Cloverfield/WMG

Clover is an amphibian alien; Pseudis paradoxa style
Its parents will come and will be the size of a regular house.

Rob, Beth, and Hud were understandably very shaken up from having just survived a helicopter crash.
Why was Because they were all fairly dizzy, shaky, and not fully aware of their surroundings. They'd just crashed onto the ground in a very loud, jarring fashion. Their ears were likely ringing, and they probably weren't as physically coordinated as they normally would be. Sneaking up on them would be about as difficult as sneaking up on a drunk person in a dance club, which is to say incredibly easy: just avoid their line of sight, because that's about the only thing working well enough to register your presence.
 * Doesn't really explain how Clover could silently sneak up on the camera, though. Were its microphones ringing too?

The image of the monster was altered by the goverment when they found the tape. The monster actually is Donkey Kong Jesus Riding A Puff of Smoke
And the Nostalgia Critic is the only one who knows the truth.

The monster is the first wave of attack by the Combine, showing off their impressive DNA modification abilities.
They modified a Gargantua by crossing it with the Race X from Opposing force.

Cloverfield is the earliest entry in the Star Trek franchise.
Abrams has said that all of his projects take place in the same universe, and, of course, both Cloverfield and his Star Trek feature Slusho.

Cloverfield is an alternate continuity version of Jericho.
The key difference being that Robert Hawkins was white. This prevents the US from getting nuked but unleashes the Cloverfield monster.
 * They also gave it some of Gordon Freeman's blood. How did it survive that explosion? It reloaded a save.

The US military knew about the monster in advance.
Within a couple of hours of the first impact, there are full-sized battle tanks on the streets of Manhattan. It would be totally impossible for the Army to mobilize that fast unless they had some kind of warning.
 * It's possible that the capsized oil tanker was the hint. We don't know how long it had been capsized when the characters see it on TV. We also don't know if the tanker arrived under its own power normally or was pulled there by the monster (it worked for Godzilla); if it was pulled there, the army would probably have considerable warning.
 * In addition, the Marines all seemed to know about the "Hammerdown Protocol". The name and the way they reference it suggests that it was a contingency plan worked out some time for just such a situation.
 * We actually DO have a Hammerdown Protocol; it's just not called that.
 * The satellite plunging into the ocean off Coney Island woke up Clover and tipped them off. They already knew that Clover was sleeping there, so they quickly mobilized the military and had them standing by for when Clover showed up. The big explosions at the start of the attack was the first stage of defense, to attack the creature while it's underwater.
 * Pretty stupid of them not to have killed the thing while it was still asleep, if they'd already known Clover was down there. Even without a falling satellite, something was bound to wake it up sooner or later.
 * And risk waking it up even earlier?
 * ...Uh, yeah. You'd tend to think getting the drop on the giant monster sleeping just off the East Coast would be the preferred course of action rather than waiting for the damn thing to start wrecking New York first. Honestly, the idea that the military knew that it was down there even *before* it woke up/started moving toward shore paints them as either complete monsters or complete morons.
 * The monster was obviously strong enough to withstand anything the army had, besides (maybe) the Hammerdown Protocol, and I doubt they would have used that as a first resort, anything else would have just woken it up even angrier.
 * You could drop nuclear torpedos/depth charges/mines on it. It'd cause far less damage than nuking a city.

The monster is another version of Sin from Final Fantasy X.
There's some indication Lost and Cloverfield take place in the same universe. The monster was very similar to Sin. Putting things together reveals that the monster is the psychic manifestation of the Lost castaways whose spirits are trapped in the purgatory within the monster; their souls power its rampage of destruction.
 * More than a hint. The recovered footage bears the Dharma logo and one Lost Easter egg featured a picture of a large business tower with a monstrous shadow cast across it. The creature yes?
 * Where is this Easter egg? I can't find it anywhere, and this is the first I've heard of it.

The monster is a Locust siege machine waking on Earth instead of Sera.
The monster looks like a few of the Locust creatures. It came out of the Earth. It could be a Locust monster, albeit of a different species. There is some kind of Locust creature living underground which could wake up on every planet. In Gears of War, it woke from emulsion drilling. On Earth, it woke from oil drilling.

The monster is a Great Old One.
It was slumbering beneath the sea until the Tagruato company woke it up. It immediately started laying waste to everything. Nothing thrown at it, not even whatever Hammerdown is, stopped it. Sounds about the same as what's supposed to happen when Great Cthulhu wakes up.
 * You forgot about the worldwide nightmares, but we can ignore that.
 * Point of order: Hammerdown is a MOAB, purportedly the most powerful non-nuke weapon in existence. Clover's sleepin' wit' the fishes.

The smaller monsters are "fleas" or "ticks" of the larger one.
Think about it. Especially think about it while cleaning off a flea-infested carpet or walking through a weedy thicket...
 * Also, consider that many blood-sucking insects inject their prey with a mild anticoagulant to keep the tasty blood flowing. Then consider what would happen to a human injected with what counts as a "mild anticoagulant" for something of the size and resilience of the monster.
 * Plus if you were a parasite at high pressure areas underwater, and needed blood to come out, you'd need to consider the internal pressure of what you're feeding on, possibly inducing pressure equalisation. Now imagine high pressure internals relocated to low pressure surface environments.
 * That's exactly what Abrams said they were.
 * Abrams was contradicted by other Words of God on other direct explanations. That said, it is a good explanation.

There are two monsters.
Enough people on the Internet seem to believe in this theory for it to merit a mention here. The monster that eats Hud seems markedly smaller than the one seen elsewhere in the film. A smaller and swifter monster would explain how it managed to sneak up on the protagonists, and why it chewed Hud. Hud smelled like those crazy bugs on mommy's back. Mommy is awesome.
 * There are at least two monsters, Cloverfield and its mother--Cloverfield's rampage is stated by Abrams to have been caused by its fear and confusion over its mom's absence.
 * Note that Cloverfield has been underwater and dormant for quite some time. It seems somewhat more likely that Mom is long since dead.
 * The mom shows up in the manga and does die at the end, though not before swimming deep under the sea to a nest of some sort with a whole bunch of eggs.
 * OBJECTION!! Word of God spoke about them treating it "like" the monster was a lost child looking for its mother, not that it actually WAS one. A pithy technicality, yes, but that's what the US legal system is made of.

The monster survived Hammerdown.
The blip of static after the credits says "It's still alive" when played in reverse. See?

Plus, Clover seemed Made of Iron throughout; no reason it couldn't stand up to whatever kind of superweapon Hammerdown was supposed to be.
 * People have theorized that Hammerdown was ineffective because Cloverfield was a deep-sea creature and was extremely resistant to extremes in temperature.
 * Deep sea creatures are not extremely resistant to anything. They are capable of living at deep pressure because their body tissues are similarly pressured, from birth to death. Marine biologists who capture specimens and bring them to the surface must keep them carefully pressurized to keep them alive long enough for study. Otherwise, all you have is some deep-sea sushi of questionable delectability. This is the reason real Giant Squid don't come to the surface unless they're already dead.
 * Giant squids have surfaced by themselves before... it's just that the pressure difference (and thus, the bends) prevents them from submerging again, cutting them off from their normal food sources. The myth of the Kraken has occasionally been explained this way. Something similar may explain why Cloverfield decided to come looking for people.
 * Deep sea creatures aren't "pressurized", they are mostly made of incompressible gelatinous tissue.
 * Wasn't this shot down by Word of Abrams?
 * Yes, yes it was. STOP with the maybe it survived crap. It's dead.
 * That doesn't mean it doesn't have siblings, now just waking up.
 * Supposedly, there is a sequel to this thing intended. Either Clover survived, it has siblings, or mama or papa Clover is going to come LOOKING for the baby, and everything will go to hell from there for whoever's in the new cast. Don't forget, in some ways, Cloverfield is a nod to Gorgo, which has a baby sea monster held in captivity and its parent, a two hundred plus foot tall version came looking for it. If this thing was an infant, according to some interpretations of Word of God, then why can't there be others of its kind, possibly adult size (whatever that may actually be given Clover's size) or siblings, or simply just another infant or adolescant of the same size out there?

The monster is an Angel from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
It came up from the sea and immediately started laying waste to the nearest populated area, just like several of the Angels. An AT-Field would explain its apparent total invulnerability. The sequel will involve the deployment of Evangelions to New York to contain it.
 * The Monster is only slightly less weird-looking than many Angels, and there's no way that normal organic tissues could survive that amount of firepower completely unscathed. The only missing bit is the lack of abstract symbolism in its structure and a core. Hammerdown is a North American Evangelion unit.
 * The disturbingly humanoid monster is itself a deformed Eva-prototype that escaped from NERV's North American branch and rampaged.
 * I think we can narrow it down to one particular Angel: Gaghiel, as seen here and here. This continuity's version had spider-crab legs rather than manta fins, though it also had an exposed core in its mouth, which is why Hammerdown worked. This also explains why it specifically came to New York... Adam's being kept in a secret lab beneath Manhattan.
 * Taken to it's logical conclusion by this troper, by mixing the soundtrack of NGE and the Cloverfield Teaser

Cloverfield documents the after-effects of Watchmen.
The monster is a different version of the one released in New York.

Hammerdown is a nuke.
It's held in reserve as a last-ditch weapon, and the person announcing its deployment finishes by saying "May God save our souls." Might be true, might not be.
 * Jossed by evidence in the film - namely, the presence of the film within a few hundred yards of the detonation site. Current consensus is that it's an MOAB or Fuel-Air Bomb.
 * To elaborate, even if it was an absurdly tiny nuke and didn't actually atomise the camera, the EMP from the blast would wipe anything electric around it.

Hammerdown is, in fact, Hammertime.
When all else has failed, the US Government rely on the ultimate power of MC Hammer and his MC Hammer slide to defeat the monster. Since even this was not enough, Humanity is truly doomed.
 * Note that one benefit of this plan is that MC Hammer is easy to deliver to the combat zone: his genie pants will function as a flotation device, survival shelter, or parachute. Whether his Magical Shoes were involved or not isn't known. If not, we still have a chance.
 * "...It's still alive..." isn't referring to the survivors or the monster(s), but to MC Hammer, who is Still Alive.
 * And this explains MC Hammer's apparent retirement. Everyone knows he's too legit to quit -- he really just went into seclusion and a decade-long Training Montage in order to prepare himself for the day the "Hammertime Protocol" would be needed.

Alternatively, Hammerdown refers to Captain Hammer.
Captain Hammer was the final line of defense against Clover and the bridge collapsing was the result of him landing on it from the drop pod in the bomber. "It's Still Alive" refers to Captain Hammer since he is invulnerable and thus is ultimately victorious, the fighting leveled New York to the ground unfortunately.

Alternatively, Hammerdown refers to Captain Falcon.
Obviously the military placed a bounty on Clover's head, that Captain Falcon came to collect. The bridge collapsing was a result of the awesome forces of the Falcon Punch that destroyed Clover. "It's Still Alive" refers to the title of Captain Falcon, which was passed on to Rob as there must always be a Captain Falcon.

Alternatively, Hammerdown refers to Chuck Norris.
The military, knowing full well they can't kill Clover, bring in their ace in the hole. 'It's still alive' refers to Chuck Norris, who kill Clover in an epic battle.

Alternatively, Hammerdown refers to Godzilla.
Because, it's obvious they were way passed the Godzilla Threshold by that point.
 * Extrapolating on this, depending on which continuity you're going from, Godzilla would probably have one of two reactions. One is he might figure out the thing is a baby and decide to adopt it (he did take in Minya in the original timeline, and Baby/little Godzilla aka Godzilla Jr. in the Heisei line). The other response he might have would basically be to blow it to hell since, infant or not, it's messing with the world he sees as his territory. Plus, he's the undisputed King of the Monsters and Clovie isn't being very smart dissing the King by messing with his stuff. And that's just the original timeline. In the Heisei and Millennium timelines...I'm pretty sure Godzilla's response would just be to blow it the fuck up since it was attacking and might have accidentally pissed him off somehow, whether by accidentally lobbing something at him, or even trying to get up close with him which he'd probably regard as an attack.

The monster is a tilt-a-whirl.
'Nuff said.

Hammerdown is an N2 Mine
Goes with the above theory that the monster is an Angel. Because of the AT Field, it was still not powerful enough to kill the monster unless it hits its core at practically point-blank range, and could only injure it.

Kishin (the boy from the Cloverfield manga) is psychically linked to the Monster
On the final page of the first chapter, what is presumably the Monster rises out of the water just as Kishin breaks down. This could mean that the Monster is somehow powered by people's despair.

The monster is Ben Linus performing a One-Winged Angel act, probably with the Smoke Monster's "help".
It's more than a little likely that "Smokey" is some kind of Sealed Evil in a Can. It turned on Ben, who has recently been shown trying to use the monster to his own devices; it absorbed him, and together they became "Clover". This explains why Clover looks just anthropomorphic enough to be thought-provoking. The whole movie is a flash-forward to the aftermath of the events in "Lost".
 * As for the parasites, perhaps Ben had... Lyme Disease... Or he ate a gas station egg sandwich.
 * Ben spent/spends all that time running around the island, getting the hell beaten out of him by everyone. No wonder he is sickly.
 * It's recently turned out that Hawaii is host to several weird invertebrates that speciated within the last thousand years or so. With this in mind, Jacob only knows what kinds of crazy ticks evolved in isolation on Craphole Island... oh dear, there's all the Nightmare Fuel I'll need tonight...
 * Sadly, this theory seems to have been Jossed by... the reveals in Season Six. Then again,

The Monster is the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal!
And while it attacks New York, it is making a very good meal of visiting tourists!
 * Oh the fools! If only they'd remembered their towels!
 * This would explain why it doesn't eat Hud until he's looking at it.

Some of the small creatures weren't parasites. They were the monster's young.
There are many amphibian species that carry their eggs on their bodies and then come ashore when the eggs are ready to hatch. Judging only from the evidence provided by the movie itself, this seems a logical and horrible conclusion.
 * No, they weren't.

The monster was manmade.
Someone tried to create their own version of Jurassic Park and got carried away.
 * Not sure about the Jurassic Park part, as the creature doesn't look a damn thing like anything you'd classify as a dinosaur. (But since so much early speculation centered around a "dinosaur" loose in New York, we've inadvertently proved a trope here! Wee!)
 * Somewhat true already, since we know that it fed off of seabed nectar to become so enormous. Also, its ascent was caused by human disturbance.

The monster is a perfectly normal human who WANTS HONEYCOMB
ME WANT HONEYCOMB! ME WANT HONEYCOMB!
 * The tragedy of Honeycomb addiction. WILL MANKIND NEVER LEARN?
 * Honeycomb big. Yeah Yeah Yeah.
 * It's not small?
 * No no no.

The monster is a djinn summoned by Islamic militants who have somehow gotten hold of occult secrets in an attempt to finish what 9/11 started.
It would explain the oft-mentioned similarities to the 9/11 incident.

The monster and the smaller monster are in fact giant rampaging pubic lice.
It was on a forum back when the film came out, and it makes about as much sense as any of the other theories.
 * Eew.
 * And what was the creature whose pubes they came from???

Clover is somehow related to the Chimera from Resistance: Fall of Man.
Exactly What It Says on the Tin. They look nearly the same.

The monster is a lhurgoyf.
Ach! Hans, run! It's the Cloverfield!
 * Not again.

The Cloverfield document was uncovered from a future-viewing experiment, and the United States destroyed USA 193 to stop it from awakening the monster
Think about it: There was the satellite or space junk that crashed into the ocean off Coney Island at the end of the movie (during the flashback). The United States Military found out about the events of "Cloverfield" through a future-viewing experiment. They then destroyed the Spy Satellite to stop it from ever waking up the monster.
 * The biggest risk was that enough satellite debris would get through the atmosphere to make the future-viewing experiment a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.

Rob is still alive.
How else does he say 'It's still alive.' at the end of the film?
 * That quote is backwards. It probably has no validity, and is just there as a hurr look at that!

Hammerdown is Hammerspace
The US military has gained control over that indefinable area where all mallets come from. They planned to suck the monster into it, or return it there. The monster's having control over Hammerspace would explain how it manages to sneak around New York. Also, it explains the survival of the camera.

Cloverfield is an alternate universe version of Heroes
This explains Beth's incredible healing abilities and Marlena surviving for as long she did. This explains the other girl's ability to run across half of Manhattan in high heels. This explains why the military soldier is willing to let three untrained civilians run off into hostile territory to rescue a friend - he could tell there was no point in stopping them. After all, Rob controls vast amounts of energy. That's how he could talk to his mom on the cell phone through six tons of debris. That's why Hude's video camera kept working for so long - Rob wanted it to.

Clover was running away from Godzilla
JJ said the monster was scared. But since it was originally awoken by Japanese, it seems pretty obvious, what could scare him off... That, or yaoi fanfiction.
 * Dude, everyone's scared by yaoi fanfiction. Some more than others.
 * Alternative: Clover was running away from a combination of Godzilla and yaoi. After all, Godzilla must be gettin pretty lonely...
 * Your theory is bad and you should feel bad.

Hammerdown is, in fact, Alberto the Shockwave
The guy's able to beat the crap of out Angels on foot. You don't get much tougher than that.
 * If Alberto could stop the Eye of Volger, THEN HE CAN STOP CLOVER!!

The monster is the Dreaming God from Pathways into Darkness
Cloverfield takes place after the game, in a continuity in which the player in PID failed to detonate the nuke. The Dreaming God is awake and has begun spreading chaos across the Earth. Hammerdown is a contingency plan developed before the events of the game in case of failure, in which a bomb is dropped onto the monster instead of being placed there by ground forces. The monster is "still alive" at the end in that the bomb only stunned it to delay it until the Jjaro can arrive and deal with it, as was the plan in the game.

Cloverfield is set in the Gears Universe
Sera and Earth are the same planet, but almost all records were destroyed by the Scorched Earth Plan. Hammerdown is another one of the satilites used in this, less known than The Hammer of Dawn. Clover is part of the Emergance Day attack.

Clover was created by GlaDOS and was in fact originally Chell
The monster was GLaDOS' master plan all along. She intended for Chell to escape because GLaDOS had treated Chell with a special serum that would make her mutate over time into a creature that could wreak havoc on the world that spurned an insane AI. This explains how at the end of the movie the monster is Still Alive

Clover was a Decepticon experiment that got out of hand
The Decepticons were trying to make a techno-organic creature "read " or say, some kind of Predacon. However, they accidently (or on purpose, take your pick.) unleashed it during production upon NYC. Operation Hammerdown was initiated, which was not actually a Nuke, but getting all avilable Autobots and NEST personel to begin an all out assault on the target with utter disregard to damage done to the city. Also the smaller clovers were drones that infect viruses. And Rob saying "It's still alive" at the end? A large ammount of blasts delivered to the monster still weren't enough to stop it. Also "Help us" was when another Helicopter, that turned out to be Springer, arrived and he was asking for help.

== Hammerdown was actually a new GDI satellite based missile deployment system. The monster was Kain's new experiment in tiberium's effects on certain humans, set in a different timeline where tiberium has not become widespread and the GDI is a secret operation == Kain mutates subject, uses it to wreck havoc on that platform, drives subject to the shoreline by means of sonar pulses from submarines and lets it loose on the general population. The GDI are aware of this plan, about the time the platform was destroyed but couldn't retaliate immediately due to the secretive nature of their operation. They instead mobilize the general military, not knowing the full extent of the monsters powers. This is also why the monster is 'upset' because mutation is traumatic and Kain was it's parental figure. After Kain dumped it in New York, it lashed out, just as he intended. Once the military proved insufficient to take the monster down, the GDI were forced to utilize their satellite (and it's a satellite because hell, that's what they do) defense system, hammerdown, to stop it. To keep the satellite's role a secret, they also carpet bombed the place. The missiles work because it's the GDI, and they have magic super techno missile kapowers.
 * It's Kane.

The monster is a Tyranid vanguard biotitan.
Several months before the incident, something fell from the sky into the ocean near New York; conventional wisdom says 'satellite,' but it could just as well be a quasi-embryonic Tyranid biotitan in a spore that emerged from its spore, devoured a bunch of oceanic life, grew to its current size, and started rumbling around, wrecking New York and sending a psychic signal back to the Tyranids, who were nearly done devouring their own galaxy. This would cause the Tyranids to come to our galaxy, but only 38 millenia in the future. The God-Emperor would also realize the threat to come, and would start trying to amp up humanity's technology in time for the invasion, perhaps being the catalyst for the Dark Age of Technology. This would also explain Clover's complete resistance to modern weaponry, as only weapons from the far future would be able to kill it.

Hammerdown is a reverse-engineered version of The Hammer.
In Independence Day, the alien superweapon is called "The Hammer". It's capable of destroying an entire city, yet doesn't leave behind any radioactive fallout. It's more powerful than any human weapon, with the possible exception of nuclear warheads. It's also shown a relative lack of success at penetrating bridges and underground tunnels completely, leaving these areas intact enough for, say, a camera to be still intact. The US military was able to salvage the Hammer from the downed alien spacecrafts, repair it, and reverse-engineer it into a weapon they could use.
 * Naturally, this WMG opens up a whole new spectrum of possibilities for Cloverfield itself...
 * Of course, this would require Cloverfield and Independence Day to be in the same continuity; New York City was already thoroughly destroyed during Independence Day.
 * They used alien technology to rebuild really quickly.

Cloverfield is set in the same universe as Stephen King's "The Mist"
Clover looks quite like the massive monster seen towards the end of The Mist, and the parasites resemble the odd creatures that assault the convenience store. Maybe the Cloverfield incident was caused by the Arrowhead project? The Mist itself could have just been a local phenomenon, caused by the lake and the experiment, so it didn't affect New York City. Or maybe a variant of the experiment happened somewhere close, at a military base. WMG, indeed.
 * Alternatively, the alternate dimension is opened by a significant amount of water.

Clover is actually an overly mutated Epileptic Tree.
Perfectly explains why it's so tall.

Cloverfield takes place in the future of Fringe.
Frist, they're both J.J. Abrams productions. They both involve unexplained things wreaking havoc. The "Cloverfield" document comes from a potential future where the parallel universe managed to bust through. The monster was created as part of their overall plan to destroy our universe. The satellite plunging into the water was actually an interdimensional portal creator.
 * Other evidence: the time stamp on the Coney Island scenes places the date at March 27. Assuming they're going over the weekend, the nearest future date would be Saturday, March 27, 2010. The film shows us what could happen.

The monster is a Red Sox fan!
And Red Sox/Yankees rivalry is Serious. Effing. Business.

Expanding on the above theory: The Monster is Wally pulling a One Winged Angel.
Wally, for those not in the know, is the Green Monster (or at least the Anthropomorphic Personification of same). He is the cuddly, lovable costumed Red Sox mascot, and, as you can see, he would not look out of place at all hanging out with Grover and Elmo on Sesame Street. (He is also one of the few MLB mascots who doesn't appear to be designed to scare children.) Cloverfield documents his reaction to Johnny Damon joining the Yankees...

Hammerdown is the Goldion Hammer.
Obligatory link to home series. I can't believe that you people couldn't think of that

Clover is the Blue Meanies' genetically engineered anti-music weapon, escaped from Pepperland.
And the Hammerdown protocol is Maxwell and his Silver Hammer.

"It's Still Alive" refers to the monster's mother, not Clover itself.
At the end credits of the film, the static message played backwards claims "It's still alive". But Abrams himself has stated that the monster was killed by the Hammerdown Protocol, so what's that clip doing in the movie? There are two reasons - a simple one and a clever one.
 * 1) Clover is "still alive" and Abrams was half asleep when he made the statement. You can just imagine Bryan Burk and Drew Goddard looking at each other in confusion, can't you?
 * 2) The audio clip was recorded from a radio broadcast and inserted into the film as part of the sightings. Where it came from is not stated, but it can't refer to a monster that's dead, now, can it? It must obviously refer to the mother, as the Kishin Manga shows the monster either dying or going to sleep next to her eggs, from which Clover himself would have been born.
 * Abrams states that Clover's rampage is just a frightened search for it's mother. Therefore, it is my guess that the mothers look after their young, and the two became seperated somehow while flattening Manhattan together in search of food (see the WMG on that theory). The baby was killed by the Hammerdown Protocol, but the mother survived and managed to flatten the guy who made the broadcast. Sequel, anyone?
 * 1) I'm overthinking this and really need a cup of tea right now.

Cloverfield takes place in The Matrix
The reason the monster seems able to sneak up on people is because, like the devilsaurs in World of Warcraft, its large size makes it graphic take longer than normal to load. The signs of its presence only arise when it's already on top of you.

Immeadietly after Hammerdown began, the monster's mother arrived.
The adult monster was easily able to defend her child from the bombs (New York wasn't so lucky.) After brushing all the monster fleas off and giving him a good talking to for wandering off alone, the two share a tender moment and leave in a flash of light. We never see this because of the camera's angle.

Cloverfield is a prequel to Pokemon.
Why not?
 * After New York was destroyed, the area (and soon the rest of the world) was flooded, making the Pokemon regions the only source of civilization . The smaller creatures Cloverfield spawned evolved into even smaller, different creatures, mimicking the wildlife around them. Eventually the citizens of Johto realized this was the perfect opportunity and developed the very first Poke Ball...
 * In addition to the fact that, like many WG Ms, this is a crappy and random piece of random crap, the BIGGEST thing wrong with it is... why would there be flooding after New York was destroyed?
 * The destruction of New York actually brought with it a new era. Eventually, it would turn out that Slusho had a disastrous effect on the local flora and fauna, mutating them into interbred, super-powered monsters. Japan was hit first with the monster plague, their civilization completely falling apart as a result. The US didn't fall because of it, but New York was soon taken over by these strange creatures. It wouldn't be until much later, when those areas are reclaimed and their monsters tamed, would they get the name "Pokemon" and New York would be newly christened "Unova".

The monster is Missing No.
It's found in water areas of the game, who's to say it didn't make its way out of the pokeverse and into New York?

Hammerdown is Alex Mercer
It makes sense, I mean Alex is effectively invincible, and Clover looks an awful lot like the Hunters (only a lot bigger). ** Also Clover is WHITELIGHT, We have black and redlight, it makes sense.

The monster is a descendent of The Rancor.
Don't you think that the brief glances of the monster looks like a rancor?

The monster is a Tarrasque.
It sleeps for long periods of time, is huge, and is destroying everything nearby. It must be a baby and thats why its looking for its mom, it doesn't know that there is only one at a time, and the reason that they said its still alive is that the new one respawned.

The monster is Lavos.
It bears a striking resemblance to Lavos' second form, having the same skin color, inflating/deflating sacs on the sides of its head, and odd, stretched-out-looking arms. It also slept beneath Earth's surface for a great deal of time.

The monster was created by the crossover thrash group Municipal Waste..
"Clover" is actually the Attention Deficit Destroyer referred to in the song of the same name, and the parasite are the bastards referred to in Unleash The Bastards. Also, their album titles (Waste 'Em All, Hazardous Mutation, The Art of Partying, and Massive Aggressive) are indicative of their plan. They plan to waste all of New York City with a massively aggressive, hazardous mutant so they can have the city all to themselves in order to demonstrate the art of partying via the RADDEST KEGGER EVER!

Cloverfield is an alternate reality-prequel to Escape from New York.
Escape from New York takes place in 1997. But this movie, taking place in 2008, is a sort of alternate reality prequel to Escape. This explains why the Statue of Liberty's head was on the ground on the cover of Escape. Some time after the end of Cloverfield, the monster is either completely destroyed or is herded back into the water. New York City, now completely wasted and no longer liveable, is transformed into a massive prison city. Cut a couple of decades later and events very similar to Escape From New York happen.

The Monster is the Witch in the Blair Witch Project.
Do I really even need to explain this?

The "satellite" that fell is actually...
...the knocked-apart cockpit of Joseph Jostar's plane from part two of JJBA. You can just imagine him screaming about FUCKING PIRANHAS in the background of the ferris wheel scene.

The entire film is Hud's dream or delusion while he is passed out at the party.
Only in a dream or a delusion would the events that occurred in this movie have made any "sense."
 * This explains the ridiculous premises, the lack of military coordination and tactics,the monster essentially "following" them throughout the film, the parasites attacking creatures that they have never encountered before, and the extremely dull intro story about two adults haven slept together.

Clover is or was thought to be a result of a prototype Aperture Science experiment ripping a hole into the other world of Stephen King's The Mist.
Because Clover coincidentally started smashing up New York City at roughly the same time that the underground labs activated their (non-functional) portal device, the scientists (and the military that they had on standby) think they just re-enacted Stephen King's The Mist. "It's Still Alive" is a result of their computer replaying a clip of HUD's voice that it had captured earlier, which explains why the voice was backmasked. Later, after determining the separation of Cloverfield from the Aperture project, the newly created Aperture Science Laboratories used the computer's information as part of the disc-operated part of GLaDoS (wanting as much information on previous projects as they could get).

the monster is only a baby, and now his mother is very angry at the humans.
The squeal will feature the humans activating their true weapon of last resort: a portal to Valhalla, from which Beowulf will emerge to deliver us awesome. (Hammerdown was obviously Mjolnir. The US government has an entire secret branch dedicated to weaponizing Norse mythology)

You thought the parasites were dangerous? You'll miss them once everybody figures out...
That Clover also carries all manners of unknown diseases from whenever or wherever he was born, that were frozen/hibernating inside him on the ocean floor. Like the parasites, they were barely a nuisance to the titanic monstrosity, but in a few days humans are going to be dying in masses from the kaiju equivalent of the common cold.

There are two monsters
The first time we get a look at Clover, it has beady black eyes. Later in Central Park  it's eyes are big and red.
 * They still are. The big red things are a pair of air sacs which inflate and deflate. The eyes are still black.

Clover is an Angel, but this doesn't go where you think...

 * In this world, the US government reasons that the only thing that beat an angel is a God, therefore the government comissions the construction of Humongous Mecha with the firepower to curb stomp angels. Since they are effectively "giant gods" to seperate them from the regular robots, or the EVAs used by japan, each robot is referred to as a "Megadeus", which literally means "giant god". However, once the angels are gone, things get a little out of hand...

Cloverfield is a prequel to Planet of the Apes.
That's how the Statue of Liberty's head ended up on that beach!
 * Brilliant!

Hammerdown is actually Chuck Norris
He's the only thing badass enough to take Clover down.

Cloverfield happens in the Marvel Universe
Hammerdown is the SHIELD protocol for the deployment of Thor.

What's Clover's fate might have been in the world of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
The nuke did detonate (though it didn't kill the beast) only for Clover's owner to come back and bring him to the ethereal realm from which he came.

This movie is a parallel story to Battle: Los Angeles.
Instead of a mass infantry invasion and combined arms security operation, the aliens tried some sort of ecological invasion, unleashing a third-party alien species or two onto Earth. What we're watching, really, is Battle New York. And, as many have theorized, we either lost New York (the "Clover's Still Alive!" crowd) or it was a Pyrrhic Victory for the humans, with millions of civilians, and a major metropolitan area destroyed. This is supported by the last shot you see of Rob and Beth at Coney Island. Many have pointed out the object that falls into the water. Watch it closely; it slows down before impact, just like the meteorites the aliens in Los Angeles used to land outside of Los Angeles did.

Clover was able to sneak up on the others at the end...
Because he's a ninja, believe it.

Hammerdown is Rainbow Dash
Someone had to.

Hammerdown is the government's codename for Superman: the biggest Badass ever.
J.J. Abrams' projects all take place in the same universe? That must include the "Superman: Flyby" film he was working on for a while back in 2002. It looked very cool, and though it was never made, that doesn't mean it never happened. Superman incapacitates Clover, who is then taken in by the government. It probably has something to do with LOST, and then due to discovering the interstellar warp travel technology Clover used to get to Earth and cross referencing it with Kal-El's own mangled prototype from his childhood, Star Trek eventually becomes possible.