Quaid (Schwarzenegger) was in the Matrix!

so the matrix one it came out in like 1999 right yes it's ridiculously overly huge cultural impact i mean it's insane it's crazy like the shot where she floats up in the air and kicks the policeman in the face has been done so many times one of the first shots of the movie and it changed everything forever it's the entire reason why wesker can run on walls once you get to code Veronica. Dude, as I think will be most people's most iconic thing they think of when they think of what was influenced by the Matrix. It's literally the entire reason that Claire drops her gun and then falls down, grabs it and shoots those umbrella agents. It had just a massive impact on season four of Angel. If you listen to like some interviews that Joss Whedon did back in the day he saw the matrix like yeah i think most things should be like the matrix and like season four of angel becomes very matrixy like so 2000 wesley when they're fighting like whatever the

beast it just comes out with like slow motion shotgun blast and drops his shotgun pulls out two pistols slow motion shooting him dude why are we talking about this we've got hours of matrix content. So, Dorvald, what are we talking about today? So, today we're going to be talking about The Matrix. Specifically, we'll be focusing on The Matrix 1 and its shared universe connections with Total Recall. The original 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger, Paul Verhoeven, the iconic Total Recall, which I honestly believe had maybe not quite the same, but almost equal impact on hollywood as the matrix certainly had quite a big impact on the matrix the theory there is that total recall is set in the universe of the matrix quade the main character of total recall is in the matrix and that's why all these crazy things are going on i was gonna say i think maybe the matrix is best enjoyed when you don't overthink

it, but we're going to be spending the next two hours overthinking it. That is the opposite of our slogan. Dude, that should be a slogan. We should always sign off by saying movies are best enjoyed when you don't overthink them. So we'll overthink them for you. I'd like to kind of walk us through everything in Total Recall and in The Matrix that makes me believe that they're in a shared universe. First, I got to ask you, who would win in a fight? Pepsi or Coca-Cola? I mean, I think Coca-Cola gets people to probably drink it more, but Pepsi did that who wants to be a billionaire thing. Whoa. So there's a lot of product placement in this film and a lot of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, but it's interesting because canonically in universe, Coca-Cola has won the war for corporate domination on earth and is the only soft drink that you'll see advertisements for on earth. However, Pepsi, on the other hand, has won corporate domination on Mars in total recall

And it's the only soft drink that you'll see advertisements on Mars. Watch it again and look for Pepsi and Coca-Cola logos. Sounds like a good use of my time. Yeah, dude, watch it again. With this theory in mind, it's important to note that a main tenet of the Matrix series is that humans can leave the Matrix, but they have to want to leave. Sure. When the humans who are outside of the Matrix, when they red pill someone, which is extracting that person from the Matrix, they need that person to want to leave the Matrix and return to reality. If that person doesn't want to leave the Matrix, it won't work. Well, speaking of pills, we should at least address one of the most popular Matrix fan theories, that the blue pill would have just killed Neo. The opening lines of the movie, Cypher is talking to Trinity. Trinity and Cypher are basically just watching Neo being creeps and talking about him.

And then Cypher says, we're gonna kill him. You understand that? basically they're saying that we're going to try to extract him and cypher makes it clear that he thinks neo will resist extraction and if he doesn't choose to leave the matrix he's gonna take the blue pill and they're gonna kill him that's that's what they're saying okay yeah that makes sense talking about total recall we got to remember that neo got out of the matrix right quade does not get out of the matrix no so and we're seeing his perspective um where everything is made to make sense to him within the matrix by the agents the movie starts out with quade waking up from a dream of mars and as he wakes up he's surrounded by news stories specifically stories of terrorists on mars and agents hunting them down what does this sound like to you yes this sounds like neo waking up at the beginning of the matrix surrounded by news stories about terrorists

and agents hunting them down terrorists named morpheus yeah sounds pretty similar the rebels are actively working on Quaid already at the beginning of this movie, just like they were actively working on Neo. Our history with this movie is that our dad, for some reason, showed us Total Recall a lot as kids. And he had edited it so that a lot of the bloody parts were gone. Like there are a lot of parts that we never saw, like the guy getting stepped on off the escalator. When he shoots the doctor and spits out the pill, that part was gone. Our dad just told us oh yeah he spit out the pill and that's how we knew yeah but anyway but dude i loved it i mean the very beginning when his mask breaks open and he's on mars he's dreaming his eyes start popping out of his head i remember that sequence being a lot longer me too and also his eyes come out as like long white snakes okay no i don't remember that i remember them like kind of

stretching out really long from his face not just kind of bugging out like they do obviously i just imagine that but i also know that dad would usually skip that part in the movie maybe he told us oh yeah his eyes come out right exactly like snakes wow so anyway when i saw it and it was just like less than half a second shot of his eyes just bugging out i was like oh huh that's not what i remember at all and then so yeah when quade wakes up and his reaction to all the turmoil on mars it's the terrorist war zone and he turns to his wife go to mars no but he says it as though it's a romantic idea he's like let's do it let's go to mars as though they were both thinking that while watching the news i love quade's character it perfectly mirrors neo's attitude regarding all this basically he sees all these articles and he's like oh let's do it let's find morpheus you know if his computer talks to him, he'll just do whatever it says to find Morpheus.

Him and Quaid are very single-minded in going towards disaster rather than away from it. Right. And it's because they both know that they're in a simulation. They want to get out. The difference being that Neo is kind of an average Joe hacker and Quaid is kind of supposed to be like everyone treats him as though he is an average Joe, but then you look at him, you're like, he's just massive. He was clearly written as an everyman, right? Like he was written is just this normal guy which is at no point evidenced more than when he goes to work and is chatting with his middle-aged giant fat co-worker you know just him with his ridiculous olympian body talking to this new yorker just like seeing him next to his friend with those big biceps and his friend's just like oh yeah don't do it they'll lobotomize you at recall he's like oh he's this massive german like yes i think i will go and get a total recall memory and

he's like yo what are you talking about don't go to get a memory while you're doing why would his friend attack him later of course he's gonna kill you no seriously why would this guy like yeah i think i'm a match for arnold schwarzenegger i'm pretty sure i can take him no you're a middle-aged even if you have four friends clearly it could have just been sort of a suspense mystery thriller mind bender but at some point arnold got cast and it turned into the whole thing one of the greatest like 80s 90s action films ever made it's great but it's not all arnold's fault i think a lot of the credit has to go to verhoeven like he knows exactly how to make this kind of movie on the train as he's going to work, Quaid sees a commercial for Total Recall. Yeah. Featuring Dr. Edgemar, played by the great Albert Brooks. You might know him as Marlon from Finding Nemo. I know him as Scorpio from Simpsons. Is Dr. Edgemar actually a doctor or is he an actor

spokesperson who is just paid to be like a fictional doctor on their commercials? So we're going to talk about that. After we're done talking about the Matrix connections, I'd like to kind of put a nail in the coffin for the age old question of, was it all in his head or did it really happen? The popcorn isn't real. Yes, I think you might know which version we're going to go with. But that question that you just asked is actually really important for answering what really happened in this movie. I think that Dr. Edgemar, it's impossible for him to show up later in the movie and be working with the agents. if he actually had anything to do with total recall right is edgemar a rebel is he working with the agents is he an actor or is he maybe someone from outside of the matrix prepping quade for the red pill see this is exactly how trinity contacted neo on his computer and started dropping

hints to prepare him to exit the matrix like just showing up on a screen in front of him and giving him cryptic messages just like dr edgemar does here only to meet him later in real life to to actually administer the pill yeah i mean i guess it's a little different than follow the white rabbit like it's very overt it's edgemott saying go to recall quaid the commercial come on go to mars and then when he gets to recall they're like nah you don't want to go to mars it was in your commercial guys that was the thing that he said to do why are you like nah go to saturn probably it was an older commercial from like before the terrorist stuff started and now they're like let's downplay the mars stuff you know i guess that could be but um when trinity starts writing to neo it was funny re-watching it because suddenly i remembered that this movie weirdly enough is like the quintessential hacker movie which has no hacking yeah they establish him

as like not just a computer programmer who works as a software engineer but also as a hacker who's apparently developing his his own malware and like zero days and selling them to random thugs yeah and then he never touches a terminal ever again like he never types a single character besides control x well if we're talking about the very beginning of the matrix so it starts out with that cool sequence of trinity fighting the agents i love the opening scene i love how she just desperately wants to get to a payphone like we know that she's got superpowers and she's like i need a payphone we're like why does she need this payphone and it's gonna get run down by that dump truck what is going on like it's such a good opening it makes you wonder why are payphones so important you know my wife had never seen the matrix when i showed it to her in 2016 she was just so confused she's like why do they need to get to a landline to get out of the matrix

they have cell phones they use them constantly why do they have to get to an actual landline to get out and i was just like yeah it's weird back in like 1999 that made perfect sense but it doesn't really anymore it's funny like no one batted an eye no one even questioned it it was like oh yeah landline that makes sense get out of the matrix with a landline yeah except technically you know any communication medium is as good as the next so right back in the day it was like cell phones are not for internet but landlines are for internet so that's how you get out back to total recall so he goes to recall there is a lady at the front desk who can tap her nails and change them to different colors which is i always thought was really cool and they reuse that in the fifth element he's like what about that guy you lobotomized and the recall spokesperson is like here look at this helpful graph he tells him nothing just like a colorful line of recalls

fatalities stayed steady whereas other people their fatalities have just gone up over the years why why did the other guy's fatalities go up but also recalls fatalities didn't go down no there are no numbers on the graph either throughout this scene they drop hints at what's going to happen and kind of describe the entire story yeah the salesman tells him that he's going to get the girl kill the bad guys and save the entire planet which is exactly what he does exactly what happens i love the shot of arnold schwarzenegger as he sits in the chair and just looks so happy and optimistic and innocent it makes me feel so bad for poor quaid like the dude just wanted a freaking vacation that he didn't even want a vacation he just wanted memories of a vacation he's just got a really really boring life and was really looking forward to his memories of mars and then they just go and freaking lobotomize him like it's so sad this poor guy but so even within

the universe of this movie recall is not in on it with the bad guys no so how could he know everything that was going to happen because like even if you believe the story of this movie the bad guy sure maybe he set everything up but like Rico wouldn't know to tell him that yeah you're gonna save the planet I think that's the biggest evidence for the other theory of just it's all what Leif is arguing for is that everything is in his head and basically he is living out the fantasy that they have implanted in his brain and he's not a real secret agent which I believe to be canon I don't really see that there's any other way to interpret this me neither but I mean just just to strengthen that as they're about to you know put him under the female lab technician hands the male lab technician a disc with the scenario that they're about to run and he says yeah oh that's a new one blue sky on mars which is literally the end of the movie yeah right they

get a blue sky on mars that's the only thing he could be talking about and the only way he could know that is if we're seeing their scenario right yeah so i don't know if you picked this up but on the screen when he's picking his love interest. So they're like, you get to pick what she looks like. And he's going to pick a brunette. For some reason, it shows her body shape. He picks athletic. But on the side, there's a bunch of just like techno computer text. If you pause it and look, one of it reads file access, password, and then the password, all one word is matrix retrieve. What? They're retrieving that data from the matrix. I didn't notice that. It makes so much sense i don't know how that fits into your theory but uh i'll tell you the total recall people are not working with the agents but in my theory they are working with the rebels edgemar is the morpheus of this universe they're essentially doing what morpheus did right they're conditioning

him to want to leave the matrix and then they're going to offer him a choice which allows him to leave the matrix yeah so yeah he's having a schizoid embolism and he thinks he's an agent they're coming for him yeah so they scrub his memory and put him in a johnny cab which when i was a kid johnny cabs were like the most hilarious thing ever i love johnny cabs so like yeah i don't understand why this was so hilarious as a kid why is it where am i i don't get it where am i you are in a johnny cab for some reason that was just hilarious he answered the guy's question you're in a johnny cab that's where you are it's really weird because every time i watch this movie i subconsciously brace myself because like i know this next scene's gonna be like a laugh right and then it happens and i'm like well that wasn't quite as good as i remember as a kid as far as i was concerned this was like johnny cab the movie i thought the johnny cabs were a lot more important

than they are so he goes home and laurie kind of tries to talk him out of it she tries to convince him that he's delusional it's all in his mind all this stuff as the agents come for him and you know continually try to abduct him the same thing basically happens to neo who then goes to work and is rightfully chewed out because he comes in super late after partying all night yeah so yeah morpheus calls him and guides him out of his office without getting caught by the agents until he's like yeah just climb around on the outside of the skyscraper neo you'll be safe and very very intelligently neo decides like no freaking way and goes back in he gets abducted and taken in by the agents and they interrogate him agent smith is interrogating him and he says your life is lived in computers where you go by the hacker alias neo and are guilty of virtually every computer crime that we have a law for i'm like whoa neo what have you been doing

oh my god i guess they had a lot less computer yeah there were less laws back in the 90s but still uh geez that's quite the intro that uh that smith has bestowed upon him but then he one-ups him and is like morpheus is believed by many to be the most dangerous man alive what does he even do in the real world well no this makes sense from the agent's perspective because all they want to do is protect humans they protect them by keeping them in the matrix morpheus wants to take them out of the matrix where things are dangerous that's the most dangerous thing anyone could do he's the most dangerous man alive that's true they're safe in the matrix it's at this point that agent smith drops probably like one of the greatest threats ever delivered in any movie when neo's like i need my phone call give me my phone call i need my rights agent smith is like tell me mr anderson what good is a phone call if you're unable to

speak and i'm like wow like even without neo's face melting and his mouth being unable to work which is what happens even without that that's an incredible threat the next thing they do before letting neo go is they put this giant robot spider into his belly button because they're bugging him yeah so this is important because because what are they doing total recall about total recall he gets a phone call right after he escapes the agents it is from one of his friends supposedly who tells him that he's been bugged and just like neo got bugged and he says you have to extract the bug just like neo had to get his bug extracted by trinity yeah some random guy leaves a suitcase for him and tells him that he's gotta go get rid of the bug in his nose and then some old lady tries to take the suitcase yeah she doesn't look like a homeless bag lady or to think she looks like a like a well-dressed like a briefcase well she's fighting with arnold

schwarzenegger you're an old lady you're not gonna win here it's true she really holds her ground though like i think most people if this i would back off approached you and i'd be like whoa especially when i know it is not my suitcase maybe she was going through her own weird movie Someone else had told her, hey, I left a suitcase for you by a payphone. So she just lost her total recall mission dream. She didn't get the suitcase. Little did we know it was actually an MMO. Like he's competing with other players. He's just so good we never even noticed. When he's going to remove the bug from his nose, he takes a Johnny Cab and it's not driving fast enough. So he rips the Johnny Cab guy out of it and drives it himself. And then when he doesn't pay, I got to ask you, Dude, Johnny Cabs intentionally tried to murder you when you don't pay. That's their job. Like when he doesn't pay, it goes crazy and tries to run him over and then explodes.

As a kid, I wasn't 100% sure. I was like, maybe it was because he ripped him out and the car was just going to malfunction and explode anyway because he broke it. I mean, if you want a definitive answer of this, you just have to remember who directed this movie, Paul Verhoeven, right? Like, it is clearly an unbelievably over-the-top critique of, like, you know, corporate capitalism and how money is worth everything. And if you don't pay, the cab will murder you. So that bug getting out of scene, probably the most memorable scene of Total Recall, right? That's the scene everyone remembers. I mean, dude, it's really good. The fully moving, animatronic, Arnold Schwarzenegger lifelike head. like and that that thing's huge coming out of his nostril i love it like his fake teeth and his fake tongue like you can tell they're not real when it's a prosthetic head dude it makes it even more horrifying yeah it's like so scary i love it oh and then the next scene after the bug scene is the

two weeks oh my gosh dude this is my favorite part in the entire movie i said the bug scene is the most memorable scene but actually the two weeks scene is the most memorable scene in the whole movie we talked about how funny it was when he says you're in a johnny cab oh that line paled in comparison to nothing was funnier than two weeks he didn't ask you he said do you have any fruits or vegetables you're like two weeks two weeks two weeks it's so good dude this scene is lady action who just has to like move her lips around while backing up that is one gigantic woman right they managed to find a huge actor who's great she's huge she's the size of arnold schwarzenegger and she's so good at acting like she can't stop saying two weeks and desperately wants to stop watching it again i just can't believe that that's practical effects when the thing unfolds it is i paused it and watched it frame by frame that is

And the Arnold head underneath is also a practical effect. It's not even Arnold's head. There's so many practical Arnold heads in this. So Agent Richter, who is chasing down Quaid this whole movie, you believe he is Quaid's version of Agent Smith? Yeah, pretty much. I gotta say that in whatever time period Quaid is in, the agents are a lot better at having conversations with each other than they are in Neo's time. Yeah. I just love every time the agents in The Matrix have conversations with each other. The way they speak is just amazing. It is really good. I like the agents. I like everything about them. I think they're cool. It's around this time Agent Richter goes to talk to the big bad boss guy. Do you know his name? Cohagen. It's like Copenhagen without the pen. Cohagen. So Agent Richter goes to talk to Copenhagen. Dang it. Oh, dude. I got you. Agent Richter goes to talk to Cohagen and Cohagen threatens him saying that if he doesn't catch Quaid, he says, because otherwise I'll erase your ass.

I mean, is that because he's a program? He is a program. Dude. So on Mars, he goes to the hotel and checks in and the guy's like, oh, it seems like last time you were here, you left something in our possession. and they remove it and it's like safely locked in this safe that needs to be verified with both of their fingerprints and then he opens it up and unfolds it and it's this sleazy poster from like a crappy strip joint and on the back he has written in his own handwriting for a good time see melina so melina and also he's like not embarrassed that it's his own handwriting who wrote for a good time call melina by writing her name again right in front of the the clerk who watches him do it and it's like what kind of a sleazy weirdo are you right after that he goes to see a bunch of psychics exactly like neo wants to see a bunch of psychics except neo did it after he got extracted from the matrix not before yeah i mean i think interesting that in both versions

it's the like the rebels you know who are working with the psychics yeah so we're coming up to the all important scene the most important theory where quade in total recall is presented with a choice not only a choice he's presented with a red pill yeah there's many iconic things about the matrix but i think the most iconic thing in the entire movie is when neo is presented with the red pill and the right people use that phrase a lot especially these days even though lana Wachowski hates it yes well it's like literally the opposite of what she means the phrase to stand for but anyway so I'm just going to compare these two scenes both Quaid and Neo are confronted by an authoritative figure who presents them with a choice and basically tells them that they're living a delusion and that they now have the opportunity to leave the delusion by taking a hill for quaid it is dr edgemar who seems to work for the total recall corporation for quaid it's a

bald white fat doctor for neo it's like awesome lawrence fishburn with sunglasses most dangerous man in the world the conversations that they have are eerily similar edgemar basically starts out by saying this is going to be very difficult for you to accept mr quaid you're not really standing here right now you're not here and neither am i and then he tells him what you're experiencing is a free-form memory delusion a schizoid embolism okay we can talk about schizoid embolism i think this is actually proof for the other theory that uh it was all in his head the schizoid embolism is definitely proof for that theory but yeah he tells him you've suffered a schizoid embolism which was the exact same thing that the female lab technician said at the very beginning although Well, that part would have to be part of his, of Quaid's dream. It would have to be. No, it makes sense because that's what he heard as he was going under.

He heard them yelling. He's into schizoid embolism. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. He says, yeah, you know, all of this is a dream. It's all going exactly like they told you it would. Quaid's like, bullshit. And he says, what's bullshit, Mr. Quaid? That you're having a paranoid episode triggered by acute neurochemical trauma or that you're really an invincible secret agent from Mars who's the victim of an interplanetary conspiracy to make him think he's a lowly construction worker which is just the greatest way anyone could possibly sum it up. He just points out how stupid this hero fantasy is. Dumbest plot ever. Anyway the next line is the most important line to me where he says I'm gonna save you but you've got to want to return to reality and this is the exact same thing they keep saying throughout the entire matrix trilogy is that you've got to want to return to reality and at this point that he holds out a red pill and says swallow this it's a symbol

of your desire to return to reality right yeah in this scene this is clearly the rebels trying to extract quade from the matrix just like morpheus tried to extract neo from the matrix yeah it's revealed in the second movie that the whole prophecy is bs and that the matrix is actually cyclical. And every time a cycle ends, a new The One appears and he resets the Matrix. Mr. Smith even talks a little bit about that cycle in the first movie. He does. So yeah, I think that they are in a different cycle of The Matrix than Neo and Trinity and Morpheus were. I think this is probably an earlier cycle. But we know that in each cycle, all of these things happen. There's still rebels, they still live in Zion, and they still try and extract people from the matrix just like they do in the matrix that we see yeah these rebels are trying a similar but slightly modified tactic just like morpheus they don't quite tell him the whole

story before red pilling him just that there's another reality and that he needs to want to leave the delusion and enter reality and that he needs to take the red pill all of that is totally 100 consistent with morpheus's tactics the difference is that they don't have a blue pill which you could argue that the blue pill is completely unnecessary anyway and that's why it's poison yeah they don't have a blue pill and they are actively working to make quade believe this is a delusion whereas morpheus kind of just was like yep it's the matrix if you believe it or not that's up to you right so i think and this is actually supported in the movie morpheus says that they don't usually extract older people from the matrix they usually only extract younger people because older people have trouble accepting the matrix and they usually die after getting extracted. What I think they're doing is they know he's older

and they know that he's going to reject all of this. So they're trying to reinforce the idea that he's in a delusion and kind of ease him out of the matrix by painting this picture of the delusion and the total recall of fake memories that he's been given. I think that they think he'll have less trouble accepting that rather than just jumping out of the matrix headfirst like they do with neo maybe that's why morpheus changes his tactics because he's like yeah because i was gonna say this doesn't work and he murders edgemar which would kill you know basically their morpheus and then he kills laurie who is their trinity and then i think basically the rebels cut their losses here and leave it does make sense too in this interpretation that they are in the matrix in Total Recall, that Edgemar would be sweating because if you die... Yeah, because he'll die! And he does!

So, yeah, I mean, like, Quaid thinks he's all like, ah, you're sweating, I figured it out, but you didn't figure out anything, man. Everything after this is just the Matrix writing itself, like, it's just the agents working to make everything make sense. So, I just wanted a quick, random, stupid thing. When he shoots his wife and says, consider that the divorce, like, Dude, ice cold, man. That joke isn't funny. It's not a funny joke. It's such dark humor. You just murdered your wife and you called it a divorce.

Let's not joke about murdering your spouse, okay? And also, you don't remember Melina at all. You have actual memories of Lori, whether or not you believe she was always your wife or not. You still have memories of her being your wife. And yet he has no conflict whatsoever in that moment. He just kills her and then makes a dumb joke about it. This is symbolic of him accepting the Matrix, right? He accepted the delusion. Yeah. Reality, reality sucks. I'm going to stay here. Divorce. Okay, yeah. So when Morpheus presents the red pill and the blue pill to Neo, he says, this is your last chance. There's no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole is. From my point of view, pretty much everything else that happens in Total Recall is inconsequential

of this theory because now he has embraced the Matrix and the rest of the movie is just the agents kind of making sure that everything makes sense to him. So that's pretty much it for the theory as far as I'm concerned. Right, okay. If you want, I would love to talk about the other theory, which I'd call the Blue Skies theory which is you know how did this movie actually end like what what really happened here we are done with the matrix with the shared universe total recall matrix theory now we're moving on to the other popular theory which is was he in a dream or was it all real from the red pill scene it ends with what i think is the definitive proof that it is all in his head so edgemar right after he tells quade to take the red pill quade then puts a gun to his head and says i could pull the trigger and it won't matter and edgemar says it won't make the slightest difference to me doug

the consequences to you however would be devastating in your mind i'll be dead with no one to guide you out you'll be stuck in permanent psychosis and then he describes every single event for the rest of the movie down line by line he says the walls of reality will come crashing down what happens right after he gets shot the wall literally crashes down it actually happens then he says one minute you'll be the savior of the rebel cause literally that's the next thing that happened to go to the rebel cause and he's the savior and next thing you know you'll be cohagan's bosom buddy which is what happens he then goes to cohagan's lair and finds out he's his best friend you'll even have fantasies about alien civilizations as you requested which is the The last thing that gets thrown in there. Yeah, weird thing for him to say, right? Except it's literally what happens in the movie. This is just like, that's the thing.

There's no reason for him to say that, except that this is the writer and director telling us that the whole movie's in his head. I agree with you. The only in-universe explanation for this, if you believe that like it's not a dream and he actually was a secret agent who goes to Mars, the only in-universe explanation is that there are psychics and perhaps Edgemar is psychic and that's how he knows what's going to happen. That's one explanation. It could also be that he's working with the agents. Ergo, he knows Quaid's entire backstory. He knows that Quaid is Cohagen's best friend and that they've been planting him as the savior to the rebels. But still, there's no way he would know word for word how this is going to play out. It doesn't make any sense. And he definitely wouldn't know that because he's not an agent. He works for Total Recall. Yeah, that part is what makes no sense. Like he's either a doctor who works for Recall or an actor who works in their commercials. Regardless, he wouldn't want to go into a dangerous situation like this for these random agents who aren't working with Recall.

pretty much so from here there's kind of two paths if we know this is a delusion then either the whole movie was his vacation and after the movie ended he woke up and went back to normal life with all those fun memories just like he paid for or he was actually having a schizoid embolism and he murdered his doctor and got stuck in his delusion forever and it's a sad tragic story of this poor guy who just really really wanted a cheap vacation and instead got his brain liquefied the latter is obviously what happened i think the second one is what happened poor quade he didn't even want a vacation he just wanted some memories this dude just really loved mars i know he's like terrorists on mars hey babe let's go i love that he was just sitting watching the morning news and all he was hearing was mars mars mars hey let's go to mars it's just his brain completely edited out all the bad stuff i'm sure as his wife talked to him he heard mars mars

I was like you're right let's go there oh poor Quaid but yeah that's about all I have for total recall I have a few other things to say about the Matrix Morpheus outright says an Alice in Wonderland reference and they're pretty overt with all their Alice references follow the white rabbit he goes through the looking glass show you how deep the rabbit hole goes etc and of course this is a fun reference because alice in wonderland is kind of a dream thing and this is all like neo you might be dreaming wake up into the real world but what most people don't know is there are a lot of references to another famous fantasy story similar to alice in wonderland called little nemo in slumberland wow by by windsor mckay wait a minute nemo neo you remove the m from nemo and you get neo oh my gosh wait a minute no no no i can't believe that there's anything having to do with these two movies unless you can prove to me that morpheus appeared in the cartoon classic little nemo which

you cannot do well i'm i'm talking more about the comics the old windsor mckay comics but yeah in the old windsor mckay comics he's going to slumberland and most of the time he's trying to get to king morpheus and his daughter the name is even spelled the same king morpheus morpheus oh my gosh that's crazy now if there's some sort of trinity well i think trinity might be the the princess the princess who's clearly morpheus is clearly setting nemo up with in little nemo in slumberland he is always paired up with like kind of a fast talking rough clown named flip he's got kind of one of those voices like oh a wise guy kind of thing you know like he talks like he's from the 1930s because he was did anyone ever tell you you're kind of cute oh and also flip always smokes a cigar is there any character in this movie who smokes a cigar i don't even see the screen anymore all i see is blondes brunettes

redheads exactly so neo in this movie has kind of a fast talking guy who talks like he's from sort i don't know new york 1930s i don't know uh who his name is not flip it's cypher but he does smoke a cigar in one scene and he does flip on them yeah he flips on them totally flips to the other team yeah well i was watching these movies man i don't even see the matrix anymore i just see theory evidence proof oh dude that's what we always see when we're watching movies now i know i mean we're just like cypher we've become jaded by the matrix i know we just want to go back we just want popcorn to be real again yeah i know that the popcorn isn't real i know that when i eat it it's just the writer's telling me that it's real but boy ignorance is bliss ignorance is bliss that's it oh my gosh dude i could easily make that gif i'm gonna do it let's do it We'll tweet it. What do you think of the theory that The Matrix and Total Recall are in a shared universe

and that Quaid from Total Recall was in The Matrix all along? I think it's a fun theory and it's a great excuse to watch two really fun movies. Yeah. It's a fun theory. I think it obviously could just be explained with the Bukowskis were really big fans of Total Recall and so they included a lot of the same plot elements. Yeah. but i like it i think it's good yeah it's fun poor quaid didn't didn't get out of the matrix well i mean poor quaid what do you think of the theory that uh it was all a delusion and that total recall was uh just the tragedy of quaid getting his mind liquefied obviously i believe that as far as yeah there's no other explanation for me obviously it was all just a dream but a cool ending though like even as a kid i was like whoa like it could have maybe it didn't happen that's like crazy i uh i like the movies though i think uh give them a watch uh have our theories

in mind and let us know if you disagree with us if you think that it's just impossible that the matrix and total recall could ever be in a shared universe tell us you know let us have it on twitter uh find us at at popcorn isn't real we check it all the time we'll we'll talk to you we're always ready to chat about movies and fan theories um other than that if you like this episode give us a follow tell your friends the world needs to know these are important fan theories of course They change the movies. You know, the popcorn isn't real. Like, dude, these people are eating unreal popcorn. We got to stop that. Ignorance is not bliss. No, we are Morpheus. We are waking up the people. We are saving humanity. We just have one pill and it's actually popcorn. So take the popcorn pill. Yeah. I mean, it's like Morpheus said, all we're offering is the truth. Yeah. Nothing more. Yeah, dude. You know, maybe a heart's a little swallow.

Music for this episode was provided by Christine. And our next episode is going to be a special Christmas episode. We're going to look at Home Alone, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and maybe a couple other movies too. Every John Candy movie ever made. That's what we're looking at. We're looking at some John Candy films, and it's going to be a great Christmas episode. So we will see you then. And remember, the popcorn isn't real.

*crickets*