah peter finds richard parker's briefcase it's got like a picture of him and kirk connors his his friend from india who he did lots of crazy stuff delivered some babies uh it's got some glasses and oscorp badge and a secret compartment with a folder with the decay rate algorithm wow peter parker goes to oscorp as peter is on this guided tour he snuck into it he's pretending to be someone else as he's doing this he bumps into pi uh rajit played by the same actor wow he's in both movies peter searches for the name of his father richard parker on bing and one of the suggested searches on bing is richard parker life of pie does that imply that the movie life of pie is just a movie in spider-man because that ruins the whole theory well i mean it could also imply that the author who was talking to pie wrote the book life of pi and it exists and it's a top hit on bing dude i don't don't know why he's

using bing instead of google that's kind of strange in the amazing spider-man 2 he has graduated to google so yes because they're the same actor and because that novel exists in their world that means that pi exists in their world to have told the story to the author and he must be Rajit. That definitively links the two movies. They're in the same universe. And oddly enough, as he's doing this research, we see a lot of little tidbits of information, but one is that there is another book with the word life of in the title, and it was written by Dr. Kurt Connors. Dr. Kurt Connors wrote a book called The Splice of Life. Whoa. So not life of, but of life. of life yeah and he's a pretty popular topic amazing title that's like the majority of hits about dr connors were posted one to 12 hours ago on whoa so another thing uh that we know from his research richard parker and kurt connors crossed a tubular worm with an aphid it only lived a few

hours oh poor thing i mean they sure are doing like uh kind of unethical stuff i don't understand why splicing random animals together that's very much what they do yeah it gives credence to your interpretation of life of bi just like we're on a boat let's just put some things together we'll shake it up see what happens those were richard's early years that was back when he probably had even less inhibitions he was just like doing stuff for fun he's just starting out one very obscure easter egg that is not even mentioned on imdb trivia there is a photo of dr connor's on a website and the photo credit like the little uh little text below the photo says it is credited to susan b now susan burig in the credits of this film is the graphic designer of the film who probably designed all these websites. So it's her photo credit. She probably took that picture of Dr. Connors. Oh, that's a cool...

So they gave her actual credit for the photo. That's fun. Susan B., who actually worked on this film, exists in the universe of the film that she worked on as a photographer. Yeah, go Susan. That's pretty cool. And because she's the graphic designer, that means she probably even captioned it in that picture. So she put her own name on it. That's fun. Go Susan. now uh on to to to oscorp he follows pi rajit ratha into a room that has an amazing keypad yeah i i think in universe rajit was probably leading peter to this room i think he recognized him as uh as richard parker's kid and he's like oh all right i know how this works let's get him some gene splicing because we know he's like he's gunning for that human testing he really wants it no i think it makes perfect sense with his character because rajit slash pi he does not like the way kirk connors work kirk connors is is too uh hesitant he loves richard parker for many

reasons but because richard parker is so radical so of course he's going to love his son and he's like yeah human test subjects get him in there yeah his father would approve my next real note was that kirk connors says that lizards regenerate limbs at will he does not seem to know what at will means yeah wow because and he's a herpetologist yeah he should know because they don't regenerate their limbs at will it just happens like it's not like they're like all right i'll grow another one now he's not a very good herpetologist i don't think he actually went to school because he was like a herpetologist when he was like 19 and he was delivering babies in india so you know i'll I'll bet that Kurt Connors delivered Peter as well, you know, in his side gig as a midwife. It's like, hey, I got a new baby for you to deliver. That's your specialty, right? Peter, he talks to Connors at Connors' house, and he asks if Connors thinks that cross-species

genetics is even possible. And Connors says, yes, of course. Connors knows because he's done it with Richard Parker before. He knows it works. He also did it with an aphid and a tubular worm. Well, and he references the fact that they've done it for years because he says literally for years, your father and I have been mocked for our theories, not just by the community at large, but by Oscorp as well. They called us mad scientists, which is exactly what they are. They weren't mocking them. They were just accurately warning people of what they were. Exactly. And then he says, you know, and then your father bred the spiders and everything changed. The results were beyond encouraging. They were spectacular. They were going to change the lives of millions, including my own. So in this movie, Rajit talks to Kurt Connors and Rajit does not want to do primate tests before human tests. And this might seem terribly irresponsible, but we have to remember this is Pi.

He knows that they have been experimenting on animals for decades. He's like, we do this all the time. Let's just do it. This is how we learn. So in the conversation they have, Rajit expresses his admiration of Richard Parker and his disgust towards Kurt when trying to fill Richard Parker's shoes. He's recommending that they sneak the human trials in, disguise as flu shots at the veteran hospital, which is very, very Richard Parker thing to do from what we know of him. To Kurt, he says, it's a little late for shock and indignation, Kurt. about 15 years late richard parker wore it well but on you it's just a cheap suit i'm like whoa he loves richard parker so much so this is the tiger that he saw walking away that's the tiger man he didn't even look back yeah he's like you would look back wouldn't you kurt kurt connor rajit slash pi is driving in his car on a bridge since we won't be seeing too much of

rajit slash pi anymore after this um i'll just say that originally this character before irfan khan was cast to play him he was not going to be named rajit ratha he was going to have a different name uh that was like german sounding anyway he was going to be proto-goblin i don't know much about proto-goblin except that one of his powers is that he has retractable claws like a tiger He's taken some cues from his master. You know, if he had gotten powers, he definitely would have gone with tiger-like powers. I have to say that watching this movie again, I have a whole new appreciation of the limo scene where poor Pi once again is trapped in a life or death situation in this limo as the lizard is coming to get him but spider-man comes to save the day just like his dad richard parker saved pie from that horrible hyena it's exactly the same exactly the same scene with the evil thing bearing down on him and then boom mr parker comes and saves them it's so good it's really

too bad they didn't focus on pie's emotional journey in the scene instead focus on some random little kid whose car catches fire for no reason like ignored that whole arc that they could have like spent so much time on there are some good deleted scenes in this movie there is one scene where they find a video that kurt connor's recorded where he's talking about how he's going to perfect the world by turning people into lizards and somehow he believes this is going to prevent loneliness and isolation and rajit slash pi is watching this video and when connor says the word loneliness and isolation it shows his face and he has a definite reaction to those words probably because he spent so much time lonely and isolated on that boat with Richard Parker as a tiger. That's a good one. I didn't actually notice that when I first watched that deleted scene. So I'm glad you picked up on that. So there's another deleted scene. It's one of the

only other scenes with Rajit in it where Peter Parker and the lizard are kind of talking. They're at the lizard lair and the lizard's kind of acting like he's going to help Peter. And then he betrays peter and he starts using his serum again and he's gonna let it loose on everyone and then richard parker's best friend ever pi rajit shows up and saves his son peter he shows up like a freaking secret agent out of nowhere just like blast the lizard like six times in the chest with bullets from his handgun grab spider-man pulls him aside he's like don't worry spider-man i got this they they like start talking about the serum and then unfortunately the lizard comes and bites his head off well we don't we don't know what happens and it's a delete it's true they didn't show it they just showed the lizard coming forward with his mouth open and then it cut to black the movie he like you know just gave him a big kiss yeah i i think pi is still out there looking for his his

mentor who's probably dead you know he probably found him no he's probably not dead after the plane crash that richard parker was on with his wife they make it abundantly clear that they never found the bodies of Richard Parker or Mary Parker. So I think they're kind of implying that those two survived probably by, you know, shooting up with some genetic hybrid serums and becoming like birds and flying away. Yeah. I mean, why wouldn't they? It's like this Richard Parker's superpower is becoming an animal man. I think we've covered everything we have to say about Pi, otherwise known as Rajit Ratha. What do you think? As you said, Pi himself best sums it up when he says, which version would you rather believe? Would you rather believe Life of Pi is just Life of Pi, or that it's part of The Amazing Spider-Man, and by association, the entire MCU? Dude, I would much rather believe that Life of Pi is in the MCU.

I think that Life of Pi should resonate with listeners of The Popcorn Isn't Real, Because it's like, you know, you find the fun version, you come up with your own interpretation, and it's fine if you believe that version because it's fun, you know. Or sometimes in our case, we make it less fun and more dark and depressing. Yeah, but not this time. This time we made it way better. And also, I'm just astounded that there is so much, like, pretty actually solid evidence for this theory. Like, it's insane how believable it gets if you just, you know, look at it with the right angle. It's so good. Thank you so much for listening. Music for this episode will be provided by Christine. Give us a review, rate us, subscribe, and check out our Patreon. We've got a Patreon. So if you like our theories and if you want us to make more theories, any bit of support helps. It would mean a lot to us. Other than that, until next time, remember, the popcorn isn't real.